Saturday, October 19, 2024

Born on this day – Auguste Lumière:


Auguste Lumière

Director

Producer

Actor

Engineer

Biologist

Co-inventor of the cinematograph

Regarded as one of the pioneers of cinema

October 19, 1862 – April 10, 1954

Recommended reading - A Century of Noir: Thirty-two Classic Crime Stories (2002):


A Century of Noir: Thirty-two Classic Crime Stories


Edited by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins.
Published 2002.
ISBN-10: 0451205960
ISBN-13: 978-0451205964

Anthology of short stories.

Description:

Bleak streets and bleaker futures. Trapped heroes and desperate shreds of hope. Wicked women and broken dreams. Urban whirlpools and inexorable fates. Call it noir. Call it pulp. Call it black – and blue. It’s a tradition – tough, reckless, and uncompromising – born from the fierce imaginations of a century of writers with a unique talent for creating shadows out of words and turning raw emotion into pure poetry.

And this is noir at its incomparable best – thirty-two of the finest crime stories of the twentieth century, personally chosen by Shamus Award winner Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane, one of the true masters of hard-boiled fiction.

Toni Morrison, on writing:


If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning,
it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic ...
Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands of ways,
learning each time they begin anew how to recognize a valuable idea and how to reader the texture that accompanies,
reveals or displays it to its best advantage.

- Toni Morrison.

Friday, October 18, 2024

On this day in movie history - Exhibition on Screen: Hopper - An American Love Story (2022):


Exhibition on Screen: Hopper - An American Love Story

documentary directed by Phil Grabsky,
was released in the United States on October 18, 2022.

On this day in music history - The Blues Is Life, by Victoria Spivey (1962):

The album The Blues Is Life,
by Victoria Spivey,
was recorded on October 18, 1962.

On this day in movie history - The Maltese Falcon (1941):


The Maltese Falcon

directed and written by John Huston,
based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett,
was released in the United States on October 18, 1941.
Music by Adolph Deutsch.


Cast:

Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Peter Lorre, Barton MacLane, Lee Patrick, Sydney Greenstreet, Ward Bond, Jerome Cowan, Elisha Cook Jr., James Burke, Murray Alper, John Hamilton, Walter Huston.

On this day in movie history - The Doorway to Hell (1930):


The Doorway to Hell

directed by Archie Mayo,
written by George Rosener,
based on the story A Handful of Clouds by Rowland Brown,
was released in the United States on October 18, 1930.
Music by Erno Rapee and Louis Silvers.


Cast:

Lew Ayres, Charles Judels, Dorothy Mathews, Leon Janney, Robert Elliott, James Cagney, Kenneth Thomson, Jerry Mandy, Noel Madison, Eddie Kane, Tom Wilson, Dwight Frye.