noir

Winter’s Bone

admin — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:01:00 +0000

In my review of 2009’s Oscar-nominated film Precious I stated that it was incredibly difficult to objectively review the film because the realism that is presented is so detached from my own circumstances. After seeing Debra Granik’s gritty Winter’s Bone I find myself faced with a similar conundrum, although not to such an extreme.

For people living in the rural areas of the Ozark mountains a fulfilled life is not one of luxury. The goal for an individual is simply to survive rather than thrive in the harsh natural and social environment. The world presented in Granik’s dark thriller seems desolate and cold, but through the female protagonist it manages to glimmer with hope. Brilliantly filmed against the poetic landscapes of the Ozark mountains, Winter’s Bone is a glimpse into rural morality and the emergence of an unlikely hero.

Relative newcomer Jennifer Lawrence is a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination for her performance as Ree Dolly, a seventeen-year-old with a lot of responsibility. She is the chief caregiver of her two younger siblings, she lives with her nearly catatonic mother, and she only occasionally shows up for school. Her meth-dealing father has been arrested, posted the family’s house as bail, and vanished. If he does not show up at court, the family will lose their house and be thrown into a world where they have more enemies than friends.

The narrative is essentially straight forward, which allows Granik to lace the film with tension. Granik brilliantly proves that action does not equal tension and most scenes start and end on high notes with an anticipated release that never comes. At its heart, Winter’s Bone is a film noir with a missing person chase, a look into an underground crime world, and a feeling of constant danger. Lawrence successfully creates a new feminist hero that also harkens back to the great noir detectives of the 1940s.

In a low populated area like the rural Ozarks, the morality that is presented does not fit the mold that urban and suburban dwellers have become accustomed to. When a significant portion of the workforce consists of unskilled laborers, the job market is incredibly volatile. In one scene Ree sees her only two possible futures in two separate school rooms: join the army and escape or become a mother and join her miserable relatives.

Nobody appears content with their existence in Winter’s Bone except for the children who only appear in the film in brief segments where they can be seen jumping on a trampoline or playing in hay. The fact that the children get such joy out of such meager circumstances shows that Ree’s fight is worth it.

Cross-posted from Film Misery

Written by: Alex Carlson, July 7th 2010

Evelyn Evelyn

admin — Fri, 07 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Evelyn Evelyn

Eleven Records

“Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.” —Susan Sontag

Evelyn Evelyn is the creation of Amanda Palmer (of the Dresden Dolls and lately a successful solo artist) and musician Jason Webley. Palmer and Webley have built a layered piece of art rather than simply a collaborative musical effort or side project. It includes an intricate back story in addition to its musical content: Evelyn Evelyn are conjoined twins, each one named Evelyn Neville (since neither they nor anyone else could keep straight their given names “Eva” and “Lyn”) who were purportedly discovered via MySpace by Palmer and Webley. Between them they have three legs, two arms, two hearts, three lungs, and a single liver. Born in 1985, there is little information known about the twins until 1996, when they appeared at Dillard and Fullerton's Traveling Circus. In 2007, Palmer and Webley “made contact” with Evelyn and Evelyn and encouraged them to make a studio record.

I first heard about this project at an Amanda Palmer show and thought it was creative, interesting, and different. However, the feminist blogosphere went supernova with rage after the Evelyn Evelyn project became more widely known, claiming Palmer engaged in “crip drag,” and objecting to the idea that conjoined twins “need help” from two able-bodied people. To complicate matters more, the twins' background (as stated on the record) involves a history of sexual exploitation and abuse, which was further fuel for feminist media laser-sights. Afterward, Palmer seemed not to be able to do anything right in the eyes of Internet feminism, and a quick Google search will reveal headlines like “3 Reasons We're Over Amanda Palmer,” “Amanda Palmer Behaves Like An Asshole Part 37,” and “How Amanda Palmer Lost a Fan or, My Own Private Backlash.” (Interestingly, Jason Webley seemed largely spared from the backlash for a project he helped create.)

