"C. Mint" would be better if he wanted to go into music.
But "Combat" is a horrible name. Teachers will be watching the poor kid like a hawk and punishing him for any little mistake.
If you had twin boys, you could name them Combat and Wombat.
And they could have great email addresses: Comb@domain.com and Womb@domain.com.
But "Combat" is a horrible name. Teachers will be watching the poor kid like a hawk and punishing him for any little mistake.
Maybe he'll run away from home and become an ally of marginalized people.
Best I can tell, there is a quota to be met each year for RW parents to name a daughter Reagan. Predictably, I tend to think of this one instead of the horrible president.
If you had twin boys, you could name them Combat and Wombat.
"She bangs like a belt-fed Wombat" is an actual thing that people say.
I had a Indian biology teacher with a thick accent in high school who pronounced 'cement' exactly like 'semen'. This was the source of great amusement for us.
My son went through a phase where he kept trying to say "horror" but never managed to make the second syllable audible.
Did I miss an announcement? Was the oophorectomy botched?
Sorry, feel free to delete 12 if it's violating privacy.
"Dubya! Cheney! Nine-Eleven! Y'all pipe down 'n' eat yer coal!"
"Dubya! Cheney! Nine-Eleven! Y'all pipe down 'n' eat yer coal!"
What Shall We Name My Excised Ovaries?
My son went through a phase where he kept trying to say "horror" but never managed to make the second syllable audible.
My kids call clothes hangers "hookers".
"Camo" for a boy, "Flechette" for a girl.
"Camo Hooker" sounds like a direct to video police show.
I think "Wry Cooter" is still available.
Hardcastle and McCormick and Schmick's is a great show about a retired judge who gets a reformed criminal to work with him to open a moderately priced seafood restaurant that serves as their cover for vigilante justice operations.
xelA went through a phase, when he was just learning to say his name, of calling himself 'Allah', which was always amusing.
The Calabat is unusually articulate, but uses third person exclusively. He sounds like a miniature sports personality or Bob Dole.
My niece went through a phase where she somehow turned the "tr" in "truck" into an "f". Her aunts and uncles milked this for a great deal of hilarity.
5
There's a 90% chance that you've just found Bristol Palin's next baby name. You lose 10% because it doesn't start with a T.
re: 23
xelA was quite late with the developed speech, but suddenly in the last 3 months he's turned it on and all of the sort of speech that I was always faintly sceptical of in other people's reports of their children has arrived. Full sentences, long speeches, humour, etc. His nursery keep telling us he's super-smart.*
He almost never says, 'I' though. He says 'my' or his name.
'My did it!'
* the urge to say 'Of course!', while sneering like Vector in 'Despicable Me' is hard to resist.
He used to say, 'Oh shit!' quite a lot. When he dropped things. But that has morphed into 'Oh my goodness!', which he didn't get from us.
One day my son told me that he learned a bad word. I asked him what word and he said, "motherfucker."
I told him not to say it again until he was old enough to have something big to complain about.
xelA was quite late with the developed speech, but suddenly in the last 3 months he's turned it on
This was exactly our experience with our second. We had decided to give it a few weeks before having him "evaluated" because he was saying nothing. Now he won't shut up. A couple of weeks ago he said "Can you turn on the light for me? I need to get something from the basement." That, coming from someone who can't reach the light switch, made me laugh.
AIMHMHB, my son's first complete sentence, uttered while walking away from the potty and into our bedroom, was "Pee on the floor?"
re: 30
He always spoke, but it was simple stuff, two or three word sentences, or individual words and pointing. Very occasionally a longer sentence, but not much, and not often. Then, a couple of months after he turned 2, bing.
I have a friend though, whose kid is 3 months younger, and doesn't speak at all. They aren't worrying yet, because he clearly understands everything and has a bossy/mouthy older sister, but another neighbour is a child speech therapist and has been gently prodding him to get the kid checked.
That, coming from someone who can't reach the light switch, made a lot of sense, really.
26, 30: Yeah, I think the late/slow starter on speech who leapfrogs into caught up or advanced is a very normal pattern.
Like the joke about the kid who didn't speak until four, at which point he said "Please pass the salt." "Bobby! You can talk! Why haven't you ever said anything before!?!" "Up till now, everything's been fine."
made a lot of sense, really
It's possible to laugh at things that make sense. For example, your inability to find a life partner.
That's a very hurtful thing to imply about my girlfriend, ogged.
I wasn't denying that it was funny, anyway, you awful person.
38 or Kid Hallaj, that sounds cooler.
For some reason I was told the joke in 34 as like, a FACT about Einstein's childhood, except it was soup that was cold and "up until now, everything has been satisfactory."
41: I have heard it that way too. I think it's quite commonly dispersed.
41: Not about Einstein, but the correct punchline is "I had nothing to say."
"Kid Hallaj" would be a cool anime name.
Male: Surge, Grunt, Megastorm, Jack Acid, Hub, Ram, Longhorn, Longneck, Root
Female: Promise, Doe, Fertility, Helpmate, Sorority, Commitment
Jack Acid
Why not just go straight to John Birch?
