WELCOME

Welcome. Glad to see you here in our world of strange fascinations. What do we find so strangely fascinating? Well, a lot of things, really. To sum it up...we're predisposed to the paranormal, attracted to the anachronistic, responsive to retro, passionate about pop culture, captivated by kitsch, orgasmic over the odd. This is our warehouse. Stay as long as you like. Scrawl something on the wall (we'd really like that). Just don't open that door over there behind the life size cardboard cut-out of Agent Dale Cooper. Why? Never mind. Just don't. Unless, of course, you've always wanted to be the subject of a "weird news" headline.

Velkommen. Glad for at se Dem her i vores verden på en mærkelig hensyn. Hvad ser vi så mærkeligt Fascinerende? Godt, en masse ting, virkelig. Til sidst det up...we »ad været tilbøjelig til at se, tiltrukket af det utidssvarende, lydhør over for refleksanordninger, lidenskabeligt om POP kultur, påtage ved kitsch, orgasmic over mærkeligt. Det er vores lager. Ophold så længe man vil. Scrawl noget på væggen (vi fortsat virkelig gerne høre).

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OI! PSSST. HAVE YOU MET OUR MASCOT? DON'T MIND THE GOOGLY EYES.
Yeah, she's definitely creepy with that unsettling gaze trained on the camera courtesy of those big, googly eyes, but from the moment we saw her pallid mug in the musty pages of "Wisconsin Death Trip", Michael Lesy's 1972 cult classic compendium of death, disease, disaster and degradation in 1890s Black River, Wisconsin, we knew that this nameless vixen of yore would forever have a stranglehold on what passes for our heart. And, of course, she's perfect for this dark and shamelessly skewed blog. If we had the time and the focus, we'd have T-shirts made that said "I suck the life out of Cheeseheads, Go Packers!" But, luckily, we have adult ADD and will never do it. Including her eerie little face in our blog is the best we can do. We just hope that our readers appreciate our creepy little friend as much as we do. In fact, we feel a poll coming on...





Oh, yeah....we have a theme song. Two, in fact. And a whole lot of back-up possibilities. (Videos are down below.)

Our Theme Song

A BLOG WITHOUT MUSIC IS LIKE A DAY WITHOUT BEER. IT CAN BE DONE, BUT WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO? WE HOPE THAT YOU'LL ENJOY OUR RECOMMENDED SELECTIONS.

Enhance Your Viewing Pleasure

COMING SOON! LISSA D'S "FLICKS FOR CHICKS" MOVIE PICKS AND RANDOM MUSINGS

COMING SOON! LISSA D'S "FLICKS FOR CHICKS" MOVIE PICKS AND RANDOM MUSINGS
NEXT POST: LISSA EXPLAINS WHY SHE THINKS THAT "KILL BILL" IS A NECESSARY CINEMATIC THRILL.

How To Make A Pink Squirrel

How To Make A Pink Squirrel
Why wait? Get in the pink. Click on the rodent for the recipe for a classic Pink Squirrel cocktail..

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Our Endless Fascination With Film Noir

                                             Our Endless Fascination With Film Noir


Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity

       Guy walks into a bar. Bartender says, "That girl over there wants to buy you a drink." Guy looks at girl. Girl's a knockout. Great gams, killer smile. But there's a shadow on the wattage.
"Why the long face, doll?" the guy asks.
Girl tell him she's on the lam. Guy tells her to jaw. Girl tells him that her old man was a Peterman who did a box job for some trouble boys, and everything had been silk, but then a couple of Brunos showed up and said some jobbie had fingered her old man for doing a Chinese squeeze on the lettuce from the heist, and even though her old man swore it was all jake, the Brunos zotzed him.
"Then they started giving me the Broderick," she says. "I grabbed my old man's heater out of the couch cushions and started squirting metal. Suddenly the place is lousy with buttons. And there I am with three stiffs and a fogger. So now the tins are tightening the screws and telling me I gotta sing or I'm under glass for a three spot. And I don't look good in stripes."
She slides a cigarette between her lips. He lights it. She blows smoke into his face.
"Will you help me?" she asks.
"That depends," he says. "You on the level?"
"You tell me," she says.
She kisses him. He stares at her. She taps out her cigarette. He sighs and sips his whiskey.
       "Sure," he says. "Why not? I got nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon. Besides, baby, this is FILM NOIR."

Carey Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious
Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in Dark Passage
Robert Mitchum and Kathy Greer in Out Of The Past


 Yes, we get hot and heavy over hard-boiled dialogue, and dizzy over  desperate dames and tough private eyes.  It helps if the dame and the dick have sketchy pasts and are on the run from someone or something. Film critics define the elements of classic film noir in a variety of ways, but most agree on the visual  basics:  black and white film, lots of Dutch (i.e. tilted) shots,  generous use of flashbacks, and a lot of voice-over narration (i.e. "I met her in a little bar in Poughkeepsie two years ago. She was as pretty as a picture, and as dangerous as a shard of glass if that picture ever broke.")  The characters themselves are universally troubled and filled with angst over their pasts. One critic defined the classic noir dynamic as "Boy meets girl. Girl asks boy to do something bad. Boy does it. Girl ditches boy. Boy spends the rest of the film trying to find girl and not get killed or arrested."  From Humphrey Bogart to Robert Mitchum, from Barbara Stanwyck to Veronica Lake, the tough broads and troubled guys of film noir are etched into our collective consciousness. For a musical retrospective of some of their iconic faces and some wonderful film noir moments, check out this tribute video. It is absolutely the best we have ever seen. And for a list of our favorite top ten film noir flicks, check out the "Film Noir" section of this blog. Thanks for letting us jaw and not giving us the bum's rush. See you in the funny papers....ya big lug.




Veronica Lake



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