The Faculty Lounge

Heroes to Misfits to ....

OK, so I must admit I've gotten kinda hooked on the BBC series Misfits after sitting in on an undergrad class this semester with all the students talking about it.

The Hollywood gossip at the moment seems to be that there is now a planned U.S. version of the series in the works.  What I don't understand is that I actually thought Misfits was the U.K. version of American shows like Heroes.  So would the American version of Misfits be the American version of the U.K. version of the American version ...

As someone in the copyright law area who spends a lot of time thinking about creativity and originality, I have to wonder whether the real reason copyright law protects expression and not ideas is that no one making commercial entertainment seems to have any new ideas...

Oscar Disappointments

A couple of weeks ago I blogged asking readers for advice on what movies I should see to prepare myself for the Oscar race.  Boy did I choose wrong.  After dragging myself through Take Shelter, enjoying Young Adult and hanging in there for the U.S. remake of Dragon Tattoo, I find I have missed most of the movies that got the big Oscar noms.  I still haven't seen The Descendants, The Help or The Artist.  And Iron Lady only just opened in Cleveland...

But as bad as I feel, I have to feel worse for poor Michael Fassbender who garnered so much 'early buzz' and then completely struck out despite having donned some truly ludicrous costumes in X-Men, taken it all off in Shame and had a contentious affair with a patient in Dangerous Method. 

Who else do folks feel bad for this year?

Awards Season is Approaching ....

And speaking of our friend Kelly Anders and her Oscar Trivia prowess (and congrats on the book, Kelly!) it would be wrong of me to let the new year creep in without alerting everyone to the need to spend whatever is left of the break catching up on those Oscar-buzz-worthy films.  The field is wide open this year according to Variety with no early indications of a front-runner in any of the major categories.

I can attest to the strong acting performances and quirky script in Young Adult, but I can't say I've seen too many of the other films being talked about.

Given that there's so little time and so many potential contenders, which films do Lounge readers think we should see in the remaining couple of months before the awards hit us?

Lawyering Skills: From "A" To "Z"

Creighton law prof Kelly Anders (pictured) has been a Lounge visitor on multiple occasions, including stints as one of our "Oscar trivia experts" in recent years.  Next month, Carolina Academic Press will publish Kelly's new book, Advocacy to Zealousness: Learning Lawyering Skills from Classic Films.  Details are available here.  A review of the table of contents reveals that Kelly builds her textual discussion of 26 different lawyering skills (one for each letter of the alphabet [including the always challenging "q" and "x"!]) around 26 different films, including such law-related favorites as To Kill a Mockingbird and 12 Angry Men, and others that are completely new to me, such as Pinky and Salesman.

Sounds like a book that should certainly interest those who teach a course in lawyering skills, Law and Film, or Law and Culture.  And if you don't?  A love of film should be hook enough!

Kudos, Kelly!

Woody & Mia's Lawyer Son Wins A Rhodes

Ronan Farrow, who old Woody Allen fans once knew as Satchel, has been named a Rhodes Scholar.  He is a 24 year old Yale Law grad who was first accepted by the school at age 16.  He graduated from Bard College at 15.  He is currently Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for Global Youth Issues and director of the State Department’s Global Youth Issues office. 

Whichbook

I usually have a stack of "fun" reading on my night stand.  Currently, the stack includes The Piano Shop on the Left Bank (a re-read actually of a quirky book about living in Paris),  and Daniel Silva's new book Portrait of a Spy (the latest in the Gabriel Allon series).  

I often collect recommendations from colleagues, and a friend recently told me about a book recommendation website:  Whichbook.    You can select up to four different qualities in the book (happy v. sad, funny v. serious, easy v. demanding, etc.)   The site then gives you recommendations, which include the title, an excerpt from the book and "similar" books.   The Whichbook site has helped me move outside my reading comfort zone with some unexpected recommendations.   Give it a try!

