Hitchcock's Vertigo Zoom aka JAWS shot or Dolly Zoom

Have a look, a fun shot



Great article on history of this shot
http://www.brokenprojector.com/wordpress/?p=21

Zombieland

I have to say that this actually looks really funny. Maybe even funnier than SHAUN OF THE DEAD from a few years ago. Zombiecomedy is a new genre.

NXNW

If you love Cary Grant & Hitchcock as much as I do, summer isn't complete without sitting down and watching REAR WINDOW and NORTH BY NORTHWEST.

Classics.

I thought you might enjoy this rather odd original trailer:

La mort aux trousses - Trailer
by enricogay

A V A T A R

news from CC (Comic Con) on Cameron's AVATAR and the link here

looks like you'll get to see 15 minutes of it in IMAX in August.

Reading & The Philadelphia Story

As a reader, I read a lot... lately I've been busy but for what it's worth, comedies seem to be hot right now and maybe, just maybe (especially if we all pray to the movie gods) the era of schlock horror/gore/torture porn will finally be over! Yay!

Comedies, dramedies, and biopics seem to be hot right now. I suspect with the hilarious THE HANGOVER (and HOT TUB TIME MACHINE) we'll be seeing more of the bachelor-party-gone- awry genre scripts too.

I don't mind a good laugh nor a good giggle or cry.

Watched THE PHILADELPHIA STORY again and loved it just as much, for the most part it really holds up. It is a classic. Although visually is very play-y, it still entertains and what's surprising - it actually engages on a deeper level than your typical romcom. The emotionally compelling moments in that movie, for a romcom that is, are quite moving.

I for one am tired of the suit-wearing biyatch chick with a cell phone romcoms can't seem to get enough of lately... TPS reminds us what real, solid characterization is. The female protagonist actually arcs - in a not phoned-in way! Wow, a female arc that means something.

And gee, all it took was Katharine Hepburn and Howard Hughes to make it happen.

Anyway, it is immediately bumped into my top 5. In my next life, I want to come back as a rather "goddess" like, witty, but fascinating spoiled rich brat who saunters around, rides equestrian, drinks champagne and likes to go for a "swim" after parties, thankuverymuch! Oh and let's not forget, Cary Grant!

goodsie-oodsie, if you love these two captivating and delicious greats, be sure to check out the little seen - HOLIDAY, one of my faves (also Cukor).

Everything I need to know I Learned from the Big Lebowski

Dudeists unite!

two icons

what can I say? It's devastating, the end of an era for sure.

cue Sarah McLachlan song, something about angels...

MJ was a megatalent, a super star. I really don't think they exist today anymore, like that.

The best quote I read about Farrah was someone said "she had stardust on her."

Shakespeare Wars

I am reading The Shakespeare Wars on B&N and cannot wait to buy my copy! Ron Rosenbaum is an amazing writer/journo. He makes academic study fun and brings his personal experiences/insights to his life & writing, to the point where you can't help but identify with him. I especially like his description of a profoundly personal neo-mystical moment at the blackboard at Yale teaching Shakespeare's sonnets - these visceral moments in life are hard to describe and he does a good job. I find that they happen on the threshold of a big change in your life, as if a part of yourself knows it before you consciously know it... and so in a rather ouroborosian manner, you find yourself experiencing something you're going to experience but don't know it yet and hence experience it. Rosenbaum's description is much more masterful.

My own love of Shakespeare began around age 14 when I began studying (and performing) the Bard's plays at Theatre School. One thing stage actors know is that the tricky thing about performing the Bard vs. contemporary plays is that there is no "acting" or pausing between lines. The great performers adjust and know that the Bard is acted -- during or on the lines. This is an important and quite different distinction. A personal highlight of my time at grad school was meeting Marc Norman, a great writer of one of my favorite films - Shakespeare in Love. (On a side note, he looked & sounded like he could be Rodney Dangerfield's cousin ;-) which you don't expect.)

The book is not esoteric but fun, at least so far. I highly recommend it. I first read Rosenbaum back in 1992 in a great Vanity Fair article about Hitler which stayed with me all these years.

There is a lot of debate about Shakespeare now and it looks like a great read. Man, I wish I had Kindle.

Rosenbaum describes being dismayed by his fellow graduate students "shallow cynicism" at Yale in the late '60s, hmmm.... very interesting.

New Yorker & Morning Glory

Great shot of Diane Keaton (luv her) filming MORNING GLORY in New York, which was one of the funniest scripts I read last year. (That and HOT TUB TIME MACHINE and THE HANGOVER). It's more chick flick than bachelor party gone-awry humor (see above) but if you're a fan of BROADCAST NEWS, you're going to love it. It's old school wit and hopefully will stay that way.

This month's New Yorker cover was painted by an artist on his iPhone while standing in Times Square. It's pretty cool and a fun tech milestone. I agree with the CNN blogger that when it can make a pizza and open a beer, I might get one. Scratch that, when it can babysit and give me a pedi, then I might be on board.

In other New York news, Prince Harry, looking quite dashing, visited the WTC and left a memorial wreath and a moving handwritten note. He also made a point of flying commercial and bringing a wounded soldier with him for the "new" generation of Royals. The Brits know how to do it right.

