A new term… a fresh start?
Hello! Sorry for not updating my blog posts for a while – this was because of a combination of having a lot of coursework and work to do! If ever you were wondering, I had spent my Christmas break away from London and had celebrated the New Year countdown with my family and inevitably had not done as much work as I had expected.
During the Christmas break I had managed to watch three films: Les Miserables, the Hobbit and The Life of Pi . Firstly, I thought Les Miserables was an ambitious attempt to transform a musical into the film, and I particularly appreciate the effort involved to make it as historically accurate as possible. Though there have been criticism about some of the quality of the actors’ singing as compared to the musical version on stage, I believed that any such deficiencies in their voices is compromised by the quality of the acting. I thought it was an excellent film, and that was clearly shown by the young couples who were sitting in the cinema who were rendered teary-eyed after watching it.
Next, the Hobbit. While I am not wading into the debate of whether the film should be made, what can be said about the film was that it had a noticeably different style compared to The Lord of the Rings. You may think this as odd, but I believe that the film was more light hearted and “funnier” than the Peter Jackson trilogy, of which I had thought to be a much more “serious work”. This perhaps reflect the books themselves, The Lord of the Rings being the main story and an epic 1000 pages long, the Hobbit being a small book of merely 200-300 pages long (how they would make a few films out of that book, I will have no idea). The Hobbit film also looked at different aspects of the Tolkien universe, for instance there was a whole ten minute section which focused on Bilbo Baggins (the main protagonist for those who don’t know about the film in detail, who is sent on a long quest to steal gold which is kept guarded by the dragon Smaug) answering riddles from Gollum. Though there are some that say this was time wasting in the film, I disagree, and it shows Tolkein’s love for the English language and languages in general which is so evident when reading through his novels. Indeed the whole film was peppered with jokes, songs and some humour, I found the film was enjoyable even though I am not a “hardcore” fan of the series. The only problem though, is waiting fervently for the second film!
Lastly, The Life of Pi. I had been reading the book before the film, and was among the doubters in questioning how a film could be made where the main event was about a boy in a boat with a tiger. Alas, I was proven wrong when I came out from the cinema, and I particularly liked the colours and the imagery which is used to create a vivid and enjoyable film (though perhaps it was a bit too long). The religious philosophy and ethics of which is dotted in the book is also represented in the film, but not to such an extent that the film could be seen as “going on” about religion (though it was perhaps not for young children, which I saw were falling asleep halfway through the film). It is a feel-good film which details the young Pi of finding his religious identity, and this film is significant in promoting the values of religion in a world which is becoming more and more secular.
But enough transgressing about films! Generally this term had been rolling by, and had been noticeable with the pace of the lectures increasing and the material that we have to learn getting more and more complex. I find that law is only complex, not because it is intellectual challenging, but the rules and principles that you learn within the entire year all have to be used, including those of which you have learnt way back in September! Most people in our class have realised that we only have 3 more months until we sit our exams, with the result of lectures now having an attendance rate at almost 70-80%. This I compare to lectures in term 1, when I can remember one lecture in which only 40-50 people (out of a class of 200) had managed to attend. I have almost something to do every week, whether it is taking part in external competitions for mooting (which involves representing a client in a hypothetical scenario) to looking and interpeting the case law and trying to extract what principles that the judges in each case trying to say. What I had learnt is that it is simply not humanly possible to learn all the cases in the supplied study material, and what you should do instead is to try and learn the principles of each area of law and then try to learn as many cases as you can which use this principle).
A quick note – at the time of writing, it is Valentine’s Day so I like to wish a happy Valentine’s Day to you all! It can’t be said that romance in London is dead – I had seen in the Tube many commuters holding roses for their proposed loved ones. I also wish those a happy Lunar New Year, and a happy Year of the Snake. For Chinese New Year, I did bear the cold and freezing conditions to enjoy some nice food in a restaurant in Chinatown.
See you soon!
(Photo: Working Title)