Posts Tagged ‘Shades of Noir’

Quarry on the Brain

Tuesday, July 25th, 2023

On the occasion of my starting a new Quarry novel, Quarry’s Return, let’s look at Quarry on audio and screen.

Let’s start with this excellent overview, which properly gives Hard Case Crime some praise for bringing the series back to life, and lavishes praise on the film The Last Lullaby (more about that below).

I have been very lucky with the readers of my audio books. Dan John Miller is, hands down, the voice of Nate Heller. For a long run, I had Stacy Keach himself reading the Spillane/Collins novels. When Stacy stepped down, Stefan Rudnicki stepped up and has done a fabulous job – no small job filling those Keach shoes (and trenchcoat). Several readers have done right by Quarry, but Stefan is the definitive Quarry.

Check out this sample and see. And hear.

If you’ve never seen The Last Lullaby, the Quarry movie starring Tom Sizemore, co-written by me (and derived from my novel The Last Quarry), it’s available on Amazon Prime.

It’s also available on YouTube. Looks good there.

Here is the trailer.

While I like the Quarry Cinemax series, I think The Last Lullaby – even though Quarry is called “Price” there in – is the more accurate rendition of the character.

I required the production not to call the lead character Quarry because I didn’t want to give up sequel rights. This is the same reason Parker is called “Walker” in the film Point Blank, based on Richard Stark’s The Hunter.

Unfortunately, the short (and award-winning) film, “A Matter of Principal,” which I wrote for the same director (Jeffrey Goodman) who put together The Last Lullaby, does not seem to be available anywhere but on the somewhat out-of-print Black Box that collects a number of my films.

It’s available at Amazon for (gasp!) $68, but secondary sellers there have it for much less.

Troma Direct has it for a much more reasonable $29.71.

I won’t provide a link, but e-bay has it for $40 and up.

Wherever you get it, The Black Box includes: Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market; Mommy; Mommy’s Day; and Shades of Noir, which has several of my shorts, including “A Matter of Principal.” Be forewarned that better versions of the two Mommy movies are coming.

There are a few copies of just the Shades of Noir DVD (never sold separately from the Black Box boxed set) at e-bay in the $25 range. The Troma option seems the best.

Now if only they’d send me some royalties!

* * *
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, still from train action scene.

A quick appraisal of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One.

Well, it’s a terrific action movie. Beautifully shot, with Tom Cruise going for broke in what is likely to be the conclusion of the series with Part Two. It’s a thrill ride and often surprisingly witty. Not without heart, it shows a human side of the Cruise character and his supporting cast.

On the downside, the A.I. aspect is not explored as anything but another Blue Meanie. A Big Blue Meanie, the Ultimate Blue Meanie; but little is done with it. The biggest deal is probably screwing up the Internet and forcing our agents to (arrghhh!!!) go analog to use the Net.

The horror.

I am also not crazy about the Part One/Part Two thing, because a two-and-a-half hour movie ought to give you some resolution.

Terrific and fun, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning etc. is not, to me, as satisfying as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (reviled by some, particularly those who decided to hate it before seeing it). Here’s the difference: MI is an action movie and a satisfying one, a wild ride. Indiana Jones is an adventure movie. It’s about, among other things, archeology. Which is to say it’s about something, and not just a vague, scary Big Blue Meanie.

That does not mean you should skip MI, because it’s a terrific example of an action movie. Its action scenes outdo the Indiana Jones movie by half; the final scene on a train in MI is one of the best action scenes (and funniest) I’ve ever seen, if not the best). But Indy is adventure and speaks to the inner child in a very different way.

Not a popular view perhaps, but there you have it.

* * *

Here is a positive review of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction that is nicely illustrated and worth a look.

And here’s yet another “Movies You Didn’t Know Came from Comic Book” articles. Guess what’s included. (And no, I didn’t “base” Road to Perdition on Lone Wolf and Cub – the latter was an influence among a number of other influences. A key influence, like John Woo HK cinema and the real life of John and Connor Looney and Richard Stark’s Parker and various movies about Bonnie and Clyde and more.

M.A.C.

A Buck-Twenty-Five A Movie

Tuesday, March 12th, 2013

If any of you are interested, THE BLACK BOX, the boxed set DVD collection of my indie movies – MOMMY, MOMMY’S DAY, REAL TIME: SIEGE AT LUCAS STREET MARKET and SHADES OF NOIR (which includes the original, longer cut of MIKE HAMMER’S MICKEY SPILLANE as well as the Brian Keith “Mike Hammer” pilot from 1954) – is on sale at Oldies.com for $4.98. That’s a savings of $30.

I want to thank all of you who sent supportive comments (sometimes as private e-mails) after my post last week, complaining about various aspects of the writer’s life, now that I am officially old enough to be a complaining coot. I am considering putting a rocking chair on the porch and writing further updates there on a laptop.

For the record, it took four work days to put ASK NOT back together (also for the record, my editor at Forge was completely on my side and reinstated everything I requested). To give you an idea of how extreme the ASK NOT copy edit was, I also dealt this week with the copy-edited manuscript of the upcoming thriller WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU from Thomas & Mercer. It took one work day.

