@manwhoknewtoomuch
Author of a trio of books on film noir: SIREN CITY, THE RED AND THE BLACK, and I DIED A MILLION TIMES. Edited Edgar-nominated KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS. Working on two novels, one inspired by noir, the other by detective fiction. Fan of art, pop music.
Novel Rec of the Week: Emily Everett's ALL THAT LIFE CAN AFFORD. 📖 Q: Will the Austenian heroine successfully navigate the Sylla & Charybdis of class & romance in London? A: See this debut, a smart take on the key word of the Samuel-Johnson epigram from which the book takes its title: "afford." ❌♥️❌
Novel Rec of the Week: Amran Gowani's LEVERAGE. If you ever wondered what sort of hijinks Wall Street hedge funds are up to, this satire about high finance that takes no prisoners is the book for you. Not only can Gowani write--his mastery of "bruh"-speak is nonpareil--he's ferociously funny. ❌
Movie Rec of the Week📽️: FALCON LAKE. Set in the summer 🔅and in Gore (a double entendre🩸), Quebec and starring Joseph Engel as 13-year-old Bastien and Sara Montpetit as 16-year-old Chloe, Charlotte Bon's 2022 debut--part ghost story 👻, part coming-of-age film--casts a real spell. I'm bewitched!
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Movie Rec of the Week: TRANSIT📽️. Christian Petzold's 2018 film is a surreal one-off, marrying the Nazi occupation of France and the contemporary diasporic moment. Think ICE. It also features a ghostly romance 👻 a la VERTIGO that haunts the vertiginous plot like a perfumed dream. Vide. 👁️ Now.
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Horror Movie of the Week: LONGLEGS (2024). Verdict: it's not perfect, but the score, art direction, and cinematography are excellent, as is Maika Monroe as FBI agent Lee Harker. Gotta love any film inspired by T. Rex: "You're slim and you're weak . . . /You're dirty, sweet, and you're my girl"!
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Shout out to Bella Freud's "FASHION NEUROSIS," a YouTube/podcast that's an absolute must-listen for anyone interested in art 🎨 & fashion👗. Just caught her convo--she's the great granddaughter of Sigmund--with Alexa Chung. Highlite: Chung riffing about modeling after being "traumatized by life."♥️🎭🏴☠️
Brit "Noir" of the Week: THE BLUE LAMP. More semi-doc social-realist policier than noir like THE NAKED CITY, Basil Dearden's picture is nonetheless punctuated by striking shots that, thanks to DP Gordon Dines, inject a noirish vibe into the "cosy," bobbie-on-the-beat atmosphere. Highly recommended.
TV Show of the Week: "The Missing Reel." If you're a fan of film noir see episode 4 of THE STUDIO. I especially enjoyed the voice-over (therapeutic "journaling"), lighting (impressionistic set-within-a-set color), and locations (the one & only Chateau Marmont). Forget the reel, Matt, it's Chinatown!
Bathos. This past week Bill Moyer, who served as press secretary for LBJ, passed away. 🙏 Walter Cronkite once called Moyer "the conscience of the country," so if bathos is the descent from the sublime to the ridiculous, Karoline Leavitt is the very definition of the bathetic. ❌ The Amazing Mr. X
Jeff 🚀+ Lauren 💎Bezos = Ugly Americans.🖤 Poor Venice! ☹️ Not only does Venezia have to put up w/ these two tacky, "loud luxury" ambassadors of ill will 😱 but they're joined by a motley crew, inc. Ivanka (Ms. Complicit), The Kardashians (yr 15 minutes are up!), and Oprah ("you get a gondola . . .").
Scandi-noir! 💀 See my review of the 2021 Netflix Danish series "The Chestnut Man" on Instagram:
theamazingmrx
This is a classic Nordic noir and, as I hope my review suggests, it comes highly recommended--by, of course, me!
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2. DAVID LYNCH, 1946-2025 [cont.] to remember the Parisian Surrealists who inspired him.
As well as the Belgian, Monsieur Magritte
Club Silencio
Bondar: No hay banda! There is no band! . . . And yet we hear a band! . . . It is an illusion!