I've been reading The Martian to my kid. And its going alright, except the astronaut in the story swears like a sailor (as one does when one is stuck on Mars.)
At my kid's request, I've been censoring out the swearwords. Except then he reads over my shoulder and points out every time I change the word "shit" to "crap" or "fuck" to "frig" or what have you. Way to make a big deal out of not making a big deal out of it, kid. Maybe you should go back to reading Little House books with your mother.
My kids have misheard me swearing, so now they say "Bucket!" Then they look to see if they're going to get a reaction, but I'm just laughing.
There's an annual list of weird names people have given their children.
Storm, Jazz and Kio are still available.
Digging once again into the history of my eccentric family, I can suggest not only "Archibald" but also "Scipio". (Then you could call him Skippy for short.)
50, 51 -- best on the 2014 list are "Sephora" and "Yolo" as girls' names.
Digging once again into the history of my eccentric family, I can suggest not only "Archibald" but also "Scipio". (Then you could call him Skippy for short.)
Archie is apparently super popular again. Number 17 last year.
52 don't be jealous but I have a family claim to the name Okla Homa Bobo; everyone can name all their kids that but realize them's big shoes to fill
51. ISTR that Berkeley Breathed (who once based a strip around the proposition that his own name was more embarrassing than "Yaz Pistachio") used to sign his earlier work Berk Breathed. I was actually quite relieved to find that it was an abbreviation.
My son has a little friend named Siri. She was born about a year before the iPhone Siri was, so I just feel kind of bad for her and her parents -- the dates are close enough that a casual observer could well think "little kid named Siri, what dopey parents!" when in fact they're blameless.
"For so thou hast been named YOLO, that ye may ever be reminded that thou hast but one life"
This state has a Berks County. I like to imagine that people run for re-election to public office there by posting ads about how they are "working for berks."
Somewhere along the line I heard "Bench" suggested as a good, tough-sounding name for a boy. Solid. Useful. Made of wood. Bench.
Also, a girl named Nixon?
I misread "Cheska" as "Cheka", which had me wondering for a moment.
"Stool" would meet all of those points plus allow for jokes about three legs.
"Continent" would make a good name. Especially as a middle name after "Nathan" or "Nicholas" or something.
63: The Breakfast Club and Futurama were both way too influential.
My GF has a niece named "Sm/ythe." All the kids on that side of the family have last names for first names.
65. In Britspeak, it would be an antagonistic epithet for a gay or bisexual man.
To be fair, Britspeak for a cigarette is (was?) the same as far as U.S. English goes.
Bender's not unusual if it's followed by Bending Rodriguez. Also Basil isn't particularly unusual at all. A bit old-fashioned, maybe.
I know someone who, along with their partner, were big enough fans of him to name their daughter Carlin.
Kai's super-articulate, but still retains some kid pronunciations. For a long time, but I think not any more, he would pronounce "thanks" with an initial S, which was adorable. Even better, AB recently found some school papers in which he'd written out as, "sengks", which is _exactly_ how he pronounced it. Those went into the save pile.
57: When I was in 8th grade, I got a new hamster and I named her Simba, knowing it was Swahili for "lion" and I thought this was a cute ironic name for a tiny ball of rodent fluff. Simba! Hilarious! Then The Lion King came out and I was just mortified that people would think I had named her after the character in the movie. It doesn't help that being 13-14 years old is pretty much the height of mortificability.
I think we can all agree that Moist would be a terrible name for a girl.
Or Moaist, if you like extinct birds.
72: Did the hamster sort of look like a lion? My gf and I decided that our hamster, Dmitri looked like a lion -- maybe the the fur around his face looked like a mane? One day an Eagles song came on the radio and we both realized it was written about him, "You can't hide those lion eyes."
Speaking of extinct birds, if a Moa weighted 500 pounds, you'd think that once they were gone Haast's Eagles would have been able to kill people often enough to survive until British colonists arrived with delicious sheep. It's like a say about the giant panda. It's no good complaining about habitat loss if you aren't even going to try to meet natural selection half way.
76: She did! She was a nice fluffy teddy bear with a little neck ruff. Later, I had a "black bear" hamster who looked exactly like a tiny black bear, so her name was Ursula.
(Ursula was ALSO not named after a Disney character. My life wasn't easy in high school.)
Pop quiz, ratite. There's a group of humans that have eaten all your prey. Once the last bird is gone, what do you do? What do you do?
79: At least your parents didn't name you Ariel or Belle.
Oh hey, are we up for discussing my private life, OT?
82, sure why not, I'm doing a bit of it in the other thread already.
You're discussing my private life in another thread?? Whoa.
I suppose it's more seemly than insulting extinct or about to be extinct animals.
Can we discuss your personal life using modified quotes from the movie Speed?
I suggest "St. John," in honor of Evil (?) Parallel Universe Flippanter, who got that much superior name.
85: Well, if you picture AWB as a polar bear, as I'm sure we all do.....
