A Starship Troopers Reboot? Color Me Doubtful

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Sony is reportedly looking at a fresh adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s young adult novel Starship Troopers. The book has been previously brought to the silver screen in 1997 by Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, but that interpretation took the route of being a satire and in my opinion a terrible film. Yes, I know it has its fans, but I am not one of them and the point of this piece is not to debate that film or even the themes of the novel. No, I am here to say why I think this novel is nearly impossible to adapt as a film or television series.

Heinlein was the gateway drug that seduced me into fiction reading. Prior to being forced to read Red Planet for a book report I consumed only non-fiction, after that one novel, my course was set, I mention this so you understand that I come at this analysis from a position of someone who admires the author and the novel.

Starship Troopers has no plot.

It has a story, and it has a very strong point of view as the author ruminates, lectures, or rants, choose your preferred descriptor, on service, duty, and patriotism. The story has young Filipino Johnny Rico going from being a callow youth with self-serving interests, he only joined the service because of a girl, to a leader of men with a deep and dedicated sense of duty. The protagonist’s journey from boy to man is the story. To me story is the transformation of the character. Plot on the other hand  is the mechanical aspect of the tale, the objective and obstacles that challenge the protagonist. I can illustrate my views on plot vs story with two James Bond films.

Casino Royale has both plot, Bond tries to bankrupt Le Chiffre so he will be inclined to betray his clients to save himself, and story Bond opens his heart, making himself emotionally vulnerable only to be betrayed, becoming the cold man who uses women but who never trusts.

Moonraker has only plot. Bond must discover and stop Drax’s plan to eliminate humanity and reseed it with his eugenically perfect population. As a person Bond experiences no transformation, no growth. He ends the movie the exact same character as he was at its start.

Starship Troopers has story, Rico’s transformation into an adult but it has no plot. The war that supplies the narrative with its action scenes starts off-page while Rico is in basic training for his military service and the novel ends with the war still raging. There is no special big mission that drives the book from start to end. The ‘capture the brain bug’, something that would take place in a movie’s third act and might be the spine of an entire film, is not established prior to its introduction. In terms of a 3-act structure, Establishment, Conflict, Resolution, Starship Troopers simply doesn’t fit.

The novel is first and foremost a polemic of Heinlein expounding or hectoring (again you choose) the reader with his views on duty and sacrifice. Given that, I hold to my reservations as to how you can make a film adaptation that is both a good film and faithful to a controversial novel that is built around a series of classroom lectures.

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The ‘Dead Men’ Project: Film, 1 The Bribe

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Having acquired the DVD from San Diego City Library my quest to watch every movie in the compilation comedy Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid begins with the lowest scoring movie, 1949’s The Bribe, starring Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, and Vincent Price.

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Federal Agent Rigby (Taylor) is sent far from any US jurisdiction to a small island off Central America and the fishing hamlet of Carlotta to investigate a criminal ring smuggling war surplus aircraft engines onto the international black market. Had the feature opened this way it might have been a better movie, instead it begins with the most tired of film noir tropes, particularly when done badly, the voice-over. To make this overused technique even less appealing the voice-over is spoken in second person. So, everything we see Rigby narrating that he did he describes ‘you’ did. I myself have never found a piece of fiction where the second person works, it always keeps me at a distance, unable to submerge myself in the story being told, either in prose or in cinema.

Anyway, Rigby finds the married couple that the fed believe are running the smuggling operation, Elizabeth (Gardner) a nightclub singer and Hinton (John Hodiak) her drunkard of a husband. Naturally, Rigby falls for Elizabeth and she for him though the production code keeps their mutual feelings chaste. Rigby’s cover as someone simply looking for sport fishing had apparently the half-life of one of James Bond’s covers and he is approached by Bealer (Laughton) who offers him a bribe of 10,000 dollars to simply leave the island. The real bribe of the title however, is the threat to drag Elizabeth down with the criminals when she had actually been ignorant of it all unless Rigby ‘plays ball.’

At one point the movie makes extensive use of rear-screen projection so performers on a boat set might appear to be out on the open sea, marlin fishing. While this technique may have been acceptable to audiences of the 40s and 50s to modern eyes it screams its tricks like a poor stage magician. Which is a shame as the sequence boasts what in better handled hands could have been a tense and dynamic scene of attempted assassination.

