Outline for the Presentation

I.               Introduce your film and provide the premise of the film in three sentences or fewer.

    In Brick, the teenaged Brendan, sets out on a search for the reason of the murder of his ex-girlfriend, who was missing and found dead.

II.         Characteristics and Conventions of the Film that Link it to Classic Film Noir

Protagonist is a detective figure on a quest for a missing person. Brendan is our protagonist, but like many classic noir figures, he is on the morality fence he hides it in order to conduct his own investigation without interference by the police. 

first quote:                                                                  

Context: 
The scene where Dode is on the phone with Brendan and he is trying to scare Brendan by telling the Pin and Tugger the killer.

Quote from the Source:

Brendan Frye: Hire another hash head to blade me?

Dode: Don't need no blade, Shamus. I just gotta squawk.

Brendan Frye: What do you want?

Dode: Just to see you sweat.

Significance:

Protagonist suffers appalling abuse in the search of truth. Beaten by Pin’s gang to persuade him to stop the investigation. The Pin sent one of his to attack Brendan, Brendan ended up beat the guy.

second quote:

Context:

David Denby, the author of "Tabacco and Drugs.

Quote from the Source:

“Yes, the knight in shining armor must walk down those mean streets; he must act like a criminal, enter the underworld (in this case, a suburban basement with prefab paneling), get himself beaten up, outsmart everyone, and, in the end, give us the pleasures of sin and of justice at the same time.” 

Significance:

The protagonist dose have to go to the dark side to get want he wants.

ProtagonProtaProtagonist is on of the characteristic as noir and so is a femme fatale. Femme fatale attempts to manipulate the protagonist like Laura manipulates Brendan in the film “Brick.” Beautiful close up shots of the little clues throughout the film and of course the outfits of the femme fatale Laura.

III.        Elements of the Film that Deviate from Classic Film Noir and Link it to Neo Noir

Protagonist suffers appalling abuse in the search of the truth, Beaten by Pin’s gang to persuade him to stop the investigation.

Location deviates from typical noir setting.

            Set in the modern-day Southern California neighborhood and high school.

Anxieties of the time.

High school, often associated with innocent children, id becoming just as corrupt as miscreant in the streets.

                       

Devastation of heroin.

Annotated Bibliography: Brick

Dark 'Brick' high school noir, but is it homage or satire?

In this review it talking about the language the film and how it relates to the storyline. It is a hardboiled detective story set in an affluent Californian high school where everyone speaks a wonderful mixture of teen slang and 70-year-old pulp lingo. Example “bulls," "pipers," "scrapers," "yegs" and "saps"

Curtright, Bob. "Dark 'Brick' high school noir, but is it homage or satire?." Wichita Eagle, The (KS)(2006): Newspaper Source. EBSCO. Web. 9 May 2011.

Dark sarcasm in the classroom

Rian Johnson's stylish teen noir murder flick “Brick” gets a gold star from JAMES CHRISTOPHER. This article is basally about the plot of the movie and then it turns out to be about the hero, Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), review. It gives details in the plot and Joseph talks about it too. It also gives some informant on hot much the movie cost at Wal-Mart.

James, Christopher. "Dark sarcasm in the classroom." Times, The (United Kingdom) n.d.: Newspaper Source. EBSCO. Web. 9 May 2011.

OLD NOIR FOR A NEW GENERATION

This article is about the film “Brick” and how it is related to film noir. It talks about the style and some elements of noir. It says that people not and days don’t really know the genre film noir and how it’s becoming new again. Neo noir is the new term for it. It also talks about the film itself. The plot of the film and how it I rated.

Rainer, Peter. "OLD NOIR FOR A NEW GENERATION." Christian Science Monitor 98.92 (2006): 14.Newspaper Source. EBSCO. Web. 9 May 2011.

