Thinkin' 'Bout Sherpas

A Merry Christmas to All!

I'll Give You Banter

Repo Man

Why don't I own this movie?

Sub-thought: I'm pretty sure that Alex Cox doesn't know that this movie is as funny as it is. Maybe that's why it's so funny.

Shitty Writing 101

What they're doing here? Don't do this.

Unless it's the first movie, in which case, carry on-- but since I'm talking to a man in the past, you should really help Judy out with her pill problem. It's the right thing to do, hypothetical time travelling writer.

The Bitch Went Nuts

I'm saving the substantive stuff regarding Black Swan for a podcast that I'm doing with my friend Joe (titled "White Guys, Square Glasses," and I wish I came up with that title, thanks for asking). I'll try to be as brief as I can:

Black Swan is my favorite film of 2010. I almost loath to say it like that or even say it at all, because I kind of feel like I'm elevating it to an Important Picture as opposed to a good, fucking movie. I think part of the reason I don't take to some pictures is because They're Really Very Important and Touch Upon the Human Condition and that's a terribly obnoxious way to sell a movie. Black Swan is good. What's more is it's fun. After walking out of the movie, I realized something, which is that if Hitchcock were alive, instead of making half-assed thriller copycats, he'd probably end up making a movie like this. So, when I say fun, I do mean fun in the I'm-going-to-kill-my-wife-and-use-a-psycho-body-double kind of a way.

Which is a very specific kind of a fun, rarely found in nature.

Despite the risks of all three of you readers being sold a bad bill of goods, I'll keep on typing, because I'm pretty decent at it and Black Swan is worth sounding like a blowhard over.

I saw about six movies in theaters this year, so saying that it was my favorite doesn't count for a whole lot. Off the top of my head they were (in reverse chronological order) The Social Network, The Girl Who Played with Fire, Inception, Micmacs, and Avatar (in 3d!). They were all pretty good movies for wildly different reasons, ranging from wanton taser-centric violence to amazing feats of quantum cross-cutting to me not having to pay to see it (and in some cases, more than one of these reasons apply). So, for what it's worth Black Swan is better than Avatar.

Getting back to my concerns about over-hyping the movie and why I'm only just writing about it now is that I think one of the reasons I didn't like The Wrestler quite as much as everyone else seemed to (which is another discussion for another day) is that I had to hear people blabbering about how The Wrestler is the greatest movie of the decade and will redefine how I look at the wrastlin' circuit. I'm allergic to that kind of hyperbole. I think like most people I'm about as apt to avoid something or not like it because of the hype train driving it as I am to give an underdog a chance when everyone maligns it.

I can't say that was my entire reasoning for not being a huge fan of The Wrestler, but it's something that's been in the back of my mind for quite some time. It's not something that I want to happen to Black Swan, because I really do feel strongly about it. It deserves the chance to be great on its own without being obscured by public opinion one way or the other.

I think my experience with Black Swan definitely benefited from going into it with a completely blank slate. I knew what the basic premise was and I had seen the first trailer, but other than that, this movie was completely off of my radar. I honestly think this is the best way to see a movie, so the best thing I can say about the movie is this: Stop faffing about and go and see it post-fucking-haste. You won't be sorry.

And if you are, fuck you.

WA few last points before I shut the fuck up:

Black Swan isn't a perfect film, by any means. It's got a few hiccups along the road and some very questionable bits of dialogue, along with one of the most poorly judged jump scares of all time (send me a message if you can guess the exact scene I'm talking about). Though the movie, like all movies, I guess, is bigger than the sums of its parts and overcomes all of the small problems to create a surprisingly compelling story about Padme going cookoobananas.

Yes, it is better than The Wrestler. While it can be said that the two are companion pieces (at best) or "the same story, but with tutus" (at worst), it really is more than that. If you liked The Wrestler, you'll like this movie, and if you hated The Wrestler, that's cool, I won't judge you, you should still like Black Swan.

No, you don't need to give a shit about ballet to like it. I went with three other guys to go see it and we all had a pretty good time, despite knowing about as much about ballet as I know about baseball. The mere spectacle of ballet is entertaining enough for a non-dance fan to appreciate it and the drama isn't limited to backstage bitchfests (though there is plenty of that). I'm sure most people who saw The Wrestler don't care about wrestling at all, but still enjoyed it (or, in Pi's case, give a damn about Hasidic math). I imagine the same would hold true for this picture, with the added benefit of ballet being a much sexier subject.

I gotta say, I don't like either of the posters for different reasons. I thought the first one was a teaser poster because of the fact that Natalie Portman wasn't in it. I thought they were just using a stand-in to get the basic tone across (which is done for a lot of movies). Then I realized no, wait, that is her, how fucking weird is that? I mean, if you have one of the most beautiful women on screen in your movie, don't you want people to recognize that's her? I don't like the second poster because it's just kind of bleh. It's the one you see above, but I put it up because, I guess, it does get the basic premise across better than the abstract boner-killer that the last one was.

And, finally, yes, I do realize that my opinion is not significant enough to ruin Black Swan in your mind, but I want to be seen as a Negative Nancy about as much as the "Oh My God, You Gotta Listen to This Band" Guy. Those people are terrible.

Merry Christmas!

Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy with Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly from Will Ferrell

Gay, Occupied Paris

Click here if you want to see full color photos of Paris during the German occupation (or one of them, anyways).

This looks like the singularly least fun New Wave film that ever was.

The color on those is rather amazing. Not that color photos during WWII surprises me (color footage does, though, I mean, come on, that's amazing), but the variety of color is strange. It reminds me of Kodak Kodachrome. That's probably because of each stock's respective age (and subject matter) and not because of their actual visual qualities. It's just amazing to see one color version of the past look so different from another version of the past, when each subject, each time over laps. I guess it's like seeing Technicolor versus black and white. Each film stock gives off a different feeling that I really can't put my finger on.

Either way, I'm stealing all of this for the WWII comic. This you can be assured.

. . .

This needs to be shared.

My Average Saturday

Bronson.

"I had a very bad experience on the plane in from California yesterday. There was a man on the plane, sitting across from me, and they were showing an old Greer Garson movie. He said, Hey, why aren't you in that? The picture was made before I even became an actor. I said, Why aren't you?"
--Charles Bronson.

(via Roger Ebert.)

This is My Jam

This is what gets me going.

This is what I'd be blasting from the speakers if I were going to be mounting an attack on somewhere.

Cinecult and the Code of Conduct

Mark Kermode has to be one of my greatest influences when it comes to film.

Recently he released a Cinema Code of Conduct, which, even if you don't want to read the rest of this blog entry, you should read. Don't hold me against him.

The Code of Conduct is a Geneva Convention of how we should act at movie theaters. It's a line in the sand and, as I think about it, it's long over due, isn't it?

My love of Dr. Mark Kermode isn't a particularly proud declaration, it's just fact. I like the man. I think he's a fairly smart individual and I think when he isn't right, he's making a good argument for why he belives what he believes. In my mind that's what makes a good critic, not a person who always agrees with your all of the time (which is impossible and an insane thing to wish for), but someone that can make a compelling argument as to why they believe what they do. I've run into an innumerate amount of people who disagree with me on this and that and the other, but it's a rare few who can actually make a compelling argument regarding what they believe.

