Cult

DEFINITION ：

Cult Films have limited but very special appeal. Cult films are usually strange, quirky, offbeat, eccentric, oddball, or surreal, with outrageous, weird, unique and cartoony characters or plots, and garish sets. They are often considered controversial because they step outside standard narrative and technical conventions. They can be very stylized, and they are often flawed or unusual in some striking way.

Most cult films cut across many film genres (science fiction, horror, melodrama, etc.), although some film genres are also more prone to being cultish, such as the horror or sci-fi genres. Teen comedies are also more often rated as cult films, such as American Graffiti (1973), (National Lampoon's) Animal House (1978), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), and Dazed and Confused (1993), with quotable lines of dialogue, and memorable characters and scenes.

Many cult films feature or effectively showcase the performance of newcomers or other unknown talented actors/actresses. Sometimes, they were revolutionary, brilliant films 'before their time' (i.e., Fantasia (1940)) and not bound by the conventions of their day. Most often, obscure and cheesy cult films are made by maverick, highly individualistic film-makers with low-budget resources and little commercial marketing. And cult films are rarely, if ever, sequels, since then they would have attained mainstream appeal and widespread success. Some directors/producers are more prone to making cult films, such as Roger Corman, John Waters, Ed Wood, Quentin Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, and David Lynch, especially early in their careers, because of their individualistic perspective and style, although they can often make a conventional 'mainstream' film too (such as David Lynch's The Straight Story (1999)).

Many cult films fared poorly at the box office when first shown, but then achieved cult-film status, developing an enduring loyalty and following among fans over time, often through word-of-mouth recommendations. Cult movie worshippers persuasively argue about the merits of their choices, without regard for standard newspaper or movie reviews from critics. There's no hard-and-fast rule or checklist to gauge what makes a cult film. A cult film is often designated as such "in the eye of the beholder" without fufilling any definition. It's often a matter of opinion. One viewer's cult film may not be judged the same by another viewer.

They elicit a fiery and intense passion in devoted fans, and may cause cultists to enthusiastically champion and become devoted to these films, leading to audience participation, fan club membership, and repetitive viewings and showings at repertory cinemas. Cult films have tremendous followings with certain groups, e.g., college campuses, 'midnight movie' crowds, independent film lovers, etc. The first 'official' midnight movie was Alexandro Jodorosky's strange El Topo (1970, Mex.) (aka The Mole) - a mystical 'spaghetti western' about a black-clad rogue gunfighter on a quest to defeat the 'four masters of the gun.' It premiered at midnight in a rundown NYC theatre (on lower Eighth Avenue) and ran seven nights a week for many months. The concept of long-playing, taboo-breaking, eccentric midnight movies designed to appeal to urban film fans was thereby born.


Camp films are cult-type films, but they are often poorly made or ludicrous, yet still enjoyable and appreciated. Cult films follow no rules or pattern - some cult films are popular only among certain limited groups of audiences or friends.


MY OPINION :

Mostly , people are not really love cult movie because it always show homosexuals, drug addicts, dressers addiction, sadism and other more marginalized theme. However , I think the audience of Cult does not care about the topic of movies come out, they only care about the movie itself. For a example , a famous actor named Stephen Chow had take a Hong Kong cult movie before . Although the movie was long time ago but the audience still can memorize the actor's lines such as me !
And I also do the research of cult :)

This is the movie that I say 

REFERENCE :

This is the movie that I was talking about :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3iD6DPFgWw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXjDuEdjDg0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7APUM1rbEg4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryg9KYXXq0U

Noir

DEFINITION :

Film Noir (literally 'black film or cinema') was coined by French film critics (first by Nino Frank in 1946) who noticed the trend of how 'dark', downbeat and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France to theatres following the war, such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), Murder, My Sweet (1944), Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), and Laura (1944). A wide range of films reflected the resultant tensions and insecurities of the time period, and counter-balanced the optimism of Hollywood's musicals and comedies. Fear, mistrust, bleakness, loss of innocence, despair and paranoia are readily evident in noir, reflecting the 'chilly' Cold War period when the threat of nuclear annihilation was ever-present. The criminal, violent, misogynistic, hard-boiled, or greedy perspectives of anti-heroes in film noir were a metaphoric symptom of society's evils, with a strong undercurrent of moral conflict, purposelessness and sense of injustice. There were rarely happy or optimistic endings in noirs.


