#American film noir crime film

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

[scenephile]

It attracts mosquitos and repels men.

[mariocki]

The Web (1947)

"Isn't there some way we can get together on this?"

"Oh, sure. You confess and I'll arrest you."

[brokehorrorfan]

American Gigolo will be released on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray on June 18 via Arrow Video. Tommy Pocket designed the new cover art fort the 1980 neo-noir crime drama; the original poster is on the reverse side.

Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Hardcore) writes and directs. Richard Gere stars with Lauren Hutton, Bill Duke, Héctor Elizondo, Frances Bergen, and Carol Bruce.

American Gigolo has been newly remastered in 4K from the original negative with Dolby Vision and original mono, stereo and 5.1 audio options. A double-sided poster, six art cards, and a booklet are included.

Special features are listed below, where you can also see the full packaging.

Special features:

Audio commentary by film critic Adrian Martin (new)

Interview with writer-director Paul Schrader (new)

Interview with actor Héctor Elizondo (new)

Interview with actor Bill Duke (new)

Interview with editor Richard Halsey (new)

Interview with camera operator King Baggot (new)

Interview with music supervisor Dan Wilcox (new)

Interview with Professor Jennifer Clark on the fashion landscape of the '80s (new)

Original trailer

Image gallery

Also included:

Double-sided fold-out poster

6 postcard-sized art cards

Booklet featuring new writing by Neil Sinyard, an archival article by Bill Nichols, and original pressbook materials

In a world of wealth and desire, high-end male escort Julian Kay (Richard Gere) offers his love and attention to women in need. But when a client, the wife of a sadistic finance magnate, is found dead, all eyes turn to Julian as the prime suspect. Realizing he’s being framed, Julian races to prove his innocence, determined to unravel the mystery behind the setup. As he digs deeper into the case, he embarks on a journey that forces him to confront his own identity.

Pre-order American Gigolo.

[valerieandherweekofwonderz]

Florence Marly in Tokyo Joe (1949) dir. by Stuart Heisler.

[timmurleyart]

R.I.P. to the phenomenal Ray Liotta. Who gave us one of the all time G.O.A.T performances in cinema history in one of the greatest films ever. You will be missed. 🎥💀🪓🩸🔪🔨

[theaskew]

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

THE ART DIRECTION OF APOCALYPSE NOIR ON FULL DISPLAY -- THE GRAPHIC DESIGN IS WHITE-HOT!

PIC(S) INFO: Mega spotlight on the art direction and/or graphic design behind Robert Aldrich's apocalyptic noir/thriller, "Kiss Me Deadly," released by the Criterion Collection as Spine #568 on June 21, 2011.

OVERVIEW: "When The Criterion Collection asked me to design the packaging for the great Robert Aldrich noir, "Kiss Me Deadly," they had a particular direction in mind. They wanted to present the lurid and sensational detective picture in the style of one of that era's counterparts, the lurid and sensational detective magazine.

A natural combo. I was only too happy to oblige.A few days latter they sent a terrific volume featuring covers -- and a few spreads too -- from "Inside Detective Magazine," "True Detective Magazine," "True Police Detective Magazine," you name it. Almost all were from the mid 1950s.

The best of them, I think, belongs to Dell's "Inside Detective." Their covers were stark and immediate --often just two-color, though occasionally three. Their frequent use of the all-American Franklin Gothic presses just the right tabloid button. This was quality sleaze. 

These are some my initial sketches which lead to the finished cover."

-- F. RON MILLER (Los Angeles-based art director/graphic designer)

Source: www.fronmiller.com/fron-miller/2011/06/kiss-me-deadly.html.

[rhobi]

i recommend people watch movies from other cultures because when i saw a post-war noir crime thriller from japan years ago, there was a short scene of a man crumpled in the dirt, absolutely wailing and inconsolable about the murder of his wife and now i can’t watch any american films where a slightly ruffled, lightly misty eyed man tries to convince you that he’s upset that his wife’s dead

[don-lichterman]

Too Late for Tears aka Killer Bait (1949) | Full Movie with Lizabeth Scott & Don DeFore

Too Late for Tears aka Killer Bait (1949) | Full Movie with Lizabeth Scott & Don DeFore

A 1949 film noir directed by Byron Haskin, starring Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Dan Duryea, and Arthur Kennedy 🎦 Through a fluke circumstance, a ruthless femme fatale stumbles across a suitcase filled with $60,000, and is determined to hold onto it at all cost. @FEATURE FILM channel offers a wide range of full length movies, which provide great entertainment for the whole family. On our channel…

[ceasarslegion]

Ive made my stance on oppenheimer discourse very clear but one detail of it that really bothers me is the "movies about sad white men are always bad" attitude, and i didnt really know why until i was able to sit down and parse it out.

