Join us with special guest host John Rogers for our discussion about Film Noir. you can decide for yourself if it is and actual film genre, or if it’s just a certain atmosphere.
Film noir (meaning ‘black film’) is a distinct branch of the crime/gangster sagas from the 1930s. Strictly speaking, film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style or tone of various American films that evolved in the 1940s, and lasted in a classic period until about 1960. However, film noir has not been exclusively confined to this era, and has re-occurred in cyclical form in other years in various neo-noirs. Noirs are usually black and white films with primary moods of melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt and paranoia.
About John Rogers
John Rogers is a screenwriter, comedian, film producer, and comic book writer. Although born in Worcester, Massachusetts, he attended McGill University in Montreal and is better known publicly as a Canadian writer. While at McGill, he wrote for the school’s comedy magazine The Red Herring.
John Rogers
Rogers wrote the first draft of the script for the live-action movie Transformers, released in 2007. He wrote an early screenplay for Catwoman and created the cartoon series Jackie Chan Adventures. He also co-wrote the science fiction adventure film The Core. In 2004 Rogers wrote and executive-produced a television pilot based on the graphic novel Global Frequency. Although the pilot was never aired on network television, it achieved brief notoriety when it was leaked onto the internet and accrued an international fan base. He created and serves as executive producer for the 2008 TNT TV series, Leverage.
Apart from his work in movies and television, Rogers has also worked in the comic book industry. In March 2006, he co-created the new Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes, in the relaunch the Blue Beetle comic book for DC Comics with plotter Keith Giffen and artist Cully Hamner. He has also written comics for BOOM! Studios. Rogers’ stories are included in BOOM!’s Zombie Tales, Cthulhu Tales, Pirate Tales and What Were They Thinking? anthologies. Rogers currently writes the current Dungeons & Dragons comic series for IDW Publishing.
Rogers has also worked on role-playing games, and is the author of Feywild chapter of the 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons Manual of the Planes (2008).