Imaginary Friends - Analysis of the Real Housewives of NYC Women

I'll admit it -- I'm an addict. Like most addictions, it started slowly and I went through various phases: indulgence, denial, and acceptance. I do not know if I need help yet but the fact that I'm going to watch the (rather lame) reunion show on Bravo tomorrow night -- scratch that -- am looking forward to it means I might need to seek counseling. In my own defense, and this is NOT a rationalization (cough, ahem), I love pretty much anything & everything to do with New York & Manhattan because it reminds me of those salad days back at NYU. (wondering where the term salad days comes from?) That and my satellite had issues upgrading to HD so now I'm even more stoked to watch.

Anyway, Real Housewives as our Imaginary Friends. It's fun to think about since I don't know them personally (and if any of you do and this is way off, well then, my apologies...)

Who doesn't want a front row seat at Fashion Week or to be an eyewitness to conspicuous consumption as Jill buys a $15,000 handbag, or to see catfights and real fights as the housewives slug chocolatinis at this week's "magazine" party. We all watch and think instinctively: hm, who would I like to have as a friend?

Alex is like a friend you might have now. She seems cool. Yes, she's different but I like different and she seems like a genuinely interesting person who would be a good, loyal friend who would always have a strange take on something that you never thought of it that way before. Alex's blog (RH NYC) really inspired me – she's a woman, smart, former actress, much like myself who lives her life on her terms – the way she wants. She's anyone and everyone and here she is talking about how she reinvented herself and has a basic, corporate, graphic design job and loved it because she got to work hard, be independent, have her own thing going on and she got laid off and she said, which really impacted me: "if you're not changing, you're not growing." There's something real and independent about her. Like she'd survive a street brawl and have your back. Like she could navigate her way through the Alps in a blizzard and not whine too much while doing it. The other housewives?

Like the Countess? Not so much. She is clueless and out of touch with modern issues (her "dating" advice about women taking the back seat was laughable). That said, I like LuAnn, she has a confident way about her and is very tree-like, there's an adjective that should go here (no, not arborous) which I will need to look up when I have a moment. If LuAnn, the real life countess, were a tree she'd be a Maple tree – solid, pretty leaves, dripping a syrup concoction that's good in small doses.

Ramona likes to think of herself as a firebrand – I like to think of her as an annoyance, like when smoke gets in your eyes and you feel as if they're going to burn out of your head they sting so badly and you need air, like NOW! That's Ramona. Her and her bug-eyed nastiness and judgement (I really don't like judgemental people in the sense that they engage in that German word I can never spell: scherudanfreude) – she just really is not a nice person. She seems to have a lovely daughter, however, so maybe it's the show's editing. She's also aggressive and blunt and all the housewives seem to be in fear of her. Oh and Ramona, your husband isn't THAT hot, I mean, it's not like you married a) Hugh Jackman, b) Will Smith, c) Denzel Washington , d) Johnny Depp, or e) Rob Lowe… I mean, let's face it: you married the David Hasselhoff of the Bridgehampton set. So he's ranked in tennis, omg, so what! Lighten up, will ya?

Jill Zarin – I totally get her. I know so many people like her, she's so New York and kind of surprises you because she comes across like the ditzy rich woman and then you realize she's got a brain in that head and isn't just small dog + giant boobs + rich husband. However, the day my husband delivers me a giant black Mercedes SUV with red ribbon and I whine that I need a new one because I can't figure out where to put my iPhone is the day someone can just lay me down in the ground and cover me with one of those horrible fleece blankets you can buy at Target for $10 bucks. In other words, Jill: get a clue, you spoiled brat! Still, she seems fun, like she'd be a fun friend. She comes from a great family & has a mom anyone would love and is just that fun person who sometimes says those ditzy things that you think, omg, did she just say that? (Like the time she told magazine reporters her friends often ask about prospective suitors, "how big is his p-p?" meaning: 'how big is his private plane?' she thought this was hilarious and the reporters thought she was really annoying.)

Kelly. There's no talking about Kelly without talking about Bethenny. We all love Bethenny. She's hilarious. Those writers write all the best jokes/digs for her (come on, we all know it's not that real/unscripted). Bethenny is cool, she's like your best bud from college or your sister. She's funny & tough and ambitious. She's a disaster with men, has good taste, and a killer body. She's the cool girl you'd love to hang with and could chat for hours on the phone with until 2 am. Bethenny let us down, however, when she let crazy uber-biyatch Kelly walk all over her.

Kelly is insane. She (allegedly) assaulted her boyfriend. She's a supermodel. She's a giant amazon of a woman who is too tan and is a classic narcissist: who else would insist on jogging IN traffic in Manhattan? Not on the sidewalk, not on the SIDE of the road, but IN the road, literally in front of taxis and cars and just stomp down the road oblivious to the raised fists and honking horns behind like she's some sort of stone-faced Terminator, the latest T-2000 model that will just stomp right over the cars? Her kids seem adorable so maybe it's editing but if ever there was a frenemie – she's it. I have never actually seen a real human being say to another: "I'm up here and you're down here" which she said to Bethenny who looked like a deer caught in headlights. Bethenny: if someone says that to you, you have every right to correct them and then leave the room. Or throw a drink in their face or laugh hysterically. At them. Not with them - but at them. There is nothing that irks most normal people more than someone who feels they're superior to you but then is dumb enough to tell you to your face? Priceless. Bethenny doesn't know how to take Kelly on which is surprising. Bethenny gets her goat and so maybe that's her plan because Kelly looks like an utter fool. Bethenny is like I'll just give her the rope because she keeps hanging herself. But at some point, girlfriend, youse gots to say: enough is enough. The gazelle-amazonian who keeps falling off her horse needs to learn that mere mortals are not her inferiors just beause we didn't steal someone's jewelry line and make-out with Eurotrash at our friend's fabric store party. Either that or Kelly needs to go back on her meds.

