To the Mattresses Week 30 - Noir-o-rama coming in September

I usually only do the 30 films in 30 days thing for October, mostly as an excuse to catch up on cheesy horror films that I've been missing.  But my friends Brad and Matt have beed doing this for the past few months, with honorees ranging from Gene Hackman to Nicolas Cage to Ray Harryhausen.  Now, I'd love to get that specific, but for now I'm going to be general.   Not many actors have starred in 30 crime films.

So I deem the month of September Classic Noir Month.

And I've got no idea what to watch, hence the month advance notice.

So I'm looking for some suggestions.  There are always going to be the easy answers, the classic films, but I'm hoping to get a few rare gems.

My List of Possibilities So Far
The Maltese Falcon
Shadow of a Doubt
Laura
The Lost Weekend
Scarlett Street
The Big Sleep
The Dark Corner
The Killers
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Kiss of Death
Nightmare Alley
Out of the Past
Key Largo
Criss Cross
The Third Man
Strangers on a Train
The Big Heat
The Killing
and growing...

Friday Night at the Movies Week 30 - The Losers

I hate to start of the conversation with money, but almost everytime this film was brought up, so were the dollars and cents.  I'm hardly one to base success on the almighty bank account, but was DC really expecting much more from this movie finance-wise?  It did a respectable sum of  23.5 Million, and that wasn't much less than it's budget of $25.  Of course they wanted it to do big bucks, but even the similiarly themed and much more name recognized A-Team did $75, but that film had a budget of $110.  I think it will do just fine on DVD, hopefully allowing more people to see it.

And has any film with a large release come to video that quickly?  It was less than three months!

Now to the film.  I loved it.  My twelve year old son loved it.  (It's PG-13,  but come on, I want to be the cool Dad.)  The movie was fun, over-the-top, and rather conscious of it.  There were no pretenses of being something more than it was. 

Again, what it was, was fun.

From imdb.com
A tale of double cross and revenge, centered upon the members of an elite U.S. Special Forces unit sent into the Bolivian jungle on a search and destroy mission. The team-Clay, Jensen, Roque, Pooch and Cougar -find themselves the target of a lethal betrayal instigated from inside by a powerful enemy known only as Max. Presumed dead, the group makes plans to even the score when they're joined by the mysterious Aisha, a beautiful operative with her own agenda. Working together, they must remain deep undercover while tracking the heavily-guarded Max, a ruthless man bent on embroiling the world in a new high-tech global war.

What made this movie so watchable was the cast.  Starring a Justice League of other Comic Book/Nerdgasm actors, we've got Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen's Comedian) as team Leader Clay.  He's the grisled, tough leader who also has a way with the ladies.  And one particular lady has a rocket launcher.  She is Zoe Saldana (Star Trek's Uhura and Avatar's Neytiri) as Aisha, the lady with a mysterious past who gives our heroes a second chance at revenge.  With all her seriousness, there needed to be comic relief.  Bring on the always reliable for a laugh, we have Chris Evans (Fantastic Four's Human Torch and the soon to be Captain America) as Jensen, the tech wizard.  And if there is a team leader, there must be at least one guy to challenge him, and that would be great second man Stringer Bell, I mean Idris Elba (The Wire and soon to be Heimdall in Thor).  Rounding out the team we have Columbus Short as Pooch, and Oscar Jenada as Cougar.  How these two got cast without any nerd/street cred is beyond me?  And of course, you need the villain, and in true mustache twirling mode we've got Lost Boy Jason Patrick as the evildoer Max.  He's never been a supervillain, but he's got the chops.  Go ahead, shave his head and call him Luthor.

So once we get beyond the cast, we've actually got a very good adaptation of the DC/Vertigo Comic.  The issues have been chopped down to fit the running time, but the film never feels like it was missing anything.  Thanks to that would probably go to the director, Sylvain White (who honestly hadn't made one film I've seen) and writers Peter Berg (always awesome) and James Vanderbilt (also reliable) who kept the film moving at incredibly quick pace.  And excellent use of Journey in the soundtrack.  Not many films can pull that off.

Room was made for a sequel, which in all likelihood, will never ever get made.  So for those of you wanting more, go pick up the graphic novels.  Well worth it.

The Long Con Week 30 - The Grifters

If it wasn't for One Crazy Summer or Better Off Dead, I never would have heard of Jim Thompson.  Have the films of Savage Steve Holland ever brought so much joy?

Allow me to make the connection.  I've always been a movie junkie and a night owl, and when you are 12 years old and have movie channels, that is pretty close to heaven.  And those two films of Savage Steve (who names themself that, he's like the 80's McG!) were always on.  Always.  And I loved them.

They also happened to star an early hero of mine, John Cusack.  He was the lovable, comedic everyman, who always had a strange cast of friends and usually a girl that was way out of his league.  In other words, exactly what I wanted to be.  Once I'd gotten a bit older and seen Say Anything, I knew I wanted to be Lloyd Dobler/Cusack, and the only way to do that would be to watch  every single movie he was in, or at least the ones available on HBO.