Where Academic Writing Could (Sadly) End Up

With gratitude to my colleague (and occasional Faculty Lounge guest blogger), Cassandra Robertson, for drawing this to my attention.  Here's a review of an academic book on photography that Cassandra and I both felt may tell us something about the perils of how some of us write (or feel that we should write) law review articles.  See what you think!

Going Ape Over Monkey Movies

In honor of today's opening of Rise of the Planet of the Apes (what's not to love - intelligent apes, dangerous biotech research etc?), I invite readers to comment on their favorite monkey movies over the years.

Was it in Madagascar the the monkeys were discussing when they should "fling poo" in cultured British accents?

And if anyone can explain all the time and space paradoxes in previous Planet of the Apes movies, I'd be most grateful.  Don't they start in the future and end in the past?

 

Last Minute Summer Reading

If anyone is trying to fit in some summer reading in a last desperate bid to convince themselves that the fall semester is not imminently upon us, I would recommend two books I read recently. 

The first is Before I Go to Sleep which is a British novel - I think a debut novel from a new writer.  It's a mystery/thriller about a woman who has amnesia and can only remember the day she is living and then forgets and starts anew the next day.  She has to attempt to solve the mysteries of her past life and how she got to where she is without being able to remember.  It's kind of derivative, but a definitely new and gripping take on an existing theme.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second recommendation is Split which is also a debut novel by a new young writer.  This deals with the question of what happens to a teenage boy who escapes an abusive home.  It sounds like a downer but it's told with humor, sincerity, and warmth from the perspective of the teenager who runs away to seek his older brother who escaped from the home some years earlier.  I found it beautifully written and very touching.

Our Favorite Typos

While cleaning up some of my son's Star Wars paraphernalia over the weekend, my husband pointed out a typo in a book referring to the history between Obi-Wan and Anakin as the pair facing obstacles that put their friendship to the "text".  I mean, I'm all for IM-ing, but that seems just silly.

What are some of your favorite typos?

The Best and Worst Fictional Leaders

While catching up on the many TV series I've missed over the years, I stumbled on Commander in Chief, starring Geena Davis as the first female American president.  Having recently succumbed to The West Wing and having always kind of had a soft spot for The American President, I started thinking about which are the best and worst portrayals of political leaders.  I mean, you kind of have to love Bill Pullman in Independence Day talking about not quietly going into the night in the face of alien attack.  And didn't Morgan Freeman try to lead the country out of meteoric disaster in Deep Impact?

And I haven't even started on portraryals of British royalty - Helen Mirren's Oscar Winning turn as Queen Elizabeth is a case in point.  (Although to be fair, this is a fictional account of a real figure unlike the fictional accounts of fictional presidents listed above.)

Who were the best TV or movie presidents, prime ministers, and monarchs in your view?

Pre-Loaded Audio and Video Players

OK - so I realize I absolutely must spend less time on Amazon and less time trying to find more time to read more books.  But I did find something new on Amazon earlier today and did a little digging.  Apparently, there's a new way of enjoying books and movies via "pre-loaded" digital book and video players.  In other words, you don't buy content and download it to an MP3 device, but rather you buy hardware (a player) pre-loaded with the content you want.  There's a company that sells a whole catalog of audio and video products this way.  But I don't understand the marketing/pricing.  A popular novel costs around $50 to $60 in this format and it's not clear to me whether the device can ever be re-used to play other content or whether you have to buy a new hard copy device for each book (or movie).  If so, this is a pretty expensive pricing model.  Even a hardcover new release book only costs $20 to $30.  So I'm not 100% sure who the market is for these products and whether the manufacturers are pricing themselves out of the market anyway.  With so many models available for listening to and viewing content relatively cheaply and flexibly, it's hard to understand where this one will fit in.

Summer Reading: How to Choose...

Recently, I blogged about the differences between browsing for book selections in bricks and mortar stores versus online.  There's another difference I've noticed about selecting books digitally versus in stores and that is the way physical world recommendations work as compared with digital recommendations.  On Amazon, for example, books are recommended in three ways: (a) the "my recommendations" section of my account; (b) when I look up a title, Amazon also tells me about other books viewed/purchased by people who liked this title; and, (c) the customer reviews section, including the average number of "stars" each book has received from readers.

