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.
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.
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.
With his square jaw and magnetic charm, he played soldiers, lovers, marshals, judges, a sheriff for a day, gambler Bret Maverick, 
Last to Know by Elizabeth Adler is standalone mystery set on a Massachusetts lake once known for its peacefulness, but now the home for a killer on the loose (available July 22, 2014).
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).
Atonement of Blood by Peter Tremaine is a historical mystery set in 670 AD Ireland, the 24th novel featuring Fidelma and her companion, this time in enemy lands, trying to unravel their king's attempted assassination (available July 22, 2014).
“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.
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 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.
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.
Hounded by David Rosenfelt is the 12th mystery in the Andy Carpenter series about a lawyer with a reputation for saving both humans and animals from Death Row (available July 22, 2014).
