Word: noire
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...Burwell turns in another of his hauntingly cycling scores, delving into the sense of intrigue evoked by the string instruments. Roger Deakins, Oscar-nominated for his golden-hued cinematography on O Brother, turns in similarly stellar monochromatic work here; every shot is crisp and pristine, bursting with an expressively noir-ish atmosphere...
...this tragedy--and probably more important, the ensuing conflict--will change the culture. Great events do that. The absurdity of the First World War gave us Dadaism. The Great Depression created an appetite for frothy screwball comedies. World War II replaced them with sentimental, patriotic dramas and eventually film noir and social-issues movies and plays. The atomic age fed science fiction and rock 'n' roll; the Vietnam War gave us Norman Lear sitcoms and Robert Altman films...
Nearly 30 years ago, Josh Jensen, fresh from a postcollege stint in the vineyards of Burgundy and eager to make his own wine, bought a Volkswagen camper and spent two years driving around California looking for the perfect place to grow Pinot Noir grapes. He finally found grape pay dirt, but nowhere near the famed Napa Valley. Instead it was 135 miles south, on a limestone-rich mountainside east of Monterey. Jensen planned to plant vines in the Gavilan Mountains at 2,200 ft. above sea level, making his future vineyard among the highest, and the coldest, in California. Around...
DIED. JANE GREER, 76, alluring film-noir star from the 1940s; of cancer; in Los Angeles. Greer, who was briefly married to singer Rudy Vallee, was discovered by Howard Hughes. ("He was obsessed with me," she later said.) When Greer married her second husband, Hughes reduced her film work for his studio. Greer starred as a femme fatale opposite Robert Mitchum in the 1947 film Out of the Past--and, nearly four decades later, in the remake, Against All Odds...
Meanwhile, back on lower Earth--in the roiling depths of California film noir--there are plots every bit as dark and complex as those in the season's fantasy films. Just look into the barely beating heart of Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), the barber of Santa Rosa, in Joel and Ethan Coen's tragicomic cardiograph The Man Who Wasn't There. He's got a cheating wife (Frances McDormand), a conniving friend (James Gandolfini), a dead-end job and the depressive sense that "life has dealt me some bum cards. Or maybe I didn't play them right...