Great film. Adrenaline is still coursing through my veins. Just go see it. The less you know the better. I'm going to have to see it again.

I also recommend Director Rian Johnson's first film, Brick. It's a modern day Raymond Chandler style noir set at an Orange County high school.

This guy is a fantastic writer.

...and he also directed Breaking Bad episodes? Really? Total bad ass.

Yeah. There's a good quote from Alan Moore where he talks about just that:

Apparently, someone asked Raymond Chandler once what he thought of Hollywood ruining all of his books. And he took them into his study and pointed up to the shelf where they all were, and he said, "Look, they're there. They're fine. They're okay." That's the attitude I have to take. The film hasn't ruined my book.

A few winters ago I read the Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe series. Then I'd find myself at the movies whenever there was an old noir classic. As a sort of offshoot I started looking in the uni library for books on grifters and confidence games. What I found was interesting but there's not a lot out there, unfortunately.

Confidence games fall into two categories; the "short con" and the "long con". What we see in these programs are mainly variations on short cons, (eg. the "pigeon drop" from the beginning of "The Sting") the practice of which often goes back more than a century.