Tipping My Fedora

As part of the celebrations for Fedora's 50th episode, special guest Nick Cardillo returns to conclude the exploration of his top 10 Sherlock Holmes movies. In part one we looked at The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), The Scarlet Claw (1944), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) and A Study in Terror (1965). We now enter the 1970s and a brand new approach to canonical fidelity ... To find ou...

To celebrate Fedora's 50th episode, our special guest is Nick Cardillo, author of several Sherlock Holmes pastiches in print and on audio. He joins me to pick his favourite movies featuring the most beloved, and most filmed, "consulting detective." This podcast became such an epic that we had to split it into two halves. In this first part, Nick and I discuss his choices covering films originally...

I am joined by Brad Friedman to look at Hitchcock's classic romantic thriller, REAR WINDOW, which was based on a short story by Noir maestro, Cornell Woolrich.  Brad blogs about Golden Age mystery books and movies at Ah Sweet Mystery: https://ahsweetmystery.com/ Spoiler alert: the plots for REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO, including their respective endings, are explored in detail.

Returning guests Matt and Luke, crime authors and hosts of the Cinema Sleuths podcast, visit Fedora to talk about their latest novels and give us a list of their 10 favourite Noir books. Authors up for discussion include Raymond Chandler, Philip Kerr, Sue Grafton and many more. We also slip in a quick look at Robert Altman's very eccentric private eye movie, The Long Goodbye (1973). For more info...

Sergio is joined by Steve Hunt to discuss Dario Argento's classic giallo, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, and its uncredited basis in Fredric Brown's exceptional 1949 Noir mystery novel, The Screaming Mimi.  Steve Hunt is the host of the superb Boxing Movie Podcast and author of, Heavyweight Title Fights of the 1980s: A Complete History. To listen to Steve's podcast, please visit: https://boxin...

Terence Fisher's 1953 whodunit, MANTRAP (US title: Man in Hiding), starring Lois Maxwell, Paul Henreid and Kay Kendall, is the latest thriller from the vaults of Hammer Films to be restored and released in a deluxe edition. Sergio is joined by Steve Rogers, of Hammer Archive & Product Development, to discuss the latest in the company's range of dual 4K UHD / Blu-ray sets.  For more information...

Today I am joined by crime author, critic, historian and archaeologist, Mike Ripley, to talk about his latest novel, BURIED ABOVE GROUND, which has just been published in paperback. A witty and clever mystery about the crime fiction industry, I quiz Mike about the sources of his inspiration and try to figure out just how realistic a depiction of the book trade this actually is. For more details ab...

Sergio is joined by Professor James Chapman, author of Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films, to look at the first 007 adaptation, the 1954 TV version of CASINO ROYALE, as well as the 1967 spoof and the 2006 Daniel Craig reboot. We then speculate about the future of the franchise under Amazon after 25 movies, wholly or partly, all overseen by the Broccoli family. To find ou...

Sergio is joined by Moira Redmond, she of the mighty Clothes in Books blog, to celebrate the work of Ross Macdonald, creator of PI Lew Archer and for many the natural successor to Hammett and Chandler. We look at his books, his life with his wife, celebrated mystery author Margaret Millar, and some of the films based on his novels including HARPER (1966) and THE DROWNING POOL (1975). both starring...

Sam Spade, the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, first appeared Black Mask magazine before publication in book form in 1930. Despite being an instant success, Hammett never wrote another book about his ultra hardboiled PI, though he did appear again in three short stories published in 1932. Between 1931 and 1941, as discussed with Mark Dillon on the last episode of Fedora , War...

Today’s podcast is devoted to THE MALTESE FALCON, the classic novel by Dashiell Hammett and its various film versions including the classic Humphrey Bogart version from 1941 and the two lesser-known adaptations that preceded it. My guest is Mark Dillon, the award-winning Toronto-based journalist specializing in film, TV and pop music. He is a former editor of Playback, the business publication for...

Today I am joined by Ayesha Khan - host of the prizewinning podcast, Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever* ( www.everyscififilm.com/ ) - to talk about one of our favourite movies, Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER (1982). In addition we will also look at its sequel, Denis Villeneuve's BLADE RUNNER 2049 and Philip K. Dick's original source novel, Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep?  In the podcast we mention Fi...

Sergio looks at Michael Anderson's 1958 suspense drama, CHASE A CROOKED SHADOW, a clever mystery with a strong cast and memorable payoff. It stars Anne Baxter as an heiress driven to near madness when a man turns up claiming to be her dead brother and everybody but her believes him. Richard Todd is the the smooth impostor and Herbert Lom plays the understandably confused police inspector. Though u...