OK, I wrote it all out and I realized I don't really have a question. I'm just in a pickle of my own making and I need to own up to it. Basically, I slept with an old friend, forgetting that he has historically had very strong feelings about me, and now I don't know what to do with those feelings being laid at my (currently psychosexually exhausted) doorstep.
79: Named after the character from the George of the Jungle cartoon, then?
You are a Haast's Eagle. His feelings are a Moa. Now swoop.
84 Frowner's friend and by the by my own which I've never really gotten into here. But it was a doozy. And if I'd chronicled it at the time here it would have been up there with the legendary horrific tales of UNG. but I was far too depressed at the time to deal with basic life issues much less comment here, though I was reading.
I've only just realized that I'm finally at the place where when I meet someone new of potential interest I've stopped feeling compelled to lead with that trauma like waving the bloody stump in there face. Not by way of trying to unload it on them and rehash it but just having no way to relate my own narrative, even to myself, without it looming over everything. Someone new is on the horizon and it's been wonderful getting to know this person slowly over these past months and I've only just realized that that looming domineering presence had gone. It's just not there and not a part of this in the least. It feels wonderfully joyously liberating no matter what happens with this person. A gift.
How's that?
That's not specific enough advice, Moby. You should ignore his calls or emails four times. On the fifth time, pick up the phone, but only make screeching eagle sounds. If he calls back, screech louder. If he insists on emailing or texting him, respond, but only with a .gif of a waving American flag and no other content or context.
The Haast's Eagle is (was) pretty rad, but do you think you can get out of a difficult relationship with something from wussy New Zealand? No way, this is America.
I feel like I was abundantly clear about the thinness of my psychosexual situation at the moment. He knew I already had a date scheduled for the next night, and that next weekend I'm going to visit my long-term partner in another city. But still, the admissions of obsessive unpleasant-sounding feelings (from the visible first line) are sitting unread in my inbox.
Take these evolved-away wings and learn to fly again.
66 - the "\" must be difficult to pronounce. 60, 62: What about "Log"?
And when we hear the Māori sing, the book of fossils will open up and let us in. Yeah, yeah.
93.2: I know how you feel. I still have leftover issues from my divorce, but pretty much nobody is on the dating scene at my age without some damage, so at least I have company. I'm now 7 months into a relationship with a very nice lady, and all that baggage isn't causing major issues at all. It's kind of exciting.
Incidentally, anyone over 30 and on the dating scene might try Tinder. It's a hookup app for younger users but I've run into a lot of middle aged people on it who are looking for something more serious. The criteria for making a match are kind of shallow, but no shallower than you'd use in a bar. I think the model of most dating sites encourages list making and over emphasizing deal breakers. Tinder gets you to the chatting phase quickly, where you can better gauge interest. I think most people will find that the person they eventually really connect with doesn't meet all the requirements in a list of must-haves unless the person making the list is especially self-aware.
...but no shallower than you'd use in a bar
"Does this person have $3 to buy me a beer?"
Incidentally, anyone over 30 and on the dating scene might try Tinder.
I hear that Ashley Madison is the hot ticket these days. Although using it is a bit complicated, since you have to get married first.
I wonder if Haast's eagle's were capable of being 'domesticated' like falcons or war owls. I don't see why not. And I can't wait to go fly some falcons again when the weather here cools down.
So, is it more racist to ogle ridiculous baby names, or to worry about whether said ogling is racist?
Also, from 2013, Leviathan.
103.2 How about over 40? And don't you need the facebook? I don't have one of those. And I don't even know if I can get Tinder in Arrakis. They had one in Dubai but it closed down. Having seen this I wonder what the the women's profiles were like.
no shallower than you'd use in a bar
In this Vine age, why don't profiles require a short video clip? They tell you so much more about whether you'll find someone attractive than a photo.
I guess it's time for me to disrupt the dating app industry.
103.1 glad to hear it, but what are you doing on Tinder?
108 thanks, but complicating factor is she's in another country, albeit one that's only about 45minutes-1 hour away by plane. Could that even work? But it has me wondering.
We're doing some testing.
106: Dude, we had better see some falconry selfies.
Just hand your phone to the bird.
Anyway, so far I've dealt with the residual trauma thing by having the first person on okcupid be a clinical psych person who studies the impacts of rape and emotional trauma, so we spent our first date excitedly talking about that for 90 minutes. Second was a bit more like what normal people do.
There's actually a short video but it was a lot less manly then I'd be willing to share. Basically it was me flinching as I removed the hood. The falconry teacher was great though, a natural. I asked him what he does if it tries to bite or peck at him with its beak and he said he goes to stick his finger down the falcon's throat, they hate that and won't try anything again.
115 That's one hell of a first date.
Will post some pics to the Flickr pool soon, I promise.
Basically it was me flinching as I removed the hood.
As I've always said, nothing looks as rented as a rented bird.
111.1: Just trying things out. I would not recommend it for Arrakis, though. It has kind of a bad rap. Also you need the facebook thingy. Most definitely they are tracking the bejeebus out of you and using it for some nefarious purpose. Got me a girlfriend, though, so I'm happy enough.
