Noir City Goes Global

That thump you heard in in-boxes just before Thanksgiving was the latest issue of Noir City, house rag of the Film Noir Foundation. The focus this time around is on international noir, to wit—

Imogen Sara Smith on the long history of Mexican noir; Jake Hinkson on the heartbreaking crime dramas of Japan’s Yoshitarô Nomura (stream these wonders on FilmStruck before the service goes dark for good this week); the redoubtable Ray Banks takes on the villainous roles of Patrick McGoohan; Ehsan Khoshbakht on Iranian genre films; Nathalie Atkinson on the premier Canadian noir The Silent Partner; and more.

On the domestic front, we’ve got a killer 5 Favorites essay from comic book legend Jim Steranko; a look at the twinned noir careers of John Huston and Orson Welles by Brian J. Robb along with a review of their last collaboration The Other Side of the Wind from FNF honcho Eddie Muller himself; and, once again, more.

As for my humble efforts, I spoke to both Lawrence Block and artist John K. Snyder III about the recent adaptation of Larry’s landmark Matt Scudder mystery Eight Million Ways to Die into a graphic novel, bringing 1980s New York to raw, vivid life in a whole new way. Plus a pair of book reviews and my Cocktails & Crime column.

You know the drill, kids: donate to the Film Noir Foundation and have all this goodness delivered direct to you. Don’t miss out. Because the next issue? That’s one gonna be even better.

Book: Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit, by Darwyn Cooke (2010)

Cooke follows up his critically-acclaimed graphic novel adaptation of The Hunter (aka Point Blank, aka Payback) by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake) with what amounts to a double dose of the steely professional thief Parker.

Part one of The Outfit is based on 1963’s The Man With the Getaway Face. Parker’s got a new look but the same old problems, forced into an armored car heist fated to go south. In the rest of the book, drawn on the ’63 novel of the same title, Parker finds himself hounded by the Mob. He responds the only way he can: by arranging for his criminal cohort to take down every connected establishment they know of.

Cooke’s illustrations are, as ever, gorgeous, steeped in period detail. One of the great pleasures of this series is seeing Stark’s flinty narratives play out in the era in which they were written. In adapting the traditional third-person section of the novel Cooke truly gets inventive, recounting multiple heists in an assortment of styles including the pages of a crime confession magazine using Stark’s prose as copy. Cooke would seem to be tacitly admitting that the words need little adornment, but then you turn the page to find a brooding double truck panel of Parker sitting by a shuttered pool at an upstate New York motel and are reminded again of what Cooke brings to the table.

Reminder: Hell & Gone Giveaway

Go read last week’s Q&A with Duane Swierczynski. Then enter the contest to win a signed copy of Duane’s book Hell & Gone. U.S. residents have until noon PST on Wednesday, November 2 to email their name and postal address to contest@vincekeenan.com with Hell & Gone as the subject line.

Sort Of Related: Richard Stark Edition

Effective may not sound like the highest compliment. But it is in the world of Parker, the professional thief created by Donald E. Westlake under the pen name of Richard Stark.

And the new graphic novel adaptation of The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke is brilliantly effective. Cooke’s clean, dynamic art, rendered with a sharp eye for early ‘60s detail, suits Stark’s stripped-down prose perfectly. The result is the best interpretation of the character to date, and that includes the two cinematic versions of this book. It’s a potent moment when Parker finally raises his face to a mirror and we see his grim Jack Palance mug. But it’s the blank eyes of the wife who betrayed Parker and left him for dead that fully reveal the power of Cooke’s style.

Reading the comic triggered a hunger for Stark in pure form so I read the second entry in the series, 1963’s The Man with the Getaway Face. (Cooke’s take on this book will be published next summer.) Parker’s gotten plastic surgery after the events of The Hunter. Desperate for cash, he signs on for a heist that he already knows comes with a double-cross. His only hope is to beat his supposed partner to the punch. But there are unexpected complications, including one involving Parker’s new look. Do I even have to tell you it’s good?

Elsewhere, critic Paul Matwychuk goes on a Parker roll, watching three movies about the character in a row.

Comics: Two, Please

It’s a casting call for your favorite married film geeks, below or here.

Comics: Two, Please

Your favorite married film geeks are back on schedule. This week’s installment below or here.



Miscellaneous: Tweets for the Tweet

Posting will continue to be erratic. The bloom is not off the blogging rose, but it’s clear to me that this site is evolving into something else.