I know a lot of weinies and I know a lot of morons who put up an argument about as strong as Sudetenland's. It's sad and it's frustrating. I want a fight. I want to have a discourse with someone, even if I disagree with them. I mean, speaking, talking about ideas is the entire point of being human, right? So, yeah, I guess in this analogy, I am Hitler, but don't hold that against me. I just get perturbed when people fold like second-hand lawn furniture when encountering a philosophy different than their own. I mean, it isn't as though I'm that abrasive. I'm not so hostile that those who disagree with me melt before me. I am friends with and respect plenty of people who disagree with me on far more important issues than movies, so I don't think it could possibly be all on me.

Mostly on me, probably. I do love a good argument. If I was built any better, I'd feel the same way about a good fight.

Anyways, I love Mark Kermode. Kermode kept my head above water when all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies were coming out. I didn't much care for the first one and I cared even less for the second one, but, at the time, I was alone among my friends and comrades. I was the one nail sticking out.

I guess that sounds like I was a martyr or something, but I just hated those movies. And I've always been critical of the crappier bilge that's been forced on us through the cinema. I don't know how I ever stumbled upon Mark Kermode, but I'm glad that I did. I like him. I like his style. I think he's funny and, unlike a lot of critics, I think he balances between acrimony and celebration in a rare way. He loves movies like Twilight, but he rails against QT's (because that's how he deserves to be referred to as) because of their ugliness. I like that. I like that a person can make an argument for things like that and not sad like a mad man.

And what I really appreciate is that even if you disagree with him (as I often have), you don't feel like a moron for doing so, because it's all fun. It's all art. There are very few things that are worth serious derision in Mark Kermode's world, but it's never the listener. I like that. That's what critics should be. There's a lot of things that Mark Kermode has in his lock box-- words like synethesia and phrases like mis en scene and comparisons like Bunuelian and songs like "Das Capital"-- but before he brings up all of those wonderful and difficult ideas, he's your friend.

He's your rather snooty British friend that has a sense of humor and he wants to watch good movies with you. And he's got Simon Mayo-- the friendliest man in all of England-- with him, which doesn't help.

Hello to Jason Isaacs.

I Feel Like I Already Know About This

Oh well.

Fake Criterions. Still as clever as the first time I might have posted it here.

Obviously some of these are better than others, but, as far as the quality parodies are concerned, they've got the tone down pat.

Stupid Facebook Meme, Chain Letter Bullshit

I saw a meme going around Facebook (or, rather, I saw a brief idea in one person's post on the ol' Facebook) and I thought it'd be an interesting exercise on this blog.

The exercise is "15 Authors." Basically, I get to list/have to list fifteen writers who have influenced my current style. I'm going to assume that this is limited to the written word, so that makes it a bit of a prickly pear, but I'll do my best.

Here goes:

1. Cormac McCarthy
2. Ray Bradbury
3. H.P. Lovecraft
4. Alan Moore
5. Neil Gaiman
6. Warren Ellis
7. Garth Ennis
9. George Orwell
8. Philip K. Dick
9. Dashiell Hammett
10. Rudyard Kipling
11. Joseph Conrad
12. William Gibson
13. Stephen King
14. Frank Herbert
15. Jason Aaron

Now, you may go ahead and judge my nerdy ass.

Never Clap

During my senior year of high school Ray Bradbury vistited my high school to speak. Even back then, I was amazed that he was still alive. By all accounts of the naked eye, that man should have been dead within days of leaving the city of La Canada-Flintridge (an unusual coupling between incredibly rich white settlers and incredibly rich Spanish settlements which were bought out by incredibly rich white people). Yet, despite my diagonosis, that son of a bitch keeps on keeping on. If life hasn't taken out that man by now, nothing will. He's got whatever it is that Casto has in his blood that keeps him going. Your grandchildren are going to be wondering about Ray Bradbury's demise years and years from now. None of you will live long enough to get a satisfactory answer to the Ray Bradbury Mortality Question.

Anyways-- stop me if I've recited this on paper before (and I know I've recited this in my mind innumerable times)-- but Ray Bradbury mentioned several important things in his speech that I still carry with me to this day (I realize that you can't stop me and that I'm probably going to repeat myself, to my detriment, regardless of your moans at the computer screen [I have very few anecdotes, please allow me the ones that I have]).

He said that you should never do research for a story. In my innexeperience, I have to disagree, but I agree with the spirit of his advice.

As a writer, you shoulder never let the little things get in your way. If you want to write about Mars or the future or gothic families or tattooed men or whatever, just fucking write it. Just do it. Go to your typewriter and fucking do it. There's no logic or system of rules that are keeping you from a great story, only your own will power. I guess this probably carries over to most mediums, and in that fashion, he's right. Worry about being right later, in the mean time, if you want to write, WRITE, GODDAMMIT!

He also said that you shouldn't watch any TV, which, became pretty funny exactly one year later when David Hyde Pierce came to our high school (St. Francis High School) and told us that we should watch more TV (which, of course, he would say). Again, his advice isn't something I agree with by the letter, but it is something I agree with in spirit. He's right. We should avoid TV (and, I imagine, Facebook and AIM and You Porn and everything else) and just create. We shouldn't let our minds be poisoned by the outside, we should just go ahead with whatever it is that we want to do. Paying too much attention on TV (or movies or memes or the internet or comics or grindhouse pictures) is asking for a hard fall. As writers, or creators in whatever medium we end up working in, we should seek to be original more than anything else, which is something that I can entirely agree with.

There's the whole post-modernist school of thought which wants to tell us that there isn't any such thing as a "new" thing. To a point, I agree. One can't write or draw or act without being aware or inspired by those who came before. From a basic, functional point of view, you can't perform your medium without the people who invented stage lighting and graphite mixtures (which we can thank Napoleon's army for-- a different discussion for a different time) and WWII movies and Will Eisner and whatever else. All of this is in our blood, we can't just wipe the slate clean and be tabula rasa about art, if we did that, we'd probably be making pictures with our own feces on the wall (and Lord knows that not all of your readers are Irish political prisoners).

Post-Modernism is, of course, a bunch of latent, liberal, quitter bullshit. The people who spawned post-modernism were the same people that invented cultural relativism, elected Jimmy Carter, protested the retirement age being moved up to 62, saw the legacy of the 1960's crushed under the weight of the Hell's Angels and reality, and people who buy multiple Jean-Luc Godard films on the Criterion Collection. In other words-- pussies.

As I said, there's a great point to be made about nothing being new and I've copied plenty of artists in my own stories (which always seem to be set in the past, with an intense amount of research involved). There is nothing new under the sun, though I don't know that that means anything. Sure, there isn't anything new, but man, as a species, knows less than diddly-shit about anything. As a society, as a culture, as whatever, we don't know anything. That's the human experience: Not knowing more than you know, having an awkward adolosence, and dying. That's about it. But, with that said, you can't say that there isn't anything new to be said about life. If that were true, I think we could all retire our species at this point.