121 Oh I'm sure they're tracking everything. Everyone else too.
No doubt somewhere in Sietch Tabr a Fremen SIGINT analyst is asking an American military attaché what is the meaning of this acronym NMM?
Barry, the link in 109 is amazing. Please workshop any Tindr profiles here. Large cats? Hell yes! Luxury vehicles, meh.
By the way, I'm finally about halfway through the onetime-discussed-here H is for Hawk and I like it to a certain extent. I take from it the impression that it is tough to write a book with one eye on a classic about the same thing.
Have you read the classic already, Flip? I keep thinking about ordering the two of them but haven't yet.
109 makes me sad, because so many people are so much more cartoon me than I am. Oh ho you're cradling a white tiger cub in your photo? That's cute, check out my profile with six fucking white tigers who live on my BED. Here's my gold-plated Uzi. Is that me posing shirtless with a huge ass scimitar? Why yes it is, how do you like me now?
There's also the guy who looks like Nick Kroll wearing a Terrence Trent D'Arby wig, though.
Years ago I babysat a 1.5 year old - 2 year old for about 6 months and had many long animated discussions with him before his parents overheard us chatting. He'd never spoken to them. They'd not told me about this. They were going through a complicated break up. Took one source of stress off of them, but I remember feeling a bit sorry for the kid, didn't mean to shop him.
126: I have and it's great. I'd send you a copy but I gave my last one to [muffled by shame over intense desire to name-drop]. NYRB Books reissued it in paper not long ago, though.
130: I'm perfectly capable of acquiring both on my own from non-fancy sources, mister! I was just curious if you'd read them in that order.
Looks like a good place to roll out Halfordismo. First we take Dubai, then we take Berlin.
That's cute, check out my profile with six fucking white tigers who live on my BED. Here's my gold-plated Uzi.
Tigrismo turned into hardcore aspirational luxury advertising so gradually I didn't even notice.
If it makes everybody else feel fancy, I don't know what book you're referring to even after looking at the wikipedia page for "H is for Hawk."
(Note: She did not rent the bird, according to the above mentioned wikipedia page.)
Oh I really need to read that. What's the classic?
134: T.H. White's "The Goshawk," Mobes.
134: Well, I googled it and read a review and found out! Oddly enough, it turns out not to be "A is for Armadillo".
103.2 endorsed for over 40. Don't know about BF's distant land.
Pretty sure that for some subscribers, the motivation is entertainment/ego while flipping through others' profiles. But there are definitely also normal middle-aged people on there using it to meet.
Setting up a novel fb profile just requires an email, no need to link to actual identity in a way visible to server owners. I think tinder requires a cellphone number, so if no travel phone is available, privacy from server admins for the cost of a burner.
137: Flip, never give Moby a straight answer. It confuses him.
No. I actually needed a straight answer. I had no idea about anything on than "The Once and Future King."
I was on fb under an alias for observational purposes, and zuckerberg had a hissy fit and kicked me off.
Did whoever you were stalking report you?
143. Probably don't log into both accounts from the same device, or pay attention to cookies if you do.
True story: Yesterday I ate nothing but cookies until dinner. It wasn't like I got up late either.
143: The image of Zuckerberg personally calling up peep and telling him off is amusing.
146: Perhaps my fb name "Faceless Friendless" was a bit of a giveaway.
Why not just go all in and use "Serial Killer"?
AWB, a friend of mine oncecused "it cannot be. My people need their queen." when nothing eksr worked.
9: I should think so, the scansion is delicious. Is there a song?
Everyone knows that you name twins Diamat and Histomat, regardless of gender.
155: Tiamat and Yogamat are for the next set of twins, of course.
And then you name your turtles Diastat and Parmalat.
If triplets, the third one is Laundromat.
Related, a colleague asked for advice on how to open a conversation with a chap she'd met through Tinder (not actually Tinder but some similar thing). For some reason she took my advice and gave the guy the Voigt-Kampff test (you know, the 'you see a tortoise on its back in the desert, what do you do' thing) from "Blade Runner", a film that she has not in fact seen. She is now committed to going on a date with him based on a shared love of cyber-noir films of the 1980s which is, in her case, completely fake.
I mention this to show that that sort of thing does happen in real life as well as in bad sitcoms.
How many other cyber-noir films were there in the 80s? Brazil, maybe?
Tron, Videodrome, Max Headroom, Robocop...
I'm not sure I'd call any of those particularly noiry, except maybe Videodrome.
To be fair, I haven't seen Max Headroom (other than clips from the TV show).
Oh, come on, Robocop is very noirish. The good cop in a wicked world (and his sidekick, the tough broad), falling foul of the thugs with connections to the amoral rich and powerful?
Moby and I are not fancy
You already know why
We're in the slow lane
From Pittsburgh to Dubai.
But still, the admissions of obsessive unpleasant-sounding feelings (from the visible first line) are sitting unread in my inbox.
Maybe he's using sending you email to process his feelings - which he shouldn't be doing! but which is preferable to trying to change your mind.
