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.
Tag Archives: Joseph De Paul
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
Filed under Joseph De Paul, Movies

