Flying Houses

Die Hard 5: A Good Day to Die Hard - Dir. John Moore (The Die Hard Project #5 - JM)

2013-05-04T12:36:00.000-04:00

Die Hard 5: A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

Dir: John Moore

Die Hard takes a Walk
by
Jay Maronde

Die Hard 5: A Good Day to Die Hard is a movie that takes a walk, and I don’t mean that because for the first time John McClane leaves America for his adventure—I mean it in the context of the pitcher who beans the batter and says, “take your base.” Very sadly, this movie is atrocious (like worse than all the bad reviews of the previous four installments combined). Don’t get me wrong, I love DIE HARD, John McClane, and action movies, and by all means there are a ton of outstanding action sequences, but otherwise this movie is complete and utter capitalistic Hollywood garbage. The longer you watch this movie, the more it becomes apparent that the producers were pulling out all the stops for the action scenes, and if they had put 1/10 of the time, energy, and money into producing a movie that contained something of a plot and slightly better writing, this review would read very differently. But as it stands this is trash, remarkable trash.

Let’s start with Bruce. He’s awesome and more “die hardish” than ever. But he’s working with nothing for a script. Every single thing he does is the obvious silly Hollywood plot choice. And sadly, much like an older Roger Moore playing James Bond, his age does detract from the movie. Also, instead of this movie being a buddy film, it’s more of a father/son team up. Which brings us to the new star of the Die Hard series: Jai Courtney playing John “Jack” McClane, Jr. Personally I don’t feel as though Courtney was that poor of a casting choice, but he’s certainly not even half as good as Shia LaBeouf as Indiana Jones’ son. Further, his role in the film (which I won’t give away) is completely ridiculous: it’s merely a way to put Willis in Russia. Also while on the topic of actors I would like to acknowledge Mary Elizabeth Winsted reprising her wonderful performance from DH4 as Lucy McClane (John’s daughter and Jack’s sister). Miss Winsted was outstanding and was more than decent in her cameo performance in this film. However, she looks so much different from the last film that I honestly had no idea it was her until the credits rolled and spent a big part of the experience troubled by this. The rest of the actors are decent character actors playing stereotypical Russian gangsters and again they seem to be doing as much as they can with the poor-to-bad script that they are working with.

Not to let the director off the hook: at no point during this entire film do you feel like Moore had any creative control or self-expression. To be honest, a decently well programmed robot could have probably churned out more original garbage.

I’m so sad to have to give the latest installment in one of my favorite series a poor review, but on the brighter side of things the movie made more than 3 times its budget from ticket revenues, so for a film which was intentionally just Hollywood capitalistic trash, I suppose it achieved its goals remarkably well.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress #23: Scamblogs

2013-04-29T12:01:00.001-04:00

The penultimate NIED column. #24 will be my farewell column, and is yet to be written. While this post replicates some of the material linked to in the first paragraph, I felt that an update on the matter would be instructive in determining of how many legal educations "scams" at certain institutions continue to exist. My slight complaint about the version appearing on BLS Advocate is that they did not seem to get my point about the Claims Adjuster position posted on our school's job board...

On June 1, 2011, I posted a long “special comment” on so-called “scamblogs.” That may be found here http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2011/06/special-comment-scamblogs.html. As previously understood between me and the BLS Advocate staff, I will complete Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress with 24 articles. I felt that since I was nearing graduation, it was time to reconsider scamblogs, and see how the landscape has changed in the past two years.

First, we consider http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com, which has just said “goodbye” on February 27, 2013, after 500 posts. One statement bears excerpting:

19 months and 499 posts later, it turns out that the core message of this blog – that legal academia is operating on the basis of an unsustainable economic model, which requires most law students to borrow more money to get law degrees than it makes sense for them to borrow, given their career prospects, and that for many years law schools worked hard, wittingly or unwittingly, to hide this increasingly inconvenient truth from both themselves and their potential matriculants – has evolved from a horrible heresy to something close to conventional wisdom.

So the scamblogs have gone away because people got tired of repeating themselves over and over again, until people at the ABA decided that it was time to take their concerns seriously. I personally dislike this blog because he brags about getting 50,000 comments (I have about 100 comments and 30,000 page views, but I would like to think that I have written on a far more diverse range of topics). I also have little sympathy for law school professors that write about how they know they are “duping” their students—if you believe that strongly about it then get out (maybe it’s all he’s qualified to do, though).

Next up we have the always popular “ATL.” I will not say much about this website as I have written at length on it in my previous special comment linked to above, but I will just say that I was very distressed to see them report on the resignation of our Director of Career Services, with a “hot tip” from a BLS student who bemoaned the fact that a position of “Claims Adjuster” was listed on Symplicity. Note to self: Claims Adjuster is not a “legal job” but it’s at an insurance company and they always need lawyers so they wouldn’t be posting there if that wasn’t at least part of the concern. Plus those jobs pay pretty well, and the lead singer from the band Pissed Jeans is a Claims Adjuster for his day job so I think it would actually be kind of cool to do that.

I hate “ATL.” I have visited it less and less over the years. It loads slowly. It’s TMZ for nerdy lawyers and law students. They make all their money off advertising from various “legal companies” and then they don’t exactly bite that hand that feeds them, but might as well [tell everyone that if they score beneath 170 on the LSAT don’t go to law school]. I have very little respect for this website and hope that my blog will never fall prey to being such a sell-out.

Lawschoolfail.blogspot.com is our next stop on the tour, and this site at least opens up with a nice post (dated December 26, 2012) asking whether the scamblogs are wrong. Now this is an interesting question. The scamblogs may have been right, and they may actually have effected a grassroots-type of change in the legal profession, now that US News & World Report has changed the way they list employment figures for graduated law students. But do we really need scamblogs anymore?

The blogger makes an interesting point:

What is the point in not getting married or not trying in life because you did not get a job after law school? What is the point in feeling sorry for yourself over the internet year after year? There has to honestly come a time when you get off the internet and start striving again. I just can't get over the fact that law school has broken so many people. I can't come up with any other conclusion than these people were very weak individuals. Some seem to literally revel in their own self pity, wallowing in the perceived idea that they are pariahs. Many act as if they have given up on life, instead of trying to do something else, they just say "I can't do anything with my degree."

This is basically the point I wanted to make here. Law school is not for babies. If you’ve never had a job before starting law school, then you may not know what it is like to search for a job, and how demoralizing it can get. It’s probably going to suck. But things are different in 2013 than they were in 2012 or 2011 or 2010 or 2009 or even 2008. They still pretty much suck, but they are, ever-so-slowly (we are told to believe) getting better.

ThirdTierReality.blogspot.com is an especially vicious site with offensive imagery that seems to revel in parades after parades of horribles. In the past, this blog has taken pot shots at BLS and our President. Now, many of us may feel strongly about our President, but nobody really knows how much of a role she plays in our school. She is higher up than the Dean, no? She is the at the very top and has done her best to plug holes in the sinking ship that is a law school of our caliber in New York City in these economic times. As much as people might love to hate on her, the fact is many of us have not even spoken to her, and have no idea what she is doing behind the scenes. We will not pay any more attention to the woman behind the curtain.

***

Higher education may indeed be a scam, but it is a scam with which we must live. Persons concerned that they are not getting their money’s worth should avoid private education. (Though it is worth noting that many public institutions have rather inflated tuitions for law school—see University of Illinois at $38,250 a year (in-state); I base my statement on the cost of attending Northern Illinois University, however, which most people would consider reasonable at $19,811 a year (in-state).) Many people from my generation will find it necessary to obtain a higher degree because they have found out that liberal arts degrees are a a-dime-a-dozen and they are simply not competitive in the labor economy. I would not say “the hard is what makes it great,” but I would say “the hard is what makes you prepared to accept the terms of reality.” I’m not going to make $160,000 in my first year out of law school, and indeed may not even get a job paying $57,000. But I am not going to blog about how I wish I had known better. Law school has been a rigorous education and has opened up a few more job possibilities than were open to me with a B.A. I will continue to blog about literature, film, music, and interesting legal matters. I will never suggest that BLS “tricked” me into attending (though I may file a complaint against them in small claims court for $6,000), and whenever I give my “unauthorized tour” of the library to prospective students, I tell them that it is a very good school, and the tragedy is that because we are all so well-qualified, a fair number of us will just get left in the dust because there will always be employers that only care about class rank.

BLS has cut back the number of students per class, and ultimately this is the wisest resolution of the “hyper-saturation problem.” We may never be as good as NYU or Columbia, but my hope is that one day (hopefully soon) we will be recognized as a school on equal footing with Fordham. And I do not think that is an unrealistic hope.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress #22: Corporations

2013-04-27T09:05:00.001-04:00

I really do not want to cover up "Wild Bill," but as we near the end of law school, we must think of others who do not read BLS Advocate. While I have generally been pleased with the posting of my materials on BLS Advocate, there are at times small (nearly imperceptible) changes made to my work that I find to be incorrect. My grammar and writing may be horrible, but I will continue to post the "unedited" versions on Flying Houses. And using info-graphics that may require permission....

NIED #22: Corporations

By Christopher J. Knorps

I took Corporations in the Spring semester of my 2L year. Only one section of it was offered then, and I was disheartened that I had not taken it in the Fall, when four (I think) were available, but I digress. I do remember one Fall 2011 Corporations student’s status message on facebook: “If you are taking corporations in the spring, start outlining.”

Corporations is a strange class—indeed, it is one of the many “upperclass requirements” (along with Evidence, Criminal Procedure, Trusts & Estates, and perhaps Tax or Administrative Law) but does not seem to focus on any single concept for too long except for the Business Judgment Rule. By the end of the semester, you reach mergers & acquisitions, which is probably the hardest part of the course. My professor worried, during an extra help session shortly before the exam, that I might “miss the forest for the trees,” and I was cautioned against doing so. Regardless, I earned a B in the course—certainly the most disappointing grade in my 2L year—and I was later told that I was “boosted” from a B- for my in-class participation. My hope is that after reading this column, you will not fall into the same Corporations trap.

First, if you have online access to BarBri or Themis or Kaplan, you should watch the lecture they have on Corporations. It will not exactly be in depth, but it will tell you everything you need to succeed on the exam. I feel that if I had watched the BarBri lecture, I would have earned a B+ or A- on the exam. This was a class that I worked very hard in—and I knew the cases. But I tend to focus on “the entire case,” rather than the rule to be gleaned from the case, due to a general distrust of “law student laziness.”

“Law student laziness” may or may not be practiced by the top students—but it irks me to no end. Corporations was difficult for me, because of the M&A stuff. To illustrate, consider the Omnicare case. Now, not only was the similarity of “Obamacare” and “Romneycare” a topic of some interest to throw off my concentration, but this case is a toughie. It was the only assignment for that class, and we spent two hours on it. When you have taken good notes from a two-hour class on one case, you have a problem because you have to get rid of all the extraneous stuff. However, it is just like a law school exam to bring you through an extremely complex fact pattern that mimics patterns in certain cases, and forces you to react accordingly with the courts’ decisions in such instances. I have no ideas about how to memorize such situations, but I can only suggest that you enumerate all of the relevant events in the merger negotiation process, and that you focus, laser-like, on the events or transactions most important to the court.

Revlon is a different matter. That is an easy case. If your business is going up for sale, and everyone knows it, you now have an affirmative duty to find the best price for your shareholders.

However, what the “best price” is in any given situation may be difficult to analyze. Particularly if you do not have a very good idea about how analysts price stock.

Now, I asked a question about this in my class, and my professor told me to take Corporate Finance. I did that and got a C+ on that exam. But I do know from that course how people price stock:

XYZ Affair, Inc. has 1,000,000 authorized shares and was started with $1 million in capital.

Each share is worth $1.

If XYZ Affair is very profitable, if it makes $500,000 in its first year of business, each share is now worth $1.50 (issues related to dividends, I will admit, are pretty well-cabined in the Corporate Finance course).

However, that would be too easy. Stock pricing gets more difficult when you start including hostile tender offers that apply a “discount premium.” In such a situation, Ronald Perelman or Carl Icahn is about to “raid” a company. They may pay $4 for that share (probably more realistically they would not be interested in the XYZ Affair, Inc.), and once they own 500,001 shares, they have control. Once they have control, they have a duty to their shareholders (unless the corporation is on the brink of insolvency, in which case the duties shift to the creditors of the corporation). They will pay that $4 in order to get shareholders to sell, but once they have the majority of the stock of the corporation, they will be able to elect everyone to the Board of Directors.

I do not know if “poison pills” and “shark repellant” are essentially the same thing or not, and I am actually unsure of the veracity of the statements in the preceding paragraph by now (i.e. the stuff about voting). But I do know my exam featured a “lock-up agreement” (also, may or may not be the same thing as a “no shop provision”) that I was unable to properly analyze, and so the rest of my answer came out a mess.

But I do know that BJR almost always wins the case for the Board—except in Van Gorkum. And I do know that once it is determined that the Board is made up of “interested” directors, the standard shifts to “entire fairness” and the Board must prove their action was fair to shareholders. Unitrin and Unocal are all about taking defensive measures against takeover attempts, and are easy, like Revlon to sum up in a sentence: the defense mechanism has to be consonant with the severity of the threat.

There are other cases—Caremark looms large, but I seem to remember that one just standing for the proposition that corporations must maintain internal systems of control to “police themselves” from committing fraud.

I really am afraid to write anything more because I don’t want to be wrong. Just watch the lecture. It should help. If you want to comment in the hopes of clarifying some minute aspect of the corporations course, feel free—let this column be a place for impromptu truth-seeking.

Christopher J. Knorps is a 3L at Brooklyn Law School. He enjoys studying bankruptcy law and constitutional law. He is organizing Brooklyn Law School’s 2^nd Annual Open Mic—please e-mail him at Christopher.knorps@brooklaw.edu if you want to reserve a slot ahead of time. You may read more of his work at flyinghouses.blogspot.com.

Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas - Bruce Allen Murphy

2013-04-24T13:40:00.000-04:00

Justice Douglas is my favorite Supreme Court justice, ever. Justice Stevens is #2, and Justice Brandeis might be #3. (Brennan, Marshall, and Black might fill out a few other top slots.) That all 3 ran on the "same line" from 1916 - 2010 is noteworthy, and whatever reservations Douglas may have had about his likely successor, one hopes that Justice Stevens "made good" in the eyes of history (I believe that he has).

Wild Bill is a long book--511 pages to be exact. It was published in 2003 and took 15 years to research and write. Mr. Murphy did a fine job with his research and his prose, but one tends to wonder about editing. While Wild Bill will certainly make the "best books" list on Flying Houses, I fear that it did not capture a wide audience. Murphy states that he had a 2,700 page manuscript at one point, so boiling this down to 1/5 of that length must have involved some serious editorial wrangling. He had good help:

"My gratitude is extended to agent Robert Gottlieb, then at William Morris, for arranging the original book contract and for encouraging me to stick with the plan of doing a one-volume biography." (515)

Gottlieb is a legend in his own right, but it is quite apparent to me that few people in 2003 were still interested in reading multi-volume biographies. However I will not use this review as a sword against the modern world of literary agents. This is a book that deserved to be published (of course) and deserves to be called one of the greatest biographies in American history--primarily because its subject is one of the greatest heroes in American history, and the treatment of that subject is well considered.

For those that are unaware of Justice Douglas (or who did not read my review of his excellent work Points of Rebellion) there are a number of "sound bites" that people in law school tend to know:

(1) He was married four times.

(2) He was an impassioned environmentalist.

(3) He holds the record for the longest term of service on the Court.

(4) He was fucking crazy.

Of course I am only kidding about the last one. If he was crazy at any point, it was near the end of his life, and I intend "crazy" in its most endearing form: good crazy; not bad crazy.

His life story is not easily told in a review of a book, but I would like to comment on one thing first:

Whitman College.

Now, few people may know this, but Whitman College was on my "shortlist" of undergraduate institutions to attend back in 2001. It did not win out, but I am sure that had I gone there, I would have been aware of Justice Douglas much earlier in my life, and would have modeled the years past accordingly. Therefore, I blame the admissions outreach office of Whitman College for its failure to highlight this esteemed alumnus's humble roots. Perhaps I was not interested in law when I was 18, but I am sure that, had I gone to Whitman College, I would have gone to law school immediately, would probably have graduated at one of the most terrible times in history, and might not be sitting in the Napping Room of the Brooklyn Law School library, typing out this post.

I suppose the best place to begin is with his time in law school (at Columbia):

"As his classmates got to know Douglas, they became aware that he was different from them. 'The thing that really set him apart from the rest of us,' remembered classmate Herman Benjamin. 'was not his brilliance--we were all pretty smart--and it was not his poverty--we were all pretty poor...No, what set him apart from the rest of us was his age. He was a full two years older than the rest of us.' Indeed, in an entering class of 264 people, nearly all twenty-one or twenty-two years old, Douglas was one of only two who were about to turn twenty-four. Embarrassed by this difference, Douglas made up a story to explain it...." (44)

That story involves distinguished service in World War I, which later serves to get him a place at Arlington National Cemetery. This is apocryphal, like some other stories Douglas liked to tell, but true enough to make people shut up.

Douglas did well in law school, but not as well as most modern Supreme Court justices:

"This combination of intellectual challenges took its toll on Bill Douglas's scholarly performance. At the end of the first year's exams, when the top several students were acknowledged by being named James Kent Scholars, Douglas was not among them. Douglas's friends believed that his lack of academic success was due to causes beyond any intellectual weakness on his part. 'Douglas was not well-off in law school,' explained Herman Benjamin. 'He was the only one of our class who absolutely had to work...The rest of us worked to get spare money, but Douglas had to work to live. I think it's quite possible that his financial straits may have affected his scholarship." (45)

Later, he improved in his second year, due in no small part to the efforts of his first wife, Mildred, who taught school in New Jersey and supported him for his last two years in school. However, it was not without its disappointments. He didn't make the Columbia Law Review (at first) and he "lost a clerkship." Furthermore:

"The real truth, they all knew, was that the Yakima Apple Knocker had been nowhere close to graduating second in his class or, for that matter, to the law clerkship. Herman Benjamin, a Law Review compatriot who is acknowledged as the class's historian, remembered, 'Not only can I assure you that Al McCormack was the universal and obvious choice for the clerkship [with Harlan Fiske Stone], but...if Douglas was competing with McCormack, it was for no better than fifth in the class....Douglas's memory on this matter is never very precise. I have concluded that he is always a little general about the facts.'" (474)

This is not a far cry from my laments about Justice Stevens being the only recent Justice not to graduate from Harvard or Yale, but that being okay because he graduated #1 in his class at Northwestern. Once again, I lament that only the most intellectually superior will ever have a chance to sit on the Supreme Court. It is particularly ironic, in this day and age of anti-intellectualism, that the President has never felt compelled to place a "more ordinary" mind on the Court. I digress.

Justice Douglas was raised in large part by his mother, with whom he had a stormy relationship. His father was a Reverend, and sometimes Murphy invokes that image when writing of Douglas as a "preacher from the pulpit of the Court." He was very ill as a boy, but recovered, and eventually was a very powerful hiker. At one point he challenges a bunch of people to hike a 161 mile trail:

"The Washington Post endorsed a plan to build the C&O Parkway from Cumberland, Maryland, to the nation's capital along an old 185-mile, 230-foot-wide towpath beside the historic Chesapeake and Ohio Canal....Douglas sent a letter to the editor protesting that this highway would destroy the canal that his predecessor Justice Louis D. Brandeis used to travel by canoe to Cumberland. Even now, he said, 'it is a refuge, a place of retreat, a long stretch of quiet and peace at the Capitol's [sic] back door--a wilderness area where man can be alone with his thoughts, a sanctuary where he can commune with God and with nature, a place not yet marred by the roar of wheels and the sound of horns.'" (330)

Of course he makes good on his challenge, and the editors at the Post decide that they were wrong, that the trail is indeed beautiful, and that they no longer endorsed the project.

Oh, also he did this (in his mid-50's) after a horse fell on top of him about five years earlier, crushing 23 out of 24 of his ribs.