(nearly forgot my name for this blog! too much time on File 770 using my old livejournal handle.)
While you can frame the premise as a noir set-up, it's not played very noiry. The satire is too foregrounded and the action too cartoony for it to come across as noir. And there's no femme fatale, nor much in the way of labyrinthine plotting and backstabbing (Omnicorp bosses aside, but it's not like that's a twist).
I mean, the comparison with Blade Runner just highlights the difference. BR shoehorns a not-particularly noir original story into a noir style. It's trying so damn hard to be a noir, with its women smoking in lightbeams with 40s haircuts and so on. Whereas Robocop, to the extent it has noir themes, buries them under capitalist satire and scenes of Murphy punching through walls and shooting people in the dick.
There was a 1978 version of "The Big Sleep," which is certainly noir. It also counts as 80s because Joan Collins.
I doubt it was very "cyber", though.
I mean there was plenty of general noir in the 80s - Body Heat, Blood Simple, To Live and Die in LA, Blue Velvet, arguably The Grifters
Angel Heart belongs on any list of 80s noir.
174.1: It was set in London, which was strange and "cyber" stuff is strange.
TV show -- not the original talk show, but a journalism-based thriller kind of thing. It didn't last long.
It wasn't as good as "The Misfits of Science."
I saw the tv show. I wouldn't call it noir, to the extent that being dystopian and poorly lit isn't enough to be noir. I thought maybe there was a movie I missed, sort of like the post-cancellation Twin Peaks movie.
'Poorly lit' is, admittedly, an important component of noir.
What makes film noir?. (Happened to be in my twitter feed this morning.)
Maybe he's using sending you email to process his feelings - which he shouldn't be doing! but which is preferable to trying to change your mind.
Maaaaaaaaybe, but I've found from both sides that one bleeds into the other pretty quickly.
185: Now, we are officially inside a noir movie.
186: So, we should stop commenting since it's too dark to read.
You know, what with the dames and the horses, I don't even know why I bother to put my hat on in the morning.
From the minute she walked into the comments section of the eclectic web magazine, I could see she was trouble.
188: Yay, Cabin Pressure! I still haven't found Zurich -- it doesn't seem to be available through the BBC website anymore.
The Lost Boys !!! Noir film about contagious vampirism among sexy backlit adolescents, overtones of AIDS metaphors. 80s noir championship winner.
Wait, what? How on earth is Lost Boys noir, rather than, you know, a teen vampire comedy horror? I don't remember any death by stereo in Touch of Evil.
Inspired by this thread and a desire to avoid working on a grant application, I've been reading some "Best 80s noir" lists, and most of them don't seem very coherent. They include things like Body Heat and Blood Simple, but then they throw in films like Extreme Prejudice, which is just a big dumb* action movie.
I suppose the joy of a category like noir is that you can argue endlessly over which movies belong and which don't.
*Really dumb.
If you want 80s vampire noir look no farther than Near Dark.
If you want 80s vampire noir look no farther than Near Dark
Love at First Bite, surely. Technically it's from 1979, but even so.
Noir is pretty hard to define except in an I know it when I see it way.* I don't think Robocop is noir. Lost Boys is also not noir but it does sound in some noirish themes, since "nefarious, secret, mysterious deeds in beach city at night" is a core component of noir.
*this is why I wasn't an awesome student of literature
Anyhow, I feel like there's a specifically 80s style and theme that's not quite noir but needs its own catchphrase -- "80s dark" maybe. Reveling in the dark side of cocaine and glamour. I assume there's some literature on this that I don't know.
The 80s definitely had a weird relationship with noir, what with all those high-profile, godawful remakes of noir classics (No Way Out, D.O.A., Postman Always Rings Twice, Against All Odds, probably some others I'm forgetting). Inevitable fallout from some genuinely great neo-noir in the 70s I guess?
Like, even the Highlander, which is clearly not noir, needs set pieces in steamy dark alleyways, parking garages, and dimly-lit downtown lofts. Or the end of Lethal Weapon II at the port. Same with, e.g., Flashdance. Is there a name for that style? Those of those who grew up in that era learned that climactic action always takes place on dimly-lit catwalks near steam vents, something that hasn't proven true in real life.
I think the recent BFI checklist linked above is a pretty good starting point. Obviously not every component needs to be present, and very few films will have all of them (eg the poster one is more corollary than axiom), but I think you need a majority to be considered and it'll take some persuasion to convince me that a film without, say, rotten humanity and a downbeat ending is noir.
Also, I think it's less "I know it when I see it" than "It is when it's consciously working in that idiom".
Is there a name for that style?
The 80s.
188: Yay, Cabin Pressure! I still haven't found Zurich -- it doesn't seem to be available through the BBC website anymore.
You can get the whole thing on Audible.
Yeah, the BFI thing is very good. n
Definitely Thief, ManhunterTo Live and Die in LA lot's of good 80s noir.
Even more if you go global, bunch of John Woo films are very noir.
