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Feeling the ‘Drive’ To Survive
Drive” Premiering at the L.A. Film Festival June 17, 2011. In “Drive,” the new film by Danish-born director Nicolas Winding Refn, Ryan Gosling channels Steve McQueen‘s turbo-charged antics from films like “Bullet” and “The Getaway.” In fact, McQueen would have been a shoo-in to play the hero, here known simply as “Driver,” if the movie…
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Hong Kong Noir Makes French Connection
Let the bonding begin. Hong Kong is featuring a two-month-long arts festival — Le French May. In addition to music, dance and theater, a film program titled, “NOIR – A Film Noir Retrospective Bridging France and Hong Kong,” has rolled out. The festival features some of the best French crime movies from the last decade,…
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Raoul Walsh Biographer Intros Two at Egyptian
If you live in the L.A. area you’ll want to be at the Egyptian Theater Friday, June 10, when two of director Raoul Walsh’s towering achievements in crime cinema, “High Sierra” and “The Roaring Twenties,” will be screened. And to celebrate the first book-length biography of Walsh, Marilyn Ann Moss, author of “Raoul Walsh: The…
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Hammer Swings Again
Although he died in 2006, Mickey Spillane has a new crime novel out featuring New York private detective Mike Hammer. Spillane wrote numerous crime novels from the 1940s until shortly before his death, including “I, the Jury” (which sold 3 million copies and launched Spillane’s career), Vengeance is Mine” and “My Gun is Quick.” He…
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Dead Hollywood Starlet Still Spotted at Old Haunt?
17575 Pacific Coast Highway, once home of silver screen star Thelma Todd. Quite by accident I had the opportunity to tour a historic L.A. crime scene this week. I’d seen pictures of the place a thousand times, but I didn’t recognize it until my host pointed out the tawdry historic significance of the location —…
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Mean Streets and Sidewalks, Preminger’s Bleak Vision
In Otto Preminger’s 1950 hard boiled crime drama, “Where The Sidewalk Ends” (Script by Ben Hecht), Dana Andrews, as Det. Mark Dixon, lays the groundwork for “Dirty” Harry Callahan. Much like Clint Eastwood’s Fascist-leaning crime fighter, Andrews’ Dixon can’t play by the rules–he’d just as soon slap around crooks and wiseguys, and can’t stomach the…
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Aussie Gangster Film Side-Steps Cliches
Few crime dramas are as compelling as last year”s “Animal Kingdom.” David Michôd wrote and directed the film about a Melbourne family of bank robbers. We never see them rob a bank, and except for one or two brutal scenes never a crime is committed. How’s that for avoiding heist film cliches?Michôd is after something…
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You Deserve to be on the Hit List
The Black List is dead–the Hit List is where it’s at. Well, the Black List isn’t exactly dead–it’s still quite well read and influential. But following in its path, the Hit List provides a rundown of spec screenplays by promising unrepped writers. That was the Black List’s mission originally. But while most of the Black…