"When I first started teaching law, I was told two things...

... students like cases that are about sex or about animals. Students like cases even more if they're about sex and animals."

This was how we wound up discussing a case about a stud bull that was injured in the line of duty, tied up in the pasture to recover, and wound up being raped by an entire herd of heifers, such that the owner of the poor bull took things to court. The judge wound up writing a poem to memorialize the bull, who met an untimely end at the butcher's.

But for real, we've figured out our Torts professor's entire philosophy on teaching. The 3Ls warned us, and they were right.

Bernard Hermann was crazy but good.

I don't think a composer can achieve the levels of sincere madness you find in the scores to Psycho and North By Northwest unless he has a touch of the reds.

It certainly helps that both sequences involve pounding strings (I won't say jarring because it's cliched, but it's true) and those crisscrossing lines smashing and creating the credit titles. Nothing's more important than those lines.

Psycho, North By Northwest, and Vertigo are all tied for my favorite movie.
- Psycho has depth and texture and meaning in every shot. The use of black and white, mirrors, the taxidermied birds, all these elements are written about in any decent film book, but they never fail to strike a chord with me. I love watching it to pick out symbolic set pieces in the background.
- North By Northwest's opening credits are really very good, while the story and chemistry between Grant and Saint was lukewarm for me. I especially like that the opening credits sound like a chase scene (on horses, in my mind), but when the lines disappear and the picture comes in, it's nothing but swarms of New Yorkers fighting with each other over who's going first, who's going to get there before me. That anonymity, who cares if you're the wrong person? Who cares if we're all just playing a part, playing dress up spies and chasing each other around Mount Rushmore? Who are we, really.
- Vertigo has the best story--not the psychoanalysis of Psycho, but beautiful costuming and subtle longing that speeds on into sadness and obsession.