Reaching milestones of my own invention

In my last post, I described how a great friend of mine and I exchange generous Amazon gift cards for our birthdays. One gift I have already used this year’s card to purchased is this four-DVD film noir box set: Of the four titles in this no-frills set (the only extras are trailers for every … Continue reading Reaching milestones of my own invention →

Road trips and the fine art of tipping (Part I)

A few weeks ago, I finally watched Reservoir Dogs. I am very squeamish about blood (seeing it can literally cause me physical pain[1]), and I knew there was a great deal of bloodletting in Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 heist-gone-wrong neo-noir masterpiece. Plus, a friend had once informed me she could never hear the Stealers Wheel song … Continue reading Road trips and the fine art of tipping (Part I) →

The Noir of Who: Part 4

I have long been fascinated by “two worlds collided” connections between disparate things. Emblematic of that fascination has been observing the influence of classic-era film noir on the television series Doctor Who, following its resurrection in 2005. Emerging from those observations was the essay “The Noir of Who: Classic Film Noir’s Imprint on the Resurrected … Continue reading The Noir of Who: Part 4 →

The Noir of Who: Part 3

The Noir of Who: Part 2

The Noir of Who: Backstory and Part 1

Back in, I think, 8th grade English class, we read Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations. A friend of mine (whose mother would later introduce me at his wedding as “her third son”—a high compliment) was so taken with the intricate web of connections between the book’s many characters that he pulled out a piece of … Continue reading The Noir of Who: Backstory and Part 1 →

NOIR CITY 17: New heights of noir!

The streak ended at five. For a number of reasons (including having already seen 20 of the 24 films to be screened[1]), I did not attend the NOIR CITY film festival in San Francisco this year[2]. I had attended—and enjoyed immensely—each of the previous five years after attending the 2014 festival (NOIR CITY 12) on … Continue reading NOIR CITY 17: New heights of noir! →

My great-grandfather, his brother-in-law…and The Three Stooges?

This coming October 15 would have been my great-grandfather David Louis Berger’s 150th birthday. Eight days later, I will mourn the 100th anniversary of his passing, under bizarre circumstances, but that is a tale I reserve for my book. “Louis,” as he preferred to be called (like my own father David Louis Berger liked to … Continue reading My great-grandfather, his brother-in-law…and The Three Stooges? →

When is a pleasure “guilty?”

I first watched The Cotton Club (Francis Ford Coppola, 1984) as a sophomore in college, under curious circumstances. That year, I lived with two other men in a converted basement seminar room in Ezra Stiles College. The year before, that room had been occupied by a student we generally referred to as the “Saudi prince” … Continue reading When is a pleasure “guilty?” →

Organizing by themes II: Film Noir

This site benefits/suffers/both from consisting of posts about a wide range of topics, all linked under the amorphous heading "data-driven storytelling." In an attempt to impose some coherent structure, I am organizing related posts both chronologically and thematically. My love of film noir has roots in my childhood (detective fiction, Charlie Chan films) and college … Continue reading Organizing by themes II: Film Noir →