There is also plenty of gossip regarding his womanizing and drinking. No less than five wives/long-term girlfriends (while married to someone else) were sprinkled throughout his life. And there were more:

"'We never knew what Dad did in Goose Prairie,' recalled his daughter Millie. 'He would just be gone for long periods of time [during the summer].' And he took advantage of his privacy, especially in his relationships with women. 'Bill was the biggest whorer around,' recalled Isabelle Lynn, an early guest and later Kershaw's partner at the Double K, 'but we still loved him, though.' Kay Kershaw had built a one-room, tine-roofed outbuilding, complete with a fireplace and a half bath, where a guest could live in total seclusion even from the main ranch. This very quickly became Douglas's home away from home. 'Bill came here when he had a girlfriend, or when he didn't have a girlfriend and was writing one of his books,' recalled Kershaw, adding with a knowing smile, 'and he was here a lot.' His female guests were arranged by an old friend. 'Douglas would just see what he liked in Yakima, and Elon Gilbert would ask the girl up,' explained Kershaw. 'I was always seeing girls come by saying, "Is Bill around?" There were all types and all ages, and they came all the time...Poor Bill,' Kershaw concluded, 'he was no family man. His personal life was all fouled up.'" (270-271)

As for drinking, Douglas could do it with the best of them. But his paranoia, while oftentimes reasonable in certain respects (this was the J. Edgar Hoover era after all), sometimes took a toll on his staff:

"After a day of hard work with Douglas, everyone would wait until he departed before leaving themselves--sometimes it was at 6:00 and sometimes as late as 8:00 P.M. When Douglas found out about this practice, he began leaving and then returning ten minutes later to see if the work was still under way. If he saw no one, Douglas asked his secretary the next day, 'Where was everyone last night? I came back, and no one was in the office.'
On days when they did not all scramble for the door after he had departed, the bottle of vodka in the bottom of Fay Aull's desk might be brought out to celebrate the survival of another day in the Justice's service. One time, the Justice walked in a few minutes later to find a party well under way, said nothing, and went into his office. The next morning, he buzzed for his secretaries and told them, 'Somebody is stealing my booze.' Knowing that no one would dare touch the ample supply of liquor that he kept in his office, this was merely intended to put them on notice that what he saw should not happen again. All it did, though, was convince them all to wait an extra five minutes before beginning the end-of-day festivities." (407-408)

There is also a great account of a pseudo-nervous breakdown he suffers while on a hiking trip:

"Everyone looked forward to dinner and the conversation that followed around the campfire, where Douglas would often sit cross-legged on the wooden supply boxes or on a log by the fire and tell his stories. Looking past the roaring embers, with sparks filling the air around him, he would mesmerize the travelers with his tales of how he had 'cleaned up the Street,' how he had told Felix [Frankfurter] to 'go to hell,' or how close he had come to being vice president and then president instead of that haberdasher from Missouri.
But as the pack train moved along on this August day, it soon became clear to everyone that something was dreadfully wrong with their famous friend...'I'm gonna get good and drunk tonight,' he hissed at Cragg Gilbert. Normally, that would not be an unusual statement, except this time Gilbert could see that Douglas would be drinking out of anger rather than to amuse himself.
As soon as the procession reached Blankenship Meadow, nearly everyone sprang into action--pitching their tents, getting their water, scouring the woods for kindling, arranging the food and cooking utensils for dinner, and building a campfire. But Bill Douglas did none of that. Instead, reaching into one of his saddlebags, he took out a liquor bottle and just sat down, drinking as fast as his body would allow. With each swig, a deepening anger set in. When the bottle was finished, he simply tossed it aside, returned to the saddlebag, and picked out another one.....Douglas started mumbling, but it wasn't to anyone around him, it was only to himself and in a language only he seemed to understand....'They bought it! They bought the goddamned nomination!'...Douglas's mumbling eventually ceased, and he began yelling at no one in particular...."(348-349)

So on the personal side of things, Murphy does a good job of summarizing Douglas's life. Murphy's writing on the law could be compared to Jeffrey Toobin's (in The Oath or The Nine), though it lacks the same kind of immediacy that present-day reportage on the Court entails. It seems clear that Murphy is "liberal," but he is more nuanced in his treatment of "conservative" justices. In any case, this book has some overlap with The Brethren, but an unrelenting attack on Justice Burger is not undertaken. And it is to Murphy's credit that he must have known the existing literature on his subject, and that he didn't want to needlessly repeat some episodes already noted in other books. Thus, there is some discussion of Douglas's treatment of his law clerks, but none of the stories from The Brethren are repeated. Generally, Murphy is great at summarizing the Court's decisions in concise and well-chosen language. See for example, his two sentence summary of Roe v. Wade:

"In Roe, the Court had overturned Texas's ban on abortions by creating a trimester system regulating the ability to secure abortions based on the differing interests of the three parties involved in the dispute: the mother, the unborn fetus, and the state. While the mother had an unlimited right to get an abortion in the first three months of a pregnancy, and the state had the right to prevent an abortion in the last three months to protect the fetus, in the middle trimester a state could only regulate the decision to get an abortion based on the need to protect the health and life of the mother." (458)

So, again, this book will be useful for students studying Constitutional Law. Here is a brief list of cases that the book touches upon, and may be useful in supplementing one's studies:

Adderley v. Florida (1966)
Dennis v. United States (1951)
Feiner v. New York (1950)
Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)
Korematsu v. United States (1944)
Minersville School Dist. v. Gobitis (1940)
New York Times Co. v. United States (1971)
Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville (1972)
Poe v. Ullman (1961)
Rosenberg v. United States (1953)
Roth v. United States (1957)
Sierra Club v. Morton (1972)
Terminiello v. Chicago (1949)
United States v. Nixon (1974)
United Stats v. O'Brien (1968)

Sadly, the book does not pass the 420 test--but it comes pretty close:

"By this time [1970] he was especially suspicious of the FBI. Upon noticing men in dark suits loitering around his summer house, Douglas began to investigate their mission. 'I wrote you last fall or winter that federal agents were in Yakima and Goose Prairie looking me over at Goose Prairie. I thought they were merely counting fence posts,' Douglas wrote his friends at the Double K ranch in the spring of 1970. 'But I learned in New York City yesterday that they were planting marijuana with the prospect of a nice big TV-covered raid in July or August. I forgot to tell you that this gang in power is not in search of truth. They are "search and destroy" people...It would be ironic if they planted it over in Ira [Ford]'s yard, not mine!' But no such marijuana raid was ever staged." (444-445)

Douglas's career looks like this: (1) humble beginnings in Yakima, WA; (2) Whitman College years; (3) One year spent teaching high school; (4) Columbia Law School years; (5) Time spent working at Cravath, the work making him sick, weighing his other options; (6) Time spent teaching at Columbia and Yale Law Schools; (7) Offers dangled from the University of Chicago, playing law schools against one another to have him on their faculty; (8) elected Chairman of the SEC and prosecutes Richard Whitney; (9) Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1939; (10) Potential Vice-Presidential Candidate for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman; (11) Potential presidential candidate--until he gets divorced; (12) Several wives, stultifying alimony responsibilities, and general disarray of personal financial affairs; (13) Discovery that he could be paid handsomely for writing books on the various travels he took; (14) Last surviving New Dealer on the Court, facing five Nixon appointees; (15) Greatly diminished old man who refuses to accept that he can no longer handle the work on the Court after suffering a stroke.

While the book does not discuss the Bakke case (that was decided in 1977, two years after Douglas retired), it does mention a similar case that came before it, and Douglas's opinions on the matter would turn out to be quite prophetic:

"The 1973-1974 term offered Douglas the opportunity to deal with the growing number of programs offering preference based on race to law-school applicants. Marco DeFunis Jr., a Caucasian, was suing the University of Washington Law School for denying him admission while admitting under its 'affirmative action' program minority applicants with lesser qualifications...'I don't know about these tests,' said Douglas, referring to the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), which is used to test the aptitude of prospective law-school applicants. Three days later, after the Court decided not to hear the case because DeFunis was about to graduate, Douglas decided to write a dissent to the denial. The reason, he explained to his clerk, was simple: 'I might not be around next time this issue comes up.'
After considerable back and forth with his clerk in writing the opinion, Douglas's arguments against affirmative-action programs were instructive. First, he vigorously attacked the LSAT, even without evidence to prove his point, as being so racially biased that on occasion there must be reverse bias by a law school to correct it. The only requirement for him was that 'the consideration of each application [be done] in a racially neutral way. Since [the] LSAT reflects questions touching on cultural backgrounds, the Admissions Committee acted properly in my view in setting minority applications apart for separate processing...The melting pot is not designed to homogenize people, making them uniform in consistency. The melting pot as I understand it is a figure of speech that depicts the wide diversities tolerated by the First Amendment under one flag.'.......
Douglas made very clear, however, that he had no tolerance for a quota system, by which a certain number of the seats for the incoming class were reserved for certain minorities: 'The reservation of a proportion of the law school class for members of selected minority groups is fraught with similar dangers, for one must immediately determine which groups are to receive favored treatment and which are to be excluded, the proportions of the class that are to be allocated to each, and even the criteria by which to determine whether an individual is a member of a favored group.' Only a policy of admissions based on racial neutrality was the answer: 'The purpose of the University of Washington cannot be to produce black lawyers for blacks, Polish lawyers for Poles, Jewish lawyers for Jews, Irish lawyers for Irish. It should be to produce good lawyers for Americans and not to place First Amendment barriers against anyone...A segregated admissions process creates suggestions of stigma and caste no less than a segregated classroom, and in the end it may produce that result despite its contrary intentions.' For Douglas, who had once been denied access to the undergraduate portion of this very school because of his family's finances, the programs of affirmative action, which diminished the use of merit as an admissions criterion, were not permissible: 'All races can compete fairly at all professional levels. So far as race is concerned, any state-sponsored preference to one race over another in that competition is in my view "invidious" and violative of the Equal Protection Clause.' He was prepared to send this case back to the lower court to determine both the impact of the LSAT and this application process on various groups." (467-468)

These concerns would arise 40 years later in the Grutter and Gratz (University of Michigan) cases, and are still being decided as I write this today (University of Texas).

The lesson is that anyone interested in a progressive future for America should read this book and try to follow Douglas's lead. To be sure, Murphy does not hold up Douglas as a god, and details his personal indiscretions as greatly as his contributions to American society at large. So maybe, it is not okay on a moral level for a Supreme Court justice to use his or her position in order to constantly get laid. But the point is Douglas lived by what he preached. He believed in the freedom of the individual to express themselves in whatever ways they sought fit, and he certainly expressed himself without worrying what others would think of him.

Murphy sums up Douglas's importance in the history of 20th century America nicely near the end:

"He celebrated his 74th birthday, on October 16, 1972, by objecting to twenty-six denials of writs of certiorari, offering full dissents in ten of them. Douglas was objecting to the Court's unwillingness to hear all manner of cases: antimonopoly laws, airport zoning statutes, state support for parochial-school education, employment liability, destruction of war materials, the constitutionality of chain gangs, and the rights of the poor in filing for criminal-trial transcripts. By this time, Douglas was so anxious to show his displeasure with his colleagues that when four members of the Court voted to accept a case, he objected to that as well. But with four Nixon appointees now dominating the Burger Court, it was all to no avail." (458)

His retirement announcement is described in rather moving terms as well:

"After they heard the news, one by one each member of the Court walked over to shake their senior colleague's hand and wish him well. Then, as Douglas was quietly wheeled to the door, he raised his good arm, and, with some difficulty, expressed to his colleagues what had become his mantra in his waning years: 'Keep the Faith!' With Douglas's record-making legacy of 1,164 full opinions, including 486 full dissents (not to mention thirty-two books and hundreds upon hundreds of public speeches), now complete, for the first time in more than thirty-six years the guardianship of the Constitution was in others' hands." (495)

At times this book may drag (I found it a bit slow through the several chapters dealing with Douglas's Presidential ambitions) but at other times it reads like an adventure story ("Trouble in the Woods" may be the strongest chapter in the book, as Murphy does an excellent job of recreating the horror of Douglas's horseback-riding accident). Generally, the book is about as "quick" a read as you can expect for a 500+ page volume. It is excellent reading for law students and those interested in the law, but I fear most people will forget about Justice Douglas. That would be unfortunate because his influence remains relevant even in these technologically-advanced times. Douglas could see where the future of America was heading, and more often than not, his opinions articulated that view. He was an extraordinary human being, and this book is likely the most authoritative text on his life.

Of course this book won't be for everyone--but as I've mentioned on Flying Houses previously, parents should stop telling their children to "one day be President" and instead urge them to "one day be a justice." Douglas may have wanted to be President (due in no small part to his mother's prediction that it was his destiny), but the lasting impact of his work as a justice easily outdoes that of the majority of 20th century American Presidents. Future generations of law students will know his name, but more of the general American population should become acquainted with him. This book should provide that requisite level of intimacy for all.

Roger Ebert - 1942 - 2013

2013-04-04T23:12:00.000-04:00

Obituaries do not make for popular posts but they only appear on Flying Houses when the person in question has played an indispensable role in the development of the state of the art presented herein.
In terms of the methodology of Flying Houses, there is no more influential person than Roger Ebert. He changed the medium of the review, and I have always endeavored to live up to the very high standard that he set.

He didn't create the medium, but he certainly deserves to be placed in the top ten most important people in the history of cinema. Back in the 1990's before Gene Siskel died too young, people would make fun of Ebert because he was fat. Then later on, he lost his ability to eat, and speak with a human voice, and people championed him as the survivor par excellence. Lately, as I saw Richard Roeper post more reviews on www.rogerebert.com, I started to fear that Ebert was not writing as many reviews because his condition had worsened. I am sad that I will not know whether he agreed with Roeper or not on A Good Day to Die Hard.

Before I delve into this obituary, I want to highlight two things. First, a question that was asked by a reader many years ago, and was printed in the 1996 Film Companion that Ebert released:

"Q: Help me settle something. If Writer A and Writer B both wrote their opinions on a film--both with diligence and pride in their work--what difference in the two pieces would identify Writer A as a Film Critic and Writer B as someone just offering an opinion? Take the weekly feature you see in some papers, where kids review films. At what point do they cross the line, and can be called a Critics as opposed to reviewers? Is there some sort of certification program, like taking the Sally Struthers correspondence course in gun repair? (Andy Ihnatko, Westwood, MA)

A: This is a fascinating question, not unrelated to, "at what point do we know Swift doesn't really intend for the starving Irish to eat their babies?" The noncritic Reviewer will often betray himself by these mistakes:
(1) Pretense of objectivity;
(2) reluctance to introduce extraneous knowledge;
(3) predictions of which audiences will or will not enjoy the film;
(4) bashfulness about writing in the first person;
(5) distancing self from actual experience of viewing the film;
(6) an overwritten first paragraph. The genuine Critic will write in such a way as to acknowledge that he had a subjective personal experience which he wants to share with you, and which reminded him of other films or other subjects. He will wear his knowledge lightly and never presume to speak for other than himself." (920)
***
Ebert wrote for the common film-goer. He did not write in a high-handed style, and he did not believe in an objective standard of film criticism. And it makes sense. Sometimes we can tell when there is bad acting. That is a given. A fair portion of the population has some experience in acting. Sometimes we can tell when there is bad writing, too. But it is not often that we walk out of a movie and say, "Man, that cinematography was so bad!" Ebert might remark upon the cinematography, if it was good, and he might have remarked about the superiority of the letterbox format over pan-and-scan, but otherwise his writing was addressed at the average moviegoer. And he responded to them. Second thing I wanted to mention:

When I was 17, I went to Old Orchard Mall in Skokie, IL and attempted to buy a ticket for the film Requiem for a Dream. I was not allowed in. I argued for a bit with the people in charge there, but I lamented my plight in an e-mail to Roger Ebert. In his review of that film, he wrote that the film's NC-17 rating was unfortunate, because it was specifically the type of film that teenagers should see, because it showed how horrible drug addiction could get. I wrote that this was just so unfair, man. And he wrote back, "I know, I know. Damn."
***
Two sentences. They didn't change my life, but they made me realize that Roger Ebert was a very special type of celebrity: he was "one of us."

Every critic (whether it be film, theater, music, or literature) should study the work of Roger Ebert. I never took a Cinema Studies course at NYU. Maybe they do assign some his reviews, but my presumption is that they do not. But they should. I have often debated with my colleague (my "Siskel," if you will) Jay Maronde about the difference between a "film" and a "movie." Ebert understood he could give four star reviews to either (his four-star reviews include Less Than Zero, Dick Tracy, Drugstore Cowboy, Lethal Weapon, Return of the Jedi, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, Superman, Superman II, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and L.A. Story).

I am deeply saddened by his passing and just wanted to state that the work of this blog is my attempt at carrying out his mandate on how to be a Critic, rather than a Reviewer.

Happy 5th [April Fool's Day] Birthday to Flying Houses

2013-04-01T12:15:00.002-04:00

Today is April Fool's Day and also the birthday of Flying Houses. We turned 5 today.

It is always a good time to consider our achievements over the past year. Consider this my MD&A.

First of all, we cracked 30,000 all time page views.

Second, we cracked 2,000 monthly page views in March 2013, demolishing the previous month's record by nearly 700. This may or may not have been a "pop" instituted by Jeffrey Toobin's "retweet" of my review of The Oath.

Among the highlights of the past year, The Bond Project remains most prominent. More than 25 posts were made on this topic. Flying Houses will be making our 250th Post very soon and we expect it to be a special one. But we would not be at this point if not for the hard work of Jay Maronde, who has proven himself to be an expert on James Bond. With the Die Hard Project currently in progress, I cannot thank Jay enough for his contributions.

I also want to thank Emily Dufton for her excellent review of IQ84 by Haruki Murakami. This was one of the finest pieces of literary journalism/criticism that I have read in recent years, and I am deeply honored that I was able to present it here.

I also want to thank our most recent contributor, J. Alexander Gibson for his review of The Defining Decade, and not just because I post it in the waning days (16 left to go) of my twenties: I feel that these types of books (non-fiction or sociological theory) are potentially the most rewarding ones to review because real life experience, as opposed to the trait of being "well-read," colors the interpretation of a text in more "useful" or "tangible" ways.

I want to thank the BLS Advocate for allowing me to write my column and also post those columns (in their un-edited form) on this blog. Those comprise an additional 22 posts or so, and again, without those we would not be knocking on the door of 250.

My hope is that by April 1, 2014, I will be gainfully employed, and will have cracked 300 posts and 75,000 page views. Those may be ambitious projections, but I believe they are within reach.

Apart from those reviews already linked to above, here are what I consider to be the "greatest hits" of April 1, 2012 - April 1, 2013:

#1: NIED #9: Not in Love (Legally) (posted 4/4/12) - This is a column about people seeking their spouses in law school. Notable because some anonymous commenter on BLS Advocate just wrote, "you poor, poor thing," after reading it. (I tend to wonder whether that comment was a legitimate expression of sympathy or a passive-aggressive jab.)

#2: The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (posted 5/13/12) - This was the first book I was able to review by Thomas Pynchon, and it was an excellent read. Highly recommended, though it does not quite make the list of the "best books reviewed on Flying Houses list" (which you may find in my Profile).

#3: Discourse on Method by Rene Descartes (posted 6/1/12) - Understandably not the most popular post, but an original one as reviews on Flying Houses of philosophical texts hold the potential for enormous intellectual rewards.

#4: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller (posted 6/27/12) - Important because (a) it is named one of the "best books reviewed on Flying Houses" and (b) it is the first of many reviews of graphic novels that were undertaken over this past year.

#5: Big Sur by Jack Kerouac (posted 8/20/12) - Important because it is one of the last works of literature reviewed before the beginning of my 3L year, which brought great changes. An entertaining review, and a book worth reading if one is interested at all in Kerouac.

#6: Skyfall (JK); Skyfall (JM) (posted 12/3/12) - Dueling Reviews of the newest Bond, our film criticism at its height.

#7: The Brethren by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong (posted 12/15/12) - Maybe I didn't do so well in my classes because I was so wrapped up in this book. Notable as good "background reading" on certain cases in First Amendment law, provided at the end of the review. Also notable for making the "best books" list.

#8: Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar (posted 1/1/13) - Notable for being such an outstanding work of art in the graphic novel medium. A personal favorite from the year and an entrant on the "best books" list.

#9: My Bloody Valentine - m b v (posted 2/16/13) - The album that took 22 years to release created a ton of music journalism--this was my little drop in the bucket.

#10: Die Hard with a Vengeance (JM) (posted 3/20/13) - This movie is an underrated classic and deserves to be seen by more members of the general public. I include it as #10 as a way to sign off this post, as we are still meandering in the territory of the Die Hard Project and will soon complete it.

Thanks to all of our readers and thanks especially to those that have left comments. You have helped to make this blog a success. It may not be the greatest way for me to make money, but I feel that a substantial public interest has been served, and I will continue to do my best in providing excellent content for years to come.

The Defining Decade - Meg Jay

2013-03-30T09:49:00.000-04:00

As Flying Houses continues to grow in popularity, I continue to chat about it when the people I meet appear bored. Perhaps this talk bores them more, but some people recognize the importance of this project--which is to educate, entertain, and "endorse." It is to write about books like Ada, or The Oath, or Red Son and to recommend them though we know of no one else who has read them yet.

With all of this in mind, I am pleased to present a new review from a new writer. As only 18 days remain until my 30th birthday, I feel it is quite timely.

The Defining Decade – A Review

By: J. Alexander Gibson

Like many twentysomethings, I’ve been trying to figure out how to live my life “best,” often wondering to myself, “amidoingitrite???” Do I have the right job? Why isn’t my love life more successful? Is all of this drinking, caffeine and not sleeping much going to destroy my body? So as a person with a strong proclivity for self-growth and discovery, I came across a book, which seeks to help people in my situation figure all of that out – The Defining Decade by Meg Jay.

The Defining Decade is a book that seeks to inform its readers of the importance of their twenties and how important it is to get your life on a good trajectory during that decade. Whereas current popular opinion seems to be learning towards “extended adolescence,” often claiming that it’s ok to bullshit your twenties because everything is starting later anyways (marriage, career, etc.), Meg Jay’s thesis directly contrasts that notion. Jay boldly claims that, “With about 80 percent of life’s most significant events taking place by age thirty-five, as thirtysomethings and beyond we largely either continue with, or correct for, the moves we made during out twentysomething years.” (xii)

So pretty much, get your shit together in your twenties or else you may regret it when you’re not living a life you want to. Ms. Jay, PhD, a successful clinical psychologist who specializes in adult development (twentysomethings in particular) recounts her experiences with various patients and utilizes scientific research to back her points. She divides the books into three major sections: Work, Love, and The Brain and Body, covering the essence of the problems from which many twentysomethings suffer.

I consider this book required reading for people in or about to be in their twenties. However, don’t expect it to immediately lead to the perfect job, significant other and/or body, but do expect that it will start getting you to reflect on your life and start thinking about what you want to do, who you want to be and how to get there. View this book as a guide to self-discovery. It’s not going to do anything directly for you—you’ll have to take it upon yourself to make positive changes in your life—but this will certainly be a first step. Also, while I certainly agree with the overall thesis of the book, please don’t let this book discourage you one bit if your twenties are coming to a close or you’re already past them. Kurt Warner (two-time Superbowl MVP) entered the NFL at the age of 28, Harland (Colonel) Sanders who has exactly zero military experience, founded KFC at 65, and a struggling carpenter named Harrison Ford got his big break at the age of 35 when he acted in the legendary movie series and mega-franchise Star Wars.

