Archive for the ‘Movies & Television’ Category
Legal TV Review
posted by Jon Siegel
I don’t watch much TV, but I will admit to enjoying “House.” “Polite Dissent,” an engaging blog by someone with medical knowledge, publishes a useful medical review of each House episode, which runs down the medicine in each show and notes the medical errors committed each week. But what House really needs is a legal review. Because really, whatever medical errors they commit, House and his team also commit almost unbelievable torts and crimes on a regular basis.
CAUTION: Many spoilers ahead.
October 6, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Posted in: Movies & Television
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The Informant!
posted by Michael Kang
It’s not often that I hear about a new Hollywood movie based on the facts of a case that I first encountered while clerking, but The Informant!, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon, is just such a film. It tells the story of Mark Whitacre, a central actor in a case decided while I was clerking for my judge on the Seventh Circuit. Whitacre served as the key informant in a successful FBI investigation into price-fixing charges against Archer Daniels Midland Co. that sent top executives to prison. As my co-clerk Kevin Metz observed, the case featured the type of direct evidence of an agreement to fix prices that antitrust professors explain is almost never available in antitrust prosecution. Whitacre secretly recorded many hours of conversations with co-conspirators in the lysine industry over three years, all while bragging carelessly to others about his role as an FBI informant and embezzling millions from ADM under the FBI’s nose. During my clerkship year, we worked on a number of memorable cases, but United States v. Andreas probably featured the most colorful facts. Whitacre was a very odd and unpredictable personality who suffered from bipolar disorder, which Matt Damon plays up for comic effect in the movie.
September 11, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Posted in: Antitrust, Criminal Law, Movies & Television
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Why so… socialist?
posted by Alice Ristroph
Sometime in the past few days, just in time for the President’s birthday, posters of Obama in Joker-style makeup appeared on a Los Angeles overpass. The images quickly spread across the internet and have sparked predictable praise from the right or criticism from the left. Whether or not the posters are unduly offensive to President Obama, they are a serious insult to Heath Ledger’s Joker and his gleeful nihilism. What strikes and fascinates me is the poster’s angry incoherence: under the image of Obama is the word “socialism.” Did this artist even see The Dark Knight? Or perhaps I should ask, what does this artist think socialism is, anyway?
Consider that socialism is associated with the concepts of “central planning” or a “planned economy,” in which a centralized authority manages everything (or at least the economy) according to plan. Now, thanks to a conversation with Brooklyn Law prof Nelson Tebbe, who offered a profound analysis of The Dark Knight, I watched that film with the close attention of a serious academic, ready to learn what it could teach me about violence. I even read the script. And the Joker’s worldview seems pretty antithetical to socialism. Here’s what the Joker has to say about planning:
August 4, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Posted in: Constitutional Law, Culture, First Amendment, Movies & Television, Politics
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Death on a Factory Farm
posted by Darian Ibrahim
I caught a few minutes of HBO’s new documentary Death on a Factory Farm the other night. It focuses on an undercover investigation of a hog farm in Ohio, the graphic footage of abuse it revealed, and the legal case that followed. It was so disturbing that I actually had to turn it off, but then again I’m a vegetarian – it’s those who are not that need to watch.
March 20, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Posted in: Agricultural Law, Current Events, Food, Movies & Television
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The Concurring Opinions Watching Election Results (COWER) Guide
posted by Scott Moss
Thanks to Dan & the gang for inviting me back. For my first post, I’m keeping it light: to help me make sense of the election returns, I’ve tooled around the web to gather state poll closing times, which I’m listing below along with each state’s recent polling average (from Pollster.com) and number of electoral votes; below that I’ve posted lists of which Senate races have a decent chance of yielding a party switch. Basically, you can make this the home version of the red/blue map game that Chuck Todd, John King, et al., will be playing all night; see if Obama is or isn’t picking up the electoral votes (EV) he needs in the first hour or two or three of poll closures. (Disclaimer: Because I’m not a profrssional at this, I may well have gotten some of the below wrong; please post any corrections in the comments, and I’ll try to get on it — though I’ll be pretty swamped all Election Day, so I can’t promise a promt fix to any errors, sorry.)
