Jul

27

Recently I have posited that the market to an inordinate degree shows the main attributes in its daily moves of the most vivid sports game that has not been used. I would add to this that during each hour the market is likely to move to the rhythms and dynamics of the most likely classical music being played on a classical music station in home town, for example the former WQXR in New York, in full knowledge that these programs are often selected 2 months in advance, and noting that I was a subscriber to same when I was 12 years old.

I am adding to my list of mystical encampments and predictions that the fortunes of Apple and Lady Gaga will follow a similar arc in the future, and as soon as the Lady loses her luster, or a substantial base of her gay support, Apple will be ready to nose dive.

Do you feel that because of these ideas that I should resign my post as chair of Daily Spec which is designed to deflate bally hoo, or is this just a symptom of that predilection that old men such as the sage and the fake doc have to maintain their romantic aura?

Ken Drees writes:

Lebron James' Cavs win over the bulls to end that series correlates to the spy top (04/27/10). That was the zenith of his career in Cleveland. They were then going into Boston on a full tank of expectations. The last game (as a cav) in that series marked a secondary top 08/13/10–then the melodrama begins. His great choice to go to Miami did not mark the low but was the midpoint of the latest rally—he is losing his market moving mojo–his ability to focus the market energy . So now he has lost his core fan support like lady gaga at some point will lose her core fan base. No, I don't think the Chair is that off-kilter.

Popular culture icons somehow bleed into market consciousness.

Vince Fulco writes:

I've long thought that the culture has moved into a greater phase of bally hoo, perhaps a derivative of the Romans' 'Bread & Circuses'. We are now just starting to realize or are being forced to understand that flat incomes, poorly funded retirements and insufficient skills in the aggregate set against historically outsized obligations are a recipe for disaster. Fighting falsehoods would seem to be a necessity of survival and good investing for the long haul. Moreover, one has great opportunities to choose from post deflation.

Jim Lackey shares: 

Actually no. AAPL has talent and is'nt just a fad or a show. Not sayin' that the Lady doesn't have talent, but if and when I see her write and produce tunes for others and sing Jazz, then she will be an AAPL. But no! No I did buy AAPl in 2003 when Mr. Eyerman stood right here on list and said buy it now. Jobs is back, and Itunes is brilliant. It's been a ten bagger since, which is what got me to tell the father in law naaa na na no this Xmas as he was on visit to Music City and toyed with his new Iphone all week. He's a MD and a tech freak and he said, "you know what, I don't need a PC or internet at home anymore with this"

It's not CSCO when it was on the way to a trillion dollar market cap in year 2,000. It's post crash now. Also it's no shorted up fad stock, but yes it's a fashion device an ipod in all 3 colors for different outfits. If I had to guess its a DELL circa late 90's. It never crashed and burned until much later in the tech wreck. It just stopped going up and in these markets AAPL must trade 299.75 but not 300. ha. 

Craig Mee writes:

Just like Seinfeld had the bravery to sell the high and knock back the 10Mil for a tenth season, (one of a tiny minority who do) maybe the gagas and apples should too. To keep up the product development and create new bizarreness no doubt gets harder and harder with everyone hot on your tail. Im sure income changes, say for Seinfeld, from shows to marketing, but he has been smart enough to cut and run, and keep the value. A lesson for us all. 

Marlowe Cassetti writes:

The chair has touched on a point of interest that has bothered me. I don’t know about Lady Gaga, but Apple’s climb towards the top of market valuation appears to be inline with the phenomenon of a bubble. Yes, I understand that we cannot declare a bubble until it bursts, but let’s look at the facts:

There are some 47 stock analysts that cover AAPL, all but two have either a buy or a strong buy recommendation. It is the darling of the market. Its market cap is approaching $ ¼ trillion and at the rate it is moving it is on its way to challenge Exxon Mobile Corp. XOM produces stuff that the world needs, AAPL doesn’t produce stuff that the world needs just what they like to have, until something else strikes their fancy.

It reminds me in the 1980's when people couldn't buy enough Wang stock. You hadn't arrived if your office didn't sport a Wang word processor. The bubble will burst when the last fool buys in at a nose bleed price.

Thomas Miller writes:

Sometimes one's instincts or gut feelings can't be counted or explained but you feel its true. Probably based on years of different observations made subconsciously. A trader may feel strongly a market is about to break without being able to explain exactly why, because subconsciously they have seen patterns many times before. Considering the source, I wouldn't immediately dismiss this as ballyhoo. Instead of resigning, further testing is called for.

Steve Ellison comments: 

Mr. Aronson noted in his book that it is no fun being a skeptic and that the scientific method leaves deep human yearnings unfulfilled. Facts are often tedious and dull, but stories are captivating, which is why people who have bought into a narrative continue believing it even when presented with strong counterfactuals. "Story stocks" have always been prominent in bull markets.

 

Marion Dreyfus writes:

A new study reveals that people are at their angriest on Thursdays. Thus, perhaps deals might better be made on Friday, when people are delightfully anticipating the weekend, or Monday, when they are somnolently reviewing the events of their past free-time indulgences.

interesting … We have been doing product development on a tool to gather data, and do reduction for self-introspection to find and permit prediction of cyclic true 'more productive' highs, and 'down in the dumps' lows.

Jim Wildman comments:

I've been thinking a lot about rhythms. I've noticed on the treadmill at the Y that people tend to fall into step with each other. Being on treadmills, this is easier since you can be running at different speeds, but the same step count. It creates an interesting effect when the treadmills are on a suspended 2nd story as it was at the last gym. I've wondered how many people it would take to collapse the floor.

This study seems to indicate that there are (at least tendencies towards) rhythms in 'group' emotions. What other rhythms are there and how do they affect me? How do they affect the markets?

Easan Katir writes:

In a year when Paul the Octopus correctly picked 7 consecutive wins, well-documented to the world, when the underwater plume in the Gulf of Mexican Oil matched the plume of gritty ash from Eyjafjallajokull, and the rig explosion coincided with the April market top, who can say anymore what is mystical and what isn't. Lead on, Chair! Lead on!

 

Jul

26

IsraelTo what extent does the scholarly market or Israel predict the US markets?

Marion Dreyfus comments:

Aside from the timing differential, 6 hours ahead of us, why might Israel even be thought to have any impact on our market, other again than the fact that many investors there are American and they might vote the same way we vote with their shekels and dollars.

(In Israel today there is still a strong feeling of suspicion over markets, since many many Israelis lost their sandals and shirts in a crash some years ago–a huge bubble that hurt many.)

Pitt T. Maner III writes:

It appears that 2 pharmaceutical companies, 2 financial firms, a fertilizer (potash) co., and a telecommunications co. weight about 50% of the TA-100 index. Teva Pharmaceuticals, the biggest stock, took a 6% loss today–otherwise the TA-100 would probably have been positive.

So the connection would seem possibly related to the TA-100 as an early indicator of US demand, possible relationships/sensitivity to currency exchange levels (stronger dollar as positive for drug sales), indicator of relative stability in the Mideast in advance of Monday opens (US oil supply region stability), and future demand for ag commodities–fertilizer sales in advance of planting.

Phil McDonnell writes:

At a lag of a few days the TA-100 'Granger predicts' the US market (SPY) with a statistically significant R squared of 6% (~25% correlation). Details are an exercise for the reader.

 

Oddly some academic papers indicate that the US and Israeli business cycles (using hierarchy analysis) are not nearly as correlated as the stock exchange indices.

It is odd too that Teva was up in 2009 at the time the US markets were down 20% and now Teva has had bad news surrounding competitor drugs and is down near a 52 week low as US markets hover around the 0% YTD mark.

Given the complexity of the correlation it must be the result of something entirely different!

 

Jul

18

Eric Schmidt of GoogleThis link takes you to a fairly long but fascinating article called Solitude and Leadership, a lecture given to a plebe class at West Point.

It's about what leadership is, and how to learn to think for yourself. It cautions the students about multitasking, and not taking the time to think about things and how they feel. Know thyself, he pleads, before you can make leadership decisions. Interesting comments about bureaucracies, too.

Found this by following Eric Schmidt, CEO Google, on Twitter. Excellent tweets, recommending various articles. A verified account.

AL Corwin writes:

What a great article! It rings true on every level in a way that is very rare. The piece itself is a great example of the kind of thought it seeks to advance.

My favorite part was about how multi-tasking gets in the way of being good at multi-tasking. I read a couple of years ago that tests show that people who are doing two things at once only perform forty percent as well on the best of the two tasks as they can do when they focus on a single task. This article shows that that problem is just the tip of the iceberg.

In particular, the author makes a compelling case that multi-tasking actually interferes with the thinking process. It's almost impossible to really think about more than one thing at a time, and it is particularly difficult to think in the company of others. Unless you can think your way to knowing what is right, you will never be in a position to stand up for what is right. Thinking is a solitary activity even when you do it with other people. I hadn't thought about it quite that way before.

I find myself wondering if there are several different kinds of multi-taskers. One type is really doing more than one thing at a time, and another is really doing one thing only. There may be other things going on in the second environment, but the person is totally focused on one activity and then another. I am not saying this well, but it seems like some people multi-task in a serial fashion and others are really operating on multiple channels.

To play the devil's advocate for multi-tasking, I would argue that some forms of expertise are in fact multi-tasking. The people that are good at these chores have lots of things that they do on a subconscious level. When anyone starts on these complex tasks, they need to pay attention to everything which is overwhelming. As they become pros, many chores and actions become automatic enough so that the expert may not even realize what they are doing.

So what is multi-tasking? Walking and chewing gum? Shooting a someone while flying a plane? Thinking about sex while trying to drive? Maybe the answer is that focus is good, but simple multi-tasking is okay. I find that my imagination roams the most when I go for a drive, but may not be the best for those along my route.

 

Jul

9

PREDATORS

Directed by Nimrod Antal

Having seen four B to A-plus summer coolers yesterday, we had hoped for more than just dependable A/C at the screening of PREDATORS, the latest in the Predator franchise universe.

Uh, no.

PREDATORS is fairly jejune, with a barely distinct script, illogical actions, lots of less attractive side characters falling prey to sudden, gruesome and stupid deaths, inexplicable plot twists that make no sense if you know squat about tracking and hunting, and of course the predictable protagonist sexual-tension meet-uncute killer duo survive all the no-biggie sturm und drang.

Laurence Fishburne (THE MATRIX triptych) appears dourly and misanthropically for a few minutes, only to be gone forever in a trice. But all the characters save Braga seem to hate the world and pretty much each other, though they are bound together in the strange landscape they now find themselves trying to conquer. Adrian Brody—(THE PIANIST) who has clearly been to the gym for intensive sessions over the past couple months—is the loner, Royce, who unwillingly leads a ragtag crew of hunted criminals and mercenaries (including the beauteous Alice Braga, who appeared in the Will Smith dystopia vehicle, I AM LEGEND, 2007). Topher Grace (SPIDER-MAN 2) appears to be a mistake in the bloodthirsty thick-necked crew of convicts (a scorpion-tattoo'ed Walter Goggins) and being stalked by monster rejects from you-name-it monster flicks (AVATAR comes to mind—both the looming trackless jungle and the multiple moons in the alien sky, as well as the weird horny rhino-hoppers snorting prickly death, and the "beloved" cloaked characters who appear to be now electronically gifted beyond their mere physical hideousness. They have new tactics, new weapons, new senses with which to stalk their prey. Weapons large and in charge, of every variety including an old and lethal samurai sword, play key roles in every frame.

The first PREDATORs (1987; 1994) offered up the thrill of an apparently enduring sci-fi invisibility-cloaked extra-terrestrial mandibled warrior wreaking havoc and mayhem in the treetops. Actual location where the proceedings were shot: Austin , Texas . And Hawaii . There’s the improbably urchin-faced beauty, the IDF sniper Isabelle, toting his machine gun (with a Brazilian accent despite her supposed MidEast provenance), the renegade who had been about to be electrocuted; the pock-faced black fighter from some ongoing drug gang enforcer, Cuchillo, Danny Trejo); a misplaced Yakuza in a silvery suit (Louis Ozawa Changchien); a Russian from Chechnya (Oleg Taktarov); a mostly quiet killer (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) and the aforementioned spectacle-toting Edwin, the disgraced doctor, who alone among the dirty seven has no overt weapon or major firearm.

This is a frequent mash-up of late: A commando film that spins into sci-fi.They are in an alien planet somewhere, dropped without memory of their kidnapping from some space vehicle, parachuting into the creepy crawly alien Amazonian jungle. All the forests, greens and foliage were created, stapled, nailed and husbanded through the shoot using thousands of plants and logs, burnt cedars and tendrils.

Even I was distracted, a woman who is never bored. Too many aspects of the story might pass a 14-year-old’s muster–for whom, of course, the franchise has been created–but kept my head turning from side to side in disbelief. The Yakuza dude, very intense-looking, removes his shoes as soon as he finds himself in the foliage. Why would any sane bandit do that, faced with myriad insects and creatures and slicing roots, megafauna and biomass? Not a single meal is consumed in whatever length of time the movie transpires on what’s-it planet. Nor of course does anyone need to wash up or relieve himself. Fishburne’s cave is grungy, but offers strung-light electric illumination and something resembling a fridge.

The most exciting thing that happened was that when I stood up, during the credits, my new gauzy summer skirt floated serenely and without warning down atop my shoes. The lights were still down, so I swept it up and zipped the thing around my waist, with only one friend staring in astonishment at my unwonted display. Even my skirt tried to escape.

Jun

29

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

Directed by Daniel Alfredson

Reviewed by Marion DS Dreyfus

Having just finished the Steig Larsson book, seeing THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE on screen was a much-anticipated and self-referential event, one readers had long awaited.

Scriptwriter Jonas Fykberg was adept at condensing many hundreds of pages of exposition and incident into a fluid narrative, though you had to wonder if, absent the reading, audiences would 'get' all the myriad details in the story. I had a slight problem with the core casting, Lisbeth Salander, because i had built up a somewhat different image than the one confronting us in the film. (I did not see the first in the series, where the same cast obtains.) In the book, for instance, Salander ha had breast implants, where in the film, of course, she is, ahem, not endowed. A small thing, but many of the people she encounters after her year away comment on the changes to her 'look.' Here, in the film, they do not. A romance is omitted that has much to say about the polymorphously perverse or plain experimental.

No big thing.

Overall, it is an engrossing and diverting spool-out of a complex story. One is sorry Stieg Larsson (1954-2004) is not still alive to enjoy the enactment of his dense, terse tale, the second in his Millennium series, after THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Despite the foreign provenance and the posthumous publication of the series, the books have easily hit the NY Times' bestseller list, and there are 40 million copies in print. The travelogue aspect of the far-ranging drama is certainly worth the price of admission, with beautiful vistas usually unfamiliar to non-Scandinavians.

Being a constant aficionado of Lowlands film output, this added to enjoyment by being so savvy and sophisticated, yet, of course, slightly and reliably foreign, too, in the spoken Swedish, with so many recognizable aspects of pan-cultural life in Europe today so closely paralleling or echoing the US. The heroine, Salander, played by the intense Nomi Rapace, who earlier won the Best Actress Guldbagge award, the swedish equivalent to our Oscar, for her portrayal of Salander in TATTOO. is a terrific protagonist, of course, being intensely intuitive, highly senstized techie, her own person, not a worshipper of the exterior, but deeply humanistic to the insightful eye. And she is of course a superb pugilist, a tenacious and spectacular hacker, and an intensely idiosyncratic female icon. This is not a film that hands you an easy "good person vs bad person" menu; you work to figure out which is whom, what is what. Your attention is fully given over to the story and people so dynamic in their individual lives. I wanted to see more of the Millennium magazine's politicking, more of the policeman Bublanski. Everyone has a tangible backstory, even those seen for a few moments of film, and you are vested in learning and seeing more of them.

The story of seamy global sex trafficking and the attempt to cover up associated crimes around which this adaptation is spun involves thugs, prostitutes, journalists and workaday people. Lisbeth is fingered as the one guilty of a sensational triple murder, though her friend and defender, Millennium mag publisher Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nykvist), cannot square his knowledge of the wild post-adolescent Salander with the lurid newspaper accounts. Beyond sex trafficking, the film touches on the unchecked injustices rampant in the field of incarcerating the allegedly mentally unstable, psychiatry as a field ripe for abuse if its practitioners have unwholesome agendae, domestic violence, and the public's seemingly unquenchable desire for gossip and scandal, even if unproved and often, entirely misplaced.

At 129 minutes, it is slightly longer than many current sibling films, but the viewer is scarcely aware of the passage of time. The crescendo last scene could be followed by many more before the viewer would realize he is hungry or thirsty.

One now looks forward to the third offering of the GIRL WHO trilogy. Again: What a shame Larsson did not live for more to roll off his printer.

Marion Ds Dreyfus . . . 20(c)10

Jun

22

Of the reason that was the reason that federer almost lost as cervantes would say is that he was concerned and distracted by the play of his beloved swiss soccer team. What other distractions lead to losses in the market?

 

Jay Pasch comments:

ringing telephones (never again)
a 3-martini lunch (never again)
one's own imagination regarding what one thinks the market is going to do,
delusion (again and again)

Victor Niederhoffer responds:

Romance?

Nick White writes:

Beloveds of any kind, one would imagine. Good natured banter amongst one's associates can take mind off the job. I'm coming to see the Chair's wisdom of no noise, no talking, no intra-day distractions. It really does make a difference. However, it seems to me that perhaps there should be some distinction between "on" and "off" modes. When on, full noise / distraction lockdown. When off…well, game on. Like a firestation or military on alert.

Marion Dreyfus comments:

Safety issues

If one is immobilized by concerns about the outside world such as familial well being, adverse weather or unsafe streets, one cannot be free to fully concentrate

Indeed it becomes a juggling act–which concern will prevail?

 

Jun

21

Mr. Pitts fine and erudite post pointing out the importance of the outlet pass to Varusechek who has the best free throw shooting percentage brings to mind Sondheims' song from company . " its the little things you do together that make life a joy " . less hateful and humorous is the real proverb,that little strokes fell great oaks or Wiswell's make quiet moves, or take care of the draws and the wins will take care of themselves.

Marion Dreyfus comments:

Can any of the more psychologically astute listers explain why the win of the Lakers the other night occasioned vast destruction of the city, cars and streets?

Why did the police permit this lawlessness?

Why should we accept this hooliganism?

Stefan Jovanovich responds:

 Marion: your question presumes that there is a "we" in Los Angeles. That is a fallacy; there are only tribes. The tribe that inhabits downtown LA after dark are the homeless, and it was not their property that was vandalized. "Law and order" in LA is entirely up to the local inhabitants. During the Rodney King riots Koreatown was an island of tranquillity even though it was among the neighborhoods closest to South Central because the local tribe immediately displayed their arsenal of (mostly illegal) weaponry. Then, as now, the police were - as they have been for years -well-paid spectators whose concern was their own safety (for all the talk about the danger of the public saftey life, the emergency services in LA now have lower mortality rates than parking lot attendants). As paramilitary SWAT teams have grown in size and budgets, actual control of public events has declined. Some of us cynics think there might be a correlation.

Marion Dreyfus writes:

Thanks for clearing up the mystery.

It is dismaying in the extreme, however.

No-go zones in our country?!Just like the illegals n Arizona, who have entirely taken over parts of the state where no americans can set foot. 

 

Alan Corwin comments:

I don't think no-go zones are anything new in our country. There were a lot of no-go zones after dark in Boston in the 1950's for example, and I believe that was typical of big East Coast cities. The scariest place I have ever been was when I decided to check out Wilt Chamberlin's High School in Philadelphia during the late 60s. I thought I had wandered into a war zone. That may indicate how sheltered my life has been, but it was scary.

The thing that always amazes me about these riots is that they are almost never in the losing city. Things got pretty ugly in Boston the last time they won a championship, but all was quiet on the Eastern Front when they lost this year.

 

Gibbons Burke comments:

Witness the 1992 riots in Chicago after the Bulls won the NBA championship:

Bulls' NBA Victory Sparks Chicago Riots By Michael Abramowitz Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, June 16, 1992; Page A01

CHICAGO, JUNE 15 – As Michael Jordan and the newly crowned professional basketball champion Bulls partied with 18,000 delirious fans inside Chicago Stadium Sunday evening, an ugly orgy of violence and looting unfolded in neighborhoods scattered around this city, authorities said today.

Police reported more than 1,000 arrests on charges of burglary, theft, mob action, disorderly conduct and damage to property, all in the hours following the Bulls' dramatic come-from-behind victory against the Portland Trail Blazers in Game 6 of the National Basketball Association Finals for their second consecutive championship.

There were scores of injuries, nearly all of them minor. No one was killed. Among those injured were 95 police officers, two of whom received minor gunshot wounds. Three civilians were shot, two by storekeepers and one by the police, according to a police spokesman. The owner of a South Side liquor store and an employee received second-degree burns when looters attacked their establishment.

Although drunken revelry is still the most common mass response to sports championships, violence of the type that occurred here late Sunday and early today is becoming more common. Last year, after the Bulls' first NBA championship, the looting was less widespread, there were 100 arrests and no serious injuries or deaths.

[…]

Jun

9

a film still from COWC O W

Directed by Guan Hu

Cast: Huang Bo, Yan Ni, a Guernsey

This elegiac film is part comedy in the glorious Jackie Chan tradition, part tragedy—it treats the Japanese invasion of a Chinese village in the second Sino-Japanese war and the after-story with the still breathing remnants of the countryside—and part bromance (buddy-pic) between the protagonist, Huang Bo (Best Actor, Venice International Film Festival; Golden Horse award), and a sweetheart of a black-and-white 'American' cow (Chinese cows are, yes, yellow). It is clearly, too, an anti-war delivery system dressed in an historical epic, but the point is made along the way, no hammer to the head. Before you realize there is a message. The director blends a bleak humanism with a Charlie Chaplinesque tragicomic

Ravishingly photographed in nuanced, chiaroscuro-etched sepia varying with black & white, every frame takes your breath and holds it hostage until replaced by the next eye-pleasing frame. With quiet flash-backs and flash-forwards, COW follows village simpleton Niu Er (Huang) as he reluctantly tends to a stubborn, willful hunk of a cow, amid brigands, Japanese attacks, landmines, hunger and revisits from the enemy, under the impression that he is bound by deed to care for it until the Chinese 8th Battalion comes by to reclaim it. He calls the cow the name of his beloved, murdered villager-wife, the peppery proto-feminist Jiu (I) (played by saucy Yan Ni). Jiu II is a gorgeous hunk of unquartered livestock, immaculately if inadvertently sardonic. The filmmaker captures a brilliant moment in cinema when he photographs the reflected bloom of fiery explosions from afar in the humane cow's glossy right eye. Every scene is a gem of framing and texture, sky and earth, rock and soil, snow and arid war-scarred waste.

Much to marvel at and—slowly—enjoy, this wholly realistic picture of Chinese country life decades ago puts a grin on your face, then beguiles you to the gut, where it soon shivs you at tragic and poignant intervals.

Funny-true story of how Huang Bo got cast in a prior hit. Famed director Ning Hao saw Huang in a film, and thought he was a migrant worker extra, and gave up any hope of hiring him (How do you locate and call a migrant worker? Would he have an agent? Would he live in a house? Would he know how to read?). Only later, when they bumped into each other at the Beijing Film Academy, did he realize Huang wasn't a slobbo hobo.

Go. You have my blessing: Have a COW.

