"Repeat Performance" (full movie): a cross between noir genre & Twilight Zone

Repeat Performance (1947) directed by Alfred L. Werker, starring Louis Hayward, Joan Leslie, Virginia Field, Richard Basehart, Tom Comway, etc.

Film noir and The Twilight Zone have more in common than you'd probably think. B-movie actors from the 40s peppered the casts of Twilight Zone episodes almost 20 years later. Dutch angles magnify tension; and other impressive black and white photography (at least before the Twilight Zone started to shoot on video late in the series) on the CBS show could easily be mistaken for a classic noir. Watch the credits at the end of a TZ and you'll see many names sometimes associated with film noir: Harry J. Wild, Joseph LaShelle, John Brahm, Richard Florey to name a few. Of course the fantasy/sci-fi element of the Twilight Zone are usually not found in noirs. The exceptions being Val Lewton's RKO horror films and the New Years Eve thriller, Repeat Performance.

Repeat Performance was released in 1947 by Eagle-Lion films who at the time were trying to establish themselves as a major force in Hollywood. They put out some “nervous As” – not cheap enough to be Bs but not expensive enough to be As. Repeat Performance fits that description.

Just before midnight on New Year's Eve, 1946, Broadway actress Sheila Page (Joan Leslie) shoots her husband Barney (Hayward) and then rushes to see her friend, odd-ball poet William Williams. After a distressed Sheila confesses her deed to William (Basehart), he suggests they talk to Sheila's producer John Friday (Tom Conway). As Sheila and William are walking up to John's apartment, Sheila wishes that she could relive the past year, insisting that if she had it to do over, she would not make the same mistakes twice. Upon reaching John's door, Sheila notices that William has disappeared and then gradually realizes that something is wrong.

The film is based on a book by William O'Farrell. O'Farrell doesn't seem to have many other books after this, his first. Published in 1942, the book is something. Over at the Mystery File, Dan Stumpf writes, “O’Farrell can write. He can put across a bitchy theatrical milieu and a seedy flophouse with equal aplomb, evoke a desperate chase and a disparate seduction with commensurate suspense, and weave a tale of murder and melodrama (verging on Soap Opera at times, but teetering skillfully on the edge) with prose that keeps the pages turning very nicely.”

There are many changes from the book (which is wonderfully bleak) and the movie. Barney is the actor that goes back in time, not Sheila. Barney begins the novel as a flop-house drunk after shooting his lover Paula when she tried to dump him. When on the run from cops, Barney and William get shot at by the cops leading to the magical happenings. The scene is so cinematic I'm a bit surprised they didn't find a way to shoe-horn it into the film. And although it is soapy, O'Farrell's novel concludes more satisfactory than most thrillers. A good read if you can find it.

O'Farrell's book was his only one to gain any attention. His movie and TV credits are slim too – he did write an episode of Alfred Hithcock Presents. Repeat Performance was remade into a 1980s TV movie (with Joan Leslie in a small part).

The cast of the '47 film includes Louis Hayward. Hayward's career wasn't what it was just a few years before, but he did make some interesting choices. He was best friends with Edgar G. Ulmer and appeared in Ulmer's Citizen-Kane-of-B-noir drama Ruthless in 1948. 1950 he starred in one of Fritz Lang's last US productions House By the River. Ladies in Retirement, And Then There Were None and Strange Woman all were released around the same time as Repeat Performance.

Tom Conway is a favorite. In addition to Cat People and the 7th Victim he was The Falcon in that long running mystery series (replacing brother George Sanders who got bored with the part. Similarly, Sanders replaced Hayward as The Saint in the movie series that The Falcon was most likely based on.)

Joan Leslie - so good in High Sierra - is very inspired as the conflicted Sheila and as strong as her Repeat Performance co-stars. Not an easy task when you consider how outrageous the story gets.

Finally, Richard Basehart captures the book's William part without being obvious about it. I know most remember Basehart from TV's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and the voice of the 1984 Olympics but his contributions to film noir is impressive. The next year Basehart would star in the unforgettable He Walked by Night. His other noir credits include the period film Reign of Terror, Tension, Outside the Wall, Fourteen Hours, The House on Telegraph Hill, and the Brit noir The Good Die Young. Source: www.noiroftheweek.com

Jake Gyllenhaal rumoured to date model Alyssa Miller

Jake Gyllenhaal out & about in New York City on June, 19 2013

Jake Gyllenhaal is reportedly dating another Sports Illustrated model. He was spotted enjoying lunch with 23-year-old Alyssa Miller at The Dutch in Soho, New York City, last week. They sparked romance rumours after they were seen "making out" at coffee shop Cold Process Coffee & Tea. Representatives for both Jake and Alyssa have declined to comment on speculation they are dating.

