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And keep an eye out for Noir City 8 in San Francisco. January 22-31 2010. List of film screenings and special guests soon.

First this month is a little ditty that will knock you on your a**. A sleazy slice of noir told in two parallel narratives following a cop and a killer as they chase through the underbelly of the 1939 Kansas City boxing underworld. Oh, and I co-wrote it. Full disclosure and all.

From the folks at New Pulp Press comes a shot across the bow to the publishing world announcing a major new force in modern Noir fiction. Hang on for the ride.

This month's vintage pick is one I just got to even though it was published almost 70 years ago. Banned in the US for four decades we can now revel in the sleaze of this truly greasy and gritty Noir.

Anthony Neil Smith shows the rest of how it's done in his follow up to Yellow Medicine.

And finally Seth Harwood brings his series character jack Palms to print after a long and fruitful life as a podcast superstar. Pick up the book now so the publisher will get off their tush and publish the sequels that he's already written.

Farewell, My Lovely - Dick Powell: I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom.

Roadblock - Diane: One day you'll want something really expensive which you won't be able to afford on a detective's salary. Joe: Like what? Diane: Like me! Good night.

Phantom Lady - Fay Helm: No names, no addresses. Just companions for the evening.

Impact - Brian Donleavy: I’ll never think of our moments together without nausea.

The Big Sleep - Humphrey Bogart regarding Lauren Bacall: She was worth a stare. She was trouble.

The Big Combo - Cornell Wilde: I treated her like a pair of gloves. When I was cold, I called her up.

The Big Steal - Jane Greet: Stop calling me Chiquita. You don’t say that to girls you don’t even know. Robert Mitchum: Where I learned Spanish, you do.

Clash by Night - Barbara Stanwyck: Last time I looked, you had a wife. Robert Ryan: Maybe next time you look, I won’t. Barbara Stanwyck: That’s what they all say.

Detour - Tom Neal: Money. You know what that is. The stuff you never have enough of. Little green things with George Washington’s picture that men slave for, commit crimes for, die for. It’s the stuff that has caused more trouble in the world than anything else ever invented. simply because there’s too little of it.

Cape Fear - Diane Taylor: You're just an animal: coarse, lustful, barbaric. Max Cady: Keep right on talkin', honey. I like it when you run me down like that. Diane Taylor: Max Cady, what I like about you is you’re rock bottom. I wouldn’t expect you to understand this, but it’s a great comfort for a girl to know she could not possibly sink any lower.

Clash by Night - Barbara Stanwyck: What do you want, Joe, my life history? Here it is in four words: big ideas, small results.

The Woman in the Window - Edward G. Robinson to Joan Bennett: There are only three ways to deal with a blackmailer. You can pay him and pay him and pay him until you’re penniless. Or you can call the police yourself and let your secret be known to the world. Or you can kill him.

The Big Combo - Cornell Wilde: It happens to be against two laws. God’s and man’s. I’m booking her on the second.

Strangers on a Train - Leo G. Carroll: She was a tramp. Patricia Hitchcock: She was a human being. And let me remind you that even the most unworthy of us has a right to life and the pursuit of happiness. Leo G. Carroll: From what I hear, she pursued it in all directions.

The Killing - Sterling Hayden talking to Marie Windsor: I know you like a book, ya little tramp. You’d sell your own mother for a piece of fudge. But you’re smart with it. Smart enough to know when to sell and when to sit tight. You’ve got a great big dollar sign there where most women have a heart.

Clash by Night - Keith Anders: Why didn’t you come home before? Barbara Stanwyck: Why didn’t I go to China? Some things you do, some things you don’t.

Mildred Pierce - Eve Arden: Personally, I’m convinced that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young.

Double Indemnity - Fred MacMurray’s narration: She liked me. I could feel that. The way you feel when the cards are falling right for you, with a nice little pile of blue and yellow chips in the middle of the table. Only what I didn’t know then was that I wasn’t playing her. She was playing me, with a deck of marked cards and the stakes weren’t any blue and yellow chips. They were dynamite.

Ace in the Hole - Jan Sterling: I don’t pray. Kneeling bags my nylons.

Laura - Clifton Webb: Laura considered me the wisest, the wittiest, the most interesting man she’d ever meet. I was in complete accord with her.

The Big Heat - Sid Klute about the bargirls: They’re floaters. Not much more than a suitcase full of nothing between them and the gutters.

Crack-up - Claire Trevor: You can’t expect to dodge the police indefinitely, George. Wouldn’t it be smarter to go to Cochrane and this thing out in the open? Pat O’Brien: Just about as smart as cutting my throat to get some fresh air.

The Maltese Falcon - Brigid "You won't get into any trouble?" Sam Spade "I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble."

The Big Sleep: "I don't like your manners." "And I'm not crazy about yours... but I don't mind if you don't like my manners I don't like 'em myself."

Out of the Past: "That isn't the way to play it." "Why not?" "Cause it isn't the way to win." "Is there a way to win?" "There's a way to lose more slowly."

Double Indemnity: Walter Neff "I killed him for money — and for a woman. I didn't get the money. And I didn't get the woman."

