in my heart i do no crime...

And now for some 5-second movie reviews:

Lars von Trier's Dogville: A most experimental film that tests the limits of human decency in the face of utter helplessness. Indeed, greed is shown to be a powerful stimulus that transforms even the saints among us. However, von Trier has explored these themes before in his brilliant Breaking the Waves. Dogville is much too focused on its own experimentalism to allow us an intimacy with the characters that is necessary in such serious dramas. B-.

Todd Phillips' Starsky and Hutch: Predictable and stale. Surprisingly enough, the only worthwhile performance is that of Snoop Dogg as street informer Huggy Bear. Snoop is a natural on the screen, giving us a smooth dose of subtle humor and restrained grooviness. Otherwise, the film is eminently forgettable. C-.

David Koepp's Secret Window: Adapted from the Stephen King novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, this watchable psychological thriller sustains our interest with some genuinely creepy moments and a confident Johnny Depp. Yes, the film uses every cliche in the book, but it works for what it is. B.

Kim Ki-Duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring: A beautifully-shot meditation on life's cycles. However, if you know anything about Buddhism, there will be very little to learn from the film. It is true to form, but the form itself is no revelation. B.

Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy: Hellboy's arrogant indifference is both his charm and his flaw. It makes him an interesting case study, but a distant, unapproachable character. We cannot relate to him on the level of Spider-Man or the X-Men, all of whom have a distinctly human dimension to their circumstances. Hellboy is just an oddity--nothing more, and nothing less. C.

i've been waiting like a knife...

I won't be blogging for the next week or so. I'm off to Vegas, and then New York.

New York should be fun because a couple of my SLS friends will be there. Amazingly, one of them will be working at my firm! I haven't seen those kids in over a year now. There is nothing sweeter than recapturing one's past.

you leave me broken, shattered i lie...

As I watched Troy last night, I came upon an epiphany of sorts. I was thinking of the great impact of Homer's The Iliad, and started pondering what the four or five greatest books of all time would be. Here I now present the only books that can properly be called "essential" to any bookshelf (ordered chronologically):

1. The Iliad and The Odyssey. Nobility, heroism, honor, glory, vitality: these primordial, archetypical values remain transcendent today.

2. The Complete Works of Plato. Philosophy is invented, and its name is Socrates.

3. The Bible. The birth of modern ethics.

4. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. So this is what it means to be human!

5. The Portable Nietzsche. Plato and God meet their match.

but flies will lay their eggs...

I am now officially done with my second year of law school. I must say I feel completely drained right now--physically, emotionally, and intellectually. I'm really looking forward to my Vegas trip though. That should rejuvenate me before I start working in New York. Also, I get to the see the family, whom I haven't seen since Christmas.

As a way to let off some steam, I'll be watching Troy tonight. It has gotten some mixed reviews, but most seem to agree that it's fun to watch. We'll see.

Also, I have to figure out a way to pack all of my belongings into no more than three boxes, as that is the number of boxes allowed per student in the dorm basement. How draconian.

childhood living is easy to do...

So the summer movie season has started. I saw Van Helsing last weekend, and I was rather underwhelmed. It was fairly predictable, and the dialogue bordered on the absurd. However, I must say that Kate Beckinsale looks good in black leather. Given that she starred in last year's Underworld (about werewolves and vampires as well), I can only predict that she'll be wearing a lot more black leather in her upcoming movies, all of which will no doubt involve...werewolves and vampires.

An now, a list of my most anticipated summer movie blockbusters:

1. Spider-Man 2. If you know me at all, you know I'm a huge fan of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002). The film was the definitive summer blockbuster: great fun, great special effects, and completely over the top, with quality performances from Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunst (both of whom will return for this summer's sequel). I'll be in New York when Spider-Man 2 is released on June 30th, so I'm sure that will make it that much more special.

2. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. While Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was nothing to write home about (in fact, it was rather awful, with lackluster performances all around), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets provided more in the way of charm and adventure. Prisoner of Azkaban was directed by Alfonso Cuaron, who received national attention for his gritty, honest, and all too tragic Mexican roadtrip drama, Y Tu Mama Tambien. I expect the new film to be darker than the other two, which would make for a perfect ambiance given the dark magic themes.