109 minutes; Mandarin; English subtitles

Jun

6

Jonah Hill and russel Brand in Get him to the greekGet Him to the Greek

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

This week at the movies, we've got rock 'n' roll ribaldry (GET HIM TO THE GREEK, starring Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Elizabeth Moss and Rose Byrne).
Fans of Jonah Hill (né Feldstein) will recall this fat, funny fur-ball from SUPERBAD (2007) and sundry other comedies where adipose on a featured character is cause for immediate hilarity. Hollywood makes no comedies without a token Zach Galifianakis type in this decade. For those unacquainted with the star vessel of GREEK, Brand is a British comic, actor, editorialist, author and radio and TV host/presenter.

Brand achieved UK mainstream hype for presenting Big Brother's Big Mouth, a popular spin-off, and for his radio broadcasts, among sundry TV series and award rites. Appeared in rom-com FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL (2008), ST. TRINIAN'S (2007), and BEDTIME STORIES (2008), none a standout. Relevant to his obnoxious persona here, Brand actually carried or participated in major pranks in the Brit media, such as the punk't-type 2008 calls that ended his BBC days. He has walked the walk, talked the talk.

Rose Byrne is a gorgeous Aussie presence from the hit TV thriller, Damages, and in this film has the thankless role of long-time spurned gal-pal of the monomaniacal drug-sozzled Brand, a truly unlikable character, despite his being in nearly every "comic" scene and eructative of many lines of unfortunate and often ugly truth. Clomping over everything and everyone, using and abusing nubile semi-nudes, snorting more faery dust and liquor than there are sands in the Kalahari, Brand fails to win hearts and minds. You just don't much like him. Even as a quirky-megalomanic rock star resisting the efforts of hapless Jonah Hill as promotional intern trying to lasso comeback rocker Brand into appearing at the sold-out Greek theatre in LA for a sold-out blowout.

As he carries on outrageously, corrupting the sweet Hill character, forcing sexual hi-jinks and pixie substances on this naïf, you don't warm to him. Instead, you idly wonder if he's really this bored, this feckless, and whether he mimicked his mojo from Mick Jagger or other Bad Boys. As is customary of late, the crudeness and vulgarity of most of the 'party' scenes disable description and are beyond tasteless.

Does any adult read these scripts before they are stunt-doubled onto remorseless forever?

Another TV cross-over, from the prize-winning prestigious Madison Ave drama, Mad Men, is the excellent Elizabeth Moss, as a physician live-in love of the corpulent Hill. She is a center of normalcy (along with Byrne's character) in a chaotic rampage as Hill and Brand burn rubber and life-journeys from London to Vegas to NYC to LA.
Putting in appearances, among the loud proceedings for musique aficionados, are Christina Aguilera, Mario Lopez, Pink, Kurt Loder, Lars Ulrich and Billy Bush.

Try as it might, cost whatever it cost, this is a weak attempt at replicating the comedic excess of HANGOVER (2009) or evoke even that classic laugh-fest starring an irascible superstar (Peter O'Toole) and hard-put-by ingénue intern, Mark-Linn Baker, in MY FAVORITE YEAR (1982).

May

23

John Rabe

Directed by Florian Gallenberger

There is a brief scene near the end of this masterfully touching film that shows the protagonist, John Rabe, quietly gathering his financial assets before being forced to leave his hearth and home. From his apartment safe in Nanjing, he removes a neat double stack of bills. The money represents this German man’s and his wife’s life’s savings. The money they have amassed in 27 years of living in China in the early decades of the 20th century. The bills are all in American currency, $5s and $10s. These are the funds he would use to start his life elsewhere.
An isolated theoretical: Will tomorrow’s films show a man’s savings in American green?

When we lived in China, no one in the country was ever very far from the memory of the Nanjing Massacre of 1937. Japanese tourists were received with frozen, fixed stares. But the atrocity still seems remote from the consciousness or fingertip-retrieval of most sensitive world-history aficionados, save for the longest-memoried Asian-Americans, or those Westerners specializing in the history of East Asian affairs.

At long last, this dreadful time in world history seems to be making its way to the big screen. Florian Gallenberger's John Rabe is the newest of a group of Occidental-made, Nanjing-themed lensers that include the stellar-documentary Nanking and narrative full-length feature film, The Children of Huang Shi. Last year's huge winner at the German Film Awards, this powerful historical epic lasers in on one of the more memorable heroes to have emerged in the surviving accounts of the massacre, the eponymous Nazi hero, John Rabe (Ulrich Tukur) with a vein of obdurate decency to him, despite his unquestioning—if distant—support of the faraway fuhrer.

Diligent as managing director in Nanjing of China's imposing Siemens branch, Rabe and his devoted, empathic wife are resistant to leave their adopted home of some 27 years when ordered back to Germany, especially when the Japanese invasion places his Chinese workers, friends and colleagues in lethal proximity to airborne Japanese death. Along with the head of a local girls' ‘college’ (beautifully played by the austere and soulful Anne Cosigny) and a conscience-minded American physician (a too-contemporary Steve Buscemi, who seems passionate, but somehow misplaced in time, somehow to be visiting this film), he sets up the prime safety zone in the Nanjing. A Chinese safety ghetto from the nightly air raids from above.

Designed to house some 100,000 Chinese, non-soldiers, in actuality it accreted more than twice that figure. The zone is an algorithm that confronts the committed Rabe with both impossible choices and endless wrangles with home country red tape, re-supply snafus and black-marketing, officious blinkered officials and bestial Japanese war overlords with whom he is shackled in order for his zone of succor to be consummated and sustained.

Though the film is as strong and bloody as any in the genre, evoking the wrenching Holocaust imagery of Schindler’s List, the film is carefully discrete about the unbelievable tonnage of rape and daily decapitation by heinous, nerveless foot-soldiers and their cruel generals by the hundreds of thousands by the automaton-frigid Japanese.

Though removed in time by more than 70 years, this German-Chinese-French co-production squeezes the heart, engrosses viewers in taut suspense and wrenching pain, using actual footage and clips from the era—most nearly destroyed in toto by the receding Japanese mindful of their horrendous legacy-to-be, if any documentation of their brutality survived. Though the cynical in Europe downplay this as well as the filmographies of German horror on European soil, there is moral urgency and witness in every frame of this wartime prestige cine. Stephen Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun was a war-whisper forerunner of this film, and it stands the test of time—but Rabe goes farther than the American-vantage-point earlier film.

Smartly filmed and well acted, John Rabe gives the era its due, a re-crystallization of chilling chaos. Nor does the story make each character a fixed point. Even the protagonist, Rabe himself, almost abandons his moral stance when rescue seems at hand. One cannot predict where the Buscemi character will attach, or whether Rabe’s beloved wife will stand by him or not, if the beautiful young photographer will be caught and raped as she scuttles through unsafe alleys to find her brother, or whether hidden contingents of soldiers will breach security.

As a post-film exposition crawl explains, the massacre is still vastly contentious, still ignored or denied by official Japanese. It still serves as cause for modern-day Chinese nationalism. The script never comes to grips, quite, with how such a savior of myriads of ordinary Chinese men, women and children could be so unreflective of the vile human back in Germany who began and reigned over such atrocities for so long.

In Beijing one night, we were invited to the best hotel in the city (in a city rife with fantastically imperial hostelries) for a sumptuous meal, no regal courtesy spared, with a present-day avatar VP of Siemens, China, which is today still one of China’s largest and most prosperous foreign businesses.

Guess the ordered demise of Siemens in China by der Reich was grossly exaggerated.

May

13

margie hart--burlesque starBeyond the Burly Q and others

Directed by Leslie Zemeckis

You sit down in a theatre where they're showing a documentary, say on the pollution of the Southeast from runoff sludge, or the reception a Danish trio of actors receive in the DPRK, and you get a desultory 20 or 30 attendees, dutifully propping toothpicks where their eyelids might fall…Zzz!

There are numerous reasons that documentaries are relatively flooding the filmic space now. Never before have the theaters and TV airwaves been as rich with these extraordinary offerings. Cutbacks in journalists on print papers, the continuing death of magazines and news organs, plus limited time to cover stories in depth on TV and other media, produce are bumper crop of filmmakers eager to fill the gap with informative, strongly researched documentaries that are, by and large, remarkably interesting, fact-filled, and important.

With reference to this Burly Q doc, somehow, get out the word that this is a movie about the scanty hoochy-coo scandalous but affectionate heyday of the burlesque in the United states from the first squall of the 20th century through to its heyday and desuetude in the 1960s (the women's movement hammered the last nails into that particular titillational teatime), and somehow, magically, people fill those seats. Lots of men fill those comfy lean-back, rock-a-bye seats in the A/C-controlled amphitheater. And yes, there is lots of pulchritude unsheathed for the guy with the Double-D fetish or the homegrown married guy who doesn't step out on his missus.

But through the years, and with clips galore of all the stellar strippers and novelty acts, the comedians and hard-working straight men earning a better-than-average living from the 10-cents a show vaudeville and burlesque, you have to empathize with what wrought all these essentially lovely and, well, pure, women to the stage to twirl those tassels or tease off those unneeded 'extra' business-layer clothes. And while there's hilarity and fascination, the stories behind these statuesque women are often heartbreaking.Burlesque was, according to these wonderful women and men recalling the 'best times of their lives'—according to not a few of them, women in their 80s and 90s, some, or children of the ecdysiasts of yore (including a thoughtful daughter of Lou Costello, Alan Alda, whose father worked in a burlesque, the handsome young JFK tried to date one of the lovelies (she turned him down—said he didn't appeal to her, 'all that red hair under the military cap'!) and a few historians of the vaudeville/burlesque era) a loving, camaraderie-filled vagabond life.There were novelty acts, comics—some very ancient, with pratfalls and gags far older than the buildings housing them—chorines, hoochy-coo numbers, the Main Act.

Occasional tsk tsks from the likes of Fiorello La Guardia, who did not cotton to any of the comics saying the words hell or damn, and closed down the NYS joints in 1937. Or some of the circuses in town determining what could stay on, or be removed. Because they catered to a family crowd (yes, believe it or not), they offered a chorus line, comedy, a surcease from the grinding Dustbowl poverty outside the show-houses, the streets of despair from the Great Depression, they largely weathered any short-term (public and hypocritical) outrage. For the main, these lovely and talented women made a handsome living, some $1500 a week, when grub was a dollar a plate, and a place to sleep was maybe $2 a week. At a dime a throw, the innovative Minsky brothers cleared a cool $1 million a week—in emporia that seated thousands of foot-sore Bible salesmen, vacuum cleaner hawkers, even Harvard guys ("You haven't been to Harvard unless you've seen Sally Rand!").

Ultimately, it wasn't beauty killed the Burly Q—it was that squiggly-line black-and-white box in the living room that did it in.

The Oath

Directed by Laura Poitras

An exceptional documentary that interweaves the atypical histories of Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard/driver, Abu Jandal –now a Yemeni cabbie fallen on rough times—and a Gitmo prisoner charged with war crimes, Salim Hamden. We are privileged to hear people who aren't a part of the comedy nighttime lineup, or even any usual news cycle. Peabody-winner Poitras uses intelligence documents, interviews, and unnerving multilayered interrogation sessions and methods to keep viewers off balance in this second of a planned documentary trilogy on documents and artifacts from Guantanamo. One cavil, however, is that we hear from the subjects, but not enough of their personal feelings and thoughts emerge from this clearly hard-to-come-by archival material.

We wanted more personal feedback from these people in impactful places, with newsmaker myth builders and causes célèbre. Even at the length it is, THE OATH is fascinating, if queasy, watching. Undeniably riveting for any number of reasons.

The Red Chapel
The Red Chapel

Directed and performed by Mads Brugger

The most subversive documentary of the season, the three-man 'comedy team' from Denmark seems for all purposes like a visiting broad-slapshtik-y troupe come to Pyongyang, North Korea, for superficial entertainment. It is outrageously nervy, however, because the actual motive of Brugger and his compadres, is somewhere in the nether zone between Sasha Baron Cohen's Borat thing and the tsk-tsk feigned-documentaries of agenda-driven Michael Moore. The team with Brugger consists of Simon, whose ostensible goal is to do an acoustic rendition of Oasis' "Wonderwall," using a backdrop of singing Korean schoolgirls; and Jacob, a self-described 'spastic' whose regular speech in Danish or English is close to incomprehensible except to his close buddies Mads and Simon. The DPRK hosts don't understand the underlying satirical and expose purpose of the 'comedy' trio, but the horrific fright of most North Koreans they are forced to deal with, and the bizarre mandatory changes these functionaries push on the comedy team tell the viewer far more than a mere documentary possibly could. On the surface, schoolkids look idyllic and adults are smiling. Under their façade, one sees utter terror and fear for their lives, and an inability to even entertain political challenge, lest their whole façade fall. It is intentionally mocking, intentionally funny, but its ulterior goal is achieved better than any similar company in a serious vein could have been. Any comments that are accurate and critical of the N. Koreans is in subtitled Danish or English, all of which is two levels beyond the Koreans' comprehension.

The three have ethical and artistic disagreements throughout, with Jacob coming out the heroic purist unwilling to compromise at all. Mads wants to complete his film, which demands unwieldy pragmatic acquiescence. Simons is a clown, reminding one of Beckett's sad clowns, Didi and Gogo, in Waiting for Godot. Jacob is a significant rarity in film: A physically challenged person whose ailment is not the target of action, but whose intelligence, innate character and incisive brainpower are the focus.

One marvels that the evidently brilliant trio were cool enough to create this dramatic structural trelliswork; what they are doing so eludes their hosts that the DPRK 'minders' have no idea how their crazy communist destruction of the troupe's [ostensibly] innocent funny business translates into film.

This is a twinkling masterpiece, though it dawns on the viewer only as he sees the incendiary evidence in bizarre scenes played out for all they are worth by this free-speech seeking humor team. Brugger has a long, honorable career as a TV and print satirist and subversive role-playing in experimental journalism.

The Red Chapel docu is a huge Gotcha! against "the dear leader" systematically starving his people and crimping their brains in the utter absence of any news leaking out to the free world.

Hilarious. But even more–terrifying.

Takeaway: As good as are the first two films, the third is the most abiding in the heart, somehow.

May

10

Scarlet Johansson in Iron Man 2I R O N M A N 2

Directed by Jon Favreau

You start with a comic book hero. The first flick in the new franchise is a runaway hit. So you go whole hog on Iron Man Deux, including casting a compendium of crème de la crème stars: Gwyneth, Scarlett, Samuel Jackson, Don Cheadle, Gary Shandling, Sam Rockwell, even Jon Favreau himself, doing a few self-mocking comic turns. Plus the 'Russian' Mickey Rourke, who is outstanding as a villain to die from, in a part tailor-made for his post-WRESTLER mastery, physique (and dissoluteness). Stan Lee, the originator (along with Jack Kirby) of Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four and X-Men classics during the 1940s and '50s, makes a cameo appearance. (We met him last year at Comic Con at the Javits. He was gracious, kind and personable.) You have units in Monaco, Washington, Moscow and snazzy loci in California.

The crashes, explosions, anti-gravity take-offs and landings, battle royales between adversaries and friends are straight out of Marvel, but they are pitched to the 'tweens, the Gen X, Y and Z's, as well as to actual adults. The SFX and CGI are unbelievable, but fun. War Machine, IM and Rhoadey fight Ivan Vanko's creatures. Flashing. Lasers. Broken plate-glass walls cascade.

Making it all more digestible and fun is the deadly serious demeanors of all the characters toward Stark, Mr. Iron Man, versus the easy sarcasm and offhand debonair sotto voce raffishness of Robert Downey, Jr. RDJ is the inheritor of the mantle of Sean Connery's ne plus ultra Bond, except that Downey gets bashed, smashed, scary-toxic blood levels and ruffled with desire.

What's the plot: Does it really matter? Billionaire Tony Stark, now outing himself as the epic Iron Man from round one, contends with deadly issues involving the avid US government, demanding his impervious weaponized suit for defensive purposes, his dubious friends, as well as unexpected enemies accreted by his superhero persona ego.

Snippet of dialogue: Tony Stark (consulting ScarJo's resume): Look, she speaks Yiddish, Arabian, Russian, Latin… Latin? Who speaks Latin? Pepper Potts (a classy Paltrow): No one speaks Latin. It's a dead language.

Film cost the aggregate of a really good small-town hospital or the national debt of a modest third-world country. It provides a seamless mesh of eye-candy, great lines, gorgeous aerial shots of the Monaco races, and funky phoenix-like rehabilitated protagonists. Sleek Gwyneth is charm and responsibility. Johanssen is amazingly enigmatic, wackily lethal, and the instruments of death-dealing are a hoot. (We went with our Second Amendment expert firearms pro.)

The midnight show, and the theatre was almost completely full. Usually people flee as soon as the credits roll, but for some reason, the audience stayed put, excitedly discussing the film until the last logo tag-end. The credits are long, but don't leave until they are done, because there's a teaser you don't want to miss.

Is it Kierkegaard or Wittgenstein? Uh, no. But there are very few expletives, a modicum of blood, zero sex or nudity, and it's not terrible for kids. Rourke keeps a toothpick nocked into his lip-corner, but nobody smokes.

Every meal is not high-nutrition vitamin-enriched super-acai berry broth. Sometimes you just like a dollop of high-fructose junque. You could certainly do worse.

May

10

Zero Hour with Zero MostelZero Hour At the DR2 Theatre

Play directed by Piper Laurie

For those unfortunately unacquainted with the great comedic actor, Zero Mostel, who died in 1977, at only 62, he is best known for his portrayal of beloved comic characters such as Tevye onstage in Fiddler on the Roof, Ulysses in Ulysses in Nighttown, Pseudolus both onstage and onscreen in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the rhinoceros in Ionesco's Rhinoceros, and, especially, thanks to frequent plays on TCM and elsewhere on late-night TV, and the schvanz-faux producer Max Bialystok in the original film version of The Producers. Blacklisted during the 1950s, his staunch testimony before the now-infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was well-publicized. Among his many encomia, he was a Tony and Obie award recipient. More than that, he was the independent comic genius who had merely to walk down the street for one to break out into grins of anticipation.

Under the capable direction of actress/director Piper Laurie, and with subtle lighting mood painting by Jason Arnold, the outsize life-force of Zero Mostel, born Samuel Joel Mostel, is brought again to feisty, hilarious life by writer/performer Jim Brochu. It is a 2-hour tour de force, as Brochu peoples the stage with theatre greats, HUAC betrayers, stage performers, people just a few moons behind us, but living still in the Brobdingnagian life of Broadway. Brochu says in his bio that he "was born six miles and 30 years from the Brooklyn house where Zero was born" in 1915.

Among Brochu's many acting credits and plaudits, we found most amusing the fact that due to his having appeared as a dancing raisin for a Post breakfast cereal, and as a lemon from outer space for soap product Palmolive, along with being a petulant peach for Hawaiiian Del Monte, he earned the nutritiously enviable title of "Most versatile fruit in show business." More important than his chops as victuals, however, is the artful way he looks disarmingly like the great Zero, sounds like him, and weaves a remarkably accurate picture of Mostel's episode-stuffed life into a nonstop fascination for the audience to drink in.

One of his tantrums, in a rare departure from picturesque and pointed hilarity, concerns the harsh lives of the actors and artists caught in the no-win vise of HUAC's congressional inquisitions. Anent one of those who blabbered away with names of men and women who may not even have been communists at all, Jerome Robbins, Mostel quips, "Loose Lips [Robbins] was the Babe Ruth of stool pigeons."

Certainly, beyond the chuckle and guffaw quotient to be had in the art studio of the great Tevye and Pseudolus, a master of "how butterflies look when they are resting," the life of this showbiz comic-kazi deftly chronicles for us the life of New York's artistic, martial, societal and proscenium pages for the decades during which he created mirth and merriment from the '20s until his regrettably premature death in 1977, during Philadelphia rehearsals for the new play The Merchant (in which Zero played a re-imagined version of Shakespeare's Shylock). Diagnosed with a mild respiratory disorder that should have spelled no danger, on September 8, 1977, Mostel complained of dizziness and lost consciousness. Attending physicians were unable to revive him. It was later decided that he had suffered an aortic aneurysm.

Jim Brochu shows us the Falstaffian "Z" (to friends), before the decline into lesser billing for handsome pay cheques. The play doesn't go there, though. Brochu's encyclopedic biographic familiarity and embodiment of the great Zero brings the marvelous funnyman to life for two rich hours. Director Piper Laurie, herself an honored actress, sculptress and performer, masterminds a flawless show, not for a second boring or overdone.

It disabused us of one of our all-time personal favorites: We always thought he got his name because his father looked at him one day and uttered the Yiddish malediction, "Vet zein ah gornischt!" (You'll be a … nothing.) Apparently, in truth, his nickname came straight from…his agent.

For the L.A. production of Zero Hour, Brochu was nominated for Best Solo Performance by the L.A. Drama Critics; ZH was also awarded 2006 Best Play by the L.A. Ovations. His caricature was installed on Sardi's storied walls in 2001, a tribute to his 40-plus years as a playwright and performer par excellence.

May

3

CASINO JACK & THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY

Documentary by Alex Gibney

This is a scathing, carefully researched Dorian Gray portrait of super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, from his youth in college as a handsome, gung-ho GOP political activist, to the pariah disgrace of his recent years anterior to his imprisonment.

The topography of the film covers an unprecedented mapwork of unlikelies: Indian reservations, Russian operatives, Chinese sweatshops and mob Mafias in Miami. The film proffers a vast archive of clips, photos, recorded speeches, talking associates and former colleagues, newspapers–the whole array of the documentarian today, hewing not into alarmist territory, but managing to coolly limn the way monetary influence molds and corrupts the political process. Not news, certainly, but glaringly obvious in the unspooling of this riveting docu. Proof again that newspaper and TV have yielded the high ground on exposes and longitudinal coverage to the deft (well-funded) filmmaker/documentarian.

Oscar-awardee Gibney paints how the nature of politicians' campaigns and continuous scratching for re-election most probably distorts the entire politics of the American enterprise. Interesting and undeniably fun footage of college kegger times of such latter-day luminaries as Tom De Lay, George Bush the younger, Karl Rove as a cherubic sage with hair, pols of the left and right of the past four decades, CASINO JACK is hard to deny as a marathon tale of untrammeled entrepreneurship, flackery and greed.

One tries to be cynical about the reportage, but it disarms us with its cumulative argument, and claims our undivided attention.

Maybe somewhere in the country's attic, Abramoff is still the uninflected buff promising guy he started out to be.

Mar

14

I Am Love

Directed by Luca Guadagnino

Starring: Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Marisa Berenson, Edoardo Gabbriellini

Don't ask why a movie in Italian and Russian has an English title that so scratchily encapsulates the idea or trajectory of the story. Other people make those decisions, one guesses, not the director or producer.

As luscious in photographic sensuality as a film by Luchino Visconti, I Am Love is a voluptuous tale with many handsome and beautiful characters involved in the Recchi fabrica, factory, and the generations inheriting this most successful Milanese business from the grandfather who brought it to enormous profitability.

Central to the stories is the patron's daughter in law, played by an elegant, surpassingly controlled Tilda Swinton. If this does not win her the Oscar next year, and this film the Best Foreign Film, then somebody is smoking damaged weed.

