March 8...and a week until Spring Break

School and life go on. Right now, I am in the depths of the semester. So far, the semester has not been as stressful as the last one. I think that a lot of this is due to the fact that, for the first time in my law school career, I do not have Legal Writing and Analysis. I am taking 5 classes and I am taking 16 credit hours. My daily routine consists of classes and studying. This also includes the weekends. I do not have classes on Fridays, but I have been spending Fridays in the library trying to get a head start on the week.

There has not been a lot going on socially, and I have yet to see any of the newer films that are out on the screens (except for “Ghost Rider”, but the less said about THAT film, the better!). I was happy to see Martin Scorsese finally win an Academy Award for Best Director for “The Departed,” but at the same time, I know that this was not for his best work. This was definitely more of a “career accomplishment” award for someone who, arguably, made the best films of the 70s (“Taxi Driver”), 80s (“Raging Bull”) and 90s (“Goodfellas”). At the same time, I think that most of Scorsese’s films retain a certain sense of the 70s sensibilities, and I agree with Peter Biskind’s assessment of “Raging Bull” in his book “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls”-“Raging Bull” could be considered an orphaned child of the 1970s. I was disappointed that Eddie Murphy lost in his bid for an Academy Award, but I hope that this will be the first in a run of nominations for Eddie.

I am looking forward to catching the film “300” this week. Director Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel of the same name tells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae. This is the celebrated “few against many” battle where, in 480 B.C., 300 Spartan warriors (led by the Spartan King Leonidas), held off hundreds of thousands of Persian ruler Xerxes’ warriors for three days. All of the Spartans were ultimately killed. I first became enamored by this version of the tale when I read Frank Miller’s graphic novel, and upon viewing the earliest trailers, I was relieved that they retained the lighting and shading techniques used by Miller in the illustrations in the graphic novel. I love the look of the film. Although George Lucas was the first to truly take advantage of a “set-less” film (filming the actors in front of the blue screen and then filling in the details later) for his film “Radioland Murders”, it was not until his later Star Wars films that the technique was finally perfected. The use of this technique and the more modern digital video cameras have taken everything one step farther; the technique was used with great effect in Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s film “Sin City.” There, the directors were able to fully render actual scenes from Miller’s graphic novel perfectly. Zack Snyder appears to be paying the same sort of attention to Miller’s work from the “300” graphic novel, as some of the scenes from the trailer directly mirror scenes from the graphic novel. This gives me hope for Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s 1985 graphic novel/miniseries “Watchmen”.

I am halfway done with the semester, yet this is only my second post. Bear with me!