This year film noir turns 70. While there had been some intermittent films leading up to the birth of the classic noir, in 1944 the dahlia bloomed with six key films: Double Indemnity, Laura, Murder My Sweet, Phantom Lady, When Strangers Marry, and The Woman In the Window. In these films you have many of the key figures in noir making some of their first forays into the genre (directors Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Fritz Lang, and Robert Siodmak; writers Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Vera Caspary, Phillip Yordan; actors Robert Mitchum, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Bennett, Dana Andrews—just to name a few). This onslaught of darkness came in the wake of the bleakest days (from the American perspective, anyway) of WWII. The basis of many of these films were older properties but it is the way these films came out—physically darker, psychologically denser, and ultimately more pessimistic—that marks the real birth of film noir. This post kicks off a new series which will explore these six landmark films.

[Up first, Double Indemnity...]

Let’s be honest, it is certainly one thing to get caught with a smoking gun in your hand, but it is quite another to get caught with a buzzing vibrator in your baby’s stroller.

That’s just what happened to South Carolina resident, Misty Ann Lee, after she attempted to steal a sex toy from the “love section” of a Spencer’s gift shop by hiding it in her child’s stroller. Yes, a baby stroller!

It went down like this: one of Spencer’s employees watched the woman take the item “from the love unit.” She then walked to another section and slipped the device “behind a young child in the stroller,” as reported by the Smoking Gun.

After the woman left the store the employee quickly followed and confronted her. “Lee looked like she didn’t know what she was talking about and then she retrieved the merchandise from the stroller,” according to the official police report.

The suspect attempted to re-enter the store, at which point the Spencer employee called the cops. Lee was charged with shoplifting and then released on a $2,000 bond. The vibrator was safely returned.

“Harvest” picks up where we left off with Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) receiving care for a flesh wound and Vic looking genuinely drained from her hellish experience as a captive.

When Walt and Vic hugged in the hospital, my wife said to me, “I can see them as a couple,” and I had to finally agree. The relationship happens in Craig Johnson's series of novels from which the show originates, and it seems like it’s time on the TV series. But, like water in a dam rising to the occasion, we are kept waiting again, because Vic’s husband Sean (Michael Mosley) has given her an ultimatum to quit her job in two weeks or they’re done. When Branch Connally (Bailey Chase) broke into Vic’s house in last week's episode, I was thinking, you’re going to be in a world of hurt when she finds out. Sure enough, in this episode, Vic (Katee Sackhoff) tears Branch a new one and lays everything wide open.

[A bumper crop of spoilers and angst ahead!]

This sweepstakes features work by five hard-hitting (and hard-covered) books!

Click here to enter for a chance to win!

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[See what's in the bundle!]

The final episode of Endeavour Series 2 was a corker.

We don’t do spoilers on Masterpiece Mystery programs, but I would suggest that you go and watch “Neverland” right now if you haven’t already. Then go back and watch it again, knowing what you know. It’s better the second time.

We begin, as we tend to do, with a montage of characters and situations: DI Thursday is in for his physical exam; a young man, who bears a passing resemblance to Morse himself, is in prison; an Oxford professor lectures on the Siege Perilous in the legend of the Knights of the Round Table; a ventriloquist prepares for a Vaudeville-style show; there’s a benefit for the Police Widows and Orphans; and Morse is in the choir singing “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.” There’s so much going on that Colin Dexter’s cameo flashes by within seconds of the episode’s start.

Then the prisoner escapes, a young boy runs away from home, and Thursday and Morse are off and running.

[Plus ça change as they say...]

With his square jaw and magnetic charm, he played soldiers, lovers, marshals, judges, a sheriff for a day, gambler Bret Maverick, Philip Marlowe, and even Wyatt Earp, switching effortlessly between television and movies well into his twilight. But I'll always recall James Garner first in his role as the iconic P.I., Jim Rockford, the wise-cracking, sportcoated beach bum with the broken-down trailer and the suspicious mind. Thanks for all the great times. Myself, I like to imagine he's in a solid gold Firebird somewhere, making J-Turns in the ether. Read Robert J. Lewis's Homage to a 70's Detective for much more.