Electoral Vote Counts:
• Obama’s EV from the Kerry ’04 states: 252 (includes PA but not Bush ‘04 states Obama may win)
• Obama’s EV from the Kerry ’04 states plus IA+NM (the Bush ‘04 states Pollster is listing as “solid blue” for Obama): 264
• 11 possible “Bush ‘04 swing states,” ones Obama has a shot at picking up: CO,FL,GA,IN,MO,MT,NC,ND,NV,OH,VA
• Obama needs 6 more EV from the 11 possible Bush ‘04 swing states (above), or 27 more EV if McCain wins PA
Poll Closing Times for the key Bush ‘04 states and PA:
(all times Eastern)
7:00 pm:
• Indiana (M +0.5): 11 EV
• Virginia (O +5.7): 13 EV
• Georgia (M +2.9): 15 EV
7:30 pm:
• North Carolina (tied): 15 EV
• Ohio (O +3.8): 20 EV
8:00 pm:
• Pennsylvania (O +7.7): 21 EV
• Florida (O +1.8): 27 EV
• Missouri (O +1.4): 11 EV
9:00 pm:
• Colorado (O +6.7): 9 EV
• Nebraska (?): divides its 3 EV by Congressional district; Obama may have a shot at the 1 EV in the Omaha district (no recent polling I know of that district)
10:00 pm:
• Nevada (O +6.8): 5 EV (may count quickly b/c over 70% of state already voted)
• Montana (M +1.9): 3 EV
Senate Races: Possible D Pickups, with recent poll data in parentheses (all are R seats that could switch to D; there are no D seats in which the R is within 10 points in the polls)
• Almost Certain Switches: VA (D+28.2), NM (D+16.4)
• Very Likely Switches: AK (D+4.9), NH (D+7.7), CO (D+10.4), OR (D+5.9)
• Possible Switches (slightly better than 50/50 shot): NC (D+4.1), MN (D+1.9)
• Iffy (slightly worse than 50/50 shot): MS (R+5.0), KY(R+3.1), GA (R+3.8)
November 3, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Posted in: Current Events, Movies & Television, Politics
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Injury, Probability, and Mamma Mia!
posted by Sarah Lawsky
In Mamma Mia!, Sophie invites three men she has never met to her wedding. She knows that one of these three men is her father, but she does not know which one. The movie is notable for a number of reasons. It is notable, first, because it is the second movie this summer (after Sex and the City) apparently made for, and featuring, women over 40. It is also notable for its relationship to tort law (I mean, aside from the obvious link related to Pierce Brosnan’s singing). The explanation is after the jump (to avoid revealing a key plot point, to the extent there is a plot). (Translation: there is a spoiler after the jump–though really, if you are going to Mamma Mia! for the gripping story line, you have much larger problems.)
July 28, 2008 at 8:20 am
Posted in: Movies & Television, Tort Law
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The Dark (Frank) Knight
posted by Sarah Lawsky
Frank Knight wrote the great book Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, in which he described the distinction between risk and uncertainty. (The book won second prize in a 1917 competition, sponsored by Hart, Schaffner and Marx, intended to “draw the attention of American youth to the study of economic and commercial subjects.” First prize was awarded to E.E. Lincoln, The Results of Municipal Electric Lighting in Massachusetts.) We are operating under risk if an event may or may not happen in the future, and we know the chances that it will happen. For example, flipping a fair coin is a game of risk. We do not know whether the coin will come up heads, but we know that the probability of this event is 1 out of 2, or 50%. An event is uncertain if it may or may not happen in the future, and we do not know the chances that it will happen. (Knight would require that we “cannot” know this chances that it will happen, though this is perhaps too strong; I have an excellent discussion of the do not know/cannot know issue, but this blog post is too small to contain it.) For example, I do not know whether McCain will win the next presidential election, and, unlike the situation with the coin, I also do not, and cannot, know the probability that he will win, because this election is a one-off event.
