Lack of originality

Last semester I watched a film called "City on Fire" directed by Ringo Lam for my 205 paper. A couple of months ago i watched Quetin Taratino's "Resovoir Dogs" for the first time. I loved the film but some elements within it seemed like De ja vu. The plot was very similar both to "City On Fire" both being about undercover cops who finds a connection with the thiefs they are meant to catch. Also some of the scenes in Resovoir dogs were excatly the same as City on Fire.

I think its interesting to see that within the film and music industry copying another person's work is not always deemed as unacceptable. Sometimes copying another artist or directors work is almost like a compliment to the original creator. We see alot of this in films such as Resovoir dogs but even more inside the music industry. Rap's method of sampling uses sounds and music from previous songs to create the beat and tempo. This has been taken to the extreme in recent years where singers copy the entire sound off another song and just changes the lyrics such as Mary J Blige's "Love it or Hate it remix. For me i think originality is important music and its sad to see that Hip hop artists are starting to lose some of their creativity and originality