DVD: The Holcroft Covenant (1985)

You know what I haven’t done in a while? Gas on at length about a movie that everyone else has long since forgotten about.

With the Jason Bourne series, Robert Ludlum finally got the movie franchise he deserved. It’s not surprising that the films only use the set-up of the novels, though. Ludlum was the master of the killer premise and knew how to keep you turning pages, but his books are prime examples of Hitchcock’s fabled “icebox factor.” Only when you finish reading and head for the kitchen to get a glass of milk do you start spotting plot holes.

In an interview in Patrick McGilligan’s Backstory 3, Richard Matheson compared Ludlum’s style to that of a pulp writer, saying “he doesn’t really plot; he just starts out his stories and lets them roll all over the place. ... That must be why they almost never make films out of his books, because you cannot make heads nor tails of his stories.” Sam Peckinpah tried with his final film, 1983’s The Osterman Weekend. Matheson passed on the chance to adapt the novel because he “couldn’t figure it out. They finally made a picture out of it, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on. It was incomprehensible.” Maybe that explains why I can’t remember anything about the movie other than that I saw it once on cable.

The film version of The Holcroft Covenant interested me for several reasons. A startling array of talent, for one thing. Directed by John Frankenheimer. A script labored on by a trio of writers I admire: George Axelrod, Edward Anhalt (Panic in the Streets, The Sniper), and John Hopkins (The Offence). Michael Caine at the height of what I call his blazer years, when he played a series of men caught up in international intrigue while looking smashing in navy sports coats.

Here Caine is Noel Holcroft, a New York-based architect who is the son of a Nazi general. He discovers that in the waning days of World War II his father and several compatriots, having learned about the Holocaust, began stealing money from the Third Reich and hiding it in Switzerland. Forty years later it now amounts to four and a half billion dollars. Holcroft is to administer it in trust, using it for reparations. Only there are other Nazi descendants with their own designs on this bounty.

See what I mean about the killer premise?

Once again the film deviates from Ludlum’s novel, but to little avail. Everyone has a triple agenda and there are double crosses galore; I was close to breaking out my copy of Visio so I could chart who was on what side. The movie’s tone toggles between deadly serious and antic. In 1962 Frankenheimer and Axelrod collaborated on one of the great thrillers, The Manchurian Candidate. They seem to be trying to recreate that film’s singular mood here, but it doesn’t work. (In Backstory 3, Axelrod dismisses Holcroft as “a terrible picture.”)

Yet such is the power of Ludlum’s idea that I stuck it out. A little late neo-Nazi kink helped. Rosemarie said, “It’s one of those boring movies you keep watching because you’re genuinely curious about how it’s going to end. You know, the worst kind of movie.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.

If you miss Ludlum check out the note-perfect parody The McCain Ascendancy. You won’t look at the 2008 election the same way again.

Miscellaneous: Links

I can’t tell if an armored car robbery making use of an inner tube and a Craigslist ad is more Dortmunder or Parker, but either way Donald E. Westlake should be made aware of it.

Can it be? Complete gibberish almost makes sense when rendered as poetry?

Miscellaneous: Plus Ça Change ...

I happened to read this passage in reference to Jimmy Carter last night.

“... What the hell is he doing? You got any ideas?”

“No,” Malatesta said.

“Neither’ve I,” Proctor said. “I have no idea in the world what he is doing. I wished I could convince myself that he does. It’s bad enough, I got to be an asshole, but if the goddamned President’s an asshole we are all in trouble, including poor assholes like me that can’t stay out of trouble anyway, and then what the fuck we do, huh?”

From The Rat on Fire by George V. Higgins, 1981

Miscellaneous: Movie Links

How hard is it to adapt a good book, anyway?

Speaking of adaptations, here’s Toby Young on what he’s learned about the movie business now that his life is heading to the silver screen. H/t to 2 Blowhards.

The 10 Best Designed Criterion Collection DVDs.

The New Yorker’s 5 Scariest Movies.

Comics: Two, Please

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

Sports: And Welcome to Fantasy Baseball

One last note on the end of the 2008 season. I can now report the results of my first foray into the timesuck that is fantasy baseball. When I weighed in at the All-Star Break, I had finally muscled my way out of last place. At the time, I set three modest goals for myself. In the interests of completion, let’s see how I fared.

I fervently hope to stay out of the cellar. I think I have a shot.

Check.

I would accept finishing ahead of the person who dared me to play.

Mission accomplished. Take that, Karma! (For the record, I am not taunting the Eastern belief that our actions in this life have consequences in the next. My friend Karma dared me to join her league, in part by saying that if I was in it she wouldn’t come in last. As it happens, she didn’t come in last, either.)

Ideally, I’d like to make the top half of the field. I do not expect this to happen.

I was wrong. I finished fifth out of ten, closer in points to the top than to the bottom. I’m not saying that this is the equal of the Red Sox’s staggering comeback in the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees. I’m saying it’s comparable.

Baseball: Actually, I Do Care If I Never Get Back

For the second consecutive year, the New York Mets took their season down to the final game. And for the second consecutive year, the team fell short.

I can live with that. I am a Mets fan. I am inured to disappointment, conditioned to keep my expectations in check.

It does sadden me that for the second consecutive year, the Mets squandered a truly titanic performance from one of their pitchers in the season’s penultimate game, a Herculean effort that made the drama of #162 possible. And it kills me that they couldn’t win the last regular season match-up ever to be played in Shea Stadium. For old times’ sake.

A few days ago, when the Mets were in the thick of both the wild card and NL East hunts, sportswriter Tim Brown wrote, “say what you will, they do drama like no one else.” That attitude helps take the sting out of another almost-but-not-quite season: view it as a soap opera. It had all the ingredients. The lingering shadows of last season’s collapse, big personalities, late-night executions, sudden reversals, a heart-in-your-mouth ending. If it were a TV show, I’d set the DVR for it.

I’ll remember the 2008 Mets season with fondness, in large part because I got to see them play at Shea one final time. Yes, I know that if their patchwork bullpen, an Achilles heel all year that imploded down the stretch, had held onto a lead in just one game, today’s drama would have been unnecessary. I know if their spotty offense had advanced a runner in scoring position in just one game, a playoff berth would have been theirs.

But the end of the season always puts me in a philosophical mood. So here’s something else that I know. If the last game of the season counts, then all the games before it count. Every single one, no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time.

It’s a lesson that all baseball fans know. Even Yankee fans. It’s just that lately, Mets fan have been learning it the hard way.

All season long, I’ve followed my team at my friend Mike’s blog Mets Fan Club. Thanks also to the guys at Faith & Fear in Flushing. This wrap-up post is particularly fine. And here’s the New York Times’s George Vecsey saying goodbye to Shea.

