Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Extra, Extra!: Noir City

The best news in the brand-spanking-new Spring issue of Noir City, house rag of the Film Noir Foundation: Turner Classic Movies is bringing back the Summer of Noir. Every Friday in June AND July will feature twenty-four hours of noir, with your primetime host being none other than FNF honcho Eddie Muller himself.

As for the magazine ... buckle in, kids, because it’s a doozy.



Eddie and ace graphic designer Michael Kronenberg have been cooking up the comics issue for some time. And they’ve pulled out all the stops. You’ve got –

- An interview with Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, the duo behind the ultra-noir comic The Fade-Out

- Muller’s salute to Will Eisner’s The Spirit

- Jake Hinkson’s look back at Batman: Year One

- Michael Kronenberg on the Dark Knight in the dark decade of the 1970s

- Jason Ney’s survey of the original comic-book movies, RKO’s Dick Tracy films

Plus Duane Swierczynski’s review of Hickey & Boggs on Blu-Ray, yer man Ray Banks on Sean Connery as you’ve never seen him in the bruising neo-noir The Offence, and yours truly with my standard cocktails-and-crime column and a review of screenwriter Charles Brackett’s diaries. And, as the man says, so much more.

Swing by the Film Noir Foundation website, make with the contribution, and the magazine is yours. Donate by April 30 and you’ll be eligible to win a copy of my pal Mark Fertig’s gorgeous book The 101 Best Film Noir Posters. Are you still here? Get cracking!

Friday, April 10, 2015

Me Elsewhere: Scotch, Guarded

A justly neglected musical about a highland rogue. Rudolph Valentino. Stan Laurel. The Three Stooges. And a one-time toast of Broadway whose name proved one letter too difficult. What do these have in common? They all factor into the history of one of the trio of Scotch cocktails spotlighted in my latest Down the Hatch column at Eat Drink Films.