As for the music itself, the twelve songs on Evelyn Evelyn are catchy, almost jingle-like tunes that rely heavily on piano, accordion, ukulele, and violin, and Palmer and Webley harmonize wonderfully. “The Tragic Events of September” parts one, two, and three are spoken word over a spooky piano background in which the twins tell of their woe-filled life while speaking of themselves in the third person. Each one is punctuated with sound effects and lines spoken by the “characters” in the song. Other songs on the record, including “Sandy Fishnets,” “Elephant Elephant,” and “Chicken Man,” further detail events in the twins' lives.

“My Space,” which is a tribute to the social networking site on which the twins were supposedly discovered, was heralded as the singing debut of Frances Bean Cobain; her voice is layered over many other guest singers, however, and is impossible to distinguish. This song sounds like a parody of every bombastic '80s power ballad in memory, and includes drums and a lengthy guitar solo. The album ends with a very pretty ukulele cover of Joy Division's “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

This record is of interest to fans of show tunes, noir, cabaret, and Tin Pan Alley. The theatricality and operatic nature of the music and storyline will appeal to ex-drama students, and current fans of Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley will appreciate the interesting tangent in their respective current careers that still maintains the level of cleverness and originality fans have come to expect from each.

Written by: Natalie Ballard, May 7th 2010

A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Paul Theroux

Harcourt

Here’s the thing about reading a book that’s set in the place you live: it obliges you to scrutinize the setting, the authenticity of the dialogue, and the accuracy of the story in a way you may not have done otherwise. This effect becomes magnified when the place in which you live is not the place you are from, and when your own situated existence in that un-rooted place resembles that of the author’s. Aside from one’s desire for realism and reflexivity in the story, the reading provides a way of sorting out or reinforcing one’s own position as possessing superior knowledge of, having become better acclimated to, or garnering more acceptance as a foreigner in that place. It is for these reasons that I urge you to take some aspect of my repugnance toward A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta with a grain of noon.

Paul Theroux’s seemingly self-aware writing of this noir-esque novel is navel gazing, thinly disguised. The narrator, Jerry Delfont, is loosely based on the author himself: a travel writer who has wound up in Calcutta with an acute case of writer’s block, or the double entrendred “dead hand.” Delfont receives a handwritten request from a wealthy American expat, the businesswoman cum philanthropist Merrill Unger, who is in need of his assistance to clear up a delicate matter involving her son’s friend (implied to be the son’s lover), Rajat, and the body of a dead boy. More mysterious than the mystery itself is the untidy explanation as to why exactly Mrs. Unger would call upon a travel writer to do a detective’s job, but this is giving too much inquiry to something so banal. There are far better things to take issue with here.

I don’t know Theroux’s history with the City of Joy, but he got several elements plainly wrong, like the timing of Durga Puja and monsoon, the turns of phrase in Banglafied English, and the ins-and-outs of Shakta philosophy, mythology, and tantric practice. Since it is pretty standard for Western authors to have a baseless preoccupation with the Oriental exotic, and so I was expecting these kinds of errors from the jump, even this wasn’t my primary source of disappointment. That came from the wretched writing (which becomes all the more wretched with Theroux’s attempts at the erotic) and the utterly predictable plot, whose saving grace could have been its setting, were it not for the obvious artifice of its description, its appearance a kitschy vehicle for an otherwise bland story.

A Dead Hand seems to be an exercise in giving mention to the things that amuse and repulse the handful of tourists who make their way to Calcutta, and from the looks of it, Theroux is quite taken with himself for producing such a book. (There is even a moment in the narrative where Delfont has a drink with the actual Theroux in what superficially comes across as self-deprecation, but is tinged with egoistic megalomania.) Unfortunately, he might be the only one so taken.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, February 26th 2010

Portland Noir

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Edited by Kevin Sampsell

Akashic Books

Noir is easier to recognize than to define. The best dictionary definition I found was, “crime fiction featuring hard-boiled cynical characters and bleak sleazy settings.” Portland Noir, then, has a self-explanatory title: it is a collection of short, dark stories that take place in Portland, Oregon. Akashic Books has published a whole series of similar collections set in numerous cities in the U.S. and around the globe.

Reading this book made me want to immediately find a copy of Chicago Noir. Since I’ve never been to Portland, I felt like I was missing out. I was unfamiliar with the neighborhoods and businesses mentioned, and could not judge the accuracy of Portland’s portrayal. It was clear that the city was more than just a setting; Portland is almost another character in many of the pieces.