So what does this have to do with the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight? I have put the explanation after the jump, because it contains minor spoilers. (Or major spoilers, if you are totally unfamiliar with the Batman story.) Repeat: there are spoilers after the jump. Do not read the rest of this post if you do not want a few Dark Knight spoilers. Don’t! Seriously!
July 21, 2008 at 9:21 am
Posted in: Movies & Television
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Defamation by PhotoShop?
posted by Frank Pasquale
At 25, you have the face heredity gave you; at 50, you have the face you deserve; and at Fox News, your features depend on whether you’re a friend or enemy of the network. Or at least that’s how Jacques Steinberg and Edward Reddicliffe must feel after Fox aired doctored photos of them on its news show.
Note that the normal photo was not shown on Fox News; the distorted image was presented as the face of Steinberg. (I’ve embedded the full clip below the fold.)
Can such a distorted depiction give rise to a defamation action? Obviously if the picture were a cartoon, and/or the program a satire or non-news program, creative license lets just about anything go (though some particularly egregious images have sparked resistance). But does a news program have a special obligation to “objectively” present images? And, returning to defamation, is it possible to argue a) that the distorted image is a “lie” about the person it depicts and b) that ugliness (that which distortion seeks to convey) is actionable as something damaging to the person whose image is distorted?
July 5, 2008 at 10:50 am
Posted in: Media Law, Movies & Television, Privacy, Race
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Cross-Examining Film
posted by Jessica Silbey
Thanks for having me here at Concurring Opinions. I haven’t blogged for some time – reminding myself there is life outside of the Web – but for the next month I am excited to reengage my blogging-self and hopefully some readers of this blog.
One of my summer projects is to think about how to turn some of my more theoretical writing on law and film into a practical “how to” piece on lawyering in the courtroom with filmic evidence. To that end, I have been watching lots of police films (a subset of what I have called “evidence verite”). These films can be found without much effort on YouTube or VideoSpider. Anyone else out there know of good sites storing this kind of film footage, I would love to hear about it. I found one piece of footage that is the subject of a recent court case – Jones v. City of Cincinnati, 521 F.3d 555 (6th Cir. 2008) – which can be found here. This film, of the police using a tremendous amount of force to subdue Nathanial Jones (who subsequently died), is an excellent example of how the film frame (what is seen and what is not seen due to the limits of the camera’s size and angle) can affect the viewer’s response to the images. When watching this film, we must imagine the blows delivered and the pain received because both are off-camera. How we imagine them might depend on our experience with police brutality more generally. (We do hear the police and the criminal suspect protesting loudly.) Do we imagine Hollywood violence (which way does that cut for the defendant here)? Do we have any experience seeing this kind of violence first or second hand so that it is hard to imagine anything but the worst? The boundaries of imagination are hard to predict and therefore a formidable opponent in a court of law. Imagination is obviously not evidence in a court of law, although it likely wields mighty influence nonetheless. A former student suggested to me that not seeing the blows Nathanial Jones suffered makes us more callous to the pain he received. I tend to think that is the case.
The Sixth Circuit in Jones v. City of Cincinnati affirmed the district court’s refusal to dismiss the case on defendant’s 12(b)(6) motion and said this in relation to the film: “Where the evidence ‘captures only part of the incident and would provide a distorted view of the events at issue,’ as the district court concluded with respect to the videotape, we do not require a court to consider that evidence on a 12(b)(6) motion.” Id. at 561. To this, I would say “no kidding,” but we will have to wait and see what the trial court does on a Rule 56 motion. Given the Supreme Court’s decision in Scott v. Harris, I remain skeptical that a court can resist the myth of film’s obviousness and objectivity.
For those who need a refresher, Scott v. Harris was the 2007 Supreme Court case concerning a high speed police chase that resulted in the police ramming the suspect’s car causing him to become a quadriplegic. A police camera on the cruiser recorded the chase from the point of view of the police car, and the Supreme Court said that the trial court should have considered the facts in that case “in the light depicted by the videotape” despite contradictory testimony. For an excellent analysis of the flaws of that case, see Howard Wasserman’s short piece here . For an even shorter analysis, see my Op-Ed here . For a longer more empirical analysis of the video in the case, see Kahan et al. here.
