I have a thing about how Los Angeles is portrayed on film and in books. An author who makes me laugh, perhaps because of his dour satiric streak, is Evelyn Waugh. He visited Hollywood in 1947 to discuss a film adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, loathed the place, and ended up…
Tag: Raymond Chandler
Definition of film noir plural film noirs \-ˈnwär(z)\ or films noir or films noirs \-ˈnwär\ : a type of crime film featuring cynical malevolent characters in a sleazy setting and an ominous atmosphere that is conveyed by shadowy photography and foreboding background music; also : a film of this type…
He had one of the rarest qualities in all literature, and it’s a great shame that the word for it has been thoroughly debased by the cosmetic racketeers, so that one is almost ashamed to use it to describe a real distinction. Nevertheless, the word is charm — charm as…
EXT. CITY HALL – MORNING Already shimmering with heat. A drunk blows his nose with his fingers into the fountain at the foot of the steps. Gittes, impeccably dressed, passes the drunk on the way up the stairs. INT. COUNCIL CHAMBERS Former Mayor SAM BAGBY is speaking. Behind…
Miss Scott is now ninety-one. At the library she first caught my attention because she was talking quietly, distinctively, with the librarian. I didn’t recognize her the first time I saw her, it was only later that I made the connection between this gorgeously poised, very erudite, older woman and…