Burt With A Badge: Sharky’s Machine (1981)

Going into this movie I knew one thing, which I’d heard from a classmate who’d watched it on cable. At some point, a guy has a piece of glass shoved into his mouth and is then punched repeatedly in the face. The scene was described to me in such detail that I remembered it lo these many years later.

Like so much I learned on the schoolyard, this is completely untrue. Nothing even close to it occurs. On the other hand a ninja is shot with a spear gun, which I chalk up as a considerable improvement.

Burt Reynolds directs as well as stars in this adaptation of a novel by William Diehl. A drug buy arranged by Atlanta narcotics cop Tom Sharky goes chaotically wrong in the opening sequence, which includes some of the loudest gunshots I’ve ever heard in a movie. For his sins Sharky is cast into the department’s lowest circle, literally and figuratively: the vice squad, made up of misfits and short-timers. They’re content to bust streetwalkers, but Sharky has his sights set on a slick operator (Vittorio Gassman) with ties to the department and local power brokers. Soon the titular apparatus is running multiple off-the-books wiretaps and Sharky finds himself obsessed with Gassman’s pride, the lovely Dominoe (Rachel Ward).

That the apparent misspelling of her name is not only deliberate but a plot point is an indication of the kind of movie Sharky’s Machine is. Occasionally sloppy and coarse, but on the whole surprisingly effective. It’s the find of this utterly unmotivated one-man blogathon.

Burt fills the movie with his pals, old pros he worked with repeatedly like Charles Durning, Brian Keith and Henry Silva. His smartest casting decision was the then-unknown but wholly beguiling Ward. (Granted, I am susceptible to tall, regal, husky-voiced brunettes.) Yes, the Reynolds/Ward scenes borrow liberally from Laura. But if you’re going to borrow, why not do so from the best?

ASIDE: After watching the film I found the site for Rachel Ward’s production company. She expresses amazement “that anyone could want any information beyond the breasts and pouts ... so readily available on Google” and includes information on her latest film Beautiful Kate, which she wrote and directed from a novel by Newton Thornburg (Cutter and Bone). It stars her husband Bryan Brown and Ben Mendelsohn, so electric as Uncle Pope in Animal Kingdom.

As a director, Burt makes smart use of the Atlanta locations. And there’s a relaxed rhythm to his storytelling that makes room for compelling, off-beat material like Bernie Casey’s description of his Zen reaction to almost getting shot in the line of duty. Sharky’s Machine bears out what Burt’s two previous police dramas have shown: that in his prime he wasn’t interested in supercop heroics but the bonds between lawmen, the moments when things go awry. His detectives are more Barney Miller than John McClane.

Burt With A Badge: Hustle (1975)

Fair warning: I’m hanging a SPOILER ALERT up top. Because shortly I will give away the ending of this movie. And not in broad strokes either.

A year after scoring a massive commercial hit with The Longest Yard, Burt Reynolds and director Robert Aldrich reteamed for Hustle. Burt is LAPD detective Phil Gaines, savvy and cynical. His relationship with high-priced call girl Catherine Deneuve an open secret, Phil’s got no interest in rocking any boats. So he’s inclined to ignore both his partner (Paul Winfield) and the grieving father (Ben Johnson) who insist that a stripper was murdered by politically connected types. But the father mounts his own investigation, and Phil’s got to react.

When the 1970s died, this movie is where they were buried. Burt fires up mood music on an 8-track and takes Deneuve to see A Man and a Woman. Comic Jack Carter plays a strip club MC who “blew some leaf.” A grandfatherly Eddie Albert speaks of balling.

Mainly the movie is ugly, visually and spiritually. Johnson is forced to watch his dead daughter in a porn film by the cops who want him to buzz off, in an unpleasant sequence ripping off a far better one in Get Carter. (A pre-Dukes of Hazzard Catherine Bach is the porn film’s clothed co-star.) There’s a quarter-assed endorsement of vigilantism. And a bogus nihilistic ending that thinks it’s significant.

This might be a good time to repeat that SPOILER ALERT.

Because I’m turning all the cards over now.

As the movie was winding down, I said to myself: Burt’s gonna die. Cheaply and randomly. You know why? Because shit happens, man.

This kind of ending can be appropriate in a cop movie. Joseph Wambaugh used it with great effectiveness. Routine calls go wrong on a dime, and officers die. But Hustle’s not interested in making a comment about the treacheries of the job. It wants to tell you the world sucks. Offing its main character is its juvenile bid to appear meaningful. You know, like the first cut of Clerks.

My premonition of the ending was quite specific. Burt will make peace with his woman. He will offer to take her away somewhere. He will stop to buy her a gift. And he will be gunned down by some punk committing a robbery.

What amazed me was calling this detail: Burt’s killer will be a then-unknown actor who later became famous, just to throw the proceedings completely out of whack.

San Francisco, a bottle of wine, Robert Englund. Sometimes I even frighten myself.

Burt has an impossible task in this movie. His dynamic with Deneuve makes absolutely no sense. And yet he almost pulls it off. He’s at home in the role, tossing off lousy lines so that they sound like wisdom, playing the crap comedy without sacrificing his strength. And then it hit me.

Burt Reynolds as Travis McGee.

He would have been perfect on the deck of the Busted Flush. He had the attitude, the presence. He even grew up in Florida, for Christ’s sake. Why didn’t you see that, ‘70s Hollywood?