Therefore, I’ve added my Twitter feed to the main page. 140 characters at a clip I can do, usually several times a day. Find out what I’m having for lunch! Learn why the person in front of me at the supermarket annoys me! Discover where I itch! And assorted pop culture bon mots. Just look to your left.

Comics: Two, Please

Your favorite married film geeks brave the elements, below or here.

Miscellaneous: Southland Links

The Los Angeles Times picks the 25 best L.A. movies of the past 25 years. Complete with map. And for the record, Fletch is a good film.

Comics: Two, Please

Trouble at the multiplex for your favorite married film geeks in the latest installment of our web comic, available below or here.

Comics: Two, Please

Things get technical for your two favorite married film geeks. This week’s installment below or here.



Miscellaneous: Movie Links

In the 1980s, nobody mixed high and low like Cannon Films. They worked with Chuck Norris and John Cassavetes, produced Barfly and American Ninja. (Not to mention one of my favorite movies of that decade, Runaway Train.) Menahem Golan, one of the men behind the company, is still going at age 80. Films in Review has an interview. One gripe: how can you not ask Golan about his greatest directorial ... I’m going to go with “achievement,” The Apple?

I’m late in finding the GreenCine interview with Harlan Coben and Guillaume Canet about their late summer arthouse hit Tell No One. Coben’s descriptions of the never-produced Hollywood versions of his novel are chilling, and further proof of this site’s long-held belief that all thrillers should initially be made in France.

Excerpts of Woody Allen’s diaries from Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The movie, his best in several years, is also worth checking out.

Miscellaneous: Links

By popular demand*, we have set up a Flickr page for our web comic Two, Please. Now it’s even easier to enjoy the exploits of your favorite married film geeks. Of course, if you really want to support the team, you should go to our Bitstrips page and leave comments, kudos, and laughs. Two, Please is turning into a popular feature at Bitstrips, but we welcome any help we can get.

Elsewhere –

Experience the joys of cooking the Vincent Price way.

I’m a big fan of the AV Club’s Random Roles feature, which asks character actors to survey their own careers. The latest subject is one of my favorites: Brian Cox. I must confess a certain degree of disappointment that no mention is made of Cox’s sterling performance as Captain O’Hagan in Super Troopers. Last night I discovered that Cox’s new film Red, based on the novel by Jack Ketchum, is also playing via On Demand during its limited theatrical release. I hope to check it out in the next few days.

* Term applied very loosely

Comics: Two, Please

Your favorite married film geeks are back with their most obscure reference yet! The latest installment is below or here.

TV: TCM Picks of the Week

As part of the network’s Summer Under the Stars festival, two fine noir dramas air this week. Pushover (Tuesday @ 8PM EST/5PM PST) marks Fred MacMurray’s return to the shadows after Double Indemnity. And The Money Trap (Friday @ 1:30PM EST/10:30AM PST) is a late career reunion for Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth. While neither film is a lost classic, both are worth pushing the record button for.

Comics: Two, Please

Things get spicy for your two favorite married film geeks in the latest installment, which is below or here.

Miscellaneous: Blowing Out The Candles

Today’s my birthday. Normally I don’t gloat over my gifts, but this year I received the best one ever – a portfolio of photographs of my blushing bride taken at Old School Pin-Ups. I believe the technical term is “Yowza!” Thanks, sweetie.

Miscellaneous: Your Young Men’ll Be Twittering

Yes, I’m on Twitter now. Technically, I’ve been on Twitter for months – I’ll sign up for anything – but I never used it. Once I saw that Banks and Matt were on there, I decided to give it a try. I know already I will never be as pithy as Warren Ellis, whose update from yesterday (Condition: Pub) is as fine a piece of writing as I’ve read all year. Feel free to follow me and find out what I’m doing every minute of the day as I expand the Vince Keenan brand.

Books: Movie Mystery Link

In his latest column for the San Francisco Chronicle, Eddie Muller reviews a slew of crime novels with movie backdrops. I can echo his praise of Loren D. Estleman’s Frames. Oh to be in San Mateo, now that Adrienne Barbeau is there.

Comics: Two, Please

Your favorite married film geeks are back! Latest installment below or here.

Comics: Two, Please

The full report on all New York doings is still to come. In the meantime, your two favorite married film geeks return. This week’s installment is below or here.

Comics: Two, Please

Your two favorite married film geeks return, primed for adventure on the high seas! This week’s installment is below or here.