Post-modernism and the school of copying and homaging and co-depending isn't the future of art. There's plenty to be said about the human condition. And, yeah, there's plenty of room for jerks like myself (who probably hasn't written an original thought worth a damn since he was born) and QT (who is lauded for his unoriginality) and Andy Warhol and a million other artists who no one has ever heard of (who I would include myself in, if you were reading my blog at this current juncture), but there's also room for the next generation of artists to make NEW things. I guess that is what Ray Bradbury was always talking about, always writing about. Even as an ancient, decrepit, old man, he's still closer to the truth than a shit-ton of academics and so-called creative geniuses.

The world needs creativity. It needs blind, violent vision that doesn't give a shit about what has come before. That's what is going to move art upwards and onwards in this century, it isn't going to be an improvement on the old, it's going to be a blossoming of the new.

If I knew what that meant, it would probably be a lot more poetic. If I wasn't so drunk currently, I might even convince myself that the previous paragraph meant anything).

So there's that.

As far as Comic Con goes and as far as the title of this entry goes, I fucking hate clappers. It's turgic sychpanty. It's horrid. All it does is inerfere with the flow of information and the flow of thought. It's just this massive, ugly pat on the back and nothing more. "Hey, I like Ferhenheit 451, please clap with me to prove that I'm not alone on this dark, cold sphere shooting through the universe!"

It's pathetic.

And, yeah, I've been to plenty a Comic Con, so I'm looking down on these people as a nerd, not as some snooty, hip outsider. I've been annoyed by this tendency in people since high school and if I could figure something like this out in high school, then I don't know anyone else's excuse is. I was a near retard in high school is what I'm getting at.

Every single one of those mother fuckers needs to sit one their goddamn hands and show a semblance of decorum. It's so obnoxious. The clapping at Comic Con is this weird mix between wanting to be acknowledged in public for your opinions ("The Martian Chronicles are good!" "I enjoy Joss Whedon's run on Buffy!" "Hey, Watchmen was a pretty well written book six years before I was born!" "Movies are good when they're projected onto a flat surface via some sort of light-based medium!") and this need to suck up to the people you love.

I'm as human as anyone else when it comes to celebrity (which is a debatable term when it comes to Comic Con, I realize) and I'm fairly nervous when I encounter people I know and like from TV, radio, or the written word (or what the fuck ever). I'm not so cool as to be bored by the concept of Ray Bradbury being at my high school or encountering Doc Hammer on the Comic Con floor. When I interviewed Adam Carolla, I was mildly flustered. It was a pretty cool, pretty surreal moment for me. Where I differ from the clapping fuckers is that I don't feel the need to suck up to these people. They aren't there to save my life, they aren't there to bring me up to a higher plain-- they're artist for the most part and they'd be doing this shit for free if they could or, like Kafka or Lovecraft or Dickenson, they'd be doing it mostly for themselves, regardless of the money or critical acknowledgment. Applause is a nice thing when you walk (or wheel) onto stage, but when you're talking, it's incredibly rude. It's uncouth. It's completely unaware of human interaction. It's a move that supplants your opinion over the person that is talking (the expert) and is more or less indicative of the entire Comic Con experierence. I love Comic Con, but, more or less, it's an entire miniature city of people who don't know how to interact with their fellow man, much less gods like Ray Bradbury.

Sorry if I ran a bit long, though, I'm not that sorry, all told, because I'm pretty sure that no one reads this blog, not even myself (copy-editing is a fool's game). Prove me wrong, though! Post comments! Recommend this blog to your friends (your rich friends who are hiring!). Let me know that I'm not just wasting bandwidth.

"Our Day Will Come"

notre jour viendra - feature film trailer from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

I don't know what the hell this is, but I'm down. It looks like it's the right kind of insane that I need in my life right now. Lot of that wrong kind of crazy been passing through lately, asking for a ride. Had enough of that shit.

This is What I Get

Here's the results of me trying to figure out if someone has ever used a certain phrase before. Apparently they have. And it's in Kim Possible fan fic.

No, no, dear reader, your patronage is more than enough thanks.

Shit That Ain't There No More

Does Schlitz even still exist? I know I've seen the label before, but I can't tell if I saw it on some antique, tin sign at one of my dad's friends' houses or if I've seen a real, live Schlitz sign in nature. Hmmm. I'm going to have to drink on this one.

I'm Waiting for the Sun to Shine

I really aught to see this move again. It's been too damn long.

(Apparently Taschen has a Taxi Driver book out. Awesome.)

You're Trying Too Hard Again, James

 

I feel like if there's anybody who never had to do a handstand to impress a girl, it'd have been him.

Words to Die By

I gotta admit, this exchange got a lot of traction in high school.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

This is How Michael Caine Speaks

This is What Beat Communism

Evil hamsters (apparently wearing aprons).

The Faithful Hussar

(via If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger. . . )

The Long Good Friday

I just watched this today. It was pretty damn good. And both Helen Mirren and Bob Hoskins haven't aged a fucking day.

Well, maybe a couple of rough days.

As Though I Needed a Reason to Drink More Coffee

If I ever get a tattoo, it'll be a yin-yang with beer on one side and coffee on the other. Also, what ever happened to the yin-yang? I feel like I couldn't got five feet in the mid-90's without seeing one of those things. It's probably for the best.

Anyways, I think I'm gonna buy the fuck outta this mug.
One of the things I want out of this life is a cool coffee mug collection. My favorite mug ever is from the City of Pasadena and reads "Partners for Solutions." When dad dies, that's the first thing I'm making a beeline for. While all the siblings are fighting over cars and shit, I'll be gunning for the mugs.

(via Hark! A Vagrant.)

Go See Bronson

I meant to write about this movie quite some time ago, but for whatever reason (read: laziness), I never did. It isn't a great movie, but it's an interesting one and if you want to see a movie that isn't like anything else-- or if you're just really into the smart ass from Inception being buck-naked and punching dudes HARD in the head-- go and see it.

I think it's still on Instant Watch.

You're welcome.

Makes Me Wanna Twat Geezers in the Loaf

For some reason I've been on a British crime movie jag. There's just something about scary working class folk in suits hitting each other with ice picks and lead pipes that seems charming when they've got an accent. I guess part of it is that even when British crime is shown to be sexy, it's still British, which is to say, not very sexy for long. There's always a kind of underlying seediness and a leery quality that you only get in the best that American crime cinema has to offer.

Anyways, I'm not saying that the movies below are going to be great because of the trailers, I'm just saying I want to see Colin Ferrel act like a sociopath and have Jason Statham tear up England like the Lord Jesus Christ built him to do.

WATCH.

London Boulevard.


Blitz.

