The Nigh Forgotten Private Eye Film P.J.

Apparently I'd never seen the film P.J. (Universal, 1968). I missed the NBC debut, but watched on late-night TV as a kid in the seventies. Word on the 'net--and the new Kino Lorber Blu-Ray commentary track from Howard S. Berger and Steve Mitchell--is that's only a sanitized version with omissions and alternate scenes. Far less gritty.

That must be true. I remember a couple of cool set pieces and George Peppard's turn as down-on-his-luck private investigator P.J. Detweiler, but in re-watching, I see there's more blood and a few steamy scenes including a credits sequence that didn't ring any bells.

On the down side in rewatching, location filming mixes with sound stage footage, diminishing the set pieces a bit.

For much of the film, P.J.'s guarding Maureen Preble (Gayle Hunnicutt), mistress of Raymond Burr's eccentric millionaire William Orbison.

When a car's cut break line sends it speeding out of control as cut break lines were wont to do in P.I. films and TV shows of the era, P.J. has to stop it by side swiping a rock wall with sparks flying. The stunt still impresses, but this is all while he's pressing Maureen behind him. It's 1968 and not every car has seatbelts.

Things get exciting, but George and Gayle are obviously in a simulator if you're watching in 2K. That didn't detract for me in rewatching the out-of-control car in Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot a while back. Here I found the seams a distraction. 

The other great set piece comes when Orbison carts family and mistress alike to the Cayman Islands. Some exteriors look authentic, but the jungle chase and gun battle fixed in my memory was clearly on a well-designed set as well.

That's all a matter of watching with 2021 eyes in HD and not on an old black and white portable TV, I suppose. 

That's not to say the film's isn't a fun watch. It's surprisingly whimsical early on with an upbeat score and loopy behavior by skinflint Orbison. When not flaunting his mistress, he saves cigar stubs and worries about wasted office paper. 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Tony Rome AKA Miami Miami Mayhem - Early Sixties Private Eye

The film turns gritty and arguably gets better as a thriller at the midpoint. I don't remember a few flourishes from the tough side of the run time. 

In what today seems a non-PC turn, P.J.'s lured to a gay bar by Preble's stereotypically gay assistant (Severn Darden). It must have been viewed as a edgy variation on the requisite private eye beating in 1968. It definitely reveals American film's attitude toward LGBT characters at the time. Blake Edwards updating of Craig Stevens' hero Gunn (1967) featured a trans character, and Tony Rome (1967) and They Only Kill Their Masters (1972) would include lesbian characters, the latter's not too charitably treated.

The bar here is peopled with more gay stereotypes plus Anthony James, behind the counter once again following 1967's In the Heat of the Night. Everyone in the bar has sharp nails, heavy jewelry or belts with big buckles. All the better to pummel P.J. with, and they do in bloody fashion.

The other steam's delivered in a tame but risqué turn with P.J. and Preble on a pile of cash. 

Still more grit's served up in a subway battle, happily on location with no seams showing. It's a yikes even today.

A final confrontation is also shot on location with blazing guns, interesting angles, twists turns and other surprises. It ends things well.

By the way, you should watch for Susan St. James and Arte Johnson in small roles. 

Really P.J. is like watching two films, and as mentioned it gets better as the murderous conspiracy swirls. Don't except too much of the mystery plot. 

Remember it's not Tony Rome. It's definitely not Harper, but it's worth a look for private eye aficionados. 

Watch Instantly Watch: Wait Until You're Blindsided aka Penthouse North

Something's hidden in the apartment of a young blind woman, and dark criminal types turn up to look for it and glean any knowledge from her they can.

That's the plot of Wait Until Dark (1967), of course, based on the stage play of the same name by Frederick Knott who also penned the play that became Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder.

The premise gets an updating in both pace and timeframe in Blindsided aka Penthouse North, now streaming on Netflix with some airings on Lifetime as well. It's penned by David Loughery and directed by Joseph Ruben (Sleeping With the Enemy.)

In Wait Until Dark, the heroine is Audrey Hepburn, the MacGuffin a doll filled with heroin. Thugs led by Alan Arkin attempt a con game to finesse details such as the combination of a safe where the doll might be stored. Things progress to brutality. 

