In the early days of the NC e-zine (the products of which have been relentlessly embargoed by the head honcho of the FNF) there were efforts made to make the edition adjacent to the NC festival more aligned content-wise with what was going to be screened...

...but such an effort was consistently thwarted by that same head honcho (in his role as the publisher). After a couple of attempts to make it happen (2010 and 2011), the editor-in-chief threw up his hands.

Such a goal has never completely died in the ensuing years, however--and the newest edition of the e-zine shows more pronounced indications of an abortive attempt to connect those ever-elusive dots.

CASE in point: the essay on the notable 1944 short subject Jammin' the Blues, written by NC Oakland's talented and astute musical director, Nick Rossi. It fits into the overarching theme of the festival ("Face the Music", which primarily celebrated the intersection of jazz and noir) and would appear to be the type of essay that would perfectly supplement an article or articles related to the festival theme.

It's a natural enough assumption...but it is relegated to the realm of the unwarranted when the e-zine reader discovers it is orphaned. No sibling material relating to jazz and noir appears anywhere else in the issue, even though it would be a natural tie-in for the festival (a notion amplified by the fact that the "Face the Music" theme will anchor the FNF festival schedule in 2026).

Was there supposed to be more, and it didn't materialize? Or was it an afterthought when it became clear that the new issue would not make it out before the beginning of NC Oakland?

AND then there is the appearance of the publisher's own contribution to the issue--a discussion of the noir aspects of Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. It has an extra dollop or two of the broad-shouldered pugnacity that so often bleeds into his prose, and there are the expected connect-the-dot moments (the identity of the fictional author narrating the noirscape in David Thomson's clever novel SUSPECTS), but what really stands out is the fact that IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE has had an afterlife, becoming a staple of the Christmas season.

So was this essay supposed to dovetail with a planned holiday pub date for the e-zine? Its appearance in mid-Februarv isn't quite as strange as discovering that the great French Xmas noir LE MONTE-CHARGE was released to theaters in May (!!) but it does set off at least a mild (metaphorical) reading on the "temporal geiger counter."

All this points to a grab-bag feel for the issue, a sense that strengthens when it becomes clear that this edition is bereft of a lead article. While the ongoing commitment to the topic of women writers in noir is laudable, Sloan de Forest's essay on "Undercover Authors" (female crime novelists who wrote using male pseudonyms...) is simply too slight to command the opening slot for the e-zine. The FNF brain trust (editor Imogen Smith and designer Michael Kronenberg) definitely seem to sense this--the essay is festooned with over-lavish illustrations to give it the requisite sense of length, but their efforts are only partially successful.

Similar issues plague most of the subsequent articles, from the wonky look at veteran art director Martin Obzina, to Danilo Castro's uncharacteristically wan look at the birth of the "noir sequel" (not much ado about something somewhat less). Westley Felton manages to escape such a morass with a more robust look at two Sam Fuller films that feature interracial romances (HOUSE OF BAMBOO and THE CRIMSON KIMONO), though it is not quite weighty enough to occupy the lead slot. (The original editor would have looked for a larger related topic to put in front of this essay--probably something related to thematic cross-pollination between American and Japanese noir--to lead off the issue, with Felton's essay as the followup...)

Nick Rossi's look at Jammin' the Blues is the best "regular feature" in the issue (though it's "jammed" into the NOIR OR NOT square peg/round hole cudgel that the publisher relentlessly imposes upon the e-zine's format), followed by solid work from Ben Terrall on the book vs. film peregrinations that were in play in the development of Akira Kurosawa's masterful HIGH AND LOW.

All in all, it's an issue that wasn't so much released with any form of fanfare but rather is something that kind of oozed out into existence, with essays that are pale reflections of now overly-familiar editorial themes. Consider it the e-zine as tapioca pudding--inoffensive, but forgettable within minutes of consumption.