At first blush, the work on display here is much more sketch-like than what has been appearing over the years at her Wordpress site (which has been dormant since the middle of last year).
The link below takes you to her second entry (the first was a rather abbreviated paean to Claude Rains, which would have been better had it simply focused on his work in THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS, which deserves a more in-depth treatment than what Nora provided). It, too, suffers from a scattershot approach and a too-pointed attempt to sum things up with variants of the "bon mot" sentence (these will be instantly recognizable when you encounter them).
Of most interest will be her (too-short) take on BORN TO KILL, which she thankfully elevates after giving too much air-time to the execrable excesses of Claude Chabrol's attempted burial of the "crime film" (an overwrought Cahiers du Cinema broadside occasionally cited by folks who have strange agendas of their own). As we edge toward twenty years since the Board's "Top 25" poll, I remain buoyed by the collective sensibility and sound judgment of those who participated when noting that BORN TO KILL ranks in our Top 25 (#22, to be exact, with votes cast for it by more than half of the participants). It is that rara avis, a "triangle melodrama" that is relentlessly hard-boiled even as it goes through its melodramatic paces, with an improbably perfect cast and a roller-coaster tonality that is arguably unique. When I finally pare down my film poster collection to some semi-modest set of "essentials," BORN TO KILL will definitely be one that survives the pruning.
SO do check out Nora's latest effort, and if you are so inclined, subscribe to her Substack--it's currently free, so you can follow it for awhile and see how it evolves. Some writers are attempting to create cash flow for themselves via Substack, but my guess is that it takes a serious commitment to such an effort to make it a viable, ongoing enterprise--and, to be honest, I'm not initially seeing enough "fire in the belly" from Nora for that to be the case here. That said, there's enough here that you might want to keep tabs on what she's doing (as I am).
Nitrate Diva at Substack: "Thanksgiving Wouldn't Be Thanksgiving..."
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