Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer is coming back to the silver screen and Joel and Ethan Coen are involved. This sounds like a match made in noir heaven!
News
Article: High Heels on Wet Pavement
Michael Mills over at moderntimes.com wrote this short but insightful article on film noir and the femme fatale a few years ago. It is worth a few minutes to read it. With a title like High Heels and Wet Pavement how can you go wrong!
Here is the link to the full article:
Article: The Father of ‘Tartan Noir’
Here is an interesting article on William McIlvanney and his Laidlaw books. I don’t know much about McIlvanney or these books, but this article made me want to read them soon.
Written by Allan Massie for the Wall Street Journal it is worth reading. Here is the link to the full article:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-father-of-tartan-noir-1437772631
News: David Fincher’s STRANGERS ON A TRAIN Remake Not Happening Anytime Soon
So for better or for worse, the Strangers on a Train remake is put on hold for now. I was actually looking forward to this one, if anybody was going to remake this classic, this is the team to do it. On the other hand we are getting some good neo noir projects from the team in the meantime. Ben Affleck will be working on Live by Night based on the Dennis Lehane noir book. He will also be working on a new Batman stand alone film, hopefully in the noir tradition of past Batman projects. David Fincher and Gillian Flynn will be working together again on a H.B.O. series Utopia, which sounds like a great sci-fi neo noir series. Flynn will also be working on Widows, a television series about mob widows.
Though this project may or may not see production anytime soon, the projects this threesome are working on sound promising. Do you think a remake is a good idea? Could you pick a better threesome to make it?
Here is the full article written by Adam Chitwood over at Collider:
http://collider.com/david-fincher-strangers-on-a-train-remake-delayed-ben-affleck/
Article: The couple who invented Nordic Noir
The Telegraph has a great little article by Jake Kerridge. Kerridge interviews Maj Sjöwall about her and her partner, Per Wahlöö, and their Nordic Noir book series about detective Martin Beck. In the article it goes over how these two influenced a lot of current greats like Lee Child and Henning Mankell. This is a short article worth your time if you are fans of Nordic Noir like Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbø. Here is a link to the full article:
Article: Neo-Noiriste John Dahl
I came across this article on John Dahl, who’s first three films are all great neo-noir films. Those are Kill Me Again, Red Rock West and The Last Seduction. He made a couple more noirish greats in Rounders and Joy Ride.
This article maybe a little dated, since it was written in 2010, but for the most part very little has changed in the movie industry since then and Dahl has some good points. One thing Dahl doesn’t touch on in this article is television. Maybe television is the place where people can be a little more experimental and free to try what they want. It’s interesting that since this article Dahl has exclusively worked on television and has directed episodes of some of the great neo-noir series in the last 5 years including Breaking Bad, Dexter, Terriers, Arrow, Hannibal, Ray Donovan, Justified, Aquarius and more. Check out the full article below:
http://www.soundonsight.org/neo-noiriste-john-dahl/
Do you feel neo-noir is moved out of the theater and onto are T.V. screens?
Article: In The Third Man, Orson Welles is Actually the Femme Fatale
Here is an interesting article by Stephanie Zacharek at the L.A. Weekly. Though the title catches your attention with an interesting theory, there is a lot of other great insight into one of the all time great films noir. The article talks about some of the other great actors who were considered for the two main parts and why they “settled” for Cotten and Welles.
Check out the full article here:
http://www.laweekly.com/film/in-the-third-man-orson-welles-is-actually-the-femme-fatale-5754481
Article: The Telegraph takes a look at Film noir femmes fatales
The Telegraph in the U.K. has a nice slide show if Femmes Fatales, with a few surprises on there. Check out the full article here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatpicturegalleries/7352663/Film-noir-femmes-fatales.html
Ben Affleck’s ‘Live by Night’ Gets Greenlight, November Start Date (EXCLUSIVE)
Ben Affleck and Dennis Lehane’s worked together before and made Gone Baby Gone. I read the book awhile ago and look forward to this film. How about you?
See Los Angeles’ Rough Past With Crime Author James Ellroy
Check out this article from Time. It is about James Ellroy’s new book of crime photos. Did the photos inspire film noir or did film noir inspire the photos?
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