It’s another week here at BCB After Dark: the hippest hot spot for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. We’re so glad you decided to join us. There’s no cover charge this evening. The dress code is casual. We’ve still got a couple of good tables available. The show will start shortly. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The
late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Last week, I asked you who should get cut when Seiya Suzuki got activated off the injured list. Of course the answer is moot now as we all know that Dylan Carlson was designated for assignment. (He cleared waivers and has been assigned to Iowa.) Your vote was very close, as 48 percent of you thought Carlson should taken off the roster and 45 percent thought it should be Scott Kingery.
Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies. You can skip ahead if you want.
Tonight we have a big band performance of the Bobby Timmons’ song “Moanin’” featuring Art Blakey on drums, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet and Stanley Jordan on guitar and Peter Washington on bass.
This is from 1987.
Out of the Past (1947) is a classic film noir directed by Jacques Tourneur. In one sense, it’s a pretty archetypal noir with a tough guy trying to extricate him from a past mistake, a slick boss who won’t let him and a very devious femme fatale. There are some long flashback sequences that differentiates it from some other similar plots, but it mostly follows in the style of Raymond Chandler. There’s one honest man swimming in a sea of corruption and few if any people that he can trust. That isn’t a bad thing, especially since Out of the Past cleans up Chandler’s tendency towards nonsensical plots. In fact, I’d argue that it’s the excellent execution of Out of the Past that makes it a classic.
Robert Mitchum stars as Jeff, a detective hired by Whit (Douglas) a crime boss to find Kathie (Greer), a woman who stole $40,000 from Whit. He finds Kathie in Mexico and the two of them start a romance after Kathie convinces Jeff she’s innocent.
All of that is told in flashback (the “out of the past” part) as the story starts two years later with Jeff running a filling station in the Eastern Sierras. Here’s where I lament how many great movies used to be filmed on the eastern side of the Sierras in California, which is a gorgeous part of the country that most people never see. Anyway, Whit has found Jeff with the help of Kathie, who has betrayed him. Whit’s being blackmailed by a former accountant who knows enough to send Whit away for tax evasion. With Kathie’s help, Whit frames Jeff for a couple of murders.
The cast of Out of the Past is about as good as you could get for a film like this. Mitchum just oozes the Mitchum cool through the whole film. Jeff is a man who knows he’s been snookered by a bad woman and is in deep trouble after getting involved with a gangster, but he’s not about to lose his cool over it. Jeff is smart and tough, but also fatalistic and cynical. If you love Robert Mitchum, this is everything you love about him.
Douglas played a lot of oily villains early in his career and Whit is a prime example of that. Tourneur leaned into Douglas’ good looks and silver-tongue rather than his tough-guy physique. He could beat you to a pulp, but he would never want to get his hands dirty when he could have someone else do it. Douglas wasn’t a big star yet, but that he could hold the screen at the same time as Mitchum and give as good as he gets was a sign that he soon would be.
Greer’s Kathie is one of those psychopaths that are great at telling people what they want to hear but who care about nothing except their own skin. It’s tough to play someone who is just pretending to have emotion, but Greer manages to pull it off. Rhonda Fleming also does well in a bit part and Dickie Moore has a small but important part as a deaf-mute who is the only person whom Jeff trusts with the truth. After all, who is he gonna tell?
I’ve already praised the cinematography of the Mojave Desert in Out of the Past, but the whole film has a great noir look to it, thanks to Tourneur and cinematographer Nicola Musuraca. Musuraca’s resumé went back to the silent era, but worked on a lot of other great black-and-white films of the forties and fifties such as Cat People, Clash by Night and The Hitch-Hiker, among others. There are a whole ton of different sets in Out of the Past as the action flies between various locations throughout California and Mexico. Musuraca makes them all look distinct and, well, cool.
Noir expert Eddie Muller claims that Out of the Past is one of two films that can be considered the “definitive” film noir, the ne plus ultra of the form, along with Double Indemnity. It certainly has all the trappings of the genre: the corrupt world, the femme fatale, the male hero who’s a sucker (although in this case he realizes his mistake and tries to atone), the shadow-infested cinematography and all the other stuff you expect out of a film noir. I don’t know if that means it’s the best noir—I certainly feel like Double Indemnity is far more daring a picture than this one is and there are several others that I like better—but Out of the Past is certainly something you might point to if someone asked for a definition of noir.
But of all the things to like about Out of the Past, but the biggest reason to watch it is to see Mitchum be Mitchum. He’s that cool.
Here’s the scene where Jeff finds Kathie in Mexico. Under different circumstances and if Kathie weren’t a sociopath, this could be the start of rom-com.
Out of the Past is on HBO Max and Criterion.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
The Cubs pitching staff has been banged up badly with injuries to start the season. I don’t think I need to tell you that. But one of the bright spot of that, so far, has been that it’s given left-hander Riley Martin a chance to make his major league debut.
So far, the 27-year-old Martin has made the most of the opportunity. He’s pitched in three games so far, totalling 3.2 innings. In that time, he’s allowed no runs and just two hits. Martin has struck out two and walked no one.
Over the past few years, it’s been remarkable how the Cubs have put together solid bullpens from unexpected sources. At this time last year, no one thought Brad Keller or Drew Pomeranz would be key pitchers whom manager Craig Counsell would call in in a crunch. Even Daniel Palencia was pretty iffy at this point.
By now you’ve heard Martin’s story. He pitched at Division II Quincy College and was set to graduate and attend pharmacy school. He’d already been accepted. But his senior season at Quincy was wiped out because of COVID and he didn’t want his playing career to end that way. So he put off pharmacy school for one year and played one more year at Quincy. He pitched well enough that the Cubs drafted him in the sixth round in 2021. To be clear, much of the appeal of Martin to the Cubs was that he was willing to sign for a $1000 bonus, which left lots of money in the Cubs bonus pool to give to other draftees, primarily second-rounder James Triantos. But they also must have seen something they liked in him because there were lots of Division II fifth-year seniors in 2021 that would have signed for a thousand bucks. So it wasn’t just that he was cheap.
So far, Martin has been a three-pitch pitcher, relying mostly on his four-seam fastball that registers 94.4 miles per hour on the radar gun. The pitch has good vertical movement on it so far. He’s thrown the fastball 57 percent of the time. The rest of the time he relies on his 89.2 mph slider and his 85.1 mph curve. Martin mostly uses the slider against left-handers and the curve versus right-handed hitters.
It’s an incredibly small sample size, but the most encouraging thing about Martin’s major league debut has been the control and the no walks. Last year Martin struck out 80 batters in 63.2 innings. That’s really good! But he also walked 35 batters and that’s not so good. Throwing more strikes was probably the number one thing that Martin had to do to be an effective major league reliever. So far, so good on that front.
So in your mind, has Martin impressed you enough to think he’s going to be a solid major league reliever who will get important innings this year? Is he in your circle of trust? Or do you think that all of this is just small-sample-size noise and that Martin’s pure stuff and control isn’t enough to stay in the majors for most or all of the season.
Of course, there’s this news that came in late:
One would assume that’s as an opener for Colin Rea or something. Or at least, let’s hope it’s not because someone else is injured.
Thank you for stopping by tonight. We’ve enjoyed seeing you. Please get home safely. Leave a review. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow evening for more BCB After Dark.
