Recent Stories with tag noir city

Yes, awards season is finally over--blah blah blah boringest Oscars ever, blah blah blah.  But all in all, the films nominated this year weren't so bad (even if the wrong film won Best Picture), so now's your chance to catch up with some of the recent Oscar losers. Let's take a look at recent DVD releases, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video. In terms of the big releases of late, 127 Hours is out this week, and if ninety minutes in a cramped space with James Franco isn't enough for you, Danny Boyle's film is also bundled with the Oscar winner for Best Live Action Short (and probably the best Oscar speech of the night), Luke Matheny's God of Love. 

Also out now is Love and Other Drugs, which didn't get Anne Hathaway a Best Actress Oscar nomination, even though she was naked and dying (which usually does the trick). Same goes for Get Low, starring Bill Murray as Bill Murray and Robert Duvall as a crotchety old hermit who wants to throw his funeral party before he's dead. Sorry Duvall, any other year you'd get an Oscar nom, but this year his slot (Old Dude) went to Jeff Bridges instead, not that anyone had a shot at beating Colin Firth. From the creators of The Triplets of Belleville, very French full-length cartoon The Illusionist lost Best Animated Feature to Toy Story 3. You'd think that the Christina Aguilera/Cher musical Burlesque would've at least gotten a Best Song nomination, since that category was so weak this year.

Last Friday marked the release of the one- and two-disc version of Megamind, a computer-animated hero/villain story with the voices of Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, and Tina Fey. The other big release from last week was Due Date, aka Planes, Trains, and Automobiles 2. The odd couple buddy road trip is uneven and overly long, but it has its moments, and if you like Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis, then you'll like the movie well enough too. No comment on The Rock and Billy Bob Thorton in Faster.... (more)

[Don't miss Part 1. In Part 2 of the SunBreak's Eddie Muller interview, the Czar of Noir elaborates on the story behind one of his favorite undiscovered Film Noir vehicles, the role of women in the genre, and some of the screen legends with whom he's rubbed shoulders.]

Eddie Muller

You've unearthed a lot of overlooked movies over the years. Is there one that stands out in particular for you?

Woman on the Run. Have you seen it?

No.

It's absolutely fantastic. It really is one of those undiscovered, great films. Sometimes, you find these things and it's like, "Well, it's good," but you know why it's not a classic. But Woman on the Run really is a terrific film. Universal [Pictures]...had to go physically look for the film, because it was an independent, and it wasn't in their database. They looked [in their vaults], and said, "I'll be damned! [laughs] We do have this film."

We had to sign a letter of indemnity in order to show it; saying that if the rights holders were still existent, they would sue me and not sue Universal for showing a film that they didn't have the rights to. I said, "Fine! Bring 'em on." It was Howard Welch's company, and he'd be, like, 97 years old. If they come out of the woodwork, I'm fine with that. Hey, I made a thousand dollars on this screening, you want half of it? Fine, I don't care! [laughs]

When [Universal] sent the film, it was one of those great moments where the projectionist said, "Can you send Eddie up to the booth?" I was thinking the worst; that it actually isn't projectable. This was at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. And the projectionist says, "I just want you to see this, because this never happens." He'd taken the film out to inspect it, and he said, "This is the original band that was put on this film when it came from the laboratory. It has never been taken off this film; this film has never been projected." It was amazing! So we actually had the thrill of showing that print of that film for the first time ever.

So here's the deal: It came time to ship the film back. I said to myself, this film is really great. I can't, in good conscience, send this back without making a copy of it first. So I took it to a guy I know who runs a lab in San Francisco. I said, "I know this is against the law, but I'm asking you, as a steward of film history, to make a digital copy of this film--a Digi-Beta copy of the film." I couldn't do a 35 millimeter copy--I don't have that kind of money. I paid for this out of my own pocket. This is not the Foundation: This was before the Foundation existed. It was one of the things that led to the creation of the Film Noir Foundation. I couldn't send the film back, knowing that it could get lost in the bowels of the company, without making a copy. Not that I intended to do anything with it. I just wanted to know there was a copy somewhere else. So we did it.

I put the copy in my closet. For six years I sat on it. And then Universal had that big fire on June 2, two years ago. I waited a week or two because I knew what pressure these guys were under, and then I called. This was seven months before the next big festival in San Francisco. I was asking about the titles in the festival, and Universal said, "Don't worry about it--we'll make good on all of them because we have all the negatives. We'll just make new prints of everything."... (more)

The fourth annual Noir City Film Festival may have finished its run at SIFF Cinema last week, but conversing with Eddie Muller--Noir City's enthusiastic ringmaster--still feels as bracing and entertaining as one of the Film Noir sagas he labors so tirelessly to preserve.

