Noir fiction for the modern reader.

When James Cameron unleashed his original vision of this massive  film in 1997, following a two-year production period, the world welcomed it with great enthusiasm. I’m sure you remember.  Despite several attempts during the 20th century at filming this improbable story of an “unsinkable” ship going down on her very first voyage, none came close to the scope of Cameron’s version. Breathtaking in every sense, Cameron’s Titanic captured the imaginations of movie audiences everywhere.

And what was not to love? The tale of  inter-class lovers aboard the doomed ship, itself a microcosm of Amerian society during the fast-moving 1910s, was overlaid quite nicely against the story of class, arrogance, and tragedy that literally no one could make up.

But as time passed, revisionists popped up, pointing out clunky dialogue, plot inconsistencies, weariness with Celine Dion, and a general I’m-over-it attitude. You know what I’m talking about. This line of thinking caught on, and for the last eight or ten years, Titanic couldn’t get no respect.

Until now.

Sign me up in the “new revisionist” movement. Titanic 3D is here and it has reminded me of why I loved the movie in the first place, why I paid to see it five times in the theaters, and why I hated it on television.

This is probably the most blatant example of why they still show movies in theaters. Why people will still pay outrageous admission prices ($26.50 for two, in my case) and the well-known ripoff popcorn prices to sit in the dark with a roomful of strangers and watch a story unfold on a really, really big screen. This is how such films were intended to be seen.

There are no additional scenes here, no director’s-cut ego exercise, no alternate ending regarding the diamond necklace. It’s the identical film you saw fifteen years ago. The 3D process doesn’t even provide much extra wow factor, like it does in other movies. That’s because  the original film didn’t allow for any such moments–no animals leaping out of the screen, no spears flung into the audience, no spaceships exploding into our laps. The third dimension effect in Titanic 3D is not intended to blow our minds, but to make the whole story much more real, to obliterate the final cinematic gulf between the ship and the audience.

During the pre-iceberg half of the movie, the 3D allowed me a new familiarity with the unlikely tale of the Titanic and drew me deeper into the narrative. Toward the end, the escalating shipwide panic became far more palpable, and I almost felt as though I were actually clinging to the rail with Leonardo DiCaprio and the impossibly beautiful Kate Winslet when the broken half of the ship headed downward.

The incredible drama surrounding this ill-fated vessel and the era in which it was built made for a blockbuster movie in 1997. It’s almost certain not to repeat that boxoffice performance in 2012, but there’s no denying that Titanic 3D is a worthy addition to the collection of retellings of this century-old epic tale, a powerful story which is sure to resonate for centuries to come, a story that will never die.

 

Paula Prior’s great UK website, Flurries of Words, has featured Setup On Front Street as their book of the day. I didn’t find out about it till just now (11:00 PM EDT), but I’m asking all my friends out there who visit mikedennisnoir.com to please go there and leave a brief comment. It would really mean a lot.

Okay, so you’re going through your relatives’ house in Berwick, Pennsylvania, a little town around 140 miles west of New York. You’re sorting everything out for a routine estate sale, when–whoa! You go up in the attic and discover some thirty-odd movie posters glued together, one on top of the other. And they’re not just any old movie posters, you know, for American Pie 2 or some such shit. These babies are all pre-code, from 1930 and 1931, all in incredibly pristine condition, and most were thought to have been lost to history, with no known copies in existence.

Turns out they weren’t just lying around on the attic floor, either. They were put to good use: stuffed into the wall for insulation! No TLC from some careful collector, no meticulous preservation. Somebody just stuffed them into the walls 80 years ago and there they remained until recently. The glue was water-soluble, so they all came unstuck from each other with a steam dryer, causing no damage to the paper. The colors are remarkable and collectors are calling this the greatest find of all time.

Here are some examples:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, at last, the Yankees have gotten their comeuppance. And in Yankee Stadium, no less. I haven’t felt so good since the Marlins beat them in game 6 of the 2003 World Series in the house that Ruth built. I didn’t see the end of the game last night and it went on too late for the papers to carry the final result. Should it surprise anyone that I actually had a slightly difficult time learning the Tigers had won?

Do you think if the Yankees had won that it wouldn’t be plastered all over every Internet site and on everyone’s lips? Crawls across the bottom of every 24-hour news channel would be filled with quotes from all the Yankee players and management about who they’re going to start in the League Championship Series, and of course, looking ahead to the inevitable World Series.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really tired of this New York-centric culture we live in, which I’ve had to put up with my whole life. You know, it’s the greatest city in the world, they have Broadway shows, Times Square, blah, blah, blah. The Yankees, according to New Yorkers, have been permanently anointed and are therefore supposed to win the World Series every year. Those years which do not result in a championship are considered failures. Give me a break.