There are no real surprises, or twisty plot reveals and if The Bribe didn’t boast a cast of well-established stars by 1949’s reckoning, it would be an adequate ‘B-Picture.’ The only real standout moment in the movie is the final chase when Rigby pursues the ringleader Carwood (Price) through a festival and into a massive ground-level firework display. Some shots are clearly the leads, Taylor and Price, dashing through exploding fireworks and others are stunt performers with their features well hidden. Elements of this climax were used in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid and are what intrigued me the most, igniting my curiosity to see just how and why such a scene occurred.

The DVD is going back to the library and while The Bribe made for a passable lunch time viewing it is not a noir that is going to live for very long in my head or my heart.

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Minneapolis Proclaims: Don’t Tread on Us

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It has been heartbreaking and inspiring to watch and hear the events unfolding in the city of Minneapolis. Heartbreaking that our government flooded the streets with masked, unidentified thugs in unmarked vehicles acting with at best reckless abandon and quite arguably murderous intent against that community. Inspiring that the people of Minneapolis came together in profound unity, organizing networks to protect, assist, and safeguard their fellow community members with everything from people who stood watch in the freezing winter temperatures to those standing outside the center where the thuggish government released people into the snow and ice without cold weather gear, without their possessions, making sure each and every one was safe. That, to me, is the spirit of America, the Spirit of 1776, not the arrogant parading about with long guns trying to intimidate your fellow citizens.

It would seem that the architects of this pogrom failed to see that this sort of reaction might occur. They had no real plan to deal with a community that not only refused to assist them but actively and with deep and wide coordination opposed them. Why? Why were they so blind to this possibility?

I think it is because the people behind this heinous operation, the attempted occupation of an American city are at heart, racists.

Most people have a very difficult time getting out of their heads to see the world from another’s point of view.  People tend to think that everyone thinks and feels the way that they do, that they see the world through the same lens. In fact, they are ignorant of their own lens and assume that they objectively see reality and not an interpretation that has been filtered by their own history and biases. One of the more challenging aspects of fiction writing, and one not every author published or not achieves, is successfully climbing into that point of view that is alien to your own. It is a difficult task at the best of times, requires not only effort but sustained practice, and with a charged subject such as religion or politics it can be nearly impossible. Overlaid with the disease of racism, it becomes unthinkable.

The thought that people, particularly white people, might come together for their neighbors when their neighbors had darker skin and spoke accented English or foreign languages, risking their own liberties and lives is utterly alien to the racist. They wouldn’t get in the way; They wouldn’t risk anything of theirs for someone who wasn’t like them. As such they were blind to people who see community as something that transcends color and language.

It is not over. Not in Minneapolis, not for America, but Minneapolis shows us the way, Minneapolis gives us hope and now we must find our courage as they found theirs.

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Movie Review: Dracula (2025)

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Dracula, written by Bram Stoker and published in 1897, is one of the most adapted pieces of fiction in the English canon rivaled, perhaps, only by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The number of

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adaptations and the various media are almost beyond count. The famed vampire has been in London’s swinging 70s scenes, hunted the darkened streets and bayous of Louisiana, stalked victims aboard starships in deep space, and even blackmailed into hunting down criminals like a superhero (Dracula Returns, Robert Lory.) But after waves and truly out-there reimaginings filmmakers returned time and time again to the Stoker original novel, its 19th turning into the 20th century setting, and adapting once again that primal source material.

Filmmaker Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, The Professional, and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, to cite a few) has released his own take on literature’s most famous vampire. Written, produced, and directed by Besson, Dracula, released in other markets as Dracula: A Love Story, is so loosely bound by the source material as to stretch to breaking the very definition of adaptation. (It causes me to remember that there was once a screen adaptation of a Shakespearean play with credit Additional Dialog by William Shakespeare.) People familiar with the novel Dracula will recognize a fragment of a scene here and there that echoes something of what Stoker penned, but nothing more than a faint and nearly imperceptible shadow of that original text. Gone is Doctor Abraham Van Helsing, replaced by Christoph Waltz (the principal reason I ventured to see this feature) as a priest, part of a Vatican-ordained order of vampire hunters. Following in the recent canon alterations (or desecrations depending upon your point of view) Dracula (Caleb Landry Jones) once again is portrayed as a man so tormented by the loss of his true love at the hands of his enemy that he has forsaken the Church and God, that he is cursed with the terrible affliction of vampirism, leaving him to haunt the centuries searching for the reincarnation of his lost love. Much of the film’s runtime, 2 hours and 9 minutes, is dedicated to Dracula’s backstory, following him through four centuries of searching and loss. Given that the film’s main action takes place after all of that backstory, this creates in the film a powerful sense that the movie is mostly exposition. This Dracula shares a thematic element with del Toro’s Frankenstein, a deep sympathy for the monster at the center of the tale. While it can be argued that Shelley imbued her text with such feelings for the creation, no such sentiment is in Stoker’s novel. This is the inevitable consequence once you introduce any hint of a tragic origin for the famed vampire. By the end of the film Besson abandons any considerations for the Count’s numerous and slaughtered victims, keeping his sympathy entirely for a vampire with whom Besson has crafted a nobility absent from the source material. This rendition, in addition to transplanting the story from England to Paris, contains mind-control perfumes, elaborate choreographed dances with scores of performers, and culminates with the Austro-Hungarian Empire assaulting Castle Dracula with troops and cannon.

