Farewell 2023 and December at Cocktails and Crime

Is there ever going to be a year I’m sorry to see end? I seem to remember that happening. In any event, bring on 2024.

2023 did turn out to be when I returned to blog-style writing. It just happened to be at Substack, that’s all. Here’s what happened at Cocktails and Crime this month.

It’s a Shane Black Christmas made its debut over there.

I started doing the program outlined in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which meant dealing with the terrors of reading deprivation week. I also reviewed Sam Wasson’s The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story.

I decided to start taking financial advice from movie directors, a choice that I’m sure will not backfire.

25 years of Zero Effect, the great private eye movie featuring a final terrific turn from the late Ryan O’Neal.

November at Cocktails and Crime

Hey, Substack is pivoting to video! I’m sure that bodes well for the future.

I understand how the game is played. Platforms evolve to the point where they eventually stop doing what you want them to do. Case in point: the now non-functioning Twitter (to hell with that X nonsense) widget to your left. Maybe Substack is the answer, maybe it isn’t. The numbers indicate that it’s working for me right now. Still, I’m keeping my shingle up here even if it’s only to recap what I’m doing there, like the following.

A look at three new books on the big-screen comedies Airplane!, The Blues Brothers, and Anchorman.

Somehow I connect the icy, cerebral thriller Anatomy of a Fall with the raunchy comedy No Hard Feelings. Plus a history of Siskel & Ebert and a martini variation from Phil Ward.

My social media report card, along with Kliph Nesteroff’s new history of the culture wars and Scott Eyman’s Charlie Chaplin vs. America.

Jesse David Fox’s survey of contemporary comedy, documentaries on Albert Brooks and John le Carré, and a cocktail from the glory days of New York’s Amor y Amargo.

The latest spy novel from Mick Herron, plus Nyad and a documentary on the design studio responsible for some iconic album covers.

October C&C Roundup

I’m keeping busy at Cocktails and Crime, my Substack newsletter. This month’s offerings:

The ten-year anniversary of my first book, Down the Hatch: One Man’s One Year Odyssey Through Classic Cocktail Recipes and Lore, plus the evolution of my martini and the French noir Symphony for a Massacre.

Background on my CrimeReads feature about the LAPD films of Ron Shelton, Dark Blue and Hollywood Homicide, both of which were released twenty years ago.

General thoughts on watching new movies at home, plus a few of those new movies: Fair Play, Flora and Son, Wes Anderson’s adaptations of Roald Dahl stories for Netflix, and (in theaters for a change) a pair of short films by Pedro Almodóvar.

Bidding farewell to How To with John Wilson and Reservation Dogs, plus I retool my Manhattan.

September Cocktails and Crime Round-Up

Another month, another series of posts you can have delivered straight to your inbox for free. Here’s a recap of what appeared in my Substack newsletter Cocktails and Crime.

I resurrected and updated my post on Rabbit Hole, my favorite new TV show of 2023, and touted my low-octane libation of choice.

An overview of the 2022 Noir City Annual, which I edited, plus a rewatch of my childhood favorite Colossus: The Forbin Project and a review of Laura Lippman’s Prom Mom.

A tribute to Murray Stenson, an extraordinary bartender and my friend.

August at Cocktails and Crime

Things continue to go swimmingly at Cocktails and Crime, my Substack newsletter. Remember, sign-up is free. Here’s what was delivered to subscribers’ in-boxes in August.

The HBO documentary Being Mary Tyler Moore sends me down the rabbit hole of MTM’s biggest failure, a variety show packed with future stars.

A tribute to the late William Friedkin.

Reviews of a trio of new books about show business.

A new season of Project Greenlight, the only show I’ve ever hate-watched.

Wanting to feel uncomfortable, I start an improv class.

Somehow, I finish an improv class.

C&C in July

In less than a month, my Substack newsletter Cocktails and Crime has racked up subscribers in the triple digits. Thanks to everyone who has signed up. If you haven’t, there’s no time like the present. Here’s what you’ve been missing.

1. Introductions

2. My look at Library of America’s Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964

3. LOA’s Crime Novels: Four Classic Thrillers 1964-1969

4. On my feature story about Walter Matthau in the current issue of Noir City magazine, and William Redfield’s Letters from an Actor

5. I spin the Dial of Destiny and weigh in on the international capers Gold Brick and The Siberia Job

6. Steven Soderbergh’s SF/comedy web series Command Z, paired with a suitable cocktail

Substack Season

Short version: I’ve got a new Substack called Cocktails and Crime, which will be the home for most of my ramblings going forward, so if you’re at all interested in whatever thoughts wander into my head, you should subscribe to it.

