Category: FF

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You by Thomas Fleming Thursday evening, I am going to be watching one of my favorite westerns: Four Faces West, based on a novella by Eugene Manlove Rhodes.   Our friend Mark Kennedy will be joining us, and Ray Olson is willing to post some remarks.  If you have a chance, try to see the movie, and we can start a discussion either over the weekend or next week.  

Reading After the Movies: William Wister Haines By Ray Olson Every so often, instead of reading a book before I see the movie made of it, I’ll read it afterward because I want to see whether it’s as good or better. Often the same kind of clue that gets me to read before—the writer’s reputation, the book’s, or even, in the case I’m going to present, a name—boosts my curiosity to read after. In Command Decision (1948), bomb group CO K. C. Dennis (Clark Gable) is sending his planes deep into Germany to destroy three separate facilities involved in producing jet aircraft....

Revisions 1:  Reading for the movies: A. I. Bezzerides by Ray Olson It’s my habit, ever since reviewing movies in the Sixties for the Minnesota Daily, campus paper of the University of Minnesota, to read the book a movie’s based on before I see the movie.  Not always, but whenever the book’s or its author’s reputation piques my interest, I give it a try. A. I. Bezzerides is well-known as the writer of a handful of very good films noir. The screenplay of Kiss Me Deadly is his, based on one of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer mysteries and, says James...