Cloverfield: A Reason to Visit the Multiplex

Cloverfield is smart, for a PG-13er. Blair Witch sold the sizzle, not the steak. Cloverfield got some sizzle and some steak.

The one-shaky-camera approach obviously is a budget saver, although it may cause problems for anyone prone to motion sickness. Will this film actually cause someone to have a seizure? It's a definite possibility. Some theaters have reportedly warned their patrons that the film may induce motion sickness!

Aside from the low-rent camera work, the film uses unknown actors. There are a variety of set pieces in "canned" locations: a party in an apartment, a journey through subway tunnels, searching in a badly listing high-rise. The high-rise scene is inventive, reminiscent of the upside-down sinking ship in The Posideon Adventure.

They saved their money so you could have a bit of CGI, but even that is doled out in brief snippets. You don't really see the monster a whole lot, but that's OK. The simple plot of a group of friends searching for another friend is delivered with such rapid pace and real urgency that the monster is really a bit player. Cloverfield definitely is more of a disaster movie than a monster movie. Since it's not about terrorism, it can't be accused of direct 9-11-sploitation, but scenes of Manhattan destruction certainly do evoke familiar 9-11 images.

The fact that our cameraman/character is so annoying also is a simple way to lend some dramatic tension, as you can't help wondering what, if anything, will make him finally stop filming his friends in the midst of a calamity.

The casting is also smart. Talented but relatively unknown leads. Lizzy Caplan steals the show as Marlena Diamond. She can look forward to decades of signing stuff at Sci-Fi conventions just for this role. But I think she'll be pretty busy acting for the foreseeable future. Michael Stahl-David looks like a movie star and turns in a good performance as the male lead. T.J. Miller is extremely annoying as cameraman/best friend Hud, and that's what he was supposed to do, right? His largely off-camera performance really holds this film together. Caplan and Miller get the best lines and run with them.

The PG-13 Cloverfield is definitely in line with the current media trend of objectifying the young wealthy, as our early-twenties hero lives in a unusually spacious Mahanttan apartment (condo?), and his damsel-in-distress abodes in a fancy high-rise. Our Prince must save his Princess, after all.

Cloverfield is an entertaining box office hit that I enjoyed. That doesn't happen too often. Can you say sequel? It's already in the works ...

Noir City 6: Castro Theater Organist David Hegarty

A unique feature of an evening show at San Francisco's Castro Theater is the introduction and intermission music provided most nights by David H. Hegarty, played on a beautiful pipe organ that rises from below the stage during the first song. For the finale, the organ is lowered to the ground while San Francisco is played, the audience clapping along.

Do you make any special preparations for Noir City or other festivals?

I try to choose appropriate repertoire for whatever is playing at the theatre, although it's not always possible. I try to stay in the right time period, and make some gesture of recognition of nationality. But for the most part, the organ interludes are just independent mini-concerts. Of course, if the movie is a musical, I play music from the show--sort of an organ overture. And I often can play themes from the classic films--those from the Golden Age of Hollywood ('30s through the 50's).

Can you give us a brief tour of the organ, (keyboards, drawbars, pipes, etc). Also, how do you make it go up and down?

This Wurlitzer console was originally built for the State Theatre in Detroit in the '20s. The pipework (21 ranks) has been garnered from several Wurlitzers and integrated as though it was a new organ--totally authentic, as it would have been built by the Wurlitzer factory. This is the work of the organ's owners, the Taylor family of San Mateo -- particularly Dick Taylor and his partner in the organ business, Edward Millington Stout, a nationally recognized authority on Wurlitzer and Skinner voicing.

The pneumatic scissors-lift is triggered by a button to my left on the console. I get a signal from the projectionist when it's time to play "San Francisco" and bring the console down.

That castanet sound is great on Latin tunes. Is it synced to one of the keyboards? Are there other unusual sounds you like to use?

The percussion instruments are triggered by the keyboards and the pedalboard when the appropriate stops are engaged, and are actual instruments that are struck pneumatically. The tambourine, castanets, and wood block are particularly effective. There are also several tuned percussions that I use frequently: harp (like a marimba), chrysoglott, xylophone, glockenspiel, and chimes.

Is there a slight delay from when you press the keys until the sound emerges from the pipes?

