15. Film Noir character you’d trust the least with your secrets. #NoirvemberChallenge

#NowPlaying Lovely @rockingbob.bsky.social “Pre-rock” collection that encompasses cowboy ballads, theremin and barrelhouse piano.

We hear all the time about Orson Welles being only 25 when he made Citizen Kane, but Paul Weller was 22 when he wrote That’s Entertainment. And he did it in ten minutes.

Friday

14. Who’s on the Film Noir Mount Rushmore? Who wouldn’t love to see Audrey Totter up there?

I thought this looked like @slipperyjack.bsky.social’s work. ‘Demonic’ Wind in the Willows jumper banned from Westminster Abbey www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

On 12 November, @reaky.bsky.social chose Le Deuxieme Souffle (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1966).

13. Favourite Low-Budget B Film Noir. #NoirvemberChallenge In which a terrifying English femme fatale literally raises a man from the dead to get her hands on his money.

12. Sexiest Film Noir. #NoirvemberChallenge “You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.”

11. Favourite bar scene or cocktail in a Film Noir. #NoirvemberChallenge “Disaster to the wench!” The point at which Gilda’s luck starts to run out.

10. Favourite Gloria Grahame Film Noir. #NoirvemberChallenge

9. Favourite Dan Duryea Film Noir. #NoirChallenge Dan is perma-drunk in the Cornell Woolrich adaptation Black Angel (1946).

M Hulot figure not included.

Hey @bsky.app, is this phishing? Got it by DM.

Post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it.

Turned on to The Delines by @malcombowie.bsky.social. Their records are beautiful works of classical country-soul, the novelistic lyrics recounting noirish narratives of the luckless and drifting.

Robert Mitchum with one of my favourite lines directed at the noir fates. Also my preferred title for the film.

Signs that you're in for a good time

Decoy (1946) sits at the interface between noir and those Columbia Karloff vehicles in which he invariably raises himself or some other poor boob from the dead to wreak vengeance. It’s a Monogram film, and so is set in a world of cardboard and shot magnolia flat. #Noirvember

8. “Now you’re talking, Noir!” Favourite line in a film noir #NoirvemberChalleng “I've met lot of hard boiled eggs in my time, but you - you're twenty minutes.”

No, thank you. I’d rather keep them as friends.

It’s mysterious why Pearl Charles’s retro-country-soul hasn’t made her a huge star. She has the songs and is fantastic live.

Plausibly an unreleased 90s Bowie track.

6. Favourite Film Noir dream sequence. #NoirChallenge You can see the influence of the Murder, My Sweet dream sequence in Steve Ditko’s work.

Terence Stamp 1964 [Richard Saunders]

6. Coolest Film Noir character. #NoirvemberChallenge

Painting by Gustav Klimt ‘Tannenwald I’ (Fir forest) 1901. Oil on canvas. Size 90 x 90cm.

5. Film Noir you’d show someone who’s never seen one. #NoirvemberChallenge Raymond Chandler and James M Cain. Flashback structure. A man waylaid by a femme fatale. Inescapable doom. Double Indemnity is Noir 101.

Well done Zohran! And of course the real victor of the day - typography.

4. Film Noir Ahead of its Time. #NoirvemberChallenge Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946) shows us an America where a Nazi has insinuated himself into the higher levels of society, getting the Supreme Court onside, and eliminating those who challenge him.

Owen Tromans’ Between Stones is an album that’s haunted me for five years now. Its folk gothic touches on Pentangle, Nick Drake and Neil Young, but I think its closest kin is the Hunky Dory-era weird Bowie of Quicksand and The Bewlay Brothers.

3.The film noir that made you a fan. #NoirvemberChallenge I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw this, but its atmosphere - hothouse plants, rain, darkness, a camera hidden in a Chinese bust - hooked me for life.

This should be written into law for all live shows. Particularly the second-last instruction.

❤️

I’d wish Steve Ditko a happy birthday (November 2nd), but he’d probably recoil at my extending good will to another human being.

Crawford is so monumentally malignant in Harriet Craig it feels like Jacobean drama. Her hair, clothes, movements and gestures are all terrifyingly sharp and symmetrical.

Is it possible on Bluesky that someone will post one of these from later than 1990?

Back to the Wall is a deliciously atmospheric and twisty French noir in which a cuckolded husband disposes of the lover of his faithless wife (if you marry Jeanne Moreau, what do you expect?). #Noirvember

The Kathryn Bigelow portrait on the cover of the new Sight and Sound is pure Gil Kane.

Found a twofer CD yesterday with these joyous albums on. Instantly conjures up giant heaps of meatballs in tomato sauce and multi-storey eggplant parmigiana.

2. Favourite Film Noir character introduction. #NoirvemberChallenge

#NowPlaying I’ve rolled out the faux fur rug, lowered the lights and cocktails are chilling.

1. Favourite Film Noir opening scene.

#NowPlaying Took a chance on this. Johnny Pace (great noir name) is in the Sinatra/Bobby Darin vein, and the band is of course crisp and chilled to perfection.

#NowPlaying Fantastic @acerecords.bsky.social collection of #NinaSimone’s singles across all the labels of her career.