A Week Of Bizarre Noir.

It's time for another week-long blog-a-thon which, obviously, will not start on a Sunday... just like last time. This time around, I'm going to be focusing on bizarre noir (I can rhyme!), mostly because my next novel is going to be one, and I get my inspiration from movies of similar genre. And because I'm watching all these movies anyway, I might as well post up a bunch of reviews in a blog-a-thon style.

This time, however, there won't be the history lessons before each review, mostly because they're all the same kind of genre (just done in a unique way). So I'll just be doing that now.

What is noir, you ask? Noir is hard to define, really, but it is usually those movies with the hardboiled detectives, voice-over narration, femme fatales, shadowy cinematography, rainy weather, and bleak settings and outcomes. But that's not where it stops. What constitutes a noir is typically a mystery, but not always; instead, a lot of crime/gangster movies can fall under noir. The one thing all noir have in common is that they are usually bleak in some way. Whether it be due to a sad history for the main character, a grimy setting, or a dark outcome, something about the movie is typically dark and dirty. In fact, noir means black in French.

So what do I mean by bizarre noir? I'm talking about those movies that do something different with the genre. They take the same aspects and ingredients of noir, but add another flavor to it to spice it up a bit and make it quite unique. This extra flavor can be any number of things, really, and some of the more in-your-face (and good) examples will be shown via this blog-a-thon.

So there you go. This thing will officially kick off tomorrow. Hopefully this one will go smoother for me than the last one, as I have 5 of the 7 already written (as opposed to the last one, where I didn't have any). Enjoy!

UPDATE: Now that all of them have been posted, I'll just link to all of them here.

#1 - Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
#2 - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
#3 - Memento.
#4 - Sin City.
#5 - Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.
#6 - Fallen.
#7 - Batman Begins.