Since this season began, Alex has been laid off and is looking for work, Kelly's had numerous lawsuits, LuAnn's Count husband dumped her, and Ramona stopped blinking So Season 3 should be a complete showstopper. I will be watching. With my satellite. Yay.

For a real recap with a heavy helping of snark but totally HILARIOUS you'll want to visit this BLOG HERE. They deserve a Bloggie for that or at the very least, a Dundie.

Wolverine Noir

Unbelievably awesome.

This makes me want to get my fangirl geek on and go out and find it:

you have Wolverine and noir and 1937 Bowery motif.

total awesomeness!

http://www.marvel.com/catalog/?id=11550

no name post

DicrectTV is way way way better than cable or a cable co. which will go nameless...
I feel redundant posting here since everyone I know is on FB.
I've come to like it.
It is hard pursuing the arts for those of us without a trust fund
as I've found from friends and colleagues...

Upfronts

For thsoe of you wondering about which specs not to write or where to set your Tivo, the upfronts are happening this month and here are current estimate of shows "on the bubble", renewed or canceled HERE

There needs to be a campaign, if there isn't already, to save the SCC (Sarah Connor Chronicles). The last ep, the season finale, was nothing short of amazing with the old Terminator (from T2) the T-1000 turning into an almost gothic image of part T, part woman, part shield. It was astounding. SCC is some good TV, after a few ep missteps, they found their groove so it's a shame. I knew it would be gone when it was given the death sentence of Friday nights in the lineup but had held out hope...

Summer/Cameron were amazing... and maybe if it hadn't become The Jesse Chronicles (who gives a sh1t about Jesse) the show could have lasted...

recap at Fox's website HERE

UPDATE: SAVE THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES ONLINE PETITION rec'd like 17,000 sigs.

Literary Greats & their vintage typewriters

I love the idea of it but am stopped by the impracticality...
I can't imagine scanning 120 pps into FD and/or converting to pdf,
pdf kind of eliminates the whole brad issue, doesn't it? ;-)

Still... I type on my grandmother's old, vintage writing desk, so maybe...

Check out what these literary greats typed on: HERE

James Cameron's AVATAR

I for one think this sounds amazing, it's sure getting a lot of buzz with people actually using the words "revolutionary" and "film" in the same sentence.

The new 3-D technology is supposed to not give headaches and really be something earth-shattering that we haven't seen before. It's the wave of the future.

A few articles on Avatar here from TIME magazine and here from FILM.COM.

there's a teaser trailer on Youtube but it doesn't show anything really... we'll have to wait for the new one.

Wow. Pretty exciting stuff.

I like my Lex Hammy

ok, I say funny, especially at the end, but I love Hamm:

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm from Jon Hamm

Los Angeles Noir: City of Devils

My article, A.D. Norton ©2008 All rights reserved.

(Photo: Kiss Me Deadly)

Los Angeles Noir: City of Devils

If ever there was a quintessential noir town, it's LA. More than a few classic noir films, as well as neo-noir films, have been set in Los Angeles. One of the granddaddy’s of hard-boiled noir, novelist Raymond Chandler, set his fiction in the city of angels. The sprawling concrete freeways and the hollow echo of cars through the Second Street Tunnel; the glowing neon signs of Hollywood Blvd., the balmy evenings and art deco skyscrapers that scream to be noticed -- all call to the mood that lurks beneath the shadows of noir: an existential funk, a deep-seated restlessness, feelings of helplessness at that which is ultimately beyond our control: time, death… city traffic jams.

The thematic aspects of film noir -- that people, yourself, and life are unknowable and outside your control – is conveyed using a certain motif. “So noir is not simply a plot line or visual style achieved by camera angles and unusual lighting. It also involves a ‘way of looking at the world,’ an outlook on life and human existence.” (Conrad 11). There are three crucial elements present in classic film noirs, which help create the film noir mood, namely:

1) The city as an unknowable urban jungle.

2) An often alienated, antihero protagonist who is unknowable to himself and others, who is lost. (This can be literal or figurative or both.)

3) A night-time existence, a life lived in shadows, a world enveloped by darkness.

To be sure, there are other familiar elements in noir: the femme fatale, voice-over narration, a crime or scheme, but these three motifs are the essential building blocks that create the gloomy mood of classic noir. The physicality of the city, shrouded in dark night, and a lost protagonist, all give rise to the existentialist doom of film noir and create the noir milieu. In this paper, I will look at each of these more closely, focusing on Los Angeles noir and its locales in specific films.

Night scenes are critical to noir and emblematic of its visual style. The night visually depicts an unclear reality that slithers around corners, hides off-screen or behind doors, or lurks alone in the dark. The world of night is radically different from daytime, especially on black and white film. It is the technology of the city, the abundance of electricity and neon lights (which are part of the noir mise en scène) that allow its inhabitants to wander down dark alleys at all hours.

