Monday, January 28, 2019

TCM Film Noir News

By David in TN
Sun, Jan 27, 2019 12:58 a.m.

TCM's Film Noir of the Week goes on a month long hiatus in February, during TCM's 31 Days of Oscar.

Tomorrow night, Sunday, January 27, TCM will have a special Noir Double feature. At 8 p.m. ET. Act of Violence (1949), and at 9:45 pm ET, In a Lonely Place.

Our friend Eddie Muller will take Ben Mankiewicz's place as host for these two films. Act of Violence stars Van Heflin as a former bomber pilot with a dark secret, directed by Fred Zinneman. In a Lonely Place stars Humphrey Bogart. This film is notable for Bogart playing the character most like his real life self he ever played.

Eddie Muller has said In a Lonely Place is his favorite film noir.


4 comments:

Unknown said...

I always see your recommendations on the noir film genre but don't really have much knowledge about them. If you could recommend your top 3 I would surely appreciate it. In return I shall give you my top 3 commercial recommendations that I find humorous or clever. 1. ATT Stay in you lane bro. 2. Geico Humpday 3. The dollar shave club (set to a Sammy Davis Jr. song, I think). As an aside, Ive expressed by expertise to you once before on the subject, but I must confess that I think Alexandria Occasional-Cortex has a pretty sweet rack that almost absolves her of her shortcomings.

Nicholas said...

1. The Maltese Falcon (1941 version, starring Bogie): The father of Film Noir
2. Double Indemnity (1944): Billy Wilder’s hard-boiled version of James M. Cain’s novel, starring Fred McMurray, playing gloriously against type, and Barbara Stanwyck.
3. If The Third Man counts (1949?) as film noir, then it is definitely #3, even though it is ahead of both the previous pictures (#10) on my list of the greatest movies of all time. (There’s no femme fatale, but it is on lists of the greatest films noir.) It stars Joseph Cotten as a down-on-his-luck pulp fiction writer who visits an old friend in Vienna, who had offered him a job, only to find the friend dead, and the postwar city full of shady characters claiming to have been the late friend’s dear friends.


Re commercials: I've heard the phrase, "Stay in your lane," but am not sure if I saw the ad. "The dollar shave club" spot doesn't ring a bell. GEICO Humpday, however, is Hall of Fame stuff. Larsonesque, in taking a mtaphor and making it concrete. GEICO ran it the other day. I recognized it immediately with the sound off.

If comedy still lives in America, it is in TV commercials!

Nicholas said...

P.S.: As for your other observation, as a longtime scholar on the subject, I agree.

Just a day or two ago, I told my family that if a female politician is physically attractive, I cannot counter her arguments!

Unknown said...

I appreciate your suggestions and will definitely give them a watch.
I think the shave club is well worth watching but be earned the full version is over three minutes.