She's more of a 'Brick'-out hit

This article is about Nora Zehetner, who plays Laura, a rich girl who helps high school gumshoe Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) find his ex-girlfriend's killer. She plays a high school femme fatale in the Sundance hit “Brick”. The review is about her and what she thinks of the film. And a little of her background and how she got the part in the film.

Sharon, Knolle. "She's more of a 'Brick'-out hit." USA Today n.d.: Newspaper Source. EBSCO. Web. 9 May 2011.

Here's looking at you, kid (and your film)

"Brick" is a teen movie like no other, because it carries the elaborate plot and staccato dialogue of a film noir straight out of the 1940s. The guy with the most to say is Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a moody detective who cracks heads and tracks down clues. The article talks about how this film is one of the best film noir because of the storyline. In the article it says that the detective is a young boy in high school and its perfect for film noir.

Villarreal, Phil. "Here's looking at you, kid (and your film)." Arizona Daily Star (Tucson, AZ) (2006):Newspaper Source. EBSCO. Web. 9 May 2011.

Brick

Ok so I had a difficult time finding a neo noir/ film noir movie. I went on Netflix and type in neo noir then film noir movies in the search bar. I list of movies came out but none of the one Mr. Toth assign. :/

So I watched a few on the list: 

“The Square” which was lame. 

“The Naked City” which was good but it wasn’t neo noir! 

“Cement” which I couldn’t find any reviews!

A classmate took me that “Brick” was on there so I watch it. Good thing I did because I found neo noir and film noir elements in the film and I also found reviews on it as well. The film's narrative centers on a hardboiled detective story that takes place in a Californian suburbia. Most of the main characters are high school students. The film draws heavily in plot, characterization, and dialogue from hardboiled classics, especially from Dashiell Hammett. The title refers to a block of heroin, compressed roughly to the size and shape of a brick. There is a femme fatale, male protagonist- the anti-hero, detective, crime, murder and sex and drugs. It told in a flashback and has a large number of violent. Brendan the anti-hero has an ex-girlfriend Emily, who reaches out to him unexpectedly and then vanishes. Ends up finding her dead. Brendan enlists the aid of his only true peer, The Brain, while keeping the assistant vice principal only occasionally informed of what quickly becomes a dangerous investigation.

Works Cited

"'Brick'-a Teen Film Noir." Rolling Stone 997 (2006): 75. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 7 May 2011.

James, Christopher. "Dark sarcasm in the classroom." Times, The (United Kingdom) n.d.: Newspaper Source. EBSCO. Web. 7 May 2011.

Rainer, Peter. "OLD NOIR FOR A NEW GENERATION." Christian Science Monitor 98.92 (2006): 14.Newspaper Source. EBSCO.          Web. 7 May 2011.

Sarah, Nicholson. "dvd reviews." Courier Mail, The (Brisbane) (n.d.): Newspaper Source. EBSCO. Web. 7 May 2011.

Villarreal, Phil. "Here's looking at you, kid (and your film)." Arizona Daily Star (Tucson, AZ) (2006):Newspaper Source. EBSCO. Web. 7 May 2011

The Kidnapper Bell and the City of Commerce.

[[LATE BLOG #9]]

“The Kidnapper Bell” and “City of Commerce” both have a great description of places. “The Kidnapper Bell” environment is located in Los Angeles River. This place is well distinguishes it from other places. Even through there are graffiti is anywhere in Los Angeles, this story talks about the six cats on the covers on the walls. This story create a distinct sense of place because of the six cats and what are under that one cat, the tunnel to the room where the sister is kidnap. I really do think that “The Kidnapper Bell” story give a good description what one would experience in the locations. The LA River.

