Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a 2004 alternate history and sci-fi/fantasy adventure amalgamation is one of those films that is best known for its visuals in a way similar to The Rocketeer and The Iron Giant, and, like those films, it maintains a bit of a cult following. As with Dick Tracy, The Phantom, The Shadow, and Sin City, the movie attempted to emulate the look of classic comics, and like The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, it borrowed heavily from creations of the past, especially Flash Gordon, film noir, and Captain America.
Unfortunately, also like the movies noted above, it lacked a compelling script, which probably accounted for its lackluster showing with audiences. For the majority of movie audiences, it remains an obscure, “nice-looking” picture that you may have tried on Netflix and probably given up on. But for those who count themselves fans, you now have a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the movie’s visuals, Sky Captain and the Art of Tomorrow, launching today and available here at Amazon. Take a look inside below.
The first virtual reality movie? It’s innovative and brilliant, and showed that Robert Montgomery the actor also had the talent to be a director as much a visionary as Alfred Hitchcock. The film is his 1946 film noir Lady in the Lake, an experimental movie years ahead of its time, and much more than an adaptation of another Raymond Chandler novel featuring detective Philip Marlowe. It’s a great story, elevated by unusual direction and a cast of actors tasked with doing something no one had quite done this way before–react and act entirely toward the audience in the place of the protagonist and the film’s point of view.
It’s about murder, and it takes place at Christmas, and the entire film from beginning to end is wrapped up in a bow like your very own Christmas present, available now to stream at Vudu, or here at Amazon on Prime Video or DVD. If you haven’t seen it, give it a viewing this weekend and you might just see it as the next best Christmas movie of its type since Die Hard, although since it predates Die Hard by four decades you’ll want to flip that thought around. Along with the requisite noir tropes, Lady in the Lake has visual effects and story surprises at every turn. It’s pure cinema gold.
Last month I reviewed TCM’s Summer Movies: 30 Sun-Drenched Classics, the eighth volume reviewed here at borg in the TCM library. TCM is busy with new releases this year, and its look at film noir takes a different approach. Written by Noir Alley host Eddie Muller, The Art of Noirauthor and proclaimed Czar of Noir, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (available now in bookstores and at Amazon here) is actually an update of his 1998 look at film noir of the same name. It’s an essential look at the genre for both novices and diehard fans, providing just enough about the key films to entice readers to add several movies to their DVR, and giving long-time noir audiences new ways to think about some classic films. Whenever I hear someone referred to as an expert in genre, I make notes. Here I made a list of what those essential and important obscure noir films should make any book on film noir. Muller includes discussions of all of them except one, from Laura and Shadow of a Doubt to DOA, from Sorry, Wrong Number, Sunset Boulevard, and Call Northside 777, to The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and Chinatown. So the book by all counts is the real deal and worthy of its accolades for both its original and new edition. Unlike some of the other TCM books I’ve reviewed here at borg, Dark City: The Lost World of Film is not only an annotated guide to a list of recommended movies. What film noir movies would you expect to find inside?
Amnesia. A terrifying loss of self, or a chance to start anew? This is the theme explored in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1946 film noir Somewhere in the Night, starring John Hodiak (Lifeboat, Battleground, The Harvey Girls) and Nancy Guild (Give My Regards to Broadway, Black Magic, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man). Hodiak plays a WWII vet who awakens in a South Pacific hospital with a broken jaw and amnesia. The only clues to his identity? Doctors who keep calling him “George Taylor,” and a wallet empty but for a devastating, angry Dear John letter accusing him of destroying someone’s life. Unable to stand the idea of being that person, yet without any other identity, Taylor returns stateside, where he discovers that an old friend, Larry Cravat, has opened a bank account in his name, ready to support him upon his return to civilian life.
