Noir Watch: City of Fear (1959)

Watched:  11/19/2022

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Irving Lerner

A low-budget crime thriller noir for the nuclear age!  Now this would be stretched into eight episodes of prestige TV, but this taught 81 minute film uses short-hand and focuses on the minute-by-minute crisis that unfolds when a pair of prisoners use a riot as cover to escape, believing they've smuggled out a canister of heroin that they think was being used to experiment on prisoners (there's your exciting B-plot as a brave journalist blows the lid off this story!  But not in this movie.).  

But that ain't heroin.  Vince Edwards - our POV character and an all-around-heel - has accidentally grabbed a sealed container of the highly radioactive Cobalt-60.  

Vince Edwards was a pusher before he got popped, and now he's looking to unload what he things is a fortune in horse and make good his escape, and maybe have his frankly foxy and loyal-to-a-fault girlfriend (Patricia Blair) catch up with him.  

Meanwhile, the cops, FBI and various other federal agencies are on the hunt as Edwards has no idea what he has, or that if he manages to open the sealed container, he's going to wipe out LA (see that title, City of Fear).  

In general, the movie is better than a lot of poverty row pictures, and while it feels cheap for a movie, if this were TV in 1959, it'd look and sound swell.  It has a soundtrack by a young Jerry Goldsmith, and it is definitely Jerry Goldsmith, so it feels oddly highbrow if you've been trained to enjoy his scores.  

I don't know if this is a recommended film, but it's a great curiosity of a picture.  Kiss Me Deadly does the nuclear bit perhaps better, but this one gets the threat in front of you minute one and stays focused, making you cringe every time Edwards tries to crack the canister.  And you fully get why the cops agonize over what to tell the public as a public alarm seems necessary, but may also f'-up their search and cause undue calamity if they can find that canister first.

Anyway - not all bad!  

Fairy Tale Watch: Enchanted (2007)

Watched:  11/29/2022

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Kevin Lima

Jamie wanted to watch the new straight-to-Disney+ Disenchanted, and I said "I've never seen Enchanted (2007), though."   This led to some small debate.  Jamie had seen it, and thought that we'd seen it together (we had not) and so we had some comedic back and forth before she gave up and let me just put on Enchanted to see if it would ring any bells.  

I had not seen it.

Look, I don't care.  Amy Adams and Idina Menzel are in both movies, so I'd watch whatever.  But it's nice to start at the start.  I'm assuming Jamie saw the first one with her secret boyfriend.

I'm glad Enchanted was still a Disney movie and didn't feel like it needed to go "edgy".  I think I've kind of seen the joke of running sweet characters through a PG-13 meat grinder enough, and, instead, welcome bringing some of that Princess magic to the real world.  Sure, there's a version of this that's double-entredres and boner jokes that one could make and I might chuckle at, but - and maybe I'm a horrible person - but I never feel like they go dark enough if that's what they want to do.  And the results are usually kind of dumb.  As a result, I found charm in the high road version of this film (even if it absolutely winked at the audience on a key idea about the importance of a kiss).  

Noir Watch: This Gun For Hire (1942)

Watched:  11/18/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Frank Tuttle

It's probably the only Noir-vember watch party screening we were going to work in this year, but I'm glad we did this one for Veronica Lake on the week of her 100th birthday.  

Anyway, I'm positive we've written this one up before.  Go watch it.  It's ground zero for a lot of the "assassin who seems that way because he's detached from humanity" stuff you see in everything from Le Samurai to any number of American films where an assassin comes to grips with the fact they might be human.

Curiously, not many more movies where they decide "Gorton's Fisherman" is a hot look for a lady.

PODCAST 221: "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" (1993) - in memoriam, Kevin Conroy - w/ Stuart and Ryan

Watched:  11/18/2022

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing: Unknown

Decade:  1990's

Director:  Kevin Altieri, Boyd Kirkland, Frank Paur

For more ways to listen

Stuart and Ryan get together to discuss the 1993 animated film that featured the voice talent of Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman to multiple generations. We talk about the performances, art, and craft of the 1990's animated Batman material, and the tremendous impact of the cartoon and Conroy.

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 221: "Batman: Mask Phantasm" (1993) - in memoriam, Kevin Conroy - w/ Stuart and Ryan

YouTube

Music:

Main Title - Shirley Walker, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm 

DC Movies Playlist

The Signal Watch PodCast · DC Cinema and TV

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Friday Watch Party: This Gun For Hire (a Noirvember/ Veronica Lake 100th B-Day Celebration 2-fer)

POSTPONED TO Friday 11/18/2022

Noirvember is underway!  We'll have our first Noirvember screening by pairing it with a celebration of Veronica Lake, who would have turned 100 on November 14th of this year.  

This is sort of proto-noir, but plays with a lot of the ideas that would inform characters and movies after the war.  It also has so many great talents, from Lake to Ladd to Cregar.  Also, a cat.  You'll be glad, I tell you.  GLAD!

So join us for some WWII-era moralizing, bare witness to the first pairing of Lake and Ladd, and see what the fuss was about Lake.*  And what a hundred movies and pulp novels would borrow when it comes to loner hit-man types in the years to come.

Day:  Friday 11/18/2022

Time:  8:30 Central/ 6:30 PM Pacific

Service:  Amazon

Price:  $4

CLICK HERE TO SEE SOME VERONICA LAKE MUSICAL MAGIC

(link live 10 minutes before showtime)

*she is very, very, very good looking

Noir Watch: Tension (1949)

Watched:  11/15/2022

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  4th?

Director:  John Berry

I've already seen this and written it up a few times, including in 2021.  

So here's several pictures of Audrey Totter in the film.

Holmes Watch: Enola Holmes 2 (2022)

Watched:  11/14/2022

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Harry Bradbeer

One of the side-effects of streaming 99% of what I see is that movies are far less of an event.  There is no comparison between what I would do and think about en route to see Avengers: Endgame and choosing Enola Holmes 2 (2022) as prime time viewing on a Monday night.  

It is unlikely I would see a spin-off Sherlock Holmes movie on my own dime, but I did watch the first Enola Holmes, enjoyed it enough, and was game for the sequel.  Had I returned to the original and were my memories of it particularly intact?  Absolutely not.

But it is interesting to have a 2-hour option with a considerable budget, a solid cast and whatnot when the movie was never released theatrically.  It's not merely content - it is a movie into which care and love was poured.  It could have been released to screens and drawn some small box office (and I wonder sometimes if Netflix will one day partner with AMC or something and just make releases like this a thing they do as a matter of course to earn a few extra bucks).  It has actual stars.  Henry Cavill probably should have been a bigger big screen star than the DC movies and pandemic allowed, and it's time for Millie Bobby Brown to be tested as a young woman on screen. 

But those theatrical models may now be completely exploded and irrelevant.  So this is sort of the face of what movies are now.