Despite my ignorance of Portland, I still found the stories very creative and enjoyable. Some of the tales were more traditional noir pieces, with Philip Marlowe-type protagonists and centering around crimes. Other stories had the feel of noir, but might not fit the classic definition.

As with most short fiction collections, the stories vary greatly. Few readers will enjoy every story, but many will enjoy several. Characters include cops and private eyes, drug addicts and prostitutes, murderers and artists, hipsters and activists. Stories involve murder, blackmail, burglary, torture, vandalism, and even a little romance. There is even a comic book style illustrated story, “Gone Doggy Gone” by Jamie S. Rich & Joëlle Jones. Truly, this book has something for every noir fan.

I felt deep disdain for the narrator of the opening story, “The Clown and the Bard,” by Karen Karbo, in which a sexist low-life gets away with killing his ex-girlfriend. But,I was captivated by the next story, “Julia Now,” by Luciana Lopez, in which a woman becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to a previous tenant of her home. I was strangely captivated by “The Sleeper” by Dan DeWeese, a wandering tale of a newspaper delivery man with a possible substance abuse problem. “Virgo” by Jess Walter is a surprising, and surprisingly funny, story about a disgruntled newspaper employee who alters the horoscopes to harass his astrology-believing ex-girlfriend. The narrator is completely unlikable, yet laugh-out-loud funny:

We’d had the same old fight, with the same stale grievances Tanya had been lobbing at me for three months, almost since the day I moved in: Blah, blah, stalled relationship; blah, blah, stunted growth; blah, blah, I worry that you’re a psychopath…

“Burnside Forever” by Justin Hocking–which opens with the two-word sentence, “Fuck Hawaii.”–reminded me strongly of Michael Hornburg’s novel Bongwater, which is also set (mostly) in Portland. “People Are Strange” by Kimberly Warner-Cohen, is a disturbing story about a woman determined to track down her missing identical twin sister. I’d hate to ruin the twist, but know this: Happy endings are rarely found in noir.

Written by: Kellie Powell, September 1st 2009

Sexy Thrills: Undressing the Erotic Thriller

admin — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:40:00 +0000

By Nina K. Martin

University of Illinois Press

Growing up, I loved Hitchcock films and film noir, an odd choice for a child who came of age with color television, Rambo and Reagan. Fast forward to post-college years later when I took a job at a video rental store to support a poorly stipend internship, where ninety percent of the store’s revenue was from the sale and rental of adult films. Did Barbara Stanwyck and Tipi Hendren lead to this?

According to Nina K. Martin in Sexy Trills: Undressing the Erotic Thriller, they just might have (thanks for introducing me to the old flicks mom!). The erotic thriller is soft-core, direct to video pornography with elaborate sets and romanticized stories, generally aimed at women - as opposed to hard-core pornography, which, with its emphasis on penetration and myriad other sexual acts and little to no premise to get there, is usually aligned with male pleasure. Using a selection of film texts of the genre, Martin analyzes the effect of the erotic thriller on the construction of heterosexual female sexuality in contemporary American society. According to Martin, erotic thrillers have well-define formulaic patterns - including gothic and film noir borrowings - that define the genre. Within these various narrative texts, sexuality for the heterosexual female is safely explored with in the permitted boundaries and resolves itself around either true love (marriage) or punishment for digressions in personal and professional lives.

Taking an academic look at non-academic texts, Martin shows that the idea of “what women want” is more about what men tell women that women want. Nearly all media companies are owned by men, and almost all film directors are men, so in a mass media and consumer-driven world, contemporary culture is a homogenized template of what individuals are told to desire and need, and dictates come from Hollywood, Hitchcock, Cosmopolitan, Rachel Ray and women’s pornography. And ultimately, as Martin points out, the erotic thriller reinforces women’s subordinate place in society because women—even when in charge of their sexual expression—still have their sexual services purchased and made available for purchase, primarily for men. As a woman is sexually empowered in the films through fulfillment of personal desires, she is disempowered within the public sphere for her actions, thus reemphasizing the public/private split in society where power and authority are mutually exclusive to sexual expression and fulfillment (does anyone view Hillary Clinton as a sexualized woman?). Individual women’s sexuality, Martin states, is inseparable from culture representations of individual women’s sexuality and is not reconcilable with public life and power the way men’s sexuality is. Jenna Jameson is for the bedroom only, Hillary has no sex life (wasn’t that why there was Monica?), and Hitchcock's Tipi is punished for her sexual urges and desires by giant black birds.