Paul Newman, R.I.P.

The life itself is the tribute. All I can do is point to favorite movies.

Considering what’s talked about around here, I have to lead off with Harper. The two Fast Eddie films. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. The Sting. Slap Shot. The Verdict. Still throwing heat in 1994’s Nobody’s Fool.

But I want to single out a pair of films from late in Paul Newman’s career that might be overlooked today, but that mean a lot to me. The Hudsucker Proxy may be regarded as minor Coen Brothers but it’s a New Year’s tradition around here, thanks in part to Newman’s performance. And his turn as Louisiana governor Earl K. Long, besotted with a stripper in Blaze, is a thing of beauty. Ron Shelton makes movies about the two most adult subjects: sex and compromise. Newman fearlessly puts both front and center.

As a wise man once said: “Get that lumber in his teeth! Let ‘em know you’re there!”

Book: Still Shot, by Jerry Kennealy (2008)

Mix movies and murder and I’m there. If you can serve it up with finger-poppin’ brio the way Jerry Kennealy does in Still Shot, so much the better.

Carroll Quint, San Francisco film critic and noir expert, has show business in his blood. When his mother, an onetime studio system starlet, asks him to investigate the alleged suicide of her old Hollywood roommate, he’s got no choice but to say yes. The resulting case touches on decades-old Tinseltown scandals, ruthless moguls, phony Picassos, and a hard-boiled LAPD veteran whose claim to fame is being the first person ever to shout “Freeze!” at a perp. Plus there’s sex. What’s not to like?

Miscellaneous: Elsewhere

The AV Club offers a primer on TV detectives. Any article that shows love to Spenser: For Hire and Andy Barker, P.I. is OK by me.

At The Rap Sheet, their tribute to the best TV crime drama openers continues with a salute to The Avengers. As a result of reading this piece, I finally stumped the web. I have been unable to turn up a video I only saw once, for the song “Emma Peel” by Seattle band The Allies. I’m disappointed, people.

Matt at scrubbles.net has posted a slideshow devoted to old View-Master reels. The things we did for entertainment before the internet.

Miscellaneous: Bits and Pieces

Expect more posts like this. Terse, unfocused, and repurposing observations already made on Twitter.

Good book: Envy The Night, by Michael Koryta (2008). Frank Temple III has been adrift in life ever since his father, a federal agent and a hero to his son, was exposed as part of a ring of hit men. Frank gains a sense of purpose when he learns that the man who gave his father up is going home – where Frank can kill him. Strong, muscular writing, rich characters, and a great sense of place. I haven’t read Koryta’s novels about P.I. Lincoln Perry, but I’ll seek them out now.

Caught the end of We Own The Night today, and was reminded anew of what an underrated movie it is. Both as a thriller and a family drama. The car chase on the rain-slick streets of my old Queens stomping grounds is brilliant, and the closing exchange between brothers Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix got me all over again.

Elsewhere, I’d like to thank Jaime Weinman for restoring a certain cartoon to my memory. Rest assured I’ll get him for this.

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.

Miscellaneous: You Know, Stuff

O, for that halcyon time, in the dim remember’d past, when I would update this website on a semi-regular basis! Too bad them days is gone. Here are a few recommendations.

Small Crimes, by Dave Zeltserman (2008). I thought Vermont was all foliage, maple syrup and abnormally sized filing cabinets. Silly Vince. It’s also festering small town corruption. Ex-crooked cop Joe Denton is sprung from jail after brutally disfiguring the D.A. The sheriff, more bent than Joe ever was, greets him with a proposition. Either finish the job he started on the D.A., or hasten the dying crime boss trying to cut a deal with him to the grave. Zeltserman, editor of the soon-to-be-shuttered Hardluck Stories, knows the territory and serves up the goods with psychological acuity.

Finding Amanda (2008). The debut directorial feature from TV maestro Peter Tolan (The Larry Sanders Show, Rescue Me) met the fate of many independent films. Brief theatrical release coupled with unpromoted on demand availability, then a quick dispatch to DVD. However you find it, it’s worth seeking out. Matthew Broderick plays a sitcom writer formerly addicted to ... well, everything. He’s got it narrowed down to gambling when he learns that his niece (Brittany Snow) is working as a hooker in Las Vegas. Why not save her from herself and bet the ponies at the same time? With Steve Coogan as a casino manager who’s exactly as friendly as he needs to be.

Speed Racer (2008). Yes, it’s too long and too much in general. But I actually kinda liked it.

Ghost Town (2008). Charming. Then again, I’m a sucker for the entire cast and New York in the fall.

Movies: The Films of the Whistler, Part Three

Here are parts one and two for those scoring along at home.

A name that pops up frequently in the Whistler films is Rudolph C. Flothow. A producer at Columbia’s B-movie unit, he not only oversaw most of the Whistler titles but also entries in the Crime Doctor, Boston Blackie and Lone Wolf series, not to mention the serials that marked the first screen appearances of both Batman and the Phantom. That makes him a footnote in movie history, but he deserves to be remembered as a man who knew how to get the most bang out of a studio buck.

I promised a surprise, didn’t I? After posting installment one I received an email from Ed Gorman, the man who made this festival possible. Ed, a mensch amongst mensches, had good news: he had unearthed a copy of the second movie in the series, 1944’s Mark of the Whistler, and was sending it my way.

Of the eight films, it’s the one I was most keen to see. It’s directed by William Castle, and based on Cornell Woolrich’s “Dormant Account.” Richard Dix plays a drifter who discovers that money belonging to someone who shares his name is being held in a small town bank. He takes over the man’s identity only to end up with more than he bargained for. Dix gives his strongest performance in the series as the conflicted character, fusing resourcefulness with desperation. Toss in some of Woolrich’s trademark fatalism and you’ve got the best movie of the bunch.

For me, that’s the last of the Whistling Dixes. (I’m sorry. I had to.) The actor appeared in the series’ seventh film – and the only one Ed didn’t have handy – 1947’s The Thirteenth Hour, and then retired. He died two years later.

Columbia tried to keep things afloat. 1948 saw The Return of the Whistler with leading man chores handed to Michael Duane, who had a small role in 1946’s Secret of the Whistler. Again the story comes from Woolrich, and it’s a doozy: Duane’s bride vanishes without a trace on what’s meant to be their wedding night. It’s served up with energy and Duane is perfectly capable, but – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – I missed Richard Dix. His bleary presence brought an otherness to the earlier films that this one is lacking. The Whistler series could have continued without him. Perhaps it’s just as well it didn’t.

And that’s that. The Thirteenth Hour is still out there, my own personal white whale. When I track it down, you’ll hear about it. It felt strange to watch these largely neglected films, not knowing when they’d be screened again. They should be available on DVD. They’re not masterpieces by any stretch, but as Ed said, “in their own low-rent way they’re remarkable Bs.” Thanks again, Ed, for sharing them.