The brutality comes sooner in Blindsided. Michelle Monaghan is a photojournalist who's lost her sight to a suicide bomber while in Afghanistan. Three years after the incident, she's living happily with a significant other in an expensive Manhattan penthouse. 

It's more like the film I thought Wait Until Dark was going to be when I was a kid, before I saw it the first time. 

The original film is a slow burn. Arkin, Richard Crenna and Jack Weston trick Hepburn's husband into leaving then try to convince her he's involved in an affair and murder with the doll he brought home from a trip. It's the item that can time him to the whole matter, so she's urged to produce it, even though she doesn't know where it is.

Things turn brutal much quicker in Blindsided. Monaghan's Sara comes home from picking up the final touches for New Year's Eve to find her boyfriend dead. The thug that knifed him's still on the premises, and he's joined after a few twists by his boss, Michael Keaton, who's back in Pacific Heights territory. He seems like the more gentle of the two, but of course…

There's no con game, just an escalating effort to terrorize Sara until she reveals what she knows about money on the premises and more. Even a little water boardings worth a try.

It's a Wait Until Dark for our era, I suppose, with a punches contemporary audiences will appreciate, clocking in just under 90 minutes. 

There are still twists and turns, and a little does-she-know? or doesn't-she? mind play, with one moment of: "If she knew, why would she let that happen?" 

It's also interesting, if you're familiar with original, to see how Keaton and Company deal differently with issues Arkin's band tackled years ago. They're a little more heavy handed today.

Keaton's good , always love Keaton, but I think Arkin's twisted psychopath is still a little more chilling. 

Check both for yourself and see what you think. It might make for an interesting double bill on an evening at home.

The Advocate - A Twisty Script Shores Up an Indy Drama

(I received a free screener of The Advocate.)

The Advocate is a twisty little courtroom thriller with a ripped-from-the headlines case plus a dose of Dexter-style justice in the mix. It's an indy, and there's a look and feel of indyness to it that kind of makes you wish the filmmakers  had had a few more bucks for noir cinematography and production design, but if you focus on the core story, it's intriguing and well wrought.

Ray Shekar (Sachin Mehta) is an attorney whose fiancé was murdered just after he was able to buy their dream house. The loss has left him with a dark sense of justice.

His job may occasionally mean getting guilty offenders off, but he's not inclined to let the worst of the worst get away.


Enter Allyson Dougherty, played by Kristina Klebe of Rob Zombie's Halloween. She's the wife of a wealthy man who may or may not have been pushed off a cruise ship. Shekar's asked to represent her and to defend her if necessary.

It is. There's money involved. She was having an affair.  Ray has a challenge. Marshaling the forces of an assistant, his private investigator and a mock jury, he sets out to preserve Allyson's freedom, even as he wonders about her guilt and his own sense of absolute justice.

Oh, there are some nosey cops following him to keep his life complicated. Seems they're suspicious about Shekar's sleazy ex-client who's nowhere to be found.

As  an acquittal looks iffy, and Shekar allows himself to become enraptured with Allyson, he has tough decisions to make if he's going to be able to convince a jury she's not behind her husband's death. Just stressing that there's no body, doesn't seem to do the trick.

The story is the flick's strongest feature. It features a solidly crafted plot, and it uses Shekar's complex personality and back story to good effect.

Mehta is an interesting lead attorney as well. At times his delivery may seem a little flat, but overall he's a refreshingly atypical lead.

Yes, there's one obvious breech of courtroom procedure for dramatic purposes, but overall, the way the story's put together makes for a passable hour and a half or so, and surprises persist until the credits roll.

Return of the Wicker Man

Someone once asked why I thought The Wicker Man was so chilling. They seemed perplexed.

It can be hard to convey the deep chill of a psychological terror film to those who watch it passively without deeper contemplation of the story implications.

I think the chill comes in part because of the "it could really happen" feel. It's not ghosts but humans at the heart of the story, but it's also that disturbing notion that there are moments and places where the rules of contemporary society don't seem to apply.

It happens in brutal terms in Deliverance as city men inadvertently tread on the territory of grim others who don't appreciate their presence.

And it happens to Edward Woodward's Sgt. Howie in subtle then increasingly barbarous terms as he prowls an island in the Hebrides where strange practices seem to be in place. The old ways.

