American audiences remember Akira Kurosawa as the genius of the samurai epic, a past master who used the form both to revise and revive Western classics - Shakespeare with Ran and Throne of Blood, Dostoevsky with Red Beard and The Idiot, Gorky with The Lower Depths - and to give splendid and ultimately immortal life to new archetypes, as in The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo. But Kurosawa also made films of his own time. His masterpiece, in fact, was the quiet story of a gray Japanese bureaucrat dying in post-war Tokyo, and of his attempt to do something of lasting good before he leaves. The film is Ikiru ("To Live"; 1952).
posted on Jan 29, 2008 - View this thread

"But, it's a post on film noir!" I told her. She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me. I knew that caving into my desires meant I might lose her. But I didn't care. I went out to the kitchen to make coffee -- yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. I knew she'd be back.
posted on Jan 11, 2008 - View this thread

The Unsung Joe: Where bit-part actors go when they die. Biographies of the most obscure micro-stars of 1940s and '50s cinema, all remarkably well-researched and richly illustrated.
posted on Dec 11, 2007 - View this thread

Where's an egg? Psuedo-Russian noir wumpus action. Confused? Consider bidding on the only copy of the instructions in existence. Need a break? Check out some other fine titles from completely made up game company Videlectrix.
posted on Jul 17, 2007 - View this thread

Bangkok artist Chris Coles has been called Thailand's Toulouse Lautrec. His neon colored potraits capture Bangkok's underside in a way that cuts right to the center of it's seamy heart. He even catches the city's dogs. The Bangkok Noir movement includes not only painting but literature also.
posted on Mar 12, 2007 - View this thread

Some of you may have seen the feature film Brick; I thought it one of the best of the year and among the better debuts I've seen in a long time. Writer-Director Rian Johnson offers up the shooting script and original novella for free on his site. Fun for fans of noir, high school flicks, or MeFites gaggle of screenwriters.
posted on Oct 2, 2006 - View this thread

A Dozen Eccentric Westerns, Ten Neglected Science Fiction Movies, and Ten Overlooked Noirs selected by Jonathan Rosenbaum. A follow-up to an earlier post on offbeat musicals.
posted on Sep 8, 2006 - View this thread

Madison Man is no longer John Doe. If you read the article noting every occurrence of the word "Madison" and how each differs from the others you'll see why I find this nifty. (I think they'll eventually decide it was suicide.)
posted on Oct 19, 2005 - View this thread

San Francisco in Film Noir. Conversation with Nathaniel Rich, associate editor of the Paris Review and author of San Francisco Noir.
posted on Sep 16, 2005 - View this thread

For lovers of the hard-boiled crime story, life began with the black bird. It's a tale of greed and a wisecracking gumshoe. The femme fatale is a liar. The object of the hero's search is a statuette of a falcon. Published exactly 75 years ago on Valentine's Day, Dashiell Hammett's private-eye novel "The Maltese Falcon"' immediately won critical acclaim. And when it was made into a 1941 movie starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre (and directed by a rookie), Hammett's story found a worldwide audience and his hero, Sam Spade, became a household name. Now, three-quarters of a century later, that's still the case. More inside.
posted on Feb 14, 2005 - View this thread

Have you heard of Will Christopher Baer? He writes twisty, noir fiction. His trilogy of Phineas Poe books (Kiss Me, Judas, Penny Dreadful, and Hell's Half Acre) have just been re-released, and Kiss Me, Judas was optioned for a movie. (more inside)
posted on Jan 26, 2005 - View this thread

Remember the Noir Genius Exam? Wanna know the the answers?
posted on Jan 7, 2005 - View this thread

More than starwars kid...check out the dangerzone. Some kids from the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science have been winning local film awards with their movie Noir, but I prefer Dangerzone (on the same site as Noir). Their webpage isnt too shabby either.
posted on Dec 17, 2004 - View this thread

bowling noir! exactly what it sounds like. i found this while googling for a succinct definition of film noir, and this was too funny to resist. dig the altered picture of rita hayworth and the music clip, man.
posted on Apr 7, 2002 - View this thread