News

Infusing 1940s noir with supernatural scares, the new graphic novel Hard Bargain is now on Kickstarter as part of Humanoids' 50th anniversary celebration, and we caught up with prolific TV writer Steven S. DeKnight to discuss teaming up with artist Leno Carvalho for the new graphic novel, the inspirations behind his hard-boiled horror tale, and the ghoulish goodies readers can look forward to from supporting the Kickstarter campaign!

Below, you can check out our full Q&a with Steven S. DeKnight as well as preview pages and blurbs for Hard Bargain, and to learn more about the supernatural graphic novel, visit its official Kickstarter page!

Thank you for taking the time to answer questions for us, Steven, and congratulations on the Kickstarter launch for your new graphic novel Hard Bargain, which follows the supernatural adventures of Private Investigator Frank Harding in 1940s Los Angeles. How and when did you initially...

Season 2 of Nic Pizzolatto's HBO series "True Detective" was a frustratingly disjointed affair. It played like the first draft of a James Ellroy L.A. noir: it was emotionally overheated and graphically violent, but the inciting incident and ensuing intrigue never caught fire. The quintet of compromised main characters, who worked in different Los Angeles law enforcement agencies, were fascinating in their own right (save for Taylor Kitsch's overmatched California Highway Patrol officer), but the stakes were strangely un-engaging. Imagine "Chinatown" with Perry Lopez' Lieutenant Lou Escobar getting a full arc to give more oxygen to the Hollis Mulwray investigation from the LAPD's perspective, and that's this season of "True Detective" in a nutshell.

Season 2 was a rough sit, but it had its pleasures. The narrative never locked into place, but the actors punched their weight. Colin Farrell clawed his way through the scarred skin of...

Less talked about than film noir is its lighter cousin film gris, an artistic movement from the 1940s and 1950s founded to specifically criticize the American class system through the eyes of struggling criminals, thieves, and con men. Unlike film noir, which focused on a hardboiled world absent of heroes, film gris was more analytical, taking place in a more realistic version of the world, viewing crime not as a societal aberration but a natural outcropping of failed capitalism. Connecticut born filmmaker Jules Dassin was at the forefront of this movement, having made the notable film gris crime movies "Thieves' Highway" and "Night and the City" in 1949...

The post Rififi's Famous Safecracking Scene Was a Little Too Realistic appeared first on /Film.

Liam Neeson may have been a late-blooming action star, but if “Honest Thief” is the best he can muster now, those days are now behind him. As Tom, a notorious bank robber with a conscience, Neeson does his best with the material at hand, but he can only do so much when it reduces everything around him to a bland formulaic exercise.

Directed by “Ozark” co-creator Mark Williams, the movie lacks the sense of unpredictability from the hit Netflix show, where a high-stakes criminal enterprise endangers one family’s long-term future. That happens, here, too — but in much more familiar terms. Williams and co-writer Steve Allrich have constructed your typical tale of personal vindication, spreading it across a formulaic saga that teems with the expected mano-a-mano skirmishes, and by-the-numbers car chases, while centering it all on one man’s mission to make things right for the sake of (what else?...

If you have to name One movie that’s not likely to ever be screened in a prison, this one’s a good bet. In his sophomore starring outing Burt Lancaster leads a group of rebel convicts on a do-or-die bust-out against Hume Cronyn’s utter Nazi of a warden Captain. Richard Brooks’ script and Jules Dassin’s direction don’t sugarcoat the sadistic goings-on and producer Mark Hellinger pushed the result through the Production Code office. Sure, sure, plenty of noirs are violent … but this one must have been quite a head-spinner in ’47.

Brute Force

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 383

1947 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 98 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 8, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, Ella Raines, Anita Colby, Sam Levene, Jeff Corey, John Hoyt, Jack Overman, Roman Bohnen, Sir Lancelot, Howard Duff, Art Smith, Whit Bissell.

Cinematography: William Daniels...

The producer of Narcos takes us on a walk through some of the movies that made him.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Contagion (2011)

Panic In The Streets (1950)

Rififi (1955)

Night And The City (1950)

Thieves’ Highway (1949)

Never on Sunday (1960)

The Karate Kid (1984)

The Game (1997)

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

The Great Escape (1963)

Children of Men (2006)

Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (1971)

If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969)

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (2005)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

The Godfather (1972)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Animal House (1978)

An American Werewolf In London (1981)

Trading Places (1983)

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004)

Fellini Satyricon (1969)

The Beastmaster (1982)

Sheena (1984)

High Risk (1981)

Ghostbusters (1984)

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

Piranha (1978)

Gallipoli (1981)

Witness (1985)

The Killing Fields (1984)

Mad Max (1980)

Max Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975)

The Last Wave (1978)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

The Lord of the Rings (1978)

The Hobbit (1977)

The Return of the King (1980)

Class (1983)

The Great Santini (1979)

Fast Times At Ridgemont High...