How do courts and lawyers deal with filmic evidence in light of film’s inevitably partial nature? That is what my new piece is working through with some practical tips on cross-examining film in a courtroom. The piece should be up on-line soon. For those who want a preview, feel free to email me.
June 2, 2008 at 10:57 am
Posted in: Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Culture, Empirical Analysis of Law, Evidence Law, Law Practice, Law and Humanities, Movies & Television, Supreme Court
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Grand Theft Legal System
posted by James Grimmelmann
Last week’s release of Grand Theft Auto IV (actually somewhere between the sixth and ninth game in the series, depending on how you count) was big news in the gaming world (even if some observers questioned the suspiciously universal acclaim). Players cleared their calendars and in some cases emptied their wallets to play the latest installment in this series of open-ended games, which drop the player into a vast city of cars to steal, bystanders to gun down, insane stunt jumps to make, and real-life references to spot.
Among lawyers, the games may be best-known for the regular moral panics they induce over fears of copycat violence, and for attorney Jack Thompson’s increasingly bizarre crusade against them. We might also ask what kind of a legal world the GTA series envisions within its famously capacious in-game universe.
The series’s built-in attitude of rampant lawlessness—it’s named after a crime, after all—might suggest a kind of deliberate criminality. That’s certainly the interpretation that fuels the regular calls for the games to be banned. And yes, the plots typically chart the protagonist’s Scarface-style rise as he carries out errands both murderous and larcenous for an entertaining assortment mob bosses. This interactive representation of lawlessness—the player playing at the role of criminal—puts the Grand Theft Auto games squarely within the tradition of deliberate shockers like Postal.
But this may be an unduly harsh take, and not just because the claim that playing violent games leads to violence in meatspace rests on some dubitable social science. San Andreas may well show us the world as Holmes’s bad man would see it, but consider the lessons he’d learn from it. Crime doesn’t always pay. In fact, offhandedly casual offenses—driving on the sidewalk to circle around traffic, say, and in the process clipping a pedestrian—can put the police on your tail. And the aggresive things you do to try and shake them often wind up making matters worse. Before you know it, you have a six-star wanted rating, they’re sending in the black helicopters, you’re crouched in a doorframe, and there’s pretty much only one way this story can end. Exaggerated though the arc may be, it does illustrate some of the vicious circles trapping the poor, the desperate, and the criminal.
Or consider the in-game depictions of the legal system itself. Get arrested by the police, and you’re back on the streets within seconds—minus some bribe money. Call it an indictment of revolving-door-prison liberalism, or call it an indictment of police more interested in protecting their turf than in doing justice or confronting Liberty City’s very real problems. The lawyers don’t come across much better: Ken Rosenberg is a paranoid cokehead who asks our hero to fix a case by intimidating jurors.
One last thought. Given the games’ increasingly humongous alternate reality, how about building in a penal code? Grand Theft Auto’s legal geekery index would soar if every unlawful act were accompanied by a statement of exactly what crime the player had just committed. “Arson in the second degree!” “Involuntary manslaughter!” “Grand theft garbage truck!” For added fun, the crimes could be correlated with a set of sentencing guidelines, so that the in-game statistics screen would tally up precisely the number of years of imprisonment the protagonist deserved.
May 8, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Posted in: Movies & Television
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Battlestar Galactica Interview Transcript (Part I)
posted by Daniel Solove
We are very pleased to be able to present a transcript of our interview with Ron Moore and David Eick, the creators, producers, and writers of the TV show Battlestar Galactica. Joe Beaudoin, Jr., the project leader of the Battlestar Wiki, transcribed the interview for us. We edited the transcript, but the bulk of the work was done by Joe. The transcript is also posted at the Battlestar Wiki, which has a ton of great information for fans of the show. In editing the transcript, we took the liberty of cleaning up grammatical errors and eliminating “ums” and other distractions in order to make it more readable.
In this interview, we explore the legal, political, economic, and social ideas raised by the show. If you prefer to hear to the interview, click here to listen to the audio files.