There is no perceptible delay in this installation. It is very responsive. Some of the bass pipes, played by the pedals, are installed behind the screen, so they speak directly toward the organist. (The opposite is true of the Skinner organ at the Legion of Honor, where I play Pops concerts every month. The pipes are located two rooms away, in the attic, so the sound gets to the organist AFTER we've played the notes. It takes considerable experience to maintain the proper tempo in that environment; the natural inclination is to slow down as you wait to hear what you've played.)

Do you practice in the theater when it's empty?

This is my 30th year as the Castro organist (the first few were on a Conn electronic organ before the Wurlitzer was installed in the early '80s), so I know the instrument well and don't generally need any rehearsal time, although I do come in and prepare for certain special performances. I also do some teaching on the Wurlitzer. Students come from as far as Reno to take lessons on that instrument.

You are known to adapt film music for the organ. What are some of your favorites?

My specialization as a concert organist, particularly on "classical" organs, is the music of the Golden Age Hollywood film composers: Korngold, Waxman, Steiner, Tiomkin, Herrmann, Raksin, Newman, and others. I am particularly fond of Korngold's scores, and especially like his themes for Kings Row and The Adventures of Robinhood. I'm particularly interested in the Hitchcock films and the composers who wrote for him. I am also very fond of Angela Morley's music. She's a British composer who began working in Hollywood in the '80s. (She also wrote much of the underscoring for Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Dallas, Hotel, and the like.) She's now living in Scottsdale, AZ., and I am her personal archivist--organizing and catalogueing thousands of her manuscripts that reside at her house. Of course, I love playing her music: Snow Ride, Kehaar's Theme from Watership Down, etc. Check out her web site: www.angelamorley.com.

Any plans for a CD of you playing the Castro organ?

No immediate plans for recording on that organ, although I have a couple of symphonic organ CDs available online at "CD Baby."

What new projects are you working on?

I'm working on a recording on a big symphonic organ in San Francisco. Details to be revealed later.

What question do you wish someone would ask you?

Just happy that you were interested enough to ask ANY questions!

David also appears weekly at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, and presents monthly pops concerts on the Skinner organ at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. For more info go to www.davidhegarty.com

Noir City 6: Peter Lorre in Face Behind The Mask

In The Face Behind The Mask, Peter Lorre arrives in America as a naive immigre watchmaker. Practicing his English on the deck of the ship sailing into New York harbor, he asks a man "Do you have a match?" The man lights a match. Lorre says "Thank You. I do not smoke." Dependable character player Don Beddoe is an NYC cop who befriends him. On his first night in America, a fire starts in his cheap hotel, and Lorre's face is badly burned.

After a montage of job interviews that go nowhere because of his ghastly visage, Lorre is down at the docks, about to throw himself into the river. A chance encounter with a friendly criminal leads Lorre into a life of crime, in which he proves to be a genius.

When he learns of plastic surgery, he goes straight away to a clinic. But the doctors tell him it's is too late to fix the damage. What they can do is make him a life-like mask to wear. So we have Peter Lorre wearing makeup to make it look like he's wearing a mask that looks like Peter Lorre.

Of course, the man with the unsightly face meets and falls for a beautiful blind girl, Evelyn Keyes. Complicating matters is the release from prison of Jeff, whose gang Lorre has taken over.

The Face Behind the Mask is maybe a transitional film, a little early to the Noir party in 1941, but sporting 1930s-style cliches like the impossibly good and virginal female lead, and the small-time crook with a heart of gold. Lorre's character is almost a super villian, leaving no clues at the crime scene, easily overpowering a much bigger man, and masterminding a fiendish plot of revenge.

The story would have easily fit into a formulaic detective series like the Falcon or Boston Blackie, except that Beddoe's cop is barely in the movie. However the quality of the script, Lorre's performance, the cinematography and direction raise this film to a much higher plateau.

The Noir City crowd almost didn't get to see this entertaining obscurity. Sony Pictures, owners of the Columbia catalogue, had doubled-booked the only print, sending it to an Austrian film festival held the same week. When someone from Sony apologetically broke the news to Noir City founder Eddie Muller earlier in the week, they asked if they could do anything to make up for their mistake. Muller requested that they strike a new print. It arrived at the Castro Theater on Sunday at noon, just a few hours before that day's first showing.

6stringjazz.net

The Wire -- These Spoilers are Criminal

Sudhir Venkatesh and his thugs are back, commenting on every new episode of The Wire in the NYT Freakonomics blog.