In Los Angeles film noir, the neon lights of Hollywood Blvd. dazzle in Murder My Sweet. Night is shot to great effect for exterior locations in Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly and the somnambulistic night-time in Mildred Pierce captures Los Angeles’ spirit uniquely and vividly. The night essentializes the thematic aspects of film noir, the “lost” aspects of the hero who stumbles around in the dark. The “dark cinema” of film noir is an allegory to the individual’s existential struggle against contemporary, uber-modern, life. Mankind is seemingly trapped in an ever-advancing technological, alarmingly modern, world. Noir wants to tell its audience that life is ambiguous, morality is not an absolute but a mercurial element depending on which corrupt official holds the power, or which dame has recently betrayed you, and that you – as an individual – are lost in the maze of contemporary, modern, urban life, lived at night.

In Somewhere in the Night author, Nicholas Christopher describes the appeal of night: “For many film noirs,” Christopher writes, “it is the mundane daylit world that seems unreal, while the night, complex … stimulating in contrast, envelops us with an exotic, often erotic, pleasure. (Christopher 3.)

Christopher goes on to quote Borges in Labyrinths as saying, “the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.” (Christopher 4.)

To bring home this essentially existentialist motif: existence is unknowable, outside of our control, noir films focus on an individual in the city, trying to make their way through a complicated maze of schemes, double-crossers, and corruption. The city plays a critical role and not just in its milieu of rain-soaked, darkened streets, screaming headlights and all night diners; but in its representation of something different: man in the city. Man amongst the urban grind, the nameless, faceless, anonymity of skyscrapers where no one knows your name. Night is also the time that unsavory (or fascinating) characters come out, when “regular” folks who work 9-5 are safely tucked away in their homes. Nicholas elaborates on the noir night:

And streaming into our hero’s path there is an infernal

rabble … thieves, extortionists, professional hit men …. But

no cops anywhere to be seen. No pedestrians or bystanders – innocent or even neutral. Not a single uncomplicitous,

untainted character … stores and businesses are closed. The absence of the general population is, by implication, a statement

of contempt. That is, the great mass of citizens, faceless and oblivious, who flood the streets at rush hour, en-route to

dead-end jobs, prisoners of the humdrum, are asleep,

disconnected from the energy of the night, their windows

sealed and curtained to the streets below. The city we see is one

they have blocked out, stripped of illusion: a jungle of tangled

steel, oppressed by harsh weather, treacherously constructed,

in which the only order is the unnatural order; the fittest, by

necessity, are the most devious… (6)

In this way, the city serves as a character itself in the drama of noir. The idea of being lost, or losing memory, applies to the main character in noir as well as the city. Lost can be literal, in the sense that the character literally does not know their way around the big city, but it goes beyond lacking a clear sense of direction. In the case of the noir “private dick,” they are often lost when it comes to solving the mystery/crime. But ultimately, when the noir “protagonist” is lost, it is their very identity that is unknown. (We will see later how this directly ties into Los Angeles.) It is as if the noir protagonist personifies society in general: we don’t know who we are or where we’re going. Like Sartre’s existentialist Roquentin in “La Nausée” who tries to understand existence and only ends up feeling nauseated with wonder and disgust at life and its absurdity, the noir protagonist meanderings all lead to an end that is futile.

Conrad and Porfirio state that film noir’s existentialism probably is more influenced by hard-boiled detective novels than philosophers Sartre and Camus, but still the mood is crucial. “The mood at the heart of noir,” according to Porfirio, “is pessimism.” It is “despair, loneliness, and dread … nothing less than an existential attitude towards life.” (Conrad 12). Yet film critic Roger Ebert in his “Guide to Film Noir” said it is “the most American film genre, because no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic.” (Ebert).

Edward Dimendberg in Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity explores noir’s preoccupation with the urban landscape. He ties this to urban architectural developments, city planning, and modern communications. That the dark noirs were shaped by the same things as the city itself. That during the war and post-World War II, the city was the “site of social and technological alienation.” Film noir is simply reflecting what already exists.

The archetypal noir city to convey a sense of anxiety and ground shifting beneath you is Los Angeles. Literally, the ground can and does shift beneath you in LA due to earthquakes. Its immense sprawl leaves one unsure of really, where the center of the city is, there is no there-there. Los Angeles is quixotic; it is at once a beachside paradise and a gritty urban landscape decaying in the shadows.

Los Angeles embodies all extremes: rich-poor, beautiful-ugly, peaceful-chaotic. In Los Angeles, fortunes rise and fall overnight, it’s quicksand, you’re never sure – precisely – where you stand. It is a place where you can never be too sure what lurks beneath the surface and paradoxically, you can’t be too sure of its surfaces either: a grungy “egg” could be a multi-millionaire; and that well-groomed, chic “dame” could be thousands of dollars in debt. It brings to mind a quote by Chandler: “From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”

H.L. Mencken referred to Los Angeles as, “nineteen suburbs in search of a megalopolis.” Raymond Chandler called LA (in particular downtown) an “old whore.” And Norman Klein wrote in The History of Forgetting that Los Angeles is the type of place where it has a reverse identity – it’s defined by that which never happens in a sort of civic amnesia that leads to the “erasure of memory.” Klein refers to Los Angeles as the "social imaginary" that is “charming because in part it erases. That missing part induces suspense." This serves to illustrate the uniquely bizarre aspect of Los Angeles – a city, like the noir hero, without an identity, making it the ultimate noir town.