3. Before Sunset. Richard Linklater returns with this sequel to his 1995 sleeper hit, Before Sunrise. Linklater is perhaps the most explicitly philosophically-inclined director out there. In both Before Sunrise and Waking Life , we were treated to wonderfully engaging coversations about what it means to live, to die, and to be. I can only expect that Before Sunset will continue in this tradition.

4. Shrek 2. Judging from the previews, this film is looking a little too cutesy for me. However, I much enjoyed the irreverence of 2001's Shrek. Let's hope that overexposure hasn't dulled the sarcastic bite of the original.

5. Troy. Another Gladiator? Perhaps. You can expect a big, dramatic fairytale of a film. Since it is nearly 3 hours long, I just hope I don't end up falling asleep. Hopefully, the violence will keep me awake.

6. The Day After Tomorrow. Natural disaster movies have always been little bits of disasters in and of themselves. Let's hope the sappiness factor is kept to a minimum.

7. The Stepford Wives. From what I've seen in the previews, this will prove to be Nicole Kidman's worst performance ever. Plus, Matthew Broderick lost his spark back in the 1980s. And Christopher Walken? Ugh. He's become a parody of himself. Prognosis: a likely dud.

over the bridge we go, looking for love...

I just got out of my Corporations final exam, which was...uneven and rather idiosyncratic, to say the least. That's two down (Copyright was last week), with two to go. However, the other two are just papers.

The paper for my Socratic Jurisprudence class deals with Nietzsche's figure of Socrates, in which I argue that Socrates (equipped with his infamous Socratic method, and his all too clever gimmick, "the unexamined life is not worth living") was for Nietzsche the preeminent slave moralist, predisposed to avenge himself against the aristocrats of his day by subordinating their natural virtues of strength, beauty, and power, to the eminently metaphysical notion of a "noble soul." His was a "most spiritual" revenge. Even so, Socrates was for Nietzsche a "genuine philosopher" who was able to create and legislate values, which leads me to believe that Nietzsche's bitter attacks on the great Athenian were in fact the sincerest form of flattery.

My other paper is for my Church and State class. It attempts to make sense of the jurisprudence governing the display of religious symbols on government property, with a particular emphasis on the Ten Commandments cases. I argue that Justice O'Connor's endorsement test, which utilizes a reasonable-observer-plus standard, is for all practical purposes the dispositive test in deciding such cases. Why? Because she's the swing vote. This has the curious effect of supplanting the accommodationist approach followed by a plurality of the Court (Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy). That is, the most popular jurisprudential approach is rendered moot by the fortuity of a divided Court.

Fun stuff, all of it.

feel better with Oliver Stone...

I got a chance to catch Oliver Stone's U Turn on TBS last night. I had seen it once before when it was initially released back in 1997, and I liked it quite a bit back then. However, this time I noticed just how fresh all of the acting was in that movie. Indeed, the film is littered with great actors in small, idiosyncratic roles that are akin to irreverent one-liners in a gritty comedian's routine. The movie contains performances from the likes of Sean Penn (in a great, subtle performance far removed from his oppressively emotional roles in Mystic River and 21 Grams), Nick Nolte (who plays a jealous, hateful husband with a wicked sense of humor), Jennifer Lopez (who proves that she can act well, especially in sexy, subdued roles like this one), Billy Bob Thornton (playing a demented car mechanic who's got the upper hand despite the fact that he's living in a hellhole), and the great and sorely underrated Laurie Metcalf (playing a bus station clerk who has a most comical nervous breakdown). If you haven't seen this movie, it is classic Oliver Stone, and it is thoroughly enjoyable. I'd give it an A-.

told the northern lights to keep shining...

Now that most of the wrinkles have been ironed out, the site looks pretty good to me. I think I'll keep this new format.

Of course, you must know that this was all just a self-deceptive attempt to procrastinate on writing my two papers (which are both due this Friday), and on studying for that pesky Corporations exam that I have on Wednesday. Oh well. Back to the land of Rule 10b-5 I go...

Thus Spoke Zarathustra...

With the impending conclusion of my second year of law school, and with my upcoming adventures in the cities of New York (for the first half of the summer) and Houston (for the second half of the summer), I thought it would be appropriate to completely revamp this website. It's not finished yet, as I still have to figure out how to include my film review links on here, but I think I'm starting to like the new environment. Hope you like it...