Here's the thing. I have a film degree, I've spent more time in movie theaters than I have sleeping and I've easily seen more films and shows than all of my peers combined. Which isn't a flex btw, I'm a little hermit who prefers the warm embrace of a cinema seat to human connection and is the most annoying mfer imaginable during family movie night; don't be like me.

But I know hollywood, I know cinema history, and I know the legitimate frustration this attitude comes from. Hollywood doesn't like to take risks, they have to historically be dragged kicking and screaming into any territory that isn't a guaranteed profit, which usually means that we get periods of stagnation where every film is the same goddamn formula over and over again until audiences get sick of it and stop buying tickets en masse. Hollywood also tends to reflect the dominant culture and the sociopolitical issues of the time, but not SOOO much that you'd rock the boat. As an exec, you wanna hit that sweet spot where audiences relate to your films without them being so blatant that they'd cause them to question things that weren't acceptable to question. Noir was a picture-perfect example of that.

And in the modern day, that DOES tend to translate into the weird genre of Sad White Man Who Regrets Killing Foreigners movies. Like American Sniper. But I've seen American Sniper, so I can speak on how lowkey disturbing I found it, and the history it's based in and the goals it had as an art piece were to make you sympathize with a system of corruption. And here's my unpopular opinion: if done RIGHT, those films still have a place within the cinematic sphere of influence, like if you made a film exploring the psyche and experiences of what leads a man to willingly participate in a system like that, but that's not really what it was.

Now let's move onto Oppenheimer and other films like it. I don't think these films are at ALL equivalent to films like American Sniper, even if they follow a sad white man who regrets killing foreigners. You are looking at the bare bones surface level of it and assuming its contents both real world and dramatized and judging it based on that instead of the, well, actual film.

One of the biggest differences here is that Oppenheimer WAS an important historical figure just, objectively. Even removing all western racial influence from the equation, you can not look me in the eyes and tell me that the man who invented the atomic bomb in the middle of the largest world war of modern history was not an important historical figure. If you try to make THAT argument just based on the sad white man-ness of him, I'm sorry but your point is already moot, because it's not based in historical fact anymore but your own personal subjective feelings. He IS an important historical figure, he's not soldier number 648 in the middle of a massive battlefield who followed other peoples orders.

And also to be completely honest, you are a huge fucking liar if you try to claim that people like Dr. Oppenheimer are not interesting. Flawed people who make flawed decisions with complicated variables are what make for good fiction, so when one exists in the historical record, of course they are going to interest people. They are going to be studied and interviewed if they're still alive and have their entire lives and every word they said picked apart and analyzed because they are interesting. You are straight up lying if you try to act like these people arent interesting enough on their own to have media made about them, regardless of what identity they had that fits into the opposing side of the 21st centure culture wars. This attitude reminds me a lot of the people who claim that the only reason anybody could find true crime interesting is because they MUST want to fuck jeffrey dahmer or whatever. The argument just doesnt hold up because all it takes is one person going "thats not what i find interesting about them" to collapse that entire absolutist argument.

So yes, hollywood absolutely has a racism and war glorification issue. But I take issue when these accusations are just made blindly against any historical dramatization based on nothing but the poster. If you're going to talk about hollywoods sad white men issue, at least make sure the films youre citing actually fit that bill AND that you actually understand whats WRONG with those sad white men movies, because its not just the presence of a sad white male protagonist, its a conglomerate of various sociopolitical issues that must be present within those characters and what they represent.

[looptroupe]

HI GORGEOUS!!!!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TELL US ABOUT YOUR WIPS AND AUS IM REALLY INTERESTED 🙏🙏🙏

Foams at the mouth

I’m in the middle of writing up a whole HC post for someone asking about a highschool AU but I’m gonna take this opportunity to sidetrack the conversation towards something I’d love to genuinely see from the series… a HEAVY (film) noir lean. Think: Bogart, Framed, Gilda, Vertigo… probably pushing the era back 40’s, 50’s way (Maybe even some 30’s lean in there, if I could get away with it) instead of the general 60’s vibe Lupin has going for it.