He grows increasingly nervous that a missing girl may be the subject of a sacrifice, but there's even more horror planned for the pious policeman.

I read first of the tale in an issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine because it is a tale of mystery and detection as well as horror.

It took a long time to finally get to see it since it didn't play in many theaters. I finally got to watch via satellite some time in the '80s, though it's made the cable rounds and can be had on DVD.

It's interesting to learn that lost footage is being restored and that the true director's cut will be making the theatrical rounds again soon.

I read about it probably in 1979. It's been a long wait. 

Watch Instantly Watch: Messages Deleted

It's not quite The Cabin in the Woods or Scream, but I recently ran across an interesting 2009 thriller with meta touches on Netflix.

Messages Deleted is from the pen of Larry Cohen, screenwriter for a host of memorable thrillers and B-movies including Q, Phone Booth, It's Alive and Captivity. 

Messages stars Matthew Lillard, Shaggy in the Scooby Doo films and now pretty much the voice of Shaggy in Scooby animated films. He's Joel Brandt, a screenwriting instructor and struggling screenwriter.

Things start to go awry when he discovers a message on his home answering machine from a guy with a gun to his head.

Soon, Joel's embroiled in the investigation of a string of murders that mirror movie cliches.

Of course he becomes a suspect, and of course he has to begin to unravel a puzzle that seems to tie his past to an escalating series of murders.

It has a lot of elements we've seen before, but Lillard's always interesting, and he's helped along by Deborah Kara Unger as a detective on the case and Gina Holden as a student and ally.

The body count rises, Brandt grows frantic and with the help of his student, he realizes the events seem to be reflecting a screenplay written by a former student.

Death implements of variable sorts, movie coverage talk and other mayhem unfurl before the reveal.

It's not quite stupendous, but it's an interesting exercise especially if you're a bit of a film buff.

Trailer Tuesday: Since Noon Yesterday

In following through on my look at Ed Noon and Michael Avallone, here's a slightly different Trailer Tuesday.

Toward the end of his career, Avallone wrote a final set of Ed Noon novels that took his hard boiled private eye in all new directions. He'd been a private eye, a spy and in the final novels, some unpublished, he faced an alien invasion.

His son, David Avallone, is a film maker, and he adapted the final books into a web film. I missed it on Atom Films or whichever short film site it debuted on. Happily now it's on My Space films, and below is the teaser or prelude.

Trailer Tuesday: Restraint With Stephen Moyer

I'm going to depart from book trailers this week to share a trailer for an interesting New Zealand flick I discovered via Netflix. It's an interesting three-character crime thriller with Stephen Moyer of "True Blood" as an agoraphobic.

It has a little bit of Shirley Jackson flavoring and reminds me a little of a tale called Half Broken Things by Morag Joss, which was made into a British TV movie. It's clever, dark and has lots of dark twists. It also stars Teresa Palmer of The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Tony Rome AKA Miami Miami Mayhem - Early Sixties Private Eye

This is obviously the movie-tie-in edition of Miami Mayhem by Marvin Albert, a Gold Medal writer who penned three adventures for Tony Rome. Two of those were filmed with Frank Sinatra. An adaptation of The Lady in Cement with Raquel Welch followed Tony Rome. That's Jill St. John on the cover below.

I bought this in a used shop I used to frequent called The Book Nook. A nice lady ran it for many years until she retired. She was robbed once, so she started locking her door and letting you into the shop only if she recognized you.

The reason I bought it stems in part from the prominence Jon Tuska gives the Tony Rome movies in his book The Detective in Hollywood, a great book on private eye movies.

Further reading

• The Thrilling Detective entry on Tony Rome

Cool Stuff To Watch Instantly: The Cry of the Owl

Patricia Highsmith is noted for a grim and unique outlook. Her recurring series character was not a detective hero but sociopathic killer Tom Ripley brought to life with dark charm by Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley. She's also famous for Hitcockian treatment in her queen-mother-of-misunderstandings tale, Strangers on a Train.

The Cry of the Owl, a 2009 film is based on a lesser-known Highsmith novel, but it's a great example as well of her dark perspective. It's available on Netflix Watch Instantly by way of Starz, which means it won't be streaming forever, so catch it while you can.

