1934's The Thin Man was based on the Dashiell Hammett novel by the same name. But don't expect this to be a tough, dark detective story. This detective, Nick Charles (William Powell), retired after marrying Nora (Myrna Loy), an heiress. Rather than casing back alleys, Nick and Nora socialize, trade quips, and drink. And boy, do they drink! This detective is more marinaded than hard boiled. At least they're happy drunks.



The plot revolves around a old, quirky, wealthy (and thin) inventor who divorced his money- and man-hungry wife, has a relationship with his secretary, and plans to leave town in order to work in seclusion. His lawyer, MacCauley (Porter Hall), has power of attorney, and is to manage his affairs and send money via the secretary.

The movie starts and ends quite differently than the book. In the novel, Hammett reveals the plot to the reader - and to Nick Charles - one bite at a time. We never meet the inventor. The movie, on the other hand, opens with the inventor, showing us the full back story. Frankly, this is a good choice, as the golden rule for film is show, don't tell.

The crime, in the book and movie, is the murder of the secretary, discovered by the inventor's ex-wife. The daughter, Dorothy Wyant (Maureen O'Sullivan) seeks the help of Nick, who knows the family and the lawyer.

Unfortunately, the film focuses on the witty, drinking couple, the dog, Asta (Skippy), doing tricks for the camera, and the drunken friends hamming it up. It would be fun to be on a cruise ship with the Charles couple, but they're too softboiled to anchor a film noir.

Unlike the book, the film ends with all of the suspects invited to a dinner party, where Nick fishes for the culprit, and each character gets to mug for the camera in the corny, 1930s style. And, surprise, surprise, the least likely character did it.

The very best scene in the film, where Nick finds a body under the floorboards of the inventor's workshop, is also unique to the screenplay, In the novel, Nick is told about the body by the police. Again, the movie gets this right: show don't tell, and make your central character active.

With such a great title, and given that it's based on a Dashiell Hammett novel, one might expect a tough film noir. That's certainly not the case. However, The Thin Man was entertaining enough to inspire five sequels.

I give The Thin Man five of ten stars. If you want noir, skip it. If you like lighthearted, '30s style comedy, give it a try. Personally, I didn't care for the book much either. This is the last of Dashiell Hammett's novels, and, unfortunately, his weakest.

This unique documentary-style police-story film noir was worthy of two Oscars: Best Black and White Cinematography for William H. Danielsm, and Best Film Editing for Paul Weatherwax. Shot on location in New York City, rather than on a sound stage, both awards were well deserved.

The film begins, and is interspersed, with a newspaper-style narration by producer Mark Hellinger. Adding to its unique style are the dubbing of many voices representing the internal dialog of the New Yorkers shown throughout the film. Because the film was shot in the city, much of the outdoor dialog is also dubbed. Sadly, narrator Hellinger died of a sudden heart attack before the picture was released.

Barry Fitzgerald, typically a 2nd tier character actor, plays the lead as Det. Lt. Dan Muldoon, a weathered and decidedly Irish police inspector in the homicide division. Muldoon leads the investigation into the murder of a young model, Jean Dexter, who happened to have a large collection of jewlery. The police quickly tie Dexter to her friend Frank Niles (Howard Duff) and his fiance Ruth Morrison (Dorothy Hart.) However, if the film has a star, it's New York City itself.


Frank Niles is an interesting character, lying about almost everything - even inconsequential matters. Before long, he buys a plane ticket to Mexico, funded with pawned, and hot, jewelry. When the police go to arrest him, they inadvertently interrupt Niles' murder, which has a similar modus operandi to the murder of Jean Dexter.

The end of the movie has a homage to Fritz Lang's M. The killer has evaded a police and is able to lose himself in the city, but runs into a blind man. The man's seeing eye dog attacks the murderer, the murderer shoots, and the police acquire their target. In M, a blind man is also plays a key role in outing the wanted man. However, it is Hitchcock, not Lang, who inspires the climax of the film, as the killer climbs to the top of the Williamsburg Bridge.

Overall, I found the story compelling, but the narration is a bit distracting. The images of New York, however, make up for all of that. The cinematography provides an authenticity that is unique in film noir. Considering the script, I give the film an eight out of ten stars. If you focus on the images, rather than the narration, however, The Naked City gets a solid ten.

Before there was film noir, there were gangster films, and Angels with Dirty Faces is one of the classics. It even features Humphrey Bogart, who's 1941 Maltese Falcon would set the film noir standard for years to come.

Angels stars a tough, brash James Cagney as Rocky Sullivan, a career criminal. Sullivan's childhood friend, Jerry Connolly (Pat O'Brien) grows up to become a priest - and Rocky's moral counterpoint.

Cagney's role is iconic, and is even featured on TV within the movie Home Alone. His tough-guy "Whadda ya hear! Whadda ya say!" line was mimicked for decades.