Being eliminated in the first playoff round is particularly humiliating for such a team who feels entitled to scarf up everything in its path, who feels other teams should, by definition of being “other teams”, lie down and allow the Bronx juggernaut to steamroller over them. Fortunately, the Tigers had other plans. And now we will be spared having to gaze at Derek Jeter’s fucking smirk until next season. I’m actually surprised that the breathless countdown to his 3000th hit didn’t continue beyond it, so that we’re constantly informed that he’s now at 3001, 3002, my God that was hit number 3003! Anybody remember such hyped-up reporting surrounding Rafael Palmeiro’s 3000th hit? I didn’t think so.

My advice to the Yankees: go back to New York and get another year older.

Not being one to let a classic movie rerelease slide by me without a looksee, I recently talked myself into buying the 70th Anniversary Blu-Ray boxed edition of Citizen Kane, and believe me, it’s worth every penny I paid.

You get the film itself, of course, which has been digitally remastered frame-by-frame. It looks and sounds terrific over my system, which is pretty decent. You also get a DVD of The Battle Over Citizen Kane, a documentary of the making of the film and the considerable trouble it caused in Hollywood.

Then there’s the DVD of RKO 281, the HBO film of a few years back detailing Orson Welles’ personal struggle to get the film made amid the Hollywood studio/plantation system.

But wait. There’s more!

There are the slick 5 x 7 reproductions of the poster and lobby cards.

For some reason, they saw fit to include reproductions of receipts from Schwab’s Pharmacy, who supplied liquor for a party. Note the $56 charge for “2 cases of Scotch”.

     

 

 

There’s a very nice, slim hardcover book about the movie.

 

Along with a replica of the souvenir program filmgoers received in 1941.

 

Of course, no release like this would be complete without a commentary, and this one comes with not one, but two commentaries by Peter Bogdanovich and Roger Ebert. The highly original 1941 trailer is also included. It’s not hard to see why this movie bombed when it came out. Audiences of the day, no matter how sophisticated, were just not ready for the fruits of Welles’ fertile imagination. The trailer alone should’ve tipped people off that this would not be another Hollywood feelgood film.

By the way, I’m adding this set to the 50th Anniversary boxed edition I purchased in 1991. Naturally, this was in the days of VHS tapes, so that set was much larger (13 x 11 x 4). It included the film, a VHS of Reflections On Citizen Kane, a bound copy of the final script, a 242-page hardcover book on Welles and the film, black-and-white stills, and a certificate of authenticity with a number (2272) and my name on it. In addition, when you bought this in 1991, you got a coupon which you could mail back and receive a full-sized special one-sheet poster made for the 50th anniversary. I’m assuming not many people sent away for this, but I did and it’s currently hanging in my house.

At any rate, go buy the Blu-Ray 70th Anniversary set. You won’t regret it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With some changes to Facebook and rearrangement of my web furniture, the blog posts from my website will now spawn on my Facebook author page instead of my personal FB page. Hope this doesn’t inconvenience anyone.

I don’t know about you, but I breathed a big sigh of relief when I found out that God had something come up this past Saturday which made him reschedule the end of the world to Oct 21. I was worried I wasn’t going to make it to Killer Nashville or Bouchercon. I was also worried about the baseball season being cut short. The Marlins are going all the way this year, and even though the World Series probably won’t be over by Oct 21, they will have shown themselves to be clearly the superior team.

I’ve also got a novel I’m working on which I’d really like to finish, so God did me a big favor by postponing everything for a few months. I’ll get it done before then.

Also, this gives me a chance to catch the final season of Boardwalk Empire, the ridiculously expensive HBO series which begins in July. The finale should coincide nicely with the new end-of-the-world date. Will Jimmy and the Commodore take over Nucky’s empire? Will Nucky pound some sense into Margaret? Will she quit all that babbling about women’s rights? I can hardly wait.

Season 6 of Dexter returns in the fall. Now, that could be dicey. If Oct 21 is the drop-dead date, I may not get to see many episodes, if any at all. Dexter fans should get up a petition to send to God to hold off on the end of the world till Season 6 is over. I’ll sign it for sure.

Of course, if that happens, and if God complies by extending it say, three more months, then we run into the problem of Mad Men. Season 5 of that terrific show is scheduled for “sometime early in 2012″, and if we’re all facing doom in January or February, how are we going to know what happens to Don Draper? Or Joan? Will Don finally wind up with Rachel like he should have been all along? I see another extension from God.