Despite the academic prose and evocations of Freud and Foucault, Martin’s critique of the erotic thriller is accessible to interested audiences looking at the text as film criticism, feminist criticism or both (for uninterested audiences there is a smattering of still frames from select films). Martin doesn’t enter the feminist pornography debate because, as she states explicitly in her introduction, the book is primarily film criticism and secondarily feminist criticism. However, she is attuned to feminist concerns and feminisms. Through this numbered lens, the book becomes more interesting for its inability to judge pornography as either pro-woman or anti-woman. Instead, Martin cleanly analyzes how sex is marketed to heterosexual women by well-defined, status-quo affirmations of what is considered normalized (and non-threatening) sexuality and, therefore, doesn’t detach her thesis from the effect of the Second and Third Waves. The empowerment of women, Martin tells us, is through a dictum and language that are not our own.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, July 20th 2007

New Orleans Noir

admin — Fri, 04 May 2007 20:10:00 +0000

Edited by Julie Smith

Akashic Books

Unlike every other volume of short stories I've read, none of the stories in this book disappointed me. Written by authors who live or have lived in the Big Easy, New Orleans Noir digs below the surface and into the social fabric of a city that had its troubles long before Hurricane Katrina. To say that it pushes the reader out of her comfort zone would be a major understatement.

The collection is divided into two parts: pre- and post- Katrina. Each of the 18 stories is set in a different neighborhood in the city. In Part I, "Before the Levees Broke," the reader travels from a modern day bar in Mid-City to a brothel in the Swamp in 1833, and back again. Characters range from a burnt-out police detective who helps a colleague get away with murder; to a former slave who is a doctor, but must support himself by playing piano in the pre-civil war South; to a seemingly innocent female co-ed who, with a friend, lures a man to his death during Mardi Gras.

Part II, "Life in Atlantis," is equally grim, with more looting, murder and death. The common theme in both parts is, essentially, violence; whether it's a shady real estate hound getting burned to death or a ten-year-old who bleeds to death in a cemetery after shooting at the police, the stories tear at your gut. Racial tension and discrimination, before and after the hurricane, is also a recurring and important theme. Significantly, it's not always easy to determine who is or isn't justified in their actions; I found myself sympathizing with both cops and thieves.

Despite the fact that this collection is gritty, often bloody and frequently depressing, it's a fascinating portrayal of a city that has always had social troubles ignored by the rest of the country. In that it is a call to action.

Another reason to get buy this book: a portion of the sales support the New Orleans Public Library and K.A.R.E.S., which awards grants to writers affected by Hurricane Katrina. Despite all that they had gone through, many of the writers waived their fees to make this possible.

Written by: M.L. Madison, May 4th 2007

Always

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:49:00 +0000

By Nicola Griffith

Riverhead Books

Norwegian Aud Torvingen was born into a life of wealth and privilege. The former police officer gives back to the community by teaching women self-defense. The new women in her latest course cross all social and financial lines so that a southern society belle is on an even footing with a housewife. The women savor each other’s triumphs until one day one of them has to put into practice what she learned.

After dealing with officials following the woman’s act, Aud flies to Seattle where she owns property that she must clean up as her property manager violated OSHA and EPA rules. The woman was stealing from Aud’s account pretending to fix things while pocketing the money and forcing tenants to move out quickly. Aud tries to buy land on either side of her warehouse. Her warehouse is currently rented by a movie company that is plagued by incidents threatening to bankrupt the company. As Aud cleans up the mess caused by fraud, she finds the perfect person for her, but obstacles stand in their way.

As always Nicola Griffith provides a classic noir heroine who sees herself as strong and capable. Always is as much a crime thriller as it is a woman coming to terms with her vulnerabilities making for a deep character study of the self-assured lead female and to a degree the support cast. Aud is terrific as she recognizes her shortcoming of gullibility, but plans to correct her error personally while still trusting those deserving of it. The two separate subplots rotate chapters with Aud the furious female fury as the link to a fine character-driven thriller.

Written by: Harriet Klausner, April 24th 2007