Amid the swirling stories of thwarted young love gone astray for a same-sex chum, dutiful marriages exalted to thrumming orgiastic pleasure by illicit amour, sibling rivalries, decades-long family retainers who know their place but know every little intrigue going on in the fabulous marble mansion in Milano where most of the action takes place (along with a gorgeous rustic San Remo, and a business-like, austere London that is strangely devoid of irony or intrinsic emotion), gorgeous dowagers and clever performing-arts offspring, two things thread through this lush extravaganza of emotion and color:

First: A significant protagonist is a chef, and by the end of the film you will be drooling for the exotic and eye-filling Italian victuals. Second: Erotic fascination. Swinton has such an unbridled affair with her paramour that one feels embarrassed at not drawing the curtain. Significant nudity amid the foliage–and amusing scenic references to buzzing stilled birds and nectar-feeding bees.

Marisa Berenson, rarely seen in film but here used to excellent effect, is still lustrous and lovely. Swinton manages to be somehow ravishingly plain yet overridingly transformed into a beauty by her exaltation with love. She speaks a flawless Italian, and a pretty convincing Russian.

And then there is the stunning cinematography. Cunning angles of filming that most directors would scarcely attempt. And all that saliva-inducing oicho (a superb soup playing a key role in the story) served with utmost panache and plenitude. A delicious film in many ways we have come to savor because we see far too few of such consummate achievements.

Mar

10

Purveyors of the news for the past nine years know what constitutes a "green zone": Security from suicide bombers, infiltrators, craziness of an unvetted variety, and control over troublemakers of foreign and local variety, initially probably in Iraq (now metastasizing into other war theatres). The new Greengrass, who gave us the crackling good adventure-actioners in the BOURNE canon, has done it again. Greengrass' filmography includes The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) (Germany); United 93 (2006); The Bourne Supremacy (2004); and Bloody Sunday (2002), among others in a distinguished writing, directing and scripting career. The only problem is that this is so good, so fast, so all-around-diverting that it won't have the cachet of a brand new genre come next March Academy Awards night, since THE HURT LOCKER just swept the Oscars with six golden statuettes, and the Academy probably can't risk giving the prize win to a 'war film' two years in a row. Which is a damned shame. No bummed-out Babs Streisand scowling in the middle distance in '11.

Matt Damon does a tight, riveting, subtle turn as Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller in Iraq in 2004, serving under maximal stress and constant turf battles against such peacock-aggrandizers as smarmy Pentagon wonk, Greg Kinnear, who (as Clark Poundstone) wants results at all costs, no matter their veracity. Brendan Gleeson, the magnificent Irish actor, turns in a pitch-perfect perf as the Sunni- and Shi'a-hound CIA detail man who wants the practical results that will produce lasting Iraqi peace and sanity, not fleeting WMD glory. The sole female figure is a revenant who, unlike brunette Judith Miller working for the NY Times, is here blonde (Amy Ryan, playing Lawrie Dayne) and working for the Wall Street Journal. Both newsies get info they perhaps too-easily swallow.

The plot, which is challenging to hear and see amid the blur of action and overlapping dialogue and split-hair edits and cross-cutting: Discovering covert but consistently faulty intel converts a solid U.S. Army Captain to go rogue as he hunts for Weapons of Mass Destruction in an unstable region. Miller thinks there's a stinkweed in DC misdirecting all his crew's efforts, wasting their time digging in ludicrous places and uncovering innocuous toilet factories planktoned in pigeon poo. Turf battles with home office, Kinnear and parachuted-in fake Iraqi puppet masters interfere with and clash with the maddening unknown of which locals can be trusted, which cannot. Mistakes result in families being wiped out-or US Armed Services personnel buying it. Filmed in Spain, morocco and the US, the film has the gritty feel LOCKER has, the narrow alleyways, the impassive faces of the ex-Saddam Army, all of whom turn in excellent portraits of proud, fearless, passionate (if nuanced-loyalty) soldiers.

Testosterone rises right out of your seat into your chest as Damon chases leads to what's what in WMD. It's not a blatant play for partisan hoorah! Either. One rides along in the Humvee or military transport with heart racing and knuckles clenched.

Green Zone gets a bright green light from this seat.

Mar

6

aliceThe 19-year-old Alice returns to the magical world of her childhood adventure, where she reunites with her old acquaintances and learns of her true destiny– to end the Red Queen's reign of terror. Fantasy-addicted director Tim Burton (SLEEPY HOLLOW [1999]; BEETLEJUICE [1988]; BATMAN; big box-office CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY [2005]; BIG FISH [2003] (our favorite); popular PLANET OF THE APES [2001]; and the goofier-than-usual CORPSE BRIDE [2005]) fashions another phantasmagoria from the cherished-if dark-children's whimsy by Lewis Carroll, the eponymous Alice in Wonderland.

The problem is, for all the visual eye-candy, the set design that extends our childhood memories of the Cheshire Cat (called just "Chez" here in this Ain't-we-just-so- sophisticated? version), the Tweedledum and Tweedledee roly-poly twins, the Mad Hatter et al., the imagery does not create engagement or even any persistent carry-through interest. It is a mild curiosity, excepting the imperious-mad menu of performances of Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, the scenery-chewing loon, Johnny Depp in a carousel of accents and modes-none of them long enough to fix on-Anne Hathaway (as the White Queen) and Alan Rickman's hilariously soignée Blue Caterpillar. Blonde Mia Wasilkowska, a comely newbie to the film world, is older than the Alice of our book-recall, here nearly affianced to an effete silly-goose. The film toggles between the Carroll scripting and signature Burton metastasizing, but the result is curiously flat and unmemorable, neither (if you will) phish nor foul. Not animal, not veg.

Would children enjoy it? One seriously counsels against taking really young kids, as there is violence, mayhem and scary sequencing in the gimmick of the day, 3D, that makes even last season's "children's" fable, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE [2009], seem more acceptable. At least with Maurice Sendak's film, we were within the bounds of the look of the kiddie classic.

David Keyes of Cinemaphile once credited Burton's runaway surprise success, BATMAN, with the director's brilliant visual interpretation of a "dark, ominous comic book," because he brought a near-occult adult sensibility to what many usually dismissed as kid-stuff comic material. With many of his prior works, this carnival transmutational thinking works to the material's favor. Here, the result is less clear, and less successful beyond an exercise in optical opulence; as usual with many of his works, a satisfactory resolution is missing. It's the triumph of ornate form over reasonable content. Must admit, the fall down the rabbit hole was well done and unstagy, though the actual fall seemed implausibly endless.

Mar

1

The variations in prices during the day is a source of wonderment to all who study them. For example the price of 1 comes up so frequently as to excite the admiration for its fortitude and staying power. Of 26 markets on my screen with a total of 81 digits among them, 30 of them have/are the digit one. Indeed, the proverbial battle during the day between the ensemble of markets and the bulls and the bears might well be considered as a battle among the prices themselves for replication and survivability.

From similar observations in the field of evolution Richard Dawkins came up with the theory of Selfish Genes. He pointed out that evolution works by copying genes. The genes themselves, without any motivation on their part, are in a battle to be passed on. They don't care about the interests of the organism that they are part of. His book based on this theory is considered one of the two most influential books of science of the last 50 years, and has sold more than 1 million copies. It explains and illuminates many phenomena that the traditional view of organisms competing at the level of the phenotype in a struggle for survival of the fittest find hard to explain — particularly altruism, deception, kinship, acting against interest, vivid and startling coloration (green beards).

The time has come to apply this theory to prices themselves. They are the units of variation that try to reproduce that control markets, not the other way around as is so frequently posited. Let's start with the battle of the price 0 to extend itself. Using daily prices, we see the Dow crossing from above 10000 to below 10000 three times during the last two years and crossing from below 10000 to above 10000 on two occasions. The 0 in 10000 gets to express itself four times while in all other prices of recent vintage it is only expressed three times so that 10000 is a particularly noteworthy price to achieve.

In addition, it's a green beard that attracts other prices at 0. When the Dow hits 10000 every financial media is likely to have a headline that the magic number has been broken. Other zeroes in other markets such as the Nikkei at 10000, gold at 10000, oil at 100, the yen at 1000, and the S&P at  1000, soybeans at $10.00 are sure to note the price and copy it. The zeroes in 10000 while acting essentially selfishly benefit other zeroes in other market that have the intellect to recognize what is happening in the Dow. The transmission of these effects in the media magnifies what has been called "green bearding" by Dawkins in the concept of the selfish gene.

a green beardOf course, if recognition plays a part in the propagation of prices, so does deceit. The same way that butterflies mimic wasps, markets may pretend to be going to a recognized number like 10000 but stop right before it as fast moving operations like the specialists or the high frequency traders step in to beat out those who have been deceived by the path. Such activities lead to the well known phenomena that highs below the round number and lows just above it happen much too frequently to be explained by chance in individual stocks and the major market averages.   

As a first crack at systematizing the theory of the selfish price, I calculated the closing 10 digit of the S&P unadjusted futures for the last three years, 743 observations in all.

Battle of selfish opening and closing prices

             opening price        closing price
0                  71                  88
1                  76                  69
2                  64                  55
3                  74                  79
4                  77                  70
5                  84                  79
6                  77                  76
7                  68                  65
8                  68                  76
9                  84                  70

One notes that the digit of 2 is losing the investment table, some 5 standard errors away from expectation, while the old faithful of 0 is winning the ultimate battle closing 88 times, 3 standard errors above expectation from its 74 expectancy. There are other wonderful and noteworthy phenomena revealed in this table, and its extensions, and many beautiful aspects of the struggle for existence, the mutualism, and antagonism of the prices for one another, and always their tendency to be in a positive feedback system with the growth of the market organism itself, which I will not gainsay the reader the jubilation of ascertaining for himself.

It is well known that genes often work together with each for the greater good of each other. For example, there could be a gene to make disease less likely under certain circumstances, and a gene for long life. A typical example of a gene that is beneficial to other genes but not to itself is a gene in birds for calling out loudly and clearly in situations of danger. The gene helps all the other genes survive in its kin, but not necessarily itself as it calls attention to itself. Genes tend to  work together to make for a greater likelihood that the whole organism and all its genes will survive and reproduce. The cost benefit function of a given gene may be y expressed as pb  versus c  where b is the benefit a gene gives to another gene, c is the cost, and p is the increase in probability that the other gene will provide to it.

The cost benefit function creates a situation where the genes come to be represented according to their net contribution to their ability to be reproduced in successive generations, including their cumulative impact on all other genes in the genome. The opposite situation which occurs must less frequently is called intragenomic conflict, and the classic example is referred to as segregation distorter genes which act to crowd out other genes that are beneficial to fertility. Egbert Leigh expresses this unlikelihood as follows: The genes act as "a parliament of genes, each acting in its own interests, but if it acts hurt the others, they will combine together to suppress it."                            

Apparently the price units of selection in markets do not act to suppress their neighbors. During the last 2600 days for example in the  S&P, 2530 days in the S&P 24 hour futures, 2412 of them have allowed each of the ten separate 10 digits, 0 to 9 to appear. In other words the 24 hour range has been more than 10 on more than 95% of all days. Apparently it keeps all the individual prices healthy to exercise each of its competitors on almost all days.

Here is a good reference on this Selfish Price theory which I posit in all seriousity.

Rocky Humbert notes:

The paucity of "2" as described by the Chair is a persistent phenomenon. For the 12,143 trading days between 1955 to 2003 (when the S&P first went over 1,000), the digit "2" occurred (as a tens) only 5.1% of the time.

Perhaps some of this may be explained by number theory — i.e. index calculation effects due to stocks trading in eighths and quarters, and that may also explain the increase in the "2" in the Chair's data post decimalization. (He found "2" rose to 8% from the 5.1% over the longer period.)

One further notes that on most QWERTY keyboards, the lowly "@" sits above the "2". Prior to email, the @ was slowly facing extinction– only to be resurrected to prominence contemporaneous with AAPL stock. Hence I believe it's premature to put the "2" in the Peabody Museum diorama that also houses the Dodo Bird and Pig-footed Bandicoot. 

Marion Dreyfus comments:

There is apparently a marker gene for how many times a person sneezes when he or she sneezes daily–This might be a signal to alert noticers of the individual patterning of investment thinking or individual behavior. As some people always sneeze thrice, and only thrice, or twice if the gene for twice is embedded in the coding ''parliament'' of the genome sequencing, perhaps we also have an idiosyncratic pattern of investing that has hitherto gone unnoticed. Can this be mapped, one wonders. And if so, can one be thus invested with more knowledge of the other's "hand," as in playing poker with someone whose "tell" you know, so you can conserve bets for when a hand/bet/risk is most propitious…

Pete Earle writes:

morpholinoOne of the tools used in determining genetic action– or, more aptly, interaction– is the morpholino, a short, targeted nucleotide sequence which blocks ("knocks down") expression of one gene among two or more to see if, or how, the ultimate expression of said genes changes. My partner is involved in exactly this sort of research daily. Once she targets a gene– in this example, trying to determine the interaction of two genes in producing a specified outcome (gene A + gene B = expression C)–she then conducts subsequent experiments in which she varies the amount of the morpholino between 0% (no morpholino, the control group) and increments up to and including full strength (complete knock-down of gene A, 100%). This is to determine which gene, if any, is more important to a given expression than the other; and to see if a gene interaction is of the simply "on/off" type or if expressions take place along a spectrum of outcomes.

I suspect that with respect to Vic's Selfish Price Theory, we might look at morpholino-equivalent testing with a comparison of periods within which a given market approached a certain number-expressing level, and compare those with others, looking for volume superlatives; one would expect the day or week of the arrival of Dow 8888, 10000, and 11111 to be of higher volumes to a statistically more significant extent than, say, those when Dow hit 12345 or 9876. This could be broadened to look at random snapshots of days where, across a number of indices or index-constituting stocks– even, and perhaps especially, in the absence of such aesthetically pleasing prices as 10,000 or 55 and such– we would look for higher-than-expected volumes when and where there noteworthy appearances by a particular number across a spate of closing prices. 

Pitt Maner III writes:

My dentist last week mentioned to me that he was studying the latest papers (within one day of publication) on gene "crosstalk" so as to help his daughter in college who is doing an honors thesis on the subject (and how it relates to drug interactions with cancer cells). Cancer cells evidently have a means of (and this is over my head—cell experts please jump in) of dampening the effects of anti-cancer drugs through cellular cross-talk genes. Therefore drug manufacturer have a need to knock out the cancer cells through a series of steps to weaken these defense/signaling channel mechanisms.

Any underlying, as yet undefined, step-like mechanisms and pathways would seem to skew number distributions.

Henrik Andersson comments:

Benford's lawThis seems somewhat related to Benford's law which predicts the probability of digits, for example the probability that a stock index of stock price will start with a '1' is slightly above 30%. A funny side note is that this theory of frequency of numbers in nature can be checked using Google searches.

Victor Niederhoffer responds:

I don't think it applies here, especially for the second, third and fourth digits.

Henrik Andersson replies:

Yes, it probably only over powers other forces in the market for the first digit.

Kim Zussman writes in:

The SP500 is Benfordian:

Using daily closes SP500 1950-present, counted days which closed with the first digit = 1. eg, {1XXX.XX, 1XX.XX, 1X.XX} (there were no 1.XX yet}.

Of 15135 total days, 5514 had 1 as the first digit.

Alston Mabry writes:

And to relate that chart to genetics: If volatility = selection pressure, then when volatility/selection pressure is low, variability in digit frequency/phenotype expression is high; but when volatility/selection pressure is high, variability in digit frequency/phenotype expression is low.

And different species have different time intervals, i.e., lifespans.

Peter Earle responds to Henrik Andersson's comment:

At risk of torturing the analogy a bit– but worth mentioning: "Yes it probably only 'over powers' other forces in the market for the first digit. "Let's discuss those "other powers", as they are germane to Vic's theory. It's appropriate to at this point bring up one of the hot topics that my partner, again, is working on: epigenetics. In short, it's the imposition of hard-coding changes on DNA (via methylation) by environmental effects. While still not fully understood, one example is depicted by rat experiments in which the pups of profoundly overweight mothers (exposed to high levels of interuterine glucose) switched at birth with skinnier rat mothers show a statistically significant greater chance, thereafter, of becoming obese, even setting aside "lifestyle" and dietary settings. (See the "Barker Hypothesis" for another example of this phenomenon.)

With respect to Vic's Selfish Price theory, we might quantitatively express these variations from expected (Benford's Law) vs. actually expressed frequencies of prices/digits as an epigenetic effect: 'environmental' effects whereby the impact of market participants and economic influences -forces and memes - push toward or away from predicted, anticipated baselines.To that end, tracking the ebb and flow in expressed, realized prices from what which the Law predicts over time could provide one way– no doubt an incomplete way, but a way nonetheless - of quantifying the ever-changing cycles. 

Alston Mabry says:

Back to the tens digit, this time in the S&P cash. Starting with January, 2004, I calculated a 250-tday rolling total for each digit, e.g., in the past 250 tdays, how many times has the tens digit of the S&P Close been 0 or 1 or 2, etc. Then calculated the gap between the most frequent and least frequent digit, e.g., if 6 was the most frequent in a given 250-tday period, occurring 48 times, and 3 was the least frequent, occurring 21 times, then the max-min gap would be 48-21 = 27.

Then for I calculated the SD for each 250-tday period, too, as a measure of volatility. The attached graph shows the two series. What can be seen is how the max-min gap is higher when volatility is low, but compresses into a narrow range when volatility increases. This seems intuitively sensible if one thinks of a more volatile S&P moving quickly through various values and thus being more "random" at the tens digit. Whereas, when volatility is low, the S&P would be "stickier", hanging around longer at certain tens digits, thus creating a wider max-min gap.

Of course, an underlying factor is the arbitrary nature of choosing a unit of time such as a trading day. If one zoomed in and out, using different lengths of time to create ecah "Close", then one would probably see a clear relationship between volatility and digits on different time scales.

One more take (esoteric, but I really like the chart): For each S&P day from 1990 to present, calculate the distribution of the tens digit in the S&P for the 250-tday period ending that day: 41 zeros, 24 ones, 23 twos, etc. Then get the SD for this distribution. Example:

41 0's
24 1's
23 2's
17 3's
26 4's
20 5's
20 6's
21 7's
19 8's
39 9's

SD: 8.33
 

Then calculate for the same 250-tday period the SD of the daily change in points of the S&P - points rather than percent because we are relating index point movement to digit distribution.

So, for each 250-tday period, we have a measure of the volatility of the index and the variability of the tens digit. Sort all the 250-tday periods by the S&P volatility value, high to low, and graph the result - see attached graph .

Nice inverse relationship between the S&P point volatility and the variability in the tens digit.

Mar

1

I got off the bus and walked through the Central Park snowscape at 57th and 6th. Fairy time.

Little kids with their brilliantly colored toboggans or inverted large plastic frisbees in cherry, lime green, turquoise and violet flopped down the tiniest slopes, shrilly screaming with delight. People were running the track, as per usual, enclosed in their huffing and timing. Many teams of families and friends were building snowmen, and I saw at least three snow caves, which we always advise people to build in the chilly North, if they are caught in a snowstorm or are lost in the woods and there is available snow.

I watched four energetic bunches of people on tamped-down 'slopes,' some of the adults sitting on the plastic garbage-can covers (so they looked) behind their tots.

Against the stark, clean white of the snow, the strong verticals of brown-etched black tree trunks heavy with the best snowball-making snow (but also the most perilous, as the death of a man from a falling overburdened branch demonstrated to us all if we heard the news), the colorful gear and costumes of the skaters, it was a wonder place.

The children far off made the scene evocative of those daguerreotype postcards of the first decade of the 20th century–rich and wonderful, especially with the high-prancing horse-drawn hansoms every few minutes. Two offered a free fa-la-la through the park, but I declined, entranced with everything around, far more scenic than anything in the summer months.

Stopped to talk with a chilled but friendly NBC cameraman next to his sound and light transmission truck right opposite the old–now closed, preparatory to a March reopen under new and hopefully solvent management–Tavern on the Green, shorn of its usual razzle-dazzle lights, but now looking cozier for the absence of limousines and cabs and liveried doormen. Now it is just a cozy restaurant nestled in the snow banks of the park. The TV guys, they told me, were forbidden to take shots of anything untoward: Only reportage on weather and snow conditions. No reports on branches falling and ending someone's breathing in an eye-blink.

Dogs on leashes stood on their hind legs like African prairie dogs to salute the large igloo being built opposite the Tavern. The cave/igloo was now the height of a medium daddy, and his son was inside the stuccoed white igloo, the top of his head just-just visible in the 'atrium' open-air unfinished dome, adding incrementally to the enclosure.

A family of 4 kids and tony UWS parents stopped to discuss the activities in the park, and one noticed the kids wore sleek, aerated bike helmets to prevent damage to their noggins should the boys decide to go tobogganing.

Everywhere, people smiled and spoke with one another, accessible as ever in extremis of weather or misadventure. Everywhere, the overhead shiny crisp sun found its echo in the sunny dispositions of the tots and parents, walkers, runners and horse-drawn, rug-covered buggies.

Who said childhood is finished?

Chris Tucker adds:

Spent the better part of this weekend at the local high school which features a large bowl around the baseball field. This provides natural stadium seating in the warmer months, and a wonderful, wide slope for sledding, boarding and tubing when the snow permits. Yesterday a large group of us got together for the fun, some brought beer, juice boxes and a hibachi and cooked up dogs for anyone that became peckish. Today we went out early as it was getting warm and we didn't want to ride slush and mud. But the hill was in good shape on the big side and a kid sized shovel that I keep in the truck kept the tracks in prime condition. The kids love going over jumps, as I did too at that age, but after my first try earlier in the season I decided my jump days were over. The neck and back just don't seem to appreciate the impact like they used to. There is a huge variety of toys available for this. We have seen traditional tobogans (though not this weekend), flat boogie type boards, true surf boogie boards which work just as well, saucers, boats, sleds with plastic runners, traditional Flexible Flyers, sheets of hard plastic, snow boards, tubes of all shapes and sizes (best for adults as they absorb a lot of the shock) and cardboard boxes, which work but have a short half life. The most squealing occurs either when there is a race, moms or dads go down on tummies with kids piled on their backs, or we make a chain with several vehicles and riders. The grown ups tend to make more noises of delight then the kids when we do this last bit. Tons of fun and no TV or video games in sight.

Jan

31

Jungle Ball Python[Ed.'s note: this post contains some vivid descriptions of snakes that may disturb some readers]. My son, John has a pet python. He's a jungle ball python, about 4' long. The python does not do very much, except to wait on his log, in his tank, for a meal. His moves are infrequent and very deliberate. He does not waste a single joule of energy, and just waits patiently for food day and night, week after week, month after month.. Snakes and alligators don't require a lot of food, and can wait for 5 months or more for a meal. They don't exercise, play, show personality, get crazy, or cause any trouble. They just wait for their next meal, single minded, hard wired in their next task..

The snake exhibits several signals when he is hungry, and can be seen after he sheds or evacuates, for example. When he is hungry, I feed him live rats. Although the snake is a master at camouflage and deception, he knows when a rat is being introduced to his tank. Snakes generally have poor eyesight, but can detect the presence of a rat through smell and vibrations. The rat goes into the tank, and the snake sits there sizing up his prey. It can go for 30 minutes to an hour and a half, while the snake watches the rat, waiting. He slowly puts his body in position, moving and flexing his coils quietly, maybe taking 30 minutes for a set up. He will sit perfectly still, while the unaware rat walks all over the tank, sometimes over the rat and,….the rat doesn't have a clue of the dangers. The snake finally senses his best opportunity, strikes at the rat, bites him on the back of the neck, and wraps his body around the rat suffocating him quickly. The rat squirms and quivers while the snake constricts a little more on each exhale of the rat. The snake is so quick, you can hear a swoosh when he attacks, much like the swoosh you'd hear in old Bruce Lee films when they were fighting.