Miscellaneous: Links

Things are hopping here at Chez K. The weekend was so busy we didn’t have time to get a new Two Please up. So go read the old ones and leave laughs and pithy comments. In the meantime, I can tell you that in recent days I have enjoyed The Betrayers, a no-nonsense cop novel by new-to-me author James Patrick Hunt, and Burn After Reading. Then again, I will eagerly take any trip to Planet Coen.

Here’s a pair of links courtesy of Arts & Letters Daily. The author of How to Cheat at Everything confirms what I have long suspected: I have the heart if not the nerves of a con man. And an appreciation of the continuing power of black-and-white film across the genres.

Movies: The Films of the Whistler, Part Two

Here’s part one, with the necessary background.

Of all the qualities that make the Whistler films distinctive – the poverty row atmosphere, the bleakness of tone – attention must be paid to the performances of Richard Dix. Because they go a long way toward creating the series’ singular oddness.

One of the few stars to survive the transition from the silent era and a Best Actor nominee for 1931’s Cimarron, Dix is largely forgotten. (He does get a mention in Blazing Saddles, but even that’s ancient history.) Dix is a heavy man with a soft voice. Throughout the Whistler movies he reads his lines tentatively, as if feeling his way through rehearsal. You half-expect him to look into the camera at any moment and say, “Sorry, Bill, can I have another take?” Somehow that foggy aura works, lending a desperation to the proceedings.

1946’s Mysterious Intruder gives Dix a chance to play a character not beset on all sides, and he’s clearly a lot more comfortable. He’s a scheming private eye hired to find a missing girl who stands to come into a fortune. It’s a conventional but solid film, livened up with sharp plot twists, a clever MacGuffin, and a supporting cast that includes Charles Lane and Mike Mazurki. Director William Castle has his own fun, staging the first scene between shamus and client to ape a psychiatric session.

Dix gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop again in Secret of the Whistler (1946), as an aspiring artist with a rich, terminally ill wife and a hot young mistress (Leslie Brooks from the noir cult classic Blonde Ice). Dix is a touch long in the tooth for his role, and the script is clunky. At one point in his florid voiceover, the Whistler refers to “the uncertainty of not knowing.” Which, as I understand it, is the definition of uncertainty.

But a well-executed twist ending explains away many of the plot holes. And Dix’s strange affect in his early scenes with Brooks, explaining his need for simple companionship, again underscores the real subject of the Whistler movies, the loneliness and isolation of modern urban life.

The concluding post should be up sometime next week. And true to the Whistler series, expect a surprise.

DVD: Joy House (1964)

Somehow I knew the title Joy House was meant ironically. And that was before I was aware of the movie’s hardboiled pedigree: based on a Day Keene novel, adapted in part by fellow Gold Medal author Charles Williams.

Director René Clément and star Alain Delon proved they knew their way around pulp four years earlier with Purple Noon, their take on Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. Here Delon is a gorgeous playboy – what, again? – who goes too far with a married woman in New York. Pursued by a gang of villains that includes Boss Hogg and Punky Brewster’s dad, he hightails it back to la belle France. There, he holes up inside a mansion with two very odd women, a sensuous widow whose husband was mysteriously murdered (Lola Albright from The Good Humor Man!) and Jane Fonda as her coquettish cousin/maid. Delon is hired to ferry the ladies around in a sedan with a transparent roof, and to provide *ahem* other services. He thinks he’s gotten lucky. He hasn’t.

Joy House is, in a word, ridiculous. And that’s before the overheated plot kicks into gear. (At one point, Fonda notes that some people describe the title manse as “neo-Gothic.” No, really?) The movie keeps threatening to get suspenseful, or kinky, or both, but never quite makes it. Although the sequence in which Jane, in her yowza! days, strips down to almost nothing and does the forgotten ‘60s dance “The Surf” in front of a mirror did burn out some pixels on my TV.

In addition, there’s the Riviera in slick black and white and a cool jazz score. Andy Warhol once said, “Sometimes I like to be bored, and sometimes I don’t. It depends what kind of mood I’m in.” My mood could be called Sunday night, and Joy House bored me in exactly the right way.

Miscellaneous: Link

David Carradine does the AV Club’s Random Roles.

Comics: Two, Please

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

Movies: The Films of the Whistler, Part One

Amidst multiple deadlines, I’ve been making my way through the offbeat movies based on the radio program The Whistler. The opportunity comes courtesy of Ed Gorman – friend of the site, damn fine writer, and all-around good guy. Thanks again, Ed.

The Whistler ran on radio for 13 years, beginning in 1942. The film series, which started two years later, is essentially a noir grab bag. All the elements are here, recombined in various ways: amnesia, blackmail, femme fatales, shady shamuses. And lingering over it all, a pervasive sense of doom, of fate reaching out from the darkness.

The title character, glimpsed only in silhouette, narrates each tale. (“I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night.”) Purple prose read in a fulsome voice. Something tells me Ed Wood was a big Whistler fan.

Richard Dix starred in the film series. He’s given a different name in each movie, but he’s playing the same type: a man hounded by life no matter how successful he is. As Ed put it, “Dix is awkward but somehow right as a down and outer. Even when he’s supposed to be up he’s down and out, sort of his spiritual DNA I suspect.”

Snappy, B-movie pacing is the order of the day; the longest of the eight films clocks in at just over an hour. Each could use another three or four minutes to smooth out the plotting, but they’re still marvels of economical storytelling.

1944’s The Whistler kicks things off. Director William Castle is best remembered for the gimmicks he deployed to sell schlock like The Tingler, but he knew his way around a suspense piece. The story is the venerable warhorse used most recently in Bulworth: guy hires a hit man to end his own life, has a change of heart, then desperately tries to cancel the contract. Dix’s natural malaise is a perfect fit. Titanic’s Gloria Stuart plays his loyal secretary, and J. Carrol Naish is the killer who taunts his target as part of a “psychological experiment.”

I will not, alas, be able to see the same year’s Mark of the Whistler, adapted from Cornell Woolrich’s “Dormant Account.” In Power of the Whistler (1945), Dix puts his befuddlement to work as an accident victim who has lost his memory. Janis Carter is the would-be fortuneteller who vows to help him, even though small animals that come near Dix tend to meet grisly fates. It features the creepiest use of the Whistler’s shade.