Noir City 6: Barbara Stanwyck in Jeopardy

"She did it ... because her fear was greater than her shame!"
-- tagline from Jeopardy

In noir, piers in Mexico are always a bad sign. Usually, we reach the pier at the end of the movie, and it's like reaching the end of the earth, no going back (Kansas City Confidential, The Hitcher).

In Jeopardy, we get there early on, for a family fun fishing and camping vacation. But as soon as we reach that pier in Mexico, right on schedule things start to go horribly wrong.

Jeopardy is a low-budget independent picture, with four main characters shot on location, only occasionally interrupted by a few bit players. With the studio system in shambles by 1953, you could have Barbara Stanwyck in a non-glamorous picture like this one.

Barry Sullivan is the army-trained dad who is prepared for anything, even bringing a gun. But a fishing pier column falls and pins his leg in the surf. They try several methods of extrating the log, but to no avail. They were unable to hear the voice in my head yelling "Fulcrum, Fulrum, Fulcrum!" as I watched helplessly in my seat at the Castro.

Sullivan must send Stanwyck for help, while his young son Bobby tries to, well, do something for his Dad at the pier. Stanwyck gets a tow rope from a shack, and then suddenly finds Ralph Meeker is there. Meeker, an escaped prisoner, takes control of the car and Stanwyck. Savvy in the ways of noir, he is not interested in going to the pier and saving Barry Sullivan.

If you thought Meeker was cool in Kiss Me Deadly, he is even cooler here. His character would sound out of place today, but look-wise would fit right in with slightly shaggy hair.

Meeker asks Stanwyck to switch seats with him while driving, taking advantage of the bench-style front seat as generations of American men have. He takes a long pause as she's on top of him, and when she squirms back to her side, she is humiliated -- he is smiling. Pretty racy stuff for 1953.

Meeker shows some manly knowledge while repairing a flat tire in the desert with no car jack available.

While speeding down the back roads, director John Sturges lets Stanwyck's face tells us in advance what she plans to do to convince Meeker to go to the pier so she can save Sullivan. A Stanwyck voice over will soon materialize, asking what would any woman do in this situation? When Stanwyck switches from vulnerable to steely, it is instant and total.

Will Meeker take her to the pier? Will he just ... take her? Will Barry Sullivan drown in front of his son? Will Meeker's clever criminal Think Fulcrum?

It's on DVD, people.

The Tijuana street vendor is Natividad Vacio, a musician and character actor who was a close friend of George Reeves and is portrayed in the film Hollywoodland.

Child actor Lee Aaker was a busy boy throughout the 1950s, appearing in many films and the Rin-Tin-Tin TV series.

Noir City 6: Ida Lupino in Woman In Hiding

"This is -- pinch, pinch, pinch -- a Monday night and the theater is almost full." -- Eddie Muller, on the crowd at Noir City


In Woman In Hiding, Lupino plays Deborah Chandler, heir to a mill in a Southern town with no accents. The mill is run by her wanna-be son-in-law, Selden Clark (Steven McNally), scion of the namesake family of Clarksville.

The set up has Lupino driving an out of control car at furious speeds through the mountains. We see the car crash through the wooden rails of bridge and plunge into a river. A huge organ chord swells, as the car sinks, with the wooden rails floating away. Shades of Carnival of Souls. Then, Lupino's voice from the grave ... or is she still alive?

Now watching people search for your body while your still alive is a bit Tom Sawyerish, but just in case you didn't get it, one of the search party at the river mentions Tom Sawyer as a couple of old-timers fire cannon balls in the river, trying to make the body come up.

From there, we flash back to the events leading up to the car crash, the creepy courtship conducted by Selden Clark. He asks her to marry him on the day of her father's funeral. Her father fell from a catwalk in the factory, alone up there with one Selden Clark.

An incident on their honeymoon convinces Chandler that Clark (a) killed Daddy (b) plans to kill her next. Getting away unseen from the scene of the car crash, she declares, "I've got to stay dead!" If that's not noir, I don't know what is.

While in hiding she meets up with educated drifter Keith Ramsey (Howard Duff). Master character player Irving Bacon, Duff's boss at the bus station newsstand, tells him: "Do me a favor. Please quit. It would be a shame for a man like you to get fired from a job like this."

