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*Hustle & Flow [2005, Paramount/New Deal/MTV].--D-Jay, a pimp, has a mid-life crisis situation & decides to become a Rap performer. With the help of his 2 hookers [1 of them pregnant with an incredible singing voice], an old highschool friend on the mixing board & another dude creating/programming beats, D-Jay records songs for a demo tape at a home studio. D.I.Y., baby! Now, D-Jay is looking to take his act all throughout Memphis. Ludacris also stars as Skinny Black, a B.E.T./MTV-ready Rap MC character I hated immediately! Co-produced by John Singleton. D-Jay's songs performed by Memphis Rap MC Al Capone [how fucking original]. Winner of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
*Double Idemnity [1944, Paramount].
*Sorry, Wrong Number [1948, Paramount].--2 Film-Noir classics starring Barbara Stanwyck.
"Double Idemnity" has Stanwyck in a femme fatale-role. She plays Nora Dedricksen, the wife of an oildriller who arranges to have her husband killed, to make it look like an accident, so she could claim
$100,000 from his insurance-policy. Fred MacMurray played Walter Neff, an insurance salesman/love interest who helps Nora bump off her husband.
"Sorry, Wrong Number" has Stanwyck in a victim-role. She plays Leona Stevenson, a bedbound woman with an unspecified sickness, frantically answering/making calls on a telephone all throughout the picture. Burt Lancaster plays her husband Harry, who Leona married & hooked up with a job in the family business: Pharmaceuticals. Harry Stevenson sets up dummy companies in the New York City/northern New Jersey-area & makes money--for himself. But hired goons working for Cottrell [the pharmaceutical company in this picture] come after him & his accomplice, a sixtysomething chemist. From there, the suspense mounts.
[If there's anyone on this forum who've never checked out a Film-Noir flick--besides "Sin City" & "L.A. Confidential"--these are 2 good ones to start out with]
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