Gangster Squad be Gangsta yo!

Time to talk about an actual movie, so let’s start with 2013’s kick ass Gangster Squad. (SPOILERS WARNING)

It has been an ongoing challenge for Hollywood to recapture the enigmatic magic of classic Film Noir. It’s attempts over the decades have meet with varying success but the real Noir feel has remained ineffibly elusive. Even a lauded film like L.A. Confidential never really hits the mark. Gangster Squad changes all that.

It’s most powerful attribute is it’s light touch. Gangster Squad comes roaring out of the gates with one thing on its mind, to entertain the fuck out of you. GS embraces the pulpy, gritty, lurid elements of pure entertainment that drove the origional Noir’s. It doesn’t dwell or get caught up in ideas of what half a centuryof analysis has said about what made Noir’s great. Instead it glories in those things the audiences went to see them for, and what audiences still want out of a quality picture: dames, toughs and tommy guns. 

GS beats out the other NeoNoir’s in that it actual captures the tone of cynicism that ran through the origionals. The cynicism in the NeoNoirs  always rang a little false so I’m going to put GS into a Post-NeoNoir catagory. The tone that GS captures is far more genuine. In part I believe this is generational, the Boomer generation just couldn’t get a handle on the spirit of relentlessly crushed expectations like the Great Gen and the Post Boomers.

The NeoNoir’s couldn’t get the fatalistic quality of men and women who keep getting burned and who know they will keep getting burned no matter what they do.  The first conversation between Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone captures it perfectly, the same “What’s your racket, not that it matters because even the truth is a lie” mentality that underpinned the moral ambiguity of the origional Noirs.   

The waredrobe, cinematography and period art deco ceaselessly dazzle the eye. I could go on in detail about all the visual splendors but instead will summerize that this film is absolutely gorgeous.

Style and striking visual beauty go hand in hand with the brutal violence perpetrated with habitual ease. This is a post war story with hard men who’ve endured the heaviest combat in history, the Second World War II. The soldiers who fought Hitler came back to a Homeland over run with rot and corrution. The war warped many who went abroad to fight, gangster toughs with military training and equipment that were able to make mincemeat of civic forces. Thus begins Ganster Squad, where good men must defend the Law guerrilla style.

GS may have a light touch but it handles this moral/ethical grey zone quite deftly and cinematically. When Sgt. John O’Mara gears up and goes for the throat, he is not out to kill Gangster Kingpin Mickey Cohen, he is out to arrest him, discredit him and destroy the mythos of the Criminal Overlord. He may work outside the Law to get there but the most important scene of the film is O’Mara’s moment of physical triumph over the intimidating Cohen, when he turns away from the killing blow and leaves it for the boys in blue to take the scumbag away to face trial. The supremecy of Justice has been re-established and The City oF Angels will remain free of criminal domination.

So go see this Movie! It also has several unparralled Tommy Gun fights and proves that the Tommy Gun is the most cinematic fire arm available.

Cinema Vectors: Artemis Emergent

Cinema Vectors is the idea of following narrative patterns forming across the medium.  The first Vector I’d like to explore is the idea of Artemis Emergent.

The rise of the heroine is an important trend in contemporary cinema. Following the narrative pattern I would posit that in this can be found a regeneration of the Artemis archetype.

Artemis is characterized by her skill at hunting, especially with the bow. She was a prominent and powerful goddess in Hellenic belief and her temple was a rich organization with expansive trade and which backed its own currencies. Artemis is also characterized as a virgin goddess , daughter of Zeus, and mistress of the wilderness.

Katniss of The Hunger Games is thus far the most prominent manifestation of this Archetype, but following the trend backwards, we can watch her as she matures along with the age cohort that are her followers.

Artemis begins with the PowerPuff Girls. PPG was cute, catchy, brightly coloured and full of assertive action undertaken by a super hero team of young girls with an older scientist mentor. They were the protectors of their home Townsville and together they battled the forces of evil, embodying ideas of teamwork and cooperation perfect for its young target audience.

Here is the seed of the Artemis archetype in North American culture. Strength, assertiveness, bravery, loyalty, humor, cooperation, are all values the characters embody while still being a super fun candy coloured thrill ride. Simple but not simplistic, PPG is a launching point in girl role models and the Artemis archetype.

The childhood of PPG lead into the tweenery of Spice Girls. While this phase certainly composed itself of pop fluff, it nevertheless asserted flatly a belief in “Girl Power.” Projecting confidence, loyalty and flamboyance for its audience, Spice Girls exploded across an international stage and was a beloved part of many a young girl’s childhood.

The shallow bubblegum fantasy of Spice Girls was followed by the moody adolescents expressed in  Xena: Warrior Princess. Xena presented a much more complex and often dark view of the world, the awakening of sexual desire and the journey out into conflict and the unknown. Gabriel is an important counterpoint to Xena, and together the two embody the conflict between the desire  to be the good girl Gabriel or the bad girl Xena. Yet it is being together that these two find strength, each influencing the other  to become more of what they feel they lack in themselves.