One of those was The Grifters.  Starring Mr. Cusack, Angelica Huston, and Annette Benning, and directed by Stephen Frears, it was a film unlike any I had seen John in.  Where was the fun-loving?  The nerdy friends?  At least he still got the girls.  But this was the first film I ever looked at Cusack and saw a grown up.  And for my then 14 year old mind, it was an awakening.  If Lloyd Dobler can be a con man, well, anyone can.  Perhaps this was the start of my cynicism?  Those of you who know me, place blame here.

I was so enchanted by the slick but messy life of Roy Dillan (Cusack) I needed to know more.  I discovered that Frears also directed Dangerous Liasons (oh yeah) but not much else that interested me.  (It would be years before I saw My Beautuiful Laundrette).  But the writers were people I could follow up on.

Donald Westlake?  Jim Thompson?

Never heard of them.

C'mon.  I came from a small town with a very tiny library.  So sadly, and this was pre-internet of course, I had to wait a few years before getting my hands on a novel by either of these fellows.  But when I did...I was amazed.

So again, thanks Savage Steve Holland.  I would be willing to be this is the first time, perhaps ever, that his name has been mentioned three times in a blog.  Perhaps he is like BeetleJuice or Candyman, and now that I've said his name he will appear and make a sequel to One Crazy Summer.

Anyway, I hadn't picked up a Thompson book in a while, and with the film version coming out, I was tempted to reread The Killer Inside Me, but instead, opted for the story that started it all, The Grifters.  I hadn't read it in a decade, nor seen the movie, but what do you know, I still cannot picture anyone other that John Cusack in the role.  And the book, still just as good. 

I saw online somewhere that there was some study, buy some people, who theorized that we most fondly remember the things we discover for ourselves at the age of Twelve.  I'm going to put The Grifters on my Netflix Queue, and I don't expect to argue with that point once I'm done.

New Comics Wednesday Week 30 - Good News for Chew

Congrats to the team of John Layman and Rob Guillory, as their book Chew has been awarded the Eisner for Best New Series.  Rumor has it the book has also been optioned for a TV series.  I reviewed the first collection,Taster's Choice, back in February, and the second collection, International Flavor, arrived in my mailbox a few weeks ago.  Expect a review next week.

The Short Con Week 30 - The Problem with Crime

This is it.  I give up on finding short crime fiction on the internet.  After two weeks of coasting along using the cool as hell BMW shorts, I got my hands dirty and dug through the MASSIVE PILE OF SHIT that is most of the stuff found on YouTube.  Seriously, I watched 2-6 minute videos for two hours straight, and only one didn't bore the piss out of me within 30 seconds.  How do you zone someone out that quickly?  Thanks to television, our brains are trained to take information in quick clips without thinking of a grocery list in between, but guess what, I couldn't stop thinking about everything else I could be doing instead of pointing and clicking and watching people who can't write, act, or point a camera properly.

Thankfully, at least this entertained me.  It sums up my feelings about the evening quite well.

45 Minutes Week 30 - White Collar

For the better part of three weeks, the majority of my energy has been going to the pre-press work on my upcoming Warrior27: The Collection.  Coupled along with my day job, it's meant a lot of sleepless nights and all too focused attention on tiny details.  Have you ever made sure 250 pages are all at 5" x 7.5", RGB color with the correct compression?  It's mundane as hell, and sadly, takes a ton of time.

Luckily, all the recent DVD releases of some great shows have been keeping me company, making the hours seem not so endless.  Just this past week I've knocked off Season 5 of The Closer and yesterday alone, I killed the entire Season One of White Collar.  While most of my contemporaries were outside, frolicking at the beach and drinking cheap beer, I was in my living room, fan blowing on my face, fingers glued to the keyboard, while my eyes watched the con games of grifter extraordinairre Neal Caffrey.

I'm always a fan of the con, so I expected to like White Collar.  I was surprised to love it.  All the pieces fit just right, and the show delievers, with solid acting and great stories for each episode.  But first, the players.

Tim Dekay is a fine actor, perhaps the best part of the excellent Carnivale, and he is completely believable as the straight-laced, but very smart FBI Agent Burke that manages to capture Caffrey, twice.  And Willie Garson was always entertaining on Sex and the City.  (Should I admit to watching every episode, but not the films, of that?)  Okay, I've always heard Garson was good on that show.  But on White Collar, he's very good, playing against type in the role that usually would go to some grizzled actor like Chris Christopherson.  He's the man that can get you anything, and the best friend of the series star, Matt Bomer.

Bomer is perfect as Caffrey.  He's unbelievably pretty, which for a con man, is a great quality to have.  Unlike most "faces," he's not a womanizer.  In fact, it was his love for his girlfriend that landed him in this predicament.  Three months away from the end of his sentence, she left him.  Unable to deal, he escaped and went looking for her.  Unfortunately, Burke catches up with him again.  In a twist that is probably far too common in the real world, the Agency offers Caffrey a job in exchange for his freedom.  Help catch other bad guys, and you will have some freedom on the outside world, mostly confined to two square miles thanks to his monitoring bracelet.

But he's got plans of his own. 

Besides the usual "case of the week," there are plenty of subplots, which I won't give away here, but they add plenty of extra motivation for our smooth criminal.  And I really didn't see the season finale coming.  It left the show in a great place for the start of Season Two, which luckily, just started.

I'm tempted to find time to watch it weekly, and not just catch the random episode during the summer.

Cover of the Week 30 - White Heat