But his efforts to claim the money open up a can of worms and set a gang of thugs, conmen, mobsters, and even an evil fortune-teller on Taylor’s trail played by Fritz Kortner (The Razor’s Edge), all convinced he can lead them to the mysterious–and still missing–Larry Cravat.
Hodiak’s Taylor is likeable, earnest, and sympathetic, as he tries to navigate the increasingly confusing and seedy world of his pal, Larry Cravat. Mugged, beaten, chased by cops, thrown out of a sanatorium, and nearly run down by a truck (as it turns out, a villain’s weapon of choice), Hodiak can’t help but wonder: What kind of a guy is this Larry Cravat?
Along the way, Taylor hooks up with a few friendly faces–savvy nightclub singer Chris (Nancy Guild) has a soft spot for the guy, even when she finds out he’s on the trail of the man who broke her best friend’s heart and contributed to her death. A sympathetic police detective, played with delightful aplomb by Lloyd Nolan (The Untouchables, 77 Sunset Strip, Airport, Earthquake) provides some backstory into the criminal dealings Cravat may have been involved in. Chris introduces the local nightclub owner, played by Richard Conte (Call Northside 777, Ocean’s 11, The Godfather), who is in love with Chris and tries to help Taylor. Keep an eye out for producer/director/actor Sheldon Leonard (It’s a Wonderful Life) and Henry Morgan (M*A*S*H, Dragnet) in bit parts.
Creating a Gotham City derived from the dark and sleazy world of the 1989 Batman film, but with a “Gotham Confidential” film noir spin, Fox’s new series Gotham managed to hit all the right notes in its Monday night premiere episode. Like LA Confidential, it even stars a ringer for Russell Crowe, actor Ben McKenzie (Southland, The O.C.) as the rookie cop James Gordon. But it’s the supporting cast and some tight writing that sticks to key parts of the DC Universe backstory that will have us back again next week.
Some elements are modified for this TV adaptation, of course, like the presence of a young Selina Kyle/Catwoman (Camren Bicondova) at the murder of the parents of Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz). And Batwoman Kate Kane’s girlfriend and cop Renee Montoya (Victoria Cartegena) shows up far earlier in the DCU and, if we’re picking up the innuendo right, seems to have had a similar relationship with the would-be Barbara Gordon (now Gordon’s fiancée, not his daughter). Will this Barbara Gordon (Erin Richards, Being Human, Merlin) go on to be Batgirl and/or Oracle?
But the most riveting and engaging performances in the pilot come from Gordon’s senior partner Detective Harvey Bullock, played by the ubiquitous Donal Logue (Vikings, Sneakers, The X-Files, Ghost Rider), almost reprising his gritty cop roles from the short-lived crime drama Life and the film Zodiac, and the introduction of a new villain, mid-level mob moll Fish Mooney, played in a sultry Eartha Kitt-inspired performance by Jada Pinkett Smith (Hawthorne, The Matrix Reloaded). Logue proves again he could carry a TV series all by himself, and Smith also owns every scene she appears in.
Jason McClain is a big fan of Ed Brubaker’s writing. He’s mentioned his appreciation for Brubaker’s Sleeper books here at borg.com more than once. So when I saw the enticing noir cover art on the first issues of the new series Fatale, I figured this was a good place to start. I picked up Issues 1 and 3-5 and it took me awhile to track down #2 so I only this week could read the first story arc straight through. The new story arc starts with the next issue, coming out soon.
Based on the noir covers I was looking forward to what I have found in my favorite film noir–Otto Preminger’s Laura, Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, Dial “M” for Murder and Vertigo, Jimmy Stewart in Call Northside 777, also Sorry, Wrong Number, Elizabeth C. Bunce’s fantasy noir Liar’s Moon, and in a strange way, even the voiceover version of Blade Runner. For the most part these are all crime noir stories. A dangerous damsel–the Femme Fatale as in Double Indemnity–plus a Dana Andrews-looking character in a gray fedora who is usually a cop or newspaper reporter, and a dangerous city full of secrets and dark, wet streets–all of this is the stuff of noir. But I was thinking about this all wrong. I had no idea Ed Brubaker and artist partner Sean Phillips were creating a supernatural 1950s pulp horror/thriller, not a noir pulp crime novel. None of my favorite film noir has anything supernatural so from only a few pages in I was thrown a bit. Fatale is noir, but it is just as much supernatural horror. So I read the story once and was confused a bit. Then I figured out what genre I was reading and read it again.