It's as twisty as it is dark, and it's wonderfully unusual. You haven't seen this before in quite this way.

The story focuses on Robert Forrester (Paddy Considine), who's going through a horrible divorce. He's left New York for a small town in presumably Pennsylvania where he works as a designer in an aeronautics firm.

In a chance glimpse, he catches the seemingly blissful Jenny Thierlof (Julia Styles) doing dishes. What he perceives as her happiness is comforting, so he returns to watch her, innocently and chastely from afar. Things like that never go well. Soon he's caught the attention of her boyfriend, Greg, and then of Jenny herself, who surprisingly invites him into her home.

Jenny believes in fate, romance and harbingers. Soon she's broken up with Greg and is pursuing connection with Robert, even as he struggles to disentangle him from his wife, a witch of twisty dimensions played wonderfully by Caroline Dhavernas. She comes into one arbitration meeting saying she's changed her mind and wants to make up before a "Just kidding."

Before long, a jealous Greg attacks Robert then disappears, and Robert's run of bad luck so far has been mild for what's ahead. Confusion, misunderstanding and terror ensue.

Adapted and directed by Jamie Thraves, the film is relentless in its realization of that Highsmith sensibility. It's not about crime and detection but about situations that spiral around strange characters.

It's very dark, but engrossing and a must for Highsmith fans.

See also
Earlier adaptation: Le cri du hibou

Movies Worth a Look: Dolan's Cadillac

I know everyone's probably way ahead of me, but if not, here's a flick to check out.

I haven't read the Stephen King short story Dolan's Cadilac from the Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection, but the title rang a bell a while back when the movie adaptation popped up as a Netflix recommendation. I added to my queue and settled in to watch it recently.

At first blush, the film looks like a standard issue crime drama. It centers on one of those happy middle class couples who run afoul of criminals. There's the intense Wes Bentley (Robinson), of American Beauty and Ghost Rider,  and Emmanuelle Vaugier, from the Saw movies and more. They're school teachers. She's trying to get pregnant.

Unfortunately, while horseback riding, Elizabeth (Vaugier) happens upon Dolan (Christian Slater) and his crime crew. They ride around in Dolan's black and ominous Caddy SUV.

Moving the plot
Dolan's chief criminal activity is smuggling young women for the sex trade. A failed ventilation system in a truck has caused deaths and leads to additional murders while Elizabeth is watching.

She's soon targeted by Dolan and his existential sidekick played by Greg Bryk, also of Saw films. Mild spoiler here: 

 They kill her, and the devastated husband sets out for revenge.

That's where the spoiling stops, and where the film, realizing what I suspect is the meat of the King source material takes off.

Soul searching, confrontation and the execution of an ingenious plan unfold with surprises and subtext that you don't find in routine crime dramas or many direct-to-video flicks.

Performances
Christian Slater is at his over-the-top best as Dolan, who's devilish and intelligent, and Bentley's capacity of deep darkness is perfectly utilized.

A couple of minor characters who play a role in Robinson's resurrection also add flavor, and Bryk's  complex lieutenant is much greater than a typical henchman walk-on.

Is it perfect? Meh. Is it without implausibility? Well no, but it's all well-executed and enriched by character and explorations of grief, torment and even spirituality.

If you're going in cold, it's particularly entertaining and probably worthwhile as a watch-instantly choice if you've read the story.

Watch the trailer below, but know it spoils some surprises before you click: 

Genre Oscars

I've seen more of the Best Picture nominees this year than in some time. I've been making a point of getting off the sofa more and hustling out to the theater. I try to do my part to encourage the making of more movies.

It's interesting how many films have at least a drop of genre juice on them this year.

The King's Speech and The Kids are All Right are more likely Oscar contenders--human dramas with strong performances. I saw both, and I liked both.

Speech is the movie I'm rooting for, in fact. It is an emotional journey, finding drama as it deals with small, intense human strife against a backdrop of war and political crisis. It examines the toll of leadership on the individual and illustrates the importance and the power of words and symbolism on the world stage at a time when such consideration is particularly relevant. 

The genre side

The films that fit the notion of genre flicks are exceptional examples and not to be dismissed, however. I think they really are some of the best films of the 2010. In a year where safe, cookie-cutter fare was offered up, they stretched boundaries.