The python, having dispatched his prey, lets him go and positions him for the swallow. When he's ready, he disjoints his jaw and puts it over the rat's nose, and uses his body to push the rat into his mouth, wiggling his neck to allow the rat to be swallowed. It takes about 15 minutes, but that big rat, 40 times the size of the python's head, is swallowed and the snake goes to the corner to hide and slowly digest his meal. I like the way the snake always strikes the rat in the same exact place, with quick dispatch. He makes a split second decision with his pea sized brain and wins. Trading can be like that, requiring split second decisions, and hard lethal strikes.

 The snake has a ritual for eating his prey, and manages to eat without wasting energy, getting hurt, or alerting his prey. Many trades require you to sit patiently for weeks or months for the proper set up, positioning yourself then swooping down on the prey just like the snake does. Snakes have many admirable qualities that traders should study and emulate. These traits include patience, economy of motion, concentration, surprise, and a quick but lethal offensive. No matter that the rat has a brain that is the same size as the snakes's, and is probably much more intelligent, he always loses to the python, every time. The snake is hard wired for the attack, has infinite patience, and will dispatch his prey quickly……all qualities successful traders should strive to practice and learn.

Pitt T. Maner III responds:

These guys are in the news down here in South Florida. Too bad there have been some irresponsible owners.

"Reptile retailers, brace yourselves: the federal government wants to ban the import of some large and seemingly popular snakes. Responding to growing concern over the spread of Burmese pythons in the Everglades, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service proposed Wednesday to ban both the import and interstate transport of the python and eight other snake species, all large constrictors."

A possible 10 to 100 thousand burmese pythons in the Everglades is amazing — they are bit too good at what they do.

My cousin is a big time, amateur "herper" and I remember going with him up to Orlando about 15 years ago to a national convention held there and it was quite impressive to see the reptiles on display and the captive breed ones for sale — water dragons, White's tree frogs, skinks, all sorts of snakes, etc. Very educational. One of the things I remember was a lecture about trying to catch a very large snake that escaped in a multi-room facility — the idea was to set the trap along a wall as the snake would tend to cling to walls as it moved from place to place. Big, non-venomous snakes though can still give some nasty bites.

Here is a summary of South Florida's non-indegenous species, the local vets get a lot of dogs who have tried to lick the Bufo toads.

Marion Dreyfus reminisces:

I remember living among unexpected boas and two-step and three-step crates in Thailand. I came home one night to find a 6-footer in my living room, as we lived near a thriving klong. The maid Sumpohn slew it with a shovel before it bit me. We called her Richard [the Lion-hearted] for a while. Up-country, I stepped gingerly on the roads near fields of produce, as much longer than 6-footers would slink out and slither on the hot bake of the dusty roads. And in Cambodia, I was foolish enough to wear a snakeskin dress in Ankhor Wat, and was actually chased by some outraged untethered serpents not happy with my attire. I changed my dress subsequently, and rode elephants, tall off the ground rather than encounter the ground-bound cold-blooded fauna.

Once, though, I overnighted at a friend's farm in Connecticut, and woke with a serpent cosied up next to my prone body. His pet had eluded the glass cage, somehow, and sought random visiting warmth. It was not the best wake-up notice I have ever experienced.

Jan

31

Mel Gibson in the Edge of DarknessThomas Craven’s story–chasing down his daughter, Emma Craven’s (played by newcomer Bojana Novacovic), killers–was a highly popular 6-part series in the UK in 1985: It’s 15th on the British Film institute’s Top 100 TV list. It has been updated a lot to take note of domestic and international tensions, the aura of secrecy over weapons manufacture and control, terrorism, secret government installations, nefarious black ops, and Gibson as angry avenger on the learning curve of a daughter he evidently hardly knew. It is a thriller set at the intersection of big business and oceanic politicking.

Mel Gibson is no longer the beautiful, mentally slow lad of TIM (Australia, 1979): He’s been away from the silver screen for seven lean years, getting arrested on DWIs and directing some mean-spirited agit-prop religious indictments and the like. As a colleague remarked, He hasn’t aged all that well. We no longer swoon at his visage, and maybe that means we concentrate more on the scripts. His return consists of a dollop of the gripping Liam Neeson thriller, TAKEN (2008) aka a vigilante-pursuing the murderers of his daughter under the misapprehension that her bullet was meant for him, cynical corporate skullduggery a la Russell Crowe in THE INSIDER (1999), plus a rad or two of Merrill Streep and Cher in SILKWOOD (1983). And a dash of the LETHAL WEAPON franchise (1987-1098) whacko residuum.

The four don’t quite intersect. Widowed Boston homicide vet Craven (Gibson) finds the bloody trail of his daughter's murderers leads to a hush-hush defense-industry combine, Northmoor, where she was an intern, supposedly. During the brief few minutes where she is still talking, she neither convinces that she’s an MITnuclear physicist, nor the firebrand integrity-beseiged fighter we are led to see as the plot unspools. We fix on the truly scary, unexplained character of Ray Winstone (who appears in the 44-INCH CHEST ughie indie) playing a mercenary (or magic messenger) we don’t know how to classify, Jedburgh. We see Danny Huston’s Bennett, head of Northmoor, and something immediately snaps into place if you are at all movie-sophisticated: Baddie alert! While a solid character actor, oleaginous Huston never appears as the good guy, so casting him is a menu-card for predictable later evil…. And sure enough.

In Martin Campbell's reworking of the hot British miniseries, Craven’s take-no-prisoners flinty, blind-siding sock ‘em-ups and Danny Huston's serpentine mystery sandwich don’t particularly marry well, some of the unstitched elements being Winstone's pop-up messianic Judgment man. Also not jibing is Emma’s oddly vicious boyfriend and his nasty proclivity to attack visitors related to his now-dead gal-pal. Why would a gorgeous, talented, PhD physicist go for such a creepy unhinged nutjob? How can every meeting Craven has with every friend of his daughter be surveilled, no matter how far out in nowhereland? We never actually see or hear why the film is titled EDGE OF DARKNESS—guess it was somewhere in the TV series, but they forgot to put it back into the update.

And why would a character as insanely intrepid as Gibson’s (and his daughter) be named “craven,” anyway? A jejune linguistic joke?

The infra-dig sarcasm between Huston and Denis O'Hare (as a gummint co-conspirator) is pleasantly arch, and the cast enjoys their twirling-mustaches oily bought men, whether Boston Brahmin statesman or guilty-from-the-gut killer.

Though derivative, it does offer more meat for the lions than many a studio flick, with the lined, gravelly steeliness of its careworn star not ineffective, and not unmatched to a chronicle of a policeman parent with nothing to lose, who apparently cathects for his anxious, angry, sleepless, spoiling-for-a-broiling audience.

Jan

24

Sandra Bullock from The Blind SideTHE BLIND SIDE

Directed/Written by John Lee Hancock Reviewed by Marion DS Dreyfus

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Kathy Bates

Some people never see a normal, happy, intact family in the entire Follywood of Hollywood. Here we have a corrective that warms most people's hearts. Sandra Bullock and crew bring to astonishing life the true! tale of Michael Oher, a traumatized, abused and illiterate boy who became an All-American football star and first-round NFL draft pick with the remarkable, unstinting support of a feisty woman and her cooperative, loving family. One doesn't know which is nicer, the all-American family with a smart, sexy wife and loving, supportive husband, great kids who know how to study and behave properly, or the poignant tale of the emergence of this remarkable talent who overcomes so many social handicaps to triumph where that simply (you figure) does not happen in the real world most people inhabit. I know reviews like this give you cavities, maybe, but THE BLIND SIDE is enjoyable on many levels-script, story, acting, outcome. So if you don't cotton to really great endings, avoid INVICTUS, CRAZY HEART and this one. Bullock's been winning all sorts of awards for this, probably not so much for her usual adorableness and full-on no-BS performance as much as for the delight of seeing such movie-movies can still in this age of cynicism be made. Was everyone in the home office on the slopes when someone green-lighted this one? (Full Disclosure: Bullock herself produced.) Fun fact: Quinton Aaron trained with the Georgia Tech football team in the spring 2009 to ready for the role of Michael Oher. (Though he's a mammoth size, Aaron is a lot flabbier than the real Oher, rest assured.) marion d s dreyfus . . . 20©10

Jan

21

Wes Anderson--director of Fantastic Mr. FoxAVATAR

Are you kidding? Who cares what I or anyone says? As a flick 12 years in the making, by the director of the budget-busting TITANIC, Jim Cameron made a $500 mm movie most everybody regards as must-see –-and you will see it even if we all unload a truckload of bovine manure over the darn 23rd century sci-fi thing.

It’s 3-D! It’s exactly what you and your darkness-loving chums hanker for on a holiday week with gravy and giblets still dense in your tummies. Heavy-duty futurism, slim animatronic females with substantial breastage! La la la. Be on the lookout for Cameron’s signature anti-American jabs, here in the form of American military stand-ins coming in for disrespect and unwarranted opprobrium.

IT’S COMPLICATED

Streep can read the Blimpy recipe guide to the dispossessed and you’d stick around for her to finish up. Steve Martin has that whole expectancy thing going, where you expect him to flop into the wild ‘n’ crazy guy. But he’s nerd central throughout, except where he slips up during one sequence and dances in his usual jackrabbit on speed wackiness. Alec Baldwin gamely bares more than this viewer cared to see, threatening to let some of us revisit our lunch. Last week’s lunch, to be more specific.

To be sure, there are funny bits and LOL sequences.

In the main, however, it’s a cynical and condescending bid for the Boomer bunch now heavily divorced, re-dating again, and impaled on the slippery scree of finding their footing anew among a dazzling array of electronics.

Meryl’s divorcee, however, is about as realistic as the current health monster in the House: She’s wildly popular, fantastically successful in her restaurant, money is no object (there’s a realistic note, huh?), close to her three adult kids, setting up to spend a bundle on a house addition to die for (though with all her kids out of the house and no mate underfoot, and a current kitchen gorgeous enough to hock both your liver and pancreas for—why? Why build a second house not onto but next to the first totally adequate and salivation-inducing first Calif-mansion?–and frantically attractive to her near-stalker ex, Alec, re-married to a rhymes-with-witch hottie of the statuesque school of no-way! As well as the near-perfect available man, her architect, Steve Martin’s understated swain: diffident, appreciative, longing for recommitment.

Sure: This is e-x-a-c-t-l-y the story of millions of 40-ish and 50-ish divorced women in California today, right? It’s Boomer envy. Like as not, there is possibly the plot point that people actually hunt for ‘easy viewing’—give the peeps the predictable pat answers. Be in other words predictable.

We found it too long by a half hour, indulgent, repetitive, annoying and unrealistic. OK, it’s supposed to be a fantasy? So what. It reads like a heartbreak-grad-school HEARTBURN (Nora Ephron’s more affecting, and more honest, dramedy of rocky marriage/successful divorce, starring the ever-steadfast Streep and the cheating Jack Nicholson in the naturalistic Mike Nichols episode of once-great marriage gone terribly Tiger Woods). Even the score evokes that earlier film. Scenes in COMPLICATED ring hollow and absurdly wrong, as when all three grownup offspring learn of the affair their divorced parents are having, and take to (one!) bed in childish retro petulance. Their mother owes them no apology or even explanation. Yet there it goes, as if she hadn’t learnt what being a liberated adult is all about. This is a small but irritating Dr. Spockian infusion into what one has the right to consider a modern story. It is not: It is Carrie and her girls, 15 years later, tossed salad with a few post-coital afterglows, and an anemic starter romance without evidence conducted with a near-catatonic Steve Martin.

FANTASTIC MR. FOX, story by the inimitable Roald Dahl, is Wes Anderson’s hilarious animated adaptation of the children’s fable of a wily fox outfoxing a local farmer with the able and arch amusing assistance of other barnyard creatures. Take the kids if you must—they’ll delight in its silliness, dazzling movement, color and animated imagination—but you will enjoy it far more than even they. A fun-filled delectable hour and a half for everyone.

PRECIOUS. It will probably sweep the awards shows. It has already swept up 29 noms, 3 Golden Globes, and numerous Best of the Year Top Tens. But this grim narrative of an overweight, illiterate Harlem teen unwillingly pregnant with her second child enrolled in an alternative school so her life might head in a better trajectory is tough and ugly slogging. It is probably one of the most under-lit films of the decade. But it offers a script that is scathing and blue with harrowing filth and invective against its protagonist, poor, obese Precious. Hailing from a novel by Sapphire, PUSH, this prize-capturing documentary-feel story is plain hard to sit through, despite staggering performances by the entire cast, especially stars Mo’Nique as a plug-awful jealous mother; Precious herself, played by newcomer Gabourey (Gabby) Sidibe; and tamped-down, de-glammed rock-star Mariah Carey, as a no-nonsense, sensitively played social worker; and luminous Paula Patton’s warmly beautiful guardian angel, Ms. Rain. Though you leave feeling virtuous for having eaten your broccoli-and-spinach of movies, it’s hardly going to send you out clicking your heels, Mr. Kelly.

Dec

20

INVICTUS - Clint Eastwood knows what he doing as an actor, as dozens of worthy efforts have shown over the years. More impressive, right now: He sure knows his way around a two-shot and a script as director. INVICTUS demonstrates that he is not rosk-averse, either. Under the guise of a sports metaphor using the non-American sport of rugby, Eastwood fashions a suggestive reason for the Mandela mandate success in South Africa. It's the involving, even intense, recounting of South Africa's sea change under Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) through the prism of the Springboks’ clamber up against superior teams. Before Mandela’s leadership puppeteering, the ‘Boks were the Chicago Cubs and Boston White Sox of their venue in Pretoria. This is an uncommonly winning case study in leadership, perhaps a bit lyrical and almost too pristine, still deeply affecting. After his release from 28 years in prison, and entirely absent his murderous evil-wife Winnie, Mandela takes office in 1994. The enmity between the blacks and whites is so entrenched that even the national team, the Springboks, are a det4ested stand-in for apartheid and hate. Mandela romances the leader of the rugby nationals, the Springboks, in the person of Matt Damon, now newly blond, fully hirsute, and buff from his recent film, THE INFORMANT, and seeks to turn a symbol of separation into a sturdy flag of hope. There is no better embodiment of Mandela than the wonderful Freeman - who long sought to play this climactic role. He is by this film’s lights more a saint than Gandhi or Moses could be; he is thoughtful to the meek and the least of his people, kind enough to notice the new haircut of his starchy aide de camp. He is humble to all, ever mindful of his recent incarceration. INVICTUS captures the nuances of his political deftness, but captures also the ready inspiration, as well as the ruggedness and tumble of hardball rugby. Eastwood's extraordinary; every camera angle, every lighting cue, every response of the little child straining to hear the crucial game inside the stadium is spot-perfect. Brief strong language, some ardent South African accent, but, in 132 minutes, a rousing sports clarion to unification and full-out masculine teamwork. Winning. Uplifting. A great film in the evening of Eastwood.

The Lovely Bones - Though it is debuting in the holiday period, and though Alice Sebold’s book sold well for many a month, THE LOVELY BONES, directed by Peter Jackson, is a mishmash that ill suits the festive period. Even with Stanley Tucci as the signature creep perv, Mark Wahlberg as the murdered girl’s caring father, and Rachel Weisz as the (too-young) mother of 14-year-old Saoirse Ronan, what is the entertainment in a murdered teenager looking back on her life from beyond? Really. Visionary as was the astounding LORD OF THE RINGS triptych, this is erotomania is a toughie for goo-goo fantasyland. The dreamscapes and Gee-whiz heaven scenes are intriguing clinically, but so what? You get a toothache from the taffy of the afterlife the heroine traverses. It runs counter to the ugliness of the real story, one that is considerably darker and uglier than the Robin Williams-heavenly Crayola afterlife we are tossed into repeatedly to soften the story. An able cast chronicling the slain character's journey from sweetheart schoolgirl to shattered dead soul stuck in a zone between here and there is relieved only by the hard-drinkin’, heavy-druggin’. profane-funny sloth of Susan Sarandon’s hilarious grandma. Maybe too mature for kids, and not enough fun for adults, the film, notwithstanding Jackson’s pyrotechnics and imagination-stealing stunts, is stuck in its own disturbing netherworld between literature and violence, worthy viewing or DVD afterthought. Even popcorn cannot redeem the unavoidable sleaze of the subject matter, no matter who stars as parents and kinfolk.

Crazy Heart - One of the best pictures this year, bar none (even the over-hyped, grim and deeply upsetting PRECIOUS, nominated for all those Golden Globes, oh my) is CRAZY HEART, starring the almost triumphal Jeff Bridges (looking by the minute more like Kristofferson than does Kris himself!) and a beautifully cast Maggie Gyllenhaal. Coddling his own ego loss as a once mythic singer and country superstud, er, star, Bridges plays a down and out country singer who plays the bars and bowling alleys that will have him. He picks up the women who remember when he was the best, and he does one-night stands too rubbery to remember names. He’s sloshed on and offstage, drugged up for whatever he can get hold of. Gyllenhaal and her decency almost light the spark that gets Bridges into shape. Colin Farrell does a sexy turn as a younger, soberer version of the talented guitarman, absent the golden touch of lyricism his mentor still retains. Bridges is not to be outdone for a brilliant performance, immersing himself unself-consciously in a role that is catnip to a real actor’s actor. Magic music, Bridges singing a fair piece through the film. A story arc that vectors in real, with a finale that registers as truer than the usual Hollyweird treacle. You can see this one twice.

BAD LIEUTENANT: PORTS OF CALL NEW ORLEANS - Talk about climate change. For his shimmy down the greased ladder of self-indulgence and loss, Bridges reminds one what Nicholas Cage tries to evoke in BAD LIEUTENANT: PORTS OF CALL NEW ORLEANS, a mess of a remake (No! Is NOT a remake, says director Werner Herzog. But he is nicht gerecht. Wrong. The first one, BAD LIEUTENANT [1992], was only 17 years ago, starring the unforgettable [often buck-nekkid] Harvey Keitel as the corrupt cop beyond redemption. Too soon to do that over again). It’s good to see the honky tonk Big Easy after Katrina, maybe, and Eva Mendes as Cage’s floozy with heart and pretensions to the better life is quite the eyeful. But whoa. Cage as a damaged, pharmaceutical-addicted drunken lout in a shaky Southern drawl; iguanas and lizards littering the screen; boozy broads and bad brothers-in-law. Headache time, Herzog. A sometime Olympian director, Werner can be immortalized here for whacked-out death dances and brawling phantasmagorias. He lets slip the reins of realistic films about real people doing real things. If you are a fan, by all means. But don’t say you were not warned.

Dec

4

L RThe Nightingale

Written and performed by Lynn Redgrave
At the City Center, West 55th Street/off Avenue of the Americas

Lynn Redgrave in The Nightingale is moving, intense, stringently talented in a generational true saga of the Redgraves. Tough, teary, even radiant.

Although she could, she does not stoop to detail her shocking marital dissolution from a husband of 32 years who was cavorting with his own daughter-in-law. Nor does she dwell on her Stage IV cancer, from which she has emerged less mobile but still a brilliant, moving actress, no matter how confined her movements. Nor does she reference the tragic ski-accident death of her niece last year, Natassia (wife of Liam Neeson). 

Redgrave effects personnae changes by a shift in voice, lighting and speed of delivery. The play runs 85 minutes without intermission.

Not an easy visit, but a powerful and worthy experience of theatre, with one of our iconic greats.

Nov

29

I cannot understand why Tiger Woods–admittedly a cool golfer, a stellar performer since he was 3 years old in his field, and a talented public figure as a rule– has to be so transparent with his life. We are expected to make too many disclosures about our lives, and I applaud those who keep to themselves for a change. We admired Jackie Kennedy for not going on TV and jabbering about every detail of her life. In fact, of late, my admiration goes far more immediately and long-term to those who keep themselves…to themselves.

Must we know everything? Must we be inside someone's nostrils? In psychodynamic terms, having to know this much about strangers–these public figures are not our relatives, co-workers or intendeds, after all–is puerile and childlike. We do not set appropriate boundaries, and the 24-hour news cycle merely echoes the egregious blabbermouth calisthenics of the gossip rags. Yes, they are serving a demographic, selling a service, making income and jobs for many. But at what cost? Do we really need to know where Zach Efron buys his shoes or Viggo Mortensen goes to deposit his sperm? Do we need to invade the plastic surgery tics of actors or moguls? Why must our lives be "enriched" by how many pounds a "supermodel" (are there any just-regular models? There don't seem to be) packs on to the tsk-tsk of millions?

Such intrusiveness bespeaks an emptiness in our lives and concerns. Certainly the world is commodious enough to encompass concern for larger issues, especially when so many wish us ill, and there are so many devious and cunning ways to damage the world we know and accept so imperiously. But this untoward concentration on who goes where, with whom, doing what, for how long, is jumping the shark.

I submit that the gate-crasher couple, the Tareq and Michaele Salahi duo, would have been executed almost on the spot by a Saddam Hussein, Hamid Karzai or Bashir Assad if they had suddenl;y appeared at a private function where they posed even a whisper of threat to the head of state, not made the parlous darlings of the talk-show circuit.

No one is here suggesting that we do away with these career crashers. But neither ought we fete them and do precisely to them what they sought all along. And in so doing, encourage others to do the same foolhardy and frankly dangerous thing. As Rep. Peter King says, they should be made examples of, so this does not recur.

Tiger Woods should be permitted his household arguments or tiffs (so long as he does not harm others or fail to make restitution for the damage he and his car inflicted) without being hounded. We are not children, who pull at our parents' clothing and insist on getting the full Monty on everything that passes our eyes.

Nov

25

He flew in to join me for the holiday, remarking how strange it was that so few people were flying on this busiest travel day of the year: The day before Thanksgiving. Just as Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year, immediately following a table laden with pies and feathers, berries and jelly, casseroles and native produce. Why was there not airport pandemonium? It was clear what was happening. It wasn’t that fewer people were traveling.

Millions were still hopping up to relatives and loved ones anywhere-but-nearby. They were just dialing down their travel plans. The announcers on newscasts confirmed my suspicions — that people had traded planes for buses, cars and trains rather than the higher-ticket (if arguably faster) birds with wings of metal. And if they arrived here in the Big Apple in large numbers — while at a medical symposium, I noted over 1,000 cute, pony-tailed cheerleaders (of both genders) domiciling at the Hilton, here to dance and flounce at the time-honored Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, an annual tribute to cartoon characters and beloved memorial mascots, gathered from many states — they usually made their way to the West side for the Night Before the parade 'inflation ritual.' The police cordon; the civilians swarm.

We walked uptown to the American Museum of Natural History, where flotillas of floats were laid out under tent-sized sturdy netting as these characters from Walt Disney, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Schulz and Pixar Studios slowly gained girth and hefted height. Dwarfed armies of Macy’s crews inflated these beloved characters as the evening wore on.

The floats are inflated on West 77th Street, thronged with masses of parents and pint-sized midgety kids wondering why they were being dragged along in a steady mist below the sightlines of what was transpiring over their parents’ heads; and on West 81st Street, parenthesizing the magisterial towers of the stone museum where once Margaret Mead held peremptory sway.

