Download or read book It s a Bitter Little World written by Charles Pappas and published by Writer's Digest Books. This book was released on 2005-10-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn Life's Hard Lessons from Film Noir &break;&break;If you want to know the meaning of life, don't study Shakespeare, don't peruse Plato. Everything you need to know in life you can learn from film noir. And everything you can learn from film noir, you can find in It's a Bitter Little World. &break;&break;Author Charles Pappas scavenged sixty years of film noir - from The Maltese Falcon to Sin City - to find the answers to everything that ever perplexed men and vexed women. &break;&break;Arranged by decade, the scalding quotes and cigarette-burn dialogue reflect an America morphing from Sinatra and fedoras to P. Diddy and Botox. The language is a swig of Rum-and-Coke at breakfast. It's the last words at a funeral nobody came to. It's a saxophone on a rainy night when you can't sleep. It's all the loneliness and despair and romance and courage in your life rolled up into one neat package.
Download or read book The Maltese Meatloaf Mystery and Other Tales written by Robert Oster and published by Inspiring Voices. This book was released on 2014 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two part rollicking tongue-in-cheek film noir mystery begins in 1951 in Eda City, a small metropolis in the Mid-West. Retired detective Phillip Bartlow has made a name for himself as the city's only Culinary Private Eye. In Part One, The Maltese Mystery Meatloaf, Bartlow is hired by a beautiful young lady to hunt down an up and coming new chef who is serving his patrons dry meatloaf. Bartlow is thrown into a comic adventure which brings him in contact with a cast of characters that include local gangsters, restauranteurs, angry police and a psychotic murderer. In the midst of this tangled web of crime and mayhem, our hero suddenly finds himself falling in love with his secretary/research assistant, Connie. Part two, The California Honeymoon Caper finds our now newlyweds, Phillip and Connie Bartlow, traveling cross country to spend their honeymoon in San Francisco and at Connie's aunt's caper farm in Santa Rosa, California. Phillip and Connie find themselves caught up in another perilous, but humorous, adventure involving revenge, murder, and exploitation by the unsavory characters that they meet on the train.
Download or read book Flying Cars Zombie Dogs and Robot Overlords written by Charles Pappas and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every time you chew a stick of Juicy Fruit, eat a hamburger, slip on a nylon, plug your phone into a wall socket, flick on a TV, withdraw money from an ATM, lick an ice-cream cone, switch on a computer, ride an escalator, play a DVR, watch a movie about dinosaurs, or pop a tranquilizer, you’re doing something that originated at a world’s fair or trade expo. In fact, each new technology and every novel product that rocked America and rolled the world, from the Colt revolver and the Corvette to fax machines and flush toilets, started at trade fairs, a $100 billion industry that includes world expos, trade shows, and state fairs. More than just promoting material things, however, trade fairs popularized and evangelized every social movement and cultural concept, too, including Manifest Destiny, the closing of the frontier, Nudism, Nazism, Fascism, eugenics, female suffrage, temperance, and technocracy. While there have been notable works on world’s fairs by Robert Rydell, Erik Larsen, Erik Mattie, and others, they only capture a fragment of the whole mosaic of these shows—a mosaic that makes the glitziest Las Vegas spectacle look like an Amish barn-raising. This amusing book covers, for example, the World’s Fair that featured a nudist colony (1935); Salvador Dali’s half-naked lobster women, their virtue barely secured by well-placed crustaceans (1939); a model of the Liberty Bell made of Oranges (1893); one of Thomas Edison’s lesser-known inventions, the prefabricated concrete home (1907); and the Bayer Company’s experiment with selling heroin. More memorable and culturally iconic debuts discussed here include electricity, radios, the Volkswagen and the Corvette, television, the X-ray machine, air conditioning, and even nylon stockings. Dozens of short, illustrated chapters take the reader through over 150 years of world and trade fairs, from the vibrators displayed by sexual health advocates at the 1900 World’s Fair to the first true IMAX film at Expo ’70 in Japan.