Live Free or Die Hard - Dir. Len Wiseman (The Die Hard Project #4 - JK)

2013-03-29T10:46:00.000-04:00

Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

Director - Len Wiseman

Post 9/11 America Writ Large

Jack Knorps

The Die Hard films have always held a special place in my heart because Die Hard with a Vengeance was the first R-rated film that I saw in the movie theater. I would say that though the film technically qualifies for an R-rating, there is nothing so objectionable about it that should worry parents. Of course there is gun violence, but Live Free or Die Hard is every bit as violent as its predecessor and only earns a PG-13 rating. So this movie is okay for teens but the last one was not. If anyone wants to write an essay about the irrationality of the MPAA, then a comparison of these two films and the stated reasons for their ratings will provide a good case study.

I saw Die Hard with a Vengeance when I was 12 and I saw Live Free or Die Hard when I was 24--both in the movie theater. You see I loved Die Hard with a Vengeance, so I was very excited when a sequel was announced after such a long "quiet" period. I had never even seen the first two Die Hards. Later I would move to Los Angeles and watch Die Hard from a small apartment in Silver Lake, during a time when I would often travel to the Nakatomi Plaza location (Century City) for job interviews. That film was ahead of its time in 1988 (except perhaps for the reference to "poison pills"--those were soooooo 1985), and its sequel was "with the times" in 1990, and Die Hard with a Vengeance was also current with populist American sentiment in 1995. The five-year wait for that film seemed long, but the 12 year wait for this one seemed to signal a break in tradition. Now with a six-year gap for A Good Day to Die Hard, the franchise seems to have a questionable boom-and-bust cycle.

But Live Free or Die Hard is no bust--in fact, I was trying to rank the films on my own, and it is near the top.

#1: Die Hard with a Vengeance
#2: Die Hard
#3: Live Free or Die Hard
#4: Die Harder
#5: A Good Day to Die Hard (?)

I leave the question mark because I've yet to see it, but yes, it was hard for me to choose between this film and the original as the second-best film in the series--but it cannot touch Vengeance.

Die Hard wins out in second-place because of Alan Rickman's performance, the originality of the film at the time, and the excellent use of Christmas music. Timothy Olyphant is passable as this film's villain, but ultimately cannot stand in the shoes of Rickman or Jeremy Irons--who deserves to be named one of the top five villains in the history of cinema for his performance in that film.

My colleague Mr. Maronde pointedly argued that Die Hard with a Vengeance is a beautiful film because it is an ode to New York City at the height of its 1990s splendor. Live Free or Die Hard is a reaction to 9/11, and certainly some of the images of this film are so strong that it easily lands in 3-star territory (you must admit that the "hoax" in this film--which could be a clever commentary on the Separation of Powers and the ultimate wielder of governmental authority in America--had you fooled the first time, too). Olyphant plays a nerdy former government contractor in homeland security. He conducts a "fire sale" (I will not define the term) and the scale of this endeavor is also what takes the movie to 3-star territory: this is certainly the most audacious act of terrorism that the Die Hard movies have portrayed yet.

The Die Hard films always seem to have thieves posing as terrorists--and this one is no different, except you have thieves posing as "potential" terrorists--Olyphant believes his actions are justified because he is showing the government what it did not want to know--that the entire domestic infrastructure could be hacked, creating real chaos.

John McClane is, for some reason, hanging out in a college parking lot, spying on his daughter making out with another dude. His daughter is Lucy Gennaro (not McClane) and her parents have divorced since the last film (or were they already divorced in 1995? I can't be sure...). He's still a cop for the NYPD but certainly appears to be approaching retirement. He gets a random phone call after scaring his daughter's boyfriend and is told to go pick up a college kid played by Justin Long.

Justin Long may be controversial (a very funny moment of this film shows him with a very high-tech cell phone in 2007--it flips so you can text!) for his work in Apple commercials, but he won me over with this movie. I always found him to be an annoying hipster-ish persona--the perfect image of a Mac User--but he does not act like such a smartypants in this movie. Oh there is a moment where he explains why he doesn't listen to the news and he makes fun of what Bruce Willis likes to listen to on the radio, but he is quickly brought back to planet Earth as he is nearly killed a dozen or more times.

In terms of "sidekicks," Al is the best sidekick John McClane has (Samuel L. Jackson is #2, and probably the only problem with Die Hard with a Vengeance is that their "buddy-buddy" quality is, at times, feigned or uneven), and Justin Long is passable. In general this is a very "passable" film, but politically it is the most interesting.

It beautifully depicts the paranoia of the post-9/11 world and (I really believe) is prophetic. This film was released in May 2007. In other words, it was released right at the time the markets were about to go bust, and the "thieves" in this film certainly have an analogue in the real life robber barons on Wall Street. One is intrigued by the prospect of A Good Day to Die Hard (terrible reviews notwithstanding) as each film tends to react towards recent domestic trends in politics (Die Hard = corporate raiding; Die Harder = ?; Die Hard with a Vengeance = racism; Live Free or Die Hard = e-terrorism/Anonymous-style hackery; A Good Day to Die Hard = ? (economic desperation?)).

Len Wiseman does not have a vision quite like John McTiernan (who directed the two best films in the series) but he made a movie that was fun to go see in the movie theater. I had about as much fun seeing this PG-13 movie as I did that R-rated movie some twelve years earlier.

And the Kevin Smith cameo is priceless. Anytime you have Bruce Willis checking out a poster and Kevin Smith asking him, "You a fan of the Fett?" you have automatically made a good movie.

Die Hard 3: With a Vengeance - Dir. John McTiernan (The Die Hard Project #3 - JM)

2013-03-20T13:58:00.001-04:00

Die Hard: With A Vengeance (1995)

Dir: John McTiernan

A New York Minute From a Very Special Time

By Jay Maronde

While Die Hard 3 may be on network television somewhat regularly, it’s unlikely anyone will ever see the full version of the movie ever again, even if it's shown on cable. The reason for this is not the language but the fact that the world has changed and we as Americans no longer wish to see the movie’s biggest star in her full glory. Wait you say, Die Hard is a guy movie, who is this ultra-famous lady star—a star bigger than Bruce or Samuel L.? This Grande Dame of Stars I reference is none other than pre-9-11 New York City herself, and peaking in her Clinton/Giuliani era glory!

In this film, just like real estate, location is everything, and rarely has any movie highlighted so many of NYC’s glorious locations as Die Hard 3, and the grandest /saddest NYC site of all is featured heavily from beginning to end: The World Trade Center. As I’ve already mentioned, this is the part(s) of the movie that requires so much editing for American audiences today, and it’s tragic because the film highlights the towers so beautifully and epically that they really should be appreciated in their once towering glory. This isn’t to say that the movie doesn’t have very, very big movie stars, a great director, fantastic action sequences or one of the cleverest plots ever—because surely it does—but in the end, this movie is just as much a wonderful NYC movie as it is a classic of the action genre.

DH3 opens with a fantastic panorama of NYC perfectly set to the classic “Summer in The City.” As the song ends, a building explodes, and the terrorism has begun. Soon we are transported to a busy police station where the emergency response is being coordinated. Suddenly a secretary has a phone call that the boss needs to answer. On the line is the lead terrorist, played exquisitely by the robust Jeremy Irons in one of his greatest roles ever. As the audience, we only learn much later that the Irons character, Simon, is really the brother of the original Die Hard villain Hans Gruber. Not only is Simon intent on mayhem, but he demands that a suspended (and terribly hung-over) Lt. John McClane be part of the fun.

As the movie progresses the viewer learns the just like his brother, Simon isn’t as much of a terrorist as a thief with a very clever ruse. Simon’s first task is for John McClane to go to Harlem and walk the street naked except for a sandwich board that reads: “I HATE NIGGERS.” This bit here is regularly edited for television. In fact the director had the forethought to film the scene twice—once using another sandwich board that read: “I HATE PEOPLE”—and while this early scene is just a shot across the bow in McTiernan’s masterpiece of an everyman questioning 1990’s American racial issues, it serves to perfectly introduce the films other co-star: the always compelling Samuel L. Jackson as the helpful racist, Zeus Carver. Carver leaves his shop to help McClane (whom he believes to be an escaped mental patient) and is quickly drawn into Simon’s games. The movie progresses all the way across Manhattan from top to bottom and then back to the top, through the Bronx, parts of Westchester, and ultimately ends with in epic helicopter battle in which John McClane once again gets to declare “yippe-ki-yay motherfucker” while sending the villain to an ugly demise.

DH3’s lead actors are beyond reproach. All three of these gentlemen (Willis, Jackson, and Irons) are remarkably good in their roles. Irons could easily be one of the best villains all time in this role. His acting talent shines so remarkably because at several points he is playing Simon Gruber acting like someone else, be it the mentally unstable terrorist personality he feigns during his phone calls with the NYPD, his acting as a Dutch flower company CEO, or even his feigned Elvis Duran fan/radio caller. (That is really the real Elvis Duran, playing himself, by the way.) Irons shines throughout the whole movie as he torments McClane and Carver.

Willis and Jackson for their parts are no less amazing. Samuel L. Jackson is probably the pre-eminent casting choice for a disaffected angry Harlem resident whose hatred for white people is so great, it’s “uber-racism.” Bruce Willis, in his third appearance as John McClane, perfected his role as the loose cannon everyman cop kicking ass through a “very bad day.” To be honest, Willis is so amazingly spot-on good at being John McClane that I’m always completely shocked that he ever gets cast for any other roles. (Nothing against Bruce at all, it would just be really cool if they were about to release Die Hard 42, because apparently I’m the only one who never gets tired of these movies, ever.)

My one and only complaint about this film, is that by having removed John McClane’s family from the situation, the movie seems to lose some of its tension being caused by McClane’s desperation. This is no one’s fault, as a crux of the plot is McClane’s status as “one step away from being a full blown alcoholic” due to his estrangement from his wife. This changes the movie slightly from a man trying to save his family to a buddy action flick. Here again is time to sing the praises of Willis and Jackson as two better “buddies” cannot be found in all of American cinema.

Everyone knows that you can have all the greatest actors in the world but without a director you still won’t get a good movie at all. In Die Hard 3, John McTiernan has returned to the classic franchise he helped begin two films earlier and is more outstanding than ever. This movie is excellently planned. From the editing, to the foreshadowing, to the tie-in with previous films in the series, everything about this film fits perfectly together in just such a clever way that it always brings a smile to my face. McTiernan continues to explore the character of the everyman super hero in John McClane this time not only taking on a whole city instead of just a building or an airport, but also through questioning many social mores of the time period. For a movie filmed in the time of race riots, DH3 tackles the race issue head on and has John McClane saying what many average Caucasian folk at that time were thinking: “You’re a racist, you don’t like me because I’m white!” McTiernan, with his “down under” Aussie-approach to American culture didn’t hesitate for a moment in tackling the biggest issues of the time, and he did it with two of the biggest stars at the time. These are the moments in history that drastically alter everyone’s perceptions of race and culture by holding up a mirror to reality and showing us all what we’ve become. By forcing the racist Carver to deal with the stodgy McClane because “This guy (the terrorist) doesn’t care about race” McTiernan was holding up a torch for the people of the world to unite in their shared humanity and hatred of terrorism.

These racial “semi-tones,” while shockingly predictive of a post 9-11 world, aren’t the only triumph of McTiernan in this film—his foreshadowing is exquisite. Please note the scene early on while McClane is in the police van, which is possibly some of the best foreshadowing in Hollywood history. This one scene sets up so many of the plot points utterly essential for later in the movie, I won’t spoil it, but pay careful attention to what could have been a completely throw away scene. McTiernan’s directorial genius doesn’t stop there: he twice very covertly alludes to the original Die Hard. First, just outside of Tompkins Square Park when McClane stops the shoplifting youths and is told: “Look around, man! It’s Christmas. You could steal City Hall.” The “it’s Christmas” is a very careful word choice to help remind the viewers and McClane that not only was the original movie also a heist but also happened on Christmas. My other favorite indirect allusion to the original film occurs when McClane is investigating the Federal Reserve Bank and just as in the original Die Hard a covert terrorist gives himself away with un-American speech patterns.

As I mentioned in the introduction to this piece the real star of this entire movie is the grand city of New York in all of its stunning pre 9-11 glory. First and foremost, I want to say again that we as a people cannot let the terrorists win and happily strike the image of one of the modern wonders of the world from our collective social conscious in some lame apologist attempt to preserve “feelings.” Everyone has very strong feelings about the WTC and 9-11 and I as a writer am no different; I can tell you for a fact that I considered this review long and hard because of The Towers and the fact that I was there and saw it all go down in mind-scarring reality. Personally I will always choose to remember the resilient carefree pre-9-11 NYC that McClane ferociously and triumphantly fights to save before I will concede the horrible realities that terrorism and the police surveillance state have brought upon us all.

All of this being said, NYC is in her finest glory in this film. The movie features not only the WTC, but Wall Street, Harlem, Yankee Stadium, Central Park, Columbus Circle, the real Tompkins Square park (always one of my favorites being some of my old stomping grounds) the real 72nd Street subway station, but also the streets and avenues and traffic, and the real “summer in the city” feel that only NYC can provide. The movie plays it real too: 72nd Street to Wall Street in less than half an hour is a miracle, and just for reference: the aqueduct is real too, even though tunnel 3 is now completely finished and functioning.

Die Hard 3 is a great movie about 2 great heroes fighting their way through what could easily be history’s greatest city (come at me Rome and London). The acting, directing, and locations are epic and this movie should be recognized as one of the finest action movies ever made, and McTiernan hereby cements his place as one of the greatest action directors with this piece. Jackson and Willis, reunited for the first time since their gripping performances in Pulp Fiction, continue to carve out their places in Hollywood history. Jeremy Irons raises the bar for all action movie villains to an incredibly high place with his multifaceted and grimly sardonic performance. All and all not just a movie to see for cinema’s sake, but a film to enjoy because movies are great in the way that they can take us back to times and places that no longer exist all while having a great experience.

Disrobed: The New Battle Plan to Break the Left's Stranglehold on the Courts - Mark W. Smith (incomplete)

2013-03-16T11:02:00.000-04:00

Note: This is Not the "Disrobed" Written by Judge Block, and I Would Much Rather Read that One

by Jack Knorps

Perhaps the problem with America is that we don't really give deference to the voices that speak in opposition to ours. It pains me, greatly, to leave that scarlet word "incomplete" in the title of this post (I have not had an "I" since Proust, je pense) but Mark W. Smith is no Mark E. Smith and I can hardly bear to waste anymore of my time reading this book. I got through 33 pages. I thought it would be a fun review to write, but I was wrong.

I have written at length on the "right" and the "left" swinging of the Court, but this book is a waste of my time because it is dated! It was published in 2006. If Smith did not get his wish then I'm sorry for him, but from his writing he appears to be an extremely radical conservative.

In the basement of the Brooklyn Law School library, there is some graffiti in the men's bathroom. In the handicapped stall somebody wrote, "My s*** feels like: -a Scalia opinion (painful and offensive)." I don't know who wrote that (it wasn't me--Scalia actually amuses me more often than not and I find him to be charmingly erudite, if politically "unattractive"), but if they are a terrorist then we should find him and torture him by forcing him to read this book. That would be perfectly constitutional, actually. (I think.)

This book is dated because it opens up with Smith's Blackberry blowing up over Harriet Miers' failed appointment to the Court to replace Justice O'Connor (how charming to think, by the way, that there might have been a Justice Miers rather than a Justice Alito--Alito may be just about as conservative as you can get before entering lunatic land, but he is a much better writer than Smith--more respectable, at least).

This book has a chapter called "No More Souters." I can guess what it says. I didn't get that far, nor did I get to the titillatingly-titled fourteenth chapter, "Do You Sodomize Your Wife?" I made it to the first mention of Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan, and I stopped:

"Just look at how liberal justices decided when to use the power of the courts--and when not to. In Williamson v. Lee Optical (1955), for example, the Supreme Court upheld an Oklahoma law preventing opticians, as opposed to licensed optometrists or ophthalmologists, from fitting lenses to eyeglasses. In short, the Court rejected any suggestion that opticians or their patients had a right to enter into a voluntary economic transaction without the blessing of the state. In his opinion, Justice William O. Douglas concluded, 'The day is gone when this Court uses the [Constitution] to strike down state laws, regulatory of business and industrial conditions, because they may be unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought...."For protection against abuses by legislatures the people must resort to the polls, not to the Courts."' (emphasis added).
Yet it was the very same Justice Douglas who a decade later wrote the majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut, striking down laws that restricted the sale of contraceptives. Apparently, in the eyes of Justice Douglas, only economic conservatives needed to 'resort to the polls' when government regulators curtailed their liberties; social liberals could absolutely resort to the courts 'for protection against abuses by legislatures.' Justice Douglas and the rest of his left-wing cronies on the high court obviously took to heart Emerson's line that 'a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.'
Liberal justice William Brennan approved of the same double standard. As constitutional scholar Bernard Schwarz explained, Brennan practiced 'judicial deference in the economic realm' but 'believed that the Bill of Rights provisions protecting personal liberties imposed more active obligations on the judges. When a law infringed upon the personal rights the Bill of Rights guaranteed, Brennan refused to defer to the legislative judgment that the law was necessary.'
Why should Justice Brennan defer to government actions in the economic realm but not in the social or personal realm? What about the constitutional guarantees to the right to keep the fruits of your own labor? Did the Framers of the Constitution jettison the original Articles of Confederation to guarantee the 'fundamental' and 'unalienable' rights to abortion and buggery and the right to be free from hearing the words 'under God' uttered in the Pledge of Allegiance?" (31-32)

Actually Douglas used the words "the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment," which, yes, is part of the Constitution, but does not comprise the entirety of its text. And Smith perhaps does not seem to worry about rogue "eye doctors" that would create things like the Opti-Grab and make people go cock-eyed. But plenty of people try to practice law without a license. I am sure that Smith would not worry about rogue "baby doctors" that would perform "back-alley abortions with coat hangers"--no, we can have every baby carried to term, and if the mother is irresponsible, well she can put it up for adoption, I guess. Shame on her--she should at least need to suffer for 9 months and we should DEFINITELY BRING MORE PEOPLE INTO THIS WORLD BECAUSE IT'S GREAT!

Writing this review is like shooting fish in a barrel. The part about Romer v. Evans is priceless. Jeffrey Toobin may write books about the Court that read like "Con Law for Dummies," but Disrobed is truly written for the lowest common denominator--that is, someone that does not consider the other side's position because they know they're right.

It is quite funny, however, to think of this book as dated though it was published just seven short years ago. Smith probably blew his brains out when Obama won the election and put Sotomayor and Kagan on the Court. Or at least he probably got really bad migraines for a while.

I am guessing, however, that Smith did not lose very much money in the Great Depression, Part Two (the first of which he asserts was drawn out--not ameliorated--by the New Deal), but he does believe that allowing banks to fail back in the day was a bad thing--not sure how he could get what he wants. Reading this is like listening to Rush Limbaugh. One is saddened that people who are obviously capable of publishing a book, or speaking for hours on end and entertaining millions of people, can have their voices heard so loudly, and can propagate such myths and fool the masses into believing whatever sounds good for their agenda

I love the part in Romer v. Evans where Scalia references the Chicago Cubs (I think I have written about this on Flying Houses several times before) and talks about how gay law schools are. I had to skip ahead to "No More Souters" to make sure that Smith was not in fact gay because then he might actually be ridiculously clever--but I guess I am wrong:

"But now we know the kinds of judges we need to look for--principled conservatives who want to protect traditional American rights and values and who will focus on results rather than merely process--how do we find our Judicial Reagans? As any of my ex-girlfriends can tell you (and certainly as any of Bill Clinton's can), a woman knowing what she wants in a man is a far cry from her actually finding one who meets those criteria. It's the same with conservatives who are selecting judges: There's no guarantee we'll appoint Judicial Reagans just because we have certain qualities in mind." (124)

I have a serious problem with people that like drama for the sake of drama or fighting for the sake of fighting. There is a book called "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" and Justice Douglas made a similar point in Points of Rebellion: let us keep fighting because we don't know what else we are supposed to do with ourselves. There is a civil war going on in this country, but it is hidden, and for good reason: it would tear families apart. Many of my friends are conservatives--or libertarians--which I believe is just code for "reputable Republican." Smith repeatedly refers to the "loony left." But writers like him give Republicans a bad name. I can agree to disagree, but I am not going to write an entire book accusing my enemies of being insane and taking the Supreme Court to task. It's a foolish endeavor. It has been foolish for me to read this book and waste my time with it.

I will say that the book--while written extremely poorly--at least uses pretty decent grammar. It is more than I could say for Pygmy, but I am sure that even the "terrorist kid" in that book (or whatever he is) is a nicer person than Smith seems to be.

"Do You Sodomize Your Wife?" was apparently asked to Justice Scalia at NYU Law. Smith says that Scalia "does not argue that sodomy is good or bad, fun or unfun, moral or immoral, or anything of the kind. He instead believes only that such questions should be resolved through the democratic process, not by a small cadre of unelected judges." (210)

That may be so but Smith does not give Scalia's answer to that question, which was probably quite witty--instead, Smith just calls the question an "intellectually vapid query" and focuses on the question itself rather than the answer: which is that Congress does not equal Democracy--Congress may be called democracy but it should be clear to any high school student that the democratic process is controlled by moneyed interests and the Court is really our last resort to protect against tyranny--and moneyed interests do not always respond to the increasingly diverse needs of Americans. I personally prefer a world where I have a choice between The Strand, Barnes & Noble, and Borders, but I guess I'll probably be able to find something decent at Barnes & Noble anyways....

I have said all I can about this book. I regret checking it out because it forces me to make a terribly unattractive statement: it's okay to stop reading a book if you think it sucks (or if it just makes you so angry that you feel you have wasted your time). Now I really have to go study Crim Pro, Sec Reg, Tax, the MPRE, and whatever other fun stuff I do. Luckily I do not need to "take a side" in these activities.