Burt With A Badge: Fuzz (1972)

The problem with making something seem effortless is that people may start to resent you. It could look like you’re not trying; paying audiences occasionally want you to suffer for your art, or at the very least show your work. Conversely, there are times when familiarity truly does breed contempt, when a talent comes so readily to a performer that they begin going through the motions. It’s a tough line to walk, ease versus laziness.

Which brings us to Burt Reynolds.

Burt was once as big as stars got; at the time William Goldman wrote Adventures in the Screen Trade, he was the world’s top box-office draw for four years running and about to claim a fifth. What’s more he was accessible, appearing regularly on talk shows and even guest hosting The Tonight Show at the height of his fame. Burt possessed something that can’t be taught, the ability to be completely relaxed in his own skin. That repose and his casual physical grace have led to his undervaluing as an actor. (Doubters, watch Deliverance again.) But Burt’s bonhomie is also directly responsible for Cannonball Run and other movies in which he and his pals are having a blast, but we’re not. It’s those films that overshadow his strengths.

I’m watching several films from throughout Burt’s career in which he plays a cop. Why? Because I’m a Burt Reynolds fan. Why a cop? Because I thought of the title for this one-man blogathon. Catchy, isn’t it?

Fuzz is the only movie of the bunch I’d already seen. Let us pause to admire the poster in all its busy, Age of Aquarius glory, complete with nod to Burt’s Cosmopolitan centerfold.

Fuzz transplants Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct to the streets of Boston. McBain adapted the book himself under his own name, Evan Hunter. The Precinct’s regular nemesis The Deaf Man (Yul Brynner) launches a Zodiac Killer-style rampage against city officials as part of a larger scheme, and can’t helping taunting the cops he regards as inept. Other crimes are investigated as well, and this being McBain there are also two guys from Public Works Maintenance and Repair who will allow nothing to stop their efforts to paint the squad room apple green.

The movie’s an uneasy mix of procedural and black comedy influenced by M*A*S*H, with the two films sharing a cast member in Tom Skerritt. The humor is too broad, as evidenced by the scene in which Burt goes on a stakeout dressed as a nun with a full ‘stache. The violence strikes a jarring note and generated a degree of infamy when, after a TV airing, some kids set a woman on fire and claimed they were recreating a scene from the film. Raquel Welch’s storyline goes nowhere and could be easily excised, but then we wouldn’t see Raquel Welch. Director Richard A. Colla, who would be back in Boston directing multiple episodes of Spenser For Hire, can’t nail down the tone necessary to sell McBain’s ending, when all plot threads converge and Brynner’s plan is foiled by circumstance and dumb luck, which Jack Weston’s Detective Meyer Meyer describes as “good police work.”

There’s some great ‘70s detail on display in a porn shop sequence and a system of plastic punch cards used to dial a phone. The best thing in Fuzz? Burt as Steve Carella. He’s got an unforced camaraderie with his cohorts, and has a lovely scene with his wife Teddy in the hospital after he’s injured in the line of duty. Even better is the moment when Weston asks him if he feels weird about their adversary being deaf like Reynolds’ wife, and Reynolds marvels that he never made that connection. Both Burt and McBain deserved better.

Book: In My Own Fashion, by Oleg Cassini (1987)

You never know where a mentor will come from.

Oleg Cassini led an extraordinary life. Born in Paris of Italian and Russian lineage, he was a fashion designer, the husband of Gene Tierney, the fiancé of Grace Kelly, the personal couturier to Jacqueline Kennedy, and an impresario of ski lodges, discotheques and licensing arrangements. Above all, he was a bon vivant.

Cassini wrote his autobiography in 1987. It is now one of the great books of my life. I intend to pattern my remaining days on its teachings.

It’s the memoir of a fearless man, which is my way of saying there’s dirt galore. Oleg not only tells you who he slept with during his years in Hollywood – Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner, Anita Ekberg – but how he wooed them, because to Oleg “the art of the seduction was always more fascinating than the ultimate result.”

Cassini moved through a fascinating world. One where he spent his childhood attending fashion shows with the children of Venezuela’s dictator, where he knows more than one person named Bunny, where his first wife hires a woman to throw herself at him so photographers can catch them in flagrante. All of it described in a fabulous voice.

I was well schooled in the traditions and alleged prerogatives of European aristocracy - and one of the more hallowed, if questionable, traditions was the surreptitious utilization of servants - ancillary love. In short, I developed a mild crush on one of the maids.

Prior to reading this book, I had no idea that dueling died out because it was so bloody expensive. You had to buy splendid gifts for your seconds because they were risking arrest, and you also had to pay the doctor handsomely. And I didn’t realize that, as Oleg’s mother taught him, “With a tennis racquet and a dinner jacket, you’ll be able to go anywhere in life.”

Cassini blended Old and New World sensibilities. He was determined to make something of himself – his brother Igor also came to America and became a powerful gossip columnist – but enjoy life at the same time. That latter attitude manifested itself in terms of personal style first and foremost. Cassini knew he had to leave Italy when under Mussolini “even the idea of wearing a dinner jacket had become ... a vaguely unpatriotic act.” The Russian officer who served as his tutor in the gentlemanly arts (just think about that for a minute) stressed the importance of clothes in creating bearing and confidence. It’s an approach that’s sorely missed.

But Cassini’s real secret was his deep shallowness. “My goal was ... to pursue the good life.” He established a deep bond with JFK because he was “not afraid to be silly.” In taking frivolity seriously, he accomplished a great deal. And looked good while doing it.