Befriending a genial and cool police officer, we were able to sweet-talk our way across the cordon onto the best viewing side, uptown West 81st Street, assuring all constables that we had ‘invitations’ to parties on the block.

Time was, this hallowed inflation went on all night, starting quite late, and proceeding until dawn. Some of us had had real parties then, before those friends had moved to cheaper digs, and had gaily run down from our hosts to get an egg-salad bagel or a lox-cheese croissant being handed out to anyone foolhardy and insomniac enough to still hang around in the darkest of the wee hours across from Central Park.

That’s all changed. The Macy’s people said they now began to blow up the thick PVC floats beginning before 2 pm on Wednesday, the better to have delighted children ooh and aah as they caught a glimpse of Snoopy, macho Popeye or brave Buzz Lightyear.

Halloween (at least in the canyons of New York) now officially belongs to gender-bending adults in contrived masquerade and finery. Thanksgiving’s parade still belongs, happily, to the kidlets. No snarky sophistication welcome, thank you very much.

Though the merchants along the length of the three-sided block all remained open late, not many were buying — except in the spiffy UGG boot shop next to the Reebok Sports Club emporium of beautiful people determined to remain beautiful. Cafes and eateries were pretty packed for some 10 blocks around, among them, us, consuming Hunan Cottage fare; but regular merchandise was not flying off shelves, as tired kids clung to adult hands, and prams with many sets of twins or two-sies trundled along into the back of people’s knees.

As extra inducement to wonder, backdrop to the proceedings of huffing and puffing machinery dutifully inflating two-storey tall balloons, the Hayden Planetarium is magically lit with an ethereal red light inside the huge plate glass wall facing Columbus Avenue, and a glowing, eerie azure on the side facing West 81st.

Clever entrepreneurs in tacky costumes hawked photos, posing with the kiddies for a few dollars a throw, annoying purists. But evading arrest by the indulgent police. Cotton candy in tight Saran Wrap swaddling still repelled grown-up eaters of real food. Junk food was squeezed in many smeared, pudgy fingers.

From the thousands of kids and parents from New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and upstate NY, you couldn’t tell there was a recession in the land.

Even so, we knew from even a few bantering exchanges with the night’s bright, brief visitors that this was surely the only inflation these hard-working parents were remotely fond of.

Christopher Tucker writes:

Air traffic in NYC was mild yesterday and this morning, apart from a few flurries. Tuesday evening was unusually busy, although it was nothing compared to the air traffic pre-2007 or pre 9/11.  In the "old days" traffic the night before Thanksgiving would leave controllers sweating and cursing, leaving fodder for a year's worth of storytelling. This year and last were tepid at best, giving us a happy rest. Sunday is still up in the air, if you will.

Nov

20

marilyn vos SavantLOVELY, LISSOME LASSES?

CHOOSE SMART, COOL COOKIES

ENSURE SWEETER, LONGER SUMMERS with your choice of a bride

A new Swedish study published at the tail-end of 2009 put out results of a years’ long research project on male longevity. Men wed to smart, educated (also lovely?) women are likely to live years longer. Or than bachelors.

Why would that be?

One of the [unstated] explanations is that they challenge their men intellectually, and make the days and weeks interesting with incident and insight. Another, more obvious, variable is that smarter, more educated women will take far better care of both themselves and their families, including husbands, than the stucco-minded simpleton does. For the same reason that women with PhDs will on average live longer, healthier than the high school drop-out. It is not the genes. It is the ability and savvy to make smarter, healthier choices, resulting in fewer health-hijacks and bugaboos, better living conditions, fewer naughty habits, more attentive sporting, fooding and… everything-ing.

Wiser heads will yield healthier and longer-lived spouses.

At base, this study seems the apotheosis of obvious.

But also germane to the study: Smart men will generally opt for smarter women. Not all, of course. Many men (e.g., Tolstoy, to drop a lustrous literary lion) opt for women they can lord it over, show off to, be ages cooler than. In a research finding published some 20 years ago, the New York Times featured a Sunday magazine article that said fully 90% of men look for dumber mates. About 8% or so didn’t mind a woman of equal intelligence. And the vast remainder, 2%, actually sought out women markedly smarter than they.

Of course, as we noted one year in Singapore, really smart women marry men and let the husbands think they are smarter than their wives. That’s real smarts.

So according to the Swedes, 10% of men in the US are smart enough to hunt out women who will keep them entertained, well and healthily long lived. While–boo hiss–90% don’t have the smarts to recognize the value of living and loving with a woman who can make you think, wink, blink and smile.

So we Mensans should have a leg up, theoretically.

(There, there. Not that way. We meant in the metaphorical sense.)

Pitt T. Maner III asks:

But what do you make of the Swedish "sambo" phenomenom ? The Swedes (I am half Swedish) apparently have a pretty high divorce rate and many decide early on to never to get married at all. A continuous "shacking up" as some of my high school teachers (nuns/fathers) might have called it. Avoiding divorce and its traumatic and stressful effects could be another strategy for some.

"Swedes marry less, cohabit more, live in single-person households more, and marry at later ages than the people of any other rich country in the world. They divorce almost as much as Americans, the world's champions. Re-marriage rates are low. Since the late 1980s a small majority of all births and a large majority of first births have been to unwed mothers and fathers. This cluster of characteristics can be generalized and called the
Nordic pattern of marriage and the family. It has proceeded farthest in
Sweden, but Denmark and Iceland come close; Norway has moved in the
same direction; and so has Finland, but at a slower pace. Marriage and
fertility data, together with attitudinal surveys, show most of the
rich countries have moved in the direction of the Nordic pattern of
marriage and the family, but to a more modest degree. "

source

Nov

19

Gandhi said a person cannot be different from himself in different areas of his life. He meant a person really cannot be someone at work and a entirely different person at home, with his friends, etc. The personality is a whole –- you can’t have a mask for different occasions. What you do in private life echoes in your business life, and vice-versa. What you do in the different areas of your life (private, professional, friendship, religion, spirituality, fun) echoes in every other part.

If you are a fighter in your work, one cannot expect you to be a daisy flower at home -– you will treat your family with the same authority and discipline. If you are kind, you will be kind whether at home or at office. One cannot really perform different roles separately. The person is an unity.

That means if you are lazy, undisciplined, late, in your behavior, it will reflect in your trading. Have you ever thought your trading problems may not be trading related? If you find yourself…

1. Unprepared
2. Getting late
3. Not aware of details
4. Leaving office or desk at crucial times
5. Answering phone calls at trading time
6. Talking aloud as if your office was a party
7. Not taking care of your trading journal…

Can you honestly say that the problem is with the market?

Marion Dreyfus comments:

Not sure about this. Some children are quiet at home, noisy at school. Many of us are introspective at work, but different at private functions. I know people behave differently all the time…

Newton Linchen responds:

I didn't mean surface behavior. An example of what I meant is that person who cannot endure "suffering" (such as boring parametrization) to achieve results. In this matter, Daniel Goleman mentioned a study of children who could not wait the experiment time to not eat a cookie in order to get two cookies — and it seems this behavior (of immediate gratification) had an impact in their professional lives.

Marion Dreyfus comments:

Ahh, yes. Literalist me.

Nov

17

WCBECOMING WINSTON CHURCHILL: The Untold Story of Young Winston and his American Mentor, by Michael McMenamin, Greenwood Publishers (2007)

Summary: CHURCHILL: NOT ONLY A GORGEOUS AMERICAN MOTHER, BUT AN AMERICAN LAWYER-MENTOR, BOURKE COCKRAN

Scholar Michael McMenamin has written a (nearly) tell-all about a little-known phase of the protean statesman, painter and savior of England who is so admired throughout the Western world.

Charismatic Bourke Cockran, who even in the late 19th century made over $100,000 per year, 'adopted' the young Winston when Winston's father, Lord Randolph, died in 1895. His beauteous heiress mother, Jennie Jerome, a New York beauty famed for a number of assets, became the lover of Cockran; his mother persuaded the dashing, gifted orator Cockran to mentor the thus-far undistinguished, undirected Winston. Winnie became a grateful and devoted protege of Cockran.

Winston espoused the former's views and (then-) radical notions of individualism, free trade–and Irish home rule, oddly enough. His influence was most strongly felt on the day in 1904 when Churchill, putting principle over party, left the Conservative berth he had long been a staunch part of, to join the Liberals. The issue: free trade.

Excellent scholarship and hard-to-come by dish, as we say now. Highly recommended. Especially if you are a die-hard fan of this brilliant, confident, global, remarkably prescient politician and statesman, young or old.

Stefan Jovanovich responds:

I have not read Mr. McMenamin's book so I this only as a caution about accepting uncritically the notion that in 1904 Churchill left the Tories over principle after having "long been a staunch part of" that party. Churchill was only elected to Parliament in 1900. Even with his mother's money and his famous father's reputation behind him, he was still very much a back bencher and not one who had gained much favor with his elders in the Conservative Party. He belonged to the faction that were known as the Hughligans - a name given to the supporters of Lord Hugh Cecil who were, as the name suggests, as noisily self-promoting as Churchill himself was. When he opposed Joseph Chamberlain's budget for naval expenditures and increased tariffs, Churchill's own constituents in Oldham deselected him. His leaving the Tories for the Liberals was a matter of absolute necessity; it was the only way he could remain in Parliament.

It is also wise not to read too much into Churchill's support for "free trade". Those words did not mean what we now think they do; the debate was not over the absence of tariffs but over how the colonies themselves would be allowed to engage in direct trade (the same issue that provoked the American revolution and one on which the majority of Britons remained steadfastly for preference, just as they did in 1775). In an absolute sense Churchill believed far less in "free trade" than the American Republicans of the period, who wanted tariffs but no preferences. Churchill never abandoned his belief in the economic necessity and rightness of Empire; his first official position in government was as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies when the Liberals took office with Henry Campbell-Bannerman as Prime Minister.

Oct

16

Directed by Hans-Christian Schmid

STORM, from the passionate and disciplined Hans-Christian Schmid, is in Danish, German, English, Serbian and Bosnian. In any language, it is a must-see.

A gripping political thriller and an important documentation of the horrendous 1990s ethnic violence in Yugoslavia, Serbia and Bosnia.

The Hollywood Reporter lauds it with “Acting across the board is splendid,” but the superb acting is only a portion of the significance of this film, which grapples with a theme few filmmakers would be intrepid enough to approach.

The attractive Hannah Maynard (Kerry Fox, a standout here, last seen in the intense ANGEL AT MY TABLE, brilliant in everything she graces) is the put-upon prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal of the Hague. She is shunted into a trial that is already three years in against a former commander of the Yugoslavian National Army accused of deportation, later murder and brutal ethnic cleansing of Bosnian-Muslim civilians. Though he is acclaimed as a hero among his Serbian confreres, he is an unacknowledged monster among those whom he mistreated but who are yet alive…and dead silent about what they underwent during the violence that transfixed the global airwaves 15 years ago.

The key witness for the case unaccountably commits suicide, almost capsizing the entire case. Though her colleagues and overseers tell her to pack it in, Maynard refuses to yield in the face of what she knows to be a critical juncture in historical justice. Convinced she can unearth further witnesses and reliable facts, and despite ugly intimidation from unexpected sources wherever she travels, as well as cool words from her politically connected statesman-lover, Maynard determines there is extractable dirt under the surface in various sites in Sarajevo. She meets people distraught and silently furious, yet clearly still unable to dare come forward with their witness. The moiling angers of the past may seem smooth to the tourist, but to the citizens trying to make their way among dangerous powers still evidently entrenched and not shy about what they can do to the inconvenient, they are mute. Maynard works all her diplomatic skills and wiles to convince Mira (an extraordinary Anamaria Marinca, prize-winning Romanian actress winner of the Palme D’Or for 4 months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days), sister of the suicide, to testify.

The relevance of the film could not be stronger, as on 19 October, the trial date of the accused Radovan Karadzic is on the Hague calendar. The former Bosnian Serb leader stands accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, and violation of the law at the International Crimes Tribunal. His trial, in fact, is a fulcrum for world reaction and persecution of the Bosnian massacres—and demonstrates sharply the importance of pursuing these crimes via every means possible.

Perhaps by shining the light on such crimes, these terrible abuses and horror can be brought to heel, and possibly stemmed.

Oct

13

White RibbonThe White Ribbon

Directed by Michael Haneke's [Austria]
In German, English subtitles.

Cast: Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur, Burghart Klaubner, Michael Kranz, Marisa Growaldt, Josef Bierbichler, Leonie Benesch (Sony Classics)

Think Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” moved up a century or two, and set in Germany in the early 20th century. Or think Grace Metalious’es 1956 PEYTON PLACE, removed from Middle America and straitened into prim and constraining clothing. Even William Golding’s LORD OF THE FLIES comes to mind. The children here are not cherubs, but as guilty as are the adults.

The images evoked in this astringent, 2½ hour black/white study of deflected lives are of passions barely under control, people seething with unexpressed rage, unpalliated emotion, s_xuality inexpertly stuffed into societally correct gear and guises.

Director Haneke paints an iconic, if austere, masterpiece in violent villagers trying to cope with familial secrets, ugly liaisons, unholy alliances—while looking for all the world like a religious broach of impeccability. The roots of evil. Of fascism. Of religion owning nothing religious.

The town minister thinks he is fair, but he is brutal, unable to show love for his mistreated, heavily restrained children. The town doctor seems a model of probity, but is carrying on a brutally unloving s_xual dalliance with a widow with whom he shares less than nothing, insulting her whenever she asks for a crumb of affection or self-regard. Wives live in frank terror.

People are being hurt in a town with no apparent ‘reason’ for these ‘accidents.’ The doctor is felled while riding his steed of an afternoon. A child is taken into the nearby woods and flayed to within an inch of his young life. A town building is set afire in the darkness of deep night. The rich baron and his wife are not liked, though they employ half the town, and displeasing the baron, especially, spells economic disaster. Children are severely punished without the opportunity to explain or remark on the injustice of the offense they may not have committed. Wives try to flee cruel husbands, without much luck. Children with disabilities are tormented.

All told, it is probably much like our early childhoods, actually. Maybe others’ too.

The lack of color well suits the subject matter, the time just before the Archduke is assassinated, the world is holding its collective breath, and the vileness of the village under its starched aprons and canonical vestments is a caution for so many towns and villages of the past, and those yet to come.

In interview, the director knew very particularly his goal, and his aim was to point to a former time as a metaphor for the later times we all know perhaps too well. His effort is as shocking, but as powerful, as highly decorated German artist Anselm Kiefer’s huge, haunting sodden ‘artworks’ of earth, jagged metal, torn railroad ties and ground glass. They are art only to the extent that they evoke and point haunted fingers at his country for the havoc wreaked on the world in more than one World War.

Not a pretty picture. DER WEISSE BAND is rich with ironies and metaphors viewers cannot escape, even if they leave the theatre mid-film. Probably one of the more important films of the past decade, this director’s searing vision is in its way a cleansing blame, a scalding lesson.

Sep

24

M MooreCAPITALI$M: A LOVE STORY
A “documentary” by Michael Moore

In a faux-soothing voiceover narrative dripping with sarcasm meant to lull with its gloved malevolence, clownish Michael Moore (Sicko, 2007; Bowling for Columbine; Fahrenheit 9/11; The Awful Truth; Roger & Me) carries the spear yet again for his soapbox. (Not to mix metaphors.) (Too late.)

He plays gotcha with banks and Wall Street institutions, capturing security men impassively holding him off at Goldman Sachs, Merrill, outside Lehman, piteously holding empty money bags for the Market CEOs to toss down money to repay the taxpayer.

A native of Flint, Michigan, where his father worked the GM assembly line, he does close-ups on unemployed Detroit workers and their echoing warehouses and abandoned factories. But while he castigates the headmen at car companies, Moore fails to note that the industry died not because of greed on the part of the car industry, but because the very unions he lionizes in his nasal smart-alecky way charged more than the traffic—literally—could bear. The Japanese and Germans he rhapsodizes over—omitting the finicky point that they waged war to the death with us in the 40s, so their industry went understandably belly-up—are now back on track, charging less because their workers expect less, make less, and have fewer womb-to-tomb satisfactions doled out by their union HQ. They deliver the cars the public seems to want. It wasn’t beauty killed the beast, Michael.

Moore focuses his lens on the crying men and women being foreclosed. Their petite protests calling for the banks to stop ‘hounding’ them are covered in loving close-up. But not once does he discuss the meltdown from its ACORN-, Chris Dodd- and Barney Frank-encouraged mismatched underpinnings: The families could not afford these houses to start with, and foreclosure was an unfortunate foregone conclusion. It wasn’t all due just to the MBS people on Wall Street. These noble people squatting where they are no longer paying back their debts are simply caught red-handed as they tried to rip off the system. Oops! Our bad! pays few dividends in comfy home and hearth. To be sure, many are the culprits behind the meltdown, but this fairy tale is not the exegesis he thinks it is.

He gets cheap laughs throughout by quick, almost subliminal montage cuts of Palin, Cheney; longer and deeper excerpts of Bush 43; and all things GOP. He shows the tearful joy of students when the new guy is elected, shows his overhyped “Change” speech cuts. Taking aim further back, he mocks and derides Reagan for his movie and ad background.

But Moore elides all mention of the corruption that is now emerging, in the $835,000 handed out like Good’n’Plenty to the operatives and thugs of SEIO and ACORN. He gets in a few digs at Madoff, so we know he was tweaking the movie during recent weeks. While he shows the rise of the popularity arrow from candidate McCain to the so-so relative heights of the new guy, he somehow misses showing the equally fast plummet of his chosen in the past months. Fails to show the massive, much larger protests against the new President in townhalls or Washington, DC; fails to even mention that the people who shoe-horned the election results have been definitively exposed, are now disgraced and defunded. Fails to demonstrate the least journalistic responsibility on what might be the positives of Capitalism. Fails to show how, if the first bailout was a snake-oil deal, the recent doings of bailouts and porkulus bills are far more costly, and far more imperiously shoved down the public gullet.

Moore on the current occupant of such deals? He will have none of it.

Of his own millions, his apartment in a tony building in the City, his new office in Michigan, his fat bank balance owing to the same perilous capitalism? We hear nothing, nor any acknowledgment.

Of all the carefully sculpted half-told tales and stuff he pushes, there is one news gobbet that might be viewed as a scoop: He calls into question the dreadful custom of many large corporations of insuring their young workers in case of death. Untold workers died without their wives or husbands being at all aware of the heavy insurance policies their companies had bought against them. This was unconscionable.

This custom stopped, became public knowledge, before the film was complete. It should never have been allowed, and it does seem an unforgivably ghoulish and icy way to add gravy to the bottom line.

Moore also points out how shockingly underpaid many new pilots are; they need to supplement their incomes with waitressing or serving at MacDonald’s. But this is not news.

He has nothing good to say at all about this country, nor has he excavated any positive aphorisms on this exceptional country, from Ben Franklin to our day. He interviews radical priests in their richly appointed and gilded churches, unaware of the irony of these lavishly supported religious criticizing the institution of capitalism. Like Keith Obermann, who never dares entertain a guest who might disagree with him, Moore does not deign to interview anyone who might have a good word for the system that made him the modern Mr. Chutzpah, unshaven and richer than his entire lineage. By a country mile.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, is divorced. From reality.

marion d s dreyfus is a movie reviewer at Rotten Tomatoes .

Jul

14

If you want a family entertainment, of the two, HARRY POTTER and BRUNO, which do you think is unsafe at any speed?

Harry"HARRY and the Half-Blood Prince" features magical wonders and extensive character development and story machinations. Characters introduced in Chamber of Secrets, Sorcerer's Stone, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix are revisited, and they are more delicious for having a beloved history of being arch, sneering, weird, freaky, evil or quirky. There's nary a wayward word in the 21/2 hours, the scenery is gobsmackingly shuddery and flabbergasting (Norway, Scotland, British Isles, elsewhere), things come to life and things expire picturesquely, and there's hormones in the air of Hogwarts, whether you are Muggle or wizard. Quidditch again takes to the air, flaxen-haired bad guys smolder and wreak spells, potions are mixed and loosed, lissome lovelies fall in love with geek-sidekicks and baby sisters grown to elegant teens. Beards are thick and intertwined with lockets and laces. Clothing is dark but subtly threatening and pointed when you might least expect it. We saw it in 2D, but a 3D mastered version tantalizingly beckons for those of us who were bewitched by set and scenery, sidelongs and sidelocks — and need a second viewing to get the entirety of the saga. Stuff is always happening at the margins you don't want to miss. We'll see the 3D version before the week is out. And then there's one more to go.

BrunoWhereas BRUNO. Second go-round from Sacha Baron Cohen features beyond-the-usual vulgarity, excess, guttering of the public dialogue-far beyond what is necessary to make us laugh. Although we can't help laughing at his send-ups of celebrity adoptions of black children from exotic locales, and his SEX IN THE CITY/male version extravaganzas of attire, his eliciting a rude (but a propos) expletive from a surprised Harrison Ford, and disbelief from Paula Abdul (forced to sit on live Mexican-laborer 'furniture' in the absence of real household effects), he mocks not only gay fetishistic habits, but ordinary Americans who are — as in BORAT — taken unawares to a cruel and ludicrous degree. As an Austrian non-hetero fashionista (speaking Yiddish; in Borat the Kazakh was really Hebrew, if you listened at all carefully) he is an equal opportunity offender. There are, to be fair, many honking yuks to be had, but they are interspersed between so much upsetting and overdone queer stuff that one grows exhausted lifting one's jaw from one's chest, where it finally comes to rest-the movie overworks the penile sight-gags (pun intended), the nude effects, the gay-fey jaded ephemera, and sets the bar ever lower for the poor American (and global) movie-going public. Coarsening on this scale frightens the horses, and makes one wonder why Sacha Baron Cohen — a clear genius by most lights — aim so very low for his effects, when he could get us with half the work and a fifth the grossology.

marion d s dreyfus 20(c)09

Jun

20

SO YOU GOT THE PART ~ now what?

As a general rule, if you want something unremittingly, desperately, you probably won't get it, unless there's a perfect storm of availability, focus, economic feasibility and pacific heart.

If you aren't really sure, er, maybe, and you go for something half-heartedly, you may be disturbed to learn that, aghhh!, you actually got what you only so-so wanted.

Did you want that contract? Really? Did you want that fill? Weren't you sort of hoping nothing would happen, and you could dandle those thousands in the currency pool overseas just a few more days? Did you really want that abandoned unit in Boca, at that price, at this time?

It's fairly undeniable…there's always a distinct feeling of let-down when a deal actually chugs forward, becomes a done deal. That courtship dance is durn over.

It's the Universe's way of keeping you off your feed; a caution to reprimand you for putting out quasi-insincere energy.

So you try out for a play. The director gives you a bunch of roles to read. You're vain enough to want to play the sexy babe with the doctor in a suppressed, subterranean love affair That Cannot Say Its Cleavage. Heat. Temperatures rising. Yadda bing.

But you give more juice to the funny Frau Bleeglefleegle with an Austrian accent. Or the half-coo-coo elderly sweetheart who poisons Cary Grant's visitors with tainted elderberry vino. Whatever.

So now we have the part we auditioned for in "Harvey." Vetta Simmons, a nouveau everything, an arriviste with a vengeance who lusts for society, recognition and a bien-pensant beau for her dimmish, dowdy daughter.

It's not the role itself of course. It's the rehearsals, a vista of days or evenings stretching over the horizon. Weekends lost in 4-hour segments. Always being professional, meaning always being on time. Not so easy. Plus the make-up and costumery of someone not oneself. Being yuckier than oneself. Eww. Or jerkier.