American fashion model Alyssa made her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue debut in 2011, after becoming one of the new faces of Guess clothing in late 2010. She has also graced the front cover of Germany's Vogue and Elle in Italy and grew up wanting to be a professional soccer player. Source: www.film-news.co.uk

Natalie Portman could star in noirish cheerleading "Dare Me" film

Natalie Portman is being pursued by Fox 2000 to star in the film adaptation of Megan Abbott‘s novel Dare Me, a story involving high school cheerleaders, suicide, mystery, and presumably lots of drama. The film will center around two high school seniors, Beth Cassidy and Addy Hanlon, who have a Heather Chandler/ Veronica Sawyer type relationship, and how their world changes for the more mysterious once a new, young cheerleading coach enters the mix.

Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal, friends and co-stars in "Brothers" (2009)

The idea of a story that mixes elements of Heathers and Fight Club is definitely appealing, and I can see how the two could be combined into a twisted story with a strong but sadistic leader in a way that has the potential to be very interesting on the big screen.

Hopefully, if Portman does agree to be in the film, she brings some dark energy with her from roles like Black Swan. We may even get a successor to Heathers and Mean Girls if we’re lucky. Source: www.themarysue.com

Kirsten Dunst as cheerleading team captain Torrance Shipman in "Bring It On" (2000) directed by Peyton Reed

“What's exciting about Dare Me is how it makes that traditionally masculine genre [noir] feel distinctly female. It feels groundbreaking when Abbott takes noir conventions — loss of innocence, paranoia, the manipulative sexuality of newly independent women — and suggests that they're rooted in high school, deep in the hearts of all-American girls.” — Entertainment Weekly


Extract from "Dare Me" (2012) by Megan E. Abbott: "After a game, it takes a half hour under the shower head to get all the hairspray out. To peel off all the sequins. To dig out that last bobby pin nestled deep in your hair. Sometimes you stand under the hot gush for so long, looking at your body, counting every bruise. Touching every tender place. Watching the swirl at your feet, the glitter spinning. Like a mermaid shedding her scales.

After, you stand in front of the steaming mirror, the fuchsia streaks gone, the lashes unsparkled. And it's just you there, and you look like no one you've ever seen before. You don't look like anybody at all.

"There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls." Coach said that once, one fall afternoon long ago, sharp leaves whorling at our feet. But she said it not like someone's mom or a teacher or the principal or worst of all like a guidance counselor. She said it like she knew, and understood.

All those misty images of girls frolicking in locker rooms, pom-poms sprawling over bare bud breasts. All those endless fantasies and dirty boy-dreams, they're all true, in a way.

Mostly, it's hard, it's sweaty, it's the roughness of bruised and dented girl bodies, feet sore from floor pounding, elbows skinned red. But it is also a beautiful, beautiful thing, all of us in that close, wet space, safer than in all the world. The more I did it—the more it owned me. It made things matter. It put a spine into my spineless life and that spine spread, into backbone, ribs, collar bone, neck held high.

It was something. Don't say it wasn't. And Coach gave it all to us. We never had it before her. So can you blame me for wanting to keep it? To fight for it, to the end?

She was the one who showed me all the dark wonders of life, the real life, the life I'd only seen flickering from the corner of my eye. Did I ever feel anything at all until she showed me what feeling meant? Pushing at the corners of her cramped world with curled fists, she showed me what it meant to live.

There I am, Addy Hanlon, sixteen years old, hair like a long taffy pull and skin tight as a rubber band. I am on the gym floor, my girl Beth beside me, our cherried smiles and spray-tanned legs, ponytails bobbing in sync. Look at how my eyes shutter open and close, like everything is just too much to take in.

I was never one of those mask-faced teenagers, gum lodged in mouth corner, eyes rolling and long sighs. I was never that girl at all. But I knew those girls. And, when she came, I watched all their masks peel away. We're all the same under our skin, aren't we? We're all wanting things we don't understand. Things we can't even name. The yearning so deep, like pinions on our hearts." Source: www.meganabbott.com

Elysium & the most evil corporations

Matt Damon gives us a sneak preview of his upcoming sci-fi action film, Elysium which is realeased in Australia August 15.

“It’s better up there” is the tagline of the fictional Armadyne Corporation in the brand new sci-fi film ELYSIUM from director Neill Blomkamp (District 9). The tagine first appeared in the film’s very first teaser trailer, but in the brand new feature trailer we get an even more impressive glimpse of what this film has in store.