The film begins with teen-aged Rocky and Jerry establishing their characters, and then trying to rob a train. Jerry is the faster runner. Rocky gets caught, goes to juvie, and the two take their separate paths. Later when Rocky returns to the old neighborhood after multiple prison sentences, he and Jerry serve as alternate role models to a group of youths. Father Connolly offers the moral path, but Rocky easily trumps his friend with street smarts, tough talk, and even tougher actions.

The plot revolves around $100,000 that Rocky's lawyer, Frazier (Bogart) was to keep for Rocky in return for not being implicated in a crime. Three years later, when Rocky is released from prison, the lawyer has become the number two man for Mac Keefer (George Bancroft.) Frazier decides to keep the cash by rubbing Rocky out of the picture. Rocky survives, gets the $100k, and is able to gain a top position in the organization by blackmailing Keefer with the possession of incriminating books.

The story comes to a head when Father Connolly decides that the only way to save the boys is to take down the corruption around them, launching an anti-crime mission on radio and in the newspapers. When Keefer and Frazier decide to kill Father Connolly, Rocky gets wise, kills the two kingpins and survives a gunfight with the cops. Rocky is sentenced to the electric chair - the death row scene providing a perfect and satisfying ending to this classic film.

This film has numerous film noir elements. There is crime, murder, and the dark side of urban 20th century America. There is also insight into the human condition. Missing are a femme fatale (Ann Sheridan's Laury Ferguson never really figures into the plot or the story) and is no overall sense of mystery or suspense. The antics of the youths and the moral example of the priest give a softer feel than we come to expect in later film noir.

Overall, I give the film a nine out of ten. Technically, the film is flawless. The character story is handled well and provides the perfect ending. The only thing it lacks is the darker, mysterious feel that draws me to true film noir.

M might not be shot in New York or LA, and it might not feature a tough guy or a femme fatale, but it is definitely a progenitor to film noir.

Lang's masterpiece is shot with dark scenes and harsh shadows. It tracks the search, capture and trial of a child murderer. The plot is simple but the social themes and commentary are not. Noir aspects include murder, a police investigation, the underworld, and psychological darkness - in both the perpetrator and society at large.

In the opening scene, a child chooses among playmates with a rhythmic song about the child killer. This dark "eenie meanie minie moe" shows children coping with fear. After yet another murder, friends accuse friends, fights break out, no one is trusted, and a mob mentality develops.

Police respond by finding and following clues, but only arrive at dead ends. In response to the public outcry, the authorities enact raids, random searches, and paper checks - all written and filmed before the Nazi Party took power. Little heed is paid to human rights, but the police are victims too - working long hours, sleeping little, and being ridiculed for not catching their man.

The police presence hurts small businesses - legitimate and not. In response, underworld leaders gather to set their strategy. They decide to catch the murderer themselves. They employ the beggars union to form a network of eyes and ears.

Both the discovery and the tracking of Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) are brilliant. The beggars corner him in an office building, and thieves use their skills to break in and track him down. Once caught, Beckert is confronted by a kangaroo court, which is terrifying with its large seated mob and initial silence. Lorre's impassioned plea is one of the greatest performances in cinema.

In the end, the police track down the murderer and Beckert is tried in a court of law.

The premise of the film is clearly stated in the last line: "One has to keep closer watch over the children. All of you." For the child and family are not the only victims. The ensuing fear, hatred and outrage harm every member of society.

M was released just four years after the first picture with sound, The Jazz Singer. It pioneered the use of leitmotif, with the murderer whistling In the Hall of the Mountain King as his theme. The sound is still a bit primitive though, with some scenes lacking sound altogether. There is no score, per se; it's all source music (music that would actually be heard by the characters.)

This proto-noir film is certainly dated. The timing isn't as crisp as in the better films of later decades, some of the acting reminds us of the silent era, and there are holes in the soundtrack. Regardless, the plot is creative, Lorre's performance is brilliant, and the social commentary is much deeper than that of most Hollywood films released today. The film haunts us with questions about the resilience of society and the human soul.

Considering the state of film in 1931, this film scores a perfect ten.

Rather than a film from the mid '40s, the low quality transfer of Scarlet Street I saw on the Questar release, 5 Film Noir Killer Classics, made it feel more like a film from the '30s. Then again, maybe it wasn't the transfer. The film was directed by Fritz Lang, who make his mark with Metropolis in 1927 and again with M in 1931. The editing is smooth, and some of the dolly shots are great, but the film still feels a decade older than it really is.

Scarlet Street stars Edward G. Robinson, playing an innocent who cashiers during the week and who paints on Sundays. His character, Chris Cross, married his widowed landlady late in life out of mutual convenience and never felt truly loved. One night in Greenwich Village, he rescues a "working girl" (Kitty March, played by Joan Bennett) from a beating. Chris is led to believe that Kitty is an actress and she believes Chris to be a wealthy and famous artist. Kitty shows friendly affection, and Chris falls in love.
Unfortunately for Chris, his wife is a shrew, and he's fallen for a con woman. Kitty is really in love with a small time hood named Johnny Prince (Dan Duryea) who was dishing out the beating on the night Chris met Kitty. Johnny convinces Kitty to lead Chris on and soak him for cash.

