Outline for the Presentation

Outline for the Presentation  (100 Points)

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

              The film L.A. Confidential, directed by Curtis Hanson, is the movie of a combination of several classic film noir elements as well as considered as a great contribution to the neo-noir genre due to it’s different time period and setting.

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

                1. The plot of the movie is the most popular noir theme, that is, corruption in the police force; along with usual noir aspects, such as, greed, duplicity, bloodshed and obsession. The movie shows the dark side of American life of the 1950’s.

                2.  The film meets the standards of film noir by establishing three ambiguous protagonists, their anxiety and their searching for truth.

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

                1. Instead of the presence of one protagonist like classic film noir, the movie has three flawed heroes; the movie also contains very bold and open sex scenes unlike classic film noir.

                2.  Issues like homosexuality and racism add the neo-noir flavor in the movie.

Quotes from Outside Sources (These may be inserted anywhere in the outline)

Source One:

Context:  Provide a signal phrase that includes the title of the source and the author:	Quote from the Source: Be sure to include the page number	Significance: How does this quote relate to the topic of your essay?
In the article called, “A Good Cop is Hard to Find” by David Thomson, the writer comments on Ed,	“Ed Exley is a straight arrow...very ambitious, but repressed; he reveals his own immaturity as he insists on doing things by the book. He is a version of incorruptible but dangerous because of his own emotional disorder”(Thomson, “A Good Cop is Hard to Find”, pg 3).	Ed is highly ambitious, very fond of being in the lime light and doing all of his actions by the book. However, eventually he realizes that, in reality, it does not happen, especially under a corrupted system.

Source Two:

Context: Provide a signal phrase that includes the title of the source and the author:	Quote from the Source: Be sure to include the page number	Significance: How does this quote relate to the topic of your essay?
From an article called, “The L.A. Riots: 15 Years After Rodney King” by Madison Gray, it could be mentioned, an African American man named Rodney King became a victim of police brutality by LAPD. As Gray states,	“...which felt that racial profiling and abuse by the police had long gone unchecked”(Gray, “The L.A. Riots”, pg 5).	In 1991, incidents like Rodney King police brutality, inspired the film directors, to adopt the contemporary anxiety as a theme of neo-noir; and films like L.A. Confidential  were made, which brought up this issue as a significant aspect in the movie plot.

Optional Component:  Film Clip

A Memorable Evening with Glenn Ford

           In the beginning of this blog, I want to thank Mr. Toth. It's because of him, I went to see the movie "Framed",a film noir at the Egyptian Theatre ( of course, 25 points also matters!). But, it does not matter why I went to see the movie- I am glad that I went.
           The movie I have watched is,"Framed", starring Glenn Ford, Janis Carter, Edgar Buchanan and directed by Richard Wallace. It is a black and white movie, made in 1947. Mike Lambert is an unemployed mining engineer and he has a bad habit of drinking. He arrives in a small town while driving a truck. The breaks of the truck fail and he hit some ones property but no one got hurt. He goes to a coffee shop called La Paloma Cafe and meets the seductive femme fatale Paula, the blond waitress. From the conversation over the phone between Paula and Stephen, the audience find out that, they were looking for some guy like Lambert. Anyway, after meeting Paula, Mike finds himself in trouble with the law. On the basis of a few burning glances, Paula pays his fine and gets him a room in a motel. At the same time, she also finds out about his bad drinking habit and his habit of forgetting things while he is drunk. Paula's motive seems just casual help in the starting, but later on it's clear that her motives are not what they seem. Mike lucks into a job with miner Jeff Cunningham. But against his will Mike drawn deeper into Paula's schemes. Paula takes Mike in Stephen's log cabin. He sees Paula's robe in Stephen's bathroom her name written on it. He gets angry and knowing his hard drinking habit Stephen keeps giving him drink after drink until he gets completely drunk. Stephen is a bank manager. Paula and Stephen's plan is to rob the bank, framed Mike as the robber and kill him in a car accident. Paula poisons Mike's coffee to kill him but then, she changes her mind since he is too drunk to remember anything. Then in the car she hits Stephen in the head to death. Then,  through Paula, Mike finds out about the murder and he is told that he is the murderer; since he was too drunk he can not remember what he did; and he also gets to know that his friend Jeff the miner, got arrested as the killer. Mike knows that Jeff has been framed and falsely accused. But he cannot remember anything about his presence in Stephen's log cabin and their conversation. At this point of the movie, Mike Lambert plays the detective role until the end. He plays kind of a game with seductive Paula as she did the same with him before. Truth comes out at the end and the femme fatale gets arrested.
            This is the first time, I have seen Glenn Ford's movie and I just loved it. His acting, style and looks are absolutely stunning. Janis Carter was perfect femme fatale with her acting and looks. Overall, I really enjoyed this old time, kind of thrilling movie. The audience was full of all kinds of higher class talented people- writers, directors, Glenn Ford's son and an old lady who was introduced as a very famous former actress. I thank again Mr. Toth for encouraging me to watch the movie. I get the chance to see a classic film noir on a big screen and spend the evening with the wonderful actor Glenn Ford.