If you like supernatural horror and you like the 1950s underworld as your setting, Fatale is a very interesting read–almost like revisiting a lost story type. The supernatural bits remind me of the TV series Medium, which often contained surprisingly dark and gory crime moments juxtaposed with the lives of good, caring people. Same goes here. Like the movie Skeleton Key, where a man and woman use voodoo to switch bodies and live forever, and like Rosemary’s Baby and The Others, Fatale’s characters are sucked into shocking and frightening situations and as readers we aren’t supposed to know all that is going on until the end.
Fatale has the requisite fascination of an otherwise boring man with an attractive, inaccessible, mysterious woman. Nicolas Lash meets Josephine at the funeral of his godfather, Hank Raines. Raines once knew Josephine back in the 1950s. She’s blackmailed by a detective in the 1950s world of the story, Walt Booker, and both Josephine and Walt have this unnatural power over each other. Is Josephine a “pusher” in the X-Files sense or does she just bring out something in others innocently? What are these occult priestly fellows in red showing up dead everywhere and this fanged beast who kills Raines’ wife? I’d need a few more re-reads to really catch the complexity of what happened here. Each issue from #2 on has a lead-in paragraph at the beginning to explain what happened in the prior issue. I found myself puzzled by these summaries, as in “oh, is that what happened last issue?” Since I read these through in one sitting, I’d think I shouldn’t be surprised by a summary of what I just read, yet I was. Usually if stories suffer it’s through too much “telling” and not enough “showing.” Here I think this story has the reverse problem, but only a bit, and could stand to explain a little more plainly what the heck is going on with the mass suicide, magic dagger, old novel script and some pile of papers that need translating. At times I felt I was totally in sync with the story–there was a 1960s James Bond aura at different points along the way that created a cool vibe. Then with the symbology and strange beast who was also a leader that looked like Hitler, I was out of sync again.
Without question, the best part ofFatale is Sean Phillips’ 1950s style art. If I wasn’t following a scene from the dialogue then I could usually get there with the visual storytelling. Fatale looks like the noir I’d expect to see, for most of the scenes. Dave Stewart’s coloring creates a world familiar to fans of Edward Hopper’s paintings. I think the storytelling has some jarring moments, however. Things like expletives that seem out-of-place and -time bothered me here. It could be because, even if people used expletives in the real 1950s, 1950s movies never did, and so the aura of 1950s drama seems more accessible to me than what might have been real-life lingo (although I refuse to believe folks in 1950s swear as much as, and with the exact same colorful metaphors as, we have today as this work reflects). So I love the look of Fatale, but am not sure of how much I like the story and whether I would recommend it to others not familiar with this genre. The “voiceover” parts were quite good (the “it was a dark night in the city when I first met her” kind of thing). Are Brubaker and Phillips’ other works supernatural horror like this? I’d be willing to try more of their works to find out.
Fataledid make me think a lot about characterization, mood, and what makes something a crime novel vs a horror novel vs a supernatural thriller. In a different kind of way, it made me think about complexity of story much as I did reading and watching the Watchmen graphic novel and film adaptation. Anything that makes you think like that is probably a good thing.
Fataleis available at Amazon.com for pre-order in a trade edition titled Death Chases Me.
, I figured this was a good place to start. I picked up Issues 1 and 3-5 and it took me awhile to track down #2 so I only this week could read the first story arc straight through. The new story arc starts with the next issue, coming out soon.