For this special Christmas episode, Sergio is joined by Scott K Ratner for an in-depth look at Dashiell Hammett's novel The Thin Man. We also consider the series of six movies it spawned, all of them starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles and Skippy as their pet Terrier, Asta. Here's a full list of the films in the series: The Nick and Nora Charles Screwball Mystery Movies...

Sergio is joined by Luke Deckard and Matthew Booth, the hosts of the excellent Mean Streets podcast (https://meanstreetspodcast.podbean.com/) to find out what their top 10 Film Noir remakes are. The films under discussion include (in chronological order) are: THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) THE KILLERS (1964) FAREWELL MY LOVELY (1975) THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1981) NO WAY OUT (1987) NARROW MARGIN...

It's 40 years since Alan Plater's mellow comedy thriller THE BEIDERBECKE AFFAIR (1985), starring James Bolam and Barbara Flynn, first appeared on TV. Sergio is joined by Plater expert James Leggott to discuss the original serial and it's two sequels, THE BEIDERBECKE TAPES (1987) and THE BEIDERBECKE CONNECTION (1988). Dr James Leggott is Head of School, Design Arts and Creative Industries, at the N...

Sergio is joined by Vincent M. Gaine of Lancaster University to discuss Michael Mann's hitman neo-noir, Collateral, starring Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith. A thriller made on the cutting edge of digital cinema of 2004, this in-depth exploration of the film will look at the new technology used to make it, how it sits within Mann's filmography - and why Sergio really has a problem wi...

Brad Friedman is back to talk about  Hitchcock's 1940s Noir thrillers with Sergio! This time they discuss the romantic whodunit, SPELLBOUND (1945), the spy drama NOTORIOUS (1946) and the real-time suspense thriller, ROPE (1948). Brad blogs about Golden Age mystery books and movies at Ah Sweet Mystery: https://ahsweetmystery.com/ To read "The House of Dr Edwardes" by Francis Beeding, the basis for...

Special guest Jonathan Rigby joins Sergio to discuss WOMEN OF TWILIGHT (1952), the film adaptation of Sylvia Rayman's 1951 groundbreaking all-female play. Jonathan Rigby has been writing about films for over 30 years now - and has been an actor for even longer. He is the author of several books on horror cinema, including English Gothic, American Gothic and Euro Gothic - with American Gothic 2 on...

The Fedora podcast is one year old today. And it's also my birthday! To celebrate, my awesome buddy Professor Stacey Abbott (who also just had her birthday) makes a very welcome return visit to Fedora. This time we get together to celebrate the John Wick series starring the mighty Keanu Reeves. Please note, we pretty much spoil every single one of the films. [This episode is being re-presented to...

Today we launch headlong into the erotic thriller genre with a very deep dive into the 1992 box office smash, Basic Instinct. Starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, written by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Paul Verhoeven, this gaudy and controversial Neo Noir has many strong links to Hitchcock's Vertigo. To discuss this film and more, Sergio is joined by very special guest, Rebecca McCallum. N...

James Harrison of Film Noir UK joins Sergio to preview the 2025 Film Noir Fest, which is taking place from 31 October to 2 November at the Plaza Cinema in Weston-Super-Mare. This year's theme is heist movies and highlights include screenings of: Kubrick's KILLER'S KISS (1955) and THE KILLING (1956), Huston's THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950), Siodmak's CRISS CROSS (1949), Dassin's RIFIFI (1955) and Tarant...

Sergio is joined by blogger Aidan Brack, of Mysteries Ahoy, for an in-depth look at Akira Kurosawa's classic 1963 suspense thriller, High and Low. This seems like the perfect time to look back at the film with the release of Spike Lee's remake, Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington. Adapted from King's Ransom - the tenth volume in Ed McBain's series of police procedurals featuring the cops...

Following on from the first part last week, Sergio and Sheldon Hall reunite for a second bout of Film Noir scepticism. How well does Sergio stand up to Sheldon's stinging and relentless criticism? The genres being considered include Westerns, Horror, Science Fiction and the work of Alfred Hitchcock.  To listen to the first part of the podcast, visit: Apple buff.ly/wDl4xnB Spotify buff.ly/34bRrLu Y...

At the beginning of every podcast, Sergio asks his guests to give their definition of Film Noir, a notoriously difficult assignment. This week, in the first of a two-part episode, Dr Sheldon Hall, long-time friend to Sergio and the podcast, picks holes in the host's own attempts to define the term.  They consider two genres, screwball comedy and the gangster movie, and look to see how well they ov...