The Oath - Jeffrey Toobin

2013-03-09T12:13:00.003-05:00

The Nine: The Sequel

by Jack Knorps

The Nine was a difficult book to review because I deigned to describe each Justice. While it was a terrific book, and more even-handed than The Brethren, I criticized the amount of material the author included on Supreme Court appointments and Bush v. Gore. Toobin has, in fact, written an entire other book on the subject (Too Close to Call), and I do not think I will be reading that. However, I have heard good things about The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson and would consider reading that. Toobin is a talented writer, and at times the words flow off the page. He is a "quality author."

That being said, The Oath is a better book than The Nine though there is almost nothing to distinguish the two from one another. True, The Nine was about the period between 1993 and 2005--the longest period in which the same nine justices served together, and there is more material because the "length of the story" is longer. The Oath is about the period between 2005 and 2012 (though primarily '08-'12) and clocks in at a perfect length of 300 pages.

A friend recently asked me what the perfect length for a book was. It is a hard question and depends on the book but I have to say now that it is between 250 and 300 pages.

And I have to say that, though my review of The Nine (published January 1, 2012) was probably not read by Toobin himself, it is almost as if Toobin took my criticisms to heart and wrote a better book, substantially similar though it may be.

It is a subject that is hard to write about briefly. The Brethren was very long, too. So much has happened, but when we last left off, I had reviewed Five Chiefs and was bemoaning the Conservative Court--that is, the moment Justice Thomas replaced Justice Marshall (not the moment Justice Souter replaced Justice Brennan): the Court seemed like it was "fixed."

However, The Oath makes the point more than once that Justice Stevens, Justice O'Connor, and Justice Souter were all Republicans, and slowly but surely became part of the "liberal wing" of the Court. I don't think this point can be emphasized enough. If you look at the Court, you are looking at a group of extremely distinguished individuals, some of the most intelligent professionals in America. That three of them abandoned their former party highlights my distaste for the conservative movement. Toobin, I would imagine, shares this view.

When I reviewed The Nine I provided snippets about each Justice, and it was an extremely long review. I will do my best to stick to the highlights in this review.

The book is divided into five parts. Part One focuses on Obama, his election, and the Court as it stood when he took office. Part Two focuses on Second Amendment concerns and introduces Justice Sotomayor. Part Three is basically about Citizens United. Part Four introduces Justice Kagan. Part Five is basically about the Affordable Care Act cases. Oh and Part One also discusses Stern v. Marshall (briefly).

Unlike Bush v. Gore, Citizens United and the ACA cases (which I wrote an extensive article and roadmap on) are both extremely interesting cases. So obviously I like those parts. Part One is good because it tells us some thing about Barack Obama that, shockingly, we probably did not know:

he went to law school when he was my age:

"His life as a public figure began in 1990, when he was twenty-eight and won election as president of the Harvard Law Review, the first African American to hold that position. Obama practiced law for a dozen years and taught at the University of Chicago Law School for nearly as long. But by the time he ran for president, Obama was above all a politician, and a cautious one. Obama admired the heroes of the civil rights movement, including the lawyers, but he did not model his career on theirs. Obama did not believe the courts were the principal vehicle for social and political change. Elections, rather than lawsuits, were his battlefield of choice, and by 2008 he knew that the way to win the presidency was, in part, to embrace the individual rights theory of the Second Amendment." (22)

The Oath is quite timely but Toobin might revise that last sentence in light of the events that have transpired over the past four months. We are living in an increasingly insane world where people are isolated and would rather go out in a blaze of glory and kill dozens of innocent people than attempt to grab that increasingly fictitious concept known as the "American Dream." Chief Justice Roberts and Barack Obama, one might say, are both "living the dream"--but it would be wrong to say they are totally happy and their lives are perfect:

"Near the end of his memoir Dreams from My Father, which he published when he was thirty-three, Obama reflected on his education at Harvard Law School. His tone was ambivalent. 'The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power--and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.' Then, in a gesture that was common in the book, and in Obama's character, he gave the other side of the story: 'But that is not all the law is,' he continued. 'The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.'" (22-23)

The reason why I have no respect for republicans is because they lambast Obama as if he was the worst president ever and they have absolutely no idea what he has come up against. Basically, whoever became president in 2008 needed to be FDR in order not to look like a douchebag. Obama is not FDR. People generally consider Lincoln the greatest President. FDR is often near the top of the list, too. For me, Obama is number three. Some people put Kennedy up in the top five, but I'm not sure I could (shockingly I might even put Nixon above Kennedy). I don't want to get into word games but I think Chief Justice Warren was probably the greatest Chief Justice (and Scott Brown took Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts) and in three years, in my fantasy world, a different Warren could potentially be the greatest President, too.

You can't blame Obama for putting Sotomayor and Kagan on the Court. Sotomayor has recently become popular for putting out a book of her own--and she claims that Obama's book greatly inspired her. It is quite shocking, though, to think of Chief Justice Roberts. I made this point in The Brethren review, but I'll make it again: it is such a better job than President! He could be Chief Justice for like, twenty-five, maybe thirty years. Clearly, the Justices are the ones that see the change in the country more clearly than anyone else.

I basically hate Chief Justice Roberts because he is so perfect:

"There was never a student like John Roberts at the La Lumiere School in LaPorte, Indiana, a quiet town near Lake Michigan, on the outer edges of the gravitational pull of Chicago. It was a Catholic school, but it was independent of any order or diocese; the founders, all laymen, built the institution around an ideal of academic excellence.

"Roberts was not just the valedictorian of the class of 1973. He served as captain of the football team, a varsity wrestler, member of both the student council and the drama club. (He played Peppermint Patty in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown; the school was all boys in Roberts's day.) He continued taking Latin, as a tutorial, after the school dropped the language as a requirement...." (8)

Toobin goes on to explain Roberts's excellent memorization skills and how ironic it was then that he messed up on The Oath that he gave to Obama at his inauguration. But there is something sinister about Roberts's perfection: he is too much like Kennedy (except not quite as well-to-do from birth) and his conservatism is blind to the problems of society's have-nots. However, he did get one case right--and it was an important one.

Toobin covers the drama around the Affordable Care Act and the various legal challenges to it in an economical and entertaining fashion. The same goes for Citizens United. Thus, Part Three and Part Five are excellent reading for law students. (Citizens United is only really studied, however, in classes on First Amendment Law and Campaign Finance law--it doesn't affect Americans as individuals as broadly as the ACA--but it has enormous philosophical implications: read thought control). What is most upsetting about Citizens United is that we never got to read Souter's dissent:

"The new majority opinion--which transformed Citizens United into a vehicle for rewriting decades of constitutional law--shocked the liberals. Stevens assigned the main dissent to Souter, who was in the last weeks of his tenure on the Court. (He was actually working on the opinion when he announced his departure.) The Kennedy opinion reflected everything Souter had come to loathe about the Roberts Court--its disrespect for precedent, its grasping conservatism, its aggressive pursuit of political objectives. Worse yet, Robert's approach to Citizens United contradicted a position he had taken earlier in the term. At the argument of a death penalty case known as Cone v. Bell, Roberts had berated at length, the defendant's lawyer, Thomas Goldstein, for his temerity in raising an issue that had not been addressed in the briefs. Now Roberts--the chief justice--was doing precisely the same thing to upset decades of settled expectations.

"Souter wrote a dissent that aired some of the Court's dirty laundry. By definition, dissents challenge the legal conclusions of the majority, but Souter accused Kennedy and Roberts of violating the Court's own procedures to engineer the result Roberts coveted. The dissent, had it been published, would have been an extraordinary, bridge-burning farewell to the Court by Souter." (168)

But "The Ninety-Page Swan Song of John Paul Stevens" is a pretty good thing to read, too. I have written at length on Justice Stevens and how he is my second-favorite Supreme Court justice so I will not add much, except that next time I go to Chicago I will take a picture:

"....Still, the family never recovered its former wealth, and it lost control of the hotel. (It is now known as the Chicago Hilton and Towers; the 'S' is still there.)" (187)

This book is not quite as gossipy as The Brethren but it is more gossipy than The Nine. In The Nine Toobin makes some pretty incredible statements about Justice Thomas, but in The Oath he makes Thomas out to be some kind of enormous evil genius/fool. I do not even want to repeat what Toobin wrote about Thomas (this is why I think writers are the only more hated group than lawyers: if I were Thomas I would go kick Toobin's ass for the things he suggests and reveals). But now I know that "Lady Kaga" is not, in fact, gay, so I make this plea:

***

Dear Justice Kagan,

I know that you probably get lots of date offers but I want to ask you out. I am a 29-year-old law student and that means there is only about 23 years separating us. That is less than the difference between Justice Douglas and some of his wives. I promise you that, if you give me a chance, I will be a good and loyal partner to you, and help you achieve whatever it is you hope to do in this life. I will never "leak" anything. I am a good cook and would make a great stay-at-home dad. I also have a tremendous singing voice, and am a soon-to-be-acclaimed filmmaker.

If you'd like, I would be your law clerk for a year if you wanted to test me out. If that's too much trouble, I understand (my credentials are nowhere near as impressive as Sparkle's), but if you just want to grab dinner sometime and see if we'd get along, that could be really cool. I'll take the Bolt Bus down to D.C. and meet you some Friday evening when you get off work. I'd even be willing to pick up the tab! Please respond via comment if you are so interested. (And yes I am being totally serious.)

***

Kagan also apparently kicked a 20-year cigarette habit. On that note, I am going out to have one....

Kagan was also a classmate and friend of Toobin's. He can't recuse himself from writing this book, but it highlights his own achievements. While I don't necessarily agree with some of his statements (for example, that Justice O'Connor is "the most influential woman in American history" (207)) The Oath is more often than not, erudite and sensitive to the political climate of our nation's capital:

"Stewart [not Potter-Ed.] was wrong. Congress could not ban a book. McCain-Feingold was based on the pervasive influence of television advertising on electoral politics, the idea that commercials are somehow unavoidable in contemporary American life. The influence of books operates in a completely different way. Individuals have to make an affirmative choice to acquire and read a book. Congress would have no reason, and no justification, to ban a book under the First Amendment." (166)

It is an important book that everyone should read. (Many will not because reading about law is boring--and honestly, having studied the law for the past two-and-a-half years, sometimes I just don't want to read about all of those Commerce Clause cases over and over again...) It also taught me how to correctly use parenthetical sentences, so it may improve your writing also (though I would hardly call this review one of my finest moments).

Basically, if you are pressed for time, read The Oath. Then, if you want, you can read The Nine for the sake of nostalgia. The only problem with this book is that it preempts its prequel. But a lot of people still prefer the first Back to the Future to the second one. I would imagine the debate between fans of those two movies is quite similar to the debate that fans of these two books would have: it largely depends on how accurate their vision of 2015 will be. I, for one, hope that there is another Warren on the way to "reshape" American society, and not another Clinton.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress #21: Monthly Expense Project and Moral Hazard

2013-02-28T14:23:00.000-05:00

NIED #21: Monthly Expense Project and Moral Hazard

By Christopher J. Knorps

On January 25, 2012, I had an inspiration. The germ of this idea came from a period in early 2008. I had recently gone on a road trip and managed to spend about $10,000. While I could track most of my expenses through credit card statements, obviously I had not been diligent about keeping receipts from cash transactions. Thus, I became paranoid that someone was taking money out of my account—recognizing that I was traveling (filling up my tank about once a day, paying for a hotel almost every night, buying snacks and meals) and incurring heavy expenses, and believing (perhaps correctly) that they could slip a withdrawal or purchase under my nose.

But it took four years for me to realize that a more eloquent system had to be constructed for personal finance. Starting on February 1, 2012, I kept track of every dollar (nearly every penny) that I spent. On February 1, 2013, I had completed one year of what I called “Monthly Expense Project” (or MEP). Here were my totals (for the 5 main categories out of 16):

Total: $27,207.15 ($2,270.46 per month average)
Transportation: $2,344.75 ($195.40 per month average)
Food: $3,820.72 ($318.39 per month average)
Recreation: $4,923.93 ($410.33 per month average)
Academic: $1,877.67 ($156.48 per month average)

More important is the disparity between “fixed” expenses and “discretionary” expenses. Here, my 1 year MEP shows an interesting trend—as my fixed expenses dropped, my discretionary expenses grew (the disparity arose from a summer spent in Chicago, where I paid about $450 per month in rent as opposed to about $1,000 per month in Brooklyn).

On a very general level, I can tell that my fixed expenses come close to equaling my discretionary expenses. Of the $27,207.15, about $11,000 of that is attributable to rent. Thus, my total income after taxes should be about $33,000 (applying the general principle that rent should equal 1/3 of net income). My total expenditures after rent totals approximately $16,000. Thus, I would have roughly $6,000 to dispose of in other ways—it could go into savings, but after graduation, a good portion of that should go to loan payments.

But more interestingly, how do these totals stack up to the approximations that Brooklyn Law School provides for its incoming students?

Add $49,976 to my total and you get $77,183.15 (the school estimates $75,536—not bad!)

However, the school estimates housing in the amount of $17,200 (probably the cost of a fairly nice room in Feil Hall). Subtracting $6,000 for me, the school estimate drops to $69,536.

Now this starts to look fishy. Am I really spending almost $8,000 more dollars than the typical law student?

What about transportation? The school estimates $950 for that category, and I spent $2,344.75, about a $1,400 difference.

A word about transportation: over the summer, I took the El Train to work every day, and had monthly CTA cards, but at BLS, I rarely use the subway (I walk to campus). However, I have also taken a number of plane trips, and this is probably responsible for my high totals (though there is certainly an argument to be made that this transportation expense is misleading).

So now, we’re down to $6,600—but let’s get to my favorite category: living expenses.

The school estimates that the average student will spend $5,880 on miscellaneous and living expenses. Now, I did spend roughly $3,800 on food, which leaves about $2,000 for recreation, toiletries and various household expenses like cleaning and laundry.

If you add my recreation and food totals, it equals a whopping $8,744.65—almost $3,000 over the school estimate.

Still, there is about $3,600 difference lurking in the shadows. My academic expenses equaled $1,877.67 and the school estimates “books” at $1,300. Down to $3,100.

You could take out another $1,400 for health insurance—which I was on last year until I realized I could qualify for Medicaid (the school factors $0 into health insurance and does not widely distribute information about Medicaid—perhaps an attempt to drive up business with their provider, Aetna). Still, there is a $1,700 shortfall. I would imagine that cell phone and other utility bills makes up this difference.

I advertised MEP as best as I could. One other person participated in the November MEP. My total was $1,999 and “Jackie Chan’s” total was $1,955, so the average was $1,977.

My goal with MEP was to show that the school’s estimates were inaccurate and misleading. People often criticize for BLS for its massive tuition and the expense of living in what is perhaps the most expensive area in Brooklyn.

It is questionable what kinds of figures the school is “estimating” for food and recreational expenses. It is not surprising that MEP has failed—but I am not a quitter and I demand that one more attempt be made. The point of MEP was to write a scholarly article about personal finance, and to send it to Elizabeth Warren for comments. In Chapter 13, disposable income is separated from fixed monthly expenses, and the debtor pays the court each month, and the court distributes that amount to creditors. The point of the article would be to see if those amounts allocated by the court ($280 for food per month, for a single individual, from what I recall…) matched up to reality.

Of course MEP is a larger project, but it has its seeds at BLS, and my experience of going from “fairly wealthy” to “broke” from 2007-2013—and I do not think my experience is unique.

I urge you to join me in the March 2013 MEP. I know I will have at least three other participants, but of course greater participation equals greater accuracy. Please visit this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIznoCng3Oo to watch a 28-minute video of the MEP Presentation. I will e-mail you the slides from the Powerpoint if you prefer not to see the comedy. I realize that MEP can be a tedious exercise, but it has been a valuable one for me (it has helped me figure out what kind of salary I should aim to earn), and I would be very pleased if you join me in this endeavor.

Christopher J. Knorps is a 3L. He enjoys studying Bankruptcy and Constitutional Law. He is organizing a Monthly Expense Project “reporting” for March of 2013—please e-mail him at Christopher.knorps@brooklaw.edu if you are interested in participating. He is also organizing a 2^nd Annual Open Mic and seeking performers so please contact him if you are interested.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress #20: Sticker Shocks and Certificates

2013-02-26T16:38:00.003-05:00

In this column, I addressed sadness over a bad report card. I also wrote about business law classes and law school grading mysteries.

NIED #20: Sticker Shocks and Certificates

By Christopher J. Knorps

In keeping with the tradition of being an open book when it comes to grades, I must confess that my 3L Fall Semester was my worst academic performance in law school. Over the first few days of the “sticker shock” I suffered after reading the results, I searched for a reasonable explanation:

(1) The Professors did not adjust the curve upward for the two classes I took that had less than 39 students and that I got C+’s in.

(2) I had the same “first exam” jitters for Accounting for Lawyers that I had for Criminal Law—only getting 3-4 hours of sleep before a 9 AM exam.

(3) I didn’t appropriately allocate my time on the First Amendment exam.

(4) I didn’t put in enough time to ensure that I knew the material cold (or that I could do the mathematical calculations that I’d be expected to know in Corporate Finance).

(5) I never fully understood all the permutations that the different intestacy regimes for Trusts & Estates would implicate (though this was the least disappointing grade).

(6) The clinic professor didn’t really pay attention when she gave students a “P” or an “HP.”

(7) The other students in the class were just too damn smart (or the professors taught the class too damn well).

(8) The other students getting Business Law Certificates are too damn smart.

Also I had no friends that wanted to study with me.

Most likely, all 8 of these explanations, taken together, explain my precipitous drop. However, I think the last two are the most important. #7 was true for First Amendment (Araiza is an excellent professor, and while I would never brag about that grade, I am sure that everyone in the class left it with a very good understanding of the material). #8 was true for Corporate Finance and Accounting for Lawyers (I would also add that, as a left-handed person forced to handwrite knuckle-smearing page-smudging-notes and struggle to keep up with the pace of the class, I was at a disadvantage). Corporate Finance is a required course for the Business Law Certificate, and nobody in their right mind would take Accounting for Lawyers unless they are getting the Business Law Certificate (while not required it is “strongly recommended”) or taking a general Business Law Curriculum route.

Certificates have their critics. They say, “Nobody is going to care if you got a Certificate and you get to list it on your resume.” However, I “trusted the school” in deciding to do this. I felt that if I took these courses, then I would have the basic skills necessary to enter a number of different areas embedded within the general “business law” wheelhouse. Perhaps it will have served me well to “punish myself” (in a sense) and learn this material, but it remains to be seen.

Some people may read this column and think I am dumping on all the other students that don’t take the Business Law Certificate. They might think I’m implying that the Business Law kids are the really smart kids in the school. But there are kids that are brilliant when it comes to Criminal Law, Intellectual Property (which, it is perhaps worth noting, seems much less popular than I thought it would be coming into law school), and Tax too. But I must admit that I haven’t dug deeply enough into these areas (have not delved at all into IP, regrettably) to really know the kids taking the advanced courses.

Brooklyn is not a very highly-ranked school, but we suffer outside of the New York region because people do not recognize the intellectual quality of our students. I have repeatedly said that I have never been surrounded by such an intelligent peer group in any other academic context in my life (and I think my previous schools were all more “prestigious”). And I think that holds true for most of us.

I still have to believe that I would have done better if I had taken “fun” courses like I did last year (i.e. Interviewing and Counseling, Trial Advocacy, Employment Law, Business Reorganizations—all B+s through A’s). And if all you care about is your GPA, then I highly recommend you just take courses that interest you, and don’t push yourselves to take big survey classes unless you are doing it for the Bar Exam. Some people tend to say, “That sounds awful!” when I tell them I take Securities Regulation or Federal Income Taxation or Corporate Finance or Accounting for Lawyers. And my GPA and class rank are now, officially “weak,” and there is nothing I can do about it. But I remind myself that I have been learning something “new.”

It would be interesting to see if there was a correlation between class rank and area of concentration or certificate field. I would venture a guess that the Business Law kids would be highly-ranked, but then again I am sometimes accused of allowing my experience to cloud my judgment. Regardless, a study should be made.

Christopher J. Knorps is a 3L earning a Business Law Certificate. He enjoys studying bankruptcy and constitutional law. He is organizing a 2^nd Annual Open Mic this Spring with the proceeds going to Sanctuary for Families. Please e-mail him at Christopher.knorps@brooklaw.edu if you are interested in performing.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder - Dir. Renny Harlin (The Die Hard Project #2 - JM)

2013-02-25T12:46:00.001-05:00

Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990)

Dir: Renny Harlin

The Blueprint for a Successful Sequel

By Jay Maronde

Before one can begin a review of Die Hard 2: Die Harder, the question must be posed: what really makes a Great Action Movie?

Now if your answer to that question is that you need to see some “all-new,” “next-level” kind of stuff, then this is not the Die Hard for you—as yes, this is essentially the same movie as the original Die Hard, except in an airport. The production staff of this movie seemed to have realized this glaring flaw, and as such, went “all out” in other ways to produce a fun movie.

Now, if you define a Great Action Movie as a movie with great characters, great action, and a spectacular ending, then DH2 will be a great time.

First things first, Bruce Willis returns to reprise his role as the Everyman Cop Hero Caught in the Wrong Place, but trying to save his wife (now no longer estranged) from terrorists on Christmas Eve. This time the terrorists (who for the only time in the franchise are really terrorists, not just thieves) have seized Dulles Airport while John McClane’s wife is airborne waiting to land.