The Karate Kid was generally received as a feel good teen underdog movie, but in fact it's an unacknowledged masterpiece of 80s neo noir. #SlatePitch.
Tigre, you scrofulous lickspittle, you're saying with a straight face that Michael Chapman's conematography on a movie where action takes place mostly at night and centers on dangerous seduction fails to meet a meaningful definition of noir?
Perhaps you typed 197 while stopped at a light so felt compelled to write before thinking.
Chapman filmed Taxi Driver and Hardcore before this one. Any definition of noir which isn't so stilted as to encompass only movies up to Touch of Evil as noir is going to include this one. Feel free to type words as "rebuttal."
204 also insert that damned comma.
Is Taxi Driver noir? That strikes me as a good question. Definitely some noirish themes (and Bernard Hermann music -- though, is Hitchcock noir? I'd say mostly no?) but no convoluted plot, tale of secret corruption, etc.
I'm not sure that it's fair to include the whole private-eye/detective stuff in the definition: sure private-detective stories were really common/influential because of the Hammett and Chandler movies. But there are a bunch of films that are noir as hell that don't have anything like that in them.
I think the focus on cinematography and general tone is probably the main thing to go with, and I'd support a 'in high contrast black and white' as a central and important feature. One of the things about neo-noir movies that always feels strange/off is that you can't do that as effectively in color, which strips them of a lot of the noir atmosphere. I mean, you can get close by filming mostly at night, generally washing out the color palettes or restricting yourself to almost black-and-[particular color] shots*, etc. But the sort of ambient bleakness you get from the black and white noir films is really hard to get when you're working with color.
*BladerunnerIamlookingatyou.
Inevitable fallout from some genuinely great neo-noir in the 70s I guess?
Well represented by comparing Chinatown with the coma-inducing dullness of The Two Jakes.
In fairness The Two Jakes produced some excellent lawsuits.
I mean, The Leopard Man (and a lot of those RKO Val Lewton movies) has almost nothing as far as noir-detective-fiction stuff going on in it, but it's noir as hell.
I think the focus on cinematography and general tone is probably the main thing to go with
Would people say that Miller's Crossing is Noir? I wouldn't have thought that it was, but Brick was obviously highly influenced by Miller's Crossing and is considered neo-noir. It doesn't use Noir lighting but has a classic, "down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean" noir plot.
Hopeless antihero who tries anyway, driven by impossible/improbable love interest that he's maybe ambivalent about. Cinematic world marinated in cynicism.
Tremors is the ultimate in 80s film noir. You have a town named "Perfection" and underneath it is riven by monsters.
Also, it was released in 1990 but the 80s don't really end until the release of "Nevermind."
A lot of crime films from the early noir era seem to get called noir simply because crime. There's a big difference between people getting caught up in things that spin out of control and people meticulously planning heists that still go wrong. Asphalt Jungle: great film, not noir.
214. I can't deal with the Coens. I have the same feeling that I do with Tarantino, these are movies about movies first and anything else second. The difference is that I see Tarantino movies as exuberant-- maybe incoherent or tasteless, but QT cares about the movie he's making.
Every Coen movie leaves me feeling that these guys hate their audience; they're so talented that some of the movies (Fargo most strongly) succeed anyway.
The wikipedia list of new-noir titles is far too inclusive, but reminds me that House Of Games is a film worth mentioning (great movie, perhaps a better example of Tigre's "80s dark" than Noir)
Every Coen movie leaves me feeling that these guys hate their audience;
What?
But the sort of ambient bleakness you get from the black and white noir films is really hard to get when you're working with color.
It's a different bleakness, sure, but I'd put the photography of, say, The Long Goodbye or The Friends of Eddie Coyle up against anything from classic noir for ambient bleakness.
And of course, now that the Coens have come up, this bring us to their (non 80s) noir masterpiece The Big Lebowski.
Tremors is the ultimate in film everything, Moby.
fucking HTML tags, why don't they close?
Every Coen movie leaves me feeling that these guys hate their audience
I've heard that criticism. Personally I only occasionally like them -- many of their movies seem more clever than good, but I don't know how you could say that Blood Simple is a movie which would make you think they hate their audience -- watch the opening, which I'd argue is as exuberant as anything Tarantino has done. Less hyper-kinetic, but completely thrilled by the act of movie-making.
Tremors 5 is currently in production.
The Coen brothers are mostly like Tarantino in that they like playing around with genre tropes, but for whatever reason for them it's almost always noir (whether straight like in Blood Simple, goofy like in The Big Lebowski, or whatever they were doing with Fargo). Noir is bleak enough that I guess it could seem that way, if they do it enough. Tarantino mostly makes movies playing around with fun b-movie tropes, which gives off more exuberance than you can get with noir (I'm guessing if he made a few more movies like Reservoir Dogs his output would feel different and more like the Coens).
Also apparently Bill Murray signed on for the movie Garfield (and its sequel, I guess) because he read the name "Joel Cohen" and thought he'd read "Joel Coen" which is amazing. Also the idea of a Garfield movie directed and written by the Coen brothers is one of the greatest things ever.