Upon the advice of friends whom I trust, I have taken the plunge and hung out a shingle at Substack. The numbers here at the blog have held steady over the last few years, but like so much in life, they aren’t what they used to be. All the action is at Substack, and the cool kids are hanging out there as well. Based on concrete examples from people in the know, I started Cocktails and Crime. Which will pretty much be this blog in newsletter form.

I’m not closing up shop here; I have too many fond memories of the ol’ internet homestead to abandon it. My plan is to use this site to promote my work whenever it appears, and on occasion cross-post some of the longer entries after they’ve debuted on Substack.

The first post is up as of today. But again, the best way to keep up is to subscribe.

Noir City Seattle Schedule

It’s hard to believe that the dark carnival that is the Noir City Film Festival first pitched its tents twenty years ago. Eddie Muller and the Film Noir Foundation just finished feting the fest at its new home at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland. Seattle’s turn is next; Eddie has been bringing Noir City to SIFF theaters for fifteen years, with your humble correspondent in attendance at all of them.

Eddie programmed this year’s lineup with the occasion in mind. Every film hit the screen seventy-five years ago in 1948, so it’s diamond anniversaries up and down the bill.

Eddie will be hosting the screenings all opening weekend. After that, Renee Patrick—aka Rosemarie and me—takes over those duties, with me working solo a few evenings. The fun kicks off next Friday, February 10, with us as your emcees from February 13—16. If you’re anywhere near the Emerald City, come out for one of these can’t-miss shows.

Friday, February 10
6:30pm - Key Largo*
9:00pm - The Lady from Shanghai

Saturday, February 11
1:00pm - Larceny*
3:15pm - The Spiritualist*
6:00pm - The Big Clock
8:30pm - Unfaithfully Yours

Sunday, February 12
1:00pm - They Live by Night*
3:30pm - Raw Deal
6:00pm - Hollow Triumph*
8:15pm - Kiss the Blood Off My Hands*

Monday, February 13
6:00pm - The Hunted*
8:30pm - Call Northside 777

Tuesday, February 14
6:00pm - So Evil My Love*
8:45pm - Sleep, My Love*

Wednesday, February 15
6:00pm - The Naked City
8:30pm - Cry of the City*

Thursday, February 16
6:00pm - Night Has a Thousand Eyes*
8:15pm - All My Sons*

* screening in 35mm

Noir City We’ll Meet Again Edition

Issue 36 of the Film Noir Foundation’s magazine Noir City is now out in both digital and print editions, and it marks a bittersweet moment for yours truly. It’s my final issue as editor-in-chief. After fourteen years on the editorial staff, the last three-plus in the top job, I’m hanging up my spurs. 

But I’m leaving on a high note. Check out that cover image, for starters. We celebrate 100 years of film noir icon Veronica Lake with Lynsey Ford’s story looking at Lake’s career and her private life, “as tragic and convoluted as any film noir plot.” Also in the issue—

A brilliant feature by Farran Smith Nehme, aka the Self-Styled Siren, on the neo-noir world of “the French Hitchcock,” Claude Chabrol;

Brent Calderwood surveys the slippery history of masseurs and masseuses in film noir;

Noir City’s own Steve Kronenberg hears the siren song of Gale Sondergaard;

Jim Thomsen profiles “Driver’s Seat” singer and noir-inspired artist Paul Roberts;

Bob Sassone unwraps the singular charms of the classic yuletide-set noir Cover Up;

Eddie Muller offers a heartfelt memorial to his friend and colleague, novelist Jim Nisbet;

The Nitrate Diva Nora Fiore compares the book and film versions of Out of the Past.

Plus book reviews, film reviews, and more—including the farewell edition of my Cocktails & Crime column, with one last libation for the road.

It’s been an honor to work alongside publisher/FNF honcho Eddie Muller and ace designer Michael Kronenberg on every issue of this magazine, and I’m particularly proud of helping to launch the print edition of Noir City. I’ll still write for the magazine on occasion—look for a story from me later this year—and I’ll remain on the FNF’s advisory board. If you want to know which incredibly capable people will be taking the Noir City reins, why not get yourself a subscription by donating to the FNF, with your contribution going to support the Foundation’s film restoration efforts? If you prefer the hard stuff, you can order a print edition exclusively from Amazon. Either way, you won’t regret it.

There’s Only One Hitch—Or Is There?