In the year 2159, two classes of people exist: the very wealthy, who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. The people of Earth are desperate to escape the planet’s crime and poverty, and they critically need the state-of-the-art medical care available on Elysium – but some in Elysium will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve their citizens’ luxurious lifestyle. The only man with the chance bring equality to these worlds is Max, an ordinary guy in desperate need to get to Elysium. With his life hanging in the balance, he reluctantly takes on a dangerous mission – one that pits him against Elysium’s Secretary Delacourt and her hard-line forces – but if he succeeds, he could save not only his own life, but millions of people on Earth as well.

The film also stars Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, and Alice Braga, and arrives this August 9, 2013.
Source: www.scificool.com

The 15 Most Evil Movie Corporations:

Living in solitary confinement on the moon harvesting Helium-3 for Lunar Industries has its pros and cons. On the upside, you get help from a friendly robot that sounds suspiciously like a sad Kevin Spacey, and lots of time to build models and tighten up your ping-pong game. On the downside, it turns out you're just one in a series of clones created by the corporation, and all your precious memories are pre-planted lies. Also, some of your clones are jerks.

If you've been paying attention to the news, you know there's nothing more evil than hydrofracking. Or maybe you know it's the next great energy breakthrough. Either way, we can probably agree that manipulating kindly small town folk into selling their family farms for such a risky proposition is at least evil-lite.

The private military organization responsible for keeping the so-smart-they-can-traverse-the-universe but so-inept-they-can't-feed-themselves-on-the-voyage alien robo-lobster refugees of "District 9" in check is guilty of evil on three fronts: 1) They're ruthless — experimenting on interstellar guests with their own advanced, super-cool weaponry? For shame. 2) They perpetuate the military-industrial complex — it's like they've never heard a Dwight D. Eisenhower farewell address. 3) They're nepotistic — did they really think putting that bumbling, Inspector Clouseau of an Afrikaner in charge of inter-species relations was going to end on a high note?

When your corporate headquarters is 700 stories tall, based on pure probability alone there's a good chance there's some sinister business going on inside. But the Tyrell Corporation made it a sure thing by creating humanoid robots that are designed for dangerous (and sometimes sexy) work but occasionally escape into the Los Angeles streets where they wreck (sometimes sexy) mayhem. Additional evil notches in the Tyrell Corp belt for manufacturing a product that craps out every four years, thus making replicants the Xbox 360s of superhuman cyborgs.

Having had its hands in everything from military weaponry and space exploration to food and healthcare, OCP has perhaps the most impressive evil resume on the list (so long as you’re willing to overlook that gap year it spent backpacking through Europe). They even developed a plan so outrageously evil — building and operating their own "utopian" city — that it would never happen in real life.

If you're an Arnold Schwarzenegger character, there's likely an evil corporation bent on your destruction. (There's also an outside shot you might be pregnant — in which case, congrats!) Whether you've had your mind manipulated by a shady memory implanting service, been cloned against your will, forced to compete in a violent futuristic game show or programmed to prevent the existence of a future human hero and sent back in time only to be reprogrammed and sent back in time again by that very same hero to protect a rapscallion-y ten-year-old version of himself who then teaches you the value of human life ... well, anyway, the point is these corporations are, like, super-evil. Source: www.nextmovie.com

Jake Gyllenhaal & cia. at the Tony Awards 2013

Jake Gyllenhaal attending the Tony Awards 2013, on June 9, 2013


Jake Gyllenhaal presenting the Guys Choice Awards 2013 (disguised as The Great Lebowski)


Anna Kendrick, who donned a navy Donna Karan Atelier dress, brought her brother as her date to the 67th annual Tony Awards. Actress Kathleen Turner also opted for navy.


Tom Hanks' wife, Rita Wilson, wore a lighter shade of blue -- a royal blue-colored gown, as did actress Sigourney Weaver. Classic black also filled the Tonys in a varying array of styles. Debra Messing hit the red carpet with her boyfriend, Will Chase, in a black Matthew Christopher dress, coupled with Fred Leighton jewels. Cyndi Lauper's red-carpet ensemble was also black -- a lace pants-number that was off-set by her fiery red hair.



Scarlett Johansson wore a short Saint Laurent black dress featuring a layer of lace at the top and a blazer. Also in black? Actress Patricia Clarkson. Source: www.cbsnews.com

Jake Gyllenhaal will be one of the presenters at Tony Awards

A fresh blast of star power has been added to the lineup of presenters for the 67th Annual Tony Awards Sunday night. Sally Field, who appeared on Broadway in Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? in 2002, will be a presenter.


Likewise Anna Kendrick, who made her Tony-nominated Broadway debut in 1998 at age 12 in High Society.