Download or read book Fade to Zilch written by F. Lewis Hall and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Joseph Metropolis calls himself a philosophical counselor, and he is looking for a paying client with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He finds such a person in Zero Vaynilovich, also known as Zilch, who comes to him demanding assistance in finding his lost love. Although private detective work isnt his usual employment, Dr. Metropolis agrees to help the lovelorn tycoon. Thus begins a narrative that seeks to shine a light on the darkest reaches of the human mind. As Dr. Metropolis weaves through the fabulous theatrical world of Hollywood, he encounters movie moguls striving to embrace their creativity while struggling with their own psychological demons. He explores the role of the muse, the intemperate impulses of the femme fatale, and the lure of the casting couchall while working to solve the mystery brought to him by Zilch. Featuring spectacle, sexual intrigue, and a host of memorable characters, this screenplay details the fall of an empire that has become devoid of artistic inspiration.
Download or read book The Ghost and the Femme Fatale written by Alice Kimberly and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-05-06 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A film festival gone noir gives bookshop owner Penelope Thornton-McClure and her ghostly companion a big screen caper to solve in this Haunted Bookshop mystery from Cleo Coyle, writing as Alice Kimberly. The Movie Town Theater is holding its first ever Film Noir Festival, with Pen handling book sales for the guest speakers, including screen actress Hedda Geist. The legendary femme fatale has been out of the spotlight for decades. Unfortunately, the moment she steps back into it, she’s nearly killed. Then other guests start to die, and Penelope wants to know why her little town’s Film Noir weekend has taken a truly dark turn. With local police on the wrong track, Penelope enlists the help of Jack Shepard, P.I. Okay, so Jack hasn’t had a heartbeat since 1949, when he was gunned down in what is now Pen’s store. But the hard-boiled ghost actually remembers Hedda’s dark past and Penelope’s sure he can help solve this case—even if he and his license did expire more than fifty years ago...
Download or read book Nightmare Alley written by Mark Osteen and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2013-01-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic film noir offers more than pesky private eyes and beautiful bad girls—it explores the quest for the not-so-attainable American dream. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Desperate young lovers on the lam (They Live by Night), a cynical con man making a fortune as a mentalist (Nightmare Alley), a penniless pregnant girl mistaken for a wealthy heiress (No Man of Her Own), a wounded veteran who has forgotten his own name (Somewhere in the Night)—this gallery of film noir characters challenges the stereotypes of the wise-cracking detective and the alluring femme fatale. Despite their differences, they all have something in common: a belief in self-reinvention. Nightmare Alley is a thorough examination of how film noir disputes this notion at the heart of the American Dream. Central to many of these films, Mark Osteen argues, is the story of an individual trying, by dint of hard work or, more often, illicit enterprises, to overcome his or her origins and achieve material success. In the wake of World War II, the noir genre tested the dream of upward mobility and the ideas of individualism, liberty, equality, and free enterprise that accompany it. Employing an impressive array of theoretical perspectives (including psychoanalysis, art history, feminism, and music theory) and combining close reading with original primary source research, Nightmare Alley proves both the diversity of classic noir and its potency. This provocative and wide-ranging study revises and refreshes our understanding of noir's characters, themes, and cultural significance.
Download or read book Neo noir written by Douglas Keesey and published by Oldacastle Books. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Directors discussed include the Coen Brothers, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Christopher Nolan, Steven Soderbergh, and Quentin Tarantino A world-weary detective, a seductive femme fatale, a mysterious murder—these elements of classic film noir live again in more recent hardboiled detective films from Chinatown to Sin City. But the themes and styles of noir have also spilled over into contemporary films about gangsters, cops, and serial killers, such as Reservoir Dogs, The Departed, and Se7en. New hybrid genres have been created, including psycho-noirs such as Memento, techno-noirs such as The Matrix, and superhero noirs like The Dark Knight. Beginning by showing how neo-noirs have drawn upon contemporary social and historical events as well as the latest technological advances in filmmaking, this book then discusses the landmark neo-noirs, the cult auteur figures of neo-noir, international films, and the remakes that put a new spin on past noirs. The main credits and a plot summary are given for each movies—including Fargo, Get Carter, L.A. Confidential, Mulholland Drive, Oldboy, and Pulp Fiction—followed by an in-depth analysis containing original insights into the film's meaning. Also included are fascinating facts, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and lively quotes from the cast and crew.