Voice of the Whistler (1945) is the oddest of the lot so far. It opens with a Citizen Kane-style newsreel singing the praises of Dix’s deeply unhappy industrialist. Ordered by his doctor to take a vacation for his own mental health, Dix falls ill and is taken in by a kindly stranger. As he recuperates under an assumed name, he reinvents himself as a more open individual. The film grafts on a conventional and unsatisfying plot involving a scheming nurse and a locked-room mystery in a lighthouse. But the opening scenes, with Dix questioning whether it’s possible to die from loneliness, cast an unsettling spell. They go right to the core of what the Whistler movies are about: the burdens “hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows.”

Three down, three more to go.

Miscellaneous: An Open Letter To Entertainment Weekly

Dear Entertainment Weekly,

I’ll give you credit for trying to cast the net a little wider with the nationwide pop culture recap in your September 12 issue. It is, in fact, true that “the hottest ticket” at Seattle’s Seven Gables Theater is Elegy. It is also the coldest ticket, considering that the Seven Gables has only one screen. I can’t believe I renewed my subscription through 2010.

Hoping this finds you well,
Vince Keenan

Miscellaneous: Blue Blaze Irregular Link

Just a day after learning that I made one of my coworkers a convert to the glories of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension comes word of Buckaroo’s return in comic book form. Wherever Buckaroo goes, there I am.

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.

Book: Vampyres of Hollywood, by Adrienne Barbeau and Michael Scott (2008)

I don’t recognize labels like summer book or beach read. But I’m still glad I finished Vampyres of Hollywood before Labor Day. It has that warm afternoon, bottle of beer within reach kind of feel.

The novel by Adrienne Barbeau (yes, that Adrienne Barbeau) and Michael Scott (no, not that Michael Scott) suggests that many of the movies’ brightest lights are in fact the undead. Funny how easy that notion is to accept. None is more powerful than Ovsanna Moore, the “scream queen” turned mogul. (In a book with all manner of hellish creatures running amok, that’s the only element I had trouble with. It’s like saying Brinke Stevens runs Lionsgate. As if an actor could run a movie studio. Oh, wait ...)

But someone is murdering vampires – sorry, vampyres – in unspeakably violent ways. A Best Actor winner has his Oscar rammed into a sensitive place ... pedestal first. That’s an opening in more ways than one. When a Beverly Hills detective discovers that Ovsanna links the victims, she must move quickly to prevent centuries of secrets from coming to light.

The book is funny, packed with choice showbiz observations and inside jokes. Then there’s the scene where Ovsanna is confronted by the title cabal, a coterie of silver screen luminaries you foolishly thought long gone. And you won’t believe who the villain is. Vampyres is great, trashy fun. Read it now while there are still margaritas to spare.

I squandered way too much time in high school watching Adrienne Barbeau in Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing, a 1980s cable TV staple. They don’t make comic book movies like that any more: goofy, satirical, strangely personal. I miss those.

Book: Runner, by Thomas Perry (2009)

That date is correct. Yours truly used his awesome pull in media circles to get a sneak peak at the latest from Thomas Perry. It won’t be released until January, but get those orders in now. It’s that good.

In Runner, Perry returns to his most famous creation: Jane Whitefield, the Seneca “guide” with a talent for helping people in trouble to disappear. Jane has used her own skills to settle into happily married life. But when a young pregnant woman shows up with six ruthless professionals on her trail and Jane’s former name on her lips, Jane is forced to dust off her old tricks.

Jane’s insecurity – Has she gotten rusty? Has technology outstripped her inventiveness? Is her own desire to have a child clouding her judgment? – seasons an already strong character. There are also the trademark Perry villains, implacable but always recognizably human.

Perry, a longtime favorite of mine, has written some terrific standalone thrillers in the nine years since the last Whitefield book. It’s great to have Jane back in action. Put this one on the Christmas list.

Miscellaneous: Link

Wanna write a movie? Joel and Ethan Coen explain how.

Sort Of Related: Noir Is The New Black

A $500 million domestic gross propels a movie beyond blockbuster into cultural phenomenon. The Dark Knight should reach that rarified box office air by Labor Day. Weeks into its release it’s still stirring intense conversations; I witnessed one the other day in Quizno’s that jeopardized the pepper bar. Op-ed takes on the movie’s politics abound, ranging from cautiously vague to, forgive me, batshit crazy.

What amazes me is all this passion, all this furor, over a film that is so bleak. So grim. So ... noir.

I’m not the only who thinks so. The Dark Knight receives a lengthy, glowing review in the latest issue of the Noir City Sentinel, house rag of the Film Noir Foundation, in which it’s compared favorably to genre classics like Touch of Evil. Several years ago I heard FNF founder Eddie Muller speak, and he said the films of Dark Knight co-writer/director Christopher Nolan, citing Following and Memento, came right out of the noir tradition.

This summer also saw AMC’s 1960s advertising series Mad Men return for its sophomore season, to continued critical acclaim and higher ratings. Novelist and Sentinel columnist Megan Abbott, in this appreciation of the show, noted that it was “easy to see Mad Men’s noir underpinnings.”

Are you detecting a pattern here?

Maybe this vogue for noir is a fluke. Shadows are cool, literally and figuratively. And The Dark Knight, after all, is still a big-budget superhero movie, one featuring the last complete performance by an extraordinary actor.

Or maybe it’s something more. Again quoting Megan Abbott:

Many point to the impact of World War II as central to the rise of film noir, the sense that the world is a much darker place than we had ever thought before – hence, the feeling of cynicism, anxiety, paranoia and desperation that drives KISS ME DEADLY, DEAD RECKONING, ACT OF VIOLENCE and IN A LONELY PLACE.

I recently read Matt Taibbi’s The Great Derangement, a flawed book built around the brilliant premise that in the wake of 9/11 Americans have become “a people (who) can no longer agree even on the basic objective facts of their political existence.” He writes that “we had become a nation of reality shoppers, mixing and matching news items to fit our own self-created identities.”

Mad Men’s audience is vocal, devoted, and, in the grand scheme of things, small. (I count myself among its number.) But half a billion dollars? That’s another matter entirely. That indicates a worldview that resonates across the political spectrum and a range of “self-created identities.” Getting that many people to agree on anything in this culture, even a vision that could be described as pessimistic, is a step forward and out of the darkness.

2008 was the summer noir came back. And I welcome its return, for more reasons than one.

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

DVD: The Roundup

Spent the weekend watching older films new or newly reissued on DVD.

Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955). Jack Webb’s jazz opus plays like the strangest episode of Dragnet ever. Not only because it’s written by series vet Richard L. Breen with the show’s trademark blend of melodrama and hardboiled pithiness. But because Webb, not an actor noted for his range, is essentially playing Joe Friday in period drag. Same haircut, same monotone delivery, same cheap shirts, only in 1925 Kansas City. I thought Webb’s plodding walk on Dragnet was an artistic choice speaking to the methodical nature of police work. Turns out that’s how he got around.

