Monthly Archives: April 2023

Sunday Night Noir: Criss Cross

 

Universal Pictures

 

Criss Cross is a 1949 film noir directed by Robert Siodmak about a gang of crooks attempting to pull off an armored car heist of nearly half a million dollars.

Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) has returned home to Los Angeles after drifting about the nation for two years disillusioned after the disintegration of his marriage to Anna (Yvonne De Carlo). Anna has remarried to a local crime goon Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea) Soon Steve and Anna have rekindled their affair despite the lethal threat of Slim. Partly as a cover for their affair and partly to dissuade Slim’s suspicions, Steve concocts a plot with slim to rob the armored car company his works for with an intention to betray Slim and abscond with both the loot and the lady.

The film is a moderately decent noir marred by an intrusive and superfluous voice-over that, like Double Indemnity’s, seems to be the character recounting the events to a third party but without an actual third party to receive it.

Siodmak’s direction is sure and deft with creative and imaginative employment of rear screen projections the craft large spaces giving the impression of exteriors while maintaining strick studio control for cinematographer’s Franz Planer’s lighting and camera work.

Noted noir composer Miklos Rozsa fashioned the score but did not quite match his best work with the music sometimes as intrusive as the voice over.

The cast is uniformly good, portraying the conflicted and ultimately weak nature of the characters as they are consumed by their unrequited needs. While Criss Cross bears all the visual stamps of the noir style, more important to me the tone and theme of the story are true to the heart of noir, a dark cynical impression of humanity. Steve is trapped by his infatuation with Anna. While Anna and Slim are compelled by their respective flaws. The ending, dark, disturbing, and doomed is equally tragic and inevitable, paying honestly to the corruption in the human heart.

Playing as part of a Siodmak collection Criss Cross is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Share

Impressions The Mandalorian Season 3

.

I have to confess that so far Season 3 of The Mandalorian a space fantasy series set a few years after the downfall of the Empire in Star Wars has been less compelling than the preceding two.

In season one we had a clear narrative line, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) accepts a bounty to collect an asset and deliver it to remnants of Imperial Forces. The asset, an immature member of the same species of Yoda, wins his affections and the plot is about keeping the child safe.

Season two Din Djarin is tasked with returning the child to a Jedi who can complete its training while dealing with the powerful enemies still intent on collecting the child for their own schemes.

Both of these plots are clear and established early in each season with Din eventually sacrificing his commitment to his warrior religion to rescue the child.

The third season, with Din Djarin and the Child reunited, has so far displayed no narrative cohesion. Feeling much more like an adventure role playing game, the season has wandered from battle to battle, event to event, with very little plot connecting the various elements. Each week stuff happens but without revealing a goal that the characters are pursuing. The season seems to be comprised of side quests while forgetting to give a central one for the side ones to branch off from.

The show is still quite well produced and directed but lack cohesion to give it narrative gravitas making it by far the weakest season so far.

Share

That Potential Harry Potter Series

.

Deadline and other sources are reporting that Warner Brothers, a studio once known for its anti-fascist stances, is looking to move forward for a re-booting of the valuable Harry Potter IP as a series for its streaming service HBOMax. It is reported that WB CEO Zaslav has met with JKR in hopes of bringing this project to life and that JKR may even be producer on the series. JKR, in addition to the controversies surrounding her small-minded stance on trans issues, is notorious for demanding control over the property and would likely wield great influence over the series’ production.

It’s understandable that people became fans of the franchise either through the books or the films before JKR’s opinion became public poisoning, quite understandably, many against the author. With the proposed series all this is known ahead of time on this go around and raises ethical and moral concerns about financially supporting JKR as she continues with what many people feel are bigoted opinions.

I fully support those who protest and drag into the light the statements and attitudes of JKR, but I also think it would be wise and just to be prudent in who is targeted if this series continues to move forward.

For example, the young actors cast in the series I would not want to see hounded or harassed on social media. ‘We are not so smart when we are young,’ as one fictional character observed and it is already a very hard road to travel as a child actor there is little, very little, to be gained targeting them.

The writers of the ‘writers room’ are likely to be in the first stages of their careers, struggling with student debt, the high cost of living in LA, and the difficult task of landing any paying gig in Hollywood, refusing an assignment may not have been a viable option for them.

However, the show runner, as of yet unnamed, the person with creative control only checked by the studio and the dictatorial JKR is another matter. That person is likely to be an experience veteran of the business with the financial and career resources to walk away from the series. If they choose to get into bed with JKR, fully aware of the controversies she brings along, then they have made their decision and shouldn’t be surprised when it turns out to be far from popular.

I have read the books and seen the film adaptation and found them enjoyable but flawed. Others have done a fine job pointing out the antisemitic tropes and the ignorant racism in the text so I will not elaborate on that here just beware it is there. I have no need to purchase anything new from the franchise and I am quite happy leaving it behind, the proposed series holds no interest for me and hopefully not for you either.

Share

The Clown Car Has Crashed Into The Police Van

.

For the first time in American History a grand jury has indicted a former president of the nation on criminal charges. The exact nature of those charges are still unknown as the disclosure will occur at the defendant’s arraignment and everything said about those charges, their strengths or weaknesses is mere speculation. But hey, there are clicks to harvest and commercial airtime to sell so the speculation is not going to stop.

Of course, all of this is so utterly predicable that the most fraudulent telephone psychic of the 80s or 90s would have foretold its coming. Trump, a man who idolized and admired the organized crimes goons of his city, who famously stiffed nearly everyone single person he ever owed money to, and who envisioned himself, despite his soft doughy nature, as a hard man of cruelty, was always at some point exceed his limited intellectual capacity and finally violate the law in a manner that he would not be able to bribe, buy, or dodge his way out of. That was a predictable as the law of gravity.

And yet, notwithstanding all that the Republican Party, lashed themselves to his fate and, depending on your point of view, either revealed their utter hypocrisy or shredded their final and weakly held principles as the party of ‘individual responsibility’ and devoted their time and treasure to this small, weak, and stupid man’s defense.

Having spent the previous decades chasing away anyone with a modicum of decency towards their fellow person while making every effort to enrichen the wealthy the elites and powerbrokers of the GOP transformed their once proud vehicle into a clown car and then handed the wheel over to the biggest clown of all.

Now devoid of principles save the authoritarian ‘my way!’ they GOP as shocked and terrified to discover that the clown car has ended up into the police station and there is little chance to escape the terrible, inevitable, and wholly foreseeable fallout of their self-destruction. They fervently pray that a conviction or a Big Mac will remove the orange clown from their care, but even if that were to come to pass it would change very little. The army of clowns that they had spent decades building, fooling themselves that it obeyed their commands, has taken control and will remain there for at least another decade.

Share