Below is the introduction to the interview and the transcript for Part I, which explores the legal system, morality, and torture. I couldn’t fit the entire transcript into one post, so Parts II and III are contained in another post. Part II examines politics and commerce. Part III explores the cylons.
March 2, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Posted in: Culture, Interviews, Law Talk, Movies & Television, Privacy, Privacy (National Security), Science Fiction, Technology
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Battlestar Galactica Interview Transcript (Parts II and III)
posted by Daniel Solove
This post contains Parts II and III of the transcript of our interview with Ron Moore and David Eick, the creators, producers, and writers of the TV show Battlestar Galactica. Joe Beaudoin, Jr., the project leader of the Battlestar Wiki, transcribed the interview for us. We edited the transcript, but the bulk of the work was done by Joe. The transcript is also posted at the Battlestar Wiki, which has a ton of great information for fans of the show. In editing the transcript, we took the liberty of cleaning up grammatical errors and eliminating “ums” and other distractions in order to make it more readable.
Our interview explores the legal, political, and economic dimensions of the show. Part II (see below) examines politics and commerce. Part III (see below) examines the cylons. Daniel Solove, Dave Hoffman, and Deven Desai pose the questions to Ron Moore and David Eick.
Click here to read Part I of the interview transcript, which examines the legal system, morality, and torture.
March 2, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Posted in: Culture, Interviews, Law Talk, Law and Humanities, Movies & Television, Privacy (National Security), Science Fiction, Technology
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Battlestar Galactica Interview Part III
posted by Daniel Solove
Dave Hoffman, Deven Desai, and I are pleased to present Part III of our interview with Ron Moore and David Eick, the creators, producers, and writers of the hit television show, Battlestar Galactica.
Part I of our interview explored the role of law in the show, exploring topics such as the legal system, lawyers, trials and tribunals, torture, necessity vs. moral principles, and deference to the military.
Part II of our interview examined the political system and economic issues.
In Part III of our interview (the final part in this series), we discuss the cylons. How do the humans view the cylons? As mere machines? As quasi-human? Are the humans heading toward a recognition of more humane treatment of the cylons? Why did the cylons choose to try to annihilate the humans? How do the cylons govern themselves? What role does the cylons’ religion play in all this? We explore these questions and more, including what political and philosophical books most influenced Ron and David in their creation of the show. We learn why Adama changes his views about Boomer and accepts her as a person. And we try to coax out spoilers for the upcoming season.
Part III of the interview is 16 minutes, 15 seconds long. You can access it, along with Parts I and II, here.
UPDATE: The interview has now been transcribed. You can read Part I here, and Parts II and III here.
February 26, 2008 at 12:11 am
Posted in: Culture, Interviews, Law Talk, Law and Humanities, Movies & Television, Politics, Science Fiction, Technology
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What I Like About the New Battlestar Galactica
posted by Bruce Boyden
In honor of the BSG interviews that Dan, Dave, and Deven have posted below (which I hope to listen to soon), I thought I’d chime in with what I like about the show. I’m a big fan; BSG is one of only 3 “must-see” shows for me currently on television (the other 2 are Lost and the PBS NewsHour). My enthusiasm has waned a bit since “New Caprica,” but here’s what struck me as particularly interesting about at least the first couple of seasons:
1. The villains continually have the upper hand. That may not initially seem like a plus. But think of the number of shows where the heroes sail through life, barely needing to worry, while the villains face setback after setback that repeatedly results in defeat. E.g., Perry Mason, CSI, Star Trek (any generation), or the first Battlestar Galactica, where being trained by the Cylon defense force seemed to be a guarantee of utter incompetence in combat. Heroes that appear to face more realistic challenges that do not carry with them a guarantee of success are, at least, a refreshing change, and are more dramatically interesting for avoiding repetition and cliche.
Warning: Mild spoilers follow
February 25, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Posted in: Culture, Movies & Television, Science Fiction
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Battlestar Galactica Interview Part II
posted by Daniel Solove
Dave Hoffman, Deven Desai, and I are pleased to present Part II of our interview with Ron Moore and David Eick, the creators, producers, and writers of the hit television show, Battlestar Galactica.
