Summer of Darkness

[Janet]

This is a place for those of us who are taking the TCM Summer of Darkness course to talk about it, so we don't clutter up the TCM thread too much. It may be cheating to have our own discussion instead of going on the TCM boards, but THEY'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME! Besides, I want to talk about other stuff than the Daily Dose of Darkness

Yesterday I had time so I decided to see what Noir TCM had available on demand. They didn't have much. I watched LA Confidential because I'd never seen it. I had heard it was good, but it was good in ways I didn't expect. What I really liked was the way it updated Noir conventions.

One of the aspects of Noir that I find easiest to grasp is the idea of a good person who finds himself in a corrupt world where the rules he is used to don't apply anymore. You would think that would be hard to pull off in our cynical times. But what LA Confidential did was just up the ante. Instead of good people shocked out of their beliefs/naïveté by evil, he took hard-boiled cynics and faced them with something so bad it shocked them out of their cynicism. I thought that was extremely effective.

So, what have you guys watched? Have you posted on the official boards? I haven't, but I suppose I should.