Tipping My Fedora

Following on from the first part last week, Sergio and Sheldon Hall reunite for a second bout of Film Noir scepticism. How well does Sergio stand up to Sheldon's stinging and relentless criticism?

The genres being considered include Westerns, Horror, Science Fiction and the work of Alfred Hitchcock. 

To listen to the first part of the podcast, visit:

• Apple buff.ly/wDl4xnB
• Spotify buff.ly/34bRrLu
• YouTube buff.ly/QyLHaCo

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At the beginning of every podcast, Sergio asks his guests to give their definition of Film Noir, a notoriously difficult assignment. This week, in the first of a two-part episode, Dr Sheldon Hall, long-time friend to Sergio and the podcast, picks holes in the host's own attempts to define the term. 

They consider two genres, screwball comedy and the gangster movie, and look to see how well they overlap with Film Noir, along with th...

The 1988 live action and animation hybrid, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, can certainly lay claim to being the most unusual Film Noir yet featured on Tipping My Fedora. A 1940s murder mystery set in a parallel universe in which humans and cartoons co-exist, it was a huge gamble for the studio and its director, Robert Zemeckis, hot off the success of the first Back to the Future movie. The gamble paid off however, both critically and at t...

The great film composer and songwriter David Shire turns 88 today. To celebrate, I am joined by film music historian John Leman Riley to look at some of Shire's classic 1970s Neo-Noir music scores, including:

THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (Sargent, 1974)

THE CONVERSATION (Coppola, 1974)

FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (Richards, 1975)

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (Pakula, 1976)

For more information about the life and work of David Shire, plea...

Film and music historian John Leman Riley is back and joins me for a discussion of some of the great Neo-Noir scores composed by Ennio Morricone, Michael Small and Jerry Goldsmith.

In this episode we focus on four great films and their soundtracks:

THE SICILIAN CLAN (Verneuil, 1969) - music by Ennio Morricone

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (Argento, 1970) - music by Ennio Morricone

KLUTE (Pakula, 1971) - music by Michael Small

C...

Sergio is joined today by podcast buddy Brad Friedman to discuss two of Alfred Hitchcock's first engagements with American Film Noir: the Gothic romance Rebecca (1940) and the dark small-town psycho-thriller, Shadow of a Doubt (1943).   

Brad blogs about Golden Age mystery books and movies at Ah Sweet Mystery: https://ahsweetmystery.com/

Spoiler alert: the plots for both these films, including their respective endings, are explore...

Boxing features in more Hollywood movies than any other sport - and this was certainly true in the era of classic Film Noir. Where does this fascination come from - and how have Noir boxing movies rung the changes over the decades?

Sergio is joined by Steve Hunt, host of the superb Boxing Movie Podcast and author of the new book, Heavyweight Title Fights of the 1980s: A Complete History. Together they look at five of Steve's favour...

Will the real "Mr Arkadin" please stand up?

For the podcast's first foray into audio noir, we tip our hat to Orson Welles - whose birthday it was this past week - and look at the strange case of his noir maudit, MR ARKADIN. Also released as CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, we will consider the many iterations of the film (following in the path of Jonathan Rosenbaum's seminal essay, The Seven Arkadins, first published in Film Comment magazine i...

David Fincher's seminal neo-noir thriller SEVEN is now thirty years old. A surprise commercial success and critical hit, this dark, powerful, densely-layered and genuinely scary and challenging thriller proved to be a hugely influential Neo-noir.

And then, there was that box ...

To celebrate, Sergio is joined by Dr Laura Mee, Principal Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Hertfordshire. She primarily researches hor...

Before such monstrous miscreants as  Ernst Stavro Blofeld, The Joker, Hannibal Lecter and Bellatrix Lestrange besmirched page and screen, perhaps the greatest supervillain of them all was Dr Mabuse. Hell-bent on world domination, his devilish plans were chronicled in books and movies throughout most of the 20th century. And now he's back in a brand new box set bringing together his six dastardly movie appearance from the 1960s, cou...

Our offices will be closed during the Easter period so we can take a small holiday and recharge the little grey cells. But we won't be gone for long and we have lots of special episodes all lined up and ready to go. 

To whet your appetite, here are previews from some forthcoming episodes including ones dedicated to boxing movies, Westerns and Noir scepticism, the various versions of BLADE RUNNER (and its sequel, BLADE RUNNER 2049),...

Sergio is joined by novelist, blogger and podcaster Jim Noy to enthuse about the work of writer Jim Thompson, the sui generis maestro of 50s and 60's Noir. We explore some of Thompson's major themes, his often psychopathic protagonists and his horrifying and frequently surreal endings - and look in detail at such classic books as The Killers Inside Me, A Hell of a Woman, The Grifters, After Dark, My Sweet and Pop. 1280 (all of whic...

Welcome back for the second half of Sergio's conversation with Simon Brown about the Michael Winner / Charles Bronson Death Wish trilogy - today's focus is on the first two sequels, produced by Cannon in the 1980s.

We look at what the sequels added to, and detracted from, this popular cycle of revenge films extending the success of the first and most distinguished entry in  the series. 

The first part of this podcast can be found ...

Sergio is joined today by Simon Brown for the first of a two-part look at the trio of Death Wish films that were directed by Michael Winner and starred Charles Bronson.   

One of the key releases of the 1970s, Michael Winner’s 1974 box office smash, Death Wish, starred Charles Bronson as a man driven to murderous reprisals after a violent assault that left his wife dead and their daughter an emotional wreck. Adapted from the 1972 ...

As a tribute to the late David Lynch, Sergio is joined by special guest Dr Lindsay Hallam, Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of East London to discuss his work in the Noir context.

Dr Hallam is author of the books Screening the Marquis de Sade and a Devil's Advocates volume on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and has written several articles and book chapters on the works of David Lynch.

She has also contributed audio comment...

Today’s podcast is devoted to KISS ME DEADLY, the classic Film Noir directed by Robert Aldrich from Mickey Spillane's best-seller featuring his ultra-hardboiled PI, Mike Hammer.

My guest is Mark Dillon, an award-winning Toronto-based journalist specializing in film, TV and pop music. He is a former editor of Playback, the business publication for the Canadian media industries, and to which he still contributes. He has been writing...

Can the shadows of Film Noir retain their dark power even during the holiday season?

Come and join me in front of the fireplace for a special yuletide edition of Tipping My Fedora with friends of the podcast, Simon Brown and Stacey Abbott and their devoted pooch Lilli, while they take a break from sleuthing as we look at some classic crime movies set between Christmas and New Year.

The films discussed include: 

THE THIN MAN (WS Van...

To celebrate what would have been the 131st birthday of Hollywood icon Edward G. Robinson, Sergio is joined by Craig Ian Mann to provide an overview of the many gangster roles he played during his career, examining how they transitioned from Depression-era tragedies of men who took the wrong path to fame and fortune to Noir-era sociopaths of the 40s and 50s who no longer have a place in society.

Films discussed include:

• Little...

A look back at Kenneth Branagh's box office hit, Dead Again (1991), a highly imaginative valentine to classic Film Noir co-starring Emma Thompson and Andy Garcia that daringly combines a murder mystery with the supernatural. 

Sergio is joined by writer and actor, Nick Cardillo. A lifelong fan of mystery and detective fiction, Nick is the author of several Sherlock Holmes pastiches for MX Publishing and Belanger Books. These were c...