Then, as far as I can tell, the pattern went dormant. Xena: Warrior Princess ended in 2001 and the War On Terror began. This may not be the cause of the Artemis pattern’s submergence but the shock to the culture from the attack on the United States of America was profound. Artemis went back to the wilds, likely still existing in more diverse and less prominent expressions.

Then, after ten years in the woods, out she sprang with 2011’s action hit Hanna. Hanna was a feral warrior child raised in the woods by a warrior mentor. Hanna was the product of military super soldier experiments and the target of the ensuing coverup. Artemis’ iconic bow has arrived and Hanna brings out her hunting aspects in spades. Both predator and prey, Hanna plays a tricksy game to draw out her deadly quarry, the anti-mother character Weigler who ran the experiment that created Hanna. Destroying the old corruption with her bow and dispatching Weigler in the same way that she killed a reindeer at the films opening, Artemis reasserts her power. She’s back in action baby!

The Hunger Games takes the next step beyond the rawness of Hanna with the media savvy Katniss. Less extreme then Hanna, Katness has the civilizing influence of family and community. Yet like Hanna, Katniss is trapped within a violent and oppressive world. Both had refuge in their woodland domains but both must strike out from safety to challenge the forces that oppress them.

The oppression, however, has taken on vast new levels of sophistication. Katniss must face an entire apparatus of entrenched slavery, totalitarian power and slick propaganda.  Katniss fights not for her own survival but for the liberation of the peoples of the world and Katniss must, like Hanna, draw out her true foe who hides behind the veil of power. Katniss, however, must do it live on television.

Katness and The Hunger Games deserves a more in depth look in relation to Artemis and so will take place in another installment.  Plus, I’ve not read the books and only seen the first movie so there is still much to explore. Until then keep an eye out for the Huntress, you never know where she might turn up.

Oscar Party Proper II: Post Party and All That

So I’m finally over the hangover and had some time to digest the spectacle.

Watching the Oscars from the balcony of a single screen cinema was awesome. The Rio Theatre was packed, people dressed up, the cash bar was flowing and JJ’s Trucketeria outside kept us all in much needed BBQ pork.

As for the show I had low expectations and so was pleasantly surprised. I was also surprised reviews of the show, but I suppose I shouldn’t be, it seems to be part of the Oscar tradition to trash it, the host, the stars, the winners, the losers, the industry and everything in general. Not that it doesn’t often deserve it but really, this time it just seemed like easy pickings for a cranky populace.

The VFX industry snafoo is the most significant of the politics at play this year. As an industry they’ve been getting screwed but at the same time they set up there own industry to get screwed, putting it up along libertarian lines, and mismanaging their business’ to leave their industry open to exploitation. It’s not right or just but it was predictable. Form a Guild guys, fantasies of fierce individualism and a ruthless attitude just end up leaving you vulnerable.

Argo did deserved best picture.

Jennifer Lawrence deserved Best Actress but more for Winter’s Bone and even Hunger Games then for Silver Linings Playbook which i just saw. It’s pretty blah even if she was hot in it, though the movie did start to feel like an excuse to have her jumping around in spandex.

The music was great, the banter moved along and Jack Nicholson was able to steal the whole show with one turn of his head. Then he flirts with Jennifer Lawrence and steals the show again. damn.

So yeah, good times at this years Academy Awards and it’s the Rio again for next years awards.

Oscar Party Proper

First blog so let’s go right to the glitzy heart of movies, of Tinsel Town, of Hollywood, of The Academy Awards with blazing red carpets and blinding star power.

Now, I’m not even a regular follower of the Oscar’s. As an Award, its habitually off the mark.  As performance, wildly uneven and often bogged down under its own hubris. Yet the Oscars remain the defacto Award of Awards. Next to perhaps the Nobel Prize, the Oscar has come to define our very concept of Award, the statue itself the defining awards statue. Like it or lump it, the Oscars is anchored in our collective mindset.

So I’ll be watching this year. In fact I’ll be dressing up and going down to the Rio Theatre’s free admission live feed presentation to watch it on the big screen. I don’t even know who’s nominated but that doesn’t matter, because they’ll let me know. I don’t care for the host but I’ll have a glass of campaign at the ready. It’s a long, glitzy, ceremonial ritual but that’s fine, I plan to schmooze and flirt my way through the doldrums.

It’s also a chance to be in a place with hundreds of other movie fans, to talk, debate and discuss with the casual drunkenness that lends itself so well to conversation.  I love movies. I came to Vancouver for the movie business. I’m going to watch the Oscar’s in one of this cities few remaining movie houses. I’m here making movies, may as well aim for an Oscar while I’m doing it.