He's led an interesting enough life to fill a pretty rich book on its own. Long before becoming Film Noir's most vocal and eloquent steward, Muller studied film with (and acted in several films for) underground legend George Kuchar in the late seventies. He made Bay City Blues (an award-winning 14-minute, 16mm valentine to the hard-boiled universe of Raymond Chandler) as a class project next, then dove into the world of print journalism, slugging it out in the footsteps of his dad, a sports writer for the San Francisco Examiner. A decade-and-a-half in the ink-stained trenches honed his investigative and storytelling skills, assets he brought to bear when he started writing books.

The first, Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of "Adults Only" Cinema, opened the door to several written forays into fiction and cultural archaeology, as well as the formation of his own graphics firm, St. Francis Studio. Through St. Francis he wrote and designed The Art of Noir, a stunning and essential coffee table book of vintage Film Noir poster and promotional art. Muller has also written scripts and stage plays, co-written and produced a documentary on Adults-Only cinema (Mau Mau Sex Sex), and bartended professionally (he jokes that the latter marked his "one positive contribution to society").

But when I sit down with Eddie Muller at the bar in the Sorrento Hotel's swank Hunt Club, he's all about Film Noir. His passion for the compelling cinematic sub-genre burns brightly: Every work of fiction he's written has been informed by it; his non-fiction books Dark City and Dark City Dames stand as definitive studies of it; and he started the Film Noir Foundation to preserve and champion its importance as a uniquely American art form. Incidentally, if you've bought or rented a Film Noir DVD, don't be surprised to hear a meaty and informative commentary track by Muller: He's done a lot of them. Not for nothing was he anointed the Czar of Noir.

Tall, dressed in black, and sporting Reed-Richards-style slashes of white at each of his temples, Muller cuts a figure almost as imposing as one of the Noir toughies he's chronicled in those books and countless DVD commentaries...until he starts talking. His regular-guy demeanor leavens that wordsmith's combination of charm, curiosity, and investigative persistence, and his banter's peppered with frequent laughter and engagingly labyrinthine side trips. His knowledge of film in general--and his most beloved genre mistress in particular--is voluminous but never stuffy; and like most good writers he's articulate and insightful without ever putting on airs. Muller's one of those guys who can (and does) literally converse with anyone: In the minutes preceding our chat proper, he's cracking jokes with the server and comparing notes on mixed drinks and San Francisco watering holes with key members of the Sorrento staff. It's all in the service of a mind that never tires of telling--and hearing--great stories.

My interview with the Czar of Noir spans almost two hours, but it zips by at lightning pace. Damon Runyon, one of Eddie Muller's heroes, would be proud.... (more)

The Film Noir Foundation's Noir City Film Festival began its fourth annual stop in Seattle at SIFF Cinema last weekend, to deservedly-packed houses.

The Fest has always earned major props from film noir hardcores for bringing obscure but top-drawer examples of the genre to light, and Friday's opening double-feature delivered a couple of honest-to-God undiscovered gems in Pitfall and Larceny.

The transformation of Dick Powell from apple-cheeked Busby Berkeley hoofer to noir tough-guy represents one of the great image overhauls in Hollywood history: Picture Zac Efron morphing into Clint Eastwood in an eight-year span, and you're about there. But Powell managed just such a hat trick with his hard-boiled turn in 1944's brilliant Murder, My Sweet. Pitfall hit theaters in 1948, and marked the continuation of Powell's exploration of the dark side. 

In it, he plays a happily-married insurance agent magnetically drawn into a fling with fashion model Lizabeth Scott. This being a film noir, things go rapidly astray--compliments of a sloe-eyed monster of a private eye (future Perry Mason star Raymond Burr), Scott's jealous ex-con boyfriend, and fickle fate.

It's the most wrenchingly honest and unflinching portrayal of infidelity you'll probably ever see from a Hays Code-era movie. Scott and Jane Wyatt (the female points of this triangle) are both realistically-rendered and likeable characters: The former assumes far more complex (and unfortunate) shading than the stereotypical noir femme fatale, and Wyatt's an unexpectedly iron-spined (and, um, kinda sexy) little pistol. Powell finds a core of charm and sympathy despite his actions, and director Andre de Toth keeps things moving like a recklessly-fired-off bullet. Burr, the movie's metaphoric and literal heavy, coolly steals the show with a performance that's a glorious kin to his villainous, flambé-tossing turn in Anthony Mann's Raw Deal.... (more)