: I just watched Double Indemnity for the first time during
my first
: weekend (last weekend)of gathering films that are
considered hard-
: boiled. I actually found Fred MacMurray a treat to watch, I
had
: heard that he'd played the tough guy before My Three Sons,
but never
: had the opportunity to see it before.
I love that movie, and I think MacMurray's a great
Neff/Huff/whatever.
I remember reading someone say that when he sat down on "My
Three
Sons" to talk about girls, if you'd seen _Double Indemnity_,
you knew
he knew what he was talking about. I think I'll reread that
soon,
then watch the movie again.
: I assume that common decency prevents anyone on this list
from
: actually identifying plot points such as, um, er, I don't
know, say,
: the KILLER??
For the books we read each month, the rule is that after the
start of
the month, it's open season and any spoilers can be
mentioned. For
classic books, murderers probably won't get mentioned because
most
subscribers know the plot anyways, and besides, half the time
it's not
important. A quarter of the time it's the narrator who's the
killer,
anyway! (Note: no-one knows who killed the chauffeur in _The
Big
Sleep_, not even Chandler.) For modern books, it seems
like
subscribers refrain from giving away too much because many
other
people won't have read it.
My top two? It's hard to say, and I'd probably change my mind
if I
thought about it more, but I know I wouldn't go wrong with
_Red
Harvest_ by Hammett and _The Big Sleep_ by Chandler. If I
could pick
another one and reckoned I should make it modern I'd make it
_White
Jazz_, by Ellroy, because the style he's got is ferocious. Of
course,
you have to read the first three books of the L.A. Quartet
first.
Tigger, could you keep track of the picks and turn them into
a nice
ranked list?
Bill
--
William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/ | Caveat lector.
"Let's keep the party polite."
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