The Increasingly Poor Financial Decisions of James Kislingbury: Part 9 in a series of 37

For those of you who didn't get a text from me (because the only people who read this damn blog are people I have direct contact with and can bother to read my blog), Barnes and Noble is having a sale on Criterion Collection DVDs. For the next couple of weeks all DVDs released by Criterion will be 50% off. To say the least, I think I went a little bit loopy at the store today. Maybe it was the huge discount (augmented by my friend giving me access to his Barnes and Noble membership) or maybe it was just the high of cashing my second paycheck in a year or two, but I walked out of the store tonight fifty-five dollars poorer-- or one-hundred ten dollars in DVDs richer, as I'll tell anyone that accuses me of being capricious with my new found non-wealth.

With one exception, everything I bought I've seen before (and I only bought four DVDs, so I guess that isn't such a marked statistic) and of the movies I bought, I only own one of them.

Anyways, here's the list.



The Friends of Eddy Coyle is one of these movies that I find to be inexplicably ignored. It's brilliant. It's really fucking brilliant. Not in a showy, changing cinema kind of a way like a Kubrick or a Godard or Noe or whatever other darling you want to pick out of a hat, but in that it is a wonderfully written movie that is acted with the best possible people you could want. Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle look like the kind of criminals that might actually exist, and they talk like criminals that might actually exist. They're tired, they're kind of doughy, and they're capable of really shitty things if it will get them out of a jam. I could go on and on about this movie (and someday, maybe I will), though I'll spare you that punishment and leave you with this: The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a really well done crime film, the kind of which couldn't ever be made after 1978.

It's basically the kind of crime movie I don't want anyone to catch me alone with.

Moving on.



Buying The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was a no brainer. It's one of the best movies I've ever seen and at eight dollars, I couldn't say "No." I've also stolen at least eight dollars worth of characters, story, dialogue, aesthetics, and plot to give the owners of the movie at least some of that back.

I thought about not buying it because it is on Instant Watch, but the quality on that is so shitty, it really is a noticeable step down. Also, I dont' want to ostensibly be renting a film that I'm such a big fan of. It'd be wrong-- WRONG-- of me not to buy it.



The Thin Red Line is another movie I've written about ad nauseum. I don't think there's much that I can say about it that I haven't already said (or has been said by other, wiser individuals), but I am glad that it has finally received a proper DVD release (complete with Criterion's new marketing gimmick, a sicker proclaiming the DVD to be the "Director Approved Edition). I already own The Thin Red Line, but its previously release left me somewhat wanting. While it did allow me to rediscover the film, it came with no features to speak of and was packaged in a two-DVD set with Platoon, which is a fine film, but being crammed in with another movie like that is not exactly befitting a movie such as this one.



Lastly, I bought W.C. Fields 6 Short Films (which actually ran me a few bucks more than Colonel Blimp), and is made entirely up of shorts I have no seen before. It was a gamble, but it was the kind of gamble that reminded me of less lean years, back when I would buy three disc versions of Orson Welles flops or lesser Kurosawa movies just to see what they were all about. In reality it can't be that much of a gamble, though, since it's W.C. Fields, one of the greatest drunks/film-makers of all time. We should be so lucky as to gamble on Mr. Fields.

Side Note: It needs to be stated that the Criterion Collection not only has some of the best movies of all time in its line-up, but it also has some real top-notch graphic designers putting out their products. The men and women at Criterion obviously give a fuck about presentation and succeed in delivering all of the boutiquey goodness that you expect from a company that sells all of Godard's good movies. The covers and the booklets included are all rather beautiful and distinct. What's interesting with the covers of most of the DVD is that they're original works of art or pieces of design. They're rarely just reprinted posters of movie stills with the title thrown over it.

On the occasions where the interior booklet supplies little more than just the obligatory chapter listing, it at least includes that little bit more that makes these DVDs stand out.

Even the back of the DVD slip has images printed on it. Now that is paying attention to details. That's pretty damn cool.

Or at least that's what I'm going to tell myself that when I look at my bank statement this week.

Sub-Sub Note: Apparently "The Essential Art House" imprint of Criterion DVDs also means "We Took Out all of the Good Criterion Collection Features, Sucker." Damn. And Colonel Blimp had a Martin Scorsese commentary.

So It Goes

(via Pajiba.)

VIGGO THE CARPATHIAN

I kind of don't give a shit about this movie (unless it's got way more Karl Jung than I think there is), but just look at this still. It's crazy. That's Aragorn right there.

(via Pajiba.)

My Future Home

Home of art director John Holmes (not that John Holmes), designed by William Kirsch, is made entirely from used parts incl. 85 stained glass windows.

I think a lot about what my compound in Montana is going to look like when I strike it big as a successful comic writer/gun-for-hire/explorer/gigolo. I imagine it'll probably have a pool, an armory, and, if I can manage it, something to hold my biplane collection. Basically it'd look like the inside of Wes Anderson's head, except that you wouldn't get annoyed with it after going there for longer than seven hours. It'll also have a tabletop Ms. Pac-Man game. I have to think this way, because I've been spoiled about my living situation since birth.

I come from a rather unusual living situation, which isn't so much that every place I will ever move to is a step down, but that the house I grew up with is the Addam's Family Manor. It's covered from top to bottom with taxidermied animals and has more ancient wood in it than the Playboy Mansion (Hi-yo!). There are few places that measure up to it, especially when you're as weird as I happen to be.

I want my future home to be lousy with decapitated animals and muzzle-loaded weaponry. That's just who I am.

I'd love this house a lot more if it wasn't for my folks. If only there was a way to live there without having to deal with them-- I know! Murder! Thank you, internet, you always know what I need to hear.

Words From the Maestro

"Feel the prophecy of a woman being sexy. . ."

Le Cine De Lahore

We aren't ever going to beat these people in a war. We airbrush photos of Katherine Heigel, they paint up pictures of over-weight, middle aged men covered in blood.
(via Jhalal Drut.)

I Found Out What I Want to Do In Life

This. This is it.

Jeb Corliss wing-suit demo from Jeb Corliss on Vimeo.

Whatever I'm doing with my life, I'm clearly doing wrong.

Dead as Fuck

Tony Curtis, dead as fuck: 3 June 1925 – 29 September 2010.

On a side note, I accidentally saved this image off of a white power website.

Oh Shit

That's my dad's bar.

Dennis Reynolds is peeing on my dad's bar.

There is urine there.

Drink Up, Judah Ben-Hur

As you know, I watch The Simpsons from time to time. I've been known to recite lines from it at important points in our many conversations. I also like movies. On this, I'm sure we can all agree. Anyways, some Spanish Simpsons fansite has assembled a big-fat list of movie quotations and references from the TV show.

What they've done is what you see above-- Assemble screencaps from the show and its corresponding movie and show them side by side. It's pretty damn cool for a guy who loves movies and The Simpsons to have a resource like this, even if it is in Google translated, pidgin English.

Somewhere out there, there's a Venn diagram to show how nerdy of a thing this is. Luckily, I haven't seen it, so until that day, I'm going to be pretty jazzed about this whole situation.

Cool Pictures From Bad Movies Pt. 1

I'm going to make a mash-up movies, The Man Who Would Be King to Earth. It's about two English con-men trying to make an alien the king of a Central Asian country.

It'll cost 85 million dollars and will only recoup one two-hundredth of its budget before the only surviving prints are shot into space, never to be spoken of again.

