A Night City

The Handsome Family - Far From Any Road

2014-03-01T08:10:00.001-08:00

Take a hefty bit of weird Americana music, communing with desert cacti and looking for UFO's under bright peyote skies, there's the Handsome Family who despite being in my radar for a time just hit big because of the obsessive compulsive nature of True Detective show-runner Nic Pizzolatto and my favourite white viejito T-Bone Burnette. Good to see more people grabbing wilfully at the intersecting branches of noir and weird-fiction, murder ballads and bat-shit alt-country.

True Detective

2014-02-25T21:37:00.000-08:00

True Detective is one brilliant show. If anyone was worried about Breaking Bad being off the air, this is one show that will satiate that need. There are two timelines, two investigations that might be linked and who knows what is really going on. Yes, it is another tired serial killer drama but there are many details that separate it from its peers. It stars two disparate detectives on a trail of murders committed in rural Louisiana. It is an anthology show where one neo-noirish storyline will dominate the plot per season and the show will have, at least for the moment, one authorial vision, that of virtually unknown author Nic Pizzolatto. It it is his first foray into show-running for a prestigious network known for highly literate and challenging shows.

As the show follows its well-worn path we come to realize however that the expected procedural, investigation and dissection of the victims lives and deaths, the intersection of casual murder and escalating violence is not the main part of the storyline. That's the skeleton by which Pizzolatto hangs his characters. One is a nihilist train-wreck with a guarded past and the other is a philandering shit-heel with a much abused family. They search for a monster that lurks just beyond the marshes, the refineries, and ghost-towns wracked by poverty, crime and the elements while the politicians and preachers circle in to quash the case. Except for the directorial style which is long and languid and the performances which are nuanced beyond the usual it's all pretty standard fare. Except that there's a rabbit-hole in the center of this labyrinth. It's an interactive show with red herrings all around to drive our expectations and send us to our favorite social media platform, but the show is much more subversive.

It's an existential horror show masquerading as a police procedural or that's the implication obviously. It's not about Satan or a religious war or Christians for that matter. It's not even about the nihilist iconography of a 100 year old collection of weird-fiction written by Robert W. Chambers called the King in Yellow: the titular King, the black stars and being lost in time, but other than sharing a similar world-view that the universe is cold and uncaring and that people use religion as a means of social control, this is something else entirely.

Religion in this show is just the tool. Power is the key. There is a wealthy guy here that we have already met by the way. He is connected to one of the main characters and he is like Kurtz at the center of the labyrinth. He's the metaphorical Yellow King; and elected officials, policemen, the system, including protagonists and antagonists by the way are just pawns in his game and if we realized that was what was actually behind the curtain we would all go mad. In other words a nice family comedy.

After Hannibal, The Killing, The Bridge, The Following and any number of other recent shows, I really thought I was done with the whole serial killer dramas on television, but this has got some other psychological thing going on. Catching the killer isn't even the point anymore. They've already gone down that road and reached a dead-end. I hesitate to even mention that the twitterverse has their sights on one of the two protagonists. I think Pizzolatto will subvert even that old cliche.

No, I think he'll hold off on catching the King in Yellow. Remember, this is an anthology show and the over-arching mythology may not be resolved for another few years. One thing is certain. The end is near for Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. Their prospects don't look good.

Luther: Season One

2013-07-22T16:36:00.001-07:00

Luther, written by one of new favorite writers Neil Cross, is my new favorite show. Bar none.

The Faceless Killers

2013-05-28T21:39:00.002-07:00

For anyone drawn to this novel by the Scandinavian mystery novel publishing sensation Steig Larsson's Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, thinking you'll get more of the same, well you'll be disappointed. Oh, you'll recognize the landscape and the people are the same, this a bit more rural or small-town and less urbane, but Sweden and its people are well-represented in both. Mankell's narrative is slower and its protagonist less super-human, less likable, than Larsson's but far more rewarding I think. Wallander is a deeply flawed detective, but his humanity and doggedness are what drive the plot, ultimately the plot is secondary, more a means to illuminate the human condition, the protagonist's struggles and triumphs. Wonderful book

City of God

2012-08-12T17:25:00.000-07:00

There are films that profess to be modern heirs to The Godfather, Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. This is a film Martin Scorcese would have filmed had he been born in Rio de Janeiro. City of God. Favela de Deus

Angeltown

2012-08-05T14:36:00.001-07:00

Gary Phillips is the acclaimed writer of the Ivan Monk detective novels set in Los Angeles. Nate Hollis, the protagonist of Angeltown is another detective in that vein and in the same city, but the pace is quicker and the relationships a tad funkier, knottier, and the central mystery is spot on for early twenty-first century Los Angeles; it's a blaxpoitation reset with Hollis chasing down an NBA basketball player who disappeared after his wife was found murdered. Martinbrough drew Batman for DC Comics a few years ago and he has a really good handle on spotting blacks and giving it that L.A. Noir shine.