On the plus side, Caleb Landry Jones turns in a performance that sold me, for the most part, on his portrayal as an Eastern European nobleman. To my untrained ear I detected no flaw in his accent and his bearing and delivery all contributed positively to the air of a man for whom power was a birthright. I do wish that hair and make-up had dyed his hair black, a blonde Transylvanian nobleman did stretch my credulity as much as the count being a master chemist whipping up mind-control perfumes.

Besson’s Dracula does strike me as the most thematically Christian rendition of the material. Most vampire movies and television programs will use the cross warding as a gimmick, a way for the characters to save themselves when confronted by a thing that vastly overpowers them, but here the story and its resolution actually turns on Christian theology.

And that made the final resolution unacceptable to me for what is yet another rendition of the ‘red shirt’ problem. In my final section I will spoil the ending of the film so you can bail out here, knowing that I cannot recommend this movie at theatrical prices, at best wait for it to come a streaming service you already subscribe to.

After the army and assorted characters have successfully assaulted and gained entrance to the castle, and after Dracula had slaughtered literally scores of men, Waltz’s priest confronts the vampire and implores him to renounce his heresy. For Dracula to accept God’s love and forgiveness, which Dracula does and then allows the priest to destroy him with a silver stake.

So, Dracula, a vile and evil creature who for hundreds of years has visited terror and death on the people of Europe, is in the end forgiven and granted absolution even as he stands in a hallway littered with the corpses of men he killed. These nameless characters died not to end a great evil, and in the end their sacrifices achieved nothing. It was not by their blood and lives that the Priest walked into the castle. They were mere spectacle, giving the conclusion some action.

It is Christian to believe that honest and true repentance will grant you God’s absolution, but it makes for a terrible movie ending and it is particularly rankling when once again we are being asked to accept a monster as subject of our sympathy and empathy.

 

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The Spy Spectrum

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While the Spy craze of the 60s is long behind us with only the property that ignited that boom, Bond, James Bond, still commands the attention of popular culture — that phrase always implies to me that there is an unpopular culture. Stories of spies and espionage continue to be written and produced. In my opinion there is a spectrum upon which stories of the covert services are told and the ends of that spectrum are anchored by the authors that towered over the field during the height of the ‘spy boom’, Ian Fleming and John le Carré.

Ian Fleming created James Bond, the first novel, Casino Royale, written just before Fleming’s marriage with the author plucking the character’s name off a birding book because he felt the name had a grey forgettable quality to it. While that originating novel had a few not too spectacular gadgets and battled the spy services of the Soviet Union not global criminal empires it wasn’t long before those elements were introduced, then became mainstay tropes of Bond’s adventures. Bond’s stories are adventures, filled with colorful characters, beautiful willing women, fantastic technology and always with clear heroics both in the nature of the threat and the heroic people fighting evil, unredeemable bad guys. (We will set aside that in Casino Royale Bond in the confines of his private thoughts muses on the ‘sweet tang of rape’ an aspect of the character that was mercifully never translated to the screen.)

John le Carré, real name David Cornwell, crafted espionage fiction that very much reflected the real world. His characters were not the fantasy of ‘gentlemen spies’ but working people trying to do their best in a system that in order to achieve its goals often employed the same despicable tactics of the enemy until recognizing one from the other became nearly impossible. Disillusionment is a common theme in le Carré’s work, work which questioned whether our methods define us no matter the nobility of our ends. What gadgets exist in le Carré’s world are ones that actually exist or at the very least are very possible, here you will not find powerful electro-magnets that can pull boats to you from yards away. Heroes often find at the end of the missions not that they have triumphed over evil but rather that they have employed evil, often for questionable results. It is a world so thoroughly gray one wonders if any color can be found anywhere.