And finally, to offer a celebratory tribute that you'll find nowhere else, here are the ice dancers from Donny and Marie Osmond's TV show, skating their hearts out—in life preservers no less—to one of the catchiest TV theme songs ever.

We pick up only hours from where we left off last week in Episode 2 “The Box”. A well-built exterminator is prepping his gear for the day like a warrior preparing for battle. As we’ve already est ablished that the vampires of The Strain are caused by parasitic worms, this is a dead giveaway that Vasiliy Fet (played by genre favorite and hulking Canadian Kevin Durand) is going to join our roster of heroes, soon to stand alongside Dr. Eph in the good fight—

Sorry. Kevin Durand started speaking Russian and my brain just sort of short-circuited.

Moving on, we watch as errand boy Gus delivers Mr. Master’s Coffin O’ Dirt to a conveniently underground, dimly lit garage. At least Gus has more common sense than your typical horror movie character: as soon as the coffin starts to shake and yowling shrieks fill the air, he promptly peaces out.

[Can you blame him?]

Rick Grimes and company might have left the prison last season on The Walking Dead, but one of the show's “walkers” won't be leaving anytime soon. Shannon Guess Richardson, 36, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after being found guilty of mailing ricin-tainted letters to President Obama, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Mark Glaze, the former executive director of Bloomberg’s gun-control group.

“I never intended for anybody to be hurt,” Richardson told the court on Wednesday. Her actions would say otherwise. Let this be a warning to everyone: leave the ricin to Walter White. 

Rocket Girl Volume 1: Times Square by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder is a time-traveling comic series where a girl must travel back to 1986 NYC to save the future from an evil corporation (available July 22, 2014).

Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder present us with a neat new twist on time-travel: a teenage cop from the New York City of 2013 travels back in time to 1986 to stop the invention of an engine that will allow a megacorporation to establish its near-totalitarian and wholly criminal grip on the city.

Dayoung Johansson works for the New York Teen Police Department, a body established due to people over the age of 20 no longer being considered trustworthy. When she and her partner, LeShawn O’Patrick, stumble across information proving that Quintum Mechanics has been manipulating the past in order to control the present, she determines to travel to the one point in time that begins Quintum’s domination and stop it in its tracks.

[Sounds simple enough...]

Well, here we are at the end, my friends, and look how far we’ve come. Orange Is the New Black wraps up Season 2by tying up most of its major plot threads: the rise and reign of Vee Parker, the war between Vee and Red, Piper’s attempts to bring down Fig, the upheaval between Taystee and Poussey, the transformation of Crazy Eyes into Vee’s enforcer, and Healy’s attempts to turn Pennsatucky into his sidekick. And more. Much more. The show does some of this well, but I have to be honest and report that this is, in many ways, the weakest episode of the season.

[It was still good, it's just been that strong of a season...]

“The theme of The Eye is the pursuit of an investigation which leads the protagonist through a hell of mirrors and ends in the merging of twin images.” That plot description is from Vladimir Nabokov’s own foreword to the 1965 English publication of The Eye. The protagonist Mr. Nabokov spoke of is a Russian émigré (a common theme in his body of work) living in Berlin and working as a tutor for two young boys in whose home he lodges. An attractive friend of the family, Matilda, visits, and he starts an illicit affair with the married woman. Her husband finds out and beats the tutor in front of the young pupils. Agonized from shame, the tutor packs his bags and leaves. He finds another room, then shoots himself in the heart with a revolver.

[But this only begins his adventures…]

From Shakespeare to Sherlock, Hercule Poirot to James Bond, London has always had a rich literary history. And now you can sit on it! Thanks to The National Literacy Trust, along with its public art promotor Wild in Art, 50 benches have been commissioned that will be painted to look like open books portraying scenes from famous books.

Some of the notable authors are listed below:

Douglas Adams—The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Jane Austen—Pride and Prejudice

Agatha Christie—Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly

Charles Dickens—Great Expectations

Ian Fleming—James Bond stories

Stephen Hawking—A Brief History of Time

Anthony Hurowitz—The Alex Rider Series

George Orwell—1984

Dr. Seuss—The Cat in the Hat

William Shakespeare—Various Works

Jules Verne—Around the World in 80 Days

H.G. Wells—The Time Machine.

