Film Club
Film Club: Film Noir pictures
Feb 7th
A baleful sun rose over the grey streets of New Malden as I hauled my tenderised carcass up from beneath the sheets. It seemed like a low life bar and a bottle of gin were a match made in hell and my throbbing head and half-closed right eye testified to this fact as my teeth rattled in my head and my jaw squeaked like a rusty gate.
Film club.
I poured myself a hair of the dog what gnawed my head off as my gut lurched unpleasantly beneath the starched cotton of my second best shirt. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to take this but the time was bearing down on me like a runaway engine that had jumped the tracks at Clapham Junction and was barrelling down on me spitting sparks and tearing metal with all the demons in hell tumbling after. And stuck in the back of my head was a thought, the ultimate itch I couldn’t hope to scratch – I had arranged this, I had brought this event down upon myself as surely as if I had put my .45 in my mouth, hooked the trigger and made a fist.
And so they came. The dregs of society, the poor and the hopeless, the chancers, the misfits, the bums. The drunks and the floozies, the dirty cops and the wild-eyed crooks. They sat in my apartment, they smiled smiles that never reached their eyes and licked their cracked lips as the whole caper played out before them in a succession of high-contrast, staccato images full of betrayal and depravity.
I sat in my faded leather chair and waited for trouble.
But that’s the thing about trouble, it strolls round the corner when you’re thinking about better days, never when you’re expecting it. The whole shebang past without a hitch, they even seemed to enjoy themselves the shmoes.
I got out alive. I made it.
And now as I look at the future through the bottom of a dirty hi-ball I can feel its icy fingers enclose me.
I am a damned man and I’m playing with borrowed time. I’m going to do it again. Damn me.
I’m going to do it again.
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Film Noir
Jan 15th
Film Club #1 – 6th February 2010
“You Can’t Kiss Away A Murder!”
Join me for the inaugural Film Club this February and a whole day’s worth of shadowy figures, femme fatales, plot twists, heavy drinking and hard knocks. Also there will be films to watch. Ahahaha – see what I did there? I pretended that the words that described the films were actually the things we were going to do on the day. It’s an old comedic device but, I think we can all agree, a hilarious one. Especially now I’ve explained it fully to you.
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood’s classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.
Don’t worry, I have suddenly got really intelligent or anything, I just copied it from Wikipedia. Film noir will be the theme of our first club day and I’ve chosen 4 of the best films of the genre to show you and also a silly Steve Martin pastiche to round off the day. You’re welcome to come for as much or as little of the day as you want.
Anyway, here’s how it should all pan out:
Schedule
10.00am – We all start drinking whiskey early in the morning.
10.30am - Asphalt Jungle Kick off with John Huston’s original heist movie, made the same year he introduced America to film noir with The Maltese Falcon. We wouldn’t have Reservoir Dogs without it.
12.30pm - Gilda Why did Tim Robbin’s character want a poster of Rita Hayworth on his cell wall during the Shawshank Redemption? This film is why (also the tunnel thing).
2.15pm – Stakeout Food. Lunch will be a selection of things you could consume while on a stakeout. Binoculars will be provided to spy on the neighbours.
2.30pm - Touch of Evil Orson Welles’ masterpiece and one of the best film noir ever made. The version we’ll be showing is the 1998 recut that attempted to reassemble Welles’ original vision from a 58 page memo the director wrote after viewing the studio’s original theatrical release. It’s the best version basically.
5.30pm – A selection of detective-themed games – cluedo and scotland yard among them. Also more shots of whiskey and maybe a fist fight.
7.00pm – DOUBLE BILL: Double Indemnity/ Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid – Played back to back, the most twisted, dark, OTT classic the genre has ever produced and a silly Steve Martin comedy that makes fun of it. Dress code is film noir, let’s all dress up as femme fatales and private dicks.
And it should all be over by 10.15pm.
Click here to be taken to the facebook event to register your interest in attending and find out location details.
“She liked me. I could feel that. The way you feel when the cards are falling right for you, with a nice little pile of blue and yellow chips in the middle of the table. Only what I didn’t know then was that I wasn’t playing her. She was playing me, with a deck of marked cards and the stakes weren’t any blue and yellow chips. They were dynamite.”
