A hidden gem and a wonderful piece of classic film noir, Allen Baron's Blast of Silence is a brutal unflinching story of a hitman in New York City. It's worth watching for the opening sequence alone.
Showing posts with label New York City. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York City. Show all posts
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Channel Surfing...
I often enjoy watching the Russian news channel Russia Today. The network has a surprisingly refreshing slant on world events, particularly those involving America. When big news stories occur, like the current financial crisis afflicting America, you get a fairly honest view of things. Free of the usual spin you get on other channels. Sometimes you just get weirdly aggressive newscasters saying weirdly aggressive things in strange exaggerated American accents. Plus the set designs and graphics make the channel look like a news station from some alternate universe. Some future that was never realized. Either way it makes for oddly enthralling viewing.
That got weirder.
A debate show called the Keiser Report started on Russia Today soon after. The host is a very intense guy who reminds me vaguely of Oliver Stone. His guest tonight was an American girl who still oddly put on a weirdly exaggerated American accent. She seemed very excited to be on the show. The overall feel of the show is a little bit community television. They started discussing the financial crisis in America and showed a clip of a journalist for the New York Times saying basically that if an alien invasion were imminent that the financial crisis would be solved in a few days. Which, yeah, is a weird argument to hear from a New York Times journalist. The host of the Keiser Report and the American girl then began discussing alien invasions and the financial crisis, and the fact that apparently all it will take to stimulate the American economy is an invasion of beings from outer space.
For roughly twenty minutes it was like watching television in the twilight zone.
So I'm reading The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett and it's blowing my mind. It was written in 1932 and reads like it was written with a sharp knife. Hammett is recognized as one of the masters of hard-boiled detective fiction, and when I started reading The Thin Man I half expected it to be a bit heavy handed and cliched. But the writing is so precise. The story so well realized. It's set in New York City. I've been obsessed with old film noir movies set in New York for ages. Pictures like The Naked City and Blast of Silence. The cinematography is beautiful and fascinating. Hammett's book reads like those films, New York is a vital character, and you can almost smell the city. Taste the air. Feel the sidewalk under your feet. But the book, being a book and as such superior to films, offers you so much more. The interaction between the male and female characters is fascinating. I don't know, maybe I have just been incredibly naive to the hard-boiled detective novels of that era but The Thin Man is a very satisfying reading experience.
I also just watched Super. The second film by James Gunn, the man responsible for the comic horror gem Slither. It's the latest in the relatively new genre of realistic superhero films. It has had many comparisons to Kick Ass, but I don't think the comparisons do either film much justice. They are very different viewing experiences. I don't want to say too much, I think Super should be seen fresh. It stars Rain Wilson from the American version of the Office and Ellen Page. And Ellen Page is a revelation. A awesomely mental revelation. It also stars Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler and Nathan Fillion. If your into horror films I highly recommend Slither too. I watched it sort of by accident on tv, expecting nothing if I'm being honest, and I loved it. It is strange, funny, and wonderfully crazy.
Oh and I was checking out a link a friend forwarded to me the other day. It was to a pretty amazing website called How to be a retronaut. The link was to graduation pictures of famous people. It was really funny. But this one of the great George Clooney still weirds me out.
I was flicking through channels a minute ago and pressed to read the information on a show called Hitler's Children on Discovery History. The synopsis read like this:
Seduction: Hitler moulded German children into an army which would fight in his name to conquer the world. Former participants tell of the unscrupulous methods of indoctrination.Not being in the mood for such light hearted viewing I flicked on and put on Russia Today, the Russian news channel. They were listing off the days top news stories when a headline popped up quickly. I looked at it and read Russia declares war on Jews. My eyes widened, then I saw that the words were superimposed over a photo of a great white shark and I realized it actually said Russia declares war on Jaws. I breathed an audible sigh of relief. For a very brief second I was pretty freaked out. You know, especially so soon after I read that Hitler's Children thing. It was a weird few minutes of television.
That got weirder.
A debate show called the Keiser Report started on Russia Today soon after. The host is a very intense guy who reminds me vaguely of Oliver Stone. His guest tonight was an American girl who still oddly put on a weirdly exaggerated American accent. She seemed very excited to be on the show. The overall feel of the show is a little bit community television. They started discussing the financial crisis in America and showed a clip of a journalist for the New York Times saying basically that if an alien invasion were imminent that the financial crisis would be solved in a few days. Which, yeah, is a weird argument to hear from a New York Times journalist. The host of the Keiser Report and the American girl then began discussing alien invasions and the financial crisis, and the fact that apparently all it will take to stimulate the American economy is an invasion of beings from outer space.