Mike Davis wrote about LA and noir, describing it this way: “The most outstanding example is the complex corpus of what we call noir (literary and cinematic): a fantastic convergence of American ‘tough-guy’ realism, Weimar expressionism, and existentialized Marxism – all focused on unmasking a ‘bright, guilty place’ (Welles) called Los Angeles." (Davis 18.)

There are different sub-categories of noir: hard-boiled detective, double-crossing lovers, crime capers and heists, and they’re set in various urban cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and even Kansas City. (Of course some noirs are not set in a city but in a small, dusty town just outside a city, still rife with decay.) But when you think of classic Los Angeles noir, you invariably think of Raymond Chandler and his gumshoe: Phillip Marlowe.

Chandler’s fiction took place in thinly disguised cities of LA: “Bay City” for Santa Monica, “Stillwood Heights” for Pacific Palisades, “Gray Lake” for Silver Lake. Chandler didn't limit himself to LA proper; he included Santa Barbara, Big Bear, and “Poodle Springs” (Palm Springs) in his work. Chandler’s novels are set in 1930s Los Angeles, often reflecting the notorious 30s corruption. The films show the “hard-boiled” detective antihero making his way down the "asphalt river" of Sunset Boulevard in search of the answers to one of modern society's most perplexing existential questions: What makes human beings do the things they do? And why should it matter? Who is good and who or what is bad? In film noir, the protagonist often has a hard time figuring out who is really evil and who is not. The hero, like the characters in a Sartre play, are trapped in a nightmarish existence and seem to learn that, indeed, “hell is other people.” (Sartre.)

Los Angeles noir is not limited to hard-boiled detective films such as Lady in the Lake, The Big Sleep or Kiss Me Deadly but also includes the double-crossing lovers of Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, Sunset Blvd. and others. In the 1945 film, Mildred Pierce (based upon the novel by James M. Cain) the double-crossers are not lovers but mother and daughter.

Los Angeles noirs use recurring locales: the downtown streets, office buildings, exterior traffic shots, the beach-house. In several Los Angeles noir films, the climax takes place at a beach-house. The one key exception to this is The Big Sleep where the climax takes place in a safe house – but still it is outside of the city – in the country. It seems as if the noir protagonist must get away from the city for the climax, to be out of their element. The final confrontation between our “hero” and the villain (usually a femme fatale) takes place away from the urban city, where the spider has trapped our protagonist in its web. The beach-house climax offers an interesting juxtaposition. The beach-house represents what is supposed to be a sanctuary, a retreat from city life where one goes to rejuvenate. Especially in Chandler’s work, and films like Murder My Sweet and Mildred Pierce, the beach-house represents a higher status of class in society: beach-houses are expensive and our “hero” definitely cannot afford one, or if they have clawed their way to the top, as Mildred has, they don’t want to lose it. Chandler’s focus was socio-economic, Marlowe was always aware of class distinctions between himself and the characters he meets. This too, is very LA. The beach-house represents “making it,” that is, making enough money to have arrived at being able to afford this relaxing haven. It is ironic, then, that noir turns this on its head. It takes an object of desire and makes it less desirable. When the noir detective finally does reach the beach-house, it’s under nightmarish circumstances. Noir seems to ask, at what price desire? A beach-house, after all, is just a thing. Is it worth all this to obtain such an object?

In My Sweet, the femme fatale has killed and calculated her way to this beach-house, presumably marrying for money and doing everything she can to bury her ugly past. In Deadly, the owners of the beach-house are corrupt businessmen who greedily want to profit from the “Great Whatsit.” Greed also does-in Lancaster’s character and it all ends in the beach-house. Mildred Pierce has suffered a blind sort of hubris as she works herself to near death, unable to see her daughter for what she is – a monster. Mildred is unable to come to terms with her daughter’s true nature. The beach-house represents something unattainable and the lengths to which evil individuals will go to obtain something society and modern culture tells us we should desire: wealth and prestige. The protagonists and femme fatales are often corrupted by pure greed.

Often the protagonist is surprised to find the villain at the beach-house. Often the villainess is waiting alone, under dark, and now our protagonist, isolated and alone, must go mano a mano to discover the truth. In the case of The Big Sleep and Kiss Me Deadly, the climax plays out a little differently. The beach-house is a safe-house where the love interest is being held hostage. Hammer or Marlowe must figure out a way to rescue Velda or Vivian before it’s too late.

The film noir Mildred Pierce captures a unique Southern California sensibility. Mildred is a middle-class woman who works her way up from a waitress at a diner to be a wealthy restaurant owner, capturing the California Dream.

It was journalist Morrow Mayo in Los Angeles who said: “Los Angeles, it should be understood, is not a mere city. On the contrary, it is, and has been since 1888, a commodity; something to be advertised and sold to the people of the United States like automobiles, cigarettes and mouth wash.” (Davis 2).

Mildred is a noir rags-to-riches story. It is unique in that the double-crossers are not lovers but mother and daughter, the daughter being the femme fatale. Visually, the film is lush in its depiction of Southern California: deep, dark oceans swathed in moonlight, long stretches of coastal highway, stately homes, palm fronds flapping in the evening breeze, and a well-heeled woman, cool and collected under scorching hot sun. Stylistically, Mildred has an eerie luminosity to it. It is not so much darkness as the blinding contrast between the blackest black and the most shining silver-iest light. The final climax between Mildred and her daughter at the beach-house is classic film noir.