There are certainly lessons for all writers in this year's slate, opportunities to examine the development of character and the exploitation of cliche or previous works or myths.

The most obvious of the genre group is Black Swan with it's horrific elements, which surprised many people I've talked to, including Christine who hasn't gone to a real horror movie with me since walking out on Warlock a few weeks after we went to The Silence of the Lambs.

 Black Swan is definitely a study in how to enrich a thriller with character and a dose of subtext. Themes drawn from the ballet, to me, balance perfectly with the delusions of the central character.

Winter's Bone is set up on a mystery chassis with a few horrific touches. It does one of the best jobs ever of creating a realistic rural.
universe, in which the poor aren't caricatures and the accents seem real.

It has the well-woven strands of a mystery plot, enriched by its snapshot of a culture and its strong heroine.

 The Move Westward
True Grit's a Western, of course, though one built from a literary novel. It really is a perfect adventure story, enhanced both by its use of arch types and its skewering of them. Mattie Ross is the precocious teen capable of outwitting adults, though she breaks the boundaries of Disney heroines easily, and Rooster Cogburn inverts the stalwart Western hero without sacrificing mythic acts.

Inception is the other genre entry, deceptively looking more like an epic thriller yet with a mind-bending labyrinth at it's core. It's still the more traditional in this mix, yet it stands out against the well-crafted but safe summer blockbusters that surrounded it last July. It was the one of the mix that made me want to go to the theater vs.waiting for the disk.

I enjoyed the set pieces including Joseph Gordon-Levitt's floating challenge more than the opportunities to interpret and re-interpret dream-within-a-dream possibilities, though I know those have been fun for some. I'm a Lost fan and apologist, but I'm not really up for multiple rehashes of  Inception. That's just me.

For a while, it looked like 2010 wasn't a great movie year, but, you know, looking back, maybe it was OK.

Netflix Noir

With cable/satellite channels increasingly becoming an interchangeable array of pointless reality programming, Netflix is increasingly my refuge when I find sofa time. Wait five minutes, and some films below might become unavailable, but as I write this, Netflix "Watch Instantly" has an array of film noir classics available for streaming.

Laura: One of my favorites, a true mystery with clever plot twists, based on a novel by Vera Caspary. Dana Andrews, who'd later cope with dark runes in the horror classic Night of the Demon, is the detective hero looking into the murder of the title character played by Gene Tierney. An also pre-horror Vincent Price rounds out the cast.

Experiment in Terror: A late-era noir and FBI procedural based on the novel by The Gordons, who also penned That Darn Cat. It's directed by Blake Edwards. Glen Ford is The Gordons' recurring Agent Rip Ripley, out to help bank teller Lee Remick thwart a psycho's push to force her help in embezzlement.

Elevator to the Gallows: French noir from Louis Malle, this is James M. Cain, Jim Thompson-style crime drama with the focus on scheming lovers and the slow unraveling of their perfect murder.

Gilda: Source of the iconic, Rita Hayworth hair-tossing moment, this is grand-style thriller with a young Glen Ford looking like Jake Gyllenhaal. Set in South America the tale revolves around double crosses in a casino and around a tungston mine.

The Dark Corner: Lucy before she was loved is secretary to a wrongly accused private eye. They have to solve a murder together before they can move on with their lives.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers: Van Heflin's the good guy. Barbara Stanwick's the femme fatale, and Kirk Douglas is a crooked D.A. When Heflin returns to the town, his potential knowledge of a years-old crime stirs trouble and complicates his romance with good-girl-with-a-criminal record Lizabeth Scott.

I Wake Up Screaming: Worthy for the camera work alone, Victor Mature and Betty Grable cope with a tough cop and a bum rap.

For the rental que: Detour, signature noir unfortunately requiring a disk from Netflix though free on archive.org. Directed by The Black Cat's brilliant Edward G. Ulmer on a real shoe string, this stars Tom Neal as a traveller with a sad tale of a dark encounter with misunderstanding and an exploitive blackmailer.

Chinatown: The Stones in Jake's Path

A look at obstacles and motivations in the Chinatown screenplay

This is one of several analysis pieces done as part of my MFA work. I thought it might be of some worth to anyone interested in writing, movies, mysteries and things in that vein.