Part of the allure is the otherness of enacting another character. Part is creating an ensemble with strangers until one constructs, day by day, an inevitable jewel of excellence, music, blocking, lines, poetry and laughs.

Poof goes the prospective vacation. Wham-o flies the plans to leave for 2 or 3 months to rework some of the countries recently worked. And what if the workaday schedule shifts? We never say no to regular income streams, and it's a certainty in this popcorn stand that the moment we commit to a (freebie) play, along comes a paying project or gig or excitement we can't turn down.

Is that in fact the sympathetic magic we seek to evoke to begin with? Aha! As the doctor says to Portnoy in the eponymous book by Philip Roth: Now, vee begin!

Jun

12

AFGHAN STAR
A film by Havana Marking
Review by marion d.s. dreyfus

"A fantastic documentary about a talent competition in a country where you would never dream such a thing is possible." - Oprah Winfrey, May 2009

Winner of the Directing and the Audience Awards at Sundance Film Festival (2009 World Documentary Competition).

In Afghanistan, under the Taliban, you risk your life to fly a kite, let alone indulge in singing or dancing. Fun is pretty much outlawed. But after 30 years of war and five devastating years of Taliban domestic terror, pop culture is beginning to inch back-since 2005, millions of Afghanis are tuning in to Tolo TV 's wildly popular American Idol-style series "AFGHAN STAR."

Like its Western counterparts, people compete for cash prizes (and the sibling tow-along, record deals). Surprisingly, the contest is open to everyone across the torn and rugged country, no matter gender, ethnicity or age. The 'out tribes' and out of favor Islamic sects get a chance to compete, and 2,000 people audition, including three unimaginably brave women. When viewers vote for their faves via cell phone, it is for many their first encounter with the democratic process.

Winner of the Directing and Audience Awards at Sundance's 2009 World Documentary competition, Havana Marking's timely and poignant film follows the hairpin stories of four finalists-two men, two women-as they hazard everything to become the nation's favorite performer. For the women competing, especially, their independence and temerity has fierce consequences that ricochet far beyond the contest in the film. Observing the Afghani people's relationship to its emergent pop culture, "AFGHAN STAR" is an unexpected window into a country's tenuous, ongoing struggle for modernity. What Americans consider frivolous entertainment is nothing short of revolutionary-and deeply human-in this troubled shard of the world.

This is Director Havana Marking's first feature documentary; she earlier directed "The Crippendales" (2007)- a 30-minute film about the first troupe of disabled strippers, which won the UK Channel 4 scheme for New Talent. In 2005 she made "The Great Relativity Show," a series of animated shorts that explained the Theory of Relativity; these won the Pirelli Science award. Before 2005, as a TV producer, she worked on some of the most successful UK programs and films: The F Word, Michael Palin: Himalaya, River Cottage, No Going Back, War On Terra - What Would Jesus Drive? Havana is a respected journalist with articles printed in the Guardian and Observer. Redstart Media is her own production company. UK/Afghanistan . 87 minutes.

marion d s dreyfus 20©09

May

27

The two guys who put the Upper West Side Street Fair from 72nd to 79th, on the downtown lanes of Broadway, are Ray and Mort. NLN, as they say in the penal biz… no last names. But they put on these things, and it's a fun show: Free. Just walk along and drink it all in.

About a dozen booths per block. Cost of a 10-foot-long frontage on the road, where approximately 40,000 people cross by on a good day, is $185, if you reserve the space two or more months beforehand. For one-month reservation, it's $210; last-minute yellers get a cram-in for $260.

Today was a good day. Sunny, hot, no rain.

There are the regulars, the T-shirts and the tie-dyed dresses, this year with some fetching hanky-point hems in three colors and a bit of gold dazzle. There are the plant guys, born and bred in Brooklyn, with palms and orchids and geraniums on display, along with elegant ceramic or celadon 6" vases.

There are all the foodies: The corn on cob people, the tortillas, the Thai food dumpling dips, the corn tortillas mixed with cheddar-grill melt folks. The long, skinny balloons in an array of colors, twisted to fit onto a child's head, and extend 3 feet into the West Side sky atop her head.

And there are the sock counters, always a good buy. The Indian and Paki rug merchants. And the 'special price' NY Times booth, with freebie tote bags in graduated sizes if you get the weekly or the weekend delivery. He had one other guy there today, which means they split the 8+ hours; not a great signal, when the Spanish and Thai franchises have the same space, and they're running their flip-flops out with serving people. The sweet potato fritters, the icy lemonade with lime rinds, for a single. The nut sellers. The dried fruit sellers.

The high-end products are languishing. The costly bags and the handmade silk or chiffon blouses. The bottle 'gowns' in satin, from China, that are gorgeous, but serve few practical goals aside from gifting someone for a supper invitation. The table runners in damask and silk.

How are the vendors doing? According to the Israeli with off-price 'name-brand' cosmetics, business is off 25% this year, ITE ('in this economy'). The Times guy and the balloon-twist people shrug-business is no better than last year. Which means it's worse, but they don't want to give themselves the evil eye. The homemade rug fellow picked a fight, looked up at the skies, and refused to give any figures, pleading "Rain in a minute, gotta pack up." But the orchid guy and his attractive Gen. Y daughter lifted their shoulders, and did a little Tevya mini-hora, "Thank Heaven-we are doing BETTER!" he smiled and explained both humbly and with joy. "Hate to brag, 'cause I know a lot of these guys aren't doin' so well…but…" Among the few benefiting from the 'stimulated' economy.

In this economy.

No matter what the market is doing, people want comfort food, comfort items, a lovely plant, a cuddly pet. A friend.

May

22

THE NORMAN CONQUESTS – Round and Round the Garden

A play by Alan Ayckbourn

Directed by Matthew Warchus.

The audience at this Old Vic production is swollen with the reedily mature as well as the well-heeled and sporadic younger theatrical aficionado.

No wonder.

"The Norman Conquests" was penned in 1973, but is still comfortingly timely. Round and Round the Garden, one part of three cyclical plays, loops in and out of the foibles of men and women in affairs de coeur or if-only! affairs. ITE (In This Economy, a current handy initialization going the rounds with which any financial guy worth his Sell-order should be acquainted), this good-natured and superbly acted romp is catnip to the down in the mouth or financially troubled. Better than a stretch on the chiropractor's table. Or an inhalation of ozone. This is a blueprint for a laff-factory, to be safely enjoyed by the entire demographic of theatre-goers.

Ayckbourn has been in the play biz since 1959, pouring out an astounding 69 comedies (revues, one-acts, children's plays, adaptations, Grey Plays) in that half-100–trumping all but a very very few playwrights. Even the world's reigning playwright laureate, Tom Stoppard, has put out only 24 acknowledged knockouts. (Stoppard's younger than Ayckbourn, however.)

In this romp, one of a triple cycle that may be seen in any order–Round and Round the Garden; Living Together; Table Manners–you get charmingly quirky and beyond-witty performers hopping and cavorting onstage, in-the-round style, as are all Circle In the Square productions. The gifted Ayckbourn–a Brit whose mid-career play, which went on to score phenomenal success and became an equally sensational comic movie we were invited to angel, but dumbly! incomprehensively! opted not to–forces you to laugh even if you come in dour and depressed.

Six amazing British actors under the standout direction of Matthew Warchus, amuse, command the amusing garden stage, titillate and delight for two hours. There's not an eyedropper's worth of the world outside, the roller coaster in the markets, the wars asea, the brutal price of Haagen-Dazs. Love, infatuation, cement-headed swains, and the foibles of marriage to difficult spouses conk you with willing suspension of disbelief and immersion in silly. It is expert acting, delirious scripting, spot-on comic-lode direction.

And for the (wise and timely) investor, since you are a shoo-in to attend the other two once you are beguiled and tickled by this one, it is a fiscal bonanza. The plays go on in a round robin of performances, so you can see them all in a day or so, or stagger them for three days of literate, aerating hilarity.

Every viewer will probably grab two more tickets to glom the entire cycle of Old Vic surprises, goofy interactions and whompin' lies.

Table Manners: Events of the weekend as seen from the dining room. Living Together: Events of the weekend as seen from the sitting room. Round and Round the Garden: Events of the weekend as seen from the garden.

May

3

MasaOne always expects the Japanese to be very honest. It is well known that if you lose your wallet loaded with cash in Japan it will be returned to you a year later intact, and that the only place as safe as Japan is Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. The idea of even looking at a dinner tab to check its correctness is certainly inappropriate since 95% of the customers are Stuyvesant and Julliard blood brothers. So I was stunned when eating at Masa the other night where the price had recently been reduced from $500 to $400 to find the following item printed on the check as it was handed to me, and had to look at it closely since I am over 40 and don't wear glasses. "There is a service charge of 20% added to the check. But it is not a gratuity. It covers the administrative and operating expenses of the restaurant and is not shared with employees." What a way to end a beautiful dinner. Presumably other restaurants and other businesses have operating expenses also? And presumably when one is told there will be a 20% service charge, one would expect it to be a gratuity? There are all sorts of new ways for companies to survive the recession. Restaurants in New York are taking to adding a surcharge onto the bill if you wish or eat bread or drink water. But most businesspeople know that making a customer feel that he's been gipped is not a long run way to success. On the contrary, the customer should always feel he's getting more than his money's worth. I would be interested in other special shortsighted recession-beating forays that our specs have been exposed to.

Steve Ellison writes:

LuggageAirlines seem to go the extra mile to make customers feel gipped. On a recent trip, U.S. Airways charged me $25 to check one bag. As I was checking in for a redeye from L.A. to Boston, United Airlines offered to upgrade me to a seat with a few more inches of legroom for $25. When planning this trip I used a search engine that showed both the airlines' stated prices and the real prices after adding on surcharges and fees. In some cases the real price was nearly double the stated price.

Craig Mee comments:

Another twist on this is completely the opposite: 'pay what you think it's worth.'

The example I link to is in kiwi land, but I've heard exactly the same happening in London, and with the manager staying most of the time there in front, while their people look after them. If I ran the restaurant, I'd just make sure that the tables were as far away from the exit as possible, so anyone who tossed you five pence had the walk of shame to deal with it (i.e the opportunity for waiting staff to throw them that knowing look of "thanks for nothing").

Vince Fulco writes:

MonitorsMost recently while shopping for multi-monitor video cards from numerous manufacturers, critical cables for the interfaces were not included. They easily added 30% to the overall cost, and I assume the resulting markup is many times greater vs. if everything were included with the device itself.

There seems to be a not too subtle attempt at teaser prices even in more traditional venues. Southwest Airlines is a great example. New to Minneapolis, they're heavily advertising their summer fares to Chicago for $49 among other attractive deals. Not surprisingly, any 'deal' requires traveling at the worst possible times and multiple interim stops; sometimes as many as three or four. Not a way to start a relationship with newer customers and a disconnect from their message of being clear about the total prices vs. the other guys.

Another current example is a regional furniture company advertising all products at 77 cents on the dollar. What marketing psych service advertised the switch from the old N% off sale? It doesn't resonate well.

Marion Dreyfus adds:

TzooTake advantage of the numerous specials in travel now, especially pre-summer. TravelZoo offers a raft of deals that are good, though you are warned about taxes that can make a huge difference in the stated to real price. Also note that some fail to include key variables that change the price. Departure days can be irregular, inconvenient or uncomfortable, double occupancy at a hotel may be expected. You may be expected to rent a car.

Apr

24

Along the Popcorn Pathway

"Moon"

Directed by Duncan Jones' Reviewed by Marion DS Dreyfus

Starring Matt Berry, Robin Chalk, Dominique McElligott, Sam Rockwell, Kaya Scodelario, Kevin Spacey, Malcolm Stewart, Benedict Wong

After the sci-fi stylings of "Silent Running," the (1980?) Bruce Dern favorite of a solo human caretaker on a faraway planetoid, "Moon" is a workmanlike little entertainment that, for only $5 million (basically bubkes, in today's hyper-inflated film making costs), and 33 days' shooting, delivers suspense, human interest, not a few slams at the rapacious mega-corporation. In "Moon," we are in the near future, living off a huge and fecund form of energy, Helium-3, mined and delivered to Earth by a solo caretaker on base Sarang, to the ever-thirsty earthlings. Lunar Industries, which, while a 'green' company, still manages to exploit its worker(s), lie, finagle their Comm-Sat so messages are endlessly delayed, meaning only tapes are sent, not live. (This is getting a tad old, guys: Maybe the next slew of films can slam ne'er-do-wells, slackers, people who grow air ferns?)

With Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, sole supervisor of mining, coping and transmitting, is GERTY, played by a creepy Kevin Spacey (when isn't he creepy?) a sentient anthropomorphic voice-helper robot: We are in the turf of HAL, from "2001." Rockwell is an attractive, sturdy, empathic actor, one who has been largely wasted in vehicles beneath major filmdom's attentions, chiefly the negligible "Choke." He manages to people the film (in several roles) as well as Tom Hanks did in his bravura island "Cast Away" (2000) stint.

After his 3-year contract is all but up, why can't the talented, lonely base-manager rejoin his Earth wife, Tess, and his 3-year-old daughter, Eve? His health declines, he sustains a near-fatal accident in his lunar rover, and he suddenly notices another guy in the base station, one who looks uncannily like himself.

Our very first love was sci-fi, after comic books, so this film harkens back to our first heartthrob. "Moon" brings a futuristic sensibility into the pragmatic utilitarian. The evil corp. Lunar is an absentee ogre, but plays its role inconspicuously throughout. The moonscapes we see are nicely done-especially on such an asteroid's budget-but more interesting for viewers are the clearly puzzling aspects of his new technical reality; Bell, unassisted by GERTY or the new guy, tries to figure out what's going on, whom to trust, and why that other guy is on the scene. If escape is your hatch, when the lights go down, "Moon" gives the liftoff you expect, ensconced in that dark seat.

marion d s dreyfus 20(c)09

Apr

18

The femme fatale seduces her lovers with her beauty and charm, but the sexual allure I think is the characteristic that bonds her victims the most in a deadly and compromising relationship. For some reason, she hypnotizes her victims, sometimes more than one at the same time, attracting them gradually, but inexorably, in a situation they can escape only with extreme actions and outcomes. She builds slowly and scientifically, an asymmetrical relationship where signals of confirmation of her affection alternate with denials. She has a sort of network where victims are monitored and managed to make sure they do not escape. She does all she can not to let them free, including lying. Her lovers enter finally a state of dependence and obsession that she enjoys and of which she drives the dynamics that with time become more and more extreme. The desperation, exhaustion, anxious and obsessive phase of lovers is characterised by an unhealthy and overwhelming attachment that can cause irrational decisions. The final destructive phase involves feelings of self-blame and often anger. The deadly femme fatale has a complex personality, hard to recognize at first. When victims realize the situation, it may be too late. Similarly, the market seduces lovers with charm, beauty and the art of deception. The deadly outcome leaves victims with huge losses.

Marion Dreyfus writes:

Just because the vast preponderance of readers here is male is no reason to excoriate females — the description of f.f. goes way overboard. Most women are aware of their allure (it does not take much to excite randy males, which describes, given the chance, 95% of all the gender), but we do not spin these nets and traps — it is an anachronistic model, based upon the impotence of former females in insurance securities, investments and her own nested income. Absent the need to survive and ensure for her needs, these females melt into the tough, hard-working, capable, no-nonsense female of today. To the extent that women are again (arguable if so) 'femmes fatales,' it is because of the insecurity of the times. That is why skirts rise in lean times: Females are wont to finding and bonding with a future of plenty, not want, and the sexual signal is the come-hither to desirable males.

Indeed, if a woman does behave in this alluring, seductive pattern when a male is about, it compliments his status-quotient. Were he to be adjudged low in value, her interest would not be piqued, and her sexuality would be aimed elsewhere.

We all try to to survive. The devices and tools women have are mimicked in the insect and animal world models–these are meant to procure food and necessities–stop spinning the paradigm as if it were *sui generis* for no reason other than the gratification of the destroyed male.

Scott Brooks replies:

Just like women are often attracted to the rebels…..you know the old saying….good girls are attracted to the bad boys….men are often attracted to femme fatales. I dated a FF for a short time in college. I found myself attracted to her as she was obviously a "bad girl". The attraction didn't last long as I found I was not quite as "adventurous" as she wanted to be.But of course, today, the Mistress has her hooks in me and she's driving me crazy. But I live a well balanced life. My wife is a balance wheel, very well grounded and keeps me on the straight and narrow!

Now our very beautiful, very femine Dr. Dreyfus bemoans the use of the FF phrase…..sweet innocent Marion…..who, I'll bet, has gone hunting, fishing and shot more guns than most of guys on this list…..who did her stint in the IDF. Who has roamed the hostile streets of the middle east and who manages to navigate the often moody straits of the Type A middle aged successful men who inhabit this list……and yet…… does so with flair, feminity and grace.

Fair Marion has probably been in more dangerous situations than many on this list will ever be…..I like to think of her as our groups own private FF……a living character in an adventure novel…..so we get to have all the adventure (but only in our minds) with none of the danger!

Apr

8

One of the more upscale British laddie mags recently jawed on at length about the shift from size zero boy-models to 'normal'-sized, fit, regular guys who "look capable of doing the job" they are photographed in. The nameless street-urchin male waifs of the past seven years are nowhere to be seen in the hot books of the trendoid set.

These androgenous boy-men held sway in the fashionista capitals and photo layouts since 2001, when designers constructed threads that were younger, tighter, decidedly skinnier than adult males could reasonably be expected to purchase. Or wear.

One is forced to suss out why, after the popping of a market bubble, and a global setback from the 9/11 attacks, the mood would shift to something so outré that working men would be left on the sidelines.

Were 'real men' wholly if temporarily disenfranchised because they had to will themselves up the success ladder anew?

Or were no-sex/no-gender pale males the only images that sold to the few customers willing to buy fripperies and bling? Were the 'tween set with disposable income that did not reside in Market realities or job-jobs the only ones with disposable ka-ching?

The pendulum has swung back, however. Top designers and their acolyte photogs have realigned what constitutes the Body to Emulate Now, since 2008 sometime.

The indication is that x-ray androgenic, sorta-males do nothing to comfort the working classes in a downturn. Men were turned off, and stayed away from purchasing the unwearable threads in droves. And women didn't like looking at these anorectic no-pec wonders. Such geldings offered literally nothing to fantasize about.

Top global male model this minute, David Gandy, is macho, understatedly muscled, toned…and beautiful to gaze at. Ladies and gentlemen, the Masculine Male. Is. Back.

Proving that it is not just beauteous femmes needed to woo the men back to recovery effort in freighted, weighted times. But females too want (and need) to turn up the erotic thermostat for comfort 'food' and gender-role righteousness when the economy goes awry.

This is, to our eyes, a newish index. Or a gloss on an older, more established marker. When hedge-fund, derivatives- and swap-money woes are here in play:

Androgeny, go away.

Mar

17

MarionMarket prediction by riding around aimlessly:

Aside from the disheartening evidence of restaurants, businesses such as Circuit City and others that seemingly moments ago were thriving, I see a slight sign of what I deem an upturn.

As I traverse the neighborhood on my vehicle, I see the license plates proliferating. Just a few months ago, I saw severely strictured ‘plate-diversity’: NY, NJ; Connecticut and Pennsylvania. I do this every time I leave the house: I set a number of different plates from the 50 states, assigning a total of them before I arrive at my destination. I have a formula for this — essentially six blocks per 'new' license plate/state.

In NYC, of course, there is likely to be a profusion of people from all the states, so it works out as fewer than six blocks, but the formula holds for longer distances, so I use it. Recently jaunts yielded a maximum of five or seven different plates in a two-mile distance.

However, of late, I have noticed the plates are from as far afield as Indiana, California, Minnesota, Colorado and even, occasionally, Alaska. (I also count police cars — the first, anyway — as a separate “state” for some reason based on the paucity of police cars in the vicinity, most days.) The average two-miler produces 20-25 different plates. Could this be a leading indicator? People were clearly not traveling interstate when the price of oil was $145/bbl, but that is changing, and obviously, people are high-tailing up to NYC in their cars, parking on the street, spending on restaurants and hotels, groceries and department stores.

The license-plate index idea of mine is valid. At least as good as skirt length and applications for mortgages and short sales. Now we just need to assess by how many months it's predictive of market-and-general economy ascent.

Scott Brooks writes:

ScottThe license plate formula is very location-dependent. I could walk or travel two miles from my home and could see no license plates other than MO. If I go downtown or travel down the highway, I'll certainly see many different states as St. Louis is a crossroads (the Gateway to the West) for people traveling cross-country.

It is also very time-dependent. If one were to drive around during rush hour, one would likely see mostly MO or IL plates, but if one were to drive around during other times, it would seem logical to see more plate diversity.

Mar

9

Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales is good re-read in these troubled times. I've reviewed it before, (see past discussion on the site here) but so many big and small are not surviving. Live a river, a good book is never the same when read over. He has some good advice.

There are two aspects to survival: avoiding getting into trouble, and surviving once in deep.

How to avoid getting into trouble.

Tao Te Ching says, The farther ones goes, the less one knows. There are a number of phenomenon at work that put you in deep trouble.

1. When in danger, the IQ goes down and the mind starts shutting out appropriate input, or goes into a stupor. This compounds the danger and leads to death. 75% of people react this way. Perceptions themselves change. Its very dangerous. Training and preparation help avoid shutdown.

2. We make mental models and as a result of confirmation bias, ignore cues that the model is not appropriate. Experts are especially susceptible to this. Models are simplifications, and complex systems can go way out of bounds. Like the current market situation. Then the models are no longer appropriate but we cling to them, putting us in harms way. Models come from past experience, limited experience and may not be appropriate as new situations arise, as they always do. Here is where humility comes in. A Zen saying,"In the beginners mind there are many possibilities: in the expert's mind there are few."

3. Be able to perceive, change plans, adapt, bail out.

How to get out of trouble.

4. The right positive mental attitude can keep one out of trouble, and allow survival when in deep. Some aspects of the right attitude are humility, awareness. Take personal responsibility rather than blaming outside factors. Surprisingly empathy and taking on the role of rescuer, rather than victimhood helps with survival. Death comes when people lie down and give up.

5. An interesting aspect of survival is friction. More effort cannot overcome friction. It only leads to exhaustion. Plans never go right, there are always delays, at the worst possible moment. Its Murphy's law at work. Its the vig. The cure is to conserve energy. Only go at 60%. Keep a reserve. Exhaustion is often the cause of death. When in danger or lost, people panic, and start flailing about, become exhausted, and lay down and die. Rather, be still, rest, observe. Then start to consolidate and make a plan. Get your bearings. Don't hurry. Get back on path.

Epitecus said, "Let silence be the general rule, or let only what is necessary be said, and in few words." The idea is to avoid chattering. Mental balance and focus is critical in survival situations.

"If you get a lucky break really use it. You have to fight like a bastard." Says one survivor. Other use other mantras repeated, to help survival mentality.

Last thing: be cool.

George Parkanyi writes:

In late October 1999 I went into a cold river and pulled someone out who had jumped off a bridge. Luckily her winter clothing had kept her afloat, and as it turns out thankfully the rescue was not all that difficult. . When I saw her shadow floating in the dark under the bridge, I remember thinking she could sink at any time, and for all I knew she was already dead. She'd been in the water at least 5-7 minutes. (I had run from the nearby video store to see what was going on when someone rushed in to call 911.) I quickly threw off my coat, sweater, and shoes so I'd have something dry to come back to, said a split-second prayer, and waded in. Then time slowed down — and I felt more like a detached observer. It was like something or someone else had taken over and was driving, and I was just watching it happen. I don't remember feeling the cold.