Okay, that takes us up to spring of 2012, and we all know what that means. American Idol will be in full swing. The auditions will be over, Hollywood week will be over, we’ll be into the final 6 or 7. Surely God knows he can’t bring earthquakes and volcanoes down on us until Ryan Seacrest tells us who the next American Idol will be.

And for those who sneer at American Idol, then Season 3 of Justified will be upon us during that same period. Even God knows we have to find out how Raylan Givens is going to handle Boyd Crowder’s latest antics. I have a feeling the Dixie Mafia will finally emerge fully-formed in this important season.

So that moves us into summer and we’re into baseball season again. The Marlins will finally play in their new stadium, which they’ve been waiting for since the beginning of time, so I’m afraid the end of the world might have to be pushed back yet again. Of course, then we’re right back to Dexter.

Maybe God could just have a volcano erupt under the house of that reverend who’s been yammering about this and take him instead of the rest of us.

Christopher Bunn has featured a very professional interview with yours truly on his website, Scribbles and Tunes. You can check it out here. And do me a favor. While you’re there, leave a comment, okay? It would mean a lot to me and to Christopher. He does a great job featuring indie authors and we should support him.

And yes, this interview includes an MP-3 of my lone hit record from the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Mary Pat Hyland has posted an excerpt from my noir short story Block over on her fine website, The Hylander Diner. Block is one of the “three stories from the dark side” which can be found in my very noir collection called Bloodstains On The Wall. Check out the excerpt here, then leave a comment. Mary Pat’s one of the “good guys”, and I’d like us to support her and her website.

Then, of course, after reading the excerpt, if you are so totally electrified, you can get the entire book here in either digital (99¢) or paperback ($9.95).

Let’s see, now, where was I? Oh yeah, getting ready to go to a tobacco farm in the Viñales Valley, home of the world’s greatest tobacco-growing soil. Just before leaving the hotel that morning, I snapped this shot of a foreign tourist looking out over the mist-enshrouded valley.

 

On the way to the farm (bus ride into town, then a two-mile walk through the countryside), I snapped this shot on the way out of town. Dachshunds are my absolute favorite breed of dog, so I couldn’t resist this little guy.

 

 

This is the tobacco farm itself, with the farmhouse and the drying barn in the background.

 

On the way into the house, we passed this makeshift clothesline.

 

Once inside the house, I was astonished at how small it was. Two rooms, actually. This is the kitchen of a farmer who tends the most fertile tobacco-growing soil in the world. Life under Communism.

 

I should add that in Cuba, people do not actually own the homes they live in or the land they work. It’s all owned by the state. They can’t sell it, they can’t buy an adjacent piece of property, they can’t do anything except live in (or on) it and bequeath it to their heirs when they die. This draconian system was somewhat modified last week at the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, aka the Last Goodbye to the Castro Brothers. Certain Cubans will (maybe) be able to actually own,buy, and sell their own homes and land, thereby creating a capitalist-style real estate market.

Other similar reforms have been instituted by previous party congresses only to be whimsically tossed aside by Fidel shortly thereafter. We’ll see how long these last.

In this shot, the farmer (sporting a “Hong Kong” t-shirt) demonstrates and explains the art of cigar-rolling. When the demonstration was concluded, he had some cigars for sale at the price of about $22 for ten, wrapped in a plain brown wrapper. Even though I don’t smoke, I gladly bought a pack of ten, knowing the money would go straight into his pocket, where it belongs. This is a practice I repeated throughout my whole trip, buying items directly from the Cuban people–clothing, CDs, etc.  The US has in recent years allowed Americans to bring items into the US that were made by the Cuban people, as opposed to those items made by Cuban government entities.

I might add, I gave the cigars to a cigar-smoking friend of mine once I returned to Key West.

 

On the way back to town, I stopped to check out some pineapple growing on someone else’s farm.

 

 

On the walk back into town, we stopped to check out this baseball game. It appeared to be organized, since the teams were wearing uniforms. The crowd of spectators numbered about a dozen.

 

Then we visited a cave. We entered on foot, but exited by boat, and this shot coming out of the subterranean darkness reminded me of the eerie jungle scenes of the original King Kong.

 

We returned to the hotel for our final night in Viñales. The next day, we would begin the long drive to Cienfuegos, but the last night was spent in this beautiful bar.

That’ll do it for now. Stay tuned for further installments from my fantastic voyage.