Film

I've just watched The Maltese Falcon and Murder, My Sweet for my film term paper which is about film noir. I'd never watched any film noir before, but have always wanted to, partly because of the parodies I'd seen of it. And I knew I'd have to watch The Maltese Falcon because of this (infamous) clip from Whose Line:



The Maltese Falcon is the first "classic noir" from the time period defined by many critics. I was a tad disappointed because it contained neither narration, nor the jazz music, nor the tons of low-key lighting that seems to be associated with noir. But it was compelling enough. Murder, My Sweet had elements rather similar to The Maltese Falcon, and a more developed iconic noir look and narration.

Well I borrowed 8 film noir DVDs (and 6 books) from the library@esplanade on Monday, and the paper's due on Friday which gives me very little time to go through them all. I'd like to, though, but it's all a bit much and we're always racing against time. It's a Pandora's box; it seems every time I watch something, or read more about something, it opens up a can of new names for me to read up on, or watch. These are a few films noirs (and related) that I think I'd like to watch:

Double Indemnity
Laura
Chinatown (Roman Polanski! We watched The Pianist last week, and that probably sparked something with him, Adrien Brody, and Chopin, who really, is FTW)
The Blue Dahlia
D.O.A. (1949)
Gilda
Gun Crazy
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (hahhaha sounds so cheesy but whatever)
Shadow of a Doubt
Strangers on a Train
Sunset Boulevard

Aside from that, of course, there is:

Run Lola Run
The Constant Gardener
Garden State
Lost In Translation
Big Fish
Angela's Ashes
Forrest Gump

... oh I don't know, probably like everything good ever made lah. These are my emo choices; they seem like emo things to me.

And people:

Alfred Hitchcock (I am very interested in Rope)
Zhang Yi Mou (we watched Not One Less today and I liked it a lot)
Stephen Spielberg (haha of course)
Tim Burton (I haven't even watched Nightmare Before Christmas lah)
Raymond Chandler (author who wrote Philip Marlowe stories, many of which translated to films noirs)

K la I better get back to watching my film. I'm going to watch Out Of The Past now.