It's the stars I'm interested in at the moment.  I've noticed that often a book that is recommended to me by a friend, or that gets good reviews in the press actually doesn't get a lot of stars online or vice versa.  This may be a case of TMI, but my own wetware algorithms struggle with how to internally weigh real world reviews against Amazon's star system.  I do take into account how many online reviews there were: for example, a title with five stars may only have 6 reviewers if it's a new work or a work self-published by someone on Kindle.  So my wetware algorithm may discount a high number of stars if there's a low number of reviewers.  Also, I'll read through some of the actual customer reviews online, but this gets unwieldy where there are a lot of reviews, unless everyone seems to be saying pretty much the same thing about the book.

In a world of so many books to read and not enough time (can you see I'm still suffering from writer's block myself???), I need a better internal algorithm!

And in the vein of discussing my own summer reading projects, I would recommend The Memory Keeper's Daughter, although it's perhaps more drawn out than it needs to be, and I'm not sure about The Elegance of the Hedgehog.  I haven't been able to get through it.  Can anyone advise as to whether it's worth persevering?

 

You Can Tell I Have Writer's Block When ...

... I keep blogging about pop culture books and movies.  Obviously, I'm busily and importantly attempting to finish a draft conference paper that is due next month so I'm distracted by just about anything and everything that isn't copyright law.  One of my weekend distractions was the incessant replaying of Star Wars movies on TV over the weekend that my hubby was watching.  I couldn't stop him because it was Father's Day and he deserved a treat.  But even he agreed that one of the worst romantic couples ever put together in movie history was Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen in Star Wars, episodes 2 and 3.  The lack of chemistry between them is truly awe-inspiring, particularly given that they are both very good actors in their own right. 

This got me to thinking about some of the best and worst movie pairings of all time.  I think the best for me will always be Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole in How to Steal a Million.  And while I STILL haven't seen Water for Elephants, I suspect that the pairing of Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson (she's almost old enough to be his mother and actually played his mother in an earlier film) will be amongst the worst.

What are your thoughts on the best and worst movie pairings of all time?

The Movie Wasn't As Good As the Book .... Summer 2011 Edition

Returning to one of my favorite topics, I was thinking about recent movies where "the movie wasn't as good as the book".  There seem to be quite a few of them.  For example, the film version of Water for Elephants received reviews so bad I didn't bother to see it at the theaters, even though I really enjoyed the book.  Then there was I Am Number Four, a young adult sci-fi-oriented adventure story.  The film wasn't terrible, but was pretty ordinary.  And people will probably disagree with me on this one, but I finally saw the film version of Precious, and I have to say that I thought the book was actually better despite the fact that the movie was extremely well made and acted and deservedly nominated for several academy awards last year.  The film just didn't capture the writing style of the book to my mind.  And turning to mindless romantic comedy, Something Borrowed was a cute enough book but again I was talked out of seeing the film by others who told me how bad it was.

There's some forthcoming film adaptations of books that will be interesting to check out in terms of comparisons with the source work.  For example, the final installment of the Harry Potter franchise.  I must admit that Deathy Hallows Part I rivaled the book for me, although it obviously cut out significant parts of the lengthy plot of the book.  And there's the much talked-about and not yet fully cast Hunger Games movies to look forward to.  Then there's the American versions of the Dragon Tattoo books coming up.  Will they be as good as the Swedish versions, which were pretty faithful to the books and probably as good a job at translating those books to the screen as I can imagine.

What books are you looking forward to seeing translated onto the silver screen over the next year or so?  What books do you hope they don't turn into movies?  And if they do turn them into movies, would you prefer that they not be in 3D??