Either that or I'm going to make a movie where Tilda Swinton is sent back in time to replace 1970's David Bowie from killing the president of the United States. It'll be called North bi Northwest.

George Orwell

"I was hated by large numbers of people — the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me."

--On being a policeman in Burma, Shooting an Elephant.

I'm Back

My internet is down. Now it's back up. It's kind of nice. Now I don't have to read books to find out important information like the name of Captain Ahab's boat and what Higgins' tour of duty in WWII looked like.

There's a rule of film Mark Kermode brings up from time to time-- and he's usually right about this kind of thing-- which is that all movies are better with a helicopter explosion. Case in point:

Jarmusch and Astronomy

I had collected all the Wu-Tang vinyl with the instrumental B-sides, so I could say, like, "I like this floating, damaged beat. I like this stutter, this trippy slow thing." We decided that we won't do cues to the film. You'll hand me off music, I'll put it in the film, but don't score to certain sections. . . . One of the coolest times: He came in with ODB, and we spent the whole day with ODB watching the placement of the music. That was amazing. I think they were on mushrooms or something, though—they were acting very peculiar. Every five minutes or so, ODB would jump up and go, "Yo, yo! Stop the machine! Earth, Mars, Venus: Pick one!" And RZA would go, "I got this. Earth." And he'd go, "OK, start it up again." He was amazing. I wanted to go in and film him—we were going to go in when he was locked down. Go put a camera on ODB and let him talk about any fucking thing he wants. We never got to do it. That's a big regret.

--Jim Jarmusch on working with the Wu Tang Clan.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

At a film festival, after ''Pat Garrett'' had become the latest of his films to be emasculated by a studio, he was asked if he would ever make a ''pure Peckinpah'' and he replied, ''I did 'Alfredo Garcia' and I did it exactly the way I wanted to. Good or bad, like it or not, that was my film.''

Top 5 Groups of People That Want to Kill My Dad

My dad is an old man. That isn't a relative judgment, the man is simply old and only getting older. He has has been for quite some time. What I've realized about him, though is that the older he gets the more people directly threaten his life in new an insidious ways. It's a cruel irony of life that all of the most terrible things in existence are invented in the last quarter of your life and that everything good in the world occupies the first quarter.

The threats to my father are very real and effect his life in blood-curdling ways. Every day of his life is full of threats to his life by jabbering hordes or barbarians just beyond our front gate. God help us if they ever figure out the side-gate's lock doesn't work.

I could go on and on about how and why and who his life is threatened by, but I'll let the internet's most original art form-- the list-- explain it all to you.



5. Afghans.
Here are what we know about the Afghans-- Fact: Since before time have tried to destroy the United States of America. Fact: An Afghan can keep you warm in winter and spice up a boring looking couch, but is not to be trusted. Fact: We don't know that the Afghan people aren't all Freemasons. Fact: Afghans need to be bombed.

We've been in Afghanistan (correctly pronounced "'Ghanstan") for nearly ten years and there doesn't seem to be any progress. We haven't taken any new territory in years and we yet to take the Taliban capital city (Barack Obama has had two years to take them out, why hasn't he done it yet!?). It is clear that this war can't be won by the liberal go to's of "building government" and "counter-insurgency." It is clear that we need to, as my father has pointed out on countless occasions "Bomb that whole place out."

Why the bureaucrats and intellectuals at the Department of Defense haven't thought this up yet is appalling and more than likely due to the Democratic legislature that's dominated the government since the beginning of the Bush administration. We need to drop nukes on the Afghans, it is the only reasonable way to save them from the threat of Czarist Russian marching over the Oxus River.


4. Iranians.
Iranian Muslims and their allies in Iraq are a new and frightening threat to America. We have never had a hand in the Middle East in any way shape or form and for some reason they want to kill us all and feed us all tabulleh until we start wanting more than one wife. Most of their problems can be laid at the feet of Jimmy Carter, who had the audacity not to attempt another autocratic coup like his better Dwight D. Eisnenhower. This is the only point in history in which the USA did something in the Middle East-- and even then we didn't do anything, so who looks crazy now, Iran?

The Iranians present a unique threat to my father and the American public by creating a two pronged assault on our values-- one by creating nuclear weaponry and the other by buying our restaurants and not paying rent. They both present equally nefarious threats and unfortunately with the nuclear threat, we can't just change the looks when they go away for the weekend.

Iran is also Muslim. That means that they are bad. What about Saudi Arabia, you say? No, they aren't Muslims. Who told you that? That is silly. If the Saudi Arabia was full of Muslims, then I think they'd have something to do with 9/11. Oh what's that? You were mistaken? Yeah, I thought so.

Right now an Iranian is trying to build a bomb. While I'm sure the Democrats in congress would love for them to have a fully functional bomb, what we need to do to save Israel and my dad is to get into a third land war in the Middle East. Luckily, unlike the past ten years, we have the man power and cash to fund a project like that. What's even better is that it will all be paid for and taken care of by the time my dad dies, preventing the Iranians from inflicting any sort of economic payback.

People forget about 9/11 because they don't care about our country as much as my dad does. My dad loves his country so much that during the Vietnam War, when he was asked to enlist, he signed up for the Reserve and valiantly protected his country for a week out of every four. Were there any VC sneak attacks between 1966-1968? Nope. Because a healthy mix of zeal and not wanting to leave the state.

Right now an Iranian is trying to build a mosque on Ground Zero, the holiest land in the United States, right after all of the churches and where ever else they attacked on 9/11 (I think it was a field of some kind). Muslims don't understand that Ground Zero is sacred, not unlike their wailing wall or that Cash to Gold place on Raymond Ave. Since all of New York is now a holy site, having been covered in ash, dust, and TV broadcasts of the 9/11 attacks, it is only fair that Muslims build their mosques under the East River, as our constitution dictates. That way Americans can live in safety, without any more Muslims trying to take over our country, possibly in conjunction with the Chinese or maybe rap music of some kind.


3. The Chinese
China wants to take us over. It's already and established fact that China is going to overpower us economically in ten years, forcing us up past being the number one economic power in the universe to last place. That is how lists work. I wish it were not as ugly as that, but it's a fact. China will stop at nothing to butt in line in front of us, which will only lead to a series of butts that will only stop when Zimbabwe or Czechoslovakia or some other country finally steps in front of us. When you start speaking Chinese one day, don't say that I didn't warn you. . . except that if you did say it, I wouldn't understand you, because I don't speak Chinese.

It is clear by their increasing needs to express themselves freely and demands at more government transparency that the Chinese are just trying to lull us into a false sense of security. Once that is done, they'll club us over the head and take over our country just as the Russians did between the years 1956 and 1960 and the Fire Nation did between 1989 and 2003. We cannot let this happen again. The only possible way to prevent this is to warn people by telling them that the Chinese are taking us over. Say is as many times as you need to until the words lose all meaning. That is when you know the words are working.