I checked Oleg’s book out of the library. As soon as I finished it, I tracked down a copy online. It sits on my bookshelf with the author’s rakish photo facing me to serve as inspiration. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to price ascots.

Movie: Satan in High Heels (1962)

That’s a hell of a title. Too bad the movie doesn’t live up to it. But for a while it comes close, thanks to its star Meg Myles.

Meg plays Stacey Kane, headlining the carnival burlesque circuit. Before the titles finish she shakes down the show’s manager for some extra scratch; reunites with her junkie writer beau only to swipe the cash he’s made from selling his story of recovery; and hops a flight to New York wearing nothing but a raincoat over her corset. By the time the wheels hit the tarmac in Idlewild she’s already roped a new sugar daddy and gotten an audition at the allegedly swellegant club Pepe’s, presided over by its world-weary namesake (Grayson Hall).

So far, so good. There’s a true seediness to the proceedings, as well some zip in the dialogue and the performances. (Most of them, anyway.) I start to think I’ve hit the mother lode. Is this the first exploitation movie that won’t bore me stupid? Have I found the cinematic equivalent of a Gold Medal paperback: fast, sleazy ... and good?

Then something interesting happens. Nothing.

Stacey, already involved with the club’s wealthy backer, starts dallying with his son because ... I couldn’t figure that out. The movie idles for the next forty-five minutes, not actively bad but never compelling, before having a plot spasm that doesn’t resolve much.

I stuck with it for the actors. There’s Sabrina, the buxom British bird who was briefly the U.K.’s answer to Jayne Mansfield. Several military vehicles were nicknamed after her for carrying a little more in front, wink-wink. And Hall brings a Weimar Republic grandeur to Pepe. A well-regarded stage actress, she would be nominated for an Academy Award in 1964 for The Night of the Iguana and had a long run on TV’s Dark Shadows. She never acknowledged appearing in this movie.

That it works at all is a tribute to Meg Myles. She’s believable both as a burlesque queen and a cabaret performer. Myles can sing and act, but she’s also, to be blunt, built.

The Seattle-born redhead was fabled for her dimensions, first earning fame as a pin-up girl. She moved into acting even though she asked, “How many actresses with 40-inch busts have ever won an Oscar?” She debuted in the 1954 film of Dragnet, where she is credited in the IMDb as “Bosomy Girl at Agency.” That led to roles in other films including the one where I first saw her. In The Phenix City Story, Myles has an incendiary song that establishes the title town’s lowdown reality instantly. It’s such a potent moment that I wanted to see Myles in something else. Satan in High Heels was her only chance at a starring role, and the movie isn’t worthy of what she brings to it. Even worse, photographs from her brief nude scene ended up in men’s magazines at the time, souring her on the film.

But Meg Myles persevered. She kept singing, releasing several albums. She studied with Lee Strasberg and has a successful career in the theater. And at last report at age 77 she was tending to New York’s wounded birds. She may not have had the career she deserved, but it seems like she’s having an interesting life.

I can’t close on that note. It’s too sweet for me. Here’s the trailer for Satan, and Meg doing her dominatrix routine.

TV on DVD: Ellery Queen (1975-76)

For a series that only lasted a single season, Ellery Queen casts a long shadow. A cult favorite among mystery fans, the show would occasionally surface on cable but I’d never seen it. With its DVD release late last year, I blitzed through all 23 episodes and wish there were more.

Based on the detective created by cousins Frederick Dannay and Manfred Lee, who also penned the books under that pseudonym (confused yet?), Ellery Queen is a genuine fair play mystery. Crime writer Ellery (Jim Hutton, affability incarnate) helps his detective inspector father (the permanently irascible David Wayne) on some of the NYPD’s most difficult cases. Every clue required to unravel the riddle appears onscreen. In the show’s signature innovation, once the penny drops for Ellery he turns directly toward the camera and asks if you’ve figured it out, helpfully recapping the suspects, key bits of information and even offering a hint. Never before has the pause button on our remote gotten such a workout. As soon as Hutton broke the fourth wall, we’d stop the show and hammer out our theories. Once I even made a sketch of the crime scene.

Co-creators William Link and Richard Levinson bring to bear the same sharp writing they deployed on Columbo. The first few episodes rely heavily on “dying clues,” cryptic bits of information left by the murder victims – the one in the pilot film, Too Many Suspects, verges on preposterous – but as the series progresses it slyly subverts that convention. The show also fully exploits the period 1947 New York setting. The locations and costumes aren’t always convincing but the atmosphere is, blending nostalgia for a bygone age (radio dramas and the Brooklyn Dodgers) with anticipation for the modern era (television).

Each episode brings a fresh cast of special guest stars. Familiar faces from Hollywood’s golden era abound (Vincent Price, Donald O’Connor), with many drawn from the ranks of film noir (Ida Lupino, Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Howard Duff). But the show’s secret weapon is John Hillerman. His rival “radio detective” Simon Brimmer, a cross between Orson Welles and Claude Rains’ character in The Unsuspected, appears in a third of the episodes. Neither as famous as he wants to be nor as smart as he thinks he is, he regularly sets out to unmask the culprit before Ellery does. Hillerman makes a sublime foil, plummy voice and bogus bonhomie setting him up for a fall.