Miscellaneous: Boot And Reboot

It was bound to happen eventually. After years of roaming the Wild West ranges of the internet, never troubling no man and receiving no trouble in kind, I finally got winged.

My primary computer came down with a case of malware on Friday afternoon. It’s not even a particularly bad case; just a blitz of pop-up ads (for anti-malware software, very funny). Thanks to Rosemarie’s tech know-how, we’ve narrowed the trouble down to a single tenacious file that refuses to be killed.

For the time being I’ve switched to my laptop, a machine that, truth be told, I prefer anyway. I may not be posting much until we get the matter resolved. But we’re not letting it spoil the fun. Behold!

Comics: Two, Please

This week’s installment is below or here.

Comics: Two, Please

This week’s installment is below or here.

Book: Hollywood Crows, by Joseph Wambaugh (2008)

Back in April I raved about Wambaugh’s Hollywood Station and said I’d be digging into the sequel post haste. I’d hoped to last a little longer than this, to save the book for when I needed a good one. Still, willpower’s overrated anyway.

Crows is another group picaresque about the men and women of the LAPD. The surfer cops Flotsam and Jetsam are back, as is aspiring actor Nate Weiss. There are plenty of new characters, though, many of whom work as Community Relations Officers, the CROs of the title, responsible for “quality of life” complaints. It’s supposedly a cushy job, but as always with Wambaugh we soon discover that no part of police work is easy.

Again, there’s a gossamer of plot, as a drug addict and a divorcing couple taking their animus to murderous lengths cross paths with various police officers and each other en route to a blowout of a climax. But it’s basically an excuse for the snapshots of cop life, from hilarious to shattering, that no one does better than Wambaugh. These books are like stews made from the same basic recipe, each time with different seasonings. The resulting meals always satisfy, yet never taste exactly the same. As long as Wambaugh is dishing them out, I’ll grab a space at the table.

Comics: Two, Please

This week’s installment is below or here.

Book: Frames, by Loren D. Estleman (2008)

In January Loren D. Estleman published Gas City, a muscular tale of corruption in a fading Midwestern burg that’s my favorite book of the year so far. That would be enough for most people. But here he is back again, with a novel that’s completely different in tone but every bit as polished.

Valentino, the UCLA archivist who bills himself as a “film detective,” has appeared in several short stories. In his first book-length outing, Valentino is ready to settle down. Where else but in a movie theater? He buys the Oracle, a Hollywood picture palace otherwise destined for the wrecking ball. In the basement he makes a pair of startling discoveries. A human skeleton, bricked up for decades. And a complete copy of Erich von Stroheim’s infamous Greed, long thought to be lost forever. There’s only one way to keep the precious reels of film from becoming the property of the LAPD, and that’s to solve the murder himself.

It’s always strange to read a book that seems to have been conceived with you in mind. I am, need it be said, something of a film geek. My last post was about an Al Jolson movie, for crying out loud. So any novel featuring a character who praises the police by saying “there’s not a Barton MacLane or a Bill Demarest to be found” will go down easy. Factor in Estleman’s sparkling dialogue and evocative prose and I’m in heaven.

OK, I do have one complaint, but it’s not about the book. A few months back Estleman sponsored a trivia contest at his website to promote Frames. I didn’t win, and that’s fine. I never win. But Estleman says only one person answered all ten rather difficult questions correctly. I would argue that technically, I also went ten-for-ten. Still, I’m willing to forgive. That’s another thing I learned from the movies.

Speaking of Erich von Stroheim, I wrote about The Great Flamarion, in which he appeared as an actor, here. And speaking of film geeks ...

Comics: Two, Please

This week’s installment is below or here.

Comics: Two, Please

This week’s installment is below or here.



Movie: The Incredible Hulk (2008)

Two hours of solid, entertaining superhero action. Rosemarie, who knows about this kind of thing, assigns bonus points for Tim Blake Nelson’s performance as the most believable movie scientist in a long time. Louis Leterrier has directed four films including The Transporter and its sequel, plus the woefully underrated Unleashed with Jet Li and Bob Hoskins. I like ‘em all.

Music: James Hunter, The Hard Way

Perhaps, like Carl Carlson, you have asked, “How ‘bout some new oldies?” If so, ask no more. The latest album from James Hunter is out, and it’s like a wormhole has opened to the early 1960s, pumping out original music with that vintage sound. Part soul, part R&B, all tasty. Give it a listen.

Comics: Two, Please

The further adventures of your favorite married film geeks continue below. Or here, if that doesn’t work for you.