Blog Entry #12

1. "Le Noir et le Blanc: Hybrid Myths in Devil in a Blue Dress and L.A. Confidential", by Elana Shefrin:
                  This article basically talks about the comparison of two box office hit movies, "L.A. Confidential" and "Devil in a Blue Dress". The writer of the article discusses the theme characters and the time of these movies with certain respects. The settings of these films seem like to recreate the midtwentieth century L.A. and California. There are lots of similarities between these two movies in ethnography and critical characterization. At the end of her article, she mentions that both of the directors( Hanson and Franklin) succeed admirably in their authorial purposes and that each film has a value as a work of art and as a representation of twentieth-century American culture.
2. "Border Crossings In Out of the Past and L.A. Confidential", by William Luhr:
                   In this article, the writer first compares the two film noir, "Out of the Past"( 1947) and "L.A. Confidential"(1998). He says, even though these two films are set in the same place and era, the post WWII United States, they were made fifty years apart and illustrate shifts of the cultures specially Latinos or other cultures to Anglo culture, in racial representation and in film noir. He also tries to draw more attention by discussing that, in terms of moving from one extreme to another, the area of deepest interest may lie in neither extreme- neither black nor white, Hispanic nor Anglo, male nor female but in the relation between an blending of them.
3. "A Good Cop Is Hard To Find", by David Thomson:
                  The author David Thomson writes this article about the characters of the cops, that picturized on  screens. He takes a piece of James Ellroy's novel, Confidential confronts us with the Los Angeles of 1953, a boom time when the police department has learned enough public relations to have a hand in the new television shows glorifying cops, without compromising its own daily grind of corruption, off-camera violence and private deals. Ciminality is okay as long as nice kids and their mothers never have to see blood on the streets. The article talks about the characters and their roll and acting in the movie and if the Oscar will do justice on James Cromwell. According to David Thomson, L.A. Confidential is the most modern movie on cops.
4. "L.A. Confidential", by Rob Walker:
           The article discusses the book "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs- and Rock n Roll Generation Saved Hollywood", by Peter Biskind. Biskind is not particularly impressive as a writer, a journalist or a scholar. Though the book was supposedly years in the making, it's written in the style of a rush-job treatment, full of breathless quasi-sentences like "Altman was a Democrat, supported Adlai Stevenson" or "Beatty happened to read it, thought about playing the lead". And in the quest for sexy anecdotes, he routinely shrugs of the lack of corroboration, the denial even the flat-out contradiction
5. "L.A. Confidential", Film Reviews by Paul Arthur:
               The writer of this article Paul Arthur, discusses about the contemporary change of film noir, which has changed the meaning and atmosphere of the film noir. According to Arthur, the term has become a crutch, a cheat, an unearned password to a territory at once broader and more complex than any formulaic rehash of sexual duplicity. In distinction to greed-motivated operations of power, however, which is this context are evil by definition, the self-conscious adoption of artifice or playacting becomes a double-edged sword, a weapon wielded as readily the rtedress of corrupt practices in their expansion.
6. "Wilderness With Palms or Bears" by John Simon:
                   This article by John Simon, reviews two Hollywood Motion Pictures including "L.A. Confidential". He gives highly complementary comments about the movie making and direction as well as the acting. According to the writer, everything is credible, fits in with all the rest, and goes exciting to enthralling. the plot is absorbing, the characters are believable and even worth caring about, and the dialogue is tough and witty without ever sounding strained.

Blog# 11

         The movie, that I have chosen is, "LA Confidential". To me, this movie has all of the classic and neo-noir aspects. It is basically a hardboiled detective and higher level corruption based movie. There are three cops from LAPD. Tough cop Bud White, lieutenant Ed Exley and Jack Vincennes; everybody has their own point of views of what they are doing. The protagonist Bud White (Russell Crowe) is a tough cop and at the same time he has a vulnerable heart. In this movie, there are lots of violences, bloodsheds, murders, corruptions, blackmoney and ofcourse the "noir attraction"- the gorgeous and double-face femmefatale. Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger) is a highclass hooker. She is not exactly a wicked woman, like a regular noir femmefatale. As the matter of fact, she has true love for the protagonist. There are lots of surprising facts in the movie, that held my interest towards the story all along, till the end. There are some matches and some mismatches things compare to a typical noir story and that is the most interesting thing about the movie. Some parts of it is so unpredictable, that  give the viewers a startling feeling. For me, it is a great noir collection!

Sources:
1.Rozen, Leha."L.A. Confidential".People,00937673. 29 Sept.1997. Vol.48, Issue 13.
     Academic Search Premier.Web.23Apr.2011.
2.Blaser J. John and Blaser L.M.Stephanie."A Film Noir Glossary", "No Place For a Woman: The Family in
     Film Noir".Web.2008.
3."Hollywood Movie Memories Introduction".n.p.6 Apr.Web.2011.
4."FilmNoir-What is it?"Pictureshowman.n.p.n.d.Web.23 Apr.2011.
5.Garner,Dwight."too little, too noir".Web.19 Sep.1997.