I think there’s a TON of potential there. I mean, I’m aware something like this was pitched (and never picked up, sigh…) so there IS sentiment there, and the idea has been thought about, but instead of TWCFM’s ‘serious Lupin’ I’d love to see a true noir ‘serious Lupin’. I think you can put these characters into a serious setting without making them straight up evil, and I’ll be honest, I think it would be way more appealing than the stuff they’ve been releasing lately (besides Zero. I have to admit that I loved Zero).

I’d want the gang to actually feel like criminals, though. Cutting shady deals in illegal bars, Lupin running his mouth to big players about whatever new heist he has up his sleeve. I’d take them back to being Miyazaki-esque ‘living paycheck-to-paycheck’ rather than ‘insta-rich Lupin funding his hedonistic spirit’ because I think that would work better in this universe: Lupin is constantly getting them in hot shit with the big leagues because he can’t keep his mouth shut. Jigen has shot ten guys this week who have come knocking at their hideout’s door looking for trouble. Goemon’s sick of digging graves and is antsy to finally be who he dreams of being. Fujiko’s got her eyes on a bigger prize, like always.

Zenigata’s an underpaid beat-cop-turned-inspector who has been trying to climb the ranks for a long while. He’s ambitious, but a little too soft for his own good: he’s hopeful in a way that most of the guys in his squad aren’t, and that makes him the perfect candidate for when the commissioner has to shill a shitty 9-5 case on an unsuspecting worker. A file lands on his desk, and he flips through it with this eager fire, like he’s just been asked to take on the world, and Lupin and his gang smile up at him from the pages.

Lupin is a crook, he learns. Part-time petty thief, full-time smooth-talker: a man with a legacy to live up to and not a whole lot to show for it besides a reputation as a lady-killer and a particularly long unpaid tab at the seediest bar in town. His sticky fingers have landed him in more trouble than they’ve gotten him out of, and recent reports say that he’s managed to get under the skin of the most notorious once-criminal-now-film-director in town… the very criminal that underhandedly paid Zenigata’s boss to start an official investigation in the first place.

Jigen is a gun-for-hire. Babysitter, bodyguard, hitman… whatever you need, he’ll do, however begrudgingly. He’s not a guy you mess with: and his reputation is actually pretty good in criminal circles. He’s well-respected and well-liked. Or, he was, until the monkey-faced man at the bar implicated him in a crime he didn’t commit. Now, he’s babysitting without pay, and he’s starting to get a little sick of having to put bullets into the faces of old friends who decide his bounty is worth more than his loyalty. Figures.

Goemon’s a man slightly-less-out-of-time. A famous Japanese-American film star, he’s known world-over for starring in Samurai flicks alongside his leading lady, Fujiko Mine. The thing is, Goemon is classically trained in swordslinging, and when Lupin offers him an opportunity to be the very person he’s been portraying on screen, he’s more than happy to throw his reputation away. He never cared much for fame, anyway. There’s just this one little hitch: he’s enamoured with the sword he last used on set, and he won’t take no for an answer when he asks Lupin to retrieve it for him.

Fujiko has her eyes on a prize a little more exciting than Zantetsuken: the film empire she’s helped build herself. The tabloids can’t get enough of her, and she knows that a marriage to the most famous director the world has ever seen might just secure her a place in history. The thing is, the man she’s trying her best to seduce has stopped paying her attention since his beloved priceless-antique-turned-prop-sword went missing, and she’s determined to get it back for him. Because what would make him fall quicker? Ah, there’s just one catch: Lupin is kind of charming, and the life he’s living is… exciting. Tempting. Fujiko likes playing with fire, but she’s starting to get a little too close to this one particular flame. The heat has her cheeks burning… Or maybe that’s Goemon’s doing.

They’re a strange little bunch, the Lupin Gang. But man, do people have a habit of underestimating them. Zenigata included. Because what he thinks to be a simple case of theft soon turns into something more sinister as the layers of movie-magic veneer begin to peel away. Maybe Lupin was onto something, targeting this guy, and maybe this hotshot director isn’t quite as reformed as he says he is.

He went to court recently, after all. Say, how much did he pay the judge to overturn that guilty verdict? Zenigata would like that sum as a pay rise once this has all blown over. That, and some fresh smokes.