The story it self was weird but interesting. Didn’t really understand the ending but that is Noir for you. Noir always has weird twisting ending. Some I do understand and others I do. In the “City of Commerce” the ending wasn’t too bad. I got it. In the “The Kidnapper Bell” the guy Jim was suppose to be the good guy. He was trying to help out the girl to find her sister. The weird part to me was when he wanted to go back and he does to change his clothes. Which I understand why. The part I don’t understand is why goes change into the kidnappers clothes. And why sleep with them on?? Weird! Another thing, Jim had a wife??? What? So why was he trying to get laid by the other girl he help out? And why did the author made him seem so good in the beginning than twisted things up at the end withal these question I was soo confuse at he end of this story. Haa but I like it :D The “City of Commerce” is different because the ending is more understanding. But is similar to “The Kidnapper Bell” because of the detail in the story.

The “City of Commerce” has a great description of places as well. Its located in Los Angeles, Commerce, where is known for its casino.  It really doesn’t distinguish it from other places with casino but it dose to Los Angeles area. Its nice and a lot of light. In this story the main character gives a good description what one would experience in the location. He talks about the pokers tables the carpets and the colors of the walls which is like the reader an be there as they read the story. 

Best and most difficult to classify as noir.

In the “the Golden Cost” section I would have to say that the story “the Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones” is the best example of noir. In the other hand, in my opinion the story  "Kinship" would have to be the difficult to classify as noir.

The "Kinship" is about a Filipino boy who grows up and ended up in gangs. He wants to do better for himself and for Veronica. Veronica has a son name Emerson who is disabling and is being bullied. Well the story to me can be noir in some areas like violent. But I like story “the Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones” better for noir.

In the story “the Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones” there was some crazy woman call Cherie. Well you don’t know she’s crazy till the end but ya.  I guess you can call her the femme fatal in this story. Femme fatal = noir.  Tate another character can be the male protagonist. Once again male protagonist = noir.  Noir crazy twisted ending = “the Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones” ending. :D Which is the famous femme fatal Cherie, kills Tate for calling the cops on her. Haa poor Tate.

Yes and .....NO

I would have to say YES on noir to "The Method" story. Holly wasn’t the femme fatale in the story, but the protagonist. The method is a weird, twisted, but interesting story. She did what she had to do to safe herself. I do consider the story to be noir because there a murder done a twisted ending which shocked me but I kind of knew it was coming. It was dark and the guy was freaky and weird. That’s noir for u.

 "Morocco Junction 90210" was interesting as well. People can say it was boring but I really did enjoyed reading it. It was more like a mystery story than a noir to me. But I did like the ending of it through. 

Stories

I picked option two. Reading the two stories "Dangerous Days" and "Midnight in Silcone Alley," they both take place in LA but in different areas. Dangerous Day its in Leimert Park where a lot of Blacks and Mexicans lives. It’s more on the poor side and where the housing are low income. Thugs and gangsters get control. Midnight in Silcone Alley is more on the wealthy side in San Marino. It’s an Asian culture and the crime is not as bad as the other story. Both stories have a murder involve. Their characters are well known have you read the stories. Both are good but different stories of neo-noir. 

Neo-Noir or Film Noir???

Both neo- noir and film noir are really alike, with a little bit of differences. Neo-noir is a new style of film noir. In other words neo-noir is the modern way of film noir. The themes of both neo-noir and film noir are “greed, corruption, obsession, and deception reflect an entire society's sickness. The protagonist, in the tradition of hard-boiled detective novels, is often characterized as a cynical loner who is psychologically damaged or morally flawed” [(Naremore 222) Fireman.]. He might find himself drawn into masochistic love affairs with captivating, predatory, destructive women - femme fatales. Noir narratives explore "the male protagonist's need to investigate and punish the woman and his equally important need to adore her and be destroyed" (Naremore 264). Often, these are linked when the protagonist cannot destroy the threat that the femme fatale poses without destroying himself, too. The femme fatale's sexuality is linked with her treachery - noir made sex dangerous. Noir also made danger sexy, as in Gun Crazy, where criminal behavior is a turn-on for a pair of outlaw lovers. The narrative itself makes use of a convoluted, melodramatic plot, the sarcastic wit of the protagonist, and a cool underworld vernacular. Flashbacks fragment the plot and suggest fatalism - beginning the story at the bleak end leaves no room for the audience to hope for a better future, just as noir would imply that the mistakes of a character will forever haunt him with no hope of escape. Voice-over narration links the narrative together, but implies that the entire story is subjective (Fireman).Neo-noir is different by it having colors in it, it is more modern in culture.