Authors Higham and Greenberg in “Noir Cinema” comment on this aspect of Mildred Pierce saying: “no film has caught so completely the feel of Southern California… the coast roads, the plush, taught atmosphere of restaurants, and the endless jostling greed of the environment are conveyed with an aficionado’s knowledge.” The film would not be the same were it not set in this almost outpost-like, very western, state whose cinematic presence is unmistakable. Mildred Pierce contains all the classical elements of Los Angeles noir and then some. The authors continue:

The opening is typical [director] Curtiz: a series of shots

fired into a mirror, following distant views of a beach-house

at night, the murdered lover lurching past his reflected face, gasping a last word “Mildred.” The film conveys Curtiz’s

love of the American night world. (Higham, Greenberg 32).

Mildred then is classic Los Angeles noir: it features a woman unsure of her status in a tough, urban (and business environment), fighting against a feeling of futility as her daughter grows into an insatiable monster. Mildred features classic noir motifs: filmed at night, non-linear narrative, the city as character, a “lost” antihero and of course: a beach-house climax.

1955’s Kiss Me Deadly (based on Mickey Spillaine’s novel) was originally set in New York but when adapted for the big screen, the locale was changed to Los Angeles. Several other changes were made as well: the great Whatsit was added creating one of the first cross genre noir-meets-science-fiction films; and the main character – Mike Hammer – was changed as well. the filmmakers seemed to want to capture more of a modern essence in the film. Mike lost his East Coast, blue collar, tough-guy sensibilities. Instead, Mike Hammer became one of the first noir yuppies (albeit a 1950s version): he's dressed well, drives a nice convertible, and most importantly – his modern apartment is outfitted with all the latest gadgets. The film’s Mike Hammer was sophisticated, he even had one of the first ever “answering machines” a wall-mounted device that played back phone messages. (This brings to mind the classic opening of the great Los Angeles detective TV show, The Rockford Files.) Mike Hammer was distinctly modern. Yet, despite all this, like most classic noir detectives, he’s still lost; he doesn’t even know what the Whatsit is. We follow him to frequently seen Los Angeles noir locales: Bunker Hill, city streets, Angel’s Flight. In the end, Hammer too ends up at a beach-house staring down the barrel of horrific destiny packed into a box that could blow up the world.

There were two endings to the film. One, Hammer and Velda escape, the beach-house blowing up behind them; in the second, they do not. Why Los Angeles and not New York? Again, it points to the feeling that Los Angeles has less of a cohesive identity; in LA, there’s no real sense of history. In New York, it’s all about where you come from, your nationality and neighborhood identity, but in LA – everything is new, modern. California is also a place of new ideas, new technology. It is less about tradition (like the East Coast) and more about cutting edge. A place where people could be buying and selling a frightening technology like the "Great whatsit.”

Alain Silver in an article in “Film Comment” speaks much to the film’s visual style (as well as the controversy over the alternate endings). And Kiss Me Deadly is visually striking: the night-time shots envelope the characters in a crisply dark black and white. The external shots of Los Angeles, even in the daylight, are striking. Hammer speeding around in his convertible seems to be swallowed up by the lone stretch of highway when his headlights pick up a crazed-looking woman who’s stepped into his path wearing nothing but a trench coat. Adrich’s Kiss Me Deadly redefines Spillaine; Hammer is now less vigilante and more “yuppie;” the noir elements are brought to the familiar terrain of Los Angeles; and the burning of the villainess in the novel is replaced with the doomsday burning of a possible nuclear device. Featuring the requisite beach-house climactic conclusion, extensive night shooting, a shroud-like visual style, urban and modernity featured prominently, and a confused antihero Private Eye, Kiss Me Deadly becomes one of the penultimate Los Angeles noir films.

Murder My Sweet also follows along the familiar Los Angeles noir motifs: wealthy homes, gritty urban locales in Bunker Hill, and the requisite beach-house climax. The Private Eye Marlowe is literally blind at the end of this noir, an external manifestation of what has been his internal state throughout much of the film. When Marlowe reaches the beach-house, not only has this object of desire turned out to be not all it’s cracked up to be, but the same can be said for the femme fatale who is a trophy wife and turns out to have a sordid past and be nothing but a cold-blooded killer.

In Criss Cross, another Los Angeles noir, we meet another lost soul who stumbles across the familiar locales of Los Angeles. Almost the entire film is shot around Bunker Hill and downtown with such locations as Angel’s Flight and Union Station. Burt Lancaster’s character gets embroiled in a heist plan with an unusually sympathetic femme fatale (the trailer even uses the term “fatal attraction”) and of course, a climactic ending at the requisite beach-house, this one in Palos Verdes. In Criss Cross, like other LA noirs, status and class is omnipresent. Lancaster’s character is keenly aware of money and his lack thereof and the plot revolves around his plan to rob an armored truck.

