I’m on deadline, meaning I’ll be taking a sabbatical for the next few days. Lucky for you it’s Sinatra month on Turner Classic Movies, so you have this widget to tide you over ‘til I return.
UPDATE: Initially I embedded the widget, but it starts automatically and I hate that. So you can find it here.
The High Society number with Bing Crosby is a favorite. TCM is also airing some of Frank’s TV specials on Sunday evenings at 8PM Eastern and Pacific. I’m waiting for his 1967 show with Ella Fitzgerald and Antonio Carlos Jobim, which airs May 18.
My friend the czar of noir Eddie Muller has a terrific article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle on why the city by the bay looms so large in crime fiction. He interviewed 30 writers who live in the area, and the resulting piece explains the importance of community as well as touching on the struggles of the mid-list author. Go read it.
Interesting times here at Chez K. Lots of irons in the fire, developments on multiple fronts. I may even be able to talk them up soon.
What this means in the short term is work. Here’s how much: on Tuesday night, I had to pass up a free early screening of Iron Man. That was free. And early.
So I haven’t had time to post. Or even to read/see things to post about.
But I want to give you something for stopping by. So here’s a tip: head on over to the new Crime/Noir issue of Storyglossia, edited by wild man Anthony Neil Smith and featuring short fiction from the likes of Kevin Wignall, Vicki Hendricks, Megan Abbott and your friend and mine Ray Banks.
What, that’s not enough? Fine. I give and I give to you people and this is the thanks I get. Here’s more Mitchell and Webb.
If you’re not watching this show, you’re missing out. I have been known to talk about the Mets this way, and will start doing the same with movies.
Miscellaneous: Links, All-Brawl Edition
As a David Mamet fan, I can’t wait to see Redbelt. In an article he wrote for the New York Times, Mamet calls it a “fight film” and discusses a few cinematic battles and battlers that left memorable impressions.
Then, in the Daily News, Mamet calls Redbelt his tribute to classic film noir and mentions a few favorites.
Craig Holden’s Four Corners of Night is a big, bruising heartbreaker of a novel. His latest, Matala, is short enough to be read in a single sitting and sharp enough to wound. It’s dark, sexy, twisted. Kinky in every sense, which I intend as a high compliment.
Darcy is a spoiled American girl fresh out of high school, sent on a European tour by her wealthy parents. Naturally, she gets bored at once. In Rome she falls in with Will, another American who’s grifting his way across the continent. Will, in turn, is in thrall to the older Justine, a veteran con artist who looks at Darcy and sees nothing but opportunity. The three of them agree to smuggle a package to Greece, and before the trip is over all manner of masks will slip.
Here’s the best way I can plug Matala. A meme currently making the rounds ask you to open the closest book. Turn to page 123. Find the fifth sentence. Post the next three sentences. (Yeah, I don’t get it, either.) No one has tagged me – what, you think you’re better than me? – but Matala was the closest book when I first came across it. I give you the result:
They had each other to keep them amused and happy and satiated. And she certainly felt all three of those things. Will had proved to a robust and durable lover, and Darcy did not feel disappointed in him except at the furthest edges of her desires.
With the last major primary out of the way and the Democratic party’s electoral future clear – sweet Jesus, this campaign is gonna go on forever – this seems like an ideal time to recommend Sleeping Dogs, the latest from friend-of-the-site Ed Gorman. Ed, an immensely talented writer who’s done some time in politics, knows the territory and covers it well.
Political operative Dev Conrad steps into an Illinois Senate race in the closing stages. The incumbent, a good-enough pol with only a minor history of bimbo eruptions, finds himself in a pitched battle with a downstate “nut job ... (who’d) gone to sanity school recently.” Dev has to deal with campaign sabotage and the suicide of the man he’s replacing, not to mention his own doubts about the candidate he’s working to reelect. The action, as always with Ed, goes down smooth, and is punctuated by his bittersweet observations about life and culture.