The explosive success of the Bond movies dictated that swarms of spy thrillers would flood the screen chasing that sweet, sweet box office money. Most of these, The ‘Matt Helm’ and ‘Flint’ movies sit quite comfortably near the Fleming end of the spectrum, attempting to dazzle the audience with derring-do and fantastic gadgets. Len Deighton’s ‘Harry Palmer’ series mixed the style of Fleming’s fantastic plot with le Carré’s cynicism placing this series near the middle of the spectrum. Get Smart the successful spy parody series is clearly at the Fleming point, if not far beyond it. It would be difficult to imagine a similar program for le Carré’s style of fiction, after all how funny can a parody of the dark, cynical, and morally gray world of le Carré be?

Slow Horses, currently adapted into a quite successful series on Apple TV, hews closer to le Carré than to Fleming, there is a distinct lack of gadgets, and the world the characters inhabit very much mirrors the gray and morally questionable world that is found in works such as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, but overlaid with a modern ironic sense. Here there isn’t the common mistake of confusing cynicism for wisdom, but rather a recognition of the flawed world, the flawed systems, but an understanding that beyond all that somethings are right and somethings are wrong.

I find this spectrum a very handy method of classifying espionage fiction, how likely it is to resonate with me. It’s even applicable at the espionage genre is adapted in all sorts of new and exciting way, such as Charle Stross’ Laundry Series which clearly take it’s parody aspects from Fleming with all sorts of fantastical gadget, combined with a sharp satire of office and corporate culture while battling Lovecraftian forces beyond comprehension.

The spy trope is alive and well, even if we don’t have as many as we used to and its pleasing that we still get both our glorious heroes inspired by Fleming and dark cynical take that follow le Carré.

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Art Is Choices Not Prompts

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With generative A.I. getting more and more capable in nearly all areas but particularly in creating video imagery there have been a number of voices, not industry voices mind you, proclaiming the death of Hollywood with some short video piece that they crafted.

The videos are impressive for what they are, a machine mimicking the data that has been fed into it, but there is so much more to a film, a novel, a painting or any other art than how it appears in its final form. Art is about the choices the artist made along the path of creation and not just the final product that was created.

Some artists are very intellectual, plotting out every detail of their art, knowing with deliberate decision why everything is the way it is, why that color was employed and not some other hue, why the character has that particular name. Other artists work more from hunches and intuition, making decisions on the fly, exploring the piece as they create it. Why that color? It just seemed right. Both types, and every type in between, are making choices, and those choices in aggregate create what is the style and voice of the artist. It is the sum of the choices that let us look at a movie and tell the difference from one directed by James Cameron and one directed by Steven Spielberg, why a song by Taylor Swift doesn’t sound like one from Danny Elfman, why a novel from Kazuo Ishiguro hits different than one from Gail Carriger.

That voice that is generated by the thousands and thousands of choices made by the artist is a product of the artist, the events of their lives, and the way they see and interpret the world around them. It is why only they could have produced that one piece of art, because it is a reflection of everything that they are, had been, and how they are interacting with the world at that exact moment of creation.

Generative A.I. does not make choices, it uses probability on what the next word, or pixel is going to be, probability that is derived from the blending of all the similar data that it has been fed. Mind you, that is still a vast powerful tool. An A.I. powered grammar review will nearly all the time catch when you have typed “tub” when you meant “tube” making it a powerful assist in catching those nasty little errors, but it has no voice. Generative A.I. has no opinions on the world, it has never suffered heartbreak of love not returned nor the heights of joyous love that is returned. It’s an impressive parrot regurgitating with stunning ability what it has been fed, but by that very nature what it creates is bland, without the strong point of view that makes art last.

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Life, Uninterrupted

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Not a lot going on at the moment in my life, just the usual day to day action, reactions, and observations that is the slow steady passing of time from today to tomorrow. Certainly, there is a tremendous amount going on in the world but I am far from inclined to write even short posts about the terrible state of the United States. Those inclined to see it my way already do and those who are not so inclined are for all effective purposes immune to any arguments I might make. This is the reason why I am so terrible at Twitter. I see a stupid post from some random person I scroll right on by.  There’s nothing to gain from arguing with strangers on the internet. When I do respond to a post it is nearly always because I personally know that person. Even then I merely note and move on from most of their posts without interaction.

