TODAY is the start of the year 2008 and for students and those who are on continuing education, welcome the new year and embrace it as another opportunity to learn lots of ideas where you can use it to your lifetime career. If you’re an agriculture student here in Salamanca for instance, then make the new year as another time to learn more on the latest technologies on how to maximize production at your family farm back home. And it’s not just the universities here in Salamanca that are opening back their classes. Actually, this is a worldwide phenomenon. Universities, colleges and other educational institutions from all continents across the globe are opening back their classes today even in the preschool levels. Let’s take a look at what’s in store in the world of education this 2008.

If you are a film enthusiast, then catch Martin Scorsese live at the university campus nearest you because in lieu of making films this year, Mr. Scorsese will be discussing his lifetime career and very innovative ideas in filmmaking which we have appreciated through the decades. I have been to one Martin Scorsese lecture in 2007 and it is very heartwarming indeed. Mr. Scorsese is an avid fan of the neorealist cinema and he is dedicated to the passion of that specific genre. I specifically admire how he has captured the essence of neorealism in such films as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Casino and Raging Bull. Taxi Driver in fact was so intense in fact that there was even one real life lunatic who attempted to clone Robert de Niro’s character as himself and shot then President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Raging Bull is another testament to Mr. Scorsese’s achievement with Mr. Scorsese expected to discuss in his lecture the camera angles employed in that boxing film which are all confined inside the ropes of the boxing ring. There is one particular shot in Casino that I like and shows a vivid portrayal of human erotic attraction in slow motion – the scene played by Robert de Niro and Sharon Stone in the casino.

Another avid follower of the neorealist cinematic genre is Michael Mann and if you are not available to go to the United States this year to listen to some of Mann’s string of lectures at academic institutions here, then you may do so online or better yet purchase an audio copy of his lecture series. After all, education in 2007 is not just about going to a traditional classroom. Learning can be flexible as with distance learning and online education. Mann’s earliest hit Manhunter, a prequel to Silence of the Lambs, is not considered under the neorealist genre but all of his subsequent works are such as Heat, The Insider, Ali, Collateral and Miami Vice. Mann was instrumental in bringing two Hollywood bigwigs together – Al Pacino and Robert de Niro – in one movie and I admire his work in exruciatingly not putting the two movie giants together in one scene yet achieve that perfect chemistry onscreen.