Part I of our interview explored the role of law in the show, exploring topics such as the legal system, lawyers, trials and tribunals, torture, necessity vs. moral principles, and deference to the military.
In Part II of our interview, Dave Hoffman interviews Ron and David about politics and the economy. How did the political system of the Twelve Colonies work prior to the cylon attack? After the destruction of the colonies, how does the economy work aboard the fleet? Why do people still continue to do their jobs without compensation? How does commerce work? Why do people still use money? Dave examines these fascinating questions and more.
Part II of the interview is 13 minutes, 57 seconds long. You can also access it, along with Part I, here.
Check back Tuesday morning, when we plan to post Part III of our interview — the final part — which addresses issues involving the cylons.
UPDATE: The interview has now been transcribed. You can read Part I here, and Parts II and III here.
February 25, 2008 at 12:03 am
Posted in: Contract Law & Beyond, Culture, Interviews, Law Talk, Law and Humanities, Movies & Television, Privacy, Privacy (National Security), Science Fiction, Technology
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Battlestar Galactica Interview: Stay Tuned
posted by Daniel Solove
For those who are listening to the Battlestar Galactica interview, we plan to post Part II on Monday and Part III on Tuesday. So please stay tuned. More is on the way, and Parts II and III are really terrific!
February 22, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Posted in: Movies & Television
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Battlestar Galactica Interview
posted by Daniel Solove
We are thrilled to offer readers of Concurring Opinions an interview with Ron Moore and David Eick, creators of the hit television show Battlestar Galactica. Daniel Solove, Deven Desai, and David Hoffman ask the questions. We would like to thank Professor John Ip for suggesting some of the torture questions. Our interview lasts a little over an hour, and we’ll be providing it to you in several parts over the next few days.
Our goal was to explore some of the themes of the show in a deeper manner than many traditional interviews. Ron and David graciously agreed to give us an hour of their time, and we had a fascinating conversation with them.
Our interview is structured in three parts. Part I, available in two files (see the end of this post to download), focuses on the issues of legal systems and morality. It examines the lawyers and trials in the show. It also examines how torture is depicted, as well as how the humans must balance civil liberties and security.
Part II examines politics and commerce. It explores how the cylon attack affected the humans’ political system, and it examines how commerce works in the fleet.
Part III examines issues related to cylons, such as the humans’ treatment of cylons, how robots should be treated by the law, how the cylons govern themselves politically. Additionally, Part III will explore the religious issues involved in the show.
The new Battlestar Galactica, which premiered initially as a miniseries in 2003 on the SciFi Network, is only loosely based on the earlier show by the same name during 1978 and 1980. The new Battlestar Galactica is breathtaking science fiction, and it has widespread appeal beyond science fiction fans. Numerous critics have hailed it as one of the best shows on television. Time Magazine, for example, listed it as one of the top television shows and described it as “a ripping sci-fi allegory of the war on terror, complete with religious fundamentalists (here, genocidal robots called Cylons), sleeper cells, civil-liberties crackdowns and even a prisoner-torture scandal.”
The show chronicles the struggle for survival of a small band of humans who escaped a devastating genocidal attack by intelligent robots called cylons. The humans created the cylons for use as slaves. The cylons rebelled and a war erupted between the humans and cylons. But a truce was reached, and the cylons disappeared. But forty years later, the cylons launched a massive surprise attack, destroying the human society (called the Twelve Colonies) with nuclear missiles. Only a small group of humans aboard spaceships survived.
The show depicts the humans’ difficult fight for survival and the tough choices they must make along the way. The cylons have developed technology to allow them to take human form, and some of the humans within the group of survivors are really cylons. More information about the show is here.
The show is heavily influenced by modern events, especially terrorism, war, and torture. In a time of emergency, how should we balance security and liberty? How do we deal with enemies who may be burrowed in among us? How does a society decimated in a war reconstitute its political, economic, and legal systems?
Battlestar Galactica was honored with a prestigious Peabody Award and twice as an official selection of the American Film Institute top television programs for 2005 and 2006.