I have started a new novel but it’s very vague at this time and I am just sort of feeling my way through the opening chapters to see if I can uncover the voice for this book before committing myself to its creation.

My Sweetie-Wife and I watched Predators: Badlands a film I suspect will slip quietly and quickly from my memory. It is not bad; it is very competently crafted but I never crossed the gulf of empathy between myself and the characters. Taking us into the Yautja culture robbed them of most of their power as a force and the character came off as pretty one-note.

In anticipation of the next season, I have begun a  rewatch of Dune: Prophecy  the HBO series about the founding of the Bene Gesserit, and it’s just as wonderful on the second watch as it was on the first and like The Godfather, a rewatching actually helps me with the tangled and dense plotting.

Last night I watched the trailer for the Netflix series How to get to Heaven from Belfast and had the most enjoyable reaction to a trailer that I have experienced in a very long time. This quickly shot up the list for something for us to watch in our household.

You know when the manufacturer suggests a part should be replaced annually, that’s something to listen to, I was shaving Monday morning and felt a strange sensation against my cheek and something pinged off the countertop. A part of the electric shaver head had abandoned its post and one of the two metal foils that cover the cutting surface had sprung up. I wasn’t cut in any way and a replaced head showed up quickly via Amazon. My order history showed that it had been two years to the month since I had replaced the head that should be replaced annually.

And that, my friends is my life, mostly dull, somewhat creative, and at least a little entertaining.

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Spider Noir

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse introduced to the silver screen a number of Spider-Man variants with its central protagonist being the young Miles Morales but one of the favorites to emerge from the strange, animated team up was Spider-Man Noir, a 40s styled, film noir, detective enhanced with spider-like abilities, and voiced with manic perfection by internet favorite Nicolas Cage.

Last night I stumbled across the trailer for a new television series premiering on Amazon Prime in May 2026, Spider Noir, a live action continuation of the adventures of Spider-Man Noir, starring Nicolas Cage.

Much as my love of Warner Brothers’ gangsters movies and classic Universal monsters is making it impossible for me to sidestep The Bride! this mash-up of film noir tropes with the over-the-top manic style of Cage makes Spider Noir equally irresistible.

Just as the trailer was reaching its end, I thought to myself, it is a bloody shame that the series is not in glorious black-and-white. One of the more amusing aspects of the Spider-Man Noir character in the animated film was his puzzlement over things with color as he continued to be rendered in a stark greyscale. Then the trailer’s image suddenly shifted to black-and-white accompanied by text indicating the program could be watched in either format.

Man, I hope they pull that off well.

A few films in the last decade have released black-and-white versions to home video going for that vintage film noir aesthetic, three notable ones were Logan, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Nightmare Alley. I have seen all of these movies, which are each exceptional examples of the cinematic arts, but honestly only one of them really worked in Black-And-White.

Both Logan and Mad Max: Fury Road looked simply like the film’s color data had been deleted, the greyscale nature of the image had none of the life or vibrancy of a shot composed and production designed for Black-and-White cinematography. del Toro’s remake of the film noir classic Nightmare Alley on the other hand, looked better in its Black-and-White version than it did in the full color rendering. I do not know this for a fact, but I would bet dollars to donuts that del Toro guided every aspect of production design and photography with a monochrome sensibility in mind, but, aware that the studio would balk at releasing it solely in that format. Nightmare Alley, though dragged down by a bit of casting, in both color and in Black-and-White looks fantastic, just better in the monochrome that evokes both the pre-war period of the story and the associations with classic cinema.

Monochrome cinematography is not just shooting with B&W film, or digitally removing the color data, it is understanding that color itself registers differently when photographed in Black-and-White. It is knowing that blood looks too pale and something dark brown is more ‘realistic’ than photographing a crimson liquid or knowing that colors that may garishly clash when seen in their full hues can be very complimentary in greyscale. There lies the real challenge of making a production for both color and Black-and-White, resolving those conflicts between the different requirements.

Did the production team of Spider Noir design from the ground up for both color images and Black-and-White? I do not know but man, oh, man I really hope that they did.

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The ‘Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid’ Project

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When I went to the theater with my friend Ray in 1982 to see Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, it was not because I was a deep fan of detective movies or film noir. Steve Martin and Carl Reiner were enough of a selling point to motivate me to see this comedy, and it’s something I never regretted.

