After a horrible birthday alone followed by a lovely night out, Norah wakes up with a terrible hangover and a hunch of being a murderess.

“How about you slip into something more comfortable, like a few drinks and some Chinese food?”

– Harry

The Blue Gardenia is Lang's hard-bitten take on the gruesome Black Dahlia murder case and part of his newspaper noir trilogy together with While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, both from 1956.

They've been planning this for months, Canon City's Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility's toughest inmates. It's going to happen on December 30, and all men are ready to go.

“Nice guys.”

Fascinating about Canon City is the usage of some of the actual locations, ánd people, involved in the 1947 #prison break.

Also striking, unfortunately, is the unevenness of the affair. John Alton's cinematography, while wonderful, wanders between noir and stuck camera shutter. And that voice-over… well, lets not mention that at all.

In the late 1960s, Frank Serpico worked as a plainclothes cop for the #NYPD. He spoke out when he uncovered systematic, widespread #corruption within the force, but his findings were ignored. In 1970, Serpico cowrote a page 1 article for the New York Times about the problem, which led to the instalment of the Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption aka the Knapp Commission.

“The reality is that we do not wash our own laundry; it just gets dirtier.”

– Frank Serpico

The following year during a drug-related arrest attempt, he was shot in the face under shady circumstances. This is where Sidney Lumet's Serpico, based on Peter Maas and Frank Serpico's book of the same name, starts.

“Ah, well, if you love somebody, shoot!”

– Dr. Tom Osborne

A lot of #soccer there's not, in Wim Wenders' Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter. What we do have happens almost right at the start. After a foul, the titular goalkeeper Bloch (Arthur Brauss) is removed from the match. Frustrated he leaves and finds himself roaming the streets of #Vienna where he picks up boxoffice girl Gloria (Erika Pluhar). In the morning he kills her and travels to the countryside, waiting for the police to arrest him.

“Ich werde mich entschlossen verirren.”

– Peter Handke

Die Angst is an early, perfect example of Junger Deutscher Film (”New German Cinema”). Its cinematic thanks to Robby Müller's observant eye and Peter Handke's precise language, both describing scenes and performers as if observed through a fourth wall.

A very slow burning road movie, a Taxi Driver in reverse if you will, that does without the neurotic showmanship of its Hollywood counterpart.

Date watched, not the date in the movie. The quote was too good to leave it off this blog.

– He's got a calendar in there. – What day is it? – It's a broad in a cowboy hat. – Scooby doo bi doo ba ba.

“You know how much coffee I've had today? 17 cups. The Brazilians ought to give me a medal.”

– ER doctor