Author Archives: jgroom

Institutional Noir

A shot Paul Bond captured from episode 4 of The Wire, “Old Cases,” highlights the corporate institutional spaces much of the police work revolves around in this season. In his commentary for episode 1 of the season, David Simon refers … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in digital storytelling, ds106, Hardboiled, noir, the wire, wire106 | Leave a comment

Dirty Snow Hardboiled

More than six months ago I finished reading Georges Simenon‘s novel Dirty Snow. It still haunts me regularly. There’s only one other book that I’ve read over the last decade that has had the same, harrowing effect on me: Cormac … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Georges Simenon, Hardboiled, William T. Vollmann | Leave a comment

Milan Caliber 9: Italian Hardboiled

A few weeks ago I watched Fernando Di Leo’s Milan caliber 9 (1972) and loved it. Unfortunately I’ve been too crazy to write about it sooner, so not all the details are fresh with me. That said, there are a … Continue reading Continue reading

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Homeboiled: Touchez pas au grisbi

Thanks to my special lady friend, our focus on French noir continues, this time with a quiet mediation on growing old in the 1954 film Touchez pas au grisbi (“Don’t touch the loot”) by Jacques Becker starring Jean Gabin. The Criterion Collection’s synopsis for the film … Continue reading Continue reading

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Maybe I like to be cheap once in a while….

….maybe everybody does. The following scene is a classic Hollywood moment from Vincente Minnelli‘s 1952 melodrama The Bad and the Beautiful between Lana Turner and Kirk Douglas —and both prove why they are masters, though Douglas steals this one at … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Curtis Hanson, douglas sirk, Hardboiled, James Ellroy, Kirk Douglas, L.A. Confidential, lana turner, movies, Quentin Tarantino, Sterling Hayden, The Bad and the Beautiful, Vincente Minnelli | Leave a comment

Damnable Bestialities: a Hardboiled Discussion with David Kernohan

Thanks to David Kernohan I finally got the opportunity to talk about some of the fallout of the Hardboiled class I taught last semester. It was a really fun class, and like ds106, the first time through a relatively new … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Cotton Mather, David Kernohan, Hardboiled, Paul Bond | Leave a comment

Ellroy on Hammett: a Hardboiled War on Labor

I was searching the UMW library database for a James Ellroy novel I wanted to re-read this break (The Big Nowhere), when I stumbled across his introduction to an Everyman’s Library Edition of some of Dashiell Hammett’s stories and novels. … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Dashiell Hammett, Hardboiled, James Ellroy, labor, Red Harvest, work | Leave a comment

Why so serious?

This is my last word on James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia because I need to write about the re-emergence of black capitalism in Walter Mosely‘s Devil in a Blue Dress. At the beginning of Tuesday’s discussion about Devil in a … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in emoboiled, Gwynplain, Hardboiled, James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia, The Dark Knight, The Joker, The Man Who Laughs, Victor Hugo | Leave a comment

Hardboiled Week 14: Black Dahlia, Alternative History, and the Rise of Smut and Gore

Audio of Hardboiled discussion of James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia 11-29-2012
Tonight’s class was a bit low energy given how late we are in the semester and how much reading I have thrown at the #emoboilers—but as they say what doesn’t … Continue reading Continue reading

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Hardboiled Week 14: James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia, and Other Twisted Obsessions

I can remember the exact moment I heard about James Ellroy for the first time. It was the Fall of 1994 and I was working at UCLA’s Audio Visual Services scheduling AV needs for the campus community when my co-worker … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Hardboiled, James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia | Leave a comment