Saturday, 31 October 2015

It Seemed Loud


          The phone rang. Softly, in actuality, yet it seemed loud and ominous, as phones do at night in dark hotel rooms.

Jim Thompson
The Nothing Man
1954

    http://www.crimetime.co.uk/cigarettes-and-alchohol-the-extraordinary-life-of-jim-thompson/

At Night ......


At night this stuff's a drink. In the morning it's medicine.
Lost Weekend
1945

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Lost Weekend

Friday, 30 October 2015

Midnight Believer


                         I believe that the night tells us everything
                         The moves to make with the feel that we bring

Midnight Believer
(Jennings/Sample)
BB King

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BB King
album sleeve

Desperate People


       ...... clackety train tracks run continually under the scenes. The frame is always crammed with low-ceilinged, tight-walled compartments as passengers squeeze past one another. The camera is a character as well, pushing through or giving way to people moving past. You can feel the sweat, the heat, the stink of these desperate people scrambling to get from one place to another.

Wade Sheeler
2013  Pretty clever films.com
on Narrow Margin 1952

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Marie Windsor
in Narrow Margin

Thursday, 29 October 2015

Night


Night from a railroad car window
Is a great dark soft thing
Broken across with slashes of light
Carl Sandburg
1916

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Jack Delano
Chicago 1942

The Damned Don't Cry ........ 2

Thieves Highway

Armee Des Ombres

The Killers

End of the Affair

T Men

 Hard Eight

Criss Cross

In Cold Blood

 Third Man

Un Flic

Paths of Glory

Tuesday, 27 October 2015

Freedom


Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Soren Kierkegaard

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Bror Johansson

Heat of the Day


            She came to a stop ; he pushed against a door showing a dimmed sign ; OPEN. Inside light came up stone stairs which he took her down , at the foot he held open another door and she walked ahead of him, into a bar or grill which had no air of having existed before tonight
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wherever she looked her eyes detail took on an uncanny salience - she marked the taut grimace with which a man carrying two full glasses to a table kept a cigarette down to it's last inch between his lips.

Heat of the Day
Elizabeth Bowen
1948

Monday, 26 October 2015

All You Forget


I am stone and steel of your sleeping numbers
I remember all you forget
I will die as many times
as you make me over again
Carl Sandburg
1926

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State and Randolph
Chicago 1950

Cry of Noir ....... 8

Le Doulos

Heat

Raging Bull

Memento

Murder My Sweet

Vertigo

Out of the Past

Casino

Sunday, 25 October 2015

Sometimes it Seemed


         Eternity is said to not be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space.

End of the Affair
Graham Greene
1951

Saturday, 24 October 2015

Empty Boulevards


A gruelling soul crushing fruitless ritual we do to gain power and social status.

Empty Boulevards
Willis Gordon
2012

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Mad Men

The Damned Don't Cry

Ace in the Hole

The Set Up

The Conformist

Brute Force

Plein Soleil

Double Indemnity

Man Who Wasn't There

Casino

Rififi

Death of a Cyclist

Raging Bull

Serpico