Category Archives: Joseph De Paul

Guest Review: Jurassic World

 jurassic-world-poster
By Joseph De Paul

 

Welcome to Jurassic World

The magic is gone so let’s eat some people!

It’s been 22 years since, as a boy, I watched animals that up until that point, I had only seen as bones or cartoons damn well near come alive and at the same time bewilder scare the crap out of me. Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Jurassic Park could be seen as the perfect Blockbuster. It still holds up over 20 years later. After The Lost World (underrated I think) and Jurassic Park 3 (let’s not talk about it) the public’s cultural conciseness had basically put the franchise to bed, really only to living on in comic books and video games. But, it’s the 21st century, and we’ll try anything….four times.

So we get Jurassic World, a movie I’m sure no one was really asking for, but it’s here so let’s make the most of it. Once I heard that this was actually going to happen I instantly went in to self preservation mode and prepared myself for a total suck fest. As trailers for the movie started to come out I knew the only way I was going to like this film was if a ton of people got eaten by passable CGI Dinosaurs. That’s all I wanted and Jurassic World pretty much delivers. Continue reading

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Same $%^&, Different Day

Several years ago, staff writer Joseph De Paul, better known as Dude, and I were hanging out with one of our professors when the topic of comedians came up. At the time there was a big huff about Dane Cook being accused of stealing jokes and so Dude posed the question “If Dane Cook stealing jokes is wrong, how do you justify someone like Sergio Leone basically ripping off Yojimbo to make A Fistful of Dollars?” Our professor paused for a moment and then replied, “Well, Leone is a genius, and Dane Cook [insert XXX rated act].” Dane Cook insults aside, our professor hit on something much deeper than stolen jokes: the idea that there are no new stories.

yojimbo

Yojimbo

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A Stroll Among Shadows: A fan’s thumb nail guide to film noir, pt 2

A couple of months ago, I gave a detailed and involved description of film noir, discussing its history and the key points that make a noir story.  Here I just want to name a few of what I think are the key films for this era that not only embody key characteristics of the genre but also turned out to be great entries in American film making. Continue reading

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A Stroll Among Shadows: A fan’s thumb nail guide to film noir

The last thing that I want to write for this blog post is a paraphrase of the Wiki page about film noir, so for our purposes here, I’m going to talk about my experience with film noir and give an overview of what it is, some of the history, stars, directors, archetypes, and mostly talk about my favorites in the genre.

So just what is film noir anyway? The word noir gets thrown around a lot in modern movie geek-speak, but doesn’t seem to have a hard and fast definition. How does one separate a film noir from a run of the mill crime film? I’ve heard movies referred to as modern noir or neo-noir; I even referred to A Dame to Kill For as a comic noir in my review. Believe it or not, “what is film noir” really isn’t an easy question to answer. Continue reading

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