Just in time to plan your holiday viewing—and for the paperback release of the latest Renee Patrick novel Idle Gossip next week—comes my story at CrimeReads considering eighty years of Hitchcock movies not directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The list has fifteen entries, but I namecheck plenty more, and had to refrain from tossing in additional titles. It was plenty of fun to write, so why not check it out? (Photo from Last Embrace, the 1979 Jonathan Demme film featuring a finale at a famous landmark that Hitch himself would have admired.) 

 

Noir City Two Directors for the Price of One Edition

Is it unseemly for me to say that this is best issue of Noir City yet?
Very well then I am unseemly.
(I am the editor, I contain multitudes.)
(Also, sorry, Uncle Walt.)

The latest edition of the magazine published by the Film Noir Foundation is now available in your choice of digital or print—or what the hell, why not both? I guarantee you’re going to want in on this.

Let’s start with the cover story. Back when FNF honcho Eddie Muller and I cooked up the Modern Noir Master award, we drafted a list of dream recipients. One of the first names we both mentioned was John Dahl, who merits a place in the neo-noir pantheon for two movies alone: Red Rock West (1993) and The Last Seduction (1994).

(Fun fact: I attended one of the earliest screenings of Seduction, at the Seattle International Film Festival. When the movie ended, I joined the silent, dumbstruck line for the restroom. Finally, the guy in front of me blurted out, “Men are so stupid!” We unanimously agreed with him.)

Sam Moore interviews Dahl at length, about those movies, other gems like Rounders (1998) and Joy Ride (2001), and his work on noir-inflected TV shows including Breaking Bad, Justified, and Ray Donovan.

But wait, there’s another director! Nick Kolakowski talks to Michael Mann and his Heat 2 coauthor Meg Gardiner about moving the world of his 1995 magnum opus to print, and pushing the story into both the past and the future. Also in this issue—

Nora Fiore, the Nitrate Diva, on the many uses of lipstick in film noir. I have to say this piece is among my favorites to appear in the magazine on my watch: a brilliant concept by Nora, written evocatively, and brought to vivid life on the page by ace designer Michael Kronenberg.

A one-of-a-kind memoir by Chris D., front man for the Flesh Eaters turned film scholar, on the surprising overlap between his two passions: punk rock and film noir.

A deep dive from John Wranovics on Harry Popkin, the onetime fight promoter who produced a series of noir titles that pulled no punches.

Noir City stalwart Jake Hinkson on noir’s dark vision of academia.

Joseph Moncure March’s epic poem The Set-Up already spawned the 1949 cinematic adaptation regarded as a classic of both noir and boxing films. Now it’s been turned into a graphic novel, and Nathalie Atkinson talks to artist Erik Kriek about it.

Plus more goodies, including my usual cocktail recipe.

Donate to the Film Noir Foundation, and in addition to supporting our restoration efforts you’ll receive a subscription to Noir City. You can also purchase the print edition exclusively at Amazon. Then settle in, because you’ll want to read this bad boy cover to cover.

Noir City “The Man That Got Away” Edition

Who’s the anguished cover boy on the latest edition of Noir City magazine, published by the Film Noir Foundation and edited by yours truly? None other than William Holden. Despite his presence in some landmark noir films, he’s not an actor synonymous with the form. I sometimes think of him as noir’s man that got away; James Ellroy once said that his dream cast for L.A. Confidential would have included “the craven, self-loathing, handsome William Holden of Sunset Boulevard” as Ed Exley, the Guy Pearce role. But as Rachel Walther points out in her terrific story, Holden brought a “brooding restlessness” to every role he played, carrying noir’s shadows forever with him. With a sidebar on Holden’s rivalry, on and offscreen, with Humphrey Bogart. Also in this issue—

Imogen Sara Smith surveys the dark world of film noir from Argentina;

Ray Banks on the heist films of Stanley Baker;

Bob Sassone considers the invaluable contributions the Saturday Evening Post made to noir;

Steve Kronenberg makes the case for character actor J.T. Walsh as neo-noir's best bad guy;

Sharon Knolle looks at horror films from noir directors;

And more.

I’ve got my column along with a review of a new book about Holden’s favorite director, Billy Wilder. My favorite contribution is a conversation with Tony Award-nominated actress and singer Melissa Errico about her new album Out of the Dark: The Film Noir Project. Melissa knows her noir, the album is a pleasure, and our chat was loads of fun.

You’re spoiled for choice when it comes to getting Noir City. You can make a contribution of twenty dollars or more to the FNF, the money going directly to our mission of preserving, restoring, and exhibiting classic noir films. That nets you a digital subscription to the magazine. Or you can purchase a print edition of our latest issue exclusively through Amazon, with our cut of the proceeds going to that same mission. Either way, pick up a copy.