It is perhaps worth noting that the worldwide popularity of John McClane played no small role in the very quick production of this sequel. Furthermore, Bruce Willis’s portrayal of John McClane was so popular with audiences that he was encouraged to do more ad-libbing “anywhere he wanted.” To that end, John McClane comes off as grittier, angrier, and more determined than ever—and it works charmingly: Willis, without a doubt, ensures his place in movie history with this fantastic performance. But it takes more than just a great hero to make a great movie.

Also necessary for a Great Action Movie is a really evil, sick, weird, villain with a fucked-up plan: in this case, to save a thinly-veiled Manuel Noriega caricature from extradition to the US. This evil villain (while possibly the weakest in the series) is played quite well by William Sadler as the traitor Colonel Stuart. As the movie opens, we find Stuart doing Tai Chi naked in a hotel room and that is just the beginning of his sick-twisted-ness. This early highlighting of his horrid personality was conceived by director Harlin as an early way to let the audience know that they were experiencing a special kind of villain. But in a shocking twist, it turns out he’s not the only bad guy we find in the movie. Again (as with the original Die Hard), the federal government sends help that isn’t really much help at all. As much as I like Sadler, he is easily outshone by his deviant co-villain, played by John Amos.

Also of note in this movie are John’s unlikely allies at the airport in the form of its Chief of Police and Head of Airport Operations, played respectively by Dennis Franz (then-hot on the success of “NYPD Blue”) and later U.S. Presidential Candidate Fred Dalton Thompson. Franz is great as an overwhelmed cop who wants nothing less than some hero cop like John McClane bringing trouble to his airport. Thompson, as would be indicated by his run for President, is always great in any role where he is the boss.

Now all these great actors doing the best acting in the world wouldn’t be impressive for an action movie at all if the movie didn’t have any action, and DH2 never for a moment lacks on action. John McClane is in the middle of gun fights, snowmobile chases, and all-out-brawls, and Harlin does everything he can to keep all of this action extremely interesting and the movie flows remarkably quickly while keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat the entire time. Harlin, however, saves the best action for the very, very end of the movie.

DH2 easily has one of the best endings of all the Die Hards, and may even boast the greatest action movie ending of all time. While the villains aren’t necessarily beaten or shot to death by McClane, his method of eliminating them is more than outrageous and serves to make for this spectacular ending. John McClane not only blows up a whole plane full of escaping terrorist scum, but in the process singlehandedly re-opens the airport, allowing for his wife’s fuel-depleted plane to make an emergency landing. Audiences always love a loud, crazy and yet “everything turns out great in the end” ending, but the manner in which McClane brings down the plane along with his classic “yippie –ky-yay-motherfucker” is pure Hollywood genius.

Die Hard 2 may not be the best of all of the Die Hards, but without a doubt it is an enormously entertaining movie. The fact that the movie is in a lot of ways a complete rehash of the original Die Hard is more than made up for by the movie’s excellent pacing, great cast, and off-the-charts action.

Points of Rebellion - William O. Douglas

2013-02-23T11:20:00.001-05:00

Justice Douglas is my favorite Supreme Court justice. Law school is extremely boring at times, but any class that features Supreme Court opinions from 1939-1975 holds the potential for excitement: Douglas is likely to dissent in many cases, and there is almost always a sentence or two of pure brilliance and disgust. Points of Rebellion, then, is a 97 page dissent against America as she stood in 1969. It is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it.

In college, I majored in Writing and Politics at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. We were required to state our concentration and present a colloquium on the topic. I chose "Political Rebellion in Literature." My presentation (delivered to my academic adviser, as well as two other faculty members) was mostly a mess. We had to talk about 30 books. Some of my books were Utopia (Sir Thomas More), Hamlet, The Rebel (Albert Camus), The Flowers of Evil (Charles Baudelaire), The Origins of Totalitarianism (Hannah Arendt), One-Dimensional Man (Herbert Marcuse), White Noise (Don DeLillo), Something Happened (Joseph Heller), Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (Richard Hofstadter), The Trial (Kafka), Discourse on Method (Descartes), Bend Sinister (Vladimir Nabokov), and others...

My basic argument was that the different forms of rebellion had been squashed by the majority in American society. I could not make this argument anywhere nearly as well as I could today.

Points of Rebellion would have been THE PERFECT BOOK for this colloquium, and I am sorry that I did not know anything about the law, or the Court, when I was 21 and designing my project.

Were I to give this presentation today, the so-called "Occupy movement" would no doubt move heavily to the forefront of the conversation. Last year when the police arrested protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge and raided Zuccotti Park, I wrote on Facebook that it had taken 7 years, but I had finally been proven wrong: the flowers of rebellion still bloom today.

But I would like you, one day, to look at Google Analytics (I find it from my finance page) and look at Domestic Trends and see the last ten years in various industries. You will be able to see some remnants of the Great Recession, but more notable is the continued dominance of the credit card industry.

While the "Occupy movement" may have brought like-minded individuals together and fostered a stronger public consciousness of the ways in which the financial industry has siphoned off economic growth from 99% of the population, it is hard to say that they have made a serious impact. Elizabeth Warren has made a much stronger impact in terms of formulating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and she is but one person. It is far too early to talk about 2016, but other people are already whispering that Hillary Clinton will be running on the Democratic ticket--but I am convinced that the only way we can enter into a "golden age" is with Warren as President. Many people are saying that we will continue to live with high unemployment rates for the rest of our lives, but if more people read Points of Rebellion, one would realize that rapid and radical change is, in fact, possible.

To be sure, Douglas's vision of an American utopia is improbable. It is quite easy to counter Douglas's statements or claim that he asks too much out of people. Indeed, many of his statements ignore the psychological tendencies of people to organize themselves in "the Establishment" that Douglas faced in his lifetime, and that we still face today.

First, Points of Rebellion was written in 1970--but it might as well have been written yesterday because nothing has changed (excepting some of the statements about foreign affairs):

"The advances of technology present the problem of increasing disemployment in the private sector. We brag about our present low unemployment. But that is due to Vietnam. Without Vietnam we would have 15 per cent or more unemployment. Must we fight wars to have full employment?
Technology is in the saddle and displaces manpower. The old problem of unemployment has become the new problem of disemployment. How many of the present eighteen-year-old men and women will be permanently disemployed? Thoughts such as these fill the hearts of the young with dismay." (66)

Douglas does, at one point, flex his literary experimentation to hilarious effect:

"A number of federal agencies also use personality tests. One included the following choices:--my father was a good man, I am very seldom troubled by constipation, my sex life is satisfactory, evil spirits possess me at times, at times I feel like swearing, I have had very peculiar and strange experiences, I have never been in trouble because of my sex behavior, during one period when I was a youngster I engaged in petty thievery, my sleep is fitful and disturbed, I do not always tell the truth, as a youngster I was suspended from school one or more times for cutting up, everything is turning out just like the prophets of the Bible said it would.
The experts are at odds about these personality tests. These tests commonly grade a person by eight, nine, or ten traits while twenty-five thousand traits might approximate an accurate personality portrayal. Moreover, the creator of the test fashions his own neurotic world as, for example, to daydream is neurotic--the thesis that is present in one personality test." (25)

Most people know nothing of Justice Douglas. Law students may hear the gossip that he was married four times and that he was an early advocate of environmental protection. His passion for the environment is present throughout Points of Rebellion. Sometimes his love for it is so innocent and genuine that one cannot help but be moved:

"I remember an alpine meadow in Wyoming where willows lined a clear, cold brook. Moose browsed the willow. Beaver came and made a dam which in time created a lovely pond which produced eastern brook trout up to five pounds. A cattle baron said that sagebrush was killing the grass. So the Forest Service sprayed the entire area. It killed the sagebrush and the willow too. The moose disappeared and so did the beaver. In time the dam washed out and the pond was drained. Ten years later some of the willow was still killed out; the beaver never returned; nor did the moose." (83)

Notably, Justice Douglas does not write as you would expect a Supreme Court justice to write--and it is refreshing as hell:

"In April, 1968, only 3.5 per cent of the general population was unemployed, while for those in the slum areas it was 7 per cent, with 5.7 per cent for whites and 8.7 per cent for Negroes.
The national white unemployment rate has been about 3.1 per cent and the national Negro unemployment rate 6.7 per cent.
Police practices are anti-Negro.
Employment practices are anti-Negro.
Housing allocation is anti-Negro.
Education is anti-Negro.
The federal government, with its hundreds of federally-financed public road contracts, and its thousands of procurement contracts negotiated each year by the Pentagon and other agencies to purchase munitions, towels, stationery, pens, automobiles and the like, is admonished by Congress to make sure that the contractors for these goods make jobs available without discrimination. President Johnson gave hardly more than lip service to that mandate." (45-46)

When a Supreme Court justice can write the way Douglas does, one feels more secure in their love for their country. However, there have not been many like him. Points of Rebellion predates the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and one supposes that Douglas would think that agency a step in the right direction. However it is more likely that he would find much to hate about it too. His distaste for the administrative state is eloquently stated in another passage that could be written yesterday:

"Corporate interests, as well as poor people--unemployed people as well as the average member of affluent society--are affected by these broad generalized grants of authority to administrative agencies. The corporate interests have been largely taken care of by highly qualified lawyers acting in individual cases and by Bar Associations proposing procedural reforms that define, for example, the 'aggrieved' persons who have standing to object to agency orders or decisions. [One wishes Douglas was on the Court when Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation came down...] But the voices of the mass of people are not heard; and the administrative agencies largely have their own way.
Moreover, the Establishment controls those agencies. That control does not come from corrupt practices or from venality. It results from close alliances made out of working relations, from memberships in the same or similar clubs, from the warp and woof of social relations, and from the prospects offered the administrator for work in the ranks of the Establishment, if he is the right and proper man. The administrative office is indeed the staging ground where men are trained and culled and finally chosen to the high salaried posts in the Establishment that carry many desirable fringe benefits. The New Dealers mostly ended up there. Under Lyndon Johnson there was lively competition for administrative men who would in two years have made a million working for the Establishment. That is a powerful influence among many agencies; and it results in those who have agency discretion exercising it for the benefit of those who run the corporation state. And those people are by and large the exploiters." (79-80)

Like a law review article, this book ends with suggestions for reform. President Obama should read this book (or at least indicate to me that he has read this book) and so should Elizabeth Warren. They are the only ones out there right now that can make any of this change happen. Of course, Congress will likely stand in their way, but if lawmakers are truly servants of the public, then they must listen to reason rather than self-interest. Douglas nicely summarizes his vision at the end:

"There are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a society where law is responsive to human needs.
If society is to be responsive to human needs, a vast restructuring of our laws is essential.
Realization of this need means adults must awaken to the urgency of the young people's unrest--in other words there must be created an adult unrest against the inequities and injustices in the present system. If the government is in jeopardy, it is not because we are unable to cope with revolutionary situations. Jeopardy means that either the leaders or the people do not realize they have all the tools required to make the revolution come true. The tools and the opportunity exist. Only the moral imagination is missing.
If the budget of the Pentagon were reduced from 80 billion dollars to 20 billion it would still be over twice as large as that of any other agency of government. Starting with vast reductions in its budget, we must make the Pentagon totally subordinate in our lives.
The poor and disadvantaged must have lawyers to represent them in normal civil problems that now haunt them.
Law must be revised so as to eliminate their present bias against the poor. Neighborhood credit unions would be vastly superior to the finance companies with their record of anguished garnishments.
Hearings must be made available so that the important decisions of federal agencies may be exposed to public criticism before they are put into effect.
The food program must be drastically revised so that its primary purpose is to feed the hungry rather than to make the corporate farmer rich.
A public sector for employment must be created that extends to meaningful and valuable work. It must include many arts and crafts, the theatre, industries; training of psychiatric and social workers, and specialists in the whole gamut of human interest." (92-94, emphasis mine)

Justice Douglas is most famous for introducing the word "penumbra" into the world of constitutional rights. A lot of people criticize him for that. People tend to forget that he was giving married couples the right to use contraceptives.

If Justice Douglas was mentioned in my U.S. History classes, I can't remember. However, in my small and humble opinion, he was one of the greatest Americans to have lived. Law school has been a long and painful process, but at the very least it allowed me to gain exposure to Douglas, and to find a view of the Constitution and American society at large with which I could agree and seek to propagate in my own life.

Points of Rebellion is an inspiration. Some of the material may be dated, but those portions are at least entertaining. It is a short little book. If you care about radical politics, I highly recommend you check it out. Then go out there, and try to build a more enlightened society.

How Literature Saved My Life - David Shields

2013-02-18T21:53:00.001-05:00

Recently I went to the post office to pick up a package, and the woman behind the counter said, "We've been holding this one since January 1, is this for you?" It was a big, flat manila mailing package--a book. "Oh yes, that's mine." It said 184 Clinton St and it said Flying Houses (I live at 148 Clinton, f.y.i.)

This was the first piece of mail I received for Flying Houses from a major book publisher (Random House/Knopf/Borzoi Books). I was expecting it to be Taipei by Tao Lin (from Vintage). I had requested that book. I did not request How Literature Saved My Life.

Regardless, I took this to be a moment of divine inspiration: slowly but surely, Flying Houses was turning into a reputable media outlet. I would not pass up the opportunity. Unfortunately I wish I had because I fear this review will satisfy no one.

David Shields (not James Shields, the pitcher for the Kansas City Royals formerly of the Tampa Bay Rays, who has also written a book) has written thirteen books, the most prominent of which appear to be Reality Hunger and Remote. They also appear to be written in a "collage" style that eschews traditional forms of character and plot development in favor of a sort of stream-of-consciousness. How Literature Saved My Life is also written in this style. I have many problems with this book so I will enumerate them.

#1: Shields does not really discuss how he was about to lose his life

This is not The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon. It will not make you feel better if you are sleeping 20 hours a day and eating something and worry that you have no purpose to fulfill on earth. He does describe some moments of ennui at a famous MFA program:

"I remember hearing my highly alliterative short story 'The Gorgeous Green of the Hedges' gently demolished in class and, upon returning to my apartment, eating bowl after bowl of mint chip ice cream until the room spun. I remember admiring how some of my classmates (Elizabeth Evans, Mike Hutchison, Walter Howerton, Michael Cunningham, John Hill, Jan Short, Peter Nelson, Sarah Metcalf, Bob Schacochis) had figured out how to get their own personality onto the page.....I remember people saying that nothing ever happened to anyone in Iowa City and me wondering what in the world they were talking about. I remember, above all, during the five years I lived in Iowa City, believing that what mattered more than anything else in your life was writing as well as you possibly could." (119-120)

He also later described being unemployed at age 30 and sleeping on his father's apartment couch in San Francisco and watching a uni-cyclist juggler on television, and how that had moved him to tears--and how, had he seen the feat in person, he would not likely be moved anywhere near as much. This was a nice vignette.

The book is separated into more than a hundred of such vignettes, but the vast majority of them focus on Shields's engagement with a text or other such work of art. In a sense this is prime material for Flying Houses because it gives us the very exciting opportunity of comparing his opinions to my own.

"Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past. The book that I think of as mattering the most to me ever, but I read it more than thirty years ago and I find that I have trouble reading it now. Seems sad--do I still love it, did I ever love it? I know I did. Has my aesthetic changed that much? If so, why? Does one resist that alteration? I think not. The book still completely changed me, still defines me in some strange way. Proust for me is the C.K. Scott Moncrieff translation in paperback, all the covers stained with suntan oil, since I read all seven volumes in a single summer, supposedly traveling around the south of France but really pretty much just reading Proust. I came to realize that he will do anything, go anywhere to extend his research, to elaborate his argument about art and life. His commitment is never to the narrative; it's to the narrative as such as a vector on the grid of his argument. That thrilled me and continues to thrill me--his understanding of his book as a series of interlaced architectural/thematic spaces." (152-153)

I could not read Swann's Way four years ago, and it is one of the three posts of Flying Houses that is (incomplete), though I did remark that,

"When I first heard about him, I thought it lied very close to the same aims I hoped to produce in my own work--the inexplicable singularity of a life, with all of its attendant idiosyncrasies, which thereby educates an audience more as to the total "meaning of existence." Lofty ambitions indeed, and I will say, after 60 pages, that I am sure Proust succeeds on his own philosophical level, but that 21st century American readers will find it extremely difficult to 'dig.'"

This does lead to the next topic, which is adapting literature to new forms of technology, but I would pause to remark that the above quotation may shed light on why I did not like How Literature Saved My Life: we seem to have a similar philosophy when it comes to creating literature that is "useful," but we go about it in different ways. I do not like the "collage" method, though I did employ it in the past. That method is popular with writing group peers and the so-called "MFA Contingent" but I prefer to take cues from modern masters and not try to invent new forms when society itself is enough of a spectacle that it bears relating in plain language, without the jumping around from topic-to-topic, channel surfing, twitter news-feed scanning, etc. While I recently joined twitter about a week ago, and plan to use it sparingly, for marketing purposes (or to record funny incidents in my Tax Law class) I hope to fight against this urge to make literature more "user-friendly" for the "Me Generation."

#2: This is not Taipei

I requested a galley copy of Taipei, which is Tao Lin's 3rd novel, from the author himself. He told me that he would forward my information onto Vintage Books and that "hopefully" they would send one in January. When nothing arrived, I cursed Vintage and major publishing houses (Melville House had sent my Tao's 2nd novel Richard Yates) and then went to pick up the package in early February. It looked like they had come through! Then I opened the package, incredibly, to find that it was this book and not Taipei. Perhaps this is some elaborate trick or "test" being played on me (since Flying Houses may be "famous" for excerpting large sections of text), but I am sad that I will not be able to keep up with Tao's oeuvre. However, while I don't necessarily disagree with Shields' statement, "I don't want to read out of duty," (167) I do want to read out of duty if people want my opinion on something.

But Tao is a good entry-way into the next point about technology. For those unaware, Tao Lin is the foremost writer of my generation (we graduated in the same class from NYU) and has built his following entirely on his own through the various forms of social media. His evolution as a writer has been fascinating to observe, and perhaps with this book he may actually enter some "year end best lists," as Mr. Shields apparently has. And the strongest part of this book, for me, are its comments on the current literary world:

"The individual has now risen to the level of a minigovernment or minicorporation. Via YouTube and Twitter, each of us is our own mininetwork. The trajectory of nearly all technology follows this downward and widening path: by the time a regular person is able to create his own TV network, it doesn't matter anymore that I have or am on a network. The power of the technology cancels itself out via its own ubiquity. Nothing really changes: the individual's ability to project his message or throw his weight around remains miniscule. In the case of the web, each of us has slightly more access to a mass audience--a few more people slide through the door--but Facebook is finally a crude personal multimedia conglomerate machine, personal nation-state machine, reality-show machine. New gadgets alter social patterns, new media eclipse old ones, but the pyramid never goes away....New artists, it seems to me, have to learn the mechanics of computing/programming and--possessing a vision unhumbled by technology--use them to disassemble/recreate the web." (188-189)

The only other point worth mentioning about Tao is usage of the term "scare quotes":
"Updike: 'I loathe being interviewed; it's a half-form, like maggots.' Gertrude Stein: 'Remarks are not literature.' Um is not a word, but I like how people use it now to ironize/mock/deflate put scare quotes around what comes next. The moment I try not to stutter, I stutter. I never stutter when singing to myself in the shower." (133-134)

"Scare quotes" are not a component of literature that has been accepted by the public on a mass scale by any stretch. Tao Lin is largely responsible for the excessive use of "scare quotes" (and the reason I must put it in quotes, regarding Shields's failure to do so as a "hipper than thou" mistake) in new books, but Shields point is well taken nonetheless. I confess this is a minor quibble but "scare quotes" deserve at least a moment of clarification.

#3: Recommended Reading

In order to fully appreciate this book, I really think you have to have read all of the books that Shields references--and there are many:

(1) Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
(2) Dead Languages by David Shields
(3) The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead by David Shields
(4) Spiderman (2002 film)
(5) Prometheus Bound - Aeschylus (?)
(6) Reality Hunger - David Shields
(7) Shortbus (2006 film)
(8) Laura (1944 film)*
(9) Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973 film)
(10) Le Gout des Autres (2000 film)
(11) Anagrams by Lorrie Moore*
(12) "Weekend" by Amy Hempel*
(13) Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
(14) The Last Studebaker by Robin Hemley
(15) Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer
(16) Built to Spill - Perfect From Now On (1997 album)
(17) In Bruges (2008 film)
(18) Calendar of Regrets by Lance Olsen
(19) The Guardians by Sarah Manguso
(20) The Name of the World by Denis Johnson
(21) Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer
(22) Zona by Geoff Dyer
(23) Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee
(24) This Is Not a Novel by David Markson
(25) "This is the Life" by Anne Dillard
(26) Butterfly Stories: A Novel by William Vollman
(27) History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky
(28) The Brothers by Frederick Barthelme
(29) The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
(30) Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity by David Shields
(31) "The Dead" by James Joyce
(32) Sherman's March (1986 film)
(33) Speedboat by Renata Adler*
(34) Shit My Dad Says by Justin Halpern
(35) Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky
(36) Now and Then by Joseph Heller*
(37) The entire oeuvre of J.D. Salinger
* books I actually want to read after this.

Note that this does not include the "55 works I swear by" section, along with perhaps a handful of other texts that are mentioned more briefly.

You do not need to read all of these books to "get" How Literature Saved My Life, but the book tends to function as a collection of books that inspired it. While the book is marketed as "blending confessional criticism and anthropological autobiography," there is decidedly a focus on the former.

There are three parts worth noting where Shields slams Toni Morrison for complaining that her book didn't win an award and where Shields admits that he is actually kind of like George W. Bush and where Shields talks about Bryan Singer sitting next to Bush in first class where Bush confesses that he has been on Ambien "for years." These are probably the "sexiest" parts of the book, though other parts do indulge in vague-erotica.

#4: Been There, Done That

The big takeaway from this book (for me, at least) is the "collage" as the new form of literature--and I don't buy it. My zine "Autointoxication," (2003) flirted with this medium, and while some viewed it rather charitably, I am mostly embarrassed by it in retrospect.

