Word: noires
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Lynch and Coen pictures would make a fine set of bookends for your hardboiled fiction shelf. Both are set in the prime film-noir territory of sunny, sepulchral California: Los Angeles, home of Philip Marlowe (among other truth seekers) and moviemakers (among other chronic liars) for Mulholland Dr.; Santa Rosa (scene of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt) for the toxic scent of small-town failure in The Man Who Wasn't There. Both films serve up a lovely, lurid brew of greed, murder and twisted identities. But the Coen movie, with Billy Bob Thornton and Frances McDormand locked...
...doesn't do innocence. But he does bad guys really well. Having made his name as the latter-day master of noir with books on L.A. cops, murderers and assorted lowlifes--L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia--Ellroy began searching for larger game to hunt. He found it in the turmoil of the 1960s, with the assassinations of the two Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr. and the drama of the civil rights struggle. "I lived through the '60s, with these great events roiling around me. I never partook, but I always felt there were private stories underneath the public events...
...made a few bête noir student films with what he laughingly calls his leitmotif: "People getting killed because of messages they get in mass-produced food products...
...Pope has a scratchy, dark drawing style that tosses characters and objects together in an impressionistic jumble. His influences seem more Japanese than American, particularly in his use of "speed lines" that turn backgrounds into a blur. Given the heavy amount of black in his work, American film noir seems to also play a significant role in Pope's aesthetic. (Film noir being another genre, besides comics, more highly regarded in Europe.) Particularly representative of his intelligent draftmanship is his use of two colors besides black and white - muted rose and slate blue - to offset highlights and establish changes...
APPLE A DAY No one would confuse a glass of apple juice with Pinot Noir, but apple growers would have you believe they're the same, at least in one respect: their ability to reduce the risk of heart disease. A study funded by the apple industry suggests that 12 oz. of apple juice a day may help delay the formation of artery-clogging plaque. Reason: apple juice, like wine, is packed with powerful antioxidants known as flavonoids. The similarities stop there...