Welcome to BlogHub: the Best in Veteran and Emerging Classic Movie Blogs
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
book: Death of a Red Heroine (2000) by Qiu Xiaolong
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 22, 2018
Shanghai and environs, 1990. It’s purely by chance that the strangled body of model worker Guan Hongying is found dumped in a remote canal; by all rights she could have remained there undisturbed for decades. Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Homicide Division’s Special Case Squa read more
book: Mind’s Eye (1993; trans 2008 Laurie Thompson) by Håkan Nesser
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 22, 2018
Schoolteacher Janek Mitter wakes up one morning to a crushing hangover, the realization that he’s suffering a memory blackout, and the discovery that his wife of just three months, Eva, has been drowned in the bathtub behind a bolted door. There’s no evidence that anyone else but the tw read more
The Hangman (1964)
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 20, 2018
vt Hangman US / 11 minutes / color / Melrose Productions Dir: Paul Julian, Les Goldman Pr & Conception: Les Goldman Scr: Maurice Ogden Story: “The Hangman” (1954 in Masses and Mainstream magazine; poem) by Jack Denoya (i.e., Maurice Ogden) Animation: Paul Julian, Margaret Julian, Auril Thompson, read more
snapshot: Innocent Husbands (1925)
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 17, 2018
US / 25 minutes / bw silent / Hal Roach Studios, Pathé Exchange Dir: Leo McCarey Pr: Hal Roach Cine: Len Powers Cast: Charley Chase, Katherine Grant, Jane Sherman, Lucien Littlefield, Jimmie Finlayson, William Gillespie, Kay de Lys, Philip Sleeman, Martha Sleeper. A delightful Hal Roach comedy that read more
book: Killer Look (2016) by Linda Fairstein
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 16, 2018
Coop was abducted and terrorized in the previous volume, so now she’s on leave while she tries to get her PTSD — and her habit of self-medicating with Dewars — under control. Even so, through cop boyfriend Mike Chapman, she becomes embroiled in investigating murder and shenanigans read more
book: Under the Midnight Sun (1999; trans 2015 Alexander O. Smith, Joseph Reeder) by Keigo Higashino
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 14, 2018
In Osaka in the early 1970s, a pawnbroker is found savagely murdered in an abandoned building. The crime fascinates Detective Sasagaki, but when, over the next year, the two major suspects die — one in a traffic accident, the other in what everyone thinks is suicide although murder and misadv read more
A Hundred Streets (2016)
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 12, 2018
vt 100 Streets; vt One Square Mile UK / 93 minutes / color / Caudwell, One Square Mile, Umedia, West Fiction, Crossday, What’s the Story, Green Door, Vertigo Dir: Jim O’Hanlon Pr: Pippa Cross, Leon F. Butler, Idris Elba, Ros Hubbard Scr: Leon F. Butler Cine: Philipp Blaubach Cast: Idris Elba, Gemma read more
snapshot: Johnny Dangerously (1984)
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 10, 2018
US / 90 minutes / color with some bw / Edgewood, TCF Dir: Amy Heckerling Pr: Michael Hertzberg Scr: Norman Steinberg, Bernie Kukoff, Harry Colomby, Jeff Harris Cine: David M. Walsh Cast: Michael Keaton, Joe Piscopo, Marilu Henner, Maureen Stapleton, Peter Boyle, Griffin Dunne, Glynnis O’Connor, Dom read more
book: Jasper Jones (2009) by Craig Silvey
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 8, 2018
It’s December 1965 in the small Australian town of Corrigan, and 13-year-old Charlie Bucktin is an outcast because he’s bright, reads copiously and is pretty lousy at sports. His best and only friend is Jeffrey Lu, who’s an outcast because he’s of Vietnamese extraction and A read more
book: Only to Sleep (2018) by Lawrence Osborne
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 7, 2018
NB: This is crossposted from my Goodreads account — hence the opening remarks. One of the limitations of the Goodreads star system is that it doesn’t allow for nuance. This is an excellent novel that I admire immensely (five stars) yet it’s one that I didn’t personally much read more