Because the show explores so many interesting issues so deftly, it has attracted a large group of fans in the legal academy. We know of many law professors who count Battlestar Galactica as one of their favorite shows, and this is why we thought it would be fascinating to speak with the creators and writers of the show — Ron Moore and David Eick.
February 21, 2008 at 9:19 am
Posted in: Criminal Procedure, Culture, Interviews, Law Talk, Law and Humanities, Movies & Television, Privacy, Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security), Science Fiction, Technology
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Twelve Angry Men
posted by Bruce Boyden
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, several of the VC bloggers are making interesting comments on the jury deliberation classic, “Twelve Angry Men.”
I have two comments of my own. First, I’ve only read the play, and never seen the movie, but I can’t say I’m a fan. The play struck me as boring, because it is so obviously morally lopsided in favor of the Fonda character. The conflict between the Fonda character and the Cobb character is about as interesting as watching the Patriots play a high school football team. It reminds me of something Thomas Nagel once said, that the egregious violation of human rights is philosophically uninteresting. The idea being that if your intuitions are not pulled in more than one direction, there’s nothing to discuss. “Twelve Angry Men” gives the viewer nothing to think about, unlike, say, “Paths of Glory” (does military justice require individual culpability?) or “The Caine Mutiny” (were the defendants really innocent, in a moral sense?) or “Breaker Morant” (what’s justifiable conduct in a guerrila war?) or “The Verdict” (does the civil justice system work?).
My second comment is actually a question. Were all-male juries still the norm in 1957, when the film was released? That seems awfully late, given that the right of women to vote was adopted in 1920. When did it become abnormal?
February 2, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Posted in: Movies & Television
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The Worst Movie
posted by Daniel Solove
I’ve been tagged by Professor Paul Butler to play this game running around the legal blogosphere of naming the movie I thought was the worst. That’s a tough one. I agree with Paul’s choice of Gone With the Wind for the reasons he states. The entire new Star Wars Trilogy (Episodes I – III) certainly comes in near the top of my worst list, with some of the most inane lines of dialog ever penned and some of the dumbest plot contrivances ever devised. One of the highlights is Anakin’s conversation with Yoda in Episode III, when he tells Yoda that he fears Padme might die. Yoda’s response: “Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed that is.” So the lesson in all this is that if you don’t want to turn into Darth Vader, let go of the ones you love. Don’t try to save them; let them die. Anyway, how do you screw up Star Wars? It actually took some creativity and effort to mess up the new trilogy so monumentally.
But the winner is The Matrix: Revolutions. The first movie in the trilogy, The Matrix, is one of my favorite movies. But the last movie in the trilogy, Revolutions, turns the story into a silly religious allegory, with Neo offered up to the computers crucifixion-style. All the themes of the series — reality vs. virtual reality, machines vs. humans, etc. — are tied up in a cheap simplistic manner. And Revolutions casts a dark light over the original Matrix, sapping some of my enjoyment of that movie.
I’d rather talk about the best movies, but that’s not this meme. But I’ll do my duty and keep it going, so I tag Deven Desai.
December 3, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Posted in: Movies & Television
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New Movie Shot Entirely With Surveillance Cameras
posted by Daniel Solove
According to a recent Newsweek story, there are 30 million surveillance cameras in the United States. That’s about 1 camera for every 10 Americans.
Next month, an interesting new movie called Look will be released that is filmed entirely with surveillance cameras. From the Newsweek story:
Shot entirely through the point of view of security cameras (and co-produced by Barry Schuler, the former head of AOL), the film is executed in the style of actual spy-cam footage strung together but is actually a fictional tale aimed at giving viewers a glimpse of just how public our private lives have become. Its characters run the gamut: a high-school English teacher who has an affair with an underage student, a gas station clerk with high hopes for a musical career, a department store manager who uses his warehouse as a secret sex refuge. Yet all are connected by surveillance footage that, in the end, holds the key to their survival—or demise. The film took home the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Cine Vegas Film Festival and will debut in New York and Los Angeles in December.
The movie’s website is here.
November 24, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Posted in: Culture, Movies & Television, Privacy, Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Gossip & Shaming)
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