Review

            Reading a few reviews, the Double Indemnity: A Policy That Paid Off by John Allyn got my attention.  Maybe it was the part where is said A Policy That Paid Off, where I think its ironic title for his review of the novel itself. John compares the two ending and discusses the end as a policy that paid off. I think it’s ironic because in the end in both novel and film this classic film noir, someone ends up dying. "In the original story Walter and Phyllis carry out a murder and stage a phony accident on a train to collect double indemnity on her husband’s insurance policy. They might get away with it but fear, inevitably, drives them apart. Each plan to kill the other, and Phyllis, who is more than a little pathological, it the first to act." she shoots him and he ends up in the hospital telling the story to Keys, to save Lola, (Phyllis daughter who Walter fall in love with) who is the cops number one suspect. End of the novel Keys lets Walter escape on a boat to Mexico where Phyllis is also on. While being on the boat "they feel they have been spotted and decide to jump overboard in a suicide." So they both die in the novel at the end.

            In the same review John talks about the film which has I different ending. "In the film version the ending finds Walter and Phyllis meeting for that last in her living room. Phyllis shoots Walter and wounds him on the shoulder, but she cant fire that second shot and thereby becomes a more sympathetic, more tragic figure than the cool-blooded Phyllis in the book. Walter then shoots her to protect Lola.

             Something I like about John's review was how stated "there is no suicide plan so there is no reason to establish Phyllis as pathological." Which is true. Walter had the control film than the novel. " This turn makes her motive for murder more understandable and makes Walter more acceptable than the sap in the book who will follow Phyllis anywhere." in a way I didn’t like the ending of the film because john is correct. Phyllis is not the femme fatal in the film. Well she is but she turns out to be care-ness at the end instead of careless.

            Another thing I liked about john's review that he made sense to the film ending. "By returning to the living room where Walter and Phyllis first meet, as much a cage in the city as the insurance office, the film is given a satisfying dramatic and visual unity." once again I agree with John's review!

Allyn, John. "Double Indemnity: A Policy That Paid Off." Literature Film Quarterly 6.2 (1978): 116. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 7 Mar. 2011.

..

            The ending of the novel does not satisfied me at all. I was expecting something different maybe more action more drama or something with a bang at the end. The conclusion was unclear and kind of mysterious. What really happen at the end?? Did they getaway with murder and was on their retreat to Mexico? Did they get married? Or did Walter and Phyllis committed suicide? Whatever it was I did not like it. 

            Walter and Phyllis should have received different treatment in my eyes. It was obvious that something was going to happen to the both of them. But never picture that the ending that, it ended up to be. Like I have been talking about Phyllis being the femme fatale and Walter being the ambiguous protagonist (on others blogs), we all knew that Walter was going to be in trouble at the ending for hanging around Phyllis, but never pictured death or married to the black widow. Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton “Towards a Definition of Film Noir,” said on the article "Sordidly or bizarrely, death always comes at the end of a tortured journey.  In every sense of the word, a noir film is a film of death."  So I guess I was expecting death, I was expecting death upon Phyllis, the bad, crazy woman but not Walter. 

Black Widow...

Phyllis falls perfectly under the description of an femme fatale in this tale. From the beginning I have called her the black widow because black widows are shy in nature but become fatale. Phyllis has been acting dumb since the beginning to get what she wants. The black widow waits for its catch, in this case Walter gave alone. She grabs him and won’t let him go. This is why I say that she is the mastermind and the femme fatale. Something that a femme fatale must have, manipulative, tricky but nice personality.