Download or read book The Crime Films of Anthony Mann written by Max Alvarez and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2014 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey and rediscovery of the many noir films directed by a master of the Western
Download or read book It s Not That I m Bitter written by Regina Barreca and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-05-12 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of hilarious essays that mull everything from the horror of chin hairs to why the "glass ceiling" is better described as a thick layer of men, Barreca tells women to stop believing the lies and conquer the world.
Download or read book Dark City written by Eddie Muller and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised and expanded edition of Eddie Muller's Dark City is a film noir lover's bible, taking readers on a tour of the urban landscape of the grim and gritty genre in a definitive, highly illustrated volume. Dark Cityexpands with new chapters and a fresh collection of restored photos that illustrate the mythic landscape of the imagination. It's a place where the men and women who created film noir often find themselves dangling from the same sinister heights as the silver-screen avatars to whom they gave life. Eddie Muller, host of Turner Classic Movies' Noir Alley, takes readers on a spellbinding trip through treacherous terrain: Hollywood in the post-World War II years, where art, politics, scandal, style -- and brilliant craftsmanship -- produced a new approach to moviemaking, and a new type of cultural mythology.
Download or read book The Kennan Diaries written by George F. Kennan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-02-16 with total page 760 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The annotated diaries of the late influential American diplomat and foreign policy strategist spans ninety years of U.S. history while sharing his insights into Depression-era capitalism, the Cold War, and his literary achievements.
Download or read book John Dahl and Neo Noir written by Paul Monaco and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-03-18 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In John Dahl and Neo-Noir: Examining Auteurism and Genre, Paul Monaco provides a focused inquiry into the first three feature films that director John Dahl made for theatrical release: Kill Me Again (1989), Red Rock West (1993), and The Last Seduction (1994). The importance of these three films, and Monaco's investigation of them, is how they illuminate a modern director's creative process in relation to the emerging genre of neo-noir.
Download or read book The Wheelman written by Duane Swierczynski and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nonstop action, twists and turns, and as hardboiled as they come, don't miss Duane Swierczynski 's thrilling The Wheelman. Meet Lennon, a mute Irish getaway driver who has fallen in with the wrong heist team on the wrong day at the wrong bank. Betrayed, his money stolen and his battered carcass left for dead, Lennon is on a one-way mission to find out who is responsible—and to get back his loot. But the robbery has sent a violent ripple effect through the streets of Philadelphia. And now a dirty cop, the Russian and Italian mobs, the mayor's hired gun, and a keyboard player in a college rock band maneuver for position as this adrenaline-fueled novel twists and turns its way toward its explosive conclusion. One thing's for sure: this cast of characters wakes up in a much different world by novel's end—if they wake up at all.
Download or read book This Little World written by David Christie Murray and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Peter Parley s Annual written by William Martin and published by . This book was released on 1864 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Our Paper written by and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Extreme Fabulations written by Steven Shaviro and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of science fiction narratives and the light they shed on human life, the unknowable future, and the vagaries of unforeseeable change. With this book, Steven Shaviro offers a thought experiment. He discusses a number of science fiction narratives: three novels, one novella, three short stories, and one musical concept album. Shaviro not only analyzes these works in detail but also uses them to ask questions about human, and more generally, biological life: about its stubborn insistence and yet fragility; about the possibilities and perils of seeking to control it; about the aesthetic and social dimensions of human existence, in relation to the nonhuman; and about the ethical value of human life under conditions of extreme oppression and devastation. Shaviro pursues these questions through the medium of science fiction because this form of storytelling offers us a unique way of grappling with issues that deeply and unavoidably concern us but that are intractable to rational argumentation or to empirical verification. The future is unavoidably vague and multifarious; it stubbornly resists our efforts to know it in advance, let alone to guide it or circumscribe it. But science fiction takes up this very vagueness and indeterminacy and renders it into the form of a self-consciously fictional narrative. It gives us characters who experience, and respond to, the vagaries of unforeseeable change.