Like Lupino's character this movie just keeps moving along. There a lot of cool set pieces: a drunken spree of a convention in a hotel (featuring a raft of colorful character actors), a fire exit staircase chase and struggle, an escape from a train (yes, they take the train to Clarksville), and a catwalk game of cat and mouse in a dark factory, with all the loud machinery running.

McNally often played villains and is very menacing here. Lupino's character is perpetually anxious and frightened, but is tough enough to fight back and even jump from her speeding car. Nice performances also from Duff and Peggy Dow as McNally's sexy accomplice.

This a noir crowd pleaser with fast pace, great stars and plenty of action. See it!

Noir City host Eddie Muller waited until after the movie to give some casting background, saying "it would have totally spoiled your chance to enjoy that movie" if he had revealed that the original choice to play Duff's part was none other than Ronald Reagan. Reagan broke his leg two weeks before shooting began. Duff not only got the role, but ended up marrying Lupino in real life.

"Think about it for a second. The course of American history would've changed," said Muller, imaging that Reagan, not Duff, might have ended up as Mr. Ida Lupino. "He would of been happy playing second fiddle to the smartest,toughest woman in Hollwood," instead of marrying the "power mad bitch" Nancy Davis.

Muller also thanked Bob O'Neill, Universal Pictures VP of Asset Management, saying "Univeral is a studio that really appreaciates what we do here at Noir City. They are willing to strike new prints at their own expense for this festival."

Noir City 6: Notes from the Margins

• Friday's opening night was near-capacity, despite a raging rain storm. Saturday's program did in fact sell out the 1400-seat Castro Theater. Yes, San Francisco is film mad!
  
• Noir City always has a literary bent, not surprising when you think of all the great writers associated with the genre. A book table is always doing a brisk business. Saturday evening featured a book sigining from the authors of a new noir fiction collection, A Hell of A Woman. See The Evening Class for interviews with the authors at from the signing.
  
• Host Eddie Muller not only wrote a story for the Hell of a Woman book, he then went out a made a 20-minute movie out of it, featuring the venerable noir icon Marsha Hunt. The Grand Inquisitor premiered (favorably) on the Saturday night bill, and Marsha Hunt herself graced us with her considerable presence.
  
• Crime writer extraordinaire James Ellroy proved to be a great warm-up act for Saturday's showing of one his favorites, The Prowler, leaving us all "reamed, steamed, and dry-cleaned." Muller revealed that he put the touch on Ellroy for some funds toward the new print.
  

Noir City 6: Opening Night with Joan Leslie

Noir City 6 started with, what else, a murder, in the rare 1947 Joan Leslie vehicle Repeat Performance -- followed by an onstage interview Leslie, and then her 1943 film, The Hard Way. The festival audience greeted Leslie with a standing ovation. After the crowd quieted, a man yelled out, "You look great!"

Repeat Performance:

This one starts with a bang, a murder on New Year's Eve. Then a twist -- the woman who pulled the trigger wishes she could live the last year over. Soon she realizes she is getting her wish.

Now I didn't really think that set-up would hold up, but the writing, cat-fighting and fast pace drew me in and kept me there.

Leslie plays a recently minted young Broadway star struggling with an alcoholic womanizer writer's-block playwright husband (Louis Hayward). The clothes -- Oleg Cassini. "I never got clothes like that at Warner Brothers!" Leslie told host Eddie Muller in the interview after the showing.

Richard Basehart makes a brilliant screen debut as a dreamy poet, who is fated to become shackled to slutty rich widow Natalie Schafer(aka Mrs. Howell from Gilligan's Island). "He had that role down pat," according to Leslie. Virginia Field is a beautiful bag of ice cubes and razors as scheming playwright Paula Costello. Tom Conway is requisitely British as friend and producer John Friday.

Repeat Performance was Leslie's first picture after breaking her Warners contract. She was unable to work for a year while the contract expired. She took Warners to court and lost finding that only "jockeys, prizefighters and actresses" were not allowed to break contracts they signed when underage.

Repeat Performance was re-made as a TV movie in 1989 as "Turn Back The Clock" with Connie Seleca, and featuring a bit by ... Joan Leslie, as a party guest.

Before the film, Noir City host Eddie Muller said the first print they received was so damaged it could not be shown. Fortunately, prior to the festival, two locals contacted Muller offering their personal prints as backups, bolstering his case for San Francisco as new Capitol of Noir.