When I reached her, surprisingly she was still afloat, face-up and conscious. I was up to my chin in water but didn't have to swim. I introduced myself with "Hi I'm George. I'll be your rescuer for this evening. What's your name?" "Nobody", she murmured — par for the course I suppose as she was trying to kill herself. So I grabbed her coat and literally just towed her in. I heaved her onto shore and threw my coat over her, but about half a minute later the firefighters and paramedics arrived and took over.

Before then, I never knew what I'd do in that situation, or what it would be like. As Jim says, the mind really does go into a totally different state. And I think it starts at the point where you've fully committed yourself. But before I went in I did make some quick calculations; perhaps 30 seconds worth — help would be on its way, I was a strong swimmer, pretty cold water, shoes off, need something dry later, how much time to get there, how much time would she have, how much time would I have. So the rational mind is still key.

The one funny thing about that night was the look the video store clerk's face when I sloshed back into the store all wet and finished renting my video.

Russ Sears writes:

Just today, I was thinking about what makes US strong is that we all face the "prisoners' dilemma" together, but most of the people I know tend to think of it instead as the "rescuers' dilemma".

Best case, small gain, most likely case cold, pain from an ungrateful soul, but the worst case…

Do you risk it?

When the neighbor's barn burns or is hit by a tornado, we all pitch in to help. Because we know it could have been us. She may not have wanted help, but if she was your daughter, you would have been delighted that someone like you was there. People here in fly over country are talking survival of buying guns and heading for the hills of Canada or Alaska, if things get ugly and bad. But it is just talk, always will be, we have a duty.

George Parkanyi replies:

Helping others is critical, because as you point out "There but for the grace of G_d go I." I'm sure everyone has been in a position of vulnerability at some point in their lives when a helping hand made a huge difference. It has for me, many times over, and my regret is that sometimes I forget that. And everyone has also been in the position of being that helping hand. I think on balance people will rise to the occasion and do more good than harm to each other as times get tougher here in the near term.

Marion Dreyfus comments:

It doesn't sound as if anyone made a big fuss about your bravery and cool under the crisis conditions. I will make such a fuss: Since I am fairly terrified of water, having drowned when I was 11 and been brought back to life by a doze-y lifeguard who saw a woman take me to the deep end of the pool when I could not swim, I am impressed at your calculations that did not impede your swift and funny intentions. Did you really say "I'll be your rescuer for the evening"? That is hilarious. Belatedly: You are a hero! You deserve some sort of acknowledgment that those people back then forgot to give you. Bravo!

Victor Niederhoffer adds:

My father did the same thing. But it wasn't so heroic because he was a policeman and had to do it. I have the letter from the woman he saved, and she was very grateful he saved her life as she came back and enjoyed life. I know a few people who tried to kill themselvees and they have had very happy lives afterwards including a frequent contributor to this site, who is one of the happiest guys I've ever met, even though his life style might not appeal to those who dont like 150 degree weather. The video store operator —- to make the story complete: "When I sloshed bak into the store, the clerk looked at me in amazement. He said "my goodness, you're a hero. That will be 2.50 by the way ." I said " 2.50!!!! After all that!" He said, "Oh, right, I forgot to add the VAT. Sorry."

Feb

12

My grandfather (1885-1989) was the greatest teacher and influence in my life. His love of life and adventure was unparalleled. A true Renaissance man, he was comfortable with everyone from janitors to presidents. Since he always wrote everything down and was making lists, he once gave me a list on how to live my life. A truncated version:

1. Pay your bills on time
2. Pay your gambling debts first.
3. Never do business with a friend, but allow a friendship to develop out of a business.
4. Never, ever, cosign on a note.
5. Always buy bonds when they hit 60.
6. Always treat everybody at a business, from the bottom up, like he was the president of the company.
7. Always buy real-estate on the cheap.
8. Never touch the capital, and save part of the interest.
9. Live well below your means.
10. Never allow friends to know how much money you have and always "cry poor."
11. Spread your money and investments around.
12. Never lend more than pocket change to friends.
13. Family first in everything.
14. Congratulate your opponent when he wins, and be gracious when he loses.
15. Don't be a deal hog, and leave something for the next guy.
16. Speak little and listen a lot.
17. Never be afraid to say no.
18. Learn poetry, history, philosophy, and a second language.
19. Keep current in events, and keep an ear on the street for opportunities.
20. Learn good manners.
21. Treat every woman like she was going to be your future wife.
22. Don't trust the government, and never trust politicians.
23. Circumnavigate the globe at least once in your life.
24. Big game fishing is a manly pursuit.
25. Don't ever get drunk in public.
26. Don't ever embarrass yourself or family.
27. Never complain about your family to outsiders.
28. Teach someone your business and pass your skills along.
29. Never listen to race track touts or tipsters of any kind.
30. If they're selling it, why is it such a great deal or opportunity.
31. Never cheat at anything, nor be dishonest.
32. Never welsh on a deal or wager.
33. Always keep your promises.
34. Pay your people a fair wage.
35. Never pay retail for anything, but don't be a hog.
36. Allow your opponents to save face.
37. Never keep a mistress within 300 miles of your home.
38. Always give a guy on hard times some spare change.
39. Support a charity.
40. Be a stand up guy in all areas of your life.
41. Respect the flag.
42. Respect and listen to old people, as they know more than you do.
43. Work as hard as you can and play as hard as you can.
44. Keep your house and business tidy.
45. Allow your kids to be themselves and have fun.
46. Learn to play at least one musical instrument.
48. Respect other races and nationalities.
49. Never argue religion or politics.
50. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

My grandfather was full of life lessons, and I listened.

Sushil Kedia adds:

Here are some more important lessons to consider:

1. Other Points of View (OPV): Accepting, rather than denial or immobilizing fear, is the beginning. The situation definitely gets refined when one looks at it from Other Points of View. One must look at the situation from the views of ones adversaries as well as from the perspective of an unengaged onlooker. Dispassionate observation is facilitated by comparing OPVs with one's own view and building up a strategic process that is always computing the odds.

2. Grow beyond wrong and right: Anger originates as sequence of feeling wronged and guilt originates as a sequence of having done wrong. In winning, it is crucial to be beyond computations of wrong and right. Focus instead on what defines winning for you and what is appropriate for achieving that win.

3. Economy of Movement: Decisive action including communicating the bare minimum necessary innuendos (action as well its absence are both communications) not only helps conserve energy it consumes the energy of the adversarial situation or people.

4. You are the problem: The same situation involving another man has another solution. Recognize your unique gifts and the precious effort that must go in to defending and growing this uniqueness. No handicap is thus in the middle of battle a drain on your resources. Viewing the complete picture with you at the center of the problem is necessary to identify the path of least effort applicable to you.

5. Be your own decision maker: Responsibility for all outcomes is the facilitator for achieving a focus beyond destiny and helplessness. Assume no help will come but will have to be obtained.

6. Don't celebrate your success, in the usual way: Deception is an ingredient of every contest. Feign strength when weak and display weakness when strong is something Sun Tzu taught centuries ago, in any case.

7. The Pain gain formula: Nothing comes free. Pain & gain are often the two sides of the same coin. Always check if an advantage achieved or to be achieved has not come or will not come at an unfair cost incurred unknowingly elsewhere. With such a focus the need to enjoy the journey is extraneous. What may begin with pain could be the ticket to gain and vice versa. The driver of joy being the final destination, the journey will become worth engaging in all situations.

8. Beautiful mind: Beauty of cause is a state of the mind. Being conscious that the mind has states and one can by conscious choice alter those states one may overcome the definition of mind as espoused by Edward de Bono that, "mind is a self organizing pattern seeking system." You and the situation together are the problem. Be conscious of your cognitive states.

9. Believe that you will succeed: You cannot argue with this point since as much as is true that seeing is believing so also is it true that believing is seeing. The solution and the current moment are separated in time. In traveling across the correct strand of time, one would need to traverse the correct strand of time. Believing is the lens to find the correct strand.

10. Be the witness: Changing the perspective from being the doer to one who is a witness to the struggle drives objective and rational sides of the self organizing pattern seeking system called the mind. Fear and hope that are the normal controls of minds in normal states need to be put aside whilst input and output control need to take over.

11. Do, only whatever is necessary: One can always be aware of not creating more problems while solving the ones at hand.

12. Give up when required, only temporarily: need for rest, rejuvenation, re-organizing apart. Many times silence, inaction, inactivity provide the ultimate deceptive veil for more lethal and smashing action.

Jim Sogi comments:

The Pain gain formula: Nothing comes free. Pain & gain are often the two sides of the same coin.

I love this, and Jeff's list too. But I wonder why pain and gain are so correlated? Is it the issue of going against the herd vs the genetic urge to comply? It applies in physical fitness. I sure would appreciate some ideas on this one.

Jim Rogers replies:

Pain is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for gain.

Additionally, not all pain produces gain, but both concepts are relative. Because of the differences in both pain "tolerance" and measurements of gain (in terms of "value"), it's pretty difficult to turn this observation into any type of concrete maxim.

Finally, it seems that there are occasions where the value of a gain outweighs the pain endured, indicating some type of arbitrage situation. However, the pain of spending one's time looking for free lunches (combined with the "pain" of acquiring the skills to recognize arb opportunities) may minimize the net gain.

Alston Mabry writes:

What about that special pain the Mistress inflicts with volatility? One takes a position that then goes against, and one has to try to wait it out until it turns back in one's favor. So many times one gives in, escapes the position and the pain, only to watch the fulfillment come in exactly as predicted. Book the loss, learn the lesson, try again.

Marion Dreyfus responds:

You cannot win a great body without heavy working out. You don't fall into piles of earnings and wealth–you invest judiciously. Pain is obviously correlated to gain — otherwise we would leave the womb and float through life with strawberry sundaes glissando-ing off our lanais as we polish off language texts in the Copacabana with cognac fountains spurting gleefully in the front 40. We don't. We have to work to elicit goodies.

Jan

30

In case you did not hear about this already, in his research, Phil Maymin concludes the following:

"There appears to be a negative relation between music and market volatility. In tumultuous financial times, people prefer steadier music, and in stable financial times, people prefer tumultuous music. Furthermore, it appears as if musical tastes has some ability to predict future market volatility.

The link between music and trading has not been studied in much depth, partially due to a difficulty in obtaining quantitative data. This paper shows not only that there is a link between song and stock volatility, but that the causality appears to go in the least expected direction; namely, this year's popular music seems to predict next year's market volatility."

The full article can be found here.

Perhaps I should consider switching from my plain piano preference to Lady GaGa and Beyonce.

via legacy daily

Kevin Depew comments:

This is less "scientific," but it is an interesting visual of what you are talking about nonetheless.

Marion Dreyfus adds:

From observation over decades, films too are predictive–chaotic times are concomitant with pacific and edenic films, whereas periods of economic calm are positively correlated with martial arts and violence-prone lensers, in much the way the heavily researched topic of skirt-lengths are a secure indicator of economic roller coastering. Long and modest just anterior to boomtimes, short and shocking, with downturns in fiscal friskiness.

Nov

13

"Slumdog Millionaire"

Directed by Danny Boyle Review: marion d s dreyfus

Starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor, Irfan Khan

Primed to like it by a colleague last week, I was still caught by surprise by the energy of the "Slumdog" early scenes. The bite of poverty, and the aerial view of the vast Bombay sea of corrugated tin roofs with their endless mucky, interdependent, tangled lives. Begging for rupees yields to diverse plucky polarities in their different lives, eventually leading to nobility.

One recognizes the techniques employed by the armies of the midget mendicants in Nepal, India, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Oceania, North Africa and similar venues where parents are scarce through no fault of their own. You mumble a blessing for the plenty surrounding us, our siblings, our children, our extended families.

The gritty humor and pragmatism shown in the brothers' young-mature existence, in parallel with the nearly surreal unspooling of the rough life they liver without self-consciousness–their rags were their only clothing; their barefoot state just as common; their beautiful mother's shocking and unwarranted death at the brutal beating of rampaging religious fanatics is atypical for a Western film–she is too young, too lovely, too careworn and too protective of her sons to die so brutally, with no commemoration other than her fleeing sons, Salim (Madhur Mittal) and Jamal. She is seen for a few moments, then forever gone. But everything about these young boys' lives is that old schoolyard worldview: unfair. The film utilizes the framing device of a program that is a simulacrum of the same program here, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," which still excites citizens of many countries where the concept of 'millionaire' still resonates. We enter the film as Jamal (Dev Patel) is going through his stepped paces as contestant, escalating the financial ladder. All of India is riven by his climb.

As the film showcased its load of emotional Bombay flashbacks as to how Jamal managed to correctly answer so many diverse questions in the run-up to the jackpot, he is in police custody as a suspect of cheating on the popular game show. I particularly appreciated the protagonist's solemn face and unbroken acting; he gave no hint that he was other than reliving the chaotic and miserable life of the harijan. He sweated out the answers based on his hard-scrabble life. Other actors are equally powerful, and Latika (Frieda Pinto) is beyond gorgeous as the childhood playmate he thought he had forever abandoned to begging or worse. The tough-cookie NYC reviewer audience, usually hard as week-old baguettes, sat enthralled by the hypnotic mix of scenery, charm, motion, dialogue and lushness with soft-focus flashbacks that spent out the minutes of this affecting narrative.

As the story harks back to memes of well-crafted literary fictions favored by Charles Dickens, it touched on some of the derring-do and tension of the "Bourne" trilogy, and the signature elegiac moments of many genre films. What swiftly turned the wonderment to broad beams of delight, however, was the wonderful credits featuring all hands at a Piccadilly Circus-like train depot, and what looks to be the entire population of Mumbai in ecstatic limb-flinging, knee-hoisting, syncopated Bollywood costume-and-motion extravaganzas so beloved on the repeating loops at any of the treacly Indian restaurants in the curry-and-poori alleys of your favorite big town. (In addition to seeing the vast sea of slum corrugated roofs of Mumbai, you get to see the Taj with Raj, too.)

The miraculous thing is, the precarious hand-to-mouth living of the young Jamal and Salim are caustically accurate today, with maybe more chai Wallah (tea-service servant) and computer thrown in than polishing of shoes and reedy singing to gullible tourists. This dingy-scrubbed two hours transports you back 50 years, and magics you, smiling radiantly, into the big shouldered, all-business Bombay today.

Little scatology, no sex, just a deeply felt, panoramic movie movie you can settle into and come out ready to discuss. A spicy tandoori chicken dish of a film: Some hot places, some vegetables, a surprising lumpo here or there, but a hypnotic experience after all's said and done. You feel delight for hours after you leave the theater, and the woes of the Dow are subsumed to the elations of "Slumdog."

Oct

19

pic"W." shows him to be a man of principle and caring, though a bit hijinks-committed as a stripling, OK–but now deeply faithful–surprising from a man like director Oliver Stone, maker of big, entertaining films about significant people, but often not reliable histories of the eponymous films created.

Another guilty pleasure, in a way, these Oliver Stone films:

as works of art, they are above-average entertainment, although don’t mistake them for documentaries. “JFK,” for instance, was a terrific movie, but anyone who bases his or her understanding of the assassination on Stone's movie will be severely misinformed. Likewise, the darker biopic, “Nixon,” which while very involving was not the valentine to the former president that “W.” appears to be. Stone is not Michael Moore. Watching this enjoyable though not heavily ground-breaking Texas through White house trawl, I feel Stone disappoints the Bush Derangement syndrome avatars, and went out of his way not to do the kind of over-the-top ‘coverage’ that Moore certainly shaves his name into.

One has to wonder at the timing of the release. Since the election is so close, surely he meant to piggyback on the possible frisson factor of getting the goods on the sitting president as he enjoys his last months in the nation’s Capitol. But since one emerges from the film liking this George more than one went in with, and it certainly does not affirm any of the distortions that have been bruited about the reasons for our entry into the Iraqi and Afghani military enterprises, one again is put to the question: Why make the movie?

The casting of many of the strategic roles is itself a hoot, and you see how deliciously Richard Dreyfuss (not my namesake) licks his chops at being the brilliant though carefully cloaked Dick Cheney. Likewise, Scott Glenn does one of his few wrong turns in the industry with his obdurate, snarky Don Rumsfeld. Condoleezza Rice is done a disservice, it seems to this reviewer, by the usually lovely Thandie Newton; she is nasal, whiny, servile, and wound even tighter than the original, but she comes off , as written here, as an insignificant twerpy entity nipping at the heels of the President. Elizabeth Banks does a gorgeous Laura, and I too fell in love with her (she’s lovely, supportive, kind, literate, kind of what the ideal wife should be in the best of all bests). Barbara Bush is brought to vivid life by a tough Ellen Burstyn, matched by Bush 41, reserved, careful and patrician, as evoked by the dependable player of presidents and senators, James Cromwell.

The image of Truman Capote dithering beatifically over the proceedings was distracting, because someone (mistakenly) cast Toby Jones in the role of ‘the Architect,” Karl Rove. Jones is a good actor, and he bears a surface resemblance on some level to Rove, but he just played diminutive gay scribe Truman Capote, and he still looks too much like him in the mind’s recent imprint. Rove has a different valence than Jones and this impression was erroneous. Jeffrey Wright bore the necessary gravitas for Colin Powell.

The film intercuts the past and present, omitting the campaigning process for Bush 43, omitting various crises, but showing the various Cabinet trials and Middle East challenges, showing the younger Bush through his Yale-Harvard years, as a good ol’ fratboy with a huge round of friends, his oil days, highly telegenic Americana and keggers…but also as the baseball team owner, and as the successful campaign manager for his father’s huge 1988 trouncing of Dukakis.

Overwhelming experience as the film unspooled: surprise: If Stone wanted us to dislike or distrust the man, we don’t. Instead, we watch a strongly principled man who means well, is devout (too-long absent Stacy Keach inhabits his pastor-evangelist, Earl Hudd, with delicate unctuousness and presence), loves his country, his deft and delightful wife, and his daily 3-mile runs.

Drudge carried a small item from Jeb Bush, right after the former Florida governor saw the film, that called the spine of the film, George’s strident Oedipal rivalry with their dad, “Hooey.” But the film can be enjoyed for its own sake, if one can put aside cherished misconceptions and petty rage. For the unhysterical, this is a not-unpleasurable viewing experience. If you’re fair (it probably won’t cure Bush Derangement Syndrome, unfortunately), you’ll enjoy this well-crafted biopic.

Will it have any impact on the election? TBD.

Aug

31

U BoltI have come across several conflicting ideas about the relation of speed and longevity recently. In Eric Sloane, the idea is that the slowest animals live the longest, but several studies show that that the fastest runners live the longest. I wonder how this would be resolved in the real world of markets. Speed and distance, and lifespan would seem to be helpful concepts to untwine.

Dylan Distasio adds:

Typically, larger animals have longer natural lifespans. This is likely related to their lower base metabolic rates (a smaller mammal is going to have a faster metabolism to offset greater loss of body heat). The most obvious analogy would be market cap and the idea that larger companies are slower to shift course.

Another factor is how prodigious the species is at reproducing. High fecundity usually means a shorter lifespan. Is there an analogy to this in the markets? If we use our imaginations, perhaps. Maybe an area of the market with many competitive companies, and a low barrier for entry like the Internet space.

For those who are gluttons for punishment, there is scientific journal article on body size, metabolism and lifespan that may be worth untangling.

Scott Brooks recalls:

I saw a special on either Discovery Channel about heart rate. They did a comparison between many animals and the number of heart beats they had in a lifetime. The one that stick out in my mind was the difference between some kind of mouse and an elephant. The difference in life expectancy was quite substantial in terms of years, but the average number of total heart beats between birth and death was essentially equal.

This didn't hold up for all species, but there were some striking similarities between mammalian species and heart beats.

If this is true, then am I using up my "lifetime heartbeats" each time I work out?

I know that my family doesn't live particularly long, with most dying at or near average life expectancy. I also know that for my entire life, my resting heart rate has been in the upper 80s or low 90s. I've worked diligently to get it lower, but it doesn't come down. When I exercise, I get my heart rate up into the 160s or 170s — if I'm really working our hard, then I'll get it up into the 180s or 190s.

Am I using up my heartbeats?

Marion Dreyfus reassures:

When I worked for the giant ad agency J Walter Thompson, the physican onstaff, with whom I consulted about all of my copy, used to tell me: "I have grown old walking in the funeral corteges of those more fit than I."

Kim Zussman, on the other hand, enjoys frightening people:

Don't forget, the healthier your heart (and the longer you go without heart attack) — the more likely you are to die of cancer.

Low fat diet, exercise, contol of blood pressure/blood sugar, have much bigger effect in forestalling heart disease than cancer.

Jun

2

DarkTitle: "Dark Matter" Director: Chen Shi-Zheng

There is little disagreement that the level of teaching, as well as the infrastructure, equipment, opportunities to advance and excel, in Asian grad schools are below those of the US in head-to-head comparisons. But our figures of qualified graduates in the sciences, no secret, have been discouragingly in decline for several decades, only partially stemmed by regular infusions of ambitious foreign blood, chiefly from Asian rim countries and the former Soviet Union.

… U.S. engineering and technology degrees in 1986 peaked at 97,122;
fell 16% to 81,610 in 2006, (Source: Washington-based National Center for Education Statistics)

.Data provided by the Chinese government showed 575,000 undergrad engineering degrees awarded in 2006. That stat is inflated because China classifies 'engineer' to include auto technicians and other jobs not deemed engineers in the U.S. (Source: Vivek Wadhwa, adjunct professor, Duke University, in Durham, NC).

Actual number of Chinese engineers comparable in quality to those in the U.S. in 2006 may have been closer to 60,000, Wadhwa said in a May 28 telephone interview. He noted that is less than half the number of U.S. graduates in the same year, citing figures that include computer scientists not in the National Science Foundation survey.

(Courtesy, Alex Forshaw, research data)

Despite the alarming data, we can discount the Cassandras to some extent, in that the culture-wide discouraging of innovation, and the lack of current world publications, is also a significant barrier to advancement. Brain-power alone, though wonderful, does not alone make up for the infrastructural and cultural deficits cited.

A good film to see that deals with the influx of gifted Asian–especially Chinese-students to top universities, "Dark Matter" watches one case-history: A special-import to MIT, in the astrophysics department. The department head, reaping the laurels of a theory that is received wisdom, is externally about support and nurturance. As the protagonist, Liu Xing, shows, what protege relationships involve is being a yes-guy, not rocking the boat, and finding ever-more-emphatic ways of lavishing agreeableness on the mentor. Or else. Liu's troubles with the American system of exclusionary perks and treatment, college politics and the importance of 'blending in,' can be found as assertive subtext throughout the film.

"Dark" stars brilliant Chinese student Liu Xing, played by Liu Ye (Postmen in the Mountains, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Purple Butterfly and Curse of the Golden Flower), unconsciously jockeying for top-rung among a thrush of foreign students in astrophysics and cosmology. His innocence as to the ways of academe result in his being chastised for original thought running counter to the published pet theories of his 'easy-going' but territorial mentor, Jacob Reiser, Aidan Quinn. (Note: "Jewish" professor. Depicted on the silver screen by a non-MOT. Typical.) Meryl Streep, a feather-headed wealthy Asian-student fetishist of sorts, is in the film for mere nanoseconds, trying to rectify what she sees as the institutional unfairness of favoritism, not merit, against the star Sino-import. Lui discovers an unprecedented innovation in the field, but is stonewalled at every turn by Professor Insecure. Liu is recognized as stellar (pun intended) in theory if not burdensome sociological comportment, but only Streep extends compassion to the blocked and chastised student. Not even Streep can hoist Liu over the fence of lethally competitive college politics. It's blindingly clear: No matter how innovative, Liu will never get his Ph.D.