    

Blog # 10

                 Noir, the word means black. The stories, that consider as noir, is full of the dark characteristics of human nature. In noir stories, there are lots of bloodsheds; corruptions, negative morality or moral corruptions, manipulations, drugs and gamling exist in the main theme of noir stories.
                 In the stories, in "The Gold Coast Section", The best noir story that describes the most of the feel of noir is, "The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones". It is a story of a bartender "Tate" and a waitress "Cherie" she also is a struggling actress; that much we know in the beginning of the story, Tate gets a call from Cherie, that she needs some help. Cherie already killed someone before she murdered that guy. The readers do not know about the murder at that time, but later on the way, the author makes the readers to get in the murder scene, is really wonderfull. Manipullation is another aspect of noir that Cherie used to entrap Tate. Alcoholic Cherie is the one who we can call the femme fatale, which is a very important figure in noir stories. About Cherie Tate has a good description to introduce her clearly; that is-"We get guys all the time with crushes on her, some of them very young; they come in on a daily basis for months sometimes before they accept the fact that she's never going to respond to their devotion, and lots of them keeps coming.."(pg 289). Tate himself has a crush on her too. Cherie knows it very well and that is why, she tries to entrap him by getting the body out of the house where she killed him.
             The story that could be classified as noir to me is "Kinship". This is a story about a half fillipino young man, who gets involved in a gang somehow, yet he has a deep feeling about his cousin and her disable son. The cousin Veronica is like his big sister, friend and mentor. The guy takes revenge on some guy who's son bullied Veronica's son. The bully's dad beats up her husband and that pisses him off the most and he kills him. The story is more like an emotional tragic story rather than a noir.

Blog # 9

               The stories, "The Kidnapper Bell" by Jim Pascoe and "City of Commerce" by Neal Pollack are both interesting in their own ways. Protagonists in noir, are the leading characters, who could be corrupted or honest but manipulated, pessimistic and greedy. The characteristics of protagonists in noir are actually not that impressive to me. In the first story, the main character or the protagonist is Jim. He is basically not a very good person, I would say. He is a married man (at the end I found it out, which was really shocking!). Even though he has a wife, he looks for other women, dates them and looks for an opportunity to have sex. He tries several girlfriends to get intimated; as the author states his thoughts, "all the while he's doing the male math in his head: four dates and still no sex. Tonight makes five"(pg 207, The Kidnapper Bell). The part of the story, where Jim looks for the kidnapped girl is really scary. It seems, I am in the scene and watching the whole thing with my very own eyes. There are lots of confusing parts of Jim's charater.The most confusing part of Jim's charater is, why he gets hooked up with all those women, while he has a wife at home who trusts him. Another thing that grabbed my attention, that is- why he rings the bell, which is belong to the kidnapper? Does that mean, he is going to turn into one? Obviously this man Jim, does not have any optimistic view towards life. He is also a morally corrupted man.
          In the story, "Commerce", by Neal Pollack, the protagonist is a gambler. He does not have any ambition in his life. All he thinks about playing poker, win and make money. Because of his addiction of gambling, he loses a very good opportunity, of stepping forward. The way, the story ends, it seems he does not care about anything in life but gambling, not even his life partner. The author portrayed a perfect picture of a gambler through the character of "Nick", the protagonist of the story "Commerce".

The Method, an experience!

            "The Method", written by Janet Fitch is really a very interesting story. To me, it seems a little surprising and shocking finding out about a simple girl's true character. If, I have to recommend one story to someone, I would choose this story. Holly is the protagonist of the story. The way, she manipulates and then kills the guy named Richard, is kind of femme fatalish. But, as per as rule of film noir, since Holly is the narrator of the story, she seems to be the protagonist.
             The theme and the idea of the story impresses me the most. In the starting of the story, Holly gives a description of her own. Addressing readers, she says "If you met me, you might think you knew me- a small town girl, fresh from state college productions of the Boyfriend and Annie Get Your Gun....I know, you would think lunchmeat. But you don't know me". In this self description of Holly, there is some thing, that drags the reader through the story, with an curiousity to know about her true character. We found out at the end that, the simple looking, tiny girl "Holly" is not that simple at all. She seems pretty evil and psycho type of girl. She is smart enough to deceive police even after committing a crime like murder. We could not find out about any case against Holly, so it remains unknown that, what happens to her eventually. The first thing that came on to my mind, after reading the story is, did she kill the guy because, she is mad at him, because he had a relationship with that old actress? Or, she is just simply a psychopath! Anyway, if it is a question of recommendation, I would prefer "The Method", because of it's startling ending; it is also a little different than other stories and therefore, readers will find this story pretty interesting.