Though it has its moments, The Darkest Place is disappointing.  Rich with noir, it fails to deliver, and the villain’s revelation is anticlimactic. Despite this, Judson tells an entertaining tale, but it’s best enjoyed as a whole, and not for its “ironic twist” ending that falls flat.

Deacon Kane is a professor and sometime author drifting on the edge of self-dissolution. Grieving his son’s drowning and his ruined marriage, he’s ensnared in a torrid affair with a married woman, drowning himself in booze, risking both his position and career. When a string of “suicides” emerges in Southampton, Kane finds himself inextricably involved in a Draconian plot that makes no sense, one in which he’s drugged and set up as a suspect.

For the record, let it be known that Saint Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics does not sit on my bookshelf in vain. Someday I’m going to read it. Someday, my time spent at the secondhand shop will be rewarded. Saint Thomas is going to set me straight about the purpose of man and the order of the universe, all for a bargain-basement price.

Some back-story for my defensiveness: I like reading. A lot. I grew up in a household that made library trips almost weekly, never returning home without shopping bags busting at the seams with books. While great for my developing brain, those times early in my life made me what I am today: a person with a book accumulation issue.

In an age before political correctness, in 1936 Warner Brothers released The Green Pastures, a movie in which an all black cast play out Bible stories as told in the Deep South. We see white-robed winged angels at a grand fish fry. One still has his cook’s cap still on. They’re waiting for De Lawd, a white-haired and bearded black gentleman in a black frock coat, who smiles and says, “Let the fish fry begin!”

J. Stephen Lang’s The Bible on the Big Screen has many such wonderful details in it. Lang, a prolific author perhaps best known for his Complete Book of Bible Trivia, has compiled a thorough look at films that deal with Bible themes or stories. Running from 1897 to 2007, Lang gives a synopsis, background to the making of the film, and includes a short evaluation without providing an absolute “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.”

Damnation Street is a gritty novel superbly blending contemporary themes with traditional pulp fiction.  With crisp narration, it takes readers to a familiar place: the world of noir/crime fiction, but in new ways.  Sporting archetypal characters that are fresh and inventive, this is a crime fiction delight.

Scott Weiss is a private detective with an instinctual sixth sense giving him special insight into human nature. He’s always one step ahead of clients and suspects alike. A Nero Wolfe of the streets, Weiss lives a lonely life – which makes his obsession with runaway prostitute Julie Wyant dangerous. Even though Weiss “knows” it can only end badly, he pushes on in his pursuit anyway.

How does a trip for two to Hollywood for five days and four nights at the Universal Hilton sound? Add VIP tickets to Universal Studios and Disneyland, a rental car, and more, and you've got the Thou Shalt Laugh 2 contest!

Here's what the winner receives:

    •    Two round-trip tickets to Hollywood
    •    Limo pickup from your home to the airport
    •    5 day/4 night stay at the Universal Hilton Hotel
    •    Rental car
    •    VIP tickets to Universal Studios and Disneyland
    •    $500 spending money

To enter, click on the link, watch the clips from the standup comedy DVD Thou Shalt Laugh 2, and answer the three questions correctly.

The contest is running now and continues through Jan. 18. One winner will be chosen on Jan. 21.

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We all have different favorites, but last year these titles were consistent top-sellers, right into the final moments of 2007.

 

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) - J. K. Rowling
• Deceptively Delicious - Jessica Seinfeld
• Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
• A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
• The Dangerous Book for Boys - Conn Iggulden
• I Am America (And So Can You!) - Stephen Colbert
• Double Cross - James Patterson
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Note: Every once in a while, Infuzemag.com will provide a second opinion on a noteworthy movie. This time around, Josh and Emily Pardy (or "Team Pardy" as we call 'em around here) have offered their own take on Tim Burton's interpretation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd. Enjoy! -- Ed.

 

The dark, dynamic duo has done it again! Sweeny Todd is the highly anticipated film spawned from the collaborative genius of director Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Taking on the macabre musical originally created by Stephen Sondheim, this truly legendary tale takes on a whole new life. Thanks to this re-envisioning of the story, the viewer doesn't have to be familiar with either the Broadway production or the English legend in order to enjoy this adaptation to the silver screen.

The story is simple enough to follow: Sweeny Todd (Depp), formerly the barber Benjamin Barker, has returned to London a wronged man after serving a 15-year sentence for a crime he didn't do. The man responsible, the corrupt Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), engineered Barker's demise because Turpin craved his beautiful wife. With nothing left to live for, Todd seeks vengeance against Judge Turpin. With the help of poverty-row baker Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), Todd quickly resumes his occupation, enabling him to come razor-close to those he seeks revenge against.

Johnny Depp's already on board to play John Dillinger in Michael Mann's upcoming film, Public Enemies.

 

Now Christian Bale is negotiating to play Melvin Purvis, the G-man who led the FBI's manhunt of Dillinger.

 

The film is based on Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-43, Brian Burrough's nonfiction account.

Mann also wrote the script.

 

The film is scheduled to start production in Chicago in March.
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It's been a wild week in the wacky world of labor agreement negotiations in Hollywood.

As the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP, negotiating on behalf of the major motion picture studios) get closer to starting their own negotiation track, the chill between AMPTP and the striking Writers Guild of America (WGA) continues, with neither side proposing anything to break the current impasse.

But individual movie production companies are following the path blazed by TV talk-show production companies in negotiating independent agreements with WGA. Tom Cruise's production company and United Artists both reached interim working agreements with WGA earlier in the week, and the Weinstein Co. joined the fray yesterday by signing one of its own with WGA to get back to work on a full schedule of projects. Among the projects the Weinstein Co. has current designs on is a film version of the Broadway musical Nine, itself based on Federico Fellini's film 8 1/2, and a remake of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai.

This stratagem by WGA could increase pressure on the studios to reach a deal that will give writers more of a cut from new media revenues, the chief sticking point in current negotiations.
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"But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment."
-- Werner Herzog, from an interview in Burden of Dreams

So many things have to go right to make a film shoot go smoothly that it is a wonder that any do. There are just so many "moving parts" in making a film -- so many arrangements to be made, so many things to be coordinated -- that problems are inherent to the process.

Every shoot has its challenges, but there are a few that rise to the level of legend. At the top of that list must be Werner Herzog's amazing film, Fitzcarraldo, whose shoot was documented by filmmaker Les Blank in Burden of Dreams. Filmed in the Amazon basin in Peru (near the Ecuadorian border), the Fitzcarraldo shoot spanned an agonizing four years and went through two casts as everything that could go wrong, did.