A fascinating topic by itself, dark matter forms the building blocks of the universe, but far too little is made of the actual meat and potatoes of the science of cosmology. The film is both too general and too presumptuous, letting the observer flail about in ignorance. Unless he/she already knows the field, in which case, it is also unsatisfyingly vague and nonspecific.

If the subject matter is worthy of attention, an entire movie to itself, couldn't the writer/director, Chen Shi-Zheng, give us more to marvel at and gestate? Though based on a true incident in 1991 of a University of Iowa student losing his control to tragic effect, it seemed that a better film was lurking right outside of earshot. The subject matter remains important; academe remains a pungent venue for a suitably marinating speculum; and the topic of foreign students 'out-brillianting' home-growns remains a potent topic for discussion and study. This film isn't it.

The epic shortage of stateside scientists and engineers is not directly addressed, but hinted at throughout. As we are told, somewhat unreliably, this shortfall is being addressed in financial invigoration of science and engineering departments. But based on the current crops and results, we have a way to go before we regain lustrous supernova status.

May

2

From the NY Times:

"After the terrorist attacks of 2001 deflated the economy, Mr. Lauder noticed that his company was selling more lipstick than usual. He hypothesized that lipstick purchases are a way to gauge the economy. When it's shaky, he said, sales increase as women boost their mood with inexpensive lipstick purchases instead of $500 slingbacks."

Rather than shoring their mood with inexpensive cosmetics, I believe heavier lipstick purchases is a way to attract men, which is hard-wired in times of loss and stress: Women seek the protection and nurturant love of the male, and lipstick, a red sign of sex, replicates arousal — males respond to red signals on lips and elsewhere on the body. Even without realizing it, the male sees 'aroused female' by certain cues, and instinct starts to take over. Hormones are exchanged and generated.

Thus a surge in lipstick purchases underlines perceived shortage and scarcity, and marks the start-gun of a hard-wired survival strategy. Men for their part would seem to be looking at a revival of females-becoming-more-female in affect, clothing and outward lineaments.

That is much more to the point than a mere 'boost in mood.' It is also a direr indicator of societal dislocation.

Scott Brooks confesses:

I've always been attracted to a women with very little or, preferably, no make up. There's something about a woman who has the confidence to go natural.

Marion Dreyfus replies:

Sure, sure: 99% of men aver they like the natural look. But if you saw most women without make-up, you would be shocked. The subtlety of make-up is that it appears to be natural, yet improved. And it makes a woman feel good, actually, to be enhanced subtly, so her eyes are more defined, or her lips are moisty-colorful. And her partner usually has no idea how it is done.

Apr

22

Speaking of neighborhood businesses I note for some years: I have a theory about the profusion of flower stalls and ranks upon ranks of fresh blooms on practically every block in the Big Apple. Since I never buy for myself, and it is usually rare for men (other than the homoerotic) to buy flowers for their singular singleton apartments, who exactly buys these daily refreshed buckets of beauty?

My theory is that so many people are workaholics, that nearly all relationships, married or [merely] cohabitative, are on the slender lip of breakaway, fall-away or breakdown. The men in such relationships, and occasionally the women, returning home late from labors in the mines and pits, feel beholden to their opposite numbers for not making a fuss. They buy apologetics on the quick: transmuted, translated and hybridized floral tributes. What partner and love can resist a dense evidence, a spray of beauty unexpectedly gracing the front entry or the nook near the vestibule?

Thus, when I see men of a midnight toting the cone-shaped waxy paper-engirded crimson-riot blooms in pink champagne and magenta, jonquil and plum, I mentally take a post-it: Here is a man who loves his dame, a man who has failed to arrive home in time for the supper that lies, neglectedly, warmed and re-heated, who semaphores to his beloved that it is no fault of lack of love, only lack of time. Hurrying through the darkened night, he cradles and ferries to his beloved the simplified language hues of laconic but no-less heartfelt love.

His labors on the Board and the Exchange are worthy, but they do not, in the end, quite surround us with the embrasure of affection and approbation we crave. But the loved one's silent and vibrant support and affection despite the lateness of the hour upon hour lends strength, courage and heart to leave again the comfort temples and re-achieve, anew, the dawning day's tests and trials, from near shores and far.

Thus the flowers that hectically and gloriously tier our blocks of Manhattan and environs.

And another day is done.

Apr

17

INDOCTRINATE U A Documentary by Evan Coyne Maloney

Not my favorite screening duty, documentaries. I regularly view and judge several hundred in the course of film festival judging, and many, while important and often necessary, are grim. But my jurying of a new doc, screened for the first time at the Directors Guild of America theater, and generously hosted by the Manhattan Institute, was not only clever and welcome, but also quite often laugh-out-loud funny. If a documentary on the wholly-owned left-wing dominance of higher education can conceivably be funny.

Evan Coyne Maloney, the filmmaker, is the progeny of two hippies of the 60s love-and-flower generation. They must have done something right. He is affable, persistent, smart, discerning, sarcastic with a cherubic smile, and always, scrupulously polite. Maloney and his cameraman visit college campuses around the country, from the royals of Harvard, Yale and Princeton, to the more rural or less noteworthy college campuses in flyover precincts.

Maloney’s goal: How neutral are teaching faculties at our nation’s expensive and highly regarded (at least until this film and Ben Stein’s forthcoming exposé of a similar nature, “EXPELLED,” become de rigueur viewing) colleges?

Whatever he attempts to ask, whether on the absence of men’s studies or resource centers (grim-faced females in Che Guevara-plastered offices stare stolidly at him, not ‘getting his point), the attacking of Republican students for posting provocative yet inoffensive fliers (lawsuits that invariably and ignominiously spell loss of thousands for the colleges foolish enough to pursue such groundless suits), the location of the diversity office to ensure diversity of opinion (huh??), or the ratio of left-liberal professors to conservative (the smallest ratio of Marxist-leaning ‘liberals’ to conservatives is 7 to 1; the highest is 134 left-wing teachers to 12, conservative), to how alternative papers on campus are received (entire press-runs are routinely stolen, in hundred-weight batches, as soon as they hit the stands), he is stonewalled, thwarted and…threatened with arrest.

His cheerful and diffident requests are met with flinty official agita. The response? Invariably the same: When the camera duo shows up, there is instantaneous recourse to campus or muni police. Not a single administrator attempts to answer his polite requests. The relevant parties quail and cringe from the camera, repeatedly demand he turn the camera off, and seek the nearest escape.

The packed house I viewed the film with laughed as the film proceeded, anticipating the response of yet another administrator who denies he or she is in charge. Maloney sits in anterooms all day, while colleagues of the designated official deny the job, schedule or existence of the person he has come to interview. We laughed throughout, though the topic is sober, and actually kind of frightening.

Brave students in each campus confide that they end up mum in classes, lest they forfeit grades or become the butt of verbal attacks. Contrarily, conservative students with complaints are rarely helped, abuse against them is ignored, their problems somehow lost or forgotten. Verbal abuse and vicious calumny against one hip Sikh student, for instance, amount to death threats—never acted on. Students responsible are never disciplined.

Toe the line or be ostracized, attacked, ridiculed. Pro-choice, only. Pro-gay marriage, only. Pro-affirmative action, only. Professors who are ‘liberal’ (in the new sense of illiberal and lockstep mindset), quash adverse opinion and keep a watchful eye out for those not like them. Teachers who are conservative say nothing, so as not to out themselves. “If I admitted I was a conservative,” one Stamford Professor of Biology says with a rueful laugh, “I lose my job.”

The way her students ‘know’ she is a non-majoritarian non-radical (shhh) right of center professional?

“It's not what I'd say in class. Because all I do is teach biology, as I was hired to do. It’s that I never start every class with a harangue on how Bush and co. are bad. Or how Iraq is a mistake. Or how white America is evil.” For the radical teachers, no matter what the course content, every class includes a discussion on RGE: race, gender and ethnicity. Even decorating. Even math.

A shocking episode shows Republican Steve Hinkle, a student subject to unremitting attack for posting a flyer announcing a presentation by [black] conservative C. Mason Weaver, author of It's OK to Leave the Plantation, in a Cal Polytech student center. That groundless lawsuit sets the taxpayers back $40,000—and Hinkle won on every (ludicrously unpremised) count.

The lesson, a familiar one to those who follow the issue, is that the people who run the universities are not willing or able, perhaps, to defend in public what they teach in private. They can’t take the heat when the camera is turned in their direction. Affronted and furious, they want the meticulously diffident Maloney carted away. Charges of ‘racist,’ ‘fascist’ and ‘nazi’ are regularly hurled at those who politely differ from the mainstream teacher-led doctrinaire brainwash.

Indoctrinate U undercuts the usual reaction to complaints about campus repression: These are no recycled anti-PC tall tales. No way. Maloney shows that censorship, lack of choice, forced views and indoctrination run both coasts, public to private higher-ed launchpads, rarefied elite ivies to the West Coast’s Foothill College.

Apr

13

I assume many of you know about the commendably and excruciatingly watchable "Bank Job".It is involving from the jump (in the early 1980s, UK) to dénouement.

Terry (two-day beard tough guy Jason Statham), a car-repair minor player in constant hock and debt to bigger petty criminals in London, gets offered the chance of a ‘quick-take’ bank robbery that dangles the possibility of living the better life, courtesy the temptress, ripe ex-lover Martine Love, though Terry has the presence of mind to distrust her contacts and motivation, as they say in acting class. There is far more to the plot than a simple burrow into an unremarkable safe-deposit vault and hauling off the consequent goodies.

His motley band of inexperienced mates don’t reckon on the higher-ups who are remotely assisting them in the expectation that they’ll secure some extremely compromising photos that had better not come to light. The ever- oleaginous and fecund David Suchet adds another sweaty ruby to his host of memorable skeaves with attitude. SAffron Burrows is suitably stunning as the silky ex-model babe in the stylized coveralls. Director Donaldson keeps the action taut, the conversation deftly scoundrel-red, and the upstairs/downstairs worrying at a strung-out high-wire tension.

The acting is first-rate, the story unbelievable, but made all the more enjoyable when you realize it is a true story. More to it than just a highly unlikely heist, but exquisite women, moments of humor, high dudgeon, cops-‘n’-robbers, a tinge of scandal, Parliamentary misbehaving–all the ingredients for a great stew of an entertainment.

Few special effects, gritty cinematography, manly men and womanly women. Even my CCC (cautiously critical companion) remarked what a refreshingly bracing experience it was. The best movie-movie I’ve seen in a batch. People with a long memory will be able to hazily recall the actual story and high-class to-do from thee decades ago. Bumper suspense, lots of back-story, changes of venue, exotic politics, going back to naughty times that bring you right up to our former gubernatorial cash-and-carry Spitzer hi-jinks.

Apr

13

What is it about heists, and big scores, and Bolivia? Just watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the first time in a long time. And couldn't help but enjoy William Goldman's terrific writing, much of which seemed very relevant to speculators.

A selection:

_____

(In the beginning, Butch watches a very solid, solidly-guarded bank being closed up for the night.)

Butch (to the Bank Guard): What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful.

Guard: People kept robbing it.

Butch: Small price to pay for beauty.

_____

(The moment of recognition, of reassessing one's positions.)

Macon: I didn't know you were the Sundance Kid when I said you were cheatin'.

_____

(Right after the "knife fight" with Harvey.)

Butch: Hey, what's this about the Flyer?

News: Well, Harvey said we'd hit it both this run and the return. Said nobody's done that to the Flyer before, and no matter how much we got the first time, they'd figure the return was safe and load it up with money.

Butch: Harvey thought of that?

News: Yes sir, he did.

Butch: Well, I'll tell you something fellas, that's exactly what we're gonna do.

_____

(A regime change in pursuit.)

Butch: Ah, you're wasting you're time. They can't track us over rocks.

Kid: Tell them that.

Butch: (Looks for himself.) Who are those guys?

_____

(Butch and the Kid finally escape Those Guys and return to Etta's. They read about the posse in the newspaper.)

Butch: Hey. It was Baltimore. And La Fours. You know who else?

Kid: Who?

Butch: Jeff Carley, George Hyatt, E. T. Kelleher.

Kid: (Looks at the paper.) Jees, we lucked out getting away, you know that? Why would these guys join up and take after us?

Butch: Oh forget it. A bunch like that won't stay together long.

Etta: They will. If Mr. Harriman has his way.

Kid: Who?

Etta: Mr. E. H. Harriman of the Union-Pacific Railroad. He resents the way you've been picking on him, so he's outfitted a special train and hired special employees. You spent the last couple of days avoiding them. It's really sort of flattering if you want to think about it that way.

Butch: A setup like that costs more than we ever took.

Etta: Apparently he can afford it.

Butch: That crazy Harriman. That's bad business. How long do you think I'd stay in operation if every time I pulled a job it cost me money? If he'd just pay me what he's spending to make me stop robbing him, I'd stop robbing him.

_____

(Butch and the Kid get jobs guarding the payroll for mine operator Percy Garris, played by the great Strother Martin.)

Butch: I think they're in the trees up ahead.

Kid: In the bushes on the left.

Butch: I'm telling ya, they're in the trees up ahead.

Kid: You take the trees, I'll take the bushes on the left.

Garris: Will you two beginners cut it out.

Butch: Well, we're just trying to spot an ambush, Mr. Garris.

Garris: Morons. I've got morons on my team. Nobody is going to rob us going *down* the mountain. We have got no money going *down* the mountain. When we have got the money on the way *back*, then you can sweat.

_____

You can watch the movie, in segments, online .

Marion Dreyfus adds:

Wm. Goldman has always been one of my most cherished reads. He is invariably intimate, clever, personable and cunning in resolving his plots. His films are always champions of amusing interactions, psychological insights and ebullient plotting. 

Stefan Jovanovich relates:

I once chauffeured Dad and Bill Goldman and one of his friends buddies to a Mets game. Seaver had one of his rare off days and the score was something like 9 to 1 by 6th inning. Dad wanted to leave early and beat the traffic but Goldman and his buddy were determine to stay. As the game ground to its inevitable conclusion, they seemed more and more interested, even animated. It finally dawned on my father that the author he was courting had a more than trivial bet on the over-under -which he won.

Vincent Andres says:

Reminds me another terrific movie from/with Paul Newman about optimism at its top (i.e. life at its worst) :

Sometimes a Great Notion (aka NEVER GIVE AN INCH)

A really great movie in my rememberings.

"Hank Stamper (Newman) and his father Henry Stamper (Fonda) operate a logging business in Wakonda, Oregon. The town comes to grips of economic despair, due to the local union's strike against a large lumber combine. When the Stamper's are asked to join the strikers, they refuse and are considered traitors. However, Hank continues to push his family on cutting more trees, despite Hank's wife (Remick) wishes for him to stop. Shortly later, Leeland Stamper, Henry's other son and Hank's half-brother, returns home after years of absence, which causes more unrest."

Stefan Jovanovich replies:

Vincent proves yet again his impeccable sensibility. SAGN is Kesey's best novel (the only one where his politics did not override his gifts as a writer), and the movie has Richard Jaekel, who was a wonderful actor. It also has a more than decent portrayal of the actual work of logging. (My claim of expertise here is based solely on one summer spent bucking logs for a gyppo outfit in the early 70s in Oregon - truly the hardest work I have ever seen or done.)
 

Apr

6

CanaAs a very serious collector of art, I see people buy art for the purpose of investment all the time. I'm asked to give my opinion on the worth of a particular piece of art a few times a month. When the public sees headlines touting record price for Van Gogh, Renoir or Matisse, they rush out to buy art for investment. Some major companies have also put the shareholders at "art market risk" by owning large collections of art for investment purposes. The cottage industry of consultants that has sprung up dealing with the art investment field is full of swindlers, thieves, liars and cheats. The consultants, dealers, and auction houses are the ones who profit, not the average collector. Even some reputable dealers have been known to sell fakes, such as works by Dali, which are 99% fake (except for his signature). While it is possible to make some money in the art market, it is very improbable for the collector to profit. A collector should stick to buying art he loves, has beauty, wants to display forever, and is willing to bequeath to a relative or museum upon death. The art hanging on our walls and in our collections is owned by history, and we are merely the caretakers of the art. Incidently, despite the spin by Sotheby's and others, the mid-range market for good Impressionist art is rather soft. There are also some good prices to be found in the Old Masters. I used to tell my lovely wife that the price of good mid-range art fluctuates inversely with the number of margin calls on the Street.

Sam Marx remarks:

PollockI believe a lot of modern art is a fraud. Jackson Pollock's splatter paintings — how can anyone take them seriously? Yet they are sold for millions of dollars. A painting (not a Pollock) hung in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC for a number of years before it was discovered to be upside down.

Marion Dreyfus critiques:

Your grasp of modern art is not strong; if you know the continuum of the field's development, you would not say that. It marks a yahoo sensibility, alas. There are fraudulent practitioners, but Pollock is not one. Suffice to say there are less well researched and annotated and revered artists around to pick on. In general, if you are going to pick on frauds and fakes, better to pick on a very current artist whose chops are not yet firmly implanted in the historical record and universally accepted.

Just as there are 'collectors' without an ounce of sophitication in what they are amassing, there are quick-buck artists eager to make use of the investing/collecting sensibility when they adjudge the market to be a bunch of gullible wallets circling for a kill.

And though it sounds foolish, because much of modern art is nonrepresentational, if the artist is not present while the museum hangs the piece, it is forgivable if the canvas is not the way the artist intended: The average viewer could not tell which side was intended to be down, which up, so one ought not hold the museum guilty for such an understandable error.

Sam Marx retorts:

What makes Pollock’s work worth millions? One critic called Pollock's work colorful "wallpaper designs." I don't believe Pollock precisely measured the hole he created in the bottom of the paint can and a slight change in the hole size in the can of paint that he was dripping from would've resulted in a very different painting. If you don't have a precise control over what you're doing, I have doubts about it as a masterpiece.

Michael Bonderer assays:

RothkoSam, easy boy! Kindly try to put Pollock specifically, and the Abstract Expressionists of the budding NY School Artists more generally, in the context of post Hiroshima/Nagasaki, post WW II ethos and emerging Cold War ethos of the late 40s and early 50s, to understand their aesthetic and important place in global art and their brilliance. Particularly interesting would be for you to trace Pollock's pre-Abstract Exprisionist work to see how he as an artist developed and emerged as a leading Abstract Expressionist. As the atom's understanding came to mass consciousness, you will see bio-morphic imagery present in many artists' work, including Pollock's. This gave rise to the 'explosive canvas' of Pollock and others and the magnificient 'color-field' work of Rothko, as they all came to grips and a better understanding of where we as a society were going on a certain level from 1945 to the present. Collecting and investing in art is an aesthetic and a lifestyle, and to do it well you really have to immerse yourself, e.g., Paris in the 20s and 30s, NYC in the late 40s, 50s and 60s, LA and SF Bay area in the 50s and 60s and 70s and the LA Chicano art of the 70s and 80s and now Shanghai today with its phenomenal present day contemporary pieces and artists. Sam, I kindly direct you to the Art Tab on Costco's web site!

Lon Evans adds:

Should this be 1910, Sam, you’d be offering to pass on any available Van Gogh.

Adam Robinson offers:

Cana Alas, what's not strong is modern art's grasp on what moves the human heart.

If anyone wants to take up the affirmative position that modern art resonates with the human soul and psyche anywhere near as much as does any Old Master painting, I'll take up the negative banner onto the debate field with gleeful alacrity.

As a rule of thumb, in any field of human production, whether art or literature or essay writing or science, I lay it down as axiomatic that the time and consideration that ought to be accorded to the appreciation and evaluation of human products is proportional to the time and consideration that went into their creation.

Some might argue that talent or brainpower ought to figure in to the calculus of merit, also, so for those who like to quantify things, let's say,

PT x BP/T = k x CAT (production time of creation times the creator's brain power/talent equals some positive constant times the claim on an audience's time)

Show me a piece of art — or an idea even — that took two years of a human being's life to conjure and produce, and another that took two days, and the assuming the talent of the creator's to be the same, I'll give the later maybe 1% as much of my time weighing and appreciating as I will the former.

Michael Bonderer explains:

Tang ZhigangAnd therein lies the adventure and challenge. To effectively emmerse oneself into the Shanghai art and media cognoscenti and find the Shanghai Pollock and Rothko and Diebenkorn. Scour the streets and allys and lofts for the work-product of the Tiananmen-inspired dissidents and new-found 21st Century Shanghai sensabilities. Maybe even find the Costco art-mill progenitor and take him out for tea and latte and pick his brain. He may be nothing more then a knuckle dragger, but then again, he may point you to a street that is having a new showing Friday night.

Jeff Watson responds:

There are some prefectly dreadful works from the Old Masters out there. Just go to the Prado or Louvre, and you'll see plenty of examples. While I'm not a fan of most modern art, I do like some of it, and have one piece in my collection. Good art is good art, in any genre, be it music, literature, or theater, and the heart will respond to to what's good. Some have pre-existing opinions on the merits of a certain genre, and it could cause them to miss out on something beautiful. Pre-existing opinions have cost me a lot of money in the market over the years, and this has taught me to sample everything, and keep an open mind.

Steve Leslie ponders:

Why is it that a painting of a nude is considered artform when a photograph can be considered pornography? As an addendum, do I need Freudian therapy if I am a fan of Robert Mapplethorpe?

Why would someone spend millions for a stolen work of art yet know in advance that he may never reveal it for public viewing?

Along the lines of burglary, How can billions of dollars worth of artwork be stolen every year and vanish for decades?

What happened to all the artwork that the Germans plundered from France, Italy, Denmark and other places during World War II and has not been seen since?

Where does someone draw the line between art and garbage? Along those lines what, defines Dali as a genius and not mildly psychotic?

Was Andy Warhol an accomplished artist because he drew for Campbell’s soup labels or in spite of it?

Who else thinks that Frank Frazetta is genius personified?

Are dogs playing poker classified as modern art, especially with the Phoenix-like rise in popularity of the game?

Do velvet Elvis paintings increase in value?

Alston Mabry postscribes:

I enjoy using artwork as wallpaper on my computers. Two very good sources are Mark Harden's Artchive and WebMuseum. It is crucial to get a good scan, that has decent color saturation and sharpness. For example, Hopper's Cape Cod Afternoon from WebMuseum, in which the colors are very rich, and you can actually see the grain of the canvas.

Apr

4

Street KingsIn tennis the secret is location, location, location. In movies, it's casting, casting, casting.

Among the still-gestating elements of "Street Kings," now on-screen, is the textured and mature work by Keanu Reeves. Forest Whittaker, always a standout, plays a role that is also layered and unobvious, though he seems perpetually ready to break out into a marathon sweat; here, it works for his cachet and role. Hugh Laurie, spot-on casting, was a hoot to follow. His appearance onscreen, as with Cedric the Entertainer's hangdog cameo-plus in a brilliant set of crimson wheels, elicited an audible sigh of endorsement from acolytes who recognize the beloved featured actors from other venues.

Jay Mohr and John