The Hard Way:

The Morgan Twins: [in unison] Mr. Wade? We're playing in Jersey City. Can you catch our act? We're the Morgan Twins.
Max Wade: When you're triplets, come back and see me.

In The Hard Way, Leslie plays Ida Lupino's teen-aged sister, just graduated from high school. Desperate to escape a coal mining town and a bad marriage, Lupino hatches a plot for both sisters to escape with a vaudeville team. Jack Carson is the nice-guy actor who agrees to marry Leslie, put her in the act, and let Lupino come along for the ride. Big mistake.

Carson's partner, Dennis Morgan, is right to be wary of the scheming Lupino. Eventually, Carson and Morgan split, and the act becomes a husband and wife duo. But Leslie catches the eye of a producer -- and Carson gets the heave-ho. Eventually Lupino's back-stabbing catches up with her, at about the same time Leslie begins to assert her independence.

The Hard Way features sharp dialogue, good leads, hokey vaudeville numbers, and a plethora of nice bits from an army of character actors, including Nestor Paiva as the creepy agent Max Wade, and Jody Gilbert as Anderson, the hangover nurse. Leslie's spectacular Broadway dance scene drew wild cheers from the Noir City audience. She suffered for that art, telling Muller she sprained a ligament in the performance, which sidelined her for six weeks of production.

While The Hard Way is a very entertaining film, Leslie stated "that's a show I'd like to have another crack at." Still a teenager, Leslie was required to do three hours of school while on the set. The film was plagued by re-writes. "When I'd come back (from the studio school) sometimes I'd be handed a new scene."

Leslie had worked with Lupino before, in High Sierra. "It was lovely working with Ida Lupino. She was a finished, wonderful performer." She revealed that producer Mark Hellinger, aware of Leslie's childhood days in vaudeville, asked her to do an impersonation of Lupino in Thank Your Luck Stars (1943). He insisted though, that she first ask Lupino's permission. Lupino thought the impression hysterical and greenlighted it.

---------------

Muller highlighted the significance of Leslie, then a teenager, playing aside stars Bogart, Lupino, Gary Cooper and James Cagney. Leslie shared that when she went to the set of Seargant York, she had never met Cooper and wasn't sure how she should address him. Cooper helped her out by approaching her and speaking to her in character, as Alvin York to Gracie Williams. A routine they followed during the whole production.

After performing in Howard Hughes' Born to be Bad (1950), she turned down a Jane Russell-type production deal from Hughes: "I had the nerve to do that!" But Leslie had long wanted to choose her own roles, which led her away from Warner Brothers, and she wasn't about to let Howard Hughes decide what pictures she worked.

She married in 1950 and raised a family, occasionally appearing in films and TV.

As her birthday is this weekend, the Noir City crowd saw her off with a loud Happy Birthday.

Noir City 6: Not on DVD

Noir City 6 starts tonight in SF, with a bunch of NOT ON DVD rarities.

• Repeat Performance
  
• The Hard Way
  
• The Prowler
  
• The Night Has 1000 Eyes
  
• Story of Molly X
  
• Conflict
• The Suspect
  
• 3rd Voice
  
• Face Behind The Mask
  
• Roadhouse
  

I will blog on as many of them as I can.

Joan Leslie will appear for tonight's screening of Repeat Performance and The Hard Way. James Ellroy will be on hand Saturday night for The Prowler.

Point of Information: This year's festival is 15% Lupino, which I think is the bare minimum!

PTL Club -- Hawaii Style

It is time to Praise The Lord -- Jack Lord -- with today's release of Hawaii Five-0 Season 3 on DVD.

Some highlights of the first two seasons:

• It's Danny Williams. Dan-O has not been invented yet.
  
• Repeated perfromances of the 60s Hawaiian tune It Ain't No Big Thing, including an intentionaly bad one by Sal Mineo
  
• Latin revolutionairies! In Hawaii?
  
• An evil dictator coming to the islands, opposed by the local exile community, who have Hispanic names. Can you say based on Ferdinand Marcos, Philippines?
  
• Drug freak-outs
  
• Biochemical terrorism by proto-unabomber
  
• Ricardo Montalban as a Japanese bad guy who deserted the Japanese Army at Pearl Harbor!
  