As a Dragnet fan, I thought the movie was fantastic. Others will not. Jazz fans, however, will want to check it out. There’s tremendous music throughout including performances from Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee, the latter netting an Academy Award nomination. Pete Kelly’s Hot 7 may be the toughest combo in history. I can accept Joe Friday. And on drums Adam-12’s Martin Milner, who also played a jazzman in Sweet Smell of Success. But Lee Marvin blowing clarinet? That’s pushing it, daddy-o.

Un Flic (1972). The final film from Jean-Pierre Melville is a mood piece riffing on his standard themes. I knew where it was going and didn’t mind; in fact, I relished it. Movies like this, with their familiar beats, are for me what superhero films are for so many others. You can have your costumes and secret lairs. I want trenchcoats and night clubs. I want the world where cop Alain Delon and criminal Richard Crenna can not only be friends, but both be in love with Catherine Deneuve.

Most of Un Flic is given over to two heists. The first, at an isolated bank during a raging storm, is a marvel of sound design. Due to budget constraints, the action in the second is filmed with a model train and a model helicopter. It’s a strange sequence to watch in the CGI era; you never forget that you’re looking at miniatures, but you’re never knocked out of the story, either. Crenna’s Hefnerian pj’s help.

Inglorious Bastards (1978). More model trains here. Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming WWII film only borrows the title and not the plot, about a group of stockade-bound Allied soldiers who make a run for Switzerland. It’s a film from the one-damn-thing-after-another genre that never stops moving for 100 minutes. It’s crap. Very watchable, highly entertaining crap.

Comics: Two, Please

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

Miscellaneous: Your Weekend Forecast

“The redheaded homicide detective stepped through the door at 7:30 A.M. and out into the August heat that had already reached 88 degrees. By noon the temperature would hit 100, and by two or three o’clock it would be hovering around 105. Frayed nerves would then start to snap and produce a marked increase in the detective’s business. Breadknife weather, the detective thought. Breadknives in the afternoon.”

- from Briarpatch, by Ross Thomas

OK, it’s only going to be 91 degrees. But still.

Movie: The Mask of Dimitrios (1944)

It’s a story I’ve told before. Flipping channels as a kid, happening onto this movie. The grand Warner Brothers theme. The credits presented on the pages of a book. The ominous written introduction (“Such a man was Dimitrios”).

When Peter Lorre skulked into view, I was hooked.

A short time later, my parents came home. After commenting on the novelty of a small child watching a black and white movie that was more than thirty years old in the middle of the afternoon, they left me alone. For which I am eternally in their debt.

I hadn’t seen Dimitrios since, although I had, as cited above, read the Eric Ambler novel on which it’s based. When TCM aired the movie as part of their Summer Under the Stars tribute to Lorre last night, I cleared my schedule.

It still works. The big third act twist didn’t surprise me as a kid and seems even more obvious now. Zachary Scott registers as a bit of a lightweight, playing the ur-Keyser Soze. But the byplay between Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet is peerless. Lorre, forever muttering to himself, doesn’t receive nearly enough credit for forging a modern style of acting.

And it’s the atmosphere that holds you. Dark, sensuous, mysterious. I stepped into those shadows decades ago and never came out.

Miscellaneous: Swingtown Northwest

All I can say is these people are the salt of the earth. They throw great parties. Just steer clear of the dip.

Movies: And Jack Carson Goes Rolling Along

Here at Chez K, we keep the Jack Carson fires burning. He’s an unjustly neglected actor, remembered primarily for his comic performances. Even that’s misleading; his lighter turns have undercurrents of frustration and loneliness, while his natural buoyancy lends an extra dimension to his dramatic work (The Hard Way, Mildred Pierce).

I would have recorded The Good Humor Man (1950) for the title alone, not to mention timely reminders from Bill and Ivan. But the draw, in addition to Carson, is the one-of-a-kind writing credits. Script by animation legend Frank Tashlin, based on a story by Roy Huggins, called a pop culture giant by no less an authority than this website. The result is a live-action cartoon with a halfway decent crime story at its core, as Carson plays – surprise! – a Good Humor man caught up in a heist. Not many locked room mysteries end with circular saws on the loose cutting holes in the floor. Silly, entertaining stuff.

Allow me a digression on this Huggins business. Humor is based on his 1946 Saturday Evening Post story “Appointment with Fear,” which featured P.I. Stuart Bailey. Bailey appeared in several short stories and novels as well as the 1948 film I Love Trouble before being repurposed in Huggins’ landmark TV series 77 Sunset Strip. But there’s a second 1950 film based on the same material. State Secret, aka The Great Manhunt, involves a dictator replaced by an exact double and a surgeon on the run. I haven’t seen it, but I’ll wager it features no ice cream at all.

We didn’t plan on watching two Carson films over the weekend, but another turned up on TCM. Romance on the High Seas (1948) is old Hollywood heaven. Get a load of these credits. Studio system director par excellence Michael Curtiz behind the camera. Zingy script by the brothers Epstein of Casablanca fame, with additional material by Billy Wilder’s future writing partner I.A.L. Diamond. Jule Styne/Sammy Cahn songs including the standard “It’s Magic,” all choreographed by Busby Berkeley. You want character actors? They’re all here: S.Z. Sakall, Franklin Pangborn, Eric Blore. Yet somehow neither Rosemarie nor I had heard of the movie before.

There’s even a plot, with Carson as a shamus hired by a suspicious husband to follow his wife on a cruise, unaware that the wife, intent on shadowing her hubby, has given her ticket to a lounge singer (Doris Day, enchanting in her screen debut).

It makes for a tasty confection, but the bourbon in this meringue comes courtesy of Oscar Levant, grousing and grumbling from the margins. (ASIDE: You know you’re in an odd marriage when both parties feel they’re “the Levant.”) As usual, Oscar gets the best lines:

You can’t expect to start at the top – although I’ve often wondered why not.

(Her name is) Georgia Garrett. Georgia as in marching through, Garrett as in starving in.

Miscellaneous: Links

The Line has been around for weeks, and I’m only catching up to it now. Here’s the backstory, and Episode I.

Did you watch Eddie Muller’s The Grand Inquisitor yet? What are you waiting for?

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.

On The Web: The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

I can’t believe I didn’t mention this yesterday. More than one person told me about it, and Bill Crider even thinks I’m responsible. But The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three in its glorious entirety is now free on Hulu. Meaning you have no excuse not to have seen the greatest motion picture ever made.

TV: The Olympics Opening Ceremonies

Director Zhang Yimou did an extraordinary job with last night’s spectacle, even if the Death Star made an appearance and Lang Lang had Heat Miser’s hair.

DVD: Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (2008)

Forget the Olympics. Nothing in recent memory has stirred my patriotism like this movie. USA! USA! USA!