The Woman in the Window: Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson), "The streets were dark with something more than night."

The Postman Always Rings Twice: Cora Smith (Lana Turner) "I don't especially like the way I look sometimes, but I never met a man since I was 14 that didn't want to give me an argument about it."

Asphalt Jungle: Sam Jaffe "Experience has taught me never to trust a policeman. Just when you think one's all right, he turns legit."

Double Indemnity: Phyllis: I wonder if I know what you mean. Walter: I wonder if you wonder.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY: Phyllis: We're both rotten. Walter Neff: Only you're a little more rotten.

Sweet Smell of Success: Burt Lancaster to Tony Curtis "Sidney, you're a cookie full of arsenic."

THE NARROW MARGIN: "What kind of a dish was she? The sixty-cent special - cheap, flashy, strictly poison under the gravy."

OUT OF THE PAST: "A dame with a rod is like a guy with a knitting needle."

OUT OF THE PAST: the classic exchange between Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum: "I don't want to die." "Neither do I, baby, but if I have to, I'm going to die last."

Murder, My Sweet: Dick Powell (Voiceover): I spent a buck in another bar for some history. Mike Florian owned the joint until 1939. He died in the middle of a glass of beer. His wife Jessie finished it for him. Tracing her was easy. I could do it. A really bright third-grader could have done it, but not Malloy. He needed a private detective. She was a charming, middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud. I gave her a drink. She was a gal who'd take a drink, if she had to knock you down to get the bottle.

KISS ME DEADLY: Carl Evello: Look Mike, I like you. I like the way you handle yourself. You seem like a reasonable man. Why don't we make a deal. What's it worth to you to drag your considerable talents back to the gutter you crawled out of?

Out Of The Past: "You're like a leaf that blows from one gutter to another."

The Big Heat: "We're all sisters under the mink"

The Postman Always Rings Twice: "With my brains and your looks, we could go places"

Sweet Smell of Success: "Can you deliver?" "Tonight. Before you go to bed. Cat's in the bag, and the bag's in the river."

The Hoodlum: "Yeah but you wait. I've got ideas. I'll get plenty of money. Yeah, dough. That's the only thing that will cover up the stink of the city dump!"

Detour: "Life's like a ballgame. You've got to take a swing at whatever comes along before you wake up and it's the ninth inning."

D.O.A.: "The way this guy holds onto a dollar, you'd think they weren't printing them anymore."

The Big Combo: "I'm gonna break him so fast he won't have time to change his pants."

Force Of Evil: "A man could spend the rest of his life trying to remember what he shouldn't have said."

Gun Crazy: "We go together, Annie. I don't know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together."

The Set-Up: "I tell you, Tiny, you gotta let him in on it. " "How many times I gotta say it? There's no percentage in smartenin' up a chump."

Asphalt Jungle: "He hasn't got enough blood left in him to keep a chicken alive."

Criss Cross: "I should have been a better friend. I shoulda stopped you. I shoulda grabbed you by the neck, I shoulda kicked your teeth in. I'm sorry Steve."

Pickup on South Street: "You'll always be a two-bit cannon. And when they pick you up in the gutter dead, you're hand'll be in a drunk's pocket."

Suddenly: "Show me a guy who has feelings, and I'll show you a sucker."

Gunman in The Streets: "Tell you what we do. I got a gun and you got a pretty good idea. We compromise." "How's that?" "We do it my way."

Touch of evil: "I didn't recognize you. You should lay off those candy bars." "It's either the candy or the hooch. I must say, I wish it was your chili I was gettin' fat on. Anyway, you're sure lookin' good." "You're a mess, honey."

Borderline: "All dames will stay in line as long as the payoff is big enough at the end."

Sudden Fear: "Remember what Nietzsche said - 'Live Dangerously.'" "You know what happened to Nietzsche." "What?" "He died."

Body & Soul: "Everybody dies. Ben, Shorty, even you." "What's the point?" "No point -- that's life."

This Gun For Hire: "What's the matter? You look like you've been on a hayride with Dracula."

Big Clock: "You know, Earl has a passion for obscurity. He won't even have his biography in 'Who's Who'." "Sure. He doesn't want to let his left hand know whose pocket the right one is picking."

Scarlet Street: ‘Kitty’ March (Joan Bennett): You wouldn’t know love if it hit you in the face. Millie Ray (Margaret Lindsay): If that’s where it hits you - you out to know!

Out of the Past: Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum): I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked.

Force of Evil: Joe Morse (John Garfield): I wasn’t strong enough to resist corruption, but I was strong enough to fight for a piece of it.

They Won’t Believe Me: Larry Ballentine (Robert Young): She looked like a very special kind of dynamite, neatly wrapped in nylon and silk. Only I wasn’t having any. I’d been too close to an explosion already. I was powder shy.

The Steel Trap: Jim Osborne (Joseph Cotten): The difference between the honest and the dishonest is a debatable line. We’re suckers if we don’t try to cram as much happiness as possible in our brief time, no matter how. Everybody breaks the law.

No way out: Edie Johnson (Linda Darnell): I used to live in a sewer. Now I live in a swamp. I’ve come up in the world.