• Capt Stubing as a local crime lord
  
• William Windom with a record-setting scenery-chew in McGarret's office, picking up every single knick-knack in the office and examining them while explaining to The Lord that he's just in Hawaii for pleasure, not safecracking.
  
• Hot Lips Houlihan (Loretta Swit) being insufferably ... hot
  
• And of course, various Wo Fat intrigues
  

And now, a revisionist imaging of the title credits:




By today's standards, Five-0 is not a very realistic cop show. Would a guy who meets with the governor all the time really be out solving crimes and apprehending perps? He'd probably have his staff take care of that. But not The Lord.

Maybe that's because his staff is incapable of solving crimes. When the team sits around the big glass board that The Lord draws upon with markers, only He can connect the dots. Not Danny, Kono or Chin Ho.

Who finds the clues? None but The Lord. When he visits the crime scene alone, he is usually presented with a a big fat clue. A little boy comes along. "Gee Meeester, I saw a guy leaving here last night. It was kinda dark, but I think he was 5'11 1/2, 215 lbs, has a mole on his left cheek, shoe size is 10-and-a-half, and his social security number starts with 4." Who apprehends the criminal everytime? Say it with me y'all: The Lord.

While fairly ridiculous, Five-0 is vastly entertaining, in part due to Lord's unintentionally campy acting style. Behind the scenes, his intensity burned too bright for cast and crew:

From TV Guide, via the Hawaii Five-0 Homepage:

"Let's face it," he said. "This is Lord's last chance to hit it, and he's uptight. He wasn't the first choice for the part, but we're stuck with him now. He owns a piece of it, with Freeman. Just do your job and stay loose -- and keep away from that airport detail."

Another great feature of the show is each week's guest criminal, and the assorted bit players, whether local folks just being themselves, or various rising/falling supporting thesps. While Five-0 can be hokey, the guest stars almost always turn in good performances.

Some Cult fave actors to watch for in Season 3:

Barry Atwater (The Night Stalker)
Don Stroud (Bloody Mama, Angel Unchained)
Marianne McAndrew (Bat People, Hello Dolly!)
Royal Dano (Western character actor)
John Marley (a little thing in the Godfather, something about a horse's head)
Jock Mahoney (Glorystompers!)
Joy Bang (all-time great stripper name, but she wasn't a stripper. Great in Night of the Cobra Woman)
Donna Kai Benz (The Challenge, Pray for Death)
Paul Carr (Brute Corps, Dirt Gang, Severed Arm, Sisters of Death, Bat People, Truck Stop Women)
Sabrina Scharf (Hell's Angels on Wheels, Easy Rider, California State Senate)
Khigh Dhiegh (Wo Fat)

Mystery Writer Mark Coggins on Noir and more

The fabled Noir City festival is set to open this Friday in San Francisco, so I decided to interrogate mystery writer Mark Coggins, author of an acclaimed series of modern San Francisco mysteries featuring the jazz-bass-playing detective August Riordan.

What is your favorite Film Noir and why?

Bill Wilder's 1944 Double Indemnity because of the great dialog (which was co-written by Raymond Chandler). This exchange between insurance salesman Walter Neff and femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson is classic:

Dietrichson: There's a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. 45 miles an hour.
Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Dietrichson: I'd say around 90.
Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Dietrichson: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Neff: Suppose it doesn't take.
Dietrichson: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Dietrichson: Suppose you try putting it on my husband's shoulder.
Neff: That tears it...

But my favorite line is uttered by claims adjuster Barton Keyes when Neff turns down the office job Keyes is offering him: "I thought you were a shade less dumb than the rest of the outfit. Guess I was wrong. You're not smarter, just taller."

Since I'm a Stanford alum, I also got a kick out of the fact that the murdered husband is strangled en route to Palo Alto for an alumni event. Chandler used to attend the "Big Game" against Cal, so I'm convinced he interjected that detail into the script based on his experience.

Who would you like to play August Riordan in a film?

My first book, THE IMMORTAL GAME, was actually optioned for film and a script was written, but never produced. I did discuss casting with the producer and he was interested in having either Chris Noth (Mr. Big from Sex in the City) or Jeff Goldblum.

At the time, I thought Clint Eastwood would be good because of his connection to San Francisco and--since Riordan plays bass--his interest in jazz. Eastwood is probably a bit long in the tooth for the role now, so I might go with Denis Leary. He's Irish and he's got a smart mouth, both of which are qualities Riordan shares.