For roughly twenty minutes it was like watching television in the twilight zone.
So I'm reading The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett and it's blowing my mind. It was written in 1932 and reads like it was written with a sharp knife. Hammett is recognized as one of the masters of hard-boiled detective fiction, and when I started reading The Thin Man I half expected it to be a bit heavy handed and cliched. But the writing is so precise. The story so well realized. It's set in New York City. I've been obsessed with old film noir movies set in New York for ages. Pictures like The Naked City and Blast of Silence. The cinematography is beautiful and fascinating. Hammett's book reads like those films, New York is a vital character, and you can almost smell the city. Taste the air. Feel the sidewalk under your feet. But the book, being a book and as such superior to films, offers you so much more. The interaction between the male and female characters is fascinating. I don't know, maybe I have just been incredibly naive to the hard-boiled detective novels of that era but The Thin Man is a very satisfying reading experience.
I also just watched Super. The second film by James Gunn, the man responsible for the comic horror gem Slither. It's the latest in the relatively new genre of realistic superhero films. It has had many comparisons to Kick Ass, but I don't think the comparisons do either film much justice. They are very different viewing experiences. I don't want to say too much, I think Super should be seen fresh. It stars Rain Wilson from the American version of the Office and Ellen Page. And Ellen Page is a revelation. A awesomely mental revelation. It also stars Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler and Nathan Fillion. If your into horror films I highly recommend Slither too. I watched it sort of by accident on tv, expecting nothing if I'm being honest, and I loved it. It is strange, funny, and wonderfully crazy.
Oh and I was checking out a link a friend forwarded to me the other day. It was to a pretty amazing website called How to be a retronaut. The link was to graduation pictures of famous people. It was really funny. But this one of the great George Clooney still weirds me out.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Cityscapes and Hellscapes.
Cityscape. Hellscape. Two distinctly powerful words that to me have always seemed related . They are interchangeable, both referring to the samething. In my head, in my imagination, these two words create such images. The burnt husks of buildings, blood red skies,night time,neon. My obsession with these two words grew from three other obsessions.
First, my obsession with a particular group of old futuristic films. Blade Runner. The Warriors. Escape from New York. Tron. Westworld. The Element of Crime. Old films from the seventies and eighties, particularly the eighties, have always fascinated me with their visions of the future. The mix of the futuristic with the retro. Showing us futures that never quite came to exist. Futures that literally paint a vision of the city and a vision of hell as the samething. The Element of Crime especially, portrays a particularly bleak vision of the future, a vision of Europe as a dead world full of garbage,delapidated buildings,never ending rain and perpetual darkness. Sparsely populated with damaged people without hope waiting around to die. Lars Von Trier films all this in saturated orange and yellow tones, creating a true nightmare world, a hellscape somewhere between dreams and reality.
Secondly, my obsession with old films about New York City. I'm talking particularly about Blast of Silence, The Naked City, and Strange Paradise, I also have to throw in The Third Man. Although this film is not set in New York City, I was equally fascinated with the environment of the city that is both this films setting and strongest character, that of post world war 2 Vienna. I love the stark black and white world these films illuminate. A mysterious romantic world. A world that has since ceased to exist, or maybe never really existed at all.
The third obsession of mine that has fueled my love of cityscapes and hellscapes is music. Specifically the music of Brian Eno on records such as On Land and Music for Airports, and Kraftwerk on records such as Computer World and Radioactivity. But also particular film soundtracks from the seventies and eighties. The soundtracks for Bladerunner, and Escape from New York especially, capture the feel I imagine these future worlds to have. All synths and space and sinister undertones. Also certain horror film soundtracks from this time. Dawn of the Dead, Suspiria, and especially Zombi. Almost all of the soundtracks Goblin completed for Dario Argento fit the bill. Terrifying, atmospheric prog-rock freakouts.
I also completely forgot to mention the films of Andrei Tarkovsky. A man whose work epitomises the emotions and images I'm talking about. Films like Solaris, Stalker, Ivan's Childhood and The Mirror. All epic cinematic poems that examine loneliness, grief, war, love, and the human condition in general.