Miscellaneous: An Open Letter to Senator John Edwards

Dear Senator Edwards:

Jesus, man, you’re a trial lawyer! You of all people should know there’s no way to keep an affair secret during a Presidential bid, even if you didn’t father the woman’s child and then pay her off. What if you’d actually gotten the nomination? A laughable notion, I know, but lawyers should consider every angle. I hereby retract every positive statement I have ever made about you, your policy positions, or your hair.

Sincerely,
Vince Keenan

PS. OK. I stand by my statements about the hair.

Miscellaneous: An Open Letter to the Various Cable News Networks

Dear Various Cable News Networks:

I understand how difficult it is to resist the siren song of the aforementioned scandal, particularly when Edwards himself says, “If you want to beat me up – feel free.” But could you maybe backburner the story for a spell while Russia is attacking another country? I’d kinda like to know what the hell is going on.

Sincerely,
Vince Keenan

On The Web: The Grand Inquisitor

During Noir City I raved about my friend Eddie Muller’s short film The Grand Inquisitor. You can experience this hellish little gem for yourselves now that it’s online.

Marvel at the performances of noir veteran Marsha Hunt and newcomer Leah Dashe! Shudder as a decades-old mystery is solved! Vote on its behalf!

Visit the film’s official site for more information. Then watch the movie. You won’t be disappointed.

On The Web: The Brass Verdict

More multimedia for your Friday, from someone I know. Terrill Lee Lankford has directed another stylish video promoting Michael Connelly’s upcoming novel The Brass Verdict. Watch it here.

Book: Hit and Run, by Lawrence Block (2008)

The philatelist assassin Keller returns in the latest from Lawrence Block. He’s in Iowa on what’s supposed to be his last job, and we all know how those turn out. (Why not just spontaneously decide to quit, so you’ll have wrapped up your last job before you know that’s what it is? That’s my plan.) He’s so focused on his target and his stamps that he barely notices it’s election season. He becomes aware of it in a big hurry when one of the presidential candidates is gunned down, and Keller becomes the sole suspect. After all, who better to frame for murder than a professional killer?

With that premise, you might expect a globetrotting, grandstanding international thriller. I certainly did. But Block works against those expectations, delivering a sweaty, close-quarters novel that has more in common with the Gold Medal books of his early career. How can Keller make his way across the country without cash or a workable identity when he’s the subject of a manhunt? How can he rebuild his life? The big questions of who’s behind the assassination and why are answered, but in an almost throwaway manner. It’s amazing how effective that approach is. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Lawrence Block takes a crackerjack set-up and turns it into what he does best: a Lawrence Block novel.

Sports: An Open Letter to Brett Favre

Dear Brett,

I thought you should know that your recent shenanigans have not only tarnished your NFL legacy, they have also completely ruined the ending of There’s Something About Mary for me. Thanks, champ.

Best,
Vince Keenan

PS. You should have gone to Tampa.

Miscellaneous: Video Link

Tough day? Why not practice the art of relaxating?

Movie: Lady In Cement (1968)

This post is purely in the interest of completion. A while back I watched Tony Rome, the Frank Sinatra P.I. movie, and liked it just enough to check out the sequel. I can now attest that Lady In Cement ain’t no Tony Rome.

Gold Medal novelist Marvin H. Albert this time takes a hand in adapting his own book. Tony goes diving and finds the titular murder victim. He tools around Miami looking for her killer and engaging in loads of cheesy repartee. The mystery’s solution will surprise no one; it’s transparently obvious who done it, although by the end I still wasn’t 100% on why. There’s some nice footage of the Fontainebleau Hotel and an entertaining performance by Bonanza’s Dan Blocker, even though he’s miscast. It’s a lousy movie, and I sort of enjoyed it. What can I say? I miss P.I. films, and there’s something about ‘60s smarm that fascinates me.

Frank’s enormous hat from Tony Rome makes a cameo, and this movie also ends with a zoom into a woman’s shapely backside, belonging in this case to Raquel Welch. I applaud the filmmakers’ consistency of vision.

Miscellaneous: Links

Yeah, I’m gonna have to ask you to just go ahead and read this A.V. Club interview with actor Gary Cole.

If you are in New York, I command you to attend the Film Forum’s French Crime Wave series. In particular, next Monday’s Alain Corneau double-bill of Série Noire, based on Jim Thompson’s A Hell of a Woman, and Police Python 357. Or you could just fly me out and give me a place to crash. Whatever works for you.

Aw, yeah. You know what time it is? It’s time for two hundred and forty dollars’ worth of pudding.

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.

New York Post: The Great White Way

Last of these posts, I promise. But when in New York, you’ve got to go to the theater at least once. Or in our case, twice.

The 39 Steps. When we heard that there was a stage adaptation of the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock movie and Chez K favorite, we knew we’d see it. How do you recreate the train sequence, or the chase across the moors? The answer is with a game cast of four – four! – and bracing theatrical legerdemain. It’s all directed by Maria Aitken, who for me will forever be John Cleese’s wife in A Fish Called Wanda. The Tony Award-winning stagecraft was what had me laughing, not the broader stuff like shoehorning as many Hitchcock titles into the script as possible. Before we saw the show we watched the movie again. And it still holds up.

Celebrity Encounter #1: After the show, the heavens opened. The deluge had us ducking into a diner near our digs. A few minutes later, we saw Mario Cantone darting to cover under an awning. Or at least I did. Rosemarie saw the back of his head.

[title of show]. This meta-musical about the making of a musical was an Off-Broadway smash and came highly recommended. It features energetic songs and a quarter of terrific performers. (Again with the four actors. A coincidence, honest.) But there’s a difference between an Off-Broadway show about holding fast to your dreams and a Broadway show about achieving them. The new third act, about the compromises needed to open on the Great White Way, feels contrived. But on the whole I enjoyed it, and you’ve got to love any show with its own YouTube channel.

Celebrity Encounter #2: Just before the curtain, Peter Gallagher sat down next to Rosemarie. Who initially didn’t notice. “I had bigger problems,” she said. “I was worried someone was going to step on my sprained foot in the dark.”

Miscellaneous: Link

Today’s reason why I love New York.

New York Post: Movies

It took me this long to think of New York Post as a title? I must still be in vacation mode. Anyway, a recap of what we saw on t’other coast.

Man on Wire. Easily one of the year’s best, and a movie that was definitely worth seeing in New York. This documentary recounts Philippe Petit’s self-described coup of walking a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Director James Marsh seamlessly blends interviews, archival footage and recreations. The result is like a Donald Westlake-style caper, only instead of taking something this band of dreamers and misfits is giving. You already know the outcome – Petit is on camera throughout, still ridiculously charismatic – yet the ratchets tighten. And the climax, in which a bland public space now erased from the earth briefly becomes a realm of magic, has a startling emotional intensity.