If the Cold War taught us anything is that the nuances of human beliefs are just smoke screens to take over Vietnam. And we all know how that went. A Communist is a Communist, no matter how much trade he does with us or no matter how much debt of ours' that he owns. They aren't to be trusted and will stop at nothing to. . . do something.

I'm not entirely sure how the Chinese are going to take us over, but their military spending has increased from 13% of our military budget to 15.2% of our military budget in just thirty years. This rapid uptick in spending can only lead to one conclusion: The Chinese are going to take us over. Either by marching over the Bering Straight, into Alaska, then catching a ferry over to the mainland, or by hiding themselves piece by piece in to-go boxes, biding their time in our fridges, waiting for their moment to reassemble and strike us as one.

Also, the Chinese can't drive.



2. Mexicans.
Mexicans are as old of an enemy of America as the Freemasons or maybe the Jews, depending on what mood they're in.

Mexicans have been stealing jobs from Americans for years. The most obvious example of this dates way back to the 19th century, when a cobbler left his shop for the day. When he returned in the morning, he found that Mexicans had broken in and finished all of his cobbling in secret, without his permission. Typical Mexicans, stealing jobs out from under good, hard-working Americans. Also, the Mexicans played crappy accordion music and one of them might have had a baby in the bathroom.

"But, James," you say, sipping your espresso, readjusting the Afghan around your neck, "Mexicans contribute so much to our society."

Oh, do they? DO THEY REALLY?

Let's do a checklist on what these "Mexicans" have and haven't given us:
* Mexicans did not invent the light bulb. If it was up to them, we'd still be lighting candles like shnooks!
* Mexicans can't even get pitas right. A tortilla, more like tortilladon't. . . Wait, that's shit, give me a moment.
* Mexicans didn't win World War II. They didn't even lose World War II. Make up your mind, Mexico.
* Mexico didn't see one of the all-time, greatest films of all time, Scoot Pilgrim Versus the Universe. Mexico said "I'll wait until it's on DVD." How are we going to get a sequel if you don't see it the first weekend, huh?
* Mexicans might be lizardpeople.
* Wait, I got it, I got it. Tortilla, more like tortillyuck! Yeah. That's good punnery.
* Mexicans stole the pyramids from Egypt. You know what else they stole? My six-speed bike.
* My geography might be off, but if you replace "Visigoths" with "Mexicans," it becomes clear that the Mexican people destroyed the Roman Empire. Do you want us to become like Rome, bloated and vain, with wars in the middle east that we can't pay for, hobbled by ineffective government and cheap farm labor? Do you?
* Mel Gibson made a movie about ancient Mexicans. . . I guess that's one stroke in their favor.

There is no job a Mexican does that can't be filled by an Irishman, who's at least white and at least seem to speaks some kind of English.


1. Liberals.
Liberals are the single greatest threat to my dad and the American people. They're everywhere. They're in our schools, they're in our government, they're in our army (when they say we should stop spending/carpet bombing people), they're on our TV, they're in our Communist parties, they're in our key parties, they're in our key clubs, and they're the number one reason Coke doesn't taste like it used to.

The best presidents in US history have all been good, old-fashioned Conservatives, like Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, and all of our worst presidents have been infamous characters like Bill Clinton and his Magical Surplus Tour and Barack Obama, the single worst president in the history of the United States, including that one year a snake got into the Oval Office and we were forced to abandon the White House. No Liberal has done anything good for the people of the United States ever.

In your ignorance of these threats you might say, "But, wait a minute, didn't a Democratic president win World War II for us?" Well, nice try, but FDR only won that war by using "conservative values." It looks like egg is on your face. Oh, and the myth of FDR pulling us out of the Great Depression? Another liberal lie. The corollary to this should be obvious: Any time a Conservative did something wrong it was because he was being liberal (not to be confused with Liberal) or, possibly, his was crippled by a Liberal congress, like George Bush was time and time again. There is no dark chapter in American history that does not have the stink of the Liberals.

For many years the Liberals stole the newspaper off my dad's front lawn. Also, they once left the fridge open and all of the dairy products went bad. Another time, my dad left his shoe-shop for Classic Liberalism.

There is no conceding to the Liberal, there is no understanding or aid to be given to them, because they are inherently stupider than the rest of us, also they chose to be this way, so they deserve everything they got coming to them. So, it works both ways. Being a Liberal is the worst thing a human being can be and about the most despicable. America wasn't founded by these men. It was founded by hard-working men with old fashioned ideas like freedom of religion, right to representation, right to bare arms, and freedom of speech. Good Conservatives like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Payne all pitched in, using their traditional, Conservative values to campaign for

Liberals, unlike the Chinese, Mexicans, and Muslims, don't want to just take everything we have, but erode it completely. They want to take away our rights to destroy the Constitution. Democrats are the greatest threat that we face as a democracy. They want to change the letter of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by doing something. That's right, everyone, something!

Liberals don't care about the Constitution, that's why they pass laws to take away our rights. For example just look what Barack Obama has done! Just look at all of it! Taking away our rights! There was that one thing. Yeah. And that other thing! I bet you feel the pinch of the boot heel on that one. Oh, yeah, and his health care. Yeah! How about that. Taking away our rights by installing the most banal form of government health insurance imaginable! I bet in three months you'll be attatched to a government-created, life-support system that you have to feed your paycheck into just to buy another week of life. But what if you have a bi-weekly paycheck? Too bad. Welcome to Obama's America.

That isn't what our slave-owning, affair-having, rich, white, dieist forefathers had in mind when they wrote our Constitution in secret, having less than half of the approval of the American people for a revolution! They probably had something else in mind! Probably not this! And they probably had more wigs, too!

Also, our president is black! And gays might want basic civil rights! That kind of thing never used to fly in America and the trolley only cost a nickel. Now we don't even have a trolley and our nickle is made out of lead and crushed-up dreams.

If the Liberals had their way and the Constitution was undermined and changed the way they want it not only would slaves be legally treated like human beings and non-property payers be allowed to vote, but women and all kinds of minorities, as well-- including the Irish! Imagine that, a Catholic getting sworn into office! Not in my America. Not in George Washington's America.

So, when you vote this November, don't think of yourself, think of my poor father who's life is in direct and literal danger by the hordes of so and so's coming over the border/ocean/walls/congressional hearings/delis/Mexican restaurants. American liberty is in your hands American, don't fumble it.

Wow, This is Like Some Full-Blown Inception-Type Shit, Isn't It?

I finally saw Inception last week. As much as I feel and think about that movie, for whatever reason I want to keep that all to myself, keep it as this raw bundle of emotion that I would have to untangle if I wanted to talk about it. Plus, I figure you're about as fatigued on Inception yak as I am.

It's a good movie that did some pretty risky things and got away with it. I can leave it at that.

(Photo by Tsunehisa Kimura.)

Ignoring the blockbuster for a moment, the article below is pretty cool.

(found at Bldg Blog.)

This Certainly Looks Like Something

If you hadn't heard, the Irreversible guy has got a new movie coming out.

Should be horrifying.

Choo-choo! Here comes the hype train!

Apparently, I'm not the only person driven away by over-saturated marketing.