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is both a satire and a salute to the detective and film noir films of the 1940s and 1950s, with Steve Martin as Rigby Reardon hired by Juliet Forrest (Rachel Ward) to investigate the mysterious death of her father, a famous scientist. Rigby’s investigation brings him into contact with numerous shady and dangerous characters before leading him to a cadre of Nazis in South America bent on continuing the war with America.

What makes this film special is that it’s a collage project with most of the shady and dangerous characters that Martin interacts with as Rigby carefully edited scenes from classic movies of the period. By careful use of over-the-shoulder shots, sets and costumes crafted to duplicate those seen in the archival footage, and sometimes the use of doubles photographed without their faces visible, the illusion that Martin is actually in these scenes is delivered with a degree of sophistication that’s impressive.

A few years after seeing and thoroughly enjoying this movie in my Introduction to Cinematography course I was exposed to some of the more important films that Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid used in its collages and my fascination with film noir began.

Last month I got the idea it might be fun to make it a challenge to watch every one of the 19 classic movies that this film borrowed clips from. By my own count, I’ve seen eight, leaving eleven yet to be experienced. I made a list, organized it by IMDB ratings, and decided to start from the lowest rated and work my way to the highest, skipping none—making this a mix of films new to me and old favorites.

  1. Double Indemnity (1944) – 8.3
    2. White Heat (1949) – 8.1
    3. Suspicion (1941) – 8.1
    4. The Killers (1946) – 8.0
    5. The Lost Weekend (1945) – 8.0
    6. In a Lonely Place (1950) – 8.0
    7. Notorious (1946) – 7.9
    8. The Big Sleep (1946) – 7.8
    9. Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) – 7.7
    10. Dark Passage (1947) – 7.6
    11. The Glass Key (1942) – 7.6
    12. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) – 7.6
    13. I Walk Alone (1947) – 7.4
    14. This Gun for Hire (1942) – 7.3
    15. Humoresque (1946) – 7.3
    16. Deception (1946) – 7.2
    17. Johnny Eager (1941) – 7.1
    18. Keeper of the Flame (1942) – 6.9
    19. The Bribe (1949) – 6.8

My project ran into immediate trouble.

The Bribe, which fascinated me most from the clips utilized by Reiner and Martin, was not streaming anywhere, nor was it available even as a video-on-demand (VOD) rental. There had been a single release on DVD 16 years ago in 2010 and long out of print.

I didn’t want to abandon this project—it seemed fun to me—but I also hated the idea of skipping some of the films that violated the very essence of the endeavor. Surrender seemed to be the only option until I remembered one tiny little fact: the San Diego Library System has DVDs.

A quick search of the catalog revealed that they had two copies of The Bribe on disc, and so soon, my friends, I will begin the climb up that list as my 2026 cinematic venture.

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Not Well but Not Terribly Sick Either

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So, Tuesday to Wednesday were not my salad days.

By later afternoon Tuesday I began suffering G.I. distress, and by that I do not mean my World War II veterans were having a bad day but that my lower colon had decided that it had lots of material it no longer required and that it would be expediting removal.

 The last few hours at my day job witnessed frequent and prolonged visits to what the brits call ‘the water closet’ with my tummy giving rumbling accompaniment.  I finished my shift, came home to a light supper and a pleasant evening, if not comfortably, with my Sweete-Wife. The evening was slightly marred by the Late Show with Stephen Cobert going on vacation for the week. (Dude, you’re going forever in May, stop taking vacation days.)

By later evening I began to feel flush, my ears burned and my head started throbbing. I texted my manager to let her know I was feeling unwell and may miss work the next day.

Yup.

I awoke Wednesday morning to a migraine, possibly intensified by the rainy weather that had moved in, and a lower G.I. tract that insisted I move not very far from any available restroom. I called in sick, which I hate doing, and slept for a total of 9 1/2 hours. The prolonged sleep dried my eyes out and even with drops my eyesight remained less than optimal the entire day.

By the end of the afternoon the digestive issues seemed to have passed, mostly. whichever bug caused them seems to have moved on to browner pastures, and the migraine responded to medication, which relieved the pain but left me lightheaded.

Wednesday saw no day job work performed, no writing work completed, and no joy in the horizon-to-horizon grey rainy clouds which now cover San Diego like a shroud.

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