Femme Fatale of the Week

2012-07-27T21:37:00.000-07:00

Pam Grier

Pam Grier is no tragic femme-fatale goddess from yesteryear. She is very much alive and well, working, and she can thank Quentin Tarantino for that with his exuberant adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch and changed it to suit his need and hers and called it Jackie Brown. The years have been more than kind. She is still a goddess. This is a woman that survived the blaxpoitation haunts she began her career with, dated the likes of Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Rchard Pryor and Freddie Prinze Sr. There is, and will never be, another bad-ass, funky mamma like the one-and-only Pam Grier.

Haywire

2012-07-26T08:36:00.001-07:00

Best action movie in many a moon. Directed by Steven Soderberg? A great cast led by Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor and a slew of others.This is like a Richard Stark movie with Gina Effin Carano kickin’ ass. If they had asked her to act it'd be another story. This movie rocks. Urr!!

Criminal

2012-07-26T07:55:00.000-07:00

Ed Brubaker´s gritty exploration of crime stories, their clichés and their stereotypes, while maintaining its class and naturalism

The Informant

2012-07-26T07:44:00.003-07:00

The Butcher´s Boy novels are fast-paced actioners about a retired hit-man who keeps getting hauled back into the game. This one is a solid return to a really good series.

Femme Fatale of the Week

2012-07-25T22:55:00.001-07:00

Gloria Grahame

One of the true great of film noir actresses and like many of the generations screen sirens, her life was as tragic as the characters she played. She married director Nicholas Ray after a torrid affair and then had an affair with his son Anthony while still married. She died of stomach cancer in 1981 after refusing treatment. She ignored warnings and didn´t believe it.

L.A. Noire

2012-07-25T20:23:00.002-07:00

Usually noir games suck ass. This one doesn´t. You play a LAPD detective circa 1947. You explore Los Angeles, interrogate victims and suspects and you dodge hails of bullets. Itś time intensive, involving and very atmospheric. Like noir but with pixels. Time to see if I can fix my PS3.

Stray Bullets

2012-07-25T18:54:00.001-07:00

Stray Bullets is an ongoing series that explores the often tragic events of a wide-ranging cast of characters over a sprawling 20 year cycle from the early 1970's to the mid-1990's. It is noir through-and-through. Sad that a book like this can't find an audience and Lapham has to put his career-defining masterpiece on hold to pay the bills. That's life and tat's noir I guess.

Leather Maiden

2012-07-25T17:19:00.002-07:00

Leather Maiden: Lansdale is like puff cheetos for me. Can’t read just one. This one is a modern day thriller, taught and scary like most Lansdales. A gift for the parched, needing a great high-octane and smart read. Little far-fetched, but Lansdale’s story-telling gift smooths out the rough patches.

Out of the Past

2012-07-25T17:16:00.000-07:00

Noir of the Week: Released in the UK as Build my Gallows High for the original story. Very apt. It stars Robert Mitchum as Jeff Bailey, a small-town gas pumper, has his mysterious past catch up with him one day when he's ordered to meet with gambler Whit Sterling. En route to the meeting, he tells girlfriend Ann his story filled with flashbacks, double-crosses, stolen money and femme-fatales. Out of the Past is the ultimate noir.

Memorable Quotes: My feelings? About ten years ago, I hid them somewhere and haven't been able to find them.

James Ellroy: Demon Dog

2012-07-25T17:07:00.003-07:00

James Ellroy changed modern neo-noir fiction. A writer bigger than his work. His mother was a small-time prostitute, a crime he would later investigate, a profound intellect and of deeply flawed character, but his work speaks for itself. NO modern crime writer worth his weight ignores Ellroy. You can find links to all of the Demon Dog documentary on youtube.

