The Classic Cocktail

1/6 Lemon juice
1/6 Curacao liqueur
1/6 Maraschino liqueur
1/2 Brandy (I use E&J XO, but use Cognac if you’re feeling flush)

Stir with cracked ice and strain into cocktail glass rimmed with superfine sugar (optional). Squeeze lemon peel over drink and discard.

From The Standard Bartender’s Guide by Patrick Gavin Duffy, 1948.

Suggested music with this drink:
Count Basie – One O’Clock Jump

Noir City is back, and it returns to the gorgeous Castro theater this year! As in years past they are showing some fairly well known classics (many in newly restored prints) along with many obscure but entertaining films, which makes this film noir festival the best in the world (in my opinion anyway). I’m going to attend most of the film showings but here are some of my favorites from the schedule:

• Friday, January 26th: Raw Deal (1948) – as they say in the Noir City guide it is visually stunning (cinematography by John Alton), with a great cast and direction by Anthony Mann, which makes it a perfect example of the best of the genre. Plays with the rarity Kid Glove Killer (1942), which looks great and I have not seen it yet. Marsha Hunt, the lead actress in Raw Deal, is going to appear in person!
• Saturday, January 27th: Cry Danger (1951) – Dick Powell played in many light comedies and musicals in the 1930s and 1940s as a romantic lead, but he wanted to play meatier roles as he got older. He tried to get the lead part in Double Indemnity but Fred McMurray was selected instead. He finally got his chance in 1944 in Murder, My Sweet, which was followed by tough good guy roles in many great noir films, such as Cornered, Johnny O’Clock, and this film about a bookie who gets framed for a robbery he didn’t commit. With the rarity Abandoned (1949).
• Sunday, January 28th: I have not seen Hell’s Half Acre (1954) yet, but it’s set in Hawaii so it may be the only tiki noir film ever! It’s co-presented by Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge in Alameda, which as you know is the best tiki bar on the West Coast! Also on the bill: 99 River Street (1953).
• Thursday, February 1st: Scarlet Street (1945) – I just recently caught this on TCM, but I really want to see it again on the big screen. It’s got a great cast: Edward G Robinson plays a milquetoast artist with a mean wife and a mid-life crisis. Bad girl Joan Bennett takes him for a ride with help from creep Dan Duryea! Playing with rarity Wicked Woman (1953).
• Friday, February 2nd: Two films featuring cinematography by film noir genius John Alton! First it’s The Big Combo (1955), followed by The Spiritualist (1948).

All the films on the schedule are worth seeing. I especially like seeing the rare ones, but if you have not seen any of the above films on the big screen don’t miss them.

Noir City

The action is at the Roxie Theatre next Thursday, dig? If you gotta ask, here’s all the dirt. Don’t be a square, just be there.

Authors Domenic Priore and Brian Chidester (Beatsville, Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece, Dumb Angel #4: All Summer Long) will present a unique one-hour slide show documenting the Beat Generation’s long stretch over the Greater Los Angeles area between 1956 and 1966, via visuals of coffeehouses and Jazz joints from the Sunset Strip to Malibu, Venice and Newport Beach. Legendary locations only heard about in books or in liner notes, from the Gas House and nearby Venice West Cafe, to the Unicorn and Shelly’s Manne-Hole in Hollywood, the Lighthouse and Insomniac in Hermosa Beach, then all the way down to Cafe Frankenstein (owned, operated and painted by Burt Shonberg) in Laguna Beach. Artists from John Altoon to Eric “Big Daddy” Nord gave these places a colourful splash, as did the wide variety of Folk singers and poets who performed on their stages. Accompanying the slideshow will be a rare screening of Dirty Feet (1965), shot primarily at the Prison of Socrates coffeehouse in Balboa. Special guests TBA and, there will be another short film or two (including a color one shot inside Venice West Cafe called The Beat, from 1960), plus a few new routines by San Francisco’s own Devil-Ettes to jazz the room. Showtime: 7:30 only.

Ticket info

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco is showing the films of Peter Whitehead starting this week. He was a British director who made many films of the swinging London scene in the mid 60s. Here are the film times and descriptions from the YBCA web site:

POP FILMS
(1966-69)
Thu & Fri, Sep 14 & 15, 7:30 pm

Whitehead’s early short films represent the inception of the artful, experimental and daring “rock video.” This program includes the films he made with the Jimi hendrix Experience, Animals, Nico, Shadows, Small Faces and many more.

TONIGHT LET’S ALL MAKE LOVE IN LONDON
(1967, 70 min)
Thu, Sep 21, 7:30 pm

One of the few filmmakers trusted within the perfumed gardens of Britain’s music and art scene in the 60s, whitehead was allowed unparalleled access into the center of the pop circle to capture the moment for this kaleidoscopic film. With contributions from the likes of Michael Caine, Julie Christie, Lee Marvin and David Hockney, Tonight presents a dazzling record of the in-crowd. Preceded by Wholly Communion (1964, 33 min), the film that launched Whitehead’s career. Wholly Communion captures the historic event at the Royal Albert hall where an audience of 7,000 witnessed the first meeting of American and British Beat poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso.

BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
(1965, 65 min)
Wed, Sep 27, 7:30 pm

Peter Brook directs the Royal Shakespeare Company in US, a semi-improvised work protesting England’s unseen and unacknowledged role in the Vietnam War. Containing sequences at public meetings and interviews with the actors (including Glenda Jackson) and Brook himself, the film is an agit-prop time capsule that has gone virtually unseen in this country since its premiere at the New York Film Festival in 1967.

THE FALL
(1969, 120 min)
Thu, Sep 28, 7:30 pm

Considered by Whitehead to be his most important film, The fall is a personal statement on violence, revolution and the turbulence in late 60s America. Filmed entirely in and around New York between October 1967 and June 1968, it features Robert kennedy, the Bread and Puppet Theater, Paul Auster (fresh-faced as a Columbia student), Tom hayden, Mark Rudd, Stokely Carmichael, h. Rap Brown, Arthur Miller, Robert Lowell and Robert Rauschenberg.