Transsiberian. Brad Anderson (Session 9, The Machinist) again delivers a thriller that never goes where you expect. Two American missionaries taking the nowhere-near-glamorous title train from China to Moscow fall in with a pair of mysterious vagabonds. The first hour chugs along at its own pace for good reason. But once it switches to the main track, hang on. Emily Mortimer kicks ass as a reformed bad girl, and Russian cop Ben Kingsley devours the scenery like it was made out of blintzes.

New York Report: Medical Update

Rosemarie’s back from the doctor and hobbling around in one of those walking boots. Turns out she sprained her foot while racing to Sardi’s for a cocktail before curtain. Making her the first person to injure herself in such a fashion since Kitty Carlisle Hart.

New York Report: The Old Neighborhood

The entire reason for scheduling our trip at this time was to see one last New York Mets game at Shea Stadium before the exodus across the parking lot to Citi Field. It’s pointless to rehash a week-old sporting event, so let’s focus on the color commentary.



We headed to Flushing early, because it’s where Rosemarie grew up. She took me to her childhood haunts – the candy store turned cell phone shop, the former A&P. Her block, in her words, “is an inch long.” We took photos of her old house, alarming the contractors in the process of remodeling it. We also stopped by her school, not hard considering it’s across the street.

Flushing is renowned for inexpensive and delicious Chinese food. But where to go? We were still without internet access. After a scouting expedition we settled on a restaurant that still had customers late in the afternoon, taking that for a good sign. Plus it had “Gourmet” in the name, and who’d lie about a thing like that? They certainly didn’t. (Note what a later web search turned up.)

Next stop was Flushing Meadow Park. When I was a kid it was the only green area around. Not only did I have to take the subway there, I had to change trains at 74th Street. Never seemed out of the ordinary to me.



Then it was game time. We met up with our friends Mike and Paula. (Here are Mike’s pre- and post-game reports.)



It was merengue night. We didn’t stay for the show.

Call me a traditionalist, but I miss the old blue and orange panels that used to hang from Shea’s exterior. They gave the stadium what character it had.

A recent New York Times article on baseball cuisine reviewed the food at every major league ballpark. The verdict on Shea: eat the hot dogs and nothing else. New York law now requires fast-food outlets to post calorie information. This explains how I know that two Nathan’s hot dogs are roughly equal to a bag of peanuts. This made me feel better until I realized that no one consumes an entire bag of peanuts in one sitting. Even in extra innings.

For the record, I ate two hot dogs and no peanuts. Apparently those things’ll kill you.

Carvel ice cream is also sold at Shea. Talk about childhood haunts. Carvel soft serve would be my treat for getting good grades on my report card. Mike told me that the real prize dessert-wise was the lemon ice, which would last “a good three, four innings.” Only they weren’t available at any of the food outlets in the mezzanine. We’d have to wait for a vendor. By the seventh inning I gave up; “a good three, four innings” meant I’d be finishing it on the 7 train, not known for its dining ambiance. So we had Carvel instead. I didn’t bother to read the calorie information.

Halfway through the sundae I remembered something: Carvel ice cream isn’t that good.



There were a pair of homers in the game, a two-run shot from a reinvigorated Carlos Delgado and a career first for the Mets’ young second baseman Argenis Reyes. I was so excited to see the giant apple behind the center field wall light up twice that I forgot to take pictures each time.

I did the “Jose, Jose, Jose” chant, along with “Everybody Clap Your Hands!” Beats doing it at home all by yourself. But that’s true of so much in life.

Top of the ninth, one out with a six-run Mets lead, and who magically appears behind us? The lemon ice vendor. Thanks for nothing, guy.

The Mets win and we join the throng filing into the IRT station. The “super express” gets us back into Manhattan in no time flat. During the ride, we have a pleasant conversation with a Cardinals die-hard who flew in for the series. Mets fans, magnanimous in victory.

Barring a miracle, the next Mets game I see will be in Citi Field. Across the parking lot, but a world away.

New York Report: The Return

The days of neglect are at an end, for the great journey home to New York is over. After a morning of gallery-hopping in Chelsea and one last terrific lunch, we flew back to a city thirty degrees colder and shrouded in gray. Seattle, I say this as a citizen of the world: it wouldn’t kill you to tart yourself up a little.

We handled our accommodations a bit differently this trip, renting an apartment for our weeklong stay. I wouldn’t hesitate to do so again. There’s nothing like being centrally located and able to prepare your own breakfast for less than you’d pay to stay in a hotel.

We saw family and friends, did a little business, and partook of numerous cultural experiences to be detailed in a series of bloated posts. In short, a grand time was had by all. A few random notes:

Rosemarie stumbled off a poorly-marked curb in Times Square our second night in town. Her ankle swelled and turned purple, but she taped it up and soldiered on. She’s a trooper.

We did have one unfortunate incident involving the insect known to all New Yorkers as a water bug. Rosemarie insists the beast was the size of a bath mat; I’d say it was as big as my thumb. I almost pulled a hamstring getting rid of it.

For reasons I cannot fathom, I spontaneously bark Seth McFarlane’s dialogue from Hellboy II: The Golden Army, complete with Prussian accent. (“Agent Hellboy! I demand zat you take ze shot!”) On a related note, I learned again that skyscrapers allow the human voice to carry great distances.

When in the city, I leave the TV tuned to the local news network NY1. In short order I became obsessed with the promos with actor Dominic Chianese, in which The Sopranos’ Uncle Junior sings along with the station’s snippets of theme music. I don’t know who wrote the lyrics “Twenty-four seven, that’s what we’re here for,” but damn are they catchy.

On our last night in town, at the dark corner of 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue, I literally slipped on a banana peel. One more thing I can cross off the bucket list. Next up: pie fight.

New York Report: Cocktails

Oh, yeah. We drank a lot. Did I mention that?

There are a handful of bars that we frequent when we’re in the city. On this outing, we hit all four.

Death & Company
The Flatiron Lounge
Little Branch
The Pegu Club

Peruse Death & Company’s menu and behold what you’re missing by attending various parent-teacher conferences and church events. Although I will say that the bar’s sublime Cooper Union – made with Redbreast Irish whiskey (although on the night I was there Bushmills had been pressed into service) and St. Germain elderflower liqueur, and served in a glass washed with Laphroaig – is in and of itself a religious experience.

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.

Miscellaneous: Little Town Blues Melted Away, Tonight at 11

Greetings from New York City. Yes, it’s time for the annual pilgrimage to our hometown. We’ve been here since Tuesday, and aside from the now-resolved glitch involving our internet connection, it’s been a little slice of heaven. More detailed reports to follow, because right now it’s too late and I’m too high on seeing this live to file them.

