Saturday, November 28, 2020

Noir City Noirvember Edition

Just in time for the closing days of Noirvember, the latest issue of Noir City hit inboxes as the Thanksgiving weekend approached. The magazine of the Film Noir Foundation, edited by yours truly, is the cornucopia we all could use right about now. Among this installment’s bounty—

Eddie Muller’s galvanizing letter from the publisher on the perils of cancel culture;

The return of Nora Fiore, Twitter’s inestimable Nitrate Diva, with a gem of a piece ranking noir’s best diners, beautifully laid out by ace designer Michael Kronenberg;

Michael dons his interviewer cap for a talk with comics writer of the moment Tom King;

My pal Christa Faust on noir’s ladies of a certain age;

Sharon Knolle’s timely reappraisal of crooked cops in noir—with an eye-opening sidebar by veteran law enforcement officer Peter Stipe;

Our man on the Continent Ray Banks considers the dark performances of beloved softie Richard Attenborough;

The troubled career of filmmaker Hubert Cornfield;

And more.

I’ve got some book reviews, my usual column complete with cocktail recipe, and a conversation with novelist Alaya Dawn Johnson (Trouble the Saints) prompted by her fascinating CrimeReads essay on racism in classic noir fiction.

Want a copy? Head over to the Film Noir Foundation website and make a modest contribution to the ongoing fight to preserve classic film noir. As accompaniment, you can listen to my colleagues hold forth on the Word Balloon podcast.