I haven't seen Blood Simple, I'll remember the recommendaton, thanks.
Friends Of Eddie Coyle is a fantastic book, almost exclusively incredible dialogue. If I remember right, the author turned to writing after many years as an attorney.
220, 227: I thought it was their characters the Coens supposedly hate, rather than their audience? Though in either version I find the criticism puzzling.
I don't know about hating their audience, but watch this scene from Intolerable Cruelty and it's a little bit difficult to figure out what they were going for.
Tremors Repo Man is the ultimate in 80s film noir.
Tremors Repo Man is the ultimate film in everything.
I don't know that I've seen Repo Man. I did see Men at Work, which must be close enough.
233, 234 No argument from me. The film of my generation.
232: The entire movie is a kind of off kilter screwball comedy, right?
The Coen brothers seem to love cross breeding noir with other stuff (usually in a black comedy way), and sometimes it works (westerns, stoner comedies, spy movies, etc.) and sometimes it doesn't. I think intolerable cruelty failed to some extent because the screwball comedies basically require the characters involved to be kind of annoying and frustrating and it's hard to mash that together with a black comedy sensibility and keep enough attachment to the characters. (I guess A Fish Called Wanda would be the equivalent in a movie that did work?)
Tigre, you scrofulous lickspittle, you're saying with a straight face that Michael Chapman's conematography on a movie where action takes place mostly at night and centers on dangerous seduction fails to meet a meaningful definition of noir?
That's every single vampire movie, if you take out Michael Chapman. I refuse to accept a definition of noir that encompasses all well-shot vampire movies by default.
And of course, now that the Coens have come up, this bring us to their (non 80s) noir masterpiece The Big Lebowski.
The Man Who Wasn't There is the real Coen (noir) masterpiece, because it perfects the anti-noir thing they were trying out to brilliant comic effect in Lebowski.
The Man Who Knew Too Little was pretty great and noiry.
I didn't mind The Big Lebowski, but watching somebody drink a White Russian causes me physical discomfort.
lw deserves some sort of prize for "you scrofulous lickspittle"
"Noir is a precocious if somewhat prematurely cynical 4-year old. He does have an impressive, if sometimes inappropriate, vocabulary. A few of the girls in the class are quite smitten with him while others complain about him bitterly and seem to fear him. He does have a frank stare and carries himself in a bold, almost insolent, manner. He is often to be found skulking in dark corners and shadows. Have you considered an exorcism?"
Baby names, right?
Watch Blood Simple and No Country for Old Men back to back.
239.2 is a good point. In contrast to Nosferatu or Coppola's Dracula, there's not really a hero in Lost Boys, much less romantic swirling visions of the interpersonal significance of it all and a background of hope if only the hero wins. On the other hand, also no gratuitous cynicism everywhere.
The film's pretty ambiguous about hope and inevitability, which I thought made it interesting-- I'd say actually that the absence of a hero and clearly presented hopeful outcome if only the plot resolves in hero's favor is enough; antihero and stated hopelessness would be clearer, but I still claim there's enough. Definitely not a typical vampire movie with hopeful rescue as an outcome though. Interview with the Vampire was a noir-friendly book (one I liked a lot, actually), though the movie was hacks going through the motions. Later vampires are case-by-case-- Sookie Stackhouse is I'd say an interesting marginal case, sometimes yes, sometimes no.
243. Good noir is too nice to mock with this kind of ill-considered broad-brush hackery.
The man who has tired of noir has tired of life, which, I guess, no surprise here, amirite, Stormcrow?
243: "Please do not send Noir to kindergarten with any further bottles of milk. He has taken to hoarding them in his desk, only to occasionally retrieve them while gazing wistfully at our now empty hamster cage, and many have begun to smell. Juice will be provided at snacktime."
Down these mean streets a toddler must go...
Tarantino and the Coen brothers are the opposite in almost every way. Tarantino loves movie violence, and he gives his characters a self-aware cool. The Coen brothers think the way movies romanticize violence isromanticization immoral, and they undermine the romanticization at every turn. Their characters are never cool, but are almost always goofballs.
"Chandler" is a popular boys name. There, thread tied up in a bow for you.
they undermine the romanticization at every turn
Seems like a stretch. Their violence isn't glorified, exactly, but it's hardly realistic, either. Except that sometimes I do cruise around with one of those bolt-gun air tank things and take care of enemies.
I thought that guy was a metaphor for something.
Death, evil, bowl haircuts. Something in that line.
Their characters are never cool
Tom in Miller's Crossing approaches cool, but he might be disqualified by the fact that he gets beaten up all the time.
I dunno, I think Walt has it right. Making it somewhat unrealistic isn't the same as glorifying it. Mostly when violence happens it's at the hands of idiots, people panicking and doing something dumb, or otherwise pathetic looking. When it isn't it's usually committed by people who are kind of off putting - fascinating, sometimes, but still not people you identify with or think well of. If you imagine how, e.g., Chigurh or those two guys in Fargo would come off in a Tarantino movie it would be a lot different. For the most part the criminals/etc. who are committing acts of violence in their films feel like the people in Elmore Leonard novels except they don't come off as charming or basically decent or sympathetic.