Chinatown’s hero, Jake Gittes, notes in the Robert Towne screenplay that he is a businessman. It is that primary view of himself that draws him deeper and deeper into the complex plot and dangerous situations, and it affects the way he deals with the obstacles or stones that come his way.

For most of his journey, obstacles occur in the form of deception, bureaucracy and a few violent physical confrontations, yet almost every obstacle is eventually transformed into an impetus that propels the protagonist further toward truth if not victory, for in the end the last obstacle is insurmountable.

The Opening Scene
When the screenplay reader meets him, Jake is in the midst of an adultery case that his spiritual predecessors such as Philip Marlowe or even the more pragmatic Sam Spade might not have touched, and, as it plays out, a hint of Jake’s cynicism is revealed. Only the rich, he tells his blue-collar client who is contemplating a crime of passion, can get away with murder. It is a line not included in the film, yet it reverberates thematically through the entire story.

Since adultery cases are Jake’s specialty, he is chosen to unwittingly manipulate water department engineer Hollis Mulwray into cooperation with a plan to re-route water to the San Fernando Valley for financial gain. Embarking on what he thinks is just another adultery case, Jake begins trailing what he believes to be a straying spouse. In the process of this surveillance, Jake observes the first elements of the plot’s core conspiracy.

Professional embarassment
When Jake discovers his client to be an impostor, he is professionally embarrassed and is introduced to the real wife, Evelyn Mulwray. Initially incensed that he has pursued her husband, she soon becomes Jake’s new client and pushes him further into his examination of the conspiracy once her husband is murdered. The death robs Jake of information Mulwray might have provided, but serves up a reason for him to continue.

The Nose Scene
Inevitable physical confrontation comes soon after. Jake endures a water diversion that’s part of the conspiracy, then is confronted by a pair of thugs operating on behalf of the corrupt water department. They attempt to warn him off with the cutting of his nostril, but the moment is another that fails to push him away. Instead the confrontation confirms the water department’s impropriety and continues to embolden and drive Jake forward as he seeks not just professional exoneration but also a businessman’s payday, bragging he will identify the key players and sue them.

As Jake unravels the public works conspiracy, traversing a variety of obstacles using guile or tricks of his trade, he is pushed even deeper into the story’s real and tragic domestic situation and the encounter with the true villain, Julian Cross. (The character is named Noah on screen.)
Just as his false client deceived him, Jake learns Evelyn has concealed the truth about her daughter born of incest, whom she is attempting to guard from her Cross, her father. When he finally learns the truth, Jake is driven to help her.

At odds with the police
He is put at odds with the police and his former friend as he attempts to assist Evelyn and her daughter escape, creating a ticking clock situation as the story moves toward its conclusion, even as Jake identifies Cross as Mulwray’s killer and the man behind the water department conspiracy, the spot a mystery normally might end and where a degree of concluding satisfaction in the story is found. At least answers are available.

Inadvertently and ironically, Jake—when his motivation ceases to be about only business and returns to a lost idealism—sends Evelyn to her doom. He is repeating a similar incident that occurred when he tried helping someone while working as an investigator in Chinatown. Cross, who is wealthy enough to get away with murder, gets the daughter/granddaughter while the police who are owned by Cross push Jake away.

Jake’s operatives remind him they’re in Chinatown, symbolically the place where the authorities look the other way, where he failed before, and like Chinatown the universe is a place where corruption is so interwoven it cannot be conquered. It’s a truth established in the opening pages. Since the final obstacle in his path cannot be changed or conquered, in the end Jake can only walk way.

Paul Newman is Gone

A couple of headlines just hit me on my Google home page, announcing the death of Paul Newman, and I'm having to wipe away a tear or two, not something you usually do with the word of a celebrity death.

Newman certainly was one of the finest film actors to achieve star status. He played characters on screen, not always himself, and I've always admired his altruism as well. I've had his fair trade coffee a lot of mornings, doused a lot of salads with his salad dressings and downed a lot of his chocolate cookies. I have also witnessed the handiwork of checks from Newman's Own benefiting charities in my community.

