Understanding Genre

Genre is how you can identify a piece of media for example: books, movies or music. The genre is classified by a set of stylistic criteria.

Genre is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or entertainment, e.g. music, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones are discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre

The "Thriller" genre  is a very broad genre, it uses tension, suspense and excitement as it's main elements. The genre will often stimulate the viewers moods by adding a high level of anticipation as they don't see what is coming. Thrillers can be divided into sub genres such as "period thrillers", "pyschological thrillers", "conspiracy thrillers", "erotic thrillers","political thrillers", "pyschological thrillers", "spy thrillers" and "supernatural thrillers".

Conventions of the film noir genre:  
Characters and plots: The genre of film noir often revolves around men who are often flawed or questionable morally, they are also often down and out detectives or private eyes that are given a case by a beautiful but dangerous woman, this is a femme fatale. The plots are revolved around crime which is a key element in the noir genre.

Mise-en-scene: Noir movies are often based in urban citites such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Chicago, this is because the noir genre will make the city a "labirynth" or "maze" for the hero. Bars, nightclubs, lounges or gambling dens/casios will be heavily featured.  The lighting will be dark and almost silhouette characters this is a technique called chiaroscuro. The cars and fashion are often old fashioned.

Iconography:
Guns, cigarettes, smoke, alcohol, neon lighting, trilby's, cars, police iconography.

Themes: 
The Haunted Past… In the noir world both past and present are inextricably bound… One cannot escape one’s past… And only in confronting it can the noir protagonist hope for some kind of redemption, even if it is at the end of a gun.
The Fatalistic Nightmare. The noir world revolves around causality. Events are linked… and lead inevitably to a heavily foreshadowed conclusion. It is a deterministic universe in which psychology… and even the structures of society… can ultimately override whatever good intentions and high hopes the main characters may have. http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/the-themes-of-film-noir.html 

My Top 10 Favourite Movies

10. The Evil Dead 2
 The film is set in a forest where evil lurks and the main character is Ash (Bruce Campbell) a college student who is trapped as his friends and girlfriend are possessed by the evil spirits as the night progresses he must fight to survive.


9. Gran Torino

Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood this film is about an old war veteran who lives in a neighbour hood of asians but he soon befriends one family and  grows a bond with a teenage boy as he protects him and his family as they are attacked by a gang. He soon decides to rid the problem of this gang.

8. The Dark Knight Trilogy

When Christopher Nolan rebooted the Batman series he created a dark and more realistic and character based universe where the dark knight must defend his city from dangerous threats such as a group of terrorists, his arch enemy Joker and a masked madman Bane.

7. Kill Bill

Directed by Quentin Tarantino this is a tale of a former assassain who is out for revenge against her old team for an ambush at her own wedding which resulted in her going into a coma and the death of her unborn baby.

 6. Edward Scissorhands

In the first collaboration from Tim Burton and Johnny Depp this is a tale of a boy who was made by a brilliant scientist but is unfinished with scissors for hands and when a suburbian mother finds him and takes him down to live among real people and the disintegration of his relationships with those around him.










5. Sin City

In this stylish noir graphic novel adaptation it stars Bruce Willis as a honest cop in a dirty town who protects a stripper (Jessica Alba) from an evil madman yellow basterd. Mickey Rourke as Marv a man out to avenge the only woman he has ever loved death and Clive Owen as Dwight who helps a prostitute protect her part of town.

4. Scream

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scream_%28film%29

In this Wes Craven directed slasher film, high school student Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) struggles with the one year anniversary of her mothers death but soon her class mates are murdered and the murderer stalks the teenagers dressed in a ghost face mask  but she soon discovers the murders are more personal than she realised. The reason i like this movie is that it turned the slasher horror genre on it's head and showed it from a different perspective but at the same time the movie was a parody of the horror genre showcasing the cliches and flaws within it.

3. Pulp Fiction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_Fiction

This is the second movie directed by Quentin Tarantino and stars an all star ensemble cast such as John Travolta, Samuel L Jackson, Uma Thurman and Bruce Willis. The movie consists of 4 overlapping stories but are not told in order which adds to it;s narrative structure. I love this film as the characters have been so well thought out and the situations over the top but well written. But the best thing about this movie is how influential the movie is especially the 50's diner scene and it is also very quotable.




2. Kindergarten Cop

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindergarten_Cop

This movie is about an cop, John Kimble (Arnold Schwarzengger), who is forced to go undercover as a kindergarten teacher to find the wife and child of his rival a gangster serial killer to put him behind bars for good. The reason i love this movie is that Kimble is so out of his comfort zone as a tough guy cop it provides the comedy but the storyline and bond he establishes with the children he teaches is also touching but the film is not low on action.









1. Die Hard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hard

This movie tells the story of a New York city cop visiting his estranged wife in Los Angeles for a christmas party at a large finacial company but is interrupted by a band of 12 terrorists he is the only one who escapes and takes down the terrorists one by one. The reason this is my favourite movie is that this action movie has a thought out plot and developed characters that you can actually identify with and feel for, also the action is completely blockbuster and explosive. This movie is regarded as the best action movie ever made.

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