Bite-size chapters (like in, oh say, Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut) may be something else entirely, but blending a work of creative non-fiction by mixing in one's own patina with the aggregate of artistic cultural linguistics amounts to a book of aphorisms that may serve as a nice collection of potent quotables (things to write on a piece of paper that you tape to the wall in your "writing station") but does not compel me to run out to my friends and tell them to read.

Shields has written 13 books and has been quite successful, it appears. However this book leaves the impression that he has given up on fiction as a method towards reaching psychological realism. He is, as he notes, an extremely ambivalent person, and I am quite ambivalent about this book. On the one hand, I am quite honored that someone decided to send it to me, and it has certainly opened up my mind a bit when it comes to literary experimentation (while I doubt that I will return to the "collage" form anytime soon) and there are a few nice passages, such as this one:

"Some people seemed to think I was the Antichrist because I didn't genuflect at the twin altars of the novel and intellectual property (there's an oxymoron if ever there was one). I became, briefly, the poster boy for The Death of the Novel and The End of Copyright. Fine by me. Those have become something close to my positions. The key thing for an intellectually rigorous writer to come to grips with is the marginalization of literature by more technologically sophisticated and thus more visceral forms. You can work within these forms or write about them or through them or appropriate the strategies these forms use, but it's not a very good idea to go on writing in a vacuum. The novel was invented to access interiority. Now most people communicate through social media, and everyone I know under thirty has remarkably little notion of privacy. The novel is an artifact, which is why antiquarians cling to it so fervently. Art, like science, progresses. Forms evolve. Forms are there to serve the culture, and when they die, they die for a good reason--or so I have to believe, the novel having long since gone dark for me..." (129, emphasis mine)

Even in this comparatively pristine paragraph Shields make a comment with which I take issue: I am under thirty (for another 60 days, at least) and I think I have a notion of privacy.

There is also a nice part about him working at a law firm:

"My entire twenties, I lived on practically nothing, slept on my father's couch for ten months. At thirty-one, I was a proofreader for Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro (PMS), a San Francisco law firm that represented the wrong side of every case. The lawyers hated their jobs. I loved mine, though, since I spent my entire time there finishing my second novel. All the other subalterns were as bored as I was, and they were happy to print out copies of drafts for me, retype pages for me. It was Team Shields. We also discovered something new called a fax machine. Very exciting. I'd arrive before anyone else, and the lawyers would thank me for being such an eager beaver." (163)

That passes the LSAT Test! A newly formulated test on Flying Houses that says any mention of legal culture on page 163 in any book passes the test (163 was my LSAT score).

But on the other hand, I just get annoyed when people write D.F. Wallace or DFW. Sure, he is literature's answer to Kurt Cobain, but I think he's put up on a bit of a pedestal. Sure, I've yet to review Infinite Jest here, but I will, I will...I just can't put him on the same level as FSF--and no one refers to that master as F.S. Fitzgerald. In my opinion, David Foster Wallace is occasionally great, but more often tedious, and it can be quite difficult to derive pleasure from reading his work--he has about a 10% success rate and a 90% fail rate, though admirers of his will slap me for saying this, and I may disagree with myself whenever I get around to reading Infinite Jest (2013 or 2014--that's a promise!).

It's a petty thing but people that abbreviate him DFW are part of the larger problem of the "MFA contingent," who like to wax philosophical about Amy Hempel and Barry Hannah and maybe occasionally Nabokov but never Mann. These are new 20th-21st century writers that have taken the short story form as far as it can go while still being recognizable as a prose piece. I don't intend a blanket criticism of everything they've ever done--I just shudder at the thought that the new way to write is to get an MFA, get published, and just keep writing really good short stories--forget about a novel--takes too long--with the weird middle coming in "linked-short stories."

I guess I am like Kafka "who was unusually susceptible to textual stimuli, [and] read only a couple of pages of a book at a time" (182) and just don't have the time to go to the library, on a full stomach, and sit there for hours devouring literature in a huge chunk. I want to check my e-mail and worry about some more "real" urgency ahead of me.

In summary, this book reads like a law review article. It's not particularly enjoyable, there are tons of citations to authority (sadly without footnotes--but happily with a Cf. or two that I believe means "indirect support), and a reform is (sort of) proposed. However, I am afraid that I have not gotten deeply enough into the mind of David Shields to fully appreciate his comic-linguistic asides. Fans of his may love this, but as a newcomer and as a neutral critic, I can only regard this work as a "virginity loss" type experience--but laypersons generally don't receive galley copies.

My Bloody Valentine - m b v

2013-02-16T11:53:00.000-05:00

Everyone wrote reviews of this album over the last two weeks (it is two weeks old tonight) and I still have not purchased it. It costs $16. I have been listening to it on streaming players. As such I do not have it with me anywhere outside, in my iPod, playing on my headphones; I can only listen in my apartment, and with the AUX cable connecting my laptop to my stereo. Listening to this album from tinny laptop speakers would be sacrilege. When I have the discretionary income, I'll get it for the headphones.

There was a 22 year wait for this album. I joked on facebook two weeks ago that a betting pool should open up on whether m b v would really be released that evening or not. I forgot about it and then listened to the first half of the album the next day and went to a Super Bowl party. I watched Beyonce perform her halftime show and I asked my friend hosting if he liked My Bloody Valentine (I know he likes much newer indie rock, but he is not generally known for liking all of the Our Band Could be Your Life bands, except for Sonic Youth perhaps, which is certainly in the direction of My Bloody Valentine...). He did not know about m b v, nor was he interested in how it might sound.

Oeuvre rule: I love My Bloody Valentine. See Concert Review (which still has one of the best pictures of a band I have ever taken, I think, because it looks like the cover of Loveless) and 50th Post Milestone in Anticipation of Concert. I have heard almost all of their music.

And this is one of the many things that sets MBV apart from other bands: you start with Loveless, you don't get it necessarily, but it's good--then you move onto Isn't Anything and reflect that it may be even better than Loveless, but don't exactly make this generally known because it might cause other people to think you don't "get" Loveless--you hear all of the old stuff (maybe not the stuff from Geek! or This is Your Bloody Valentine--getting into that 1985 stuff separates the hardcore fans from the obsessive fans)--and you are content to listen to Loveless or choice tracks from other releases from now until the end of time, and you expect Kevin Shields to keep teasing everyone that he is going to put out another MBV album soon and take everything he says with a grain of salt.

Until two weeks ago.

The closest analogue to this situation is the excitement that surrounded the release of Chinese Democracy. That album took 15 years to release.

This album took 22 years to release.

This album is much better than Chinese Democracy.

We don't know exactly what Axel Rose and Kevin Shields were up to during that period, but we know some details. Shields worked with J. Mascis (he played guitar as a member of "the Fog" on a few songs during the time that Dinosaur Jr.--a band highly responsible for the development of the MBV sound--was broken up). Shields worked with Primal Scream, apparently (I haven't listened to them enough to offer an opinion on it). And then there was Lost in Translation.

I saw Lost in Translation in December of 2003--but before I came back to the States for that, I heard the song "City Girl" in Paris. Another classmate and friend of mine recognized the extraordinary character of that song and he downloaded and we listened to it over and over and talked about how great it was and we wondered why something that seemed so effortless wasn't matched by anyone currently working.

A lot has changed since 2003. Dinosaur Jr. is back together (and have been very prolific and successful). Chinese Democracy was released. iPods and iTunes became de rigeur, and Compact Discs flirt with obsolescence. The Nirvana legend continues to generate income for Courtney Love. The Rolling Stones put out a new album. Weezer all but lost their former greatness. The White Stripes and the Strokes "saved" rock and roll; The Arcade Fire brought "majestic rock" to the masses and won Grammy Awards. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs became respected elder statesmen(persons?). R&B and Hip Hop came back in a bigger way than the "Outkast album" from that year could ever anticipate. Elliott Smith committed suicide (around the same time as "City Girl"). Lollapalooza and other music festivals (i.e Pitchfork) became cash cows.

People would shell out hundreds of dollars for festivals, now. Coachella could offer Morrissey $45 million (and purely vegan food vendors) to reunite the Smiths on their stage, and he would reject them, and he now flirts with retirement. David Bowie went away and is about to come back. Michael Jackson was about to come back, and he died in the process. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore broke up, and Sonic Youth's 32 year legacy remains a question mark. And then My Bloody Valentine came back in 2007. And then Pavement played reunion shows.

Rewind back to October of 2000, my senior year in high school, and my [ex-]friend Jon giving me Loveless, telling me not to listen to so much Smashing Pumpkins because Billy Corgan was really just ripping off this album. Listen to Jon speak at length about Siamese Dream--"it is exactly the same guitar sound!" Listen to all of the other bands Jon endorses--Minor Threat, Fugazi, Sunny Day Real Estate, Slint, the Velvet Underground, Cap'n Jazz--go to college, find other people that like the same bands and become obsessed along with them.

And then go to see My Bloody Valentine play alone because you don't have any friends in the city you're in--or at least any friends that want to shell out $50.

And then have m b v come out when you are in the waning days of your 20's.

Every review of m b v must have this personal element. To talk about the album itself seems like an afterthought. The first track sounds kind of boring. The second track reminds the listener that they are listening to MBV and that it is about to get awesome. The third track, "Who Sees You," is probably my favorite song on the album. It stands along with the best songs they have ever done. I personally find "Is This and Yes" to be one of the weakest songs on the album. "New You" and "In Another Way" blend into each other for me. One of them is super awesome and the other one is only really awesome. "Nothing Is" is often compared to "You Made Me Realise" and indeed is the most fun song to turn up really loud on the stereo and play guitar to, while "Wonder 2" is often considered a standout track, though I am usually worrying about what album to put on next by that point (or getting ready to go to bed).

You won't be reading this far unless you are already an MBV fanatic. You won't care about this album unless you are, and you probably won't be converted to MBV with the release of this album. That is one of the things about this band. It's unlikely they will play the Super Bowl next year. They're not a band for the masses, but they are one of the most popular "underground" bands in history.

With m b v their legend is complete. Nothing more need be said at this time.

Die Hard - Dir. John McTiernan (The Die Hard Project #1 - JM)

2013-02-12T14:50:00.001-05:00

Today we commence The Die Hard Project. Better late than never....

Die Hard (1988)

Dir: John McTiernan

The Detective Turned Super Cop

by Jay Maronde

In the summer of 1988, a Christmas movie was released. This movie, staring a then-upcoming actor named Bruce Willis would later be described as the standard to which all other action movies must be compared, and with this director John McTiernan gave birth to a franchise of movies so epic that that fifth in the series is due to be released this week, 25 years later! Of course, this movie is the original Die Hard, and as we moviegoers eagerly await the release of this year’s Die Hard 5: A Good Day to Die Hard, the fine staff at Flying Houses have decided to give you a little recap in case you may have missed or forgotten anything in the past 25 years.

Die Hard was adapted from a novel titled Nothing Lasts Forever written by Roderick Thorpe. Mr. Thorpe had previously written a little book called The Detective, which was so popular that it had been made into a 1968 movie starring none other than “old blue eyes” himself, Frank Sinatra. After the success of The Detective, Mr. Thorpe wrote a sequel with full intentions of it being made into a movie. Praise was lavished on this book from many venues and eventually Twentieth Century Fox agreed to begin production. As he was contractually obligated, Sinatra was given the right of first refusal to play the lead role. He refused, and from here began one of the most extensive searches for a lead male actor in Hollywood history. When I say extensive I truly mean it, as the role of John McClane was offered to a laundry list of the best male actors in a generation before Bruce Willis finally accepted the role. This list included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Nolte, Richard Dean Anderson, Don Johnson, Sly Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Tom Berenger, Robert Deniro, and Charles Bronson.

When Bruce Willis was finally convinced to take the role it was in no small part due to Rupert Murdoch’s personal offer of five million dollars. With a lead actor signed, a director was needed, and after being approached numerous times John McTiernan eventually agreed with the stipulation that he be allowed to “lighten the edges” of a script which he had already twice refused claiming that it was “a real nasty piece of work.”

John McTiernan then began, scene-by-scene, to assemble what we have already described as the pinnacle of the entire action movie genre. First and foremost, the original script called for terrorists who were really terrorists, and McTiernan immediately turned them into thieves masquerading as terrorists so that “the audience could enjoy them stealing a boatload of money.” Further, the original “Detective” was more of a super cop, and McTiernan had this idea that the role should be more of an “everyman.” As such he felt Willis was perfect for the role and with some more minor tweaks to the original story, the Die Hard we all know and love came about. McTiernan’s vision was not small though, and as such a massive moviemaking process was undertaken, it was greatly due to this big comprehensive vision that Die Hard is such a great movie.

Besides his script work in order to make the movie lighter and more fun McTiernan also demanded the highest caliber of music from his sound designer Michael Kamen. The idea to use Beethoven as the theme music for most of the movie was McTiernan’s, and initially Kamen staunchly refused, saying that he would gladly butcher the entire catalogue of Wagner or Schubert for the movie, but the thought of using lovely Ludwig Van was too much for him to stomach. To counter this, McTiernan explained to him that he wanted the movie to feel inspired by the Ultra Violence of Director Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, and Kamen, being a Kubrick fan himself, eventually consented.

This however wasn’t McTiernan’s only slick move to make Die Hard the fantastic film that it is: he also decided that he needed a real life office tower to shoot the exteriors of Nakatomi Tower. Being that not too many buildings of that size are unoccupied and or available for almost complete demolition, he came up with an interesting solution: he would use 20^th Century Fox’s brand new 90% completed office tower (and of course Fox charged themselves rent on their own building). They also required the production team to import from Italy enough marble to retile all the plazas and stairs outside the building.

Besides a great set, great action, and a great hero, any good action movie needs one final thing to really reach the other plateaus that the Die Hard films have reached: a resoundingly evil villain. To fill this role the producers and director gave a British stage actor (of very high repute) his first role on the silver screen. At the time the directors and producers were sure he would be good, but Alan Rickman was so good in the role of Hans Gruber, that over two decades later he’s still the man to call when you need a really evil villain. Rickman is exquisite, and McTiernan’s particular high intensity directorial style was essential in achieving this wonderful performance from a film novice. The clearest example of this delightful collaboration comes later in the movie when McClane meets Hans. In the original script there was never a meeting between these two lead characters and the producers had lamented this extensively. One day during rehearsals McTiernan discovered that Rickman was quite talented at faking an American accent and as such the scene was born. The part of this scene that really highlights both of their genius is while Hans is speaking quite convincingly with a Midwestern American accent, McClane offers him a cigarette, and while non smokers may have never picked up on this subtle detail, Hans smokes like a European. This subtle nuance—along with many others—added a level of detail to the movie that is a big part of the reason why it stands out. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s quite apparent that McTiernan went scene-by-scene to make this movie as utterly fantastic as it is.

While I could go on and on about how delightful this movie is, it would be completely remiss not to mention the outstanding co-stars. Bonnie Bedelia is fantastic as John McClane’s estranged wife—beautiful, but not someone that an Everyman couldn’t attain. Reginald Vel Johnson as the first cop on the scene and John’s radio ally on the outside was perfectly cast, especially considering that at that time he was already America’s favorite police officer from being one of the stars (opposite one Steve Urkel) from television’s Family Matters.

John McTiernan had a tremendous vision for Die Hard that was so well executed that it has become the seminal action movie. By really demanding the best from all his actors and production staff he made a movie which has not only stood the test of time, but 25 years later still has America clamoring for more.

The Bond Project: The End? (Part Two)

2013-02-11T16:27:00.002-05:00

I know, I know. It seems as if we cannot stop the Bond Mania. I believe this will be the 30th post on Flying Houses dedicated to James Bond. I am sure there are other sites on the internet that have more Bond memorabilia, but this will be the last one (seriously--The Bond Project is officially over as of this post unless I decide to watch Bonds 1-20 + Never Say Never Again and replicate what my colleague Mr. Maronde has endeavored to provide--and I do not think I have the patience for that). Also, this is the last day I can publish this post in good faith because Skyfall will be released on DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow. Happy Valentine's Day.

A Bond Project Wrap Up: Part Deux
by Jay Maronde

This is it. My last Bond article for a minute (Until Bond #24--JK). It’s probably best this way. Most women don’t want to hear too much about James Bond while at the bar, and thinking about James Bond all day leaves one quite prone to telling women at the bar all about Bond. But after ranking all the films, it seemed to me that there were still some things left unsaid—ratings to be made, pithy comments I never got to commentate—so here dear readers is a long list of Bond Bests including the best cars, Bond girls, henchmen, and villains.

Let’s start with the cars because some of the choices are a little bit obvious.

TOP 5 Bond Movie Cars

1. The Silver Birch 1963 Aston Martin DB5

No vehicle has ever been more iconic or more fully aligned in the world’s understanding of a character. The car has been in numerous films and plays a huge role in Skyfall.

2. The Aston Martin “Vanish”

Die Another Day wasn’t that great of a film, and everyone hated this car but I think it’s super awesome for Bond to be driving an invisible car. Aston Actually designed and produced this car strictly for the film and while in real life you cannot purchase an invisible car, you can however purchase a V12 Vanquish and get your 007 dreams on.

3. The Lotus Espirit S1

From The Spy Who Loved Me. I’m not necessarily a large fan of the film or of seeing James Bond outside of an Aston, but a car that turns into a submarine is clearly so James Bond that it hurts.

4. The BMW 750iL

From Tomorrow Never Dies. James Bond has a smart phone that not only starts his luxury car but can also completely control the machine. Oh and by the way, Bond has this smart phone over a decade before the release of the iPhone.

5. M’s Jaguar XJ Ultimate Long Wheel Base

“Just get out of the way! Don’t you know the car!?!” M’s car is a standout. A real touring saloon that Bond steals with M inside. Just imagine being able to power around London in one of Britain’s finest luxury cars with police lights to avoid all the traffic troubles!

Honorable Mention: The BMW R1200 Motorcycle

From Tomorrow Never Dies. As an avid motorcyclist I would like to consider myself somewhat knowledgeable of the various types of motorbikes, and the BMW R1200 had long been a favorite even before Bond put one through all of its courses while handcuffed to Wai-Lin. The R1200-C model inspired by the film was even better.

TOP 5 Bond Henchmen

1.) Jaws

Always Jaws. He’s the only henchmen to reprise his role. He’s so famous it hurts and Richard Kiel still does appearances for the James Bond franchise.

2.) Dario

From Licence to Kill and played magically by Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro. I would suggest watching this whole movie just to catch the glimpses of early genius at being so creepy. Truly, if Jaws wasn’t Jaws, Dario would easily be #1.

3.) Oddjob

The classic hat throwing monster mute dude might even be more famous than the villain for which his featured film is named (Goldfinger). The actor Harold Sakata paid a high physical toll to film his death scene as he was really electrocuted.

4.) Nick Nack

Herve Villechaize is remarkable, fun sized, and hilarious. He is the only redeeming factor in what could be one of the worst Bond Films: The Man with the Golden Gun.

5.) Xenia Onatopp

The only lady to make this list will actually appear in this article twice as what’s really better than a lady henchman who kills via fornication?

Honorable Mention: The two weirdos from Diamonds are Forever.

Credited as Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd and played by Bruce Glover and Putter Smith, these two hand-holding murderers are funny as all get out and eliminated in a lovely manner by Bond, but not before the very end of the film.

TOP 5 Bond Villains

#1: Silva

Skyfall’s epic villain is played masterfully by the remarkable Javier Bardem. To be honest, Silva is without a doubt the surprise of Skyfall. A real twisted warped evil villain, so weird and evil on so many levels that he easily tops our #2 on this list.

#2: Max Zorin

The genetically engineered villain from A View to a Kill, played as only could be done by Academy Award winner Christopher Walken. It’s really hard to top Walken when it comes to the “creepy factor,” and had Bardem been anything less than stupendous, Walken would easily be #1

#3: Auric Goldfinger

“Ha ha ha, no Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.” One of the earliest villains in the cannon could easily be the best. Mega rich and super weird, Goldfinger not only operates on numerous continents, but also has a plan to rob Fort Knox.

#4 Telly Savalas

Savalas is easily the best Blofeld amongst the several actors to play the part—creepy, scheming, and definitely trying to ruin the entire world. While Blofeld appears numerous times throughout the James Bond canon, Savalas easily does the best job.

#5: Hugo Drax

Evil, Hitler-esque, and eugenically-minded, this super villain from Moonraker not only intends to destroy the whole world, but plans on repopulating it with his sort of people. Oh yeah, and he steals the space shuttle and builds an international space station several decades before the real ISS.

Honorable Mention: Gustav Graves and Colonel Moon

Two villains in one from Die Another Day. Granted, both of these actors are supposed to be playing the same deranged North Korean bent on world domination, but without both of their wonderful performances this already rough movie completely falls on its face.

TOP 10 Bond Girls

Well, now that we’ve come to the very end and to the part that everyone has been waiting for, I must be honest and admit that ranking these 10 women might have been even harder than ranking the films themselves, as there are soooo many beautiful women in the world of Bond. I’m sure I will upset a lot of people with this list, but IDGAF, this is my article and my opinion.

#1: Agent Caruso

The busty Italian agent that Bond has hidden in his closet at the opening of Live and Let Die. Played magically by the horror film classic Madeline Smith, and reportedly working through being massively anxious due to Roger Moore’s insanely jealous real life wife being on set during filming, Miss Smith is amazing. Her busty physique has provided her with mountains of work throughout the years, but her doe eyes, plush pouty lips, come hither attitude, and bad Italian accent are absolutely perfect to compliment the debonair Moore. Further, Bond should totally be involved with a real life sex symbol, not just a very pretty actress.