250: Friends was the ultimate noir sit-com.
251: No Country for Old Men is the movie that did it the least, so it makes sense that it's the one that won awards, since everyone loves movie violence. But they gave Chigurh the world's dorkiest haircut and weird affect for a reason. Despite the fact that he gets away with his crimes, he ends up limping away just ahead of the law, while the cop who failed to catch him gets to retire peacefully.
But they gave Chigurh the world's dorkiest haircut and weird affect for a reason.
Force of habit?
256: I knew it would happen some day. I didn't know it would be today.
Glorifying is different from romanticizing. Indeed, I don't think that even Tarantino "glorifies" violence exactly, he just likes its cinematic effect. You can even read Pulp Fiction as a critique of the total prevalence of violence in American culture, while at the same time a demonstration of its integral part in that culture. And the Coens are also primarily interested in the cinematic effects of violence, though in different ways.
I don't think it's at all accurate to see the Coens movies as taking a moral stance against the tendency of film to display violence for the gratification of audiences. They are super into providing beautifully shot and put together violent scenes, and their violence is in fact gratifying, though the violence seems to be making some point about the dark side of the human soul, or something. Whereas for Tarantino it's more purely all about cinematic effect.
You can read it that way, I guess, but in terms of sheer spectacle violence in Tarantino movies looks badass, and cool. I mean, for all that Jules forsakes violence and its futility or whatever, he's also super awesome looking at it.
In the Coen brothers movies the people usually just look pathetic or stupid when they do it, and as often as not when they do commit the violence it's not something they intended to do and it's portrayed as a giant fuckup on their part.
the total prevalence of violence in American culture
Even in breakfast cereal, man.
Chigurh, the character, romanticises his violence. The Coens/McCarthy make it clear he's just batshit. (Kelly MacDonald's "It's just you" at the end, etc...)
262 It still looks great on camera though. In a way it can't be helped, that's what the camera does and it takes a real mastery to resist it. So in Coen brothers movies the people may look pathetic or stupid but it still looks cool and "cinematic."
I haven't seen his The Assassin yet but Hou Hsiao-hsien who doesn't have very much violence in his movies really does show how pathetic and stupid people are when they get violent. I'm thinking of a scene in Boys from Fengkeui and a couple of other films I can't recall the titles of right now where it happens at a distance, and the camera doesn't follow the action but the actors run on and off camera fighting but you don't see very much because most of it happens off camera. Doesn't feel in the least contrived but has a very true to life feel.
Yeah, I don't think Tarantino cares about real-world violence at all, which is why (as everyone in history has observed) Inglourious Basterds is more about World War 2 movies than it is about World War 2. (I guess you could argue that in his two most recent movies he's trying to right the wrongs of history by giving the historical victims of violence the revenge of redemptive violence on the big screen.)
In Coen Brothers movies, characters who commit violence are usually crazy and ridiculous, and generally come to an ignominious end. I'm sure on some level they like movie violence, since everybody likes movie violence, but they always undermine it at the same time.
The Coen brothers have a bunch of movies so I'm sure there's some scene or character that looks really cool committing acts of violence, but the closest they've come to a really badass assassin is Chigurh and he's a weird, lumbering shark. I mean, it's not hard to imagine people fantasizing and dealing out death and being feared and stuff like Jules in that clip. But imagining being something inspires dread or revulsion as much as fear isn't really the same thing. On some level they're both badasses and killers, but it's really clear that the directors think differently about what that amounts to.
The Big Country is very good on undermining the glamour of violence, also very well lit. And fabulous score, by Jerome Moross. Singing the main theme at the counter when purchasing a Big Country loaf at The Mill on Divisadero hasn't worked yet as an effective way to answer the person at the till asking what kind of bread you have, but is remarkably and repeatedly effective at embarrassing the teenager.
Any more where Woody Harrelson dies can't be said to completely avoid glamorizing violence.
Miller's Crossing probably comes the closest to glorifying killing/violence, I think. It doesn't have the same pathetic/creepiness that violence takes on in their later films. But even so there's an oddness to it that you don't see in a lot of movies.
246: Good noir is too nice to mock with this kind of ill-considered broad-brush hackery.
Let me illustrate the depth of my respect for noir by linking this salty tribute.
The balletic sequence in which Albert Finney as Leo fights off the Italians with a Tommy Gun which seems to have a thousand rounds, to a record player playing "Oh Danny Boy" is kind of exhilarating, even if hard to take seriously. There's also something dreamlike about the scene where Leo punches Tom through the club and out to the street.
But the return of John Torturro from Miller's Crossing is genuinely frightening.
270:
Are you thinking of the famous inconclusive fistfight between Peck & Charlton Heston? Or the disarray in Burl Ives' camp as the cowboys disrupt it? Great stuff I agree, leaving a very un-movie-violence memory.
271: Woody Harrelson's Texas badass roots.
I just think he never could replace Coach.
