"Big Fish"

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Easily my favorite Tim Burton film ever, and the first non-LotR film I've seen in theaters recently that I feel I *must* own on DVD. The soundtrack ain't shabby either.

I'm not sure what it was that made this film resonate with me so. Perhaps it's my own personal fascination with the art of storytelling, and with personal fantasy. It focuses on a lot of classic themes (high ambition, undying love, loyalty) without trying to give them some sort of modern or negative twist. It's elegantly simple that way, and I think that it has a lot of the same aspects that cause me to love "O Brother, Where Art Thou." It even had me crying near the end.

My only complaint is that it was robbed of a Best Picture nomination.

DC in June

It seems that the only blogging I manage to regularly do regards comics previews. Ah, well, here are the DC Solicitations for June, and my eye is drawn to:

Batman Adventures TPB Vols. 1 & 2
I've heard great stuff about Templeton's work on this book. I'm not crazy about the digest size, but the price is right.

Gotham Central #20
Harvey Bullock returns. Finally.

Superman: Birthright #11
Krypton invades Earth?!? Waid better have something up his sleeve, because armies of Kryptonian survivors trouble me.

Identity Crisis #1
This looks great, but Meltzer better have enough story to fill seven whole issues.

JLA #100
Action #775 was an instant classic, so I'll give Kelly a shot here.

JLA/AVENGERS: THE COLLECTOR'S EDITION OVERSIZED SLIPCASED HC
Wow. Not that I'm spending $75 on this...but wow.

Plastic Man #7
A fill-in issue already? Good thing it's Scott Morse.

Arrowsmith: So Smart in Their Fine Uniforms TP
I knew I should have waited on the trade. It's even cheaper than the issues.

'Brief'ly Speaking

I finished my first appellate brief today, and it should be on its way to the Georgia Court of Appeals come Monday. I haven't had to write a legal paper since First Year, but this one wasn't too tough. A few years back, a defense attorney filed a several page motion, and snuck in a demand for speedy trial into the middle of a paragraph on the third page. My boss didn't catch it, but the judge ended up saying that hiding it like that wasn't OK. So the defense appealed it, and I got to write the brief arguing why hidden demands shouldn't be acceptable.

It'll be fun to read a printed decision and know that the court is referring to my arguments. I just hope we win.

24: The Comic Book

The show may be on an interminable hiatus, but it looks like 24 is going to be hitting the comic stands this July. I'm a bit wary of each page equalling a half-hour of real time, but on the plus side, a 48-page limit should cut down on unnecessary subplots. In the end, with such a fast pace, I suppose this will be more like a story set over a day than full real-time action, but I can't complain about more Jack Bauer.

I can complain about the price, though. $7 for 48 pages? That's steep. But if IDW's smart, they'll get this in Borders and other mainstream bookstores, so as to reach the millions of 24 fans who don't happen to fall into a comic book shop.

"Gotham Central" Roll Call

Update (8/11/13): Realized tonight that the Roll Call page vanished when Geocities went under.  But I saved the Geocities data, and the page is back online (and now spoiler-friendly):

Gotham Central Roll Call

Gotham Central is one of the finest monthly comic books out there, nicely translating the cop genre onto the printed page. But despite the almost universally positive reviews, one complaint gets repeated constantly: this book needs a roll call. The classic Legion of Super-Heroes provided a monthly roll call to help readers distinguish between the numerous characters, and not only does [i]Gotham Central[/i] have a rotating cast of nearly two dozen, but they lack the four-color costumes that helped make the Legionnaires distinguishable. The result is that readers are regularly confused as to who the characters on the page are, and DC refuses to add a roll call of any sort to help.

Well, if DC won't help the readers of Gotham Central, I will. And so I give you your Gotham Central Roll Call (dead link).

I'm Back

To fill you in on my last few weeks:

- I'm in the last hours of my last spring break. Depressing in a way, it is, especially since I didn't do anything particularly special during the week.

- Due to lack of a razor for a week, I now have a mustache and goatee. Haven't decided whether to keep them or not.

- I was diagnosed with a pinched sciatica, and my tongue is finally healing from my having chomped on it last week. It'll be nice when it doesn't hurt to sit or eat again.

- I took part in a 9-hour MST3K fest. We watched "The Sidehackers," "Pod People," "Manos," and "Mitchell," although I fell asleep during the last one. "Pod People" was definitely my favorite.

- I finished cataloguing all the comic books I own, including all the ones I wish I didn't own. Hopefully I can dispose of some of these come summer.

- I took the MPRE yesterday morning. And with that experience, I can safely say that the Bar will be a nightmare.

- I won "Most Enthusiastic" (2nd place, sorta) at the Law School Talent Show for performing the Animaniacs' "Countries of the World" and a parody song I wrote about our retiring torts professor. The crowd really seemed to enjoy both numbers.

Now to make the remainder of my last semester memorable. But my two research papers will inevitably take precedence.