I'm not sure if any of this is making sense or not. I'm simply talking about the world the two words create in my imagination. A world where it is always night time. Burnt out cars line the streets, grafitti sprayed on every space, Japanese billboards towering over everything, eternally raining, men with five oclock shadow wearing brown overcoats and worn fedoras mingle with street gangs in matching leather, platinum white hair and wild looks in their eyes, street punk girls in torn fishnet stockings, neon hair, and elegant women with red lipstick and old vintage dresses. Drug addicts slumped in door ways, some shops boarded up, old and decrepit, others sleek silver with big neon 1950's signs over the front window, overcrowded with people, men driving rickshaws transporting people wherever, food stands on street corners, on some streets parked cars still burn, other streets lie empty, hundred year old building half demolished, or reduced to rubble by bombs dropped long ago. Some scenes are in black and white others bathed in garish oranges and yellows. The gutters overflowing with garbage. Fear and excitement fill the hearts of everyone. The air crackles with sinister energy. And over everything the warm weird emotion of synthesizers and subtle driving drum machines.
I believe if you take all the films I've mentioned: Bladerunner, The Warriors, The Element of Crime, The Naked City, Blast of Silence, Tron, Escape from New York, Stalker,etc., and the music of Brian Eno and Kraftwerk and Goblin and all the other film soundtracks I mentioned and mix them all together you will get what I'm talking about, the images and emotions the words cityscape and hellscape create in my imagination. A strange mix of warmth and fear and dreams and nightmares. A world I'd love to visit.
First, my obsession with a particular group of old futuristic films. Blade Runner. The Warriors. Escape from New York. Tron. Westworld. The Element of Crime. Old films from the seventies and eighties, particularly the eighties, have always fascinated me with their visions of the future. The mix of the futuristic with the retro. Showing us futures that never quite came to exist. Futures that literally paint a vision of the city and a vision of hell as the samething. The Element of Crime especially, portrays a particularly bleak vision of the future, a vision of Europe as a dead world full of garbage,delapidated buildings,never ending rain and perpetual darkness. Sparsely populated with damaged people without hope waiting around to die. Lars Von Trier films all this in saturated orange and yellow tones, creating a true nightmare world, a hellscape somewhere between dreams and reality.
Secondly, my obsession with old films about New York City. I'm talking particularly about Blast of Silence, The Naked City, and Strange Paradise, I also have to throw in The Third Man. Although this film is not set in New York City, I was equally fascinated with the environment of the city that is both this films setting and strongest character, that of post world war 2 Vienna. I love the stark black and white world these films illuminate. A mysterious romantic world. A world that has since ceased to exist, or maybe never really existed at all.
The third obsession of mine that has fueled my love of cityscapes and hellscapes is music. Specifically the music of Brian Eno on records such as On Land and Music for Airports, and Kraftwerk on records such as Computer World and Radioactivity. But also particular film soundtracks from the seventies and eighties. The soundtracks for Bladerunner, and Escape from New York especially, capture the feel I imagine these future worlds to have. All synths and space and sinister undertones. Also certain horror film soundtracks from this time. Dawn of the Dead, Suspiria, and especially Zombi. Almost all of the soundtracks Goblin completed for Dario Argento fit the bill. Terrifying, atmospheric prog-rock freakouts.
I also completely forgot to mention the films of Andrei Tarkovsky. A man whose work epitomises the emotions and images I'm talking about. Films like Solaris, Stalker, Ivan's Childhood and The Mirror. All epic cinematic poems that examine loneliness, grief, war, love, and the human condition in general.
I'm not sure if any of this is making sense or not. I'm simply talking about the world the two words create in my imagination. A world where it is always night time. Burnt out cars line the streets, grafitti sprayed on every space, Japanese billboards towering over everything, eternally raining, men with five oclock shadow wearing brown overcoats and worn fedoras mingle with street gangs in matching leather, platinum white hair and wild looks in their eyes, street punk girls in torn fishnet stockings, neon hair, and elegant women with red lipstick and old vintage dresses. Drug addicts slumped in door ways, some shops boarded up, old and decrepit, others sleek silver with big neon 1950's signs over the front window, overcrowded with people, men driving rickshaws transporting people wherever, food stands on street corners, on some streets parked cars still burn, other streets lie empty, hundred year old building half demolished, or reduced to rubble by bombs dropped long ago. Some scenes are in black and white others bathed in garish oranges and yellows. The gutters overflowing with garbage. Fear and excitement fill the hearts of everyone. The air crackles with sinister energy. And over everything the warm weird emotion of synthesizers and subtle driving drum machines.
I believe if you take all the films I've mentioned: Bladerunner, The Warriors, The Element of Crime, The Naked City, Blast of Silence, Tron, Escape from New York, Stalker,etc., and the music of Brian Eno and Kraftwerk and Goblin and all the other film soundtracks I mentioned and mix them all together you will get what I'm talking about, the images and emotions the words cityscape and hellscape create in my imagination. A strange mix of warmth and fear and dreams and nightmares. A world I'd love to visit.
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