Some favorite episodes:

The Adventure of the Mad Tea Party, a Lewis Carroll-themed show adapted from a Dannay/Lee story

The Adventure of Veronica’s Veils, with George Burns as the victim of the week and a great burlesque background

The Adventure of the Wary Witness, a surprisingly effective minor key outing

The Adventure of the Sinister Scenario, set in Hollywood and taking swipes at earlier screen incarnations of the character

The Adventure of Caesar’s Last Sleep, for finally allowing the long-suffering Sgt. Velie (Tom Reese) to have a moment in the spotlight

If only I’d watched the show in time to ask William Link about it at Bouchercon. To ease my pain, here’s a song that namechecks Ellery Queen. Hat tip to Russell Atwood, whose fine novel East of A is now available as an eBook.

Book: Frank: The Voice, by James Kaplan (2010)

Many serious celebrity biographies (the “serious” is meant for you, Kitty Kelley) tend to buy into one of two theories. Either the subject was such a genius that his sins against his fellow man must be forgiven, or to hell with his accomplishments because the bastard treated everyone like shit. James Kaplan walks the fine line between the two poles in Frank: The Voice, his hugely engaging new biography of Sinatra. Excuses aren’t made for Sinatra’s frequently loutish behavior, but respect is always paid to his overwhelming gift.

The book runs through 1953, ending when Frank has won his Academy Award for From Here to Eternity, lost the love of his life in the tempestuous Ava Gardner, but met his most significant partner in Nelson Riddle, arranger of the songs that would become the soundtrack to the rest of the twentieth century. Some have knocked Kaplan’s novelistic approach, putting himself in the heads of Sinatra and those around him. But that’s only an instance of the author taking cues from the master. Frank, we learn, was a supreme interpreter of lyrics because he lived inside them, analyzing them so he could “understand the point of view of the person behind the words ... his emotions.”

Sinatra’s background and resulting psychology aren’t all that unusual; not everyone who’s the product of a domineering mother and a weak father ends up being a noirish antihero. What’s different is Sinatra’s talent, his awareness of it and confidence in it. That talent is what Kaplan always leads with. There’s juicy gossip galore – in the midst of the Hollywood shenanigans, Frank’s first wife Nancy emerges as a compelling figure – but the focus is always on the music first. Kaplan provides plenty of nuggets, like how Sinatra’s rejection of the Mitch Miller-selected novelty songs “The Roving Kind” and “My Heart Cries For You” (“I’m not recording this fucking shit”) single-handedly led to Guy Mitchell’s career, and the trickery deployed by Capitol Records to get Frank to work with Riddle. Kaplan, let it also be said, is a very funny writer.

A week or so later, Sinatra had yet another on-set visitor at Columbia: the syndicated columnist Harold Heffernan, whose prose style was as clunky as his byline. “Salient factors that keep the pugnacious Frank Sinatra’s career from wallowing are a dogged tenacity and an enthusiasm about whatever he attempts,” Heffernan thesaurused, in his April 2 column.

Kaplan’s also serious about exploring all of Sinatra’s music. Thanks to this book I have now been exposed to “Mama Will Bark,” Sinatra’s 1951 duet with the evanescently famous bombshell Dagmar. Kaplan is far too kind to the song, which astoundingly was the B-side to Frank’s triumph “I’m a Fool to Want You.” Then again, why should you take the word of someone whose ringtone is “Bim Bam Baby”?

Movie: Tron: Legacy (2010)

What follows is completely irrational. I know that.

My name is Vince Keenan, and I loved Tron: Legacy.

Don’t try to disabuse me of my affection. My colleagues at the video game company have relentlessly itemized the movie’s flaws and I remain unswayed. The sole holdout at the office refuses to see the movie because, in his words, “I know how computers actually work.” Nobody made that argument about Toy Story 3. (OK, maybe Armond White did.) You’ll grant an inner life to a plastic action figure but not Quicken? If your empathy banks are that impoverished, I feel for you.

I know that the story – about a young man venturing into a synthetic realm in search of his father, who created it – is a hodgepodge of Christian allegory, dodgy Holocaust parallels and Joseph Campbell, laced with the most preposterous pseudoscience ever. And the way the title character is shoehorned into the narrative simply doesn’t work. Don’t care. Bought into it completely.

Maybe it’s because I still like the original movie. Or because Legacy so cannily exploits the fact that Jeff Bridges has become a beloved figure with a readily identifiable persona. Or because of the visceral thrill of watching Bridges square off against a digitized version of his 1982 self – although I prefer to think of the villain as a simulacrum of Richie Bone. Or because of Michael Sheen’s willingness to embrace his character’s looniness so completely. (Exactly what kind of code looks like Ziggy Stardust and does a Chaplin walk? I think I may have downloaded it by accident.) Or because of the brilliant Daft Punk soundtrack, which succeeds at being both one of their albums and an effective score. Or because the 3D photography for once adds to the believability of the film’s world. Director Joseph Kosinski isn’t getting enough credit for the deft way he handles the effects – or for his daring in undercutting them by closing with the most startling visual of all: the look in one of his actors’ eyes.

But ultimately I know why I fell for Tron: Legacy. It doesn’t indulge in the hipster storytelling that afflicts so many blockbusters, the knowing nods to convention. Legacy doesn’t wink once. It serves up this hooey unironically, with a sense of wonder that can’t be faked. In the age of iPhones, it still thinks computers are cool. A critic prefaced her year-end best list by saying that in order to earn a spot, a movie had to make her say “Wow” when it ended. When Tron: Legacy’s credits rolled, my only thought was, “Again.” That has to count for something, too.