--Mulholland Drive
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1. DAVID LYNCH, 1946-2025. It was announced today that the sui generis (but see below) American filmmaker has passed away. 🎥 From ERASERHEAD to MULHOLLAND DRIVE and beyond, Lynch put his unique stamp on every picture he made and has left a small but lovely body of work--a truly "exquisite corpse,"
2. Film Noir of the Week: SUSPENSE [cont.] such as a enormous skull-decorated set💀, but the use of a ring of swords 🗡️ that Elva leaps through in the climax to her act is genius as is the chiaroscuro lighting courtesy of Karl Struss. Forget about KNIVES OUT, this $$$ Monogram movie is the real deal.✖️
1. Film Noir of the Week: SUSPENSE (1946). I've seen a lot of noirs, but this early, Frank Tuttle-helmed picture, which I caught the other day on TCM, is a genuine oddity, featuring as it does ice-skating and real-life Olympian Belita as good-girl Roberta Elva. There are numerous striking effects
5. Movie Rec of the Week: WOMAN OF THE HOUR (cont.). But I remain haunted by this film. The world 🌎 can be a scary place, but it's scarier still for women.💀
4. WOMAN OF THE HOUR (cont.). Now, maybe my experience of the movie was a function of watching it late at night 🕑while my partner was safely fast asleep in another room. Maybe it's because I've watched way-too-many true-crime episodes ✖️ where the victims are women and the perpetrators are men. ♂️
3. WOMAN OF THE HOUR (cont). is when MC Sheryl Bradshaw (played by Kendrick) turns the tables on the show's dumb-and-dumber, double-entendre-loaded script ♀️, the dramatic highlight, spiked by Autumn Best's searing performance as runaway Amy, is her harrowing experience at the hands of Rodney Alcala.
2. WOMAN OF THE HOUR (cont.). While Kendrick's film shares absolutely nothing in common with Dziga Vertov's MAN WITH A CAMERA, it subtly dramatizes the continuity between the televisual and photographic apparatus when the person behind the camera 📷 happens to be a man. If one of the highlights
1. Movie Rec of the Week: WOMAN OF THE HOUR. Elevator pitch: the 70s DATING GAME 💌 + serial killer☠️. Despite the titillating premise, Anna Kendrick's directorial debut is a compelling portrait of the sort of dread women all-too- frequently face on a daily basis. In other words, it's existential.
2. True-Crime Doc of the (Xmas) Day: DONT F**K WITH CATS (Cont.). 🐱 This NFLX series is also a window--through a glass darkly?--into the power of movies 🎞️ and their capacity to shape our most basic, and sometimes basest, instincts.💀 Catherine Tramell: "Killing isn't like smoking. 🚬 You can quit."
1. True Crime Doc of the (Xmas⛄) Day: DON'T F**K WITH CATS (2019). 🐱 Unable to watch WHITE CHRISTMAS, CHRISTMAS STORY, or IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE yet again, my partner and I stumbled upon DFWC on NFLX. Forget the comically asterisked title, this is one dark true-crime doc, disturbing and mesmerizing.🎥
Art Rec of the Week: Goya's "Black Paintings."🎨May have been a little harsh about Hawkins' BLUE HOUR--mea culpa-- so want to note her brilliant use of Goya, who painted the Pinturas negras on the walls of his Quinta del Sordo house. Only after his death were they transferred to canvas. Magnificent!🖤
Book Review: Pip Drysdale's THE CLOSE UP. LA-set neo-noir, so had to read it. Good ending a la SUNSET BLVD., some good lines ("Am I the unreliable narrator of my own life?"), but diction is so redundant began to wonder if book had been "written" by AI. THAT would have been a mind-blowing meta-twist!
Match Made in Hell 🔥 (Now Up in Smoke): Gotta love the Trump men: pump and dump. Even as DJ's been engaged to KF for the past 6 months, he's been seeing Palm-Beach socialite Bettina Anderson. Jr. did it, they say, to impress Dad. How sad. 😥As for MAGA gargoyle KF, couldn't happen to a nicer person.🙂
Micro Movie Review: GLADIATOR II. GII jumps the shark even before the sharks appear when obviously CGI-generated baboons are let loose into the Coliseum🐵, and despite their ALIEN-like teeth, Lucius subdues one by biting it! In sum🎬, excellent spectacle, but way too talky. One opposable thumb up.👍
Micro Book Review: Paula Hawkins' BLUE HOUR. More litfic than "genre," i.e. GIRL ON A TRAIN until climax which goes for the commercial jugular and, for me (but maybe not for some readers), fails spectacularly. In fine, neither fish 🐟 nor fowl🐓, tho I did like the first, piscine part. And the Goya.🎨
Must Read of the Week (in the NYT): "[Zoe Kestan] Met Hunter Biden One Night at a Club. Then She Fell in Love."😍Equation: "WeedSlut" + crack cocaine = 💣. Love that earlier in her life Z worked for Jeff Koons mixing colors🎨: ArtSlut! NB: WeedSlut was the name of Z's brand. Re: Koons, see Cicciolina.