Dead Man Down

We saw an interesting crime movie that I am going to recommend, though it is not perfect: DEAD MAN DOWN. It’s directed by Niels Arden Oplev, of the original GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, and stars the “girl” herself, the indelible Noomi Rapace, probably my favorite actress working today. I used to not care for Colin Ferrell, but as his star has faded somewhat, his acting has improved immeasurably – he’s terrific here in a subtle, understated performance as a guy who is anything but subtle and understated. It’s a revenge film, with a great premise, but I sometimes felt the foreign director didn’t entirely understand the English language script – it’s a little too long, and some things don’t quite track. But the central romance between two damaged souls and the outlandish shoot-‘em-up finale are well worth the time of anybody interested in crime movies. It has one of the great screen Mike Hammers, Armand Assante, in a small but pivotal role.

SOTI

The reviews for SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT continue to roll in, in a very positive way. Let’s start with something I rarely do – customer reviews at Amazon, which includes one from Bookreporter. By the way, if you want to help out your favorite authors (including, I hope, me), a great, easy way is to post a brief four- or five-star review at Amazon, assuming you like what you’ve read. Those reviews really, really count.

Here’s a cool one from the International House of Geek (the fantastic blog names just keep coming).

And here’s a great one from Mystery People.

A somewhat horror-tinged positive review appears here, at The October Country (R.I.P., Ray Bradbury).

Here’s a patronizing but ultimately positive review from the UK’s Telegraph.

Here’s Comic Buzz on SEDUCTION. I’m very pleased that so many comics blogs have picked up on the book.

And what author doesn’t love getting an A+, as happens here at Fandom Post.

Publisher’s Weekly is getting cranky in its old age, but this review of the upcoming ANTIQUES CHOP is pretty good.

PW also isn’t much impressed with the upcoming Mike Hammer, COMPLEX 90, considering it more of the same. First of all, if somebody gives you a hot-fudge sundae when you order one, do you complain that it’s more of the same? Second of all, this is the book where Mike Hammer goes to Russia. Not more of the same – one of the most distinctive books in the series, in my opinion, one of Mickey’s most unusual, even unique plots.

Scroll down for a tardy but fantastic review of THE CONSUMMATA.

And finally Pop Cults weighs in with a late but lovely LADY, GO DIE! review.

M.A.C.

Say Hello To Goodbye

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

Kiss Her Goodbye

I have spotted KISS HER GOODBYE on the shelves of the Davenport Barnes & Noble, so you should be able to find the new Mike Hammer hardcover at your favorite brick-and-mortar. (The trade paperback of THE BIG BANG should be right next to KISS HER.) I don’t know if Borders is carrying the new Hammer (they aren’t getting as many titles in right now, for obvious reasons), but I encourage you to snag this one at Amazon or elsewhere on line, if you don’t have a “real” bookstore handy.

Don’t wait for the trade paperback, because I don’t know if there will be one. This is the last of the Harcourt Spillane/Collins Hammer novels, and the future of the remaining three is in your hands.

Also, the Stacy Keach-read audio book should be out soon. Stacy thinks KISS HER is the best of the three. Our old friend Craig Clarke seems to agree at his Somebody Dies blog.

Great news on about THE LAST LULLABY. I’ll let director Jeffrey Goodman tell you:

“I am very excited to announce that we have signed with Level 33 Entertainment to distribute THE LAST LULLABY in the United States. We are currently aiming for a Fall release of a newly-packaged DVD. At this point, I am not sure what extras it will include, but we are looking into some different things. We also expect this release to place LULLABY in many other places and make it much more readily available.”

Whether there will be a blu-ray seems up in the air. I also don’t know if Jeffrey will include me in the extras on the disc, but I’m hoping there will be some short history-of-Quarry feature, and possibly the original, award-winning short (“A Matter of Principal”) that spawned the film.

Speaking of Quarry, Hard Case Crime has brought out all of their Quarry novels again as part of their re-birth at Titan, the great UK publisher distributed in the USA by Random House.

You might check out this interesting if odd and not entirely accurate mini-article about my DICK TRACY movie tie-in, as part of a list of 100 famous rejections. For the record, it wasn’t Warrren Beatty who went to bat for my novel, rather producer Barry Osborne. And the rewritten version was deemed fine by Disney, they just made me remove the identity of the Blank, making the book the bestselling mystery novel ever published that didn’t reveal who did it. (The 6th printing includes my real ending – all other printings are incomplete.)

ROAD TO PERDITION has made another top ten comic book movies list.

It has also made this top 25 comic-book movies list.

And speaking of movies, you can get my long out-of-print boxed set THE BLACK BOX on sale for under $25 right here. It includes an anniversary edition of MOMMY and MOMMY’S DAY (with lots of special features not previously available), plus REAL TIME: SIEGE AT LUCAS STREET MARKET and the anthology film SHADES OF NOIR (available nowhere else, and including the original, longer cut of my Mickey Spillane documentary, recently shortened/re-edited for the Criterion KISS ME DEADLY release).

M.A.C.