One problem with the film is that the characters are simplistic, telegraphing their intent. Duryea plays the over-obvious con man, reminding me of Jon Lovitz's pathological liar character ("Yeah! That's the ticket!") Joan Bennett is shrill with Johnny and transparent with Chris. Rosalind Ivan's character Adelle Cross has not one admirable quality. Robinson's Chris is the one character with any depth. Fortunately, he plays it well and is able to earn the audience's sympathy.

The film's root problem is its premise: women ruin men's lives. In the first scene, a beautiful young woman waits in a limousine. There is a party celebrating Chris' 25th year with the bank. The boss pays the tab, but has to leave early - to join his mistress. In the final scene of the main cycle, Chris has been caught stealing from the bank. The boss doesn't press charges, asking, "was it a woman, Chris?"

In the end, we get a new premise: the guilty will be punished by their conscience. We then witness this in practice with an ending that just peters out.

The misogynist main premise and simplistic second premise do not provide any deep insights. The characters are too shallow and thick to give us a compelling plot, enough suspense or intrigue. In the end we are left with Robinson's acting, and Lang's direction, which are competent, but both past their prime.

Many reviewers rate Scarlet Street highly but I think they based their reviews more on Robinson's and Lang's reputations than the actual film. I give this film five out of ten stars. It's competent, but lacks the depth and/or plot needed to make a great film noir.

The Damned Don't Cry has the perfect film noir opening scene: A black sedan drives on an empty desert road and takes an abrupt turn off the beaten path. It slows to a halt. Two men get out, take a body from the back seat, and toss it down a sand dune, where it rolls to the bottom of the camera's frame.

What follows is a combination of film noir and melodrama, starring Joan Crawford. In flashback, we see Crawford as Ethel Whitehead, a poor woman, still living at home, married to an abusive man who is too cheap to buy their six year old a bike. After the son dies, she leaves in search of the life she deserves.

Once in New York, Ethel quickly transforms herself from neophyte to a player with spunk. She meets a straight-arrow accountant, and quickly sees that his skills with money are a path to success. She introduces her new friend to the owner of a restaurant and backroom gambling joint, and before long, Martin (Kent Smith) is hired by kingpin George Castleman (David Brian) to run the books for the whole operation. Martin takes the job to please Ethel, but it's a no-win situation.

Rather than a happy, Leave it to Beaver, 1950s wallflower, Crawford plays a powerful woman who has no trouble standing up for herself. However, it's still a man's world, so she can only hope to satisfy her ambition through the men around her. From Martin the accountant to George the married kingpin to Nick (Steve Cochran) the man who is set to take over the operation, Ethel, now transformed into socialite Lorna Hansen Forbes, climbs the ladder by attaching herself to ever more powerful - and dangerous - men.

Crawford is a bit old to play the part, but is effective with each of her three conquests. Martin is timid with women, and is easily taken by her affections. George has no interest in her, until she matches his power and brains. Nick wants her for her (recently manufactured) status among the elite.

Before long, the film returns to its pure noir roots. Intrigue and romance are replaced with threats, fights and gunfire.

If you don't mind the leading role being played by the femme fatale, like strong female characters, and enjoy a movie that combines its romance with manipulation, this is your kind of film noir. It's seen from the dark side, rather than from the eyes of a detective, so it's more than a little provocative for its time.

I give The Damned Don't Cry eight of ten stars. It was only released on DVD recently, so it's a bit of a sleeper. It never got the chance to build the reputation it deserves.

Many reviewers declare the 1947 Robert Mitchum film, Out of the Past, to be the definitive example of American film noir. Though I enjoyed the film, I felt it was too lighthearted and contrived to earn the title.

Maybe I'm just not a Robert Mitchum fan. Rather than being tough or cunning, Mitchum's laconic style presents a character who is more weary than driven. The cynic in me believes that he was cast because his bedroom eyes would make the female members of the audience swoon when he kisses the girls. I prefer my films to be hard-boiled, not harlequin romances, thank you.

By far, my favorite aspect of this film is the cinematography. The opening is shot on location is Bridgeport, California, a small town in the eastern Sierras. I've stopped in Bridgeport many times on backpacking trips, and it's the real deal. Many of the buildings seen in this film are still standing. We are also treated to scenes in the back country, as well as south Lake Tahoe.

Contrasting the beauty of the Sierras are the night scenes in San Francisco, which are wonderfully dark and ominous. But my favorite scenes were shot in Acapulco. Clearly, this film had a solid budget.

The budget was used not only for travel and locations, but for the cast. In addition to Mitchum and Greer, we are treated to Kirk Douglas as an obsessed and crooked magnate, Rhonda Fleming as a con woman, and Virginia Huston as the innocent "good girl."