Femme Fatale of the Week

2012-07-25T16:46:00.002-07:00

Is there a life more noir than Gloria Swanson's? Married six times, divorced five, and it was an open secret that she had an ongoing affair with Joe Kennedy, patriarch of the Kennedy clan. Her career began in the silent era and it was appropriate that she starred in Billy WIlder's noir masterpiece Sunset Blvd., as her own past gave the character Norma Desmond weight and style.

Memorable Quote: You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big. Norma Desmond responded, "I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

He Died with his Eyes Wide Open

2012-07-25T16:31:00.002-07:00

From the Noir Vault: English writer Robin Cook (no, not the medical thriller writer) took on a pseudonym annd broke every taboo in the book. His nameless police detective is a nod to Hammet’s Continental Op with existentialist gloom and brutality ramped up to the nth degree. The murder victim that his unnamed protagonist investigates is clearly based on the writer's own life, so this odd, brutal and defiant police procedural becomes a thinly disguised autobiography as we read further. Suprisingly warm and humane, if not human.

Breaking Bad

2012-07-25T16:26:00.001-07:00

Breaking Bad. Set and produced in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it's the story of Walter White played by Bryan Cranston, a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. He turns to a life of crime, producing and selling methamphetamine with a former student, Jesse Pinkman played by Aaron Paul, with the aim of securing his family's financial future before he dies. One of best crime-series on television and it's a neck-and-neck tie with Justified.

Moonlight Mile

2012-07-25T16:19:00.001-07:00

If Joe R. Lansdale’s book Vanilla Ride seems like a repositioning for that long-running series, this is Dennis Lehane’s swan-song for his detective series about Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro who are now married and parents of a little girl, not to mention older and far-less damaged. They revisit an old case, essentially a sequel to Gone, Baby Gone, and resolve it to some extent. It’s more than a bit disappointing as a mystery novel, it reads more like the mainstream fiction that he essentially has always wanted to write, Lehane is no genre-lifer, but a welcome coda to old friends long forgotten.

Scalped

2012-07-25T16:14:00.000-07:00

This comic-noir masterpiece by writer Jason Aaron and various artists about the daily struggle on the Oglala Lakota reservation, a place where crime, corruption, poverty and vice intersect.

In a Noir Mood: Stagger Lee

2012-07-25T16:06:00.002-07:00

Barkeep said, yeah, I've heard your name down the way and I kick motherfucking asses like you every day Mr. Stagger Lee. Well those were the last words that the barkeep said 'cause stag put four holes in his motherfucking head

Nordic Noir: The Story of Scandinavian Crime Fiction

2012-07-25T15:59:00.001-07:00

Time Shift - Nordic Noir: The Story of Scandinavian Crime Fiction

Kiss Me Deadly

2012-07-25T15:52:00.003-07:00

Film Noir of the Week: Kiss me Deadly by Robert Aldritch from a script by A.I. Bezzarides based on the popular pulp/noir paranoia of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels starring Ralph Meeker as Hammer and showcases a very young and sexy Chloris Leachmen in a small role. Her doomed female hitchhiker pulls Mike Hammer into a deadly whirlpool of intrigue, revolving around a mysterious "great whatsit." If you grew up under the immediate threat of nuclear warfare, this apocalyptic noir touched a nerve that you can't ever escape from. Without Kiss Me Deadly you get no Pulp Fiction from Quentin Tarantino.

Memorable Quote: "Wat's this all about? I'll make a quick guess. You were out with some guy who thought "no" was a three-letter word. I should have thrown you off that cliff back there. I might still do it. Where are ya headed?"

Femme Fatale of the Week

2012-07-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

Rita Hayworth

Rita Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Cancino. A dancer from a long-line of dancers, she desperately wanted to escape the typecast of being a dancer, changed her name and transformed herself through make-up, hair dyes, and even electrolysis from a dark-haired latin beauty to a light-haired leading-lady bombshell of the highest order. She was married to Orson Welles, left him for an Arab Sheikh, and loved the drink and the hard-life a bit too much. Her most famous role hinged on one scene, in Gilda where a one-gloved strip teased blew a hole in cinemas all across the nation, but one that she would rarely escape from; a woman who was caught as a fly in amber by the image that others created for her.

Memorable Quote: Every man I knew went to bed with Gilda... and woke up with me.