The backlash for me is my perception of somebody trying to get me to buy something. There's a large difference between a movie and a used car salesman, but my gut reaction is calibrated to recognize both of those things as the same threat. Or event. Whatever. I have an aversion to that kind of thing and I'm sure, in some way, most of you do, as well. The more desperate and bombastic a thing seems, the less likely I am to check it out. Either because I associate the movie with some annoying sales campaign or a say "Fuck it and fuck you" and not watch a movie out of spite.

If I had a friend who asked me to listen to his band every time we talked, I'd probably do the same thing. If I want to see or listen to something, I'll get around to it, but if you keep hectoring me about it, I'll make a point to avoid it out of principle. It's movies, not the Middle Eastern peace process, I can afford to be a little stubborn.

There's a lot of things like this. In almost all of these incidents it really isn't the movie's fault (or the TV show's or the book's fault) in any way. In fact, if it was a shitty work of art, I'd probably never hear about it again until I start scrolling through my Netflix recommendations. There's simply extenuating circumstances and I don't want to go into a movie-- for whatever reason-- with a loaded idea of what I'm going to get.

One of the best lessons I learned about watching movies-- and it probably carries on to anything in life-- is that the less you have it built up in your mind, the more satisfied you're going to be. That isn't to say that you expect something to be shitty and be happy you got it, because what's the point if that's the case? Instead, I try to judge a movie based on what I see, not on what an ad or a trailer wants me to think. It's probably why we typically trust the opinion of our friends over a critic (unless it's a critic we develope a rapport with), because our friend isn't trying to sell us anything (which only bad critics do, I realize).

I like to check out a trailer once or twice and just ignore the rest, because it doesn't help me as a viewer and it certainly doesn't help me mentally. Big expectations tend to allow for big letdowns. It's why I don't go to midnight showings any more (that and I'm broke), because there's no movie that is as good as waiting an hour in line and staying up 'til fuckass in the morning for. There's too much build up. If I can, I try to go into a blackout and wait for either more substantial news, or the movie itself. If a movie is good, I can wait for it.

And I suppose that's how I feel about all of the hyped up things I've made a point to avoid. Firefly, (probably) Scott Pilgrim, and more classic movies than I can name. I'll get around to those eventually, more than likely, but I want to watch them on my own terms without marketing, fans, or my own stupid prejudices buzzing in my ear and telling me how to think and feel. The thinking and feeling part comes naturally enough, it's all of the other junk I have to make an effort to avoid.

There's a reoccurring them I write and I talk about a lot, which is that you can often believe the right thing without doing the right thing. I see it in politics more often than not, because it's large, it's loud, and it's public. Even the smallest issues can get national press attention and become some kind of bludgeon. It's a natural consequence of human nature that the larger a group becomes, the more fucked up people are going to join up.

Lately the best example of this principle is the Tea Bagger movement. Lowering taxes and government spending is not an unreasonable argument, I don't think, and it's one Americans have historically been in favor of. In principle, it's fine, in practice, it's a headless chicken running around a living room, but somehow still knows how to squawk. Even the name is stupid. Tea Baggers. Really? No one consulted you on that one? I guess part of the problem is that there's no real leader of the movement/mob/ which is why it's lousy with paranoiacs and racists and people who see Hitler in their breakfast cereal. Wanting to give the government less money shouldn't be such a difficult issue to root for, but there you have it.

I guess on the left-end of the spectrum, you've got the anti-WTO protests. Now, I think we can all agree that most corporations would suck our blood dry if given the chance, so demonstrating against them is not entirely out of line. Kicking in a storefront and setting fire to city property is not a good way to get your point across. That makes you look like an asshole.

You get this all down the line, reasonable issues being undermined by the very morons that fight for it. Gun control is full of crybabies. Pro-weed people are stoners. The anti-gay movement is full of Ms. Carmodys. The pro-gay movement thinks a thong with glitter is formal wear. Joss Whedon fans are terrible. Film snobs make Ingmar Bergman far more painful than he's supposed to be. Etc. Etc. Etc.

There's some quote I'm probably stealing, but the greatest counter-argument against a moron is to let him speak. I guess a corollary of that is the surest way to make something good look bad is to never know when to shut up.

Cinecult: Film Noir!? I Hardly Know Her!

Film noir is probably something most of us here love, but I'm also willing to bet that it's something most of us are in the dark about (rim shot). It's a far larger and wider genre than people like Frank Miller present it to be. It's been around since the 1930's and it's as storied and respectable as any other genre, even though most of its source material can safely be considered pulp garbage (but what can't be, these days?).

With that said, I'm going to shoot my mouth off about it. Let's take a journey through film lore, shall we?

Film noir was created out of a few factors in the late 1930's. In general there was a malaise in the American public (and ditto abroad). It hadn't quite recovered from the Great Depression and Hitler's maneuvers half way across the world wasn't making anyone feel any better about their lot in life. Many of the movies were direct adaptations from the hard-boiled novels of the era. Authors like James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett (who wrote about the east coast), and Raymond Chandler (who wrote about the west coast). Even writers of proper literature like William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway could be folded into the heritage of film noir.



Another influence was the surge of German and European film makers fleeing Europe due to the specter of Nazi Germany. As a result, many talented film makers like Fritz Lang, who were a part of German expressionism took what they knew and moved it to Hollywood. While for many, their best work was behind them, the abstract, moody, and stylized lighting of the movement helped steer the genre into what it would become.

During the brief era that film noir were popular and numerous they weren't actually called anything more than B-movies or crime movies or distractions from the various horrors occurring in Europe and in the Pacific. It wasn't until WWII ended that the French discovered a whole crop of gritty, American crime dramas that weren't available for almost five years. It was then that a whole new audience began to notice the similarities of all of these American crime movies-- both good and bad.

So, French critics dubbed the movement "film noir," meaning "black film," which probably came from a combination of the low lighting prevalent in the movies (because why build a set when you could light it dramatically?), as well as the dark themes.

(By the way, if you ever want to be a know-it-all, if someone calls a book "noir" correct them by saying "Uh, actually, it's only noir if it's a film. Duh." Also, you'll get double points for pronouncing it as "new-ah.")

Putting a name on it, probably also helped hasten its end. Howard Hawks and Jules Dassin and all of the great directors never sought to make a movement or a genre or anything besides an interesting film. Once something like that becomes self aware, it's only so long before it starts to get too ornate or rigid for its own good and someone starts to parody it. Things can only become so baroque before they start too become gaudy and ridiculous.

The same thing happened to Spaghetti Westerns. Leone, more or less, started the movement copying and exaggerating the tropes of American Western directors like John Ford. In less than ten years the sub-genre was kaput, a victim of its own success, and by its end, even Leone himself was making parody movies

Film noir, as a movement started with Howard Hawkes' adaptation of The Maltese Falcon in 1941 and it ended with Orson Welles' Mexican border crime film Touch of Evil in 1958.

While the movement and its influences lasted well past the date of 1958, the golden age ended with Welles' butchered opus.

The classics of the era are numerous, but a brief list would include:


The Maltese Falcon.