The acting is solid, but somehow I didn't buy the some of the key decisions by the characters. In the substantial back story, detective Jeff Bailey (Mitchum) is hired by Whit Sterling (Douglas) to track down "his" girl, Kathie Moffat (Greer.) Jeff finds Kathie in Acapulco and falls in love. Rather than complete his job, Jeff throws Whit off the trail and runs away with Kathie to San Francisco. It was hard to believe that our smart, trustworthy detective could be manipulated so easily.

It's not hard to hate the Kathie character, but it's not so much because we truly believe that she is evil. It's that she seems to make consistently evil, even if stupid, decisions. I hated her more for being a dummy than for being truly driven from within.

That said, this film has great noir dialog, like when Kathie says, "Oh Jeff, you ought to have killed me for what I did a moment ago", and Jeff responds, "There's time."

There's also a solid plot. Years after Jeff ran away with Kathie and lost her, he is discovered hiding from his past by one of Whit Sterling's men. Jeff is then blackmailed into doing a job for Sterling, but it's a setup. Sterling wants the job done, but he still wants revenge against Jeff.

It's a solid film that is generally well reviewed. I'll give it a seven of ten, despite my misgivings. It has a 96 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and gets 8.1 on IMDB. If you like Robert Mitchum and don't mind some contrived romance in your film noir, you'll love this film.

Possessed is the story of a woman (Joan Crawford) who falls obsessively in love with a man (Van Heflin) who wants to play the field. Rather than a lighthearted love story with a happy Hollywood ending, this is an early psychological thriller in the noir style with a touch of gothic horror.
Aside from the ham-handed explanations of schizophrenia and mental illness, this film feels more modern than its 1947 date implies. In particular, Joan Crawford, who started her career in silent pictures, brings a certain maturity to the role of the jilted - and possessed - lover. She balances the melodrama of a mid-20th century woman-in-love with a character who becomes progressively more unhinged. The combination tempers the overly innocent, gag-me style of story telling that I often associate with films from the '40s.

The tone of the film is undermined by simplistic and dated psychological treatment and dry explanations of the subject. Frankly, mental illness in film is most powerful when shown and most mysterious when left unexplained. Then again, even Hitchcock felt the need to tell the audience about Norman Bates' inner workings at the end of the 1960 film, Psycho. I found it helpful to view the film as two separate, but intertwined movies: a drama about a possessed woman - and a comedy about psychiatric care in the 1940s.

True to the noir genre, there are deaths, mysteries, and a gun. There are also scenes that turn out to be fantasies, if not full blown hallucinations. In a remake, I would like to see the first person point of view hallucination thread more progressively developed. Hinting at uncertainty early in the film and bringing it to a slow boil would be a fun ride for the viewer.

My wife tolerates my love of older films; however, Possessed drew her into the story as strongly as any modern film. The acting, in particular by Crawford and the young Geraldine Brooks, is excellent, as is the cinematography, editing and score. Crawford was nominated for an Academy Award. Just two years before, she won an Oscar for her leading role in Mildred Pierce.

I give the film an eight out of ten stars. If you are able to relax and be comically entertained by the treatment of 1940s psychology, give it a nine.

The 1956 film, Bob le Flambeur (high roller), is a bridge between Hollywood's film noir meta-genre and the French New Wave movement that was to follow. It's a low-budget one-off that features a high-roller named Bob, who embodies the cool American criminal in a world of Parisian wanna-be gangsters.

The film starts slowly, introducing us to the Montmartre area of Paris, complete with layabouts, prostitutes and gambling. The main character, Bob, dresses well, stays up all night gambling, and is in the midst of a losing streak. Bob has scruples, once saving a cop from being shot in a bank heist (for which Bob did his time), not helping out a guy who beats his prostitute wife, and taking in a young woman to save her from a life on the street.

When down to his last francs, Bob learns of a fortune in the safe of a large, high-class casino after Grands Prix. There's an inside man who knows that the safe is vulnerable at 5am.

Bob goes into action, making a deal with the croupier (dealer), getting financial backing, buying some muscle, and hiring an expert safe cracker. On many levels, this is a low-tech, small-time Ocean's Eleven.

Not everything goes smoothly. Two of the crooks, Bob's young friend Paulo and the croupier, blab to their women, unraveling the scheme. On the night of the heist, Bob goes to the casino to make sure that nothing is amiss. He sees that the croupier is not there, but rather than call off the job, Bob is enticed by Lady Luck.

Frankly, there are better heist films, and better film noir. Bob le Flambeur is best saved for those studying film history, and those who are open to watching something different.

If the film has an overall flaw, it's lack of balance. The introduction of the characters is overly long before the plot goes into action. Some edits are quick. Others are long and odd. At one point we take a drive in the car and listen to the musical underscore for no particular reason, other than to get from here to there.