Movie: Tight Spot (1955)

In a conversation at work the other day, I made a passing reference to “script geeks” as a subset of “film geeks.” As if that’s not what I am. A writer’s name on a movie is all the excuse I need to watch.

Take, for example, William Bowers. He was responsible for any number of terrific westerns (The Gunfighter, The Sheepman, Support Your Local Sheriff!) as well as crime dramas like Cry Danger.

Tight Spot is a lesser effort; Bowers couldn’t get the movie past its stage origins. Ginger Rogers is a brassy dame released from prison by ambitious D.A. Edward G. Robinson and his hard-nosed investigator Brian Keith. They’re prosecuting a ruthless crime boss (Lorne Greene) who’s just killed the primary witness against him. Robinson’s only hope to send the capo packing is for Ginger to testify in open court.

There are some good late twists, and the single setting of a hotel room becomes nicely claustrophobic. Best of all is Ginger’s performance as the not-so-tough girl who can’t believe that the law or a man like Keith could be genuinely interested in her.

Tight Spot was directed by Phil Karlson, a name that keeps coming up around here. At Mystery*File, Steve Lewis considers another Karlson movie.

Movies: All Supered Out

Over the weekend I saw and enjoyed both Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and The Dark Knight. Don’t let anyone tell you that Christopher Nolan doesn’t have a sense of humor. Anyone who casts The Tick’s Batmanuel as mayor of Gotham City is a joker in his own way.

This makes me sound like an easy date, but I’ve liked all of this summer’s superhero ‘stravaganzas. Made by people who take the form seriously, they feature a range of tones and textures. None more so than Hancock, which while not perfect plays with the genre in some very interesting ways.

That said, I don’t need to see another of these movies for a good long while. Five in one summer is enough. Stop with the beautiful freaks and the billionaire crime fighters. I want suspenseful movies with more human dimensions. I want amnesiac assassins, obsessed Secret Service agents, hapless saps caught up in global conspiracies. You know, stuff we can relate to.

Where is this season’s version of The Bourne Ultimatum? OK, there’s Tell No One, a French adaptation of Harlan Coben’s novel that improves on the book. But that’s nowhere near big enough.

Am I the only person who recalls the halcyon summer of 1993? The Firm. In the Line of Fire. The Fugitive. Three crowd-pleasers. Three Oscar nominees. Three smash hits. And not a steel suit or a cursed scroll in the bunch.

So it’s agreed. No more superhero movies for the foreseeable future.

Or until Watchmen comes out. Because that looks friggin’ awesome.

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.

Book: Screen Plays, by David S. Cohen (2008)

On this week’s episode of TCM’s Elvis Mitchell: Under The Influence, Bill Murray was the latest person to voice the truism that it takes a lot of work to make any movie, even a bad one. Plenty more ammo can be found in Screen Plays, subtitled How 25 Scripts Made It To A Theater Near You – For Better Or Worse.

Cohen, expanding on features he wrote for Script magazine, traces the histories of two dozen films through the eyes of their writers. He includes a broad range of titles from every genre, studio and indie fare, originals and adaptations, hits and misses. The strongest sections detail the sturm und drang of big-budget productions: David Franzoni getting fired from Gladiator, based on his original idea, while remaining as producer; Ken Nolan climbing back on the merry-go-round after being replaced by bigger names on Black Hawk Down; Leslie Dixon writing Pay It Forward “almost in spite of the premise.” Some of the most instructive material is in Cohen’s introduction chronicling his own screenwriting career, which consists of a single episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. His limited experience is a Hollywood fractal. The part contains the whole.

TV: The Emmy Nominations

They’re out. But as always, you’ve got to go deep to find the real contests. Two songs from Flight of the Conchords versus “I’m F***ing Matt Damon”? I expect blood on the walls.

On The Web: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Why am I extending the awesome cachet of VKDC to this little web venture? It’s pretty damn funny, for one thing. But mainly it’s because Joss Whedon needs my help.

Sports: All-Star Break Report

From Dan Barry’s Sunday New York Times article on Billy Joel:

Someone must sing a proper song of farewell for Shea Stadium, the nice try of a coliseum in Queens, as its dismantling draws near and a new ballpark rises just yards away. But that someone must be able to convey emotions specific to the place, emotions beyond the sadness of many lost Mets summers and the euphoria of two World Series championships. There is so much more.

The romantic idealism and the yeah-right realism. The quickness to mock and to take offense. The need to prove oneself better than any Upper East Side twit and the guilt from having conceived such a hollow ambition. The restlessness, angst and ache of the striver. The Long Island of it all.

Had they asked to use my photo as an illustration, I would have obliged. The conflicted soul described above? C’est moi.

But who cares? We got ourselves a pennant race!

After a half-season of drama that reached dangerous Melrose Place levels, the Mets closed strong, winning nine straight. They’re now only a half-game out of first. A few weeks back, they seemed to be staring down another lost Mets summer. Man, I love baseball.

Lots of critical games in the weeks ahead – and yours truly will get to see one of them. I want to say goodbye to Shea myself, no matter if it’s “not even the nicest ballpark in its own parking lot anymore.” Or if, according to some, it stinks.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But Vince, how are you doing in fantasy baseball?” Well, curse you for asking.

As I’m sure none of you remember, I dithered on the subject of joining a fantasy league. Not too long ago I saw World Series announcer Joe Buck on Bob Costas’s HBO show say that he’d played fantasy baseball only once and came in dead last. I passed this salient fact on to my friend Mike, who replied, “Buck is old school. He probably drives a Buick and has dinner at 4:30 p.m. and watches Judge Judy.”

I was essentially goaded into participating this year by a friend of Rosemarie’s. I am pleased to say that after spending most of the season mired in last place, I have clawed my way up to eighth out of ten. There’s a lot of churn where I am; just before the All-Star break I lost a mere half-point and dropped two slots.

My goals for the year are modest. Ideally, I’d like to make the top half of the field. I do not expect this to happen. I would accept finishing ahead of the person who dared me to play. Currently that is the case, but how long that status stays quo is anybody’s guess. I fervently hope to stay out of the cellar. I think I have a shot.

Miscellaneous: Rebooted and Reborn

These files ... are CLEAN!

At least they seem to be.

By all appearances, we have brute forced our computer woes into submission. And by we I mean the lovely and tech-savvy Rosemarie, with a huge assist from the gang at Windows Support Center. They walked us step by step through what we needed to do and spared us the worst-case scenario of formatting the hard drive and starting anew. Fellas, we owe you a heartfelt thanks.

I’ve got so many anti-virus and anti-spyware programs running now that my desktop looks like Christmas morning. Now the truly hard part begins. Can I learn to love the internet again?

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.