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There are worse things than murder. You can kill a man one inch at a time. Last week I recommended Kansas City Confidential, a 1952 collaboration between Director Phil Karlson, Producer Edward Small and Actor John Payne. They re-teamed very successfully the following year to make this week’s film recommendation: 99 River Street. Payne is [...]
Archive for the ‘Popular Culture’ Category
May 12th, 2013
From the character of the Bursar in Tom Sharpe’s Porterhouse Blue: It may be proper to be vilely rude to one’s equals, but I’ve always considered it the worst of tastes to be uncivil to servants.
May 10th, 2013
Category: Film
The 1952 heist movie Kansas City Confidential is a highly entertaining film noir/gangster melodrama
May 5th, 2013
Category: Film
I watched one of the usually good English-language adaptations of Wallander (The Swedish detective show) the other night, which ended with a painfully predictable stand off as the hero bursts into a room and finds the villain holding a gun to someone’s head. Which raises the usual question: How the hell long was that guy [...]
April 30th, 2013
A Supreme Court Decision 65 years ago this week changed Hollywood forever
April 30th, 2013
Category: Humor, Popular Culture
I was in my early teens the first time I stayed up late enough to watch a British television show that was being re-broadcast in the States on an obscure independent station. A roguish Irishman sat alone on a bar stool in an empty studio, smoking a cigarette, holding a drink and serving up hilarious [...]
April 26th, 2013
Category: Film
This week’s film recommendation is an obscure, strange, yet compelling 1946 film noir: The Chase. Made through low budget studio Monogram but released by United Artists, this off-beat movie is not for all tastes, but has developed a cult following among fans of the genre. Based on a Cornell Woolrich’s pulp crime novel, the film [...]
April 19th, 2013
Category: Film
John Boorman’s Point Blank melds 1960s film experimentalism with the gangster film with unforgettable effect
April 16th, 2013
Category: Film
Jeff Wedding’s new film “A Measure of the Sin” debuts in Nashville, Tennessee on April 25