The musical score is both genius and imbecilic, with audio mixing to match. Near the beginning of the film we see a funicular train descending, and the composer plays endless downward scales. What is this, kindergarten? As young Paulo walks between bars, we hear the music playing from each one - only they don't mix. The sounds change like switching radio channels. On the other hand, the live jazz is brilliant, and the dialog and music are mixed cleanly with perfect balance as the vibes player in the background syncs to the song perfectly.

This is a fun film to watch, in that we get to see the French perspective of the Hollywood film noir and American criminals. We get to see the not so romantic side of Paris in the mid-50s. And we get to stroll onto the bridge that leads to the French New Wave film movement.

Rotten Tomatoes gives this film a 96 percent rating. I'm more critical. I give it six stars out of ten. If you like film history, add two points. If you just want to be entertained by a heist film, subtract two and rent Ocean's Eleven.

Just because I am sure all of you out there are wondering; yes, we did capture behind the scenes footage during the filming of The Murder of Dirk Snowglobe, so put away those prepared pitchforks and torches. Myself (a.k.a. Chet Candles) and Alex Volkman (a.k.a. Handel Gloves [a.k.a. dead guy on coffee table]) captured a whopping seven total tapes worth (9½ hours) of golden mishaps, hilarious outtakes, and everything that could possibly make Matt T. look bad. All in all it was pretty fun and you finally get to see a bit of what filming a Poorly Projected Picture is like.

At the moment we have uploaded four of the seven tapes and have sifted through some pretty humorous material. And last minute--as usual--Nathan had me throw together five minutes of rough edited video, that brought me back to my high school CHS Video class days, for the press kit that went into our portfolio for the Seattle International Film Festival. Alex and I are pretty excited to go through and finish up all the editing so that by the time you all get to see Dirk, there will be some good BTS footage to go along with it. We are ready to get started on the next project so that we can get some of the writing process into the next stage of behind the scenes.

'Til then, keep your torches lit and your pitchforks sharp, you never know when you might need them.

It's either very late or very early, but either way I want to be editing but can't. Right now my computer is rendering proxy files--for the non-video head, proxy files are small versions of HD footage to reduce work done by the computer in the editing phase--and it's taking much longer than I want: about 7.5:1 ratio.

So while I wait, I'll toss in some updates. Today we finished filming all the scenes in Dirk Snowglobe's office, so after a week we can finally put Alex, AJ, Matt and Shannon's living room back together. The lack of Xbox has been a particular pain :). I'm going to put together a rough cut of all the scenes tonight--if there's any time before class and after rendering--just to make sure that nothing was forgotten. We shall see.

Yesterday my living room also got turned into a set, which mostly involved moving everything into a corner. This the first murder scene in Dirk, so Alex got to lie on a coffee table for two hours covered in chocolate syrup--just like they used is Psycho. At the end of it he was pretty sticky, tired, and out of it, so I felt kinda bad, but he did look pretty cool.

It's pretty crazy, all I seem to do is work on Dirk now. School and sleep happen, but Dirk never seems to stop. Hell, if a class is boring I pull out a script and storyboard. The only other thing I do is watch films when my computer is rendering proxies. Here's the low-down on what I've watched this week.

What Lies Beneath 4.5/5 - Most of the rating is for the directing--which is amazing. One shot in particular blew my mind. Realistically the film was too long, probably could have cut as many as twenty minutes. However, since it's an homage to Hitchcock, the slower pacing makes sense.

Sicko 5/5 - Very well done. I was really disappointed with Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore was just too angry and too divisive. But Sicko hailed back to the good old days and say "what the f**k is going on!"

The Asphalt Jungle 4/5 - I usually rate older films pretty low; I'm much more into modern cinema, but this film was pretty cool. Good pacing and very interesting plot. However, by todays standards the "heist" scene was so dull it was funny. Now we have all this fancy technology to make heist films so interesting, in 1950 you could fall asleep robbing a joint.

Bugsy Malone 4/5 - I remembered this film from when I was seven years old and had to see it again because I remembered it so fondly. A musical ganster film where all the roles are played by children. Suprisingly adult, and it's quite funny to hear children deliver such witty dialog. But, still strange seeing a speakeasy full of children...

The Hunt for Red October 4.5/5 - Straight up cool action flick with an awesome cast.

Below 4.5/5 - Interesting film, definitely a cool concept and good story. Something awesome about setting a movie on a submarine because it's just such a sweet crucible.

Sphere 5/5 - Haha, I must be missing the boat on this one, because I loved it and apparently no one else does. For me it's all about the subject matter. I'm a huge sucker for time travel, space ships, and the psychologically fantastic. And Dustin Hoffman and Samuel L. Jackson are both awesome. So really, this film couldn't go wrong for me.

And my phone alarm just went off, so I can go edit!

One indirect offshoot of American Film Noir is the Czech New Wave of the early 1960s. The brave directors during this period created dark films that were a reaction to repression by the state. Rather than risking direct criticism, the filmmakers presented their views with allegory and metaphor. The movement quickly ended with the Soviet invasion in the summer of 1968.