Legacy was the first movie I saw at Seattle’s newly refurbished Cinerama, owned by Microsoft magnate Paul Allen. It’s still the best place in town to see a film, and now has memorabilia on display in the lobby including a costume from the original Tron. But if those are John Wayne’s jeans from The Searchers, I’ll eat the hat next to them.

Pete Postlethwaite, R.I.P.

It was a sad start to the new year, hearing that Pete Postlethwaite had died after a long battle with cancer at age 64. He was a brilliant actor who never struck a false note and enlivened everything in which he appeared. Deservedly nominated for an Academy Award as the gentle man pulled into his son’s nightmare in In the Name of the Father. Showing the whelps how the Bard was done in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Doing a pair of films with Steven Spielberg in 1997 that led the director to call him probably the best actor in the world. And in one of those odd pop culture felicities, immortalized in song with Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping.”

But for me, he will always be the inscrutable lawyer Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects, thanks mainly to his delicious phrasing. To this day I will seize any opportunity to work the phrase “gruesome violation” into conversation, and around Chez K whenever one of us is about to undertake some project the other is wont to say, “Kill away, Mister McManus.”

He had an astonishingly good 2010, appearing in three monster hits: Clash of the Titans, Inception and The Town. The last film offered him his best of the three roles as Fergie, the kingpin of Irish Boston whose flower shop front fooled no one. The actor looked frail but menacing, as if Fergie was hell-bent on channeling his dying breath into fucking his enemies over. Illness didn’t dim Pete Postlethwaite’s intensity one iota. He was a favorite, and he will be sorely missed.

Movies: Inside the Numbers

228.

That is the total number of movies I watched in 2010. Somehow I never counted them before.

I am well aware that 228 movies in a single year is an abnormally large figure for most people. It would have been even more if I weren’t a baseball fan. But 228 puts me at the level of gifted amateur when compared to say, Marty McKee, from whose fine blog I swiped this post.

I won’t subject the movies to a sabermetric level of analysis. There are only a handful of statistics here that interest me anyway.

First film of 2010: District B13: Ultimatum (2010)
Last film of 2010: Freebie and the Bean (1974)

From the 1910s: 1 – The Cheat (1915)
1920s: 1 – Why Change Your Wife? (1920)

Both directed by Cecil B. DeMille, viewings prompted by reading Scott Eyman’s bio.

1930s: 8
1940s: 58
1950s: 39
1960s: 1

That shocked me. Even more shocking, the movie was The Oscar (1966).

1970s: 5
1980s: 8
1990s: 3
2000s: 104

Of more interest was the manner in which I watched the movies.

DVD: 99
DVR/TV: 49
Theater: 48
Streaming: 21

Lest ye forget, I got a Roku in 2010.

On Demand: 10

That’s the figure that intrigued me the most. Independent distributors are increasingly turning to video-on-demand to maximize the exposure of new releases. I saw some of the best films of 2010 on television at the same time they were playing in theaters, including one of my top three picks of the year The Red Riding Trilogy, the new version of The Killer Inside Me, and the latest from the great Neil Jordan, Ondine.

Oh yeah, and I watched one movie in its entirety on YouTube. But that was Wicked Woman, which I’ll take anyway I can get.

The Good Stuff: Movies of 2010

Look for your Oscar bait elsewhere. I give you ten essential thrillers in order seen, with links to the original posts when applicable.

The Red Riding Trilogy. Shattering.

The Ghost Writer. Ending of the year.

A Prophet. I’d complain that it didn’t win the ’09 Best Foreign Film Oscar, only it lost to ...

The Secret in Their Eyes. The best movie of 2010. Also the best movie of the last several years. Also inspired my favorite post of the year.

Winter’s Bone. The first American movie on this list, but it’s from an America you seldom see onscreen.

Mother. Bong Joon-ho with the hat trick!

The Square. Blue-collar Aussie noir.

Animal Kingdom. Jacki Weaver is understandably getting all the love. But it’s Ben Mendelsohn’s Uncle Pope that haunts me all these months later.

Cell 211. The one title on this list not yet on DVD. Don’t worry. It’s being remade.

The American. See? A studio film with a huge star. I’m easy to please. Just give me an existential noir with a European attitude toward pacing, atmosphere and nudity.

What? You want my favorite non-thrillers of 2010? Lord, but you people are pushy. Fine. Toy Story 3 and Exit Through the Gift Shop. Both of which move like thrillers.

Underrated: 44 Inch Chest and Please Give.

Scene of the year: Michael Caine’s breakfast alone in Harry Brown.

Cinematic highlight of the year ... you have to ask? Noir City. Although seeing a restored print of The Red Shoes introduced by Thelma Schoonmaker is right up there.

And favorite movies that were new to me ... Violent Saturday (1955), a heist movie that plays like a Douglas Sirk melodrama. The beguiling Three Strangers (1946). And the DVD discovery of the year, The Underworld Story (1950).

The Good Stuff: Books of 2010

No top ten this year. Instead here’s a pick six, the half-dozen crime novels I commend to you unreservedly, listed in the order read. Click through to the original posts for more.

Print the Legend, by Craig McDonald. Yes, technically I read it in 2009. But I remembered it.

Do They Know I’m Running?, by David Corbett. Yes, Corbett is a friend. But leaving his brilliant heartbreaker off the list wouldn’t have been fair to you. And aren’t we friends, too?