#2: Honey Ryder

The original Bond girl herself, played by the super famous Ursula Andress comes in a very close second—such a close second that if I preferred blondes she could easily be first.

#3: Vesper Lynd

Played by the radiant Eva Greene, Vesper Lynd is the only woman who Bond ever loved. Casino Royale’s main female lead is gorgeous, and I know more than a few women who dream of being her.

#4: The Countessa Tracy Di Vincenzo

Played by one of the biggest stars of the day Dame Diana Rigg, the only woman who Bond ever marries is gorgeous, and while her performance against George Lazenby leaves just a little to be desired, this co-star of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service certainly gets the job done.

#5: Xenia Onatopp

The villainess who literally screws people to death is the only person to appear on multiple lists in this article. This remarkable lady henchman from Goldeneye was a little known actress but major model and sex symbol before this film, and Famke Jannsen has since gone on to remarkable silver screen greatness as the X-(wo)Man Jean Grey and numerous other roles.

#6: Dr. Christmas Jones

Denise Richards being a James Bond girl and then later marrying Charlie Sheen easily serves to prove how much that guy is “winning.” Her role in The World is Not Enough was almost written for her Playmate of the month self and her name leads to one of the best puns in the Canon when at the end of film Bond says: “I thought Christmas only comes once a year”

#7: NSA Agent Jinx

Played by the stunning Halle Berry, to not include Jinx (Bond’s American spy counterpart in Die Another Day) would be utterly remiss. I almost wish I could put her higher but Jinx trying to be the American Bond only serves to highlight how super awesome Bond really is.

#8: Domino

The kept woman from ThunderBall. Miss Claudine Auger was Miss France before attaining this role. Her beauty is still remarkable all these years later and her chemistry with Connery is beyond reproach.

#9: Maud Adams

BUT NOT FROM OCTOPUSSY. It sounds completely crazy but Adams can’t have the award for the movie named after her character. To be honest, she was too old in that film and she only made Roger Moore look older. However, a few years before that, she starred as Scaramonga’s girlfriend in The Man with the Golden Gun, and while I utterly loathe Moore’s treatment of her during the film, her beauty shines through so much that she easily makes this list.

#10: Strawberry Fields

We never learn the real first name of Gemma Arterton’s character in Quantum of Solace until the film’s final credits, but the actress is absolutely perfect as a foil towards Daniel Craig’s Bond. Her death scene is as fine of an homage to the James Bond Canon as has ever been dreamed.

Honorable Mention: Carey Lowell

As CIA pilot Pam Bouvier from Licence to Kill. I just love Carey Lowell.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (A Serious House on a Serious Earth) - Grant Morrison & Dave McKean

2013-02-08T11:46:00.000-05:00

Arkham Asylum is a tough nut to crack. On the one hand, it is a brilliant examination of mental illness and the violence that can flow from insanity. On the other, it collapses under its own weight and fails to live up to its potential. This may be so because it tries to cram as many Batman Villains (led by the Joker) as it can into one fairly concise story. As the Joker explains, Batman is given one hour to escape from Arkham Asylum after he has entered by way of invitation:

"'Time to begin the evening's entertainment, I think. If you're feeling up to it.'
'Up to what?'
'A nice little game of hide and seek. You have one hour, sweetheart and there's no way out of the building. One hour before all your friends come looking for you. There's the Scarecrow and Clayface and Doctor Destiny, of course. He seems so frail in that wheelchair but all he has to do is look at you and you stop being real. He does so want to look at you darling. Oh, and don't let's forget Croc. He came up out of that damp, dark cellar this morning, dragging his chains behind him. They all want to see you, so why don't you just run along now?'" (23-24)

Not mentioned by the Joker but included in this book are Maxie Zeus (who seems like a demented version of Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen), Professor Milo, the Mad Hatter, Black Mask, and Two-Face. And I must admit that, like The Long Halloween, the best parts of this book involve Harvey Dent.

I count 9 Batman Villains in The Long Halloween, and I thought that book felt was short at 370 pages. This is even shorter (120 pages), includes 10 villains, and eschews page numbers that make for easy excerpt searching (though there are nice "extras" with the book that includes a black-and-white script of all the text, which will be referred to for this review) and it is necessary to say word or two about the drawing style.

The Long Halloween has fairly typical illustration for a Batman book, and I enjoyed it. Arkham Asylum, by contrast, is probably the most shocking Batman book for its visual style. Everything seems blurry and bloody and if the reader is on Amanita Mushrooms or something then they may be tempted to see things in the pictures that aren't really there (or maybe they are really there, and the artist, Dave McKean, has hidden them in such a way that the reader questions themselves). One could imagine that this renders Arkham Asylum a triumph of the graphic novel form, and while this book is at times brilliant, one simply cannot say that the book is "highly recommended" if the second half of it collapses under the weight of its first half.

That is how I feel about this book in a nutshell. The first half is wonderful, and the second half is a crazy collection of action, Tales of the Black Freighter-esque literature-within-literature, and a tidy ending that renders everything that came before almost meaningless.

There are good moments in the second half, such as the Clayface/Scarecrow/Mad Hatter triple threat that bombards Batman one-by-one at the height of the action, or the ending that involves a decision made by Two-Face, but Arkham Asylum would have benefited by extrapolating more background information on the "Rogue's Gallery." Clayface and Destiny, for example, are quite interesting, but they are left behind shortly after their introduction, as are most of the other villains. The result is a story that would be a perfect template for a theme park ride (much better than say, "The Dark Knight" at Six Flags) in a sort of reverse-Pirates-of-the-Carribean situation, but fails as a work of literature. As a "comic book," it is all well and good, but the story is not unsettling in quite the same way as The Dark Knight Returns (or Red Son or Watchmen, for that matter).

I also don't think I am exaggerating the level of sophistication that went into its production:

"The subtitle was taken from Philip Larkin's poem 'Church Going.' The story's themes were inspired by Lewis Carroll, quantum physics, Jung and Crowley, its visual style by surrealism, Eastern European creepiness, Cocteau, Artaud, Svankmajer, the Brothers Quay, etc. The intention was to create something that was more like a piece of music or an experimental film than a typical comic adventure book. I wanted to approach Batman from the point of view of the dreamlike, emotional and irrational hemisphere, as a response to the very literal, 'realistic' 'left brain' treatment of superheroes which was in vogue at the time, in the wake of The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and others." (preface to script)

Will you enjoy Arkham Asylum if you like Batman comic books in general? Probably. Is it as good as The Killing Joke? Not by a long-shot. That was a shorter story, dense and concisely-packed into a neat package. However, I wouldn't buy The Killing Joke (in hardcover at least) because of its length. You can read it in one sitting at Barnes & Noble. The same goes for Arkham Asylum and I bought it off Amazon.

If you are interested in horror or the macabre, this actually might be your favorite Batman book. But I am personally more interested in comedy and drama and imaginative excess. This book has moments of dark humor and a dramatic moment or two--and it certainly shows some imagination in the telling of Dr. Arkham's back story--which is probably the strongest element of the book. And it even pays reference to Batman's often debated homosexuality, when the Joker squeezes Batman's butt and then says, "What's the matter? Have I touched a nerve? How is the Boy Wonder? Started shaving yet?" (14)

But unfortunately it is just not enough. In short, it opens up like a bat out of a hell (terrible cliche and pun, I know, but accurate) and then whimpers its way through its second half. Just when all the fun is supposed to begin, the reader might ask themselves what all of the fuss is about this book.

Regardless, I didn't consider reading this book a waste of time--I would just not want to drum up any unrealistic expectations of its greatness.

NIED #10: BLS Student Audit 2012 - PSG Cuts, Tuition Hikes

2013-02-06T10:43:00.000-05:00

As we near the end of law school and the Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress column (there will be 24) I wanted to double-check and be sure that every column I had written for BLS Advocate would also be included on Flying Houses (because it is no secret that I often feel my words being ripped from my throat and twisted in just the slightest way to make way for a completely different interpretation).

My guess is that I forgot to post this column (which was written April 7, 2012) because I posted my Presidential Speech when I ran for President of the Student Bar Association last year. Also, I was a bit nervous about posting it because BLS Advocate was in its first year and there were concerns about taking away perfectly good traffic from that site. I think 10 months later, it is safe to post. I also think a lot of students don't really care (or even know) about the way this school used to be, so I post this as a refresher.

Note however that some commentators felt the need to break out the "hatorade" on BLS Advocate. I ask that you please refrain from duplicating that experience. If there was anytime that my "popularity" at the school hit an all-time low, it was certainly around the time of this column. I have nothing against BLSPI and I feel that if I spend $450 to have dinner with Geraldo, then I am entitled to make light of the situation....Also I was corrected about my use of the phrase "Hobson's Choice" but I am leaving it in because I still think it's being appropriately used.

Moreover the situation is even more frustrating now than it was for me then--keep in mind that this was before the NIED column "On the Cusp."

Last week, a few representatives from the American Bar Association set up in the Moot Court room from 5:00 – 6:00 PM on a Monday. They wanted to hear students’ opinions of our law school. How many of us showed up? I don’t know—7? 8? I know that when I arrived I was the 4^th.

I used this opportunity to lobby for a napping room, and for a broad mandate to all law schools that class sizes must be reduced if the legal market can ever hope to be fixed. BLS may or may not already be implementing such a mandate—and the size of next year’s 1L class should help determine that. I also mentioned a brief story about the public service grant from last year.

If you were here, perhaps you remember the one day “push” to get a petition signed by as many students as possible. Perhaps you remember our argument—that we had counted on the $5,000 being there for the summer for which we applied—and to remove it with the simple explanation that “the government cut our funding,” when there are plenty of other ways to make up for an $800,000 shortfall (the approximate cost of providing $2,000 extra per student) does not indicate a willingness on the part of the administration to really help students manage the cost of law school.

BLS may, or may not have inflated their “9-months after graduation employment” numbers. Big whoop. So has everyone else. BLS participated in the merit scholarship “scheme” where falling beneath the 40% mark in your class meant a reduction in your scholarship. Big whoop. Some schools are even tougher—33% was my barrier everywhere else. BLS may, or may have not, participated in “scholarship stacking,” which is a vague practice that involves packaging all of the highest “scholarship earning” students in the same section, or same larger section, first year. This is more evil than fair, but difficult to prove (though not impossible). And I do know that Section 16 from last year [2010-Ed.] is a powerhouse.

New York Law School’s case is getting dismissed. Brooklyn’s case is getting dismissed (I’m calling it right here) because they can’t allege anything truly audacious—their only hope is the “scholarship stacking” argument—but even that might fly as a reasonable business judgment. BLS is a 501(c)(3) and it should not care about profits. But this is the #65 law school in the nation, and keeping such a high public profile costs a lot of money. The cleanest way to make up for the shortfall without harming any existing funding or expenses is to raise tuition.

Tuition increased from $46,610 to $48,416 this year [$49,976 this year-Ed.]. 3Ls did not bear the cost of the increase—but 2Ls did [3Ls, I think, did bear the cost of the increase this year--note the "I think" because this is not a formal Complaint-Ed.]. And 1Ls find themselves in the fortunate position of a smaller class by 100 students, and the unfortunate position of being the final class to have the 40% scholarship renewal barrier imposed upon them.

It is worth noting that I have not seen any student movement to reinstate the $5,000 summer PSG. It is a fact of life that we accept. I would like to argue that it is not unreasonable for us to seek this additional funding. With the new system, students may be tempted to work 25 hours per week at the internship and 15 hours at some other place that might pay and make up for the shortfall. This may include non-legal work like in a restaurant or something, and the school is not exactly encouraging students to do this, but they should know that students will be doing this, and that these sorts of jobs are not going to make them look any more attractive to prospective employers. Thus, students are left with a choice – work 40 hours a week at one place – 15 of those for free – or try to make up the difference. The school should not force students to make such a Hobson’s Choice when it is clear that other funds may be easily diverted to the cause (look, for example, at BLSPI, and how they fund scholarships….by getting students drunk and convincing them it’s a really good idea to spend $900 to have dinner with Geraldo, or $3,000 with the commissioner of the NHL….). The result is that students need to think more creatively and do even more legwork to best avoid financial disaster. But I hate students that complain about how busy they are. We all are. Get over it.

BLS is not the only law school to hike its tuition, and it has to stay competitive. We cannot blame BLS for everything, but we can try to urge it to be different from other schools and implement some really original policies. It’s my hope that the change will be coming soon.

Christopher J. Knorps is a 2L at BLS. He enjoys studying bankruptcy law. You may find his other work at flyinghouses.blogspot.com. Like Jamie Moyer, he believes that people should never count themselves out. You may fail, and fail, and fail, and people may call you a freak and a loser who doesn’t know when to call it quits, but when you are still pitching at age 49 in the Rockies starting rotation, you will have the last laugh.

1Q84 - Haruki Murakami

2013-02-02T10:17:00.000-05:00

What I Talk About When I Talk About Murakami: Mystery and Memory in 1Q84

by Emily Dufton

My notebook states that I finished reading Haruki Murakami’s 925-page opus 1Q84, first published in the United States in October of 2011, on March 2, 2012. Almost exactly a month earlier, on February 1, I scribbled in my book that I had finished rereading, for the third time, Murakami’s 2008 memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which is perhaps my favorite of his works. In the four weeks and one day that spanned the completion of Running and 1Q84, I left behind the stark and direct world of Murakami’s nonfiction and reentered the familiar fictional world this author has so consistently reproduced over the course of a dozen novels and thirty years. Which is to say that I left behind his essays – so clean and concise, about early morning training runs in Hawaii and traversing the route of the original marathon in Greece – and reentered that other, stranger place that I can only associate with this particular writer’s fiction. Here is a man who writes books the same way he runs marathons: methodically and purposefully, creating a world of chaos out of the mundane.

In what can only be credited to the construction of a coherent oeuvre, there exists in the fictional world of Murakami a very specific, if often troubling, place: a Japan that lives on the border of reality and imagination, a world of mystery, confusion, disorientation and delight, where men – and his protagonists are almost always men – are confronted by the fantastic and often surreal as they struggle within the context of quotidian Japanese life. I think of Toru Okada in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, whose story begins when his cat runs away. This small event seems to trigger (or release) a series of events, some of which border on the completely phantasmagoric, even as Toru remains chained to his everyday routines. Throughout the book there are these wonderful, quiet moments, far outside the scope of missing cats and missing wives and psychic prostitutes and newly acquired abilities to heal, that reveal the majesty of Murakami’s craft: it is within descriptions of Toru making small meals, drinking a beer at the kitchen table alone at night, or the thoughts Toru has as he looks up at the sky where the real beauty of Murakami’s writing lies. These moments, far more than the mysteries, seductions, and action that also suffuse the text, interested me most during my initial reading of the book and they’re the ones that I carry with me now, years after I put the book back on the shelf.

Other examples of the Murakami Man are myriad: the unnamed protagonist in A Wild Sheep Chase who follows a sheep (and a ghost) to the mountains of Hokkaido while he revels in the stark silence of the cold northern territory. There is young Kafka, in Kafka on the Shore, who runs away from home and hides in a library near the ocean, reading books as rain quietly falls and a man who kills cats wanders the streets. And there is Tengo, one of the protagonists of 1Q84, a young writer and math tutor in Tokyo whose introduction to a remarkable young woman named Fuka-Eri and his induction into a parallel world do little to stem his interest in listening to records at home or wandering through a nearby park. And these are just a few of the many Murakami men who sit idly by as the strangest and most remarkable situations draw them into their grasp, these men-boys who so often live alone and exist in that strange, liminal, crepuscular world between no-longer-adolescence and slack-jawed-adulthood, looking through the fridge for another beer or something to eat while, outside of their apartments, two moons are rising in the sky.

It’s as though Murakami himself doesn’t quite know what to focus on, probably because he loves both stories – the magical and the mundane – so dearly and so deeply, as they both so profoundly influence his work. There is mystery, challenge, tension and thrill hovering around the nucleus of all this writer’s work, but there, at the dead-center of the story’s very core, is thick description so anthropological in shape that its attention to the minute details of quotidian Japanese life could allow aliens to mistake Murakami’s books for lessons in the post-World War II, late-twentieth century Japanese experience. And this is the purposeful (or concomitant) result of a man who writes his books on the fly. In a 1997 New York Times review of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Jamie James noted that Murakami “does not plot his novels beforehand but lets the story reveal itself to him as he writes.” This makes sense. In some sense, a reader could get the feeling that if a character busies himself with stir-frying leftovers for an entire scene, it was most likely written on a day when that was all that Murakami wanted to do too.

But this is not a retrospective on Murakami’s collected works; it is a review specifically of 1Q84, which I intend to write in a specific way. March 2, 2012, is eleven months ago now, and 1Q84 still sits on my shelf. I’ve hardly opened the cover since I finished the last page and noted the date of its completion in my little book. But I’ve decided to keep 1Q84 there, shelved and unopened, while I write this review. I don’t want any new experience to influence what I want to say. Instead, this review is going to be written blind, based entirely on the memories and feelings I’ve retained after finishing the book. Why? Because it is only in Murakami’s work where I find myself paying such close attention to the quiet moments that lie so far outside of the story’s main action: to food, to drink, to a character sitting on the floor, to the moments late at night when the wind blows or there is quietly falling rain. 1Q84 is full of such moments – one might argue that these moments make up too much of the text – moments of solitude and loneliness, of characters trapped in place, of people trying to work through issues of magnificent scope (religious cults! Parallel worlds! Mysterious pregnancies! Missing children! Unanswered questions about a mother’s marital fidelity!) in a manner more befitting of trying to figure out what to have for lunch.

So, that being said, I don’t want to provide a synopsis of the tale, which is too convoluted to be adequately explained, nor do I want to focus exclusively on what I liked or didn’t like. Instead, I’m going to focus less on 1Q84 itself than on two other, very specific things: first, on how the book made me feel when reading it, and second, on what I can continue to recall about the text nearly a year after completing it. Less a traditional investigation of style and form, this will be an analysis of the reading experience and an examination of the metaphysics of memory as they concern Murakami and 1Q84.

What I remember most from 1Q84 are people stuck, trapped if you will, in places they cannot leave for reasons they do not entirely understand. Everyone seems trapped in 1Q84: Aomame and Tengo trapped in a parallel world, Fuka-Eri and young Tsubasa trapped in a cult, the Leader of the cult trapped in a painful body, and nearly all of the characters trapped somewhere in the past. Then there are the physical, constructed restrictions as well. This book features more people trapped in apartments than any of Murakami’s works I’ve ever read before, and this is an author notoriously fond of placing his characters in constrictive locales.

First there is the long period where Aomame, Murakami’s female protagonist (a trainer at a Tokyo gym when she’s not a hired assassin), is stuck in a new apartment in a new complex in an underdeveloped section of Tokyo for – what is it, days, weeks, months? She is kept there by the Dowager, her employer, for her own safety and is sent groceries, a stationary exercise bike, and weights to lift to keep her fit. Her only access to the outside world is through the deliveryman who comes weekly to bring supplies from the Dowager, a window and balcony that look out onto a park, and the NHK man/ghost who knocks on her door from time to time. She is kept there for chapters, maniacally exercising in the apartment to stay in shape, chopping and stir-frying vegetables for meals, and waiting through the time by reading or staring outside. She is caught between the interior and exterior worlds in the apartment in the same way she is caught between 1984 and 1Q84.

(Is it strange that, after reading those chapters, I wanted the same solitude? A blindingly white apartment in a place where I knew no one and no one knew me, where people brought me what I needed and I had no responsibilities other than riding a stationary bike and preparing simple meals?)

Then there is Ushikawa, the private detective hired by the religious cult Sakigake to investigate Tengo and Aomame. Usikawa, whose constant descriptions of being ugly made me pity him (surely he can’t be that bad; no one is), camps out on the ground floor of Tengo’s apartment building to keep an eye out for Tengo’s comings and goings. He has nothing in the apartment but a sleeping bag and a hot plate. He wraps himself in the sleeping bag to avoid the cold and stares out the window with binoculars and a camera, eating cans of beans that he’s heated up for dinner. Is there a more pitiful existence, even for a private eye? Staring between the slats of a Venetian blind, hoping the person that you’re looking for walks past? Not only does Ushikawa spend multiple chapters waiting in this empty apartment, but if I recall correctly, it’s also the site of his death. Poor Ushikawa – Murakami never gave you a break.

Fuka-Eri also remains housebound. As public interest in her novel "Air Chrysalis" reaches fever pitch, she is forced to remain inside Tengo’s apartment, sleeping in his nightshirt and listening to his records while he’s at work. Here is, as Murakami describes her, a preternaturally beautiful 17-year-old girl who lives with Tengo for days and weeks, forced into house arrest because of the strangeness of her visions. When she and Tengo finally have sex (in the weirdest sex scene I’ve ever read, even for Murakami), it is, of course, Aomame who gets pregnant. How? Why? Do these questions even matter? And when Fuka-Eri disappears – a clean break if I ever read one – we don’t need to know where she goes, in the same way that we, the readers, don’t seem to have to know the answers to any of the questions Murakami brings up.

Ultimately, what remains with me almost a year after finishing 1Q84 is how unsatisfying the storyline really is. More than any other feeling, and more than any other of his books, Murakami’s latest opus left me feeling sad. It was a half-finished, half-baked, coitus interruptus of a text, one that brought forth all of my favorite Murakami ideas only to leave them, half-assembled, in the nearly-1,000-page book on my shelf. There is a startling number of questions unanswered at its end. I remember being two-thirds of the way finished, then three-quarters through, then four-fifths complete, wondering when Aomame was going to get out of the white apartment, when the questions about Tengo’s mother’s relationship with that strange man were going to be resolved, how Murakami was going to explain all of these things, while the number of pages dwindled and the storyline seemed stuck. It was frustrating, watching the remaining pages on the right side of the book diminish while so much remained to be explained and understood.