These are not detective stories and who-done-its, but bleak explorations into human reactions within damaged societies. Think Lost Weekend, rather than Maltese Falcon.

In The Fifth Horseman Is Fear, director Zbynek Brynych follows the story of a Jewish doctor in Prague during the Holocaust. No longer allowed to practice medicine, Dr. Braun survives as a warehouse man, cataloging confiscated Jewish property for the Germans. Brynych's link between Nazi authoritarianism and Communist authoritarianism is impossible to miss.

This film doesn't present the straight narrative of commercial American cinema; rather, it weaves its sparse story with jarring images, and occasional disjoint, oddly paced edits. However, once drawn into the film, this strange, haunting world feels all too real.

Dr. Braun lives in a Prague apartment at the top of a broad, circular stair case among an odd and varied set of tenants: the wealthy couple who cheat on one another; the young boy they ignore; the angry, snooping piano teacher; a poor, mad woman who keeps rabbits; a selfish, lower class couple with a constantly crying baby; and a rat-like informant for the state. The residents are inundated by state posters, literature and radio announcements prodding them to report on suspect activities.

The plot is put into motion by the arrival of an activist who has been shot and needs medical attention. Dr. Braun is summoned, refuses to operate, but eventually relents and removes the bullet. Realizing that the man will scream in pain when he awakens, the doctor goes out after curfew, seeking morphine.

The doctor's quest leads the viewer through the madhouse that the city has become. We visit a brothel, the Desperation Club, and the Jewish asylum. The club is especially haunting as "normal" people drink themselves into oblivion, perform trance-like dances, and sing and stop in a unison of fear.

Upon return to his apartment, the doctor struggles to keep the authorities from uncovering his patient. The stress causes his neighbors to surrender to selfish desperation.

Roger Ebert called the movie, "A nearly perfect film...beautiful, distinguished work." I take the opposite view. The film has many jarring imperfections, and it is not afraid to show ugliness. For instance, the music in the Desperation Club is discordant and at odds with the sound and style of music that would have actually been playing. The dancers and music are not quite in sync. However, it is this off-kilter style and stark presentation that digs beneath our conscious mind and into the world of dreams - and nightmares.

If film noir means "black movie", then The Fifth Horseman is Fear is darker still.

I give it eight of ten stars as a film. As a nightmare, it gets ten.

Well, we've hit that point: We've got a lot to do and very little time to do it, and everyone is asking, "Is it worth it?"

Our goal is to enter the film in the Seattle International Film Festival, and the deadline is February 2nd--one week from today. At this point we have four minutes of film edited, ten pages of script left to shoot, half the film to storyboard, and three more sets to build. Whoa.

To complicate things, there is no back-up festival. I thought IFP's LA film fest might work, but it's deadline is only four days after SIFF! Four days doesn't buy us much, especially since we can hand deliver (I think...) to SIFF but need to mail to LA. Realistically, we should enter or scratch them both. But... what big festivals have deadlines after SIFF?

None. Waiting for the next festivals adds three to four months to our release. Ugh. So if we don't do SIFF, we might as well just release to the web early--but that means no festival premiere. What to do?

I read an interesting quote a week or two ago that said the brick walls are there to make sure we really want what we are after. And if that's true, I'd say it's time for us to start climbing.

If you like your murder served cold and in large portions, you'll love Dashiell Hammett's first novel, Red Harvest. Voted one of the top 100 novels from 1923 - 2005 by Time Magazine, the book features tough men and nasty women tossing back and forth short, clipped lines of classic noir dialog. For example, I flipped open a random page to find a witness end her scene with "It's hell to die ugly as this."

Dashiell Hammett is best known as the creator of Sam Spade, a character popularized by Humphrey Bogart in the 1940 adaptation of The Maltese Falcon. Before Spade, there was The Continental Op, a nameless character who starred in Hammett's short stories. Those stories led to Red Harvest, Hammett's first novel, published in February, 1929. The character returned in The Dain Curse, published later that year. Though Hammett only published three more novels in his lifetime, he is often hailed as the father of the hard-boiled detective novel.

The novel starts with The Continental Op being called to Personville (or Poisonville, if you say it with a Boston accent), a town of about 40,000 people somewhere near Boise, ID. At the same time as The Op is waiting to meet his caller, editor of the local paper, his client is murdered.

As The Op digs around, we learn that the dead man's father, Elihu Willsson, used to own the town - literally. When unions threatened Willsson's profits, he brought in strike breakers. Willsson might have won the battle with the unions, but the strike breakers were gangsters, and quickly took over the town. Everything from the Governor's office down to the local soda fountain was corrupt.

Rather than try to bring the criminals to justice, The Op sets off a gang war, leading to chapter after chapter of murders and intrigue.

This isn't an Arsenic and Old Lace or a The Butler in the Parlor with the Candlestick kind of a murder mystery. Red Harvest has drugs, prostitution, booze smuggling, rigged boxing matches, police payoffs and killing after brutal killing. The hero is no Miss Marple either. Our nameless protagonist cleans up the town with dynamite, a match and a short fuse.