Claire in Motion (2016)
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 6, 2018
US / 84 minutes / color / Sacha, Running Man, Breaking Glass Dir & Scr: Lisa Robinson, Annie J. Howell Pr: Lisa Robinson, Annie J. Howell, Jenny Deller Cine: Andreas Burgess Cast: Betsy Brandt, Zev Haworth, Anna Margaret Hollyman, Sakina Jaffrey, Chris Beetem, Brian Evans, Ken Strunk, Marianne M read more
reblog: “The Third Murder” Review
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 4, 2018
++A tremendous account from dbmoviesblog of a movie I talked about here a while ago: Sandome no Satsujin (2017 vt The Third Murder). If you’re not following dbmovies, you should be! dbmoviesblog The Third Murder (2018) “People hardly understand membersof their own family, let alone strangers” read more
Book: Tangerine (2018) by Christine Mangan
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 3, 2018
I bought this in part because I’d caught wind of the hype but primarily because of the Joyce Carol Oates quote on the cover: “As if Donna Tartt, Gillian Flynn, and Patricia Highsmith had collaborated on a screenplay to be filmed by Hitchcock.” I feel a bit nervous contradicting su read more
The Unseen (1945)
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 3, 2018
vt Her Heart in Her Throat; vt Fear US / 80 minutes / bw / Paramount Dir: Lewis Allen Assoc Pr: John Houseman Scr: Hagar Wilde, Raymond Chandler, Ken Englund Story: Midnight House (1942; vt Her Heart in Her Throat) by Ethel Lina White Cine: John F. Seitz Cast: Joel McCrea, Gail Russell, Herbert read more
book: The Labyrinth of the Spirits (2016; trans 2017 Lucia Graves) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 2, 2018
“Doña Lorena said that the level of barbarism in a society is measured by the distance it tries to create between women and books.” (page 663) This sprawling epic thriller, weighing in at just over 800 pages, is the finale to Zafón’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, begun with read more
o/t: Leisure reading in September
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Oct 2, 2018
A good crop of books this month (not that many of them, but two were enormous), only one being a bit of a stinker and one, the Zafón, looking set to be my Book of the Year . . . although who knows what further bookish excitements may come along before December 31? The links are as usual to my Goodre read more
Women in the Night (1948)
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Sep 29, 2018
vt When Men Are Beasts; vt Curse of a Teenage Nazi; vt Captured
US / 92 minutes / bw / Ansell, Film Classics, Republic Dir & Story: William Rowland Pr: Louis K. Ansell Scr: Maude Emily Glass, Ali M. Ipar, Robert St. Clair, Edwin V. Westrate, Arthur Jones, Louis K. Ansell Cine: Eugen Shuftan, Jos read more
snapshot: The Lady who Dared (1931)
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Sep 26, 2018
vt The Devil’s Playground US / 57 minutes / bw / First National, Vitaphone Dir: William Beaudine Scr: Forrest Halsey, Kathryn Scola Story: Kenneth J. Saunders Cine: Tony Gaudio Cast: Billie Dove, Sidney Blackmer, Conway Tearle, Judith Vosselli, Cosmo Kyrle Bellew, Ivan Simpson, Lloyd Ingraham, read more
book: Nine Times Nine (1940) by H.H. Holmes/Anthony Boucher
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Sep 23, 2018
This novel, the first of Boucher’s duo (bilogy?) featuring amateur detective Sister Ursula, both written as by H.H. Holmes (a moniker of a prolific 19th-century serial killer), is quite openly an homage to the work of John Dickson Carr: it’s dedicated to Carr and the best part of one of read more
book: A Voice in the Night (2012; trans 2016 Stephen Sartarelli) by Andrea Camilleri
Noirish Posted by John Grant on Sep 22, 2018
It’s Inspector Montalbano’s 58th birthday, and he’s trying to use what we might call the Sicilian equivalent of GOP economics to persuade everyone — especially himself — that it’s really only his 57th. Meanwhile, he’s got two cases to solve — three, r read more