For a complete list of benches, authors, and locations, complete with pictures, visit Books About Town.

Oh, and because I know you're wondering, yes you can own these benches. All benches will be opened up to auction, with the proceeds going to the National Literacy Trust. More information on the auctions can be found here.

Which bench is your favorite? Do you think any authors were forgotten? Join the conversation in the comments!

The Oleander Sisters by Elaine Hussey is an emotional story set in 1969 Mississippi that follows four sisters through the ups and down of the changing times (available July 29, 2014).

Let’s hear it for skeletons and Southern comfort.

I had a banner year in 1969. In January, I met my future husband on a blind date; in May, we became engaged; in June, I graduated from high school and began going to secretarial school; and in August, I had a wedding. Almost forty-five years later, we’re still celebrating anniversaries, and I just finished a book I absolutely loved that was set in 1969.

The Oleander Sisters by Elaine Hussey is like sitting down and devouring warm chocolate cake. It’s delicious to the last bite, and you hate when you have to put the empty plate in the sink.

[Make sure you rinse! (The plate, not the book!)]

Let’s talk about Red. When you think about it, the scarlet-haired Russian began this series as villain. Way back in the first episode of the show, Piper—unaware that Red ran the kitchen— accidently insulted her by pointing out, not incorrectly, that the food at Litchfield is atrocious crap. Red retaliated by nearly starving her to death. That was way back when. Now here we are in the penultimate episode of Season 2, and Red is the person we’re all counting on to destroy Vee.

This transformation owes a lot to the evolution of the character of Red, of course, but it also owes something to the fact that, of all the characters on Orange Is the New Black, Vee is the closest we’ve come to a full on bad guy. Even despicable characters like Pornstache and Fig have some admirable qualities.  Pornstache is ready to go to jail for (he thinks) knocking up Diaz, while Fig dreams of one day acquiring power to do great things. Now, these commendable traits don’t absolve Pornstache and Fig of their sins, but it does show that, at least in their own minds, they are operating from good intentions. Vee, though…Vee is a goddamn super villain. She has about as many good intentions as Professor Moriarty.

[It takes a special kind of evil to stand out in a prison...]

When Philip Seymour Hoffman died in February of this year, he had several films that were either filming or in post-production. One of those films—in addition to the mega film franchise The Hunger Games—was an adaptation of John LeCarré's A Most Wanted Man. Now, film buffs and lovers of the source material will have a chance to critique how the final product turned out.

A Most Wanted Man will be in theaters July 25, 2014, will you be seeing it?

I’m part of a group of friends who have been dazzling one another with movies for decades now. We’re all cinephiles and we have similar tastes in films, yet each of us has our own individual slant on flicks. We like to get together and watch movies, each of us taking turns at being the one to pick the titles. When you make a selection for viewing among this group, you’re of course hoping to show the others movies they haven’t yet seen. Beyond that, you just want your choices to be films that will be enjoyable and memorable. Sometimes you go for cinematic fare that’s just straight-up good, sometimes you shoot for weird and good, other times your aim is at so-bad-it’s-good camp. Just give them something that will engage them on some level during the watching and give all of us things to talk about after, and you’ve scored a winner.

I think I can say I have a fairly high success rate in picking films that work for this group. But there has been the occasional misstep. I once cleared a room with a showing of a moody early Wim Wenders title, and another time left everyone feeling deranged after presenting the bent 1973 drama The Baby. Another “mistake” on my part was when I offered the group Girly aka Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly (it went under the longer title upon its 1969 theatrical release and was shortened to the one-word name for the 2010 DVD issue – I’m going to use the shorter title from here on in). The problem was timing and setting.  This was during a beach vacation and maybe that isn’t the most ideal backdrop for a viewing of a twisted British horror/dark comedy film. But our annual beach weeks are generally the only time all of us are together these days, I had just recently happened on to Girly and was knocked out by it, and I couldn’t wait for my friends to see it. And it’s not like the idea of me championing weird movies was a new idea to this set of people.

[That should tell you how weird this one is...]