Crime City USA

I first came across RubyTuesday717 when I chanced upon her The Endless Night: A Valentine to Film Noir, a fan video so good it made me want to hijack an old cinema and watch nothing but film noirs day and night until that double-crossing blonde betrayed me to the cops and I died in a hail of bullets trying to shoot my way out. I didn't, of course, but I did watch The Endless Night over and over again. It was that good. Later I used her tribute to Notorious as the perfect ending to a piece I wrote about that fantastic film.
And now she's done it again, produced another absorbing tribute, this time to all the 'delicious, sinful crime films' set in San Francisco, piecing together images and moments from Dark Passage, The Maltese Falcon, Zodiac, Dirty Harry, Vertigo and Bullitt to name just a few, and adding inspired music, mainly Donovan's Hurdy Gurdy Man, with other snippets from Henry Mancini, Smashing Pumpkins and John Murphy. The result is not only exciting and ingenious, an admirable work in of itself, but it also invokes a love for its subject matter so intense it makes you want to watch all of these films, all at once, in a hijacked old cinema, of course, with a duplicitous blonde by your side, whispering sweet oblivion in the dark.

Friday Shorts #1

I don't know what you call them really, fan videos, I suppose, that youtube sub-genre of people editing clips from favourite films to music or giving favourite songs a new video. Most of them are uploaded just to show the person loves this film/song, which is fair enough, but some are genuine attempts to create something fresh, to capture the essence of the story or lyrics.



Here are two of my favourites; the first from RubyTuesday717 who has managed to find music capable of doing justice to what is, arguably, the most profoundly heartbreaking film ever made, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.



And this from Captainmcglue, finding metaphorical riches in the lush romanticism of Richard Hawley's Open Up Your Door. Enjoy!