By ryan
Film noir could be considered the bastardized middle child of the American narrative cinema family. Born in the early portion of the Baby Boomer years, most of our parents and professors are older than this black sheep of film. In the context of evolution, film noir hasn’t had a very long gestation period; but nonetheless, it has already evolved into quite a complex creature. For those not familiar with this stealthy and sinister persona of classical cinema, film noir is a type of crime film featuring misanthropic, malicious characters in a sleazy setting and a foreboding atmosphere that is conveyed by shadowy photography and threatening background music. It’s one of those movies with a detective who tells you about that gorgeous dame that walked into his office one dark and stormy night and if he’d have known how much trouble she’d be, he would’ve told her to scram. It is a curious and unexpected question to ask oneself how this dark and depraved film style somehow crossed over into the colorful and warm arena of cartoons. The first film noir pictures appeared in the late forties with films like The Big Clock. Soon, the cinematic genre was parodied by the satirical Warner Brothers’ Looney Toons, presenting the first bleed over into the wacky world of animation. This bleed over later surfaced in 1969 with the Pink Panther cartoon series. But, perhaps the most memorable marriage of film noir and cartoon was the 1988 movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Filmed with bizarre and slightly disturbing images of cartoons and real people involved in a crime caper, this film was a box office smash and certifiably film noir. It had the ominous music, the shadowy cinematography, and the sleazy dame. Then, in 1999 came Cartoon Noir, a medley of existentialist plots and menacing imagery compiling six international animated shorts. The film purifies the communion of film noir and animation only toyed with by other cartoon genre films and series. If Bugs Bunny dressed as a hard-knocks sleuth is on one side of the spectrum, then Cartoon Noir is its polar opposite. One is kind of cute, while the other one may cause those of us with weaker constitutions to lose our lunch. The most normal and least depressing vignette of the compilation is “Story of the Cat and Moon”. Although a serious subject matter, it’s somewhat reminiscent of a story read to preschoolers right before naptime. Its lulling tempo and somber mood creates a contemplative, albeit melancholy effect with quiet grace. However, the stories that follow jolt the audience over to the flip side, with tales that explore the putrid and corrupt underbelly of reality. “Club of the Discarded” is a concoction that could have come straight out of Norman Bates’ twistedly afflicted brain. What seems to be a voyeuristic view into an abandoned apartment filled with rotting mannequins, turns into a Marilyn Manson video, co-written by Mother and Norman Bates and directed by Hitchcock himself. The short effectively sends a white current of electricity to the ends of our nerve endings, packing a powerhouse of shock value and derangement. Like most psychopaths, this film’s genius lies beneath the surface. Provoked to the edge of horror, the viewer realizes the absurdity of this reaction because, after all, these are not deformed people having sex, they’re plastic figurines. The translation of the images as humans rather than mannequins causes our own brains to create this illusion of wickedness. It is a keen look into the ontology of social perception. As the eighty-three minutes pass, the darkness only grows. Cartoon Noir takes audiences on a journey to the dinner table of a middle-aged couple discussing their meal of ape meat that may have resulted from the wife’s brush with bestiality. We travel further into this arena of disquiet with “Joy Street” as it explores suicide in a crayon-crafted world of fruitfully drug-tinted images. We are then whisked into a nether-worldly type tableau involving an eerie story of a rotting relationship and an abstruse death. This odd tale is woven from the same twisted threads as an Edgar Allen Poe yarn, leaving the viewer bewildered. The list goes on with an increasingly unhinged repertoire of animated anecdotes. Cartoon Noir clearly captures the unsettling nature of film noir and translates it into the ulterior reality of animation. This slightly vexing creation will leave you appreciating the seemingly less disturbing amenities of the real world.Archived article by Laura Thomas
By ryan
“Now that ceaseless exposure has calloused us to the lewd and the vulgar, it is instructive to see what still seems wicked to us. What still slaps the clammy flab of our submissive consciousness hard enough to get our attention?” In two lines at the beginning of Chapter 20 in Hannibal, Thomas Harris describes the effect of his story on any who plunge into his novel. Shocking, vulgar, and abrasively disgusting at times, Hannibal whips us along on a thrilling ride from start to finish that definitely gets our attention. From the very first page, Hannibal sucks you into the suspense of a world where a famous cannibalistic monster is out on the loose, a world where one man’s single-minded and depraved need for revenge can drive an entire governmental investigation, and a world where one woman tries to uphold the law that she can no longer trust. Hannibal is not, as the title leads us to believe, a biography of Dr. Hannibal Lecter himself. Harris does lead us deeper than ever before into the impossibly chaotic and frighteningly brilliant arena of Lecter’s psyche, and we are finally able to see why the good doctor has managed to develop his own obvious disorders, but the main theme of Hannibal centers more around the effects of Dr. Lecter on other characters. Harris masterfully weaves the tale through the grotesquely violent aftermath of the bombs that drop when the subordinate characters encounter Dr. Lecter. The most gripping interactions occur between Lecter and Clarice Starling and Lecter and Mason Verger, an ex-patient of Lecter’s. These interactions allow the reader to join the plot of the novel in an intricately dizzying dance of suspense. In the beginning of the story, Hannibal Lecter is free to roam the world as he pleases, Clarice Starling’s job security with the FBI is in serious jeopardy, and Mason Verger, kept alive by a multitude of machines, is compulsively searching the globe for Lecter, who convinced Verger to horribly disfigure himself many years ago. The death waltz begins when Lecter contacts Starling after years of silence, taunting her and yet obviously upset by her recent fall from grace, proving that Lecter is alive, free, and able to be caught. The dance continues as both Mason Verger and the FBI machine gleefully roll toward their most famous quarry until the plot hits an unbelievable conclusion that spins the reader away, stunned and blinking in amazement. Harris’ third and last tale of Hannibal the Cannibal is not for the faint of heart or stomach, however. Every scene is described in graphic detail, in a simple yet blunt writing style that smacks the reader to attention. Shockingly disgusting at times, Harris’ words pounce on the reader and drag them with such force into every scene that the reader cannot help but feel as though they are standing next to each character as the action happens, not merely observing, but actively participating in each event. To term this novel “a page turner” would be an understatement. The plot, especially the last one hundred and fifty pages, snatches away the reader’s own reality and deposits him or her into the reality of a psychopath being chased by another psychopath, the government, and the governmental agent he finds “interesting.” Here’s the verdict: the book is amazing. The story takes you on such a psychologically twisted and suspenseful roller coaster ride that you can’t put the book down to do such important and necessary things as your homework or the dishes. It’s also important to note that although the book is the conclusion to a trilogy, it can be read with no more than a basic knowledge of who Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling are, i.e. he’s a psycho with biting problems and she’s a hard-ass FBI agent. One word of caution, though, the goriest scenes really are quite gory: there’s no lack of spurting blood, spattered blood, or bloody people in this book, something that many people might not whole-heartedly enjoy. Despite the bloodshed, the novel is fantastic, and is recommended to anyone in need of a good psychological scare.Archived article by Katie Porch