((Mmm someone should hop on board and help me develop this I think. Could be a fun little exercise on the side… if it’s up anyone’s alley >:) ))

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesdaypost year in review

this year brought to you by viewers like you. thank you! i still do not know how to thank everyone for their incredible generosity during the Late July/Early August Moving Catastrophe Badtimes and im still feelin some kinda way about it. thank you.

took eight weeks completely off, more than any other year so far

overnight traveled for work for the first time

moved cross country with Mack to face dangers untold and hardships unnumbered

bought an actual for-real couch and not a futon

got Phil

(unrelated to Phil) i got spayed after almost ten years of begging and pleading various medical professionals, (also unrelated) got covid and RSV back to back

listening

fallow weeks: 8. i almost always have a tuesdaysong bc i am almost always listening to something. all of the tuesdaysongs are here:

particular favorites were Peel Me A Grape (Anita O’Day), top spotify song of the year Yeah Yeah Yeah (Blood Orchid), Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Wolf remixed by Sextile, Father Finlee (Spence Hood), A Minha Menina (Os Mutantes).

the very last tuesdaysong of the year is Sugar Rum Cherry by Duke Ellington, one of the few christmas songs i tolerate.

special shoutout to the austin underscore walker universe of podcasts, bc i mainlined A More Civilized Age (clone wars/star wars rewatch) while packing, and devoured P/alisade (the newest scifi season of F/riends at the Table) this month.

-

reading

fallow weeks: 11. pleased that i am killing the invisible rules in my head and including more articles instead of feeling guilty about Not Reading A Real Book!!! every week when i sit down to write the tuesdaypost. read a fuckton earlier this year bc i was procrastinating moving prep, have not read much since i moved.

article sources:

inoreader (the best free RSS feed/app imo)

The Markup (gold standard usage of data to show how various technologies are being used to harm the public good: you may have heard of the recent American bills to equalize internet service and fix organ donation grift. that was them)

Web 3 Is Going Just Great (crypto disasters)

404 Media (technology reporting, internet culture, also break a lot of data/legal/privacy scandals)

Remap (formerly Vice's video games division Waypoint, more active on podcasts and twitch but do have great personal essays about gaming longreads)

Retraction Watch (an important academic service but platformed a particularly virulent transphobe and let the comments devolve into a free for all. yes im still mad about this)

Krebs on Security (~once a month extremely long and thoughtful infosec writeups)

Data Colada (cover academic data whoopsies, currently being sued for their journalism)

the two authors i spent the most time with this year were Alexis Hall (romance novels and novellas) and Raymond Chandler's noir detective novels. i read 90% of Raymond Chandler's work in march and went insane about yet another sad bisexual man. Philip Marlowe the cat is named after his pet detective, the human Philip Marlowe.

march was kind of a banger for this category bc in one of what i consider the best tuesdayposts this year, i tried to break down why i fucking hated Frank Miller's Sin City comics so much.

other comics, but ones i loved: Spy X Family, Berserk, weird noir DC miniseries The Human Target.

-

watching

fallow weeks: 10

notable stuff i watched for the first time (according to letterboxd) that will stick in my head for a bit. some (The Night of the Hunter) i am so glad i watched once but do not feel the need to revist. some (Slipstream) fascinate me with how good they could have been. some (Twilight. all of them) were fun bc of the people i watched them with. the two i went particularly deranged over are The Big Sleep and Day of Anger. still feel very normal about them.

very heavy on crime and courtroom films this year!

television: very excited for s2 of Blue Eye Samurai, Interview With The Vampire, Spy X Family.

i should loop back and finish Black Lagoon, Adventure Time (completely forgot i rewatched most of that this spring), and The Big O. that last one is throwing me a little bc (since i last checked) there is no freely available version with subtitles (i cannot find subtitles Period) and i'll be damned if i have to import a dvd. i can find the dub with subtitles but! i want to hear spike spiegel as mecha-batman :(

sort of lukewarm eh-i'll-get-around-to-it about s/tar wars shows. i have not watched a/hsoka At All or wrapped up the animated Resistance show. i'll pay attention when ando/r is airing again.

-

playing

fallow weeks: 10. way fewer than i would have guessed!

the trouble with this category is that it is exceptionally hard to find new good games (either ones i already own or ones that are free). it is almost completely prohibitively exhausting to trawl through the free category on steam. there's simply a lot of cruft out there. a very good thing (but also incredibly timeconsuming thing) i started this year was throwing games into various folders so the eight bajillion libraries i have are less overwhelming. i can safely ignore 80% of my epic games library, for example. the itch.io library is a whole separate weekend project i think.

got back into genshin for good or for ill, which took up most of the back half of the year.

go play ABZU. i am no longer asking.

i would like to go back and finish the RPG Gamedec, un-softblock myself in the RPG Weird West, and finish the visual novel Dead Man's Rest. i think i stalled out in Call of Juarez: Gunslinger bc there was a mexican standoff that my reflexes are simply not fast enough for/too much to pay attention to. i am excited to pick up that spooky fishing simulator DREDGE when i have fun money again.

completely forgot i spent most of jan/feb/march being annoyed at fallou/t 4 but having some fun in Far Harbor, also forgot i spent an entire month playing through Wolfenstein: The New Order but i am not compelled to play through it again. it was fun! but like many games after one playthrough my time with it is done!