Michelangelo Antonioni's pre-international breakthrough drama is as good as anything he's done, a flawlessly acted and directed story of complex relationships -- that include his 'career' themes before the existential funk set in. It's one of the best-blocked dramatic films ever... the direction is masterful. Le amiche Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 817 1955 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 106 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 7, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Eleonora Rossi Drago, Gabriele Ferzetti, Franco Fabrizi, Valentina Cortese, Madeleine Fischer, Yvonne Furneaux, Anna Maria Pancani, Luciano Volpato, Maria Gambarelli, Ettore Manni. Cinematography Gianni De Venanzo Film Editor Eraldo Da Roma Original Music Giovanni Fusco Written by Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Michelangelo Antonioni, Alba de Cespedes from a book by Cesare Pavese Produced by Giovanni Addessi Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

It's time to stop being so intimidated by Michelangelo Antonioni. His epics of existential alienation La notte, L'eclisse and...

This noir hits with the force of a blast furnace -- Cy Endfield's wrenching tale of social neglect and injustice will tie your stomach in knots. Sound like fun? An unemployed man turns to crime and reaps a whirlwind of disproportionate retribution. It's surely the most powerful of all filmic accusations thrown at the American status quo. Try and Get Me! Blu-ray Olive Films 1950 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 92 min. / Street Date April 19, 2016 / The Sound of Fury / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95 Starring Frank Lovejoy, Kathleen Ryan, Richard Carlson, Lloyd Bridges, Katherine Locke, Adele Jergens, Art Smith, Renzo Cesana, Irene Vernon, Cliff Clark, Donald Smelick, Joe E. Ross. Cinematography Guy Roe Production Design Perry Ferguson Film Editor George Amy Original Music Hugo Friedhofer Written by Jo Pagano from his novel The Condemned Produced by Robert Stillman Directed by Cyril Endfield

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Socially conscious 'issue' movies are not all made equal.

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Law is playing on Mubi in the Us through January 21, 2016.For those who like nice touches, keep your eye on the bird. In Jules Dassin's The Law (1959), it's the first character we meet, where, in a town square under the hot Mediterranean sun, a group of men are watching a pigeon. The men are out of work and squarely at the bottom of the socioeconomic totem pole. The pigeon is an idiot, one man says—why would anything that could fly choose to stay here? Because sometimes people throw it crumbs, a man answers. And if you had any doubts what this all symbolizes, another of the men hastily adds: just like us. This is a film very much about hierarchy, and the forces or illusions that keep everyone in their place. The air is soon...

or, Savant picks The Most Impressive Discs of 2015

This is the actual view from Savant Central, looking due North.

What a year! I was able to take one very nice trip back East too see Washington D.C. for the first time, or at least as much as two days' walking in the hot sun and then cool rain would allow. Back home in Los Angeles, we've had a year of extreme drought -- my lawn is looking patriotically ratty -- and we're expecting something called El Niño, that's supposed to be just shy of Old-Testament build-me-an-ark intensity. We withstood heat waves like those in Day the Earth Caught Fire, and now we'll get the storms part. This has been a wild year for DVD Savant, which is still a little unsettled. DVDtalk has been very patient and generous, and so have Stuart Galbraith & Joe Dante; so far everything...

(Region B)  It's just like the film industry, I tell ya!  Director Jules Dassin teams with writer A.I. Bezzerides for one of filmdom's strongest slams at the free market system. Trucker Richard Conte fights back when cheated and robbed by Lee J. Cobb's racketeering produce czar. Thieves' Highway Region B Blu-ray + Pal DVD Arrow Video (UK) 1949 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 94 min. / Street Date October 20, 2015 / Available at Amazon UK / £14.99 Starring Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Barbara Lawrence, Jack Oakie, Millard Mitchell, Joseph Pevney, Morris Carnovsky Cinematography Norbert Brodine Art Direction Chester Gore, Lyle Wheeler Film Editor Nick DeMaggio Original Music Alfred Newman Written by A.I. Bezzerides from his novel Thieves' Market Produced by Robert Bassler Directed by Jules Dassin

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Did Jules Dassin initiate his string of studio produced films noirs, each of which has a strong element of social criticism, if not outright condemnation of 'the system?...

Rialto Pictures will beloved French heist film Rififi by director Jules Dassin, for the first time on Dcp, at Los Angeles' Laemmle Royal, for one week beginning Friday, September 4.

Jules Dassin (1911 - 2008) began his filmmaking career in the early 1940s and is known for his hits Brute Force (1947), The Naked City (1948), and Thieves' Highway (1949). His career later took a hit when he was blacklisted for Communist activities during the McCarthy Era. Dassin's move to France helped revive his career and was the setting for the hit film Rififi that set his career in motion once again. After the film's successful French release, Dassin was awarded the directing prize at Cannes which allowed Rififi to be released in the U.S. where it enjoyed a successful art house run. Rififi is renowned for being one of the early 'heist' films and served as an inspiration for later films in the genre.