Browsing, Not Buying

Several friends have remarked to me lately about how sad it is to see so many bricks and mortar bookstores going out of business.  It appears that one obvious reason behind this has been the exponential growth of e-publishing businesses.  E-books can be significantly cheaper (although not always) than paper copies, delivery is instant anywhere anytime, books can be read anywhere anytime without having to lug them around in a backpack.  So much for the reading side of the equation.  But what about CHOOSING books to read?  Are e-devices better than physical bookstores for browsing?  I to tend to gravitate towards completely different books depending on whether I'm browsing online or in a bookstore.  I'm often attracted to items in a store that may never show up on a 'recommendations' list on, say, Amazon.  However, like many of us I suspect, if I find something I like in the store I'm probably tempted to just download it to my Kindle rather than purchasing a hard copy.  So is there any economical model under which we could maintain the advantages of bricks and mortar book browsing while retaining the benefits of e-books?  Does it have to be either/or?  Will libraries overtake bookstores as places to browse shelves for new inspiration on what to buy? 

Summer Reading: Celebrity Autobiography Edition

Well, I started the summer reading binge with two celebrity autobiographies:  Bossypants by Tina Fey and Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed both of them.  They are actually very different books and both enjoyable for different reasons.  And anyone who has ever been a breastfeeding mother (or who has attempted to breastfeed with little success) will love Fey's chapter on attempting to breastfeed her child.

Both books are well written and both deal with people who don't come from a traditional show-biz background but who made their way into success, ultimately both ending up with NBC sitcoms - Fey with 30 Rock and Lowe on Parks and Recreation.

Of course both authors are the stars in their own stories so to speak, so if you don't like (or are not prepared to like) either Fey or Lowe you may not like their books. 

One little thing bothered me while reading Lowe's book, though.  He refers to a number of his apparently well-known movies and I have no recollection of seeing or hearing of any of them other than St Elmo's Fire and About Last Night.  I had never even heard of The Outsiders - neither the book nor the movie.  I grew up in Australia and wondered if it was possible that none of these movies ever made it to distribution there.  I checked with another Aussie friend who had also never heard of most of his movies.  Do others from different countries have similar "gaps" in their "Brat Pack knowledge"?  Or was I just a bookish young girl who didn't care much for the teen scene??

 

Genre Bending

With the impending release of Cowboys and Aliens, which I understand is based on a comic book (?), I started to think of how many other movies or TV shows combined the Western format with Sci Fi.  Of course I came up with the obvious - Joss Wheedon's Firefly.  But it strikes me that some genres seem to meld together very well eg romantic comedy, historical romance, sci-fi thriller.  And many genres don't meld often or well eg historical thriller (although I'm sure there are some good ones).  Some genres seem to be diametrically opposed eg drama and comedy - although I'm sure the two have been cominbed to good effect occasionally.  Another set of oppositional genres seems to be epics and thrillers because epic implies something that is long and drawn out and thriller implies something more fast paced.  What are your favorite genre-bending movies?  What are the most effective and least effective attempts at combining genres?

Copyrighting Tattoos

An interesting law suit has been brewing between the tattoo artist who created Mike Tyson's famous facial tattoo and the Warner Bros studios in respect of Ed Helms' character in their recent release, The Hangover 2.  In the movie, Helms sports a facial tattoo very similar to Mike Tyson's original tattoo.  The case re-opens a murky area of copyright law relating to tattoos and body art, including questions of whether skin art is copyrightable.  A few law review articles have touched on this issue previously, notably Cotter and Mirabole's article:  Written on the Body: Intellectual Property Rights in Tattoos, Makeup, and Other Body Art, 10 UCLA Entertainment Law Review 97-138 (2003).  It will be interesting to see what the courts do with this case.  

Summer Movie (and Book) Recommendations

With all due deference to my colleague, Jon Adler, I remain a little disappointed at the list of upcoming summer movies.  My tastes are pretty eclectic, but I haven't seen any trailers for anything I'm absolutely desperate to see over the summer.  I'm willing to give the new X-Men prequel a go.  And I still haven't seen Source Code or The Adjustment Bureau - so they'll probably be on my list for the summer.  But does anyone have their own thoughts?  In recent years, I have come to rely on this blog for good summer book and movie recommendations.  (And speaking of books, I'm half way through the audio CD of Fluke by Christopher Moore.  Very funny so far.)