If you want to know where film noir came from, don't watch a movie. Go to your local library, check out Red Harvest, and don't put it down until the last mobster dies.

I give it nine out of ten stars.

Lately Nathan and I have been on the hunt for appropriate talent for the pilot film of The Murder of Dirk Snowglobe, and we are very proud to present our two newest cast choices: Ms. Margaux Bobargaux and Ms. Jordan Havlin. Both are students of Western Washington University that I have had the pleasure of working with through our coursework in the theater department. With their acting abilities, classical features and impeccable charms they were the ideal candidates for our two female characters, Ms. Susan Gloves and Ms. Vienna Waltz.





Let's give a warm round of applause for our newest cast members!
*clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* clap*

We have more goodness for the site. We've now added RSS feeds. Simply click on the RSS logo and get the RSS link for your reader.

By subscribing to our RSS feed, you will be notified every time we add new articles, blogs, clues, and other goodies.

Why wait? Subscribe now! (It's free.)

Now that the rewrite is complete I've got my work really cut out for me--storyboarding. And it always takes longer than I think it will. It's very tempting to rush the process, but the whole idea behind it is to really think about the scene, the characters and what that means for the camera. If you rush it, you shouldn't have bothered.

That said, I've been up all night and I only have 34 shots done--out of I'm guessing nearly two hundred. Normally that would be pretty good progress, but we start shooting on tuesday. Ah! We'll see what happens. Hopefully, I'm just all wrong and started with the hardest scene; it's not likely.

Strangely enough I planned to be up all night long before I planned to storyboard tonight. Over the past couple days I decided to try something new with my sleep schedule--which has always been a little... off. Maybe a "little" is an enormous understatement. Anyway, I stopped drinking caffeine a while back and that helped a lot, but I had a problem--I sleep a lot! Way more than normal people, and I have way better things I could be doing with my time.

It wasn't long ago that I realized it was often easier for me to not sleep than it was to wake up consistently. So I'm trying something based on that: Sleeping every other day. It sounds crazy, and it might be; it's just an experiment. Basically I can kinda get everything I want: be awake at all hours of the day--they all have their different uses--sleep for like 12+ hours straight, and get an average of six to seven hours of sleep per day.

Feel free to call me crazy--I always have been. But I'm curious to see how this works...

Things are coming together in the world of Dirk, we just uncovered this picture taken of him shortly before his death.


We'll see how production goes along tomorrow. Michael and I have been creating some indie-lights that are going to kick some major *** Two hundred dollars? I can do it on twenty. You'll see.

Paramount's 1942 Film Noir crime drama, This Gun For Hire, helped establish the detached, loner main character as a staple of the genre. Hitman Raven is played by fourth billed, five-foot-five Alan Ladd in his debut role. Rather than a femme fatale, Veronica Lake plays the emotional hero, who helps Raven find a touch of joy on his way to revealing a treasonous plot.



Ladd and Lake went on to make six more films together including two Noirs: The Glass Key and The Blue Dahlia. In the 1997 film L.A. Confidential, Kim Bassinger won an Oscar for her supporting role as a prostitute who looked like Veronica Lake. (Though, if you ask me, Bassinger looks more like Rita Hayworth.)

Ladd continued to play laconic characters, reaching his peak with the role of Shane in the movie of the same title.

Ladd's real life ended in Noir fashion. In 1962 the actor was discovered unconcious in a pool of his own blood after a bullet just missed his heart. He died from an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates in 1964.

Unlike a cop or detective story, This Gun For Hire follows Raven, a tough-shelled hitman who has a soft spot for cats, does a job, and is then setup to be taken down as a loose end. Raven barely escapes capture by the police and then tracks down his double-crossing client, Willard Gates (played by Laird Cregar). Gates works for the Nitro Chemical Company, which is selling poison gas to the highest bidder.

Being from the early forties, the film balances its hard edge with Cregar's somewhat comic performance, Robert Preston's lovestruck role as the police lieutenant, and two song and dance numbers complete with magic tricks, nicely performed by Veronica Lake. American Film Noir didn't get truly gritty until after the servicemen returned with their battle scars from WWII.

Today This Gun For Hire is definitely dated, but enjoyable. It has some classic moments - like when Raven goes to and leaves his job with a little girl wearing braces sitting on the stairs. She clearly sees his face, but he doesn't have the heart to hurt her. The scene where Raven escapes the hotel by hiding in the phone booth and misdirecting the cops is nicely choreographed and directed.

The film is a bit soft for my tastes, but, given its 1942 release date, it ranks as a key building block of the genre. Ladd's performance is tough, but Lake is the real hero of this early Noir classic.

I give it seven of ten stars.