Memory, by Donald E. Westlake. Yes, it was written almost 5 decades ago. But it wasn’t published until this year. And it gave me nightmares, so it makes the cut.

Infamous, by Ace Atkins. The best of the three Atkins novels I read this year.

The Big Bang, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins. Started by the first, finished by the second and the most fun you’ll have between two covers.

Savages, by Don Winslow. A game-changer for the author and my favorite of the year.

The non-crime fiction jury prize goes to Rut by Scott Phillips. For ingenuity in content and in distribution.

2010 was also the year I finally caved and bought an e-reader, and I haven’t looked back. That purchase is directly responsible for my favorite novels that were new to me: Solomon’s Vineyard, Jonathan Latimer (1941), Fast One, Paul Cain (1932) and especially I Should Have Stayed Home, Horace McCoy (1938).

Book: The War for Late Night, by Bill Carter (2010)

The true wisdom in New York Times reporter Carter’s chronicle of the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien debacle comes from someone who isn’t on TV anymore. Jerry Seinfeld recalls telling Johnny Carson not long after his retirement that for twenty years, comedians speculated on who would take over The Tonight Show. “And the one thing we never realized was that, when you left, you were taking it with you.” The creation of a viable late night alternative on CBS ended an era in television; as Seinfeld points out, comics say Jay or Dave or Conan now, not The Tonight Show. In retrospect, the writing was on the wall when Garry Shandling chose to do a behind-the-scenes comedy about a talk show as opposed to the real thing on NBC.

The slow-burn succession plan put in place in 2004 by NBC’s Jeff Zucker – Leno agreeing to step down as Tonight Show host in 2009 to make way for Conan – is usually characterized as the root of the problem. But by the end of Carter’s book I was convinced that the network unintentionally made the best of a bad situation. There was no way NBC could hope to hold on to both stars in the long run; one was always going to end up the competition. The current landscape, with Leno leading in the ratings and Conan on basic cable, no doubt suits the suits just fine.

Conan comes off as funny, decent and somewhat naïve. Leno, meanwhile, reads as hard-working and deeply uninteresting. When he does reveal something of himself, you wish he hadn’t; his explanation for why he refuses to take vacations (“I understand how people spend money to buy things they need or like. But spending money on an experience? That seems like an extravagance to me.”) seems utterly alien, especially when as Carter points out it’s people on vacation who pay for Leno’s fabled collection of vintage cars. It’s a sign of Leno’s lack of presence in spite of his success that his valid take on the situation – fiftysomething guy is forced out of his job, but returns triumphant – never caught on. Letterman, as always, remains inscrutable, while Carter gets plenty of good material from a savvy and scrappy Jimmy Kimmel.

The book is compulsively readable but evenhanded to a fault. Carter’s Gray Lady insistence on reporting everyone’s side as if he’s covering arms negotiations weakens the fascinating opening at the May 2009 upfronts, when Leno flopped with a long set of dated material. And he shies away from any assessment of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, including the commonly held one that it was never vital television until it was on the verge of extinction.

Overall, there’s a sense that Carter is missing the boat. 11:30 on the broadcast networks may be where the money is, but not the excitement. Jay Leno couldn’t get millions of people to turn up for a rally on the Washington mall or shame Congress into passing a bill. The boldest late night personality is Chelsea Handler on E! The only late night clips I’m sent these days are from Jimmy Fallon’s show, and the one show I try to regularly watch is Craig Ferguson’s, where actual conversations occur. Carter’s book is filled with the crack of buggy whips. It’s diligent reportage on the final mastodon’s struggles in the tar pit.

Books: Comfort Reading

Checking in with two favorite series in the waning days of 2010 ...

Hollywood Hills is Joseph Wambaugh’s fourth book about life in Tinseltown’s cop shop. A few new officers are thrown into the mix as well as dual sets of bad guys destined to collide. We have two only-in-L.A. victims of the Great Recession, a caterer turned gentleman’s gentleman and a gallery owner on his uppers. And we have victims of Hollywood itself in a pair of drug-addled teenagers obsessed with ripping off celebrities like their heroes. Wambaugh weaves in the usual tales of humor and heartbreak on the beat, but this time around he puts some of his recurring characters through the wringer. It’s another strong outing. Extra credit for referring to Paris Hilton by her correct job title, “famous person.”

The fifth of Robert J. Randisi’s Rat Pack mysteries, I’m a Fool to Kill You unfolds in 1962. Sands pit boss/fixer Eddie Gianelli gets the call when Ava Gardner appears in the hotel looking for her ex-husband Frank Sinatra only to vanish. Eddie G, aided as always by gastronomical gunsel Jerry Epstein, tracks Ava down to learn that the she went on a bender and lost several days only to find blood literally on her hands when she woke up. Randisi’s portrait of Ava – earthy, seductive, foul-mouthed and fearful of aging – is the best feature of this breezy caper.

Hey, did you know there’s an Ava Gardner museum?

Movie: The Underworld Story (1950)

Over the weekend I read critic David Thomson’s New Republic article on “feel-good noir.” Thanks to Megan Abbott for bringing it to my attention. (Checked out the blog Megan’s running with Sara Gran, the Abbott Gran Medicine Show, yet? It’s well worth your time.) I’m an admirer of Thomson’s but his latest is a windy, broad brush piece. “There are many things corroding America,” Thomson fulminates, “and this endless cultivation of noir must be on the list.” If you say so, but it had better be pretty fucking far down that list. It doesn’t help that Thomson is guilty of the very crime he protests against. Only by the broadest definition can Dennis Lehane’s Moonlight Mile and Ben Affleck’s film The Town, both of which I enjoyed, be considered noir.