Classic film noir developed during and after World War II, taking advantage of the post-war ambience of anxiety, pessimism, and suspicion. It was a style of black and white American films that first evolved in the 1940s, became prominent in the post-war era, and lasted in a classic "Golden Age" period until about 1960 (marked by the 'last' film of the classic film noir era, Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958)).


Strictly speaking, film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style, point-of-view, or tone of a film. It is also helpful to realize that 'film noir' usually refers to a distinct historical period of film history - the decade of film-making after World War II, similar to the German Expressionism or the French New Wave periods. However, it was labeled as such only after the classic period - early noir film-makers didn't even use the film designation (as they would the labels "western" or "musical"), and were not conscious that their films would be labeled noirs.


Very often, a film noir story was developed around a cynical, hard-hearted, disillusioned male character [e.g., Robert Mitchum, Fred MacMurray, or Humphrey Bogart] who encountered a beautiful but promiscuous, amoral, double-dealing and seductive femme fatale [e.g., Mary Astor, Veronica Lake, Jane Greer, Barbara Stanwyck, or Lana Turner]. She would use her feminine wiles and come-hither sexuality to manipulate him into becoming the fall guy - often following a murder. After a betrayal or double-cross, she was frequently destroyed as well, often at the cost of the hero's life. As women during the war period were given new-found independence and better job-earning power in the homeland during the war, they would suffer -- on the screen -- in these films of the 40s.


Storylines were often elliptical, non-linear and twisting. Narratives were frequently complex, maze-like and convoluted, and typically told with foreboding background music, flashbacks (or a series of flashbacks), witty, razor-sharp and acerbic dialogue, and/or reflective and confessional, first-person voice-over narration. Amnesia suffered by the protagonist was a common plot device, as was the downfall of an innocent Everyman who fell victim to temptation or was framed. Revelations regarding the hero were made to explain/justify the hero's own cynical perspective on life.


Film noir films (mostly shot in gloomy grays, blacks and whites) thematically showed the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love, and they emphasized the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience. An oppressive atmosphere of menace, pessimism, anxiety, suspicion that anything can go wrong, dingy realism, futility, fatalism, defeat and entrapment were stylized characteristics of film noir. The protagonists in film noir were normally driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes.


Film noir films were marked visually by expressionistic lighting, deep-focus or depth of field camera work, disorienting visual schemes, jarring editing or juxtaposition of elements, ominous shadows, skewed camera angles (usually vertical or diagonal rather than horizontal), circling cigarette smoke, existential sensibilities, and unbalanced or moody compositions. Settings were often interiors with low-key (or single-source) lighting, venetian-blinded windows and rooms, and dark, claustrophobic, gloomy appearances. Exteriors were often urban night scenes with deep shadows, wet asphalt, dark alleyways, rain-slicked or mean streets, flashing neon lights, and low key lighting. Story locations were often in murky and dark streets, dimly-lit and low-rent apartments and hotel rooms of big cities, or abandoned warehouses. [Often-times, war-time scarcities were the reason for the reduced budgets and shadowy, stark sets of B-pictures and film noirs.]


Some of the most prominent directors of film noir included Orson Welles, John Huston, Billy Wilder, Edgar Ulmer, Douglas Sirk, Robert Siodmak, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Henry Hathaway and Howard Hawks.

MY OPINION :

I can‘t tell you that what time on this one kind of Noir with interest . From the beginning of careless like and later specifically looking to see a lot of Noir. What I think is that Noir cold and desolate. It show a general type of film can't express things. Noir means dark or black and also means gloomy . I try to learn about the lighting of Noir and I do some research of it .

REFERENCE :

http://filmmakeriq.com/lessons/the-basics-of-lighting-for-film-noir/ 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQpGAd9k-Yo

http://www.darkmansdarkroom.com/film-noir-lighting-with-lighting-diagrams/

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cameras-photography/tips/5-film-noir-photography-tips.htm

http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/home.html