He's also, always kind of defined Lew Archer for me because I was introduced to the Ross MacDonald detective series because of the movie tie-in edition of The Drowning Pool in which Newman re-created his portrayal of Lew Harper. The name change came about when the first Archer novel, The Moving Target was being adapted and Newman wanted to follow the success of Hud and Hombre with another H title. The Moving Target became Harper, and the later Twilight was really kind of an Archer/Harper movie w/out the name.

It's a sad day on many fronts.

Office Party

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Manly Concepts

Charles suggested--and Kate seconded, I think-- that a great high concept idea might be a battle between Wayne and Stewart.

My thoughts first went to a horror pairing a la Freddy vs. Jason, but then it occurred to me that Wayne and Stewart are from Chicago and Detroit.

Of course it would be a manly action picture. Two fierce competitors squaring off. Two men enter, one man leaves and all that.

Click the pic for a larger view.
(I know, I could have spent more time on the faces, but that wouldn't be as much fun would it?)

(No rights to original image implied.)

Whysoserious.com - Out the corner of my eye

I don't have anyone on the ground at Comicscom in San Diego, but from the corner of my eye I'm watching the activity on whysoserious.com, a promo for the new Batman Movie.

An "I Want You" poster featuring Heath Ledger as the Joker appeared this morning with cooridnates of where to go for a big henchperson recruitment gathering.

Commonreview.com is steadily solving and posting clues and they do have people on the ground.

Is this viral marketing or something beyond? Any way you slice it, it's COOL!

(No rights to image implied.)

The Zodiac Character Actor's Game

Zodiac is not just a compelling procedural about the hunt for one of America's most frightening serial killers.

It's also an interesting opportunity to play "name that character actor." Clearly David Fincher's casting budget allowed him to draw on the cream of the supporting player crop, so if you go to the movie, see if you can spot:

• The guy who played the library cop in Seinfeld.
• The guy who played the priest in The Sopranos.
• The guy who played the original Hannibal Lecter. (The original original, not Anthony Hopkins who was replaced by Gaspard Ulliel)
• That guy from ER.
• That guy who shot House.
• That guy who played Drew Carey's brother.
• That girl who was the cop on Heroes.
• Chandler's crazy replacement roommate from Friends.
• Ernie from My Three Sons.
• The guy from Young Guns who wasn't Kiefer Sutherland or Lou Diamond Phillips.
• The guy who had small pox in Deadwood.
• That guy who was Carvelli in Welcome Back, Kotter.

And for bonus points can you spot Candy Clark?

A little noir on my wall

Christine and I spent a good bit of time browsing Cody's Books in San Francisco when we were there in the fall.

She secretly purchased a calendar for me, a compilation of mostly French film noir posters.

I suppose it's appropriate that many are French since they gave us the term film noir. I suppose it's also a great San Francisco gift. If San Francisco isn't the city film noir calls home, it's at least a renter there.

The Maltese Falcon, Dark Passage and a host of others are set in the city by the bay.

I put it up in my office at my day job. Adds an extra splash of color across the room from the Doctor Who poster.

Looks like for the month of January, a green Orson Wells as Harry Lime will be peering over my shoulder as I work, and The Big Sleep, Psycho (not sure I agree with that one as film noir), Little Caesar and I Love Trouble are coming in the months ahead.

Too bad my office isn't across the street from a building with a neon sign.

(My calendar, in case you want one, is officially the Black Cinema Noire calendar from Tushita.com.)

Hills Have Rs

I was reading on Comingsoon.net via Empire about the efforts to earn an R rating for the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. One long and brutal scene has so far garnered an NC-17.

I was prompted to check out the Internet Movie Database entry on the film, due in 2006, and I discovered a message board entry -- no more lightweight PG-13 horror movies, someone celebrated. Here's a back to basics terrorfest.

360 degrees
The world's done another 360 again. Back in the '80s people were singing laments about the feeling that horror films had to be R-rated and spiced with gore. The economics of general audiences changed that more than a desire to create atmospheric art.

Some horror films need to be R or NC-17 . I'm all for a new "Hills" being as gory as it wants to be.

But I do love quiet scares too, and sometimes those are the best.

The Others with its eerie twists.

The Village with its lurking fears.

The Haunting with its unseen ghosts and loud noises.

The Univited with its ghostly seaside mansion.

Hey, it's all good.