Casablanca, a rare classic that is better than everyone says it is. The movie features one of the best screenplays of all time, as well as an incredible cast of characters, ranging from Syndey Greenstreet to Peter Lorre and, of course, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.


Touch of Evil, directed and starring Fat Orson Welles, along with Charlton Heston as the single most unbelievable Mexican in film history, it isn't a perfect movie, but it has more than a few moments that make it the last gasp of a great era-- including one of the longest and most impressive single-take crane shots in film history.


Double Indemnity had its screenplay written by Chandler (based off of a Cain novel) and was directed (and written) by one of the great directors of all time, Billy Wilder.

Then there's the French copycats and prototypes, which are equally numerous:


Elevator to the Gallows is an interesting movie, because it's both directly influenced by American film and by ugly pieces of French history like the Indochina War. What makes it stand out is its rather avant garde soundtrack by Miles Davis, who, as I recall, recorded the whole thing in one day. It's also a movie that shows that the French hate police officers.


Les Diaboliques, which was later remade in the 1990's. The film is directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, who is one of the great French directors that didn't make it to the New Wave.

When William Friedkin met Clouzot in the 70's, he told him that he'd be remaking his movie The Wages of Fear. Clouzot then said to him, "Well, it won't be as good."


Le Samourai. I've spoken about this movie a lot. In fact, it's been the subject of no less than three identical sig/avatar combos on this forum. It's the epitomy of cool. It's not a fast moving film, but Jean-Pierre Melville proves that he's a methodical director and that Alain Delon is more than just an obscure punchline in the first season of the British version of The Office (it's the episode where the guy throws the shoe on the roof). Also: Le Samourai was a heavy influence on John Woe-- The Killer is more or less the same exact plot.


Rififi, directed by American Jules Dassin, it's regarded as one of the greatest heist movies and French crime films of all time. It was later heavily borrowed from by Jean-Pierre Melville in his own fantastic movie, Le Cercle De Rouge (see image below).



There could be a whole other thread about the atavistic works and films that made film noir what it is, but if you boiled down the genre, what you would find are a few, basic tropes-- especially in the movies-- that define what film noir is.


There's the reluctant hero (or the plain anti-hero). In Westerns people like Gary Cooper and John Wayne did what was right and punished the bad guys. In film noir, more often than not, the protagonist would get his head kicked in by the sheriff. He doesn't want trouble and he doesn't care about it, it just finds him.

The doppleganger (which is much harder to express in a single still image so I'm going to skip it), but usually the guy is either framing the main character or being chased by him. This character more or less underpines the idea that being a hero isn't all that different from being a scumbag on the street.

And, of course, there's the femme fatale.

The femme fatale kind of gets a bad rap. While she is bound to the Production Code's rule that a sexy woman is evil, they're interesting because, often they're what starts the plot in most of these movies. It isn't Philip Marlowe that goes out looking for trouble, but rather, some crazy dame that-- somehow, every time-- gets him mixed up in everything. They aren't exactly paragons for the feminist movement, but having a women this powerful and this sexual in a genre as murky as film noir was an important part of

Some people like to drop film noir as an idea that went and died and are clever for bringing back, but film noir has always been with us. It's too good of an idea to be left by the wayside and, unlike the western, its nowhere near as costly or complicated to replicate.

In the 1974 Roman Polanski directed Chinatown, a tribute to the classic American detective movie. It was written by Robert Towne,.

Even though the movie didn't intend to bring anything back in and of itself, it did signal a new wave of films inspired by film noir.

Neo-noir, much like the creation of the modern action movie, established itself formally during the 80's. In many ways neo-noir shares a heritage with action movies (which didn't exist as we know them know until the 1980's).

America wanted (and needed) old fashioned films and something to rationalize the ugliness of the past twenty years. Action movies were the more direct way to deal with the failures of twenty years of bad government and in a way both the action movie and neo-noir were a way to deal with American losing its first war, the government transforming into a villain, having drugs run amok in the streets, JFK and MLK having their heads blown off. have feminism and civil rights and Indian rights and everything else turn the status quo on its head, not to mention Watergate, the fuel shortage, joblessness, and the general failure of the Great Society. Obviously the 60's and 70's were no picnic anywhere else in the world, but in America, I think the movies we got later were a symptom of this mass, disappointment with the world.

On the plus side, at least we didn't get another Shirley Temple.

So what movies count as neo-noir?

The original wave would include (but not be limited to):


Chinatown is as perfect as it is depressing. It might have been directed by a child raping, prison dodging goon, but the work itself is flawless. It's kind of ironic, now that I think about it.


Body Heat, which, like many movies on here, isn't great, but it's worth seeing if only for some crazy, hot, sweaty sex the likes of which is rare in American cinema. And as bonerlicious as it is, it's a rare movie (like Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog) that makes you feel how muggy and unpleasant the weather in the movie is.


Blade Runner is a confluence of sci-fi and hard-boiled and the results aren't exactly perfect. It's one of my favorite movies of all time, but it's plagued with fiddling by the studio and didn't get a proper release until a few years ago in its full restored glory. Blade Runner mixes a lot of old LA noir tropes (like the Bradbury Building and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright) with the (then) fledgling come back of big special effects pictures.


No Country For Old Men. The movie was based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy and takes place on the Texas border in 1980. The movie mixes up a lot of ideas about Westerns along with the classic crime/thriller/chase movie. There's lots of things going on in this movie and it's one of the best to come out of the past ten years. The Coen Brothers directed the movie and one of the defining features of their work is that they always seem to be leaning heavily on past features (The Hudsucker Proxy was a throwback to the screwball comedy and O Brother Where Art Thou was based, in part, on Sullivan's Travels).

The Big Lebowski, The Man Who Wasn't There, and Blood Simple are also infused with film noir aesthetics and sensibilities, perhaps more apparently than the movie above.


The Killer Inside Me, which is also based off of a novel (have you seen a theme, yet?) by Jim Thompson which was written in 1952. While movie has received mixed reviews, mostly based off of its alleged misogyny, it's safe to say that with a subject matter like this, yeah, it's film noir.


And, of course, LA Confidential, which was based off of the novel by James Ellroy, a Los Angeles native and gifted crime writer. There's plenty of movies that attempt to copy that era of LA, but none have done it as well as this movie. It's impressive considering that most of the leads aren't from this country.

Genres are like anything else in art, they aren't rigidly defined and even though you can attach a definition and an understanding to them, there's so much bleed over and overlap that you can't ever fully get a grip on it. There's no real end to the Western, you see it in every TV show where someone has a revolver or wears a hat. The Simpsons still do musical numbers, even if it's probably much easier to wrangle a stray cell than a crappy dancer (Now that I think about it, Blazing Saddles was a Western and had a musical sequence). We still have "Women's Pictures" and melodramas, too (Tyler Perry is a fairly shitty replacement for , then again, most people are).

I'm tired now. Now you talk about film noir (feem newah).

Bonus! Here's a great website for photos of film noir. It has a pretty appropriate title.

More of a Bonus! Here's a further link to shit I posted, but have no desire to reformat.