Jake Gyllenhaal arriving at LAX Airport, on June 2, 2013

Also on the list is Jake Gyllenhaal, who took on his first New York stage role this season in the Off Broadway production, If There Is I Haven’t Found it Yet.


Fresh from Star Trek Into Darkness, Zachary Quinto will appear on the Tony telecast, prior to making his Broadway debut in the fall in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

Jake Gyllenhaal & Hugh Jackman in "Prisoners" (trailer)

Things are getting tense between Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal in Prisoners.


The thriller (out Sept. 20) features Jackman as a frantic father who is searching for his kidnapped daughter and is frustrated with the police detective (Gyllenhaal) on the case. For Gyllenhaal and French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, it's their second collaboration in a row, with their thriller An Enemy due out later this year.


Gyllenhaal says his Detective Loki and Jackman's Keller Dover are working on different levels in Prisoners. "This is instinct meeting institution, and neither of us looks very happy. But there are similarities between the two of them, which is why they butt heads." A scene in which Jackman confronts Gyllenhaal in his car, about keeping a suspect in custody, also marks a key point in the unfolding drama.


"They have a chance to work together, but at this moment, my character goes off on his own," says Jackman. "This is where there is a parting of the ways. And it's the beginning of some pretty hairy stuff."


Torture to be exact. Jackman kidnaps the man he believes committed the crime (played by Paul Dano in full creepy mode). It's a desperate, criminal effort to extract vital information about the disappearance of his daughter and another missing girl.

"The movie doesn't condone violence," says Gyllenhaal. "But at that same time it's so relatable to need to solve the situation yourself as a parent, taking things into your own hands." Source: www.usatoday.com

Modern Gumshoes: fearful & forward

Detective Fabio Montale is having a rough week. His best friends are dead, he keeps getting beaten up, and his city is descending into, as the title of the novel he stars in suggests, Total Chaos. The kitchen is an escape for this harried gumshoe, but Total Chaos, part of author Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles trilogy, is not mere escapist literature. Mr. Izzo used detective fiction to shine a light on France’s rugged southern port and the corruption that turned his stunning hometown into one of the most dangerous cities in Western Europe. Source: observer.com


In the final matchup of the Noir bracket, instead of Chandler, we have two novels by modern writers, James Ellroy and Michael Connelly, who were inspired by him. Both are here by virtue of slaying a heavy hitter -- Connelly's The Black Echo actually knocked out Chandler's The Big Sleep in the first round. And last round, Ellroy's L.A. Confidential took out Cain's Double Indemnity.


There is a connection between the two writers. A crime reporter at the L.A. Times at the time he wrote The Black Echo, his first novel, Connelly based his hero in part on Ellroy after reading about the murder of Ellroy's mother.


Connelly told Mysterynet.com, About the time I was putting this all together Ellroy's book The Black Dahlia came out, he got a lot of local press attention that revealed his past, especially that his mother was murdered when he was a boy. It was pretty obvious to me, obvious to everyone, that that is what he's about. What ever happened to his mother and so forth, he's working it out now by writing about murder. I thought that was very interesting, so I made the jump and instead of a writer working out his mother's murder by writing about it, I thought what about a detective who's solving murders and in some way that helps him deal with his own mother's murder? It's just hinted at in most of the books, and in the details it is quite different from Ellroy's life. And so Connelly's detective, Harry Bosch, was inspired in part by Ellroy's life. L.A. Confidential is an opera -- sometimes a messy opera, yes, and overwrought in the way operas are overwrought. It's exhausting. But it's the far superior book. Source: blogs.laweekly.com


Josh Hartnett understood the precept. His filmic Bucky Bleichert packs that torch for someone out there. The physical Hartnett is my described Bucky and me. He's tall, lanky, and dark-haired, with small brown eyes. Hartnett's performance nails Bucky with no histrionic excess. He excels at projecting cognition. Bucky Bleichert is always measuring and thinking. He's circumspect, intelligent, watchful. He's persistent, self-protecting, and reluctantly decent. He made specious moral choices early in life and brought a grievously flawed soul to the Dahlia. Hartnett captures that. He appears in every scene and narrates the film. He carries the film's moral vision. He embodies a positive strain of the Hilliker code: you're fearful, but you always go forward.


The design is near-German Expressionist. It's L.A./it's not L.A./it's L.A. seen by Dahlia fiends in extremis. The cinematographer was Vilmos Zsigmond. The production designer was Dante Ferretti. The costume designer was Jenny Bevan. The film commands you to savor every scene and revel in your visual entrapment. This textual richness symbolizes the Dahlia's hold on us. We can never look away. She won't let us. -James Ellroy Source: www.angelfire.com