The beach figures prominently in The Postman Always Rings Twice as well. In this Los Angeles noir, the beach figures prominently in two crucial scenes. The double-crossing lovers, Frank and Cora, kill Cora’s husband Nick by driving his car over the side of the cliff near the beach. Frank calls the road to “Malibu Lake” one of the “worst pieces of road in Los Angeles County.” The climax of Postman, finds Cora and Frank on the beach. Cora nearly drowns herself in her final showdown with Frank, making him choose to rescue her or not, so she can find out if he really loves her. Upon leaving the beach, they have a fatal auto accident and Frank is executed for Cora’s murder (even though he was innocent of that one), thereby bringing home a darkly ironic noir.

LA locales include Bunker Hill and Angel’s Flight in noirs including Criss Cross and Kiss Me Deadly. Downtown LA’s Bradbury Building figures in D.O.A., Kiss Me Deadly and Murder My Sweet, as well as the neo-noir/sci-fi Blade Runner. Additional Los Angeles noir locations include City Hall (L.A. Confidential, Mildred Pierce, D.O.A.) and Union Station. Other Los Angeles film noirs include: Lady in the Lake, Abandoned, 711 Ocean Drive, The Blue Gardenia, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, and Bordertown among others. Several neo-noir films are worth mention, most notably Chinatown, Blade Runner, and L.A. Confidential as period Los Angeles noir films.

What is the appeal of noir? Is it that film noir, like Los Angeles itself, lives in our imagination? That is, the world that noir inhabits is the imaginary “night-time,” adult, quasi-dangerous, world of night in the city…? The night-time ambiance of noir represents a night-time of the soul. Daylight life is calm, controlled, filled with restraint and civility. Night in noir is somehow untamed, unleashed, and the darkness represents the vast, uninhibited unknown.

In this way, there is an appeal. A curiosity. The characters do things, in some ways, we wish we could do. For example, characters fly to San Francisco on a moment’s notice in D.O.A. and take up with strangers to hang out at late-night jazz clubs; they utter witty wisecracks and are comfortable at a stake-out, a mansion, talking-up rare book dealers, or at a gambling hall in The Big Sleep; they are self-employed, independent, and meet people at exotic night clubs like the “Cocoanut Beach Club” in Murder My Sweet. We get to live vicariously through them as they try to navigate a night-time world of eccentric characters and intricate plots, never knowing quite who is good or bad, or even where they are, but seeming to know all the angles. The curious aspect is that it doesn’t seem to bother them that much, their lack of knowing.

At the same time, the darker noirs remind us there’s a price to be paid for stepping into the dark side of night. We take pleasure in the fact we know we would never do these things, but are compelled to watch the predicament the poor chump has gotten himself into. We are comfortable in our knowledge that there’s a reason everyone’s at home in bed, asleep. This is a dangerous world and no good will come from getting involved in it. These darker noirs serve as a cautionary tale.

I see film noirs, in particular Los Angeles noir, as highly stylized character studies of a specific time and place in our history. Chandler was not writing to a style, he was simply observing the world around him and reporting his unique insights. He, and others, created this “genre” by reflecting the societal transitions and corruption that existed. Film noir reflects the dark antipathy emitting from World War II and its atrocities. We lived in a dark time, there was darkness all around. That is in no way to take away from the incredible talent and artistic creativity the literary fiction and film noirs exhibit. The film noir auteurs and authors were geniuses. It was influenced by European sensibilities, and like jazz, film noir is one of the true American artistic movements.

LA is the quintessential noir playground, like the protagonists in film noir, it lacks a cohesive identity. In LA, a place is not a place but a film set. The real and unreal blur here. LA has no sense of history; it is a city of transplants.

Morrow Mayo said (a bit unkindly) about LA:

Here is an artificial city which has been pumped up

under forced draught, inflated like a balloon, stuffed

with rural humanity like a goose with corn ... endeavoring

to eat up this too rapid avalanche of anthropoids, the

sunshine metropolis heaves and strains, sweats and

becomes pop-eyed, like a young boa constrictor trying to

swallow a goat. It has never imparted an urban character

to its incoming population for the simple reason that it has

never had any character to impart. On the other hand, the

place has the manners, culture and general outlook of a

huge country village. (Mayo).

Los Angeles is crucial to a classic film noir. It lacks identity due to its lack of history and its sprawl. Los Angeles’ surprising-to-outsiders-against-stereotype gritty locales provide a stark contrast to its more famous wealthy mansions and sunny beaches. All this offers up the confusing paradox the noir hero himself faces, as he (or she) stumbles around in deep night trying to understand all the angles.

Davis writes about LA’s struggle for an identity, where intellectuals, artists, and even scientists come to see if LA is more sunshine or more noir. Is LA a paradise or a “nightmare at the terminus of American history” Davis asks in Quartz?

Film noir posits the answer in mythic, oneiric and foreboding terms. Noir films are a warning to remember – never to forget -- ourselves, our past, our humanity. To try to hold onto something good and real in this cold, steel, technological, mix of beach paradise and urban landscape, in a world of night where anything can happen. To outsiders, Los Angeles is all sunshine and oranges, but to its denizens, it is a complex megalopolis, in turns seedy and shiny. LA’s dark underbelly and shifting sense of itself makes it the classic noir metropolis because LA is anyman’s game. The noir protagonist tries to understand all the angles and usually fails. Yes, Los Angeles is the City of Angels but what Los Angeles noir shows us is that here lives devils as well. the city can’t be conquered or easily understood and is seemingly endlessly fascinating.