Alright, we are definitely getting into the meat of producing Dirk. The re-write is just shy of done and down to the wire is the cliche that I think describes us best. I'm really happy with the re-write though, it gives a much better look into the characters and is a single cohesive storyline--where the later webisodes will be long, interweaving and never-quite-over. I've got my work cut out for me to get things storyboarded this weekend. And we all have to get everything ready to start shooting on tuesday. Can we succeed?

The deadline for the Seattle International Film Festival seems pretty daunting, but currently the glass is half full. Today was our first official start of production; we recorded Dirk's opening monologue. Matt really got a hold of Dirk's voice, and it sounds really bad *** So be ready for that.

I'm going to get everyone blogging on here so we can keep everyone up to date on what's going on from a couple perspectives.

We are currently in the midst of last drafts of "The Murder of Dirk Snowglobe." This may seem a bit last minute, but we decided to do a page one rewrite as of about a week and a half ago. Are we crazy? Yeah...

It's hard to explain what we were doing that could have possibly been productive that led to us finding this video, but I can say that it is the greatest video of all time. Just listen to this music.



And now we must get back to work.

Check out Dirk's improved clues:

Not only are the clues now in "Dirk's files", but if you mouse over them, you'll see Dirk's notes and some additional hints. (Dirk is obsessive. All his notes are typed.)

I also updated our main page. Everytime you refresh Dirk's home page, it displays a different clue photo.

Here's another clue: there's more to come...

In this survival tale, a hiker emerges from a snow covered mountain to find a remote cabin. The rescuer inside takes action to become a hero.



This is our first short narrative film shot on the Canon 5D Mark II. The only lenses used were a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 and a Canon 70mm - 300mm f/4-f/5.6.

The film was edited on Vegas, and includes full color grading. It looks pretty good, but we've learned some tricks during the process that will improve and simplify our next project.

The music is 100% original. We produced all of the music and sound effects. The only sound remaining that we recorded on location is the moan, and it was captured with the onboard mic.

Personally, I think the mix rocks. TURN IT UP! :)

In addition to Vimeo, we posted the film with all the juicy details on our Colonel Crush site.

Let us know how you like it!

Tubefilter News is currently featuring our plans for Dirk Snowglobe as their lead story. The article, ‘Dirk Snowglobe’ Promises Indie Film Noir Comedy in High Definition, by Arjun Sharma covers the concept, our production plans, and the web site.

The author is excited about Dirk's production values before we've even started the shoot. Frankly, so are we. We've been studying and filming with our new camera, and we've currently working on two test shorts - one in production, and the other in post. By the time we start shooting scenes for Dirk's pilot, we'll have all the details mastered.

While you're waiting for our shorts and series to be released, add Tubefilter News to your 'favorites' (the usual shortcut is Ctrl-D.) Their staff is dedicated to finding the best video content on the 'Net. Let them sift through YouTube's millions of videos. Why search the net for great videos, when you can just click and watch?

As they put it. "Tubefilter News helps you discover and keep track of the stories you care about." Sounds good to me!

I haven't been able to put our new camera down! Partly because there are so many weird things about it in video mode! I don't even want to tell you yet how long I spent hand creating an effect to fix a decoder problem... But I'll get to that in a couple of days.

Today we finished a video on 5D Mark II shutter speeds. The manual told us that we couldn't get shutter speeds faster than 1/125, and at first we were disappointed. But then we got curious. We set up a test that would tell us exactly what the camera was doing at a few select speeds and we found out some interesting stuff--to us camera geeks :). Check it out.

Here it is, DirkSnowglobe.com's second day. Time to start blogging!

We've found - and bought - the coolest new camera on the market: the Canon 5D Mark II. It looks like a digital SLR camera, but it shoots digital video too. And the results are beautiful!



Most small digital video cameras shoot on tiny 1/3-inch sensors. The Canon has a full sized 35mm sensor - it's more than six times as wide and has over forty times as much area. Not only are the pictures crystal clear, but we can use the full array of photo lenses, and produce Hollywood-like images, like blurring one actor while focusing on another.



We're putting the finishing touches on a tutorial video that shows the shutter speeds available for video on the camera. Hopefully, we'll get it online soon. For more information on the 5D Mark II for video, check out this forum on Chris Hurd's DV Info site.

In the meantime, we're snowed in. Five to ten more inches are expected to fall, capped with an ice storm. I wouldn't mind so much, but we've had flat gray clouds all week - terrible light for shooting pictures and video!

I can't wait for clear roads and good light, so we can get out of the house and shoot some nice stills and video...

Welcome to our new website, DirkSnowglobe.com.



The site will track the development of our new video web series, a noir comedy featuring detective Dirk Snowglobe. The series is a mystery, and information will be unveiled one clue at a time. Can you solve Dirk's murder?

Here's the press release.

It's official!!! We're in the planning stages of creating a new Web Series called "The Murder of Dirk Snowglobe." The series is about a detective who thinks he's dead and must solve his own murder.



We'll only throw out a little information about the series at a time. Solve the clues and savor the mystery.