-

making

fallow weeks: 17 (unsurprising, pretty low energy year as a whole as i recovered from covid rounds 1 and 2 and the frankly insane stress of moving).

wrote exactly one fic: some matters at the heart of cowboy western snap shirts: why they are so and some of the implications of their being so, i would like to write more next year but i don't really have the brainpower. i hope this changes soon.

the baby blanket i started last year is still not done but the baby is still under a year so i have a very narrow window of time.

dyed some couch covers im still very pleased with

wrote an extremely long but very well received gallery wall guide

recipes: 12. sort of shocked by this? i am becoming an incrementally better cook and slowly finding recipes i both like and can successfully execute. found the fortitude to caramelize onions, for example. quick pickled red onions, for another thing. big year for protein or greens on top of beans and rice. faves included: cuban-style pork shoulder, hellofresh peruvian chicken, red lentil soup, white bean/kale/rice bowls

i would like to be less terrified about cooking fish. i would like to eat more fish.

and of course, the biggest project of all, acquired Phil. here is my very favorite photo ive ever taken of a cat

[brokehorrorfan]

Le Samouraï will be released on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray on July 9 via The Criterion Collection. Polly Dedman designed the new cover art for 1967 French neo-noir crime thriller.

Known in English as The Samurai, the film is written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon, and Cathy Rosier star.

Le Samouraï has been newly restored in 4K with HDR and uncompressed mono sound. Special features are listed below.

Special features:

Interviews with writer-director Jean-Pierre Melville and actors Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon, and Cathy Rosier

Interviews with Melville on Melville editor Rui Nogueira and Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris author Ginette Vincendeau

Melville-Delon: D’honneur et de nuit - 2011 short documentary exploring the friendship between writer-director Jean-Pierre Melville and actor Alain Delon

Trailer

Booklet with an essay by film scholar David Thomson, an appreciation by filmmaker John Woo, and excerpts from Melville on Melville

Alain Delon stars as Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him.

Pre-order Le Samouraï.

[romanceyourdemons]

I'm asking you about film noir

awesome. when a lot of people talk about noir tropes, noir detectives and femme fatales etc, they’re imagining philip marlowe on a dark night in a city that never sleeps. which isn’t completely inaccurate, there are films noir with philip marlowe, they’re just films adapted directly from philip marlowe novels. these gumshoe detective tropes originate in the hard boiled novels of raymond chandler and others, which are an influence on the film noir genre, but not the only or even, i would argue, the strongest influence. after all, the protagonists of many noirs are not detectives but criminals. other influences on the genre include pre-code gangster films and german expressionist films, and, like these films, many noirs do not follow chandler in depicting a seedy world irremediably steeped in crime. rather, like rico in little caesar (1931) and the doorman in the last laugh (1924), many noir protagonists expect, demand, and even briefly have within their grasp a life of postwar prosperity and domesticity—but the path they take to try and claim it for themself slingshots them into a spiral of deception and destruction. some films, such as double indemnity (1944) and the postman always rings twice (1946), the protagonist becomes trapped in a deadly whirlpool of crimes begetting crimes, whereas others, such as detour (1945) and you only live once (1937), show one crime as being more than enough. in the third man (1945) and the stranger (1946), the crimes are war crimes, and in night of the hunter (1955) and shadow of a doubt (1943) the criminal invades and superimposes himself atop the coveted world of the white picket fence. additionally, many femmes fatale, rather than being career criminals, are or want to be housewives—they just demand to be a housewife to a wealthier man, or to make love to a young and handsome man to compensate for the dullness of their prosperous husband. but perhaps the key difference between genres is that, unlike the gumshoe detective who slouches off into the night to solve another crime another day, most films noir between underworld (1927) and north by northwest (1959) follows a single tragic figure from his cadillac dreams to his wretched end by the wayside. that is the spirit of the classics of film noir: a man takes a bolt cutter to the gates of the american dream, but finds that the lock bleeds, and the bolt cutters cut back