Thomson’s sentiments chafed because over the weekend I also encountered genuine noir. Long forgotten, The Underworld Story has been brought back into circulation courtesy of the Warner Archive. It’s based on a story by Craig Rice, whose antic crime novels landed her on the cover of Time magazine. But the only laughs here come from the gallows. The movie whips up a paranoid atmosphere so intense it’s no surprise its director (Cy Endfield), screenwriter (Henry Blankfort) and one of its stars (Howard Da Silva) would soon be blacklisted.

When a story by reporter Mike Reese (Dan Duryea) about a witness against a crime boss gets that witness killed, he becomes the fall guy for the paper’s higher-ups. Non grata in his chosen profession, Reese waltzes into the office of the crime boss (the blazing Da Silva) to ask for payment for the service he unintentionally rendered. Reese uses the money to buy a stake in a suburban rag for people who like to see their names in print. Then he strikes pay dirt with a juicy society murder. The victim: the daughter-in-law of one of the press moguls (Herbert Marshall) who refused to give him a job. It’s immediately revealed that the killer is Marshall’s own son (Gar Moore), and that both men are perfectly willing to allow the family’s poor African-American maid to take the blame for the crime.

The Underworld Story captures several dynamics at play in the wake of World War II: the rise of the suburbs, the shift to either the trivial or the sensational in news. It also manages to shake one’s faith in every major American institution. The Fourth Estate? Reese’s initial plan for his new paper is to shake down his own advertisers. He brokers the maid’s surrender to the authorities only to claim the reward money. When that fails, he sets up a defense fund in her behalf so he continue to control the story and rake in chips. He ends up on the side of the angels simply because he’s got nowhere else to go. The lawyer who takes the maid’s case does so only for the publicity and the fee he’s splitting with Reese. The crusading D.A. puts his grudge against the reporter ahead of his responsibilities. And don’t expect any help from the top of the food chain. Marshall marshals the town’s elite and has them boycott the paper, using his influence to stifle debate. In a bone-chilling scene, respected citizens stand outside Duryea’s office glaring at him after the place has been vandalized, making it clear that they’ll escalate their tactics if necessary. The movie’s vision of a world dictated by bureaucracy and self-interest make it play like a proto version of The Wire.

It’s not a perfect film. Gale Storm doesn’t do much with the bland role of Reese’s new partner, Gar Moore is a vague presence as the killer, and the casting of a white actress as the maid (along with some strange dubbing in the scenes in which her character’s race is discussed) is jarring. But it’s a potent work that asks a lot of unsettling questions about where America was heading. When it’s over, nobody feels good.

On The Web: Blatant Self Promotion

A regular feature of the Noir City Sentinel, house rag of the Film Noir Foundation, is “Noir or Not?,” in which a film’s status in that darkest of pantheons is considered. For the Sentinel’s true crime edition, the task fell to me. The title in question? On the Waterfront. It was a tough piece to write, because before I could settle the noir matter I had to address my complicated feelings toward the movie.

True confession time: WATERFRONT is one of those classics that I respect more than like. I blame the Actors Studio. The Method school of performance it touted as the apex of emotional realism now reads as stylization of a different kind. Aside from some ferocious muckraking moments, the film crowned Best Picture of 1954 doesn’t speak to me. Three years earlier, Columbia Pictures released another film about harborside corruption. THE MOB (ironically made with the working title WATERFRONT) is a sharp-elbowed racketeering exposé with a crackling script by William Bowers. If you’ll permit a little blasphemy, your correspondent prefers it to WATERFRONT. It’s faster, funnier, more suspenseful, less ... psychological. In it a young Charles Bronson slams the degrading and tainted shape-up system of hiring longshoremen, but does so amidst corkscrew plot twists and wise-guy dialogue. True noir has no agenda other than to whisper in our ears that not only are we all doomed but destined to die unfulfilled, that at best we’ll go out with swag within arm’s reach and the lover for whom we stole it pulling the trigger. Not so ON THE WATERFRONT. It has points to make. It’s an issue drama in noir threads, a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

Nothing like walking up to a revered movie and kicking it in the shins.

My Waterfront essay is one of several from the latest Sentinel currently available for free on the the FNF website. You can read it here. While you’re there, why not kick in a few bucks to the Foundation and get regular access to my genius?

Noir City: The Countdown Begins

Last night, during a seasonal double-bill of Remember the Night and Mr. Soft Touch, the schedule for Noir City 9 was released.

The festival, run through the auspices of the Film Noir Foundation and programmed by my friend Eddie Muller, will be at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre from January 21-30, 2011. The theme this go-round is “Who’s Crazy Now?” and features 24 features that witness madness ... or do they? Dig that lineup.

The fest then goes into roadshow mode, playing Los Angeles and, more importantly to your correspondent, Seattle’s SIFF Cinema. I’m disappointed that the Northwest won’t be getting the Barbara Stanwyck pairing of The Lady Gambles and Sorry, Wrong Number, and regret that I won’t be seeing Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door on the big screen. (Eddie calls Secret “incomprehensible.” Far be it for me to disagree with the Czar of Noir, but to me the movie is perfectly comprehensible ... just completely preposterous.) But there’s so much to look forward to: The Hunted, which I have on reasonable authority is everything you could want in a loopy B film, and the closing night screenings of Loophole and Crashout.