What's your next project?

My next book is tentatively titled The Deadbeat Scroll, in which Riordan investigates the theft of a hitherto unknown manuscript by Jack Kerouac.

----------

Coggins' new book, Runoff, has been named one of the best crime novels of the year by January magazine, and selected by Sons of Spade for best wisecracks. He has posted a cool photo slidehow of the book's locations.

For more on Coggins and August Riordan, see immortalgame.com.

One Missed Call

I saw a lady run out of One Missed Call -- to answer her cell phone.

I guess she didn't want to ... miss ... one ... call ...

Must be a very effective "message" film.

The Wire -- Real Talk

OK, TV critics and commentators, move aside. I know you've all been typing furiously about the last season of The Wire, but all y'all need to check yourself before you wreck yourself, 'cause you just been served -- by Mr. Sudhir Venkatesh. Check this tremendously entertaining and informative piece in the NYT's Freakonomics blog.

Sudhir Venkatesh, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, and author of the just-published book Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, invited a group of NYC fellows experienced in the drug trade to watch and comment on The Wire's fifth season.

"Ever since I began watching HBO’s The Wire, I felt that the show was fairly authentic in terms of its portrayal of modern urban life — not just the world of gangs and drugs, but the connections between gangland and City Hall, the police, the unions, and practically everything else. It certainly accorded with my own fieldwork in Chicago and New York. And it was much better than most academic and journalistic reportage in showing how the inner city weaves into the social fabric of a city.

Last year, I learned a lot by watching a few episodes of The Wire with gang leaders in Chicago. So, a few weeks ago, I called a few respected street figures in the New York metro region to watch the upcoming fifth season. I couldn’t think of a better way to ensure quality control."

For Vankatesh's guys, the Wire cops are not dirty enough. In their world, they expect more corruption, with all sorts of side deals between dealers and cops. An acquaintance of mine who is a police in a notoriously crime-ridden city backs this up, saying that The Shield, with its focus on corrupt cops, is the most realistic cop show.

But The Wire is by far the most compelling. If you read the comments on Freakonomics, people are practically begging for this to be a weekly feature.

Val Lewton Blogathon

Cheers to The Evening Class for its Val Lewton Blogathon, in conjunction with this past Monday's premiere of Martin Scorcese's doc on Lewton (accompanied by a 10-film marathon).

Bloggers were invited to throw down with Lewton entries and many did, myself included -- and some are still submitting late in the week. If you're ready to read up on Lewton, Evening Class is the place to start.

RSA in the USA

Weird micro-genre: low-budget action films not shot in the US that pretend they are set in the US.

From South Africa, I give you American Kickboxer (aka American Kickboxer 1). It sets up with some exterior LA shots and the hero, BJ, wears a UCLA shirt often. There are a few Americans in the cast, but most of the players are South Africans trying desperately to disguise their accents ... and failing miserably.



Yet AK1 is an entertaining, so bad it's good, movie starring actual martial artists John Barrett, Keith Vitale (karate champion, Superfights, Revenge of the Ninja), and awesome villian Brad Morris. Highlights include workout scenes to hilarious 80s rock songs, they way they make it so thoroughly impossible to like the hero even a little bit, the nebbish sports reporter, and the incredibly pro-looking signage for the broadcasting company carrying the big fight.

Yes there is a sequel (not as good -- don't even think about it).

Another like film is the multi-faceted Kick or Die. This movie announces it takes place in America by having a highway patrolman pull our hero over and say, "Welcome to California." Fooling no one. Again, there are US imports in the cast.

STORY: Kickboxer who left town under a cloud comes back, teaches the local college girls self-defense against the insane rapist/killer stalking them. Takes up with college girl soft-rock singer, who is being managed by his old rival, once a boxer, who wants singer girl for his own. Oh yeah, but who is the crazy killer?

Not only is Kick or Die a film for all countries, it is a film for all audiences. It is a kick-boxing movie, a feminist fight-back against male violence movie, a Star-is-Born story of a woman singer, her mysterious Svengali and the kickboxer who completes their love triangle. A slasher movie, a criminal mastermind movie, and possibly an Amway recruitment film. Investing in this movie was like putting your money in mutual hedged fund instead of a stock. Somebody, somewhere was going to like this movie. Or so they thought.

OK, I liked it, but I might be the only one.

Not on DVD ... yet ...