 She makes Walter believe that he is the control in the planning in which he has but that is what she wants. She tricks him in planning and doing her job without her doing anything. She acts like she was no clue in what she is doing; therefore Walter comes in and "takes" control. In chapter two she has the idea to kill her husband but she claims that she really can’t go through with it. "I haven’t any reason. He treats me as well as a man can treats a woman...we can’t. Its simply --insane." she acts this way after she plants the seed into Walters head to kill her husband. She waits for him to pop up and to take the roll of the mastermind. In a way he dose. He falls right into her trap. "Yes, its insane. We’re going to do it. I feel it... but you're going to do It." and this is the part where she gets happy ending. "Yes, god help me, I'm going to do it" (18).

He takes his roll really serious that he begins to coach her. "I showed her that her only chance was to talk dumb, not start the car, and wait him out, until he would get so sore, and so worried over time, that he would make a martyr out of himself. She kept at it. Just like she was coached" (43). I find it ironic that the student is teaching the teacher here. He has no clue that what he is telling her to do is what she is doing to him as he thinks.

Phyllis is the femme fatale and a perfect one I say. When Walter lacks in his own plan she pops up like a true mastermind. " That man must have weighed 200 pounds, but she had him on her back, holding him by the handle...his head was hanging down beside her head. They looked like something in a horror picture" (51). She had to carry her death husband because she thought that Walter was going to flake. When Walter asked her why was she carrying him and why didn’t she waited for him to carry him, she replied "where were you? Where were you?" "I was there. I was waiting-" "did I know that? Could I just sit there, with that in the car? (52). She got mad because that was his job and she had to pick up her picky to do something she wanted him to do.

Frustrated and deviant, half predator, half prey, detached yet ensnared woman, the femme fatale (Phyllis) for ya. 

Femme Fatale

By reading the first three chapters of "Double Indemnity" by James M. Cain, I got a better understanding of the term Femme Fatales. "Femme fatales - mysterious, duplicitous, double-crossing, gorgeous, unloving, predatory, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative and desperate women" (Primary Characteristics and Conventions of Film Noir:  Themes and Styles” handout). 

Watch This! [:

            

The Usual Suspect is one of the best movies in the world! To me at lease. I saw that movie when I was young and fall in LOVE with it. This movie can be found under the neo-noir. Film noir can be describe as "crime-infested, shadow-draped, black-and-white movies" as the article The Neo-Noir 90's describe it. Even thought this movie is not in black-and-white, I dose have the elements of film noir in it or neo-noir which mean new modern noir (color). 

The Usual Suspect starts off with police looking into a crime that happen on a boat the exploded on a pier in San Pedro. The police discover 27 bodies and money ($91 million) on the boat. Five man were arrested in New York and brought to the station together for questioning. These five man are pros in their crimes and they all agree to work together on a job that pays well. They all worked for a mystery guy, legendary mastermind criminal name Kaiser Söze. One of the elements of noir, mystery. The unknown is what made this film so enjoyable to watch. 

Later in the movie it becomes obvious that the five man did Söze wrong and now Söze wants revenge. Another element in noir, vengeance. The suspicion increase all through the movie as five man begins to turn on each other for continued existence. 

Of course there are only two people who survive massacre and fire on a ship docked, Verbal Kint, a crippled con man and a cruelly burned Hungarian terrorist. And of course Kaiser Söze. Knit, the only one that can talk, narratives the story throughout the movie, which is classic in a noir film. The movie itself is flashbacks and makes believe by Knit. 

Narratives are frequently complex and convoluted, typically told with flashbacks, which this movie has both.

Even though this movie dose not have a femme fatale or is in black-in-white, its still the best Noir movie! There is lot of action and doomy and dangerous sense. The love that face hat this movie has a weird but great ending, something that was not expected, a nice twist at the end! The movie itself well keeps you on your toes asking one question throughout the entire movie- who is Kaiser Söze?

 Hint Hint*** go rent/buy/see this movie! you will LOVE it!<3