The noir-musical genre

I almost never regret spending my time watching a movie, even ones I end up hating. The mediocre ones are usually sufficient enough to sustain its own expectations, however low they may be, while the really bad ones can be seen as investments that pay off whenever you choose to ridicule them with friends or turn them into amusing anecdotes. 

Well yesterday I saw a movie that was an exception to the rule, i.e. it was a total waste of time. Repo: The Genetic Opera, or whatever it is properly called, was a complete disappointment! Please, don't bother watching it. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I actually thought it could be good. The trailer showed potential, it reminded me of Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical (2005) which I love, but at the end it wasn't even close to what I expected and I was left with a mind-boggling disappointment that made me want to forget I ever saw the damn thing!

Comparing the two films did lead me to an interesting observation about genres and where these type of movies could fit in. I did a compromise, in my head, and came up with the noir-musical. Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know that's not an establish genre yet. But that is where I would put Reefer Madness in. It's a musical that satirizes a propaganda film that came out in the 30s and deals with the "evil" that is marijuana, so already you can tell that it's not in the same category as Singin' in The Rain. It's "noir" because of its seediness and setting in the 40s. It also gets kind of gory at the end but I'm not sure how to classify that particular aspect, so for now I'm pleased with the noir-musical label. Come to think of it, Chicago and Cabaret could also fit in this genre, except that Cabaret, I believe, is known as a Bob Fosse musical, but that's more auteur territory rather than genre. Hm... discuss among yourselves. 

The Prodigal Daughter returns

This seems to be the theme of my life lately. Unintentionally a few weeks after I moved back home, me being the prodigal daughter of course, I've been reading books that deal with similar topics. 

Bitten by Kelley Armstrong is about the only female werewolf in existence, at least in this particular mythology, named Elena. In this story Elena has been spending the last year of her life away from her pack because of issues best discovered when you read the book yourself. Point is her "journey" is about coming home, prodigal daughter no.2.

The book I'm reading now, Stray by Rachel Vincent, is about another type of shape-shifters, namely werecats. The protagonist is again a young woman who has spent the recent years of her life going to college and then to postgraduate studies in pursuit of a life independent from her pride (which I've just learned is the equivalent of a wolf's pack for cats). She is forced to return home because of a certain incident. A reluctant, prodigal daughter no.3.

I'll have to think back on other books I've read first but I'm thinking that this is a theme that comes up quite often in one way or another, especially since a lot of the heroines that I read have some kind of daddy issue in their baggage.