In Need for a Holiday Pie/Neo-Noir Idea??

Look no further! For a limited time only, take home your very own Chinatown character Noah Cross PIE (chart)! Screenwriter Robert Towne really cooked up a doozy with this one, folks. I don't think there has ever been this complete of a villain since Jafar, and that's saying something. So while you gather around to celebrate [insert holiday here], take a moment to step back and appreciate the fact that even the most obnoxious and ornery of grandparents or second-uncles once removed do not even come NEARLY as close as Sir Cross did. Although it is unsettling to know that this human manifestation of cruel intentions was able to escape the clutches of the United States justice system, it is a comfort to know that he is probably going to get just as much (if not more) coming right back at him. Maybe not in this life, but definitely in his lives to come.
So please, this holiday season, deck the halls, bring us some figgy pudding and spin that dradle because someone, somewhere is wishing that their grandfather/dad wasn't such a creep.

Witty Title Concerning Kiss Me Deadly

Kiss me deadly, schmish me deadly.

I'm sorry but if that movie was supposed to be an allegory to ANY aspect of human nature, I am sad for humans. Frankly, I find it hard to reach a deeper conclusion from the film. How about instead of interpreting every little potential allusion, metaphor, symbol, stylistic choice a movie offers, we just take it at face value. I'm sure the director did certain things to achieve a certain mood or theme, but what if we eliminate the director? What if we just watch the movie and let bygones be bygones? It would just be a really raw, violent movie with hints of nuclear waste, a heavily-panting woman and a machisimo protagonist with a machisimo first name. Mike Hammer? Come on, that name is just begging to be paired with a punch in the face or a smooch with a girl. He happens to be the most engaging part of the film; the only one I could remotely understand, even if it wasn't much. The plot probably was not supposed to be the strong point of the film, but a little continuity would not hurt. I still don't know what the conflict was supposed to be. I think the director just wanted to base a story off of an awkwardly moaning woman... even if it was based on a novel....ummm.... yeah.

I realize that if all movies (or any works of art in that case) were met with cynicism, their intended purposes would die upon contact with the scrutiny. I just felt like being a cynic tonight.

Who am I kidding? Hands down the greatest movie I've ever seen.

Película Negra

Film noir is the cinematographic expression of disillusionment during the post-WWII era.

Out of the Past (1947) arrived only two years after the war ended, adding to the list of film noirs that offered a sort of escapism to postwar America, the way Hemingway and Steinbeck did with novels. Both mediums depict alienated or dissatisfied characters in realistic settings, however film took the viewers to a different level by offering a visual interpretation to the masses. People could live vicariously through film noir characters. Women could embody the femme fatale persona to escape the routine of their life. Men could envision themselves as razor-sharp protagonists who fell victim to temptation. No matter what their reasoning, people turned to these films to explain the crookedness of their own worlds. The movies offered a cynical view of human nature, which was already being experienced during that time period. The differences was that film noir allowed the menace of man to exist without actually causing harm to anyone.

In a way, the Second World War era has become a kind of film noir in itself. History acts as the protagonist who is damned by fate. Its past (Holocaust, Nazism, total war etc.) tries to be forgotten but comes back to haunt the present (Israeli-Palestinian conflict, dictator uprisings across the globe etc.). The power-corrupt axis leaders represent the crooks, and the tangled and shifting alliances embody the manipulative, double-crossing femme fatale character. Whether that analogy is a stretch or not, the aftermath of such a devastating war was answered by authors and filmmakers alike to help cope with the dejected society of the post WWII world.

e.t.e.r.n.a.l.s.u.n.s.h.i.n.e.o.f.t.h.e.s.p.o.t.l.e.s.s.m.i.n.d.

Ignorance is bliss. A controversial cliché that happens to be completely applicable to the events in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The characters who seek memory erasure in the movie, Clementine, Joel and Mary, could be considered blissful until elements of their past lives are reintroduced indirectly. For Clementine it was Patrick stealing Joel's memories to try and recreate a bountiful relationship. The only way Joel could ever cope with the realization that Clementine erased him from his memory was to reciprocate the procedure and essentially become ignorant of their past relationship. For Mary, her shot at blissful ignorance was disrupted by her innate and inerasable connection to Dr. Mierzwiak. Even the title happens to side with the fact that ignorance, or an erased memory, can provide bliss, or in this case, sunshine. The titular reference comes from the Alexander Pope poem, "Eloisa to Abelard".

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!/The world forgetting, by the world
forgot./Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

The lines address the potential, yet unattainable, concept of a cluelessly content society. This is disproved through the reconnections of Clementine and Joel. Despite the fact that they knew each other unbeknownst to the other, there was still tension and this sort of deja vu effect.The movie also alluded to existentialist Fredrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil when Mary quotes, "Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders." This is very much in favor of how easy for forgetful have it than those who have to own up to their memories.

The movie supports the ideal nature of blissful ignorance but shows that there can be no pure instance of it in real life.