Posted on by mwhybark

… And the Dame, Too.

A wave of film noir is due on DVD shortly, hurrah!

From the Wikipedia link above:

Film noir tends to feature characters trapped in a situation (often a situation not of their making) and making choices out of desperation. Frequent themes are murder, betrayal, and infidelity. Films noirs tend to include dramatic shadows and stark contrast (a technique called low-key lighting).

Ahh, that’s the stuff. Wikipedia crosslinks to a title list. Noirfilm is a sort of noir-lovers’ co-op. Classic Noir digs a bit deeper than the box sets below. The site encourages browsers to pull a fast one, and check out a random film.

TCM (and Warner) is releasing a beautifully-designed box set soon, with “Murder, My Sweet,” “The Set-Up,” “Out of the Past,” “Gun Crazy,” and “The Asphalt Jungle.“

Universal is also releasing a set, with “This Gun For Hire,” “Criss Cross,” “Black Angel,” and “The Big Clock.”

(“The Big Clock” was a prominent influence on the Coen’s “Hudsucker Proxy,” for what it’s worth.)

Questar will be springing “D.O.A,” “Detour,” “The Stranger,” “Scarlet Street,” and “Killer Bait,” as well as a sixth disc of features which includes a raft of trailers.

Missing from these box sets is the terrific “Double Indemnity,” starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson.

Posted on by mwhybark

Hi ho

Although there is a bus ride in the middle, here are the things I see every day on my way to work. Yesterday morning, though, there was an added attraction: the burned-out remnants of Hillcrest Market.

A walk to work.

(Grumble. The captions didn’t come over from iPhoto and I’m out of steam.)

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Sunday Strips

Not Funnies, notes the NYT Sunday mag. Hey Ma! Comics aren’t just fa kids ennymore!

Comic books are what novels used to be — an accessible, vernacular form with mass appeal — and if the highbrows are right, they’re a form perfectly suited to our dumbed-down culture and collective attention deficit. Comics are also enjoying a renaissance and a newfound respectability right now. In fact, the fastest-growing section of your local bookstore these days is apt to be the one devoted to comics and so-called graphic novels.

The piece is a decent survey of the state of affairs, and exhibits familiarity with general critical consensus on the authors and artists profiled or discussed. I am not certain I can evaluate it more critically than that at the moment. Perhaps if I reread it this evening.

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Burn

Hillcrest Market Burns Bad – Tom Harpel has the story, and the pics.

Damn, Hillcrest is gone. That kinda blows. There are two other minimarts on that side of the hill, but Hillcrest was the largest. It was the one right across from Starbucks, at the odd five-way intersection of Olive and a bunch of other streets.

In 1999, Clark Humphrey noted that the building was originally one of the initial wave of Safeway stores, which first came to town in 1923.

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¡Hasta La Victoria!

Today was an insanely busy day. Errand after errand. Luckily, we were able to meet up with Spence for dinner and finally catch F 9/11, which stood up. It was like hearing an impassioned argument. It’s worth seeing, and on the way home, Viv was saying how she wished she could get her Cuban-emigré parents to see it. She heated up a bit and blurted out, “Bush is like Castro!”

Now, I have to say that made me pause in confusion for a moment. But the underlying idea, of comparing President Bush to a long-reviled bugaboo of the right, is one that probably should be explored. It might get the big idea across. The idea that President Bush and his administration are a threat to America and the Constitution, that when they say “freedom” and “democracy” they mean “control” and “security state,” well, if I compare them to certain other well known right-wing despots of the twentieth century, the discussion is over.

But comparing him to despots of the left, now that’s an idea that just might bear fruit!

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Collective

I chuckled my way through Tad Friend’s Letter from California, “Naked Profits,” in the July 12 and 13 issue of The New Yorker, unfortunately not online.

Friend is (or was) a staff writer at the magazine, and wrote the interesting “Jumpers” for a 2003 issue of the magazine, in which institutional resistance to jump-proofing scenic landmarks was dissected.

Here, Friend turns an arch if not-unfriendly eye on the employee buyout of the San Francisco Lusty Lady. The Lusty Lady is a strip club (although I’m sure there’s a better word for it now, given the circumstances). There is also a Lusty Lady in Seattle, which has produced at least one book. Both facilities have a reputation for being a bit different than the general run of erotic entertainment parlors.

Friend has a happy time with the personal and dramatic interplay familiar to anyone who has ever worked in or helped to run a co-op. My favorite passage is simple recounting of an exchange during a meeting:

…A few minutes later she unveiled a new plan. “I’ve been reading a book about creative organizational management,” she said. “I’m proposing we have an Employee of the Week and give her a five dollar coupon to Vesuvio’s” — a local bar.

Several of the board members snapped their fingers approvingly.

Not mentioned in the passage are several things. First, the San Francisco Lusty Lady is in North Beach (a fact that may be in the story, I can’t recall), as is Vesuvio (“at Jack Kerouac Alley”), which makes much of its’ connection to the Beats.

Thus, finger-snapping.

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Times of the signs (and ads, and speeches)

The Seattle Times: 2004 Backyard Blog project. The local establishment’s paper invites your application to blog for them on the topic of this year’s election.

[via our

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quite behind the Times

(Minneapolis) City Pages: Girl, Interrupted chronicles the Plain Layne saga, a blogtempest that sounds ever-so fascinating, but which I utterly missed, not being blogmotized at the moment.

[via AZ]