There is so much beauty in Murakami’s work. The descriptions of the hothouse where the Dowager would meet Aomame for tea, where exotic flowers grew and butterflies fluttered and landed lightly on the Dowager’s shoulder, are such lovely visions of Japan (or anywhere) that I can’t get them out of my head. The meal that Aomame shares with her policewoman friend Ayumi at the Italian restaurant, with thick description of their entrees and choices of wine, seemed as comforting as eating a rich Italian meal myself. Tengo standing on top of a children’s playground slide, staring up at the moon (two moons? One moon? How many did Tengo see?) at night, is a stunning scene in its powerful simplicity.

So why then does Murakami’s book have to ultimately feel co-opted? Lost? Half-finished and unsatisfying and DOA? There was so much discussion of him receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature a few years back, with various reviewers calling 1Q84 genius, his chef d’oeuvre. But I couldn’t help feeling a little gypped at the end, as though I bought into a promise someone made but couldn’t fulfill.

For all the reasons I love Murakami – his creativity and vigor, his intelligence and prolificacy, the quietness of his writing that centers on moments of such stunningly peacefulness even in the midst of so much surreality – I enjoyed 1Q84. But for all the reasons Murakami pisses me off – his lackadaisical style, his hanging questions, his unplanned endings and his liminal characters – 1Q84 also deeply pissed me off. Maybe it’s impossible to answer all the questions Murakami brings up. Secret religious cults, tiny creatures that emerge from dead goats’ mouths to spin an ethereal chrysalis, mysterious pregnancies, a world with two moons – I mean, it’s all a lot to deal with, a lot to convey. And I’m not suggesting that every question an author brings up demands an answer within that same book; certainly, I’d assume, neither is Murakami. Instead, what he notes, and what is necessary to understand, is that there is mystery in the world – deep and trenchant mystery – especially in a place as otherworldly as Japan, which deserves to be looked at and examined, if not understood.

And the grace of Murakami’s books is not only that he brings up such luscious mysteries, but that he cloaks them in the quotidian ubiquity of daily life: there might be a woman who covertly kills abusive men for her job, but her days are still filled with the quiet rising of the sun and the silent nights when she stays up long after everyone else is asleep. There’s still the daily question of searching the fridge to see what could be stir-fried into dinner, and that is comforting, even if it makes me upset.

But still – still – I wanted more. I didn’t want 1Q84 to end like the television series "Lost," with a quick and ill-conceived wrap-up that was superficially satisfying while doing nothing to illuminate the larger story. But it did. Both "Lost" and 1Q84 started big, making enormous promises that ultimately neither could fulfill. Did they take storytelling too far? Bite off far more than they could chew? Perhaps, and maybe that’s why Murakami didn’t win the Nobel Prize and "Lost" became a laughingstock rather than a television series that earned a rightful place in the pop culture canon.

Even so, I’ll probably never get rid of my copy of 1Q84. Like when I finished Infinite Jest, there’s always an element of pride to completing a large and monumental work. And that, I guess, is the strange relationship we have with texts: we keep our books long after we’ve completed them because, in the process of reading, they become our friends. 1Q84 will stay on my shelf even as it remains one of my most frustrating friends, a book I’ll look at again from time to time just to remind me to keep away from starting things I know I can’t complete. Still, it’s a friend I won’t abandon any time soon. Friends like these are important – or at least some of them are – because they remain meaningful long after we’ve finished reading what they contain.

Batman: Year One - Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli with Richmond Lewis

2013-01-26T12:06:00.000-05:00

The opening page has something very titillating:

THE CRIME BLOTTER
by Slam Bradley
OOPS! SHE DID IT AGAIN!
Gossip diva Vicki Vale got her legendary, notoriously firm, shapely fanny tossed into the hoosegow yet again after trying to lift an estimated $11,320.00 worth of merchandise from the Sprang. The cutie klepto pled guilty. After paying for the loot and promising on a whole big heap of bibles to seek counseling, she got off with a wink and nod to the judge.
Leave us say the dame knows how to wink.
One juror says she even blew a kiss to the horny old fart.
You can't make this crap up!

It is with something of a heavy heart that I cannot recommend Batman: Year One as highly as some of the previous comic books reviewed here. Make no mistake--Year One is a good read--but I came into it expecting The Long Halloween to get blown out of the water. Now, Year One may be a "more perfect" and "concise" work than The Long Halloween (and indeed lacks the "triple-twist" which perhaps undermines the rest of the story of Halloween) but it is not as creative or imaginative as Red Son, Watchmen, or The Dark Knight Returns. In short, the last review (of The Long Halloween) included a statement by Jeph Loeb that Year One was the true masterpiece in the Batman graphic novel world (even though The Dark Knight Returns possessed the greater cultural cache). I cannot agree with him.

There is really very little to complain about here, and so this review will likely be short. The story opens and closes with Lieutenant Jim Gordon. He and Batman share equal billing in this volume--Gordon may even get higher billing. This could be a flaw of the book--that Batman's character is not as well-developed as you would expect for his "origin" story. Bruce Wayne does appear, on the second page, returning to Gotham City after 12 years "abroad." He has not yet become Batman, and (while I do seem to be dismissing the praise this book has received) there are a few excellent scenes where he takes his first stabs at crime-fighting.

Bruce Wayne appears in public as a "playboy" who is given to drunken excess and womanizing. This is all a ploy to detract attention from his new role. In his first "fighting scene" he walks through Gotham's red-light district and gets solicited by a very young looking prostitute, who is also not very experienced. Her pimp explains that she is doing it all wrong, and that she is picking out the "wrong" type of client--that Wayne in his disguise (which is really just a scar he makes across his face) could be "vice." Selina watches from a window above, making catty comments: "Oh. Geez...Can't be Vice. We're Paid up. Just some idiot out to get himself killed....You know what I hate most about men, skunk? Never met one." (11)

Selina (or Catwoman) makes a couple appearances and, as usual, establishes herself as neither an ally or enemy of Batman--though certainly leaning towards the former.

This book is not really about Batman so much as it is about Gordon and the corruption of the Gotham City Police Department. D.A. Harvey Dent does not get a much bigger role than a few choice scenes. The Mayor of Gotham and the Commissioner are corrupt. Many police officers are just as bad as the criminals, and are in fact in cahoots with the criminals (Carmine "The Roman" Falcone--who is a major character in The Long Halloween, makes a brief appearance towards the end of this story).

It is mainly about Gordon fighting corruption within the Department, but also about Batman's fumbling first attempts, which are quite entertaining:
"The costume works--better than I'd hoped. They freeze and stare and give me all the time in the world...I come in close on the one who looks the strongest--throw him a growl I've brought all the way from Africa----and suddenly everything falls to pieces. The one to my left calls for his mother----to my right the other collects his senses and leaps to position--he'll be trouble----the strong one gets scared--too scared--No----I'm no killer----he screams like a girl----can't be older than fifteen----a child--just a child----the one I was worried about takes his shot----he's trained--kick's got power--" (31)

Probably the strongest part of the book is Chapter Three: Black Dawn, in which Batman is trapped in an enclosed area and surrounded by cops who are intent on killing him. He uses a device that he has not yet tested out on these conditions. This is probably the best scene in the entire book, in terms of Batman action. And that is a lot of what this book is about--action and fighting sequences. I would have liked to see more character development.

Lieutenant Gordon, as noted, gets the majority of that. In fact, there are a few nice panels that certainly bring the paintings of Edward Hopper to mind (and are referenced accordingly) and show that Gordon is certainly not perfect, either. This is the first time (maybe the only time) that he takes a somewhat immoral tack, and for that alone it is significant. By the end of the story, Gordon has made a few strides in his war on crime, and has befriended Batman (at something of an arm's length) and is waiting for help because someone named the Joker has poisoned the Gotham reservoir.

So, the opening page, which seems to identify this book as The Dark Knight Returns Pt. 2 sadly does not come to pass. Vicki Vale is just a name, not a journalist as in the Tim Burton film. We don't get to see her, or her apparent fall from grace. There is no Robin, male or female. There are no bad guys who are trying to hide their identity. There is just police corruption. So in one sense this book is the "most realistic" of the Batman comic books, but that quality also makes it the most mundane. It is well-done on the whole, but lacks the sort of excitement and imaginative excess that the other pieces boast. It is not long and it is probably worth reading--many others seem to view it as the epitome of the "Batman renaissance" in the comic book world, so I suggest you check it out before buying into my view. But I can't help the way I feel--for my money, The Dark Knight Returns is the book that will really "knock your socks off"--Year One will just serve as a nice ottoman as you relax by your fire.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress #19: Fighting Words and the Reading Period

2013-01-25T11:41:00.000-05:00

On the morning of December 2, 2012, a group of ten students gathered in the lobby of Brooklyn Law School, waiting for the library to open. It was 9:05 AM and several students found the prohibition on entering the library unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious. One student in particular was a worker at the library (hereinafter the “off-duty librarian”)—indeed he had opened up the library the previous day—but was told that he was not allowed to open it today, since it was not his shift. This set another student off.

While several students became extremely vocal about the ridiculousness of the situation, one student became noticeably more upset than the others, and threatened to have the students responsible for opening the library at 9:00 AM—sharp—fired. The off-duty librarian, who had repeatedly requested that everyone “calm down” and “relax,” was dealt the harsh blow of the vague-sounding threat, “I’ll deal with you later.”

The off-duty librarian became upset and said that he was getting his feelings hurt. The other student responded by saying that their feelings were being hurt too. At this point a couple other students emerged from the student lounge and further suggested relaxing and calming down—they were then told to “stay out of it.” By this point, the other extremely vocal students had quieted down to a degree—a consensus seemed to be developing (perhaps the marketplace of ideas and counter-speech were effectively combating the threat of violence). The security guard in particular was subjected to verbal abuse.

The off-duty librarian attempted to maintain peace, but the abusive speech would not abate. He finally took out his First Amendment Law casebook and sat on the ground in front of the security guard table, outside the view of the anxious mob. At roughly 9:10 AM, the on-duty librarian arrived, the doors were opened, and the anger subsided.

Never before has there been such a shocking display of the “50/50 Rule[1]” as this incident. If anything it was near perfect proof of the truth of the theory (at least amongst the early-risers of the law school): of the 10 students present in the lobby, about four were un-cool and six were cool.

The situation was also extremely ironic in light of First Amendment concerns – these were fighting words if any – and though some readers may be laughing at the prospect of such a situation, it was certainly plausible that a fight was about to break out. If one other student had accepted the invitation to threaten more severely as a rejoinder, it would have come to blows. There was no better illustration of the misery that other law students can heap on their innocent classmates.

Afterward, this off-duty librarian was shaken and upset, fearing the other student now, indeed worried about the threat to be “taken care of later.” The off-duty librarian may, for once, make a colorable claim for Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress. Indeed he fears for his safety, and the incident left him so distressed that he could not concentrate on his work—indeed threatened to keep him out of the law school entirely—merely because he wanted the mob to “settle down.”

I would list damages at $25,000—or the cost of one semester—if indeed this precluded the off-duty librarian from attending exams. But this off-duty librarian does not like to take chances in court. Indeed the injury may be viewed as a de minimus from a certain perspective. However, from a different perspective these are fighting words indeed, and outside the protection of the First Amendment, unless we are to attach crucial importance to the word “later.” See, e.g., Hess v. Indiana, 414 U.S. 105 (1973).

One hopes that an apology is forthcoming. However, the “40%” never fail to amaze me with their utter indifference to common human decency, fueled by their sense of entitlement. I expect this to be “war” and a conflict that is only going to end with more destruction in its wake.

It may indeed be time for the school to purchase a puppy for the library to help students relieve stress. Violent verbal assaults should be reserved for the uneducated masses and the people who exploit them – not students that seek to define how a “reasonable person” should react in a certain situation.

Christopher J. Knorps is a 3L at Brooklyn Law School. He works at the library and enjoys studying Constitutional Law and Bankruptcy Law. He does not like fighting. He is organizing a 2^nd Annual Open Mic with proceeds going towards Sanctuary for Families. Please e-mail him at Christopher.knorps@brooklaw.edu if you are interested in reading or performing.

[1] The 50/50 Rule was first stated in writing on March 14, 2012 here http://blsadvocate.org/2012/03/negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress-trust-no-one-dr-jones-the-5050-rule/. It was later amended to the 40/60 rule on April 19, 2012 (the un-cool students now outnumbering the cool students) which is documented here http://blsadvocate.org/2012/04/nied-cubs-win-world-seriesagainst-miami-bls-in-2015/. It will now stand as the 60/40 rule—as the numbers of this all-too-clear situation must dictate.

The Bond Project: The End?

2013-01-24T08:32:00.000-05:00

The Bond Project Wrap-Up

by Jay Maronde

Well Dearest readers, as we’ve come to the end of a very long road, I would personally like to offer my extreme thanks to the entire Broccoli Family and the EON productions team, and also to the original spymaster himself Ian Fleming, for without this cadre of genii none of this could have ever been possible. I, however, would most of all like to thank my fantastic editor Mr. Jack Knorps because again without his tremendous encouragement and editing none of this could also be possible. Now having considered all this, my tremendous, gracious, and wonderfully understanding editor Mr. Knorps has asked me to write this wrap up. To wit: how could I refuse such a wonderfully respectful request from such a dear friend?

Now, I initially thought that this wrap up would be much easier as we had earlier discussed a formal interview sort of context. During the course of our interviews it quickly became apparent that the big question most of all would be a ranking, a full and complete ranking of all the films. This is extremely difficult for me, like asking a parent to choose their favorite out of 23 children, and then rank the rest, so there was simply no way I could complete this task just off the top of my head. I assured my dear editor that I would sleep on this scenario and do my best to rank them.

I also want to note that my initial idea for this article was more of a “best of” type compilation, so please continue to read even after you reach the final end of the ranking because I think some of my favorite gems may come later on, but without further ado…

#1 Quantum of Solace

If you read my reviews it was probably most apparent that this was my favorite. Director Marc Forster set out with a very specific goal of making a tight, hard-hitting action film that was “like a bullet.” Forster’s vision for this shorter, hard-hitting Bond is perfect for what is the only direct sequel in the entire franchise. Further, his allusions to other great films (including the demise of the lovely Strawberry Fields) comprise some of the finest filmmaking in the entire Canon. (Less charitable review here)

#2 Skyfall

Bond 23, the movie whose formerly impending release inspired this entire series of reviews, was more than worth the wait. The actors are fabulous. Dench and Bardem are the biggest snubs of this season’s awards shows' nominations. If the film were only slightly shorter I would have probably made it #1--it's really a personal preference (and a strong one) that I feel all films should be short so as to force the director to really tell his story concisely. But Skyfall is nonetheless amazing, I saw it in the theaters numerous times, and I will probably wait in line to purchase the Blu-Ray on release day. It was the first Bond to be filmed in large format, and if you still have the chance I would highly suggest viewing it in IMAX as it’s totally worth the extra cost. Bond simply cannot ever be big enough, and Skyfall Is a huge film that such an epic Canon deserves. (Slightly less charitable review here)

#3 Casino Royale

I know, I know, I know, “How could I put all three Daniel Craig Bonds right at the top of the list?” No, I'm not just obsessed with the newest things. Daniel Craig’s portrayal of Bond is beyond reproach! He is fantastic, and in this film during a discussion with M, Bond asks, “So you want me to be half monk, half hitman?” For me this statement is at the crux of why Daniel Craig is so fantastic in this role: he’s so fucking cold I want to offer him a cup of tea. Like geez--warm up a just little bit! He's so cold and so perfect that it makes you ask yourself: what you would be like if you killed people every day for your job? I feel like Craig asks himself this question every morning before filming Bond. This film could have easily been number one on the list except for the fact that if you are to watch it without watching Quantum immediately afterwards you are left feeling almost a little empty inside. (Equally charitable review here)

# 4 Goldfinger

The man with the Midas touch! This could easily be Sean Connery’s finest Bond. It’s the first time we see the DB5. It has Oddjob and Pussy Galore. It has Jill Masterson covered in gold in a scene which was so iconic that it’s been referenced by other films in the series. The Shirley Bassey theme is delightful and unforgettable, and I think what really makes me choose this of all the Connery Bonds is that he seems so comfortable in the role, he’s smacking asses and really playing the role as a classic cad, in way that all other Bond’s up till Daniel Craig have tried to emulate.

#5 From Russia with Love

Classic early Bond. Watching this film you can easily realize why the franchise has become so successful. Connery is young and lithe, and the scenery and sets are fantastical in a way that the franchise is still seeking to emulate.

#6 Thunderball

The Tom Jones epic theme song is outstanding--it's honestly the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of this movie--but a close second is that this is the only Bond film ever to be completely remade. The remake, NeverSay Never Again, could be the worst thing ever to happen to the James Bond franchise and if I were forced to include that tripe in my evaluation it would easily be the very last film on this list, as the essentially-bribed-Sean Connery was sooooo old in the remake that the Health Clinic should have been a convalescent's home*. The original film was very good though, and for the time the special effects were beyond reproach: the underwater sequences are still a blueprint for those making underwater films.

#7 Dr No

The original Bond. Sean Connery & Ursula Andress. Nuff said.

#8 A View To a Kill

This could be the most under-appreciated Bond, and as such I wanted to rank it highly. The movie suffers from one glaring flaw: it was the very end of the Roger Moore era, and Moore is beyond geriatric. Not even all the best plastic surgeons in the world could make him look any younger. That being said, Christopher Walken not only is fantastic but completely redeems all of the film's other flaws. He’s so perfect, and he's so evil in a way that only Walken could be. Further, the sets and locations are remarkable and very memorable.

#9 Moonraker

Again, I hate to rank the Roger Moore Films so highly, but the fact that the producers brought Jaws back, coupled with the outstanding scenery, sets and plot (Bond & Jaws save the world while in outerspace) really does it for me. Also many many people I know always say Moonraker is their favorite, as it in some ways is one of the more "approachable" Bonds.

#10 Diamonds areForever

The sets, scenery, and characters are exquisite. Plenty O’Toole is a super classic Bond girl name. The reason I put it here is Connery was a little bit past his prime and the “camp” value is a little too high for me.

#11 You Only Live Twice

I like Connery, I really do, But the only notable parts of this film are Ken Adam’s ridiculously amazing volcano set, and Bond’s Adventures one the mini chopper “Little Nellie.” The Volcano makes up for a lot though, and without a doubt a critical entry in the Canon.

#12 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Telly Savalas is downright fantastic and easily the best of the Blofelds. Everyone hates George Lazenby, but I personally think he's great as Bond: his athleticism, youth, and enthusiasm shine through. The problematic and singular reason why this very important film ranks so low on my list is Diana Rigg’s distaste for Lazenby. It is so palpable throughout the whole film that it's almost like someone wrote “I was promised Sean Connery” across her face.

#13 GoldenEye

Pierce Brosnan’s first entry into the World of Bond was a fantastic restart for the series. He was my initial Bond, and GoldenEye was the first Bond I ever saw. The women of the film are utterly perfect in their roles, the plot was ahead of its time as Republican presidential candidates were still discussing EMP’s during this past election cycle. And while I don’t necessarily like Bond in a BMW, the use of the Z3 is still considered the world’s most successful cross promotion ever.

#14 Live and Let Die

Blaxploitation Bond! Everyone loves Jane Seymour but me; I just don’t feel as though she's dynamic enough to be a Bond Girl. However, as much as I hate Moore I feel this movie is critically important to history as it’s a very British take on the entire Blaxploitation genre and provides an important historical perspective from an outside viewpoint.

#15 Octopussy

I really liked this movie, and if Brosnan been able to take the role, it would have been much higher on this list. Again, Moore’s aged-ness is completely distracting. Q has an amazing role, and the India scenes are wonderful. And let’s be honest, Bond diffuses a nuclear bomb in the middle of a circus while wearing a clown suit.

#16 The Living Daylights

I like this film, I even like Timmy Dalton (a great deal actually). I like the plot, I like the girl (she always brings back very strong feelings of the epic Daniela Bianchi in From Russia with Love), but unfortunately, the villains are like some sort of bad joke, and not even all the great “sledding in a Stradivarius Cello case” scenes can make up for villains that can barely even make you laugh.

#17 The Spy Who Loved Me

I feel like the initial Jaws film should have been a little higher on this list, but I completely loathe the plot and the Bond girl. Roger Moore is hard pressed to get any love from me.

#18 Licence to Kill

I wish I could rank this movie higher on the list as Carey Lowell is easily one of my favorite actresses ever, and the opening scene where Bond sky-hooks Sanchez’s plane is epic to the point that Christopher Nolan borrowed it for his new Batman trilogy. Benicio Del Toro alone makes the film worth watching, but the concept of having Bond quit, (almost exclusively so Bond can pursue a villain the British would have no jurisdiction over) is too contrived for me.

#19 The World is Not Enough

I really like this film also. I really wish I could put it higher on this list. Brosnan makes it look way too easy, Denise Richards (while a gorgeous Bond girl) is a horrible actress, and a villain who is not dead even with a bullet in his brain, but is a complete sucker for love, is just too much for me to swallow.

#20 Die Another Day

AKA BUY ANOTHER DAY. Everyone hates the Vanish, but I think for Bond to have an invisible car is cool. My problems are essentially that we have already seen the space laser plot, that there is too much early CG looking very bad, and the rampant cross promotion really detracts from the film. I’m also told the Korean being spoken is atrocious.

#21 For Your Eyes Only

I hated this movie. I Loathe Roger Moore. I don’t think that this film makes much sense at all.

#22 Tomorrow NeverDies

You Only Live Twice part 2.

#23 The Man with the Golden Gun

I hated this film. A lot. I really, really, really, hate the way Roger Moore beats up women to increase his macho factor in this movie. The only redemption is Hervé Villechaize.

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*I have idea what Mr. Maronde is getting at by this statement but I felt the need to include it. -JK