The year’s Film Preservation Blogathon, hosted by Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren, will benefit the FNF. As it happens, it also coincides with Noir City Northwest. My contribution to the blogathon will be the Noir City coverage you’ve come to expect.

Music: The Bad Plus

The Bad Plus has been together for ten years. Their show at Jazz Alley last night drew entirely from Never Stop, their new album celebrating that anniversary. As always, it was a sensational performance. The trio played one of my favorites, “Bill Hickman at Home,” a salute to the stunt driver of Bullitt and The French Connection, and Reid Anderson’s heartbreaking “People Like You.” Drummer Dave King truly got to shine, using his box of toys to full effect. They’re at Jazz Alley again tonight, with upcoming dates in Chicago, Minneapolis and New York. Go, go, go.

After the show, Rosemarie and I spent some time chatting with pianist and crime fiction connoisseur Ethan Iverson. Talk turned to ‘70s era detective shows and we mentioned Columbo, season one of Mannix, and the short-lived Ellery Queen. (We’ve been making our way through the recent DVD release; expect a post when we’re done.) At his blog Do The Math, Ethan details his recent reading.

Of course, this post is simply an excuse to link to Ethan’s astonishing overview of Donald E. Westlake’s career, now back on the web and somehow expanded. As it happens, Ethan’s classic rendering of the opening of The Da Vinci Code in the style of one of Westlake’s Richard Stark novels is today’s guest post at The Violent World of Parker.

All the TV shows mentioned above were created by the team of William Link and Richard Levinson. In another nice bit of serendipity, today is William Link’s 77th birthday. Mr. Link is still going strong; we recently had the pleasure of hearing him speak at Bouchercon. Extend your birthday greetings at The Rap Sheet.

And one final link to a piece on a subject that is also near and dear to my heart: Ethan’s wife Sarah Deming on cocktails bars that go too far. Who doesn’t serve Amaretto sours?

Keenan’s Klassics: It’s a Shane Black Christmas

From December 2009. We know this year’s cost of the 12 days. I shudder to think what my version would run you, even in this economy. Remember the Night will be playing at Noir City Xmas on December 15.

There I am at my favorite watering hole, talking with the staff, when the subject of Christmas movies is raised.

First suggestion, not made by me: the traditional double-bill of Die Hard and Die Hard II: Die Harder.

Thus giving me the tenor of the conversation. This is not the time, perhaps, to mention Remember the Night and Holiday Affair, two overlooked films (with noir connections!) that Turner Classic Movies has labored to turn into Yuletide staples. Although a mention of Blast of Silence, full of Wenceslas wetwork, might not be out of the question.

So I lobby for my own Christmas favorite, The Ref. And then observe, not for the first time, that the entire oeuvre of Shane Black – Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – is set at the most wonderful time of the year.

Therefore, as you venture out for that last round of shopping, I offer, by popular demand, what has become a VKDC tradition. (“By popular demand” meaning Rosemarie asked, “Why haven’t you posted this yet?” And she did write most of it.) Here, once again, is Shane Black’s 12 Days of Christmas. Record your church group performing this and we’ll post the video here!

Twelve cars exploding
Eleven extras running
Ten tankers skidding
Nine strippers pole-ing
Eight Uzis firing
Seven henchmen scowling
Six choppers crashing

Five silver Glocks

Four ticking bombs
Three hand grenades
Two mortar shells
And a suitcase full of C-4

God bless us, everyone. Or else.

UPDATE: Head over to Duane Swierczynski's blog for more suggestions on dark-hearted holiday fare.

Book: Moonlight Mile, by Dennis Lehane (2010)

If you’re going to take time off, you might as well be productive. In the eleven years since the last Kenzie/Gennaro book Dennis Lehane has had an astonishing run, writing Mystic River, Shutter Island and The Given Day. Now he returns to the characters that made his name.

Lehane is too good and too serious a writer to phone it in. Changes have happened in the intervening decade. Some familiar faces are long gone. Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro are now married and raising a daughter in Boston – because honestly, where else could they live? Angie’s no longer a private investigator while Patrick does dispiriting freelance work in the hope of getting hired on at a big security firm. A sly reversal in the opening chapter nicely establishes Patrick’s diminished expectations.

Then Amanda McCready goes missing again, and once more Patrick is asked to find her. Their paths crossed in Gone, Baby, Gone, the consequences from that case nearly driving Patrick and Angie apart and haunting Kenzie still.

Revisiting the series’ strongest book is a risky gambit that calls to mind another Boston crime writer, Robert B. Parker, whose P.I. Spenser came to the aid of troubled young April Kyle more than once. Moonlight Mile’s plot, involving identity theft, Russian gangsters and a stolen artifact, is busy and none too tightly packed; Kenzie is more witness than protagonist by the end. Lehane’s real focus is on aging, the compromises we make as we grow older, and learning to “love the things that chafe.” There’s some similarity with the later films of Clint Eastwood, who directed the Oscar-winning adaptation of Mystic River, in terms of how a man of violence deals with the fallout from his actions.

Anyone unfamiliar with Patrick and Angie won’t understand the big deal here; anyone who has read the earlier books will relish a chance to hang out with them again. Because that’s essentially what you’re doing, hanging out. Moonlight Mile is like catching up with an old high school friend you encounter by chance. The conversation is rushed and covers a lot of ground. But when it’s over you hope you run into each other again, and more regularly.