Works Cited:

Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths. New York: New Directions Publ. Corp., 1964.

Conrad, Mark T. and Robert Porfirio. The Philosophy of Film Noir. Kentucky: Univ. of Kentucky Press. 2005.

Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. New York: Random House, Knopf, 1939.

Chandler, Raymond. Farewell, My Lovely. New York: Random House, 1940.

Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. New York: Random House, 1992. (17-20).

Ebert, Roger. “A Guide to Film Noir.” RogerEbert.com. January 30, 1995. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19950130/COMMENTARY/11010314/1023.

Higham, Charles and Joel Greenberg “Noir Cinema” Film Noir Reader (Hollywood in the Forties) 1968.

Klein, Norman M. The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory. London and New York: Verso, 1997 (3-6).

Mayo, Morrow. Los Angeles. 1933.

Nicholas, Christopher. Somewhere in the Night, Film Noir and the American City. New York: Henry Holt, 1997.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. La Nausée. 1939; Huis-clos (No Exit), 1944.

Alain Silver “So What’s With the Ending of Kiss Me Deadly?” Images, November, 1966.

Silver, Alain and James Ursini. Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelight, 1996.

Ward, Elizabeth and Alain Silver. Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles. New York: Overlook Press. 1987.

“Los Angeles, California.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_angeles.

Films:

The Big Sleep. Dir. Howard Hawks. With Bogart & Bacall. Warner Bros., 1946.

Blade Runner. Dir. Ridley Scott. With Harrison Ford. Warner Bros., 1982.

Chinatown . Dir. Roman Polanski. With Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Paramount Pictures, 1974.

Criss Cross. Dir. Robert Siodmak. With Burt Lancaster. Universal, 1949.

D.O.A. Dir. Rudolph Maté. With. Edmond O'Brien. Cardinal Pictures, 1950.

Double Indemnity. Dir. Billy Wilder. With Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. Paramount, 1944

Kiss Me Deadly. Dir. Robert Aldrich. With Ralph Meeker. Parklane Pictures, 1955.

LA Confidential. Dir. Curtis Hanson. With Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito.Warner Bros., 1997.

Lady in the Lake. Dir. Robert Montgomery. With Robert Montgomery. MGM, 1947.

Mildred Pierce. Dir. Michael Curtiz. with Joan Crawford.Warner Brothers., 1945.

Murder My Sweet. Dir. Edward Dmytryk. With Dick Powell. RKO, 1944.

Sunset Boulevard. Dir. Billy Wilder. With William Holden and Gloria Swanson. Paramount Pictures, 1950.

Slumdog, Milk, Mad Men

winners at WGA Awards...

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/e3ib2336cb7507211a210e37a01ed9d38e2

Cameron

our favorite Terminator to appear on The Big Bang Theory.

Summer Glau to Guest on 'Big Bang Theory'

Dead sexy 'Sarah Connor Chronicles' Terminatrix Summer Glau will play herself on the March 9 episode of 'The Big Bang Theory,' EW.com's Michael Ausiello is reporting. The ep will find the nerd herd going wild when they run into their favorite sci-fi siren on a train trip to San Fran. (Feb. 12)

http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/2009/02/exclusive-summe.html

Why 24's Jumped the Shark

Agree with this, especially No. 6

STAR TREK

saw it during the SB... total awesomeness, imho...

the extended, however, didn't look as good so we'll have to wait & see.
Love JJ Abrams.

Design a poster for The Simpsons!

We're friends of The Simpsons here at BLA (see favorite posts).

They're offering a new contest for the fall series premiere - design a Simpsons poster and win a trip to LA!

Think yellow and doughnuts... hmmm...

sponsored by FOX.

Happy New Year!

Hope yours finds you well.

As you know I'm working as a Reader & Story Analyst.

If looking for a good coverage service, I present

The Story Analysts

There Are Only Four Male Character Arcs

Back by popular demand!

The article I wrote last year which made it on IMDB.COM's "Hit List"

There Are Only Four Male Character Arcs '07

Noticeably absent is the ominpresent "hero" or "quest" arc, but I would argue that is a plot arc and not a character (emotional) arc.

enjoy!

Happy Holidays & Happy Hanukkah & Happy New Year!

Well, I have moved to Desperate Housewives-land and am happy as a clam.

Those that know me know they never thought I'd utter such words.

But, my friends, LA + baby who walks and is very independent = one stressed out mom!

Also, we have a house... which makes me feel like I waited too long... I so burned out on the city that I seriously said I'd live in Montana just to get some space. (Ok, that was a stretch). Anyway, I did my time (7 years) which is good enough for me.

And we're still near LA not too far so when I get a hankering for some Xooro's (that would be Churros to the rest of the world!) I can still easily zip in to LA so that's good! (these should not be consumed in public if you're a lady with Victorian sensibilities teeheehee.) Yes, that was a dorky joke. It's the holidays.

blog is now updated!

Moviefone's Top 50 Movies of '08

Happy Holidays!

I've been very busy as of late...

Guess it's that time of year again...

Moviefone's Top 50 movies of 2008 (and guess which dark superhero is NOT #1?)

T4

TERMINATOR SALVATION - wow, am a huge T fan and even fan of SCC.

This looks good but doesn't totally feel "Terminator-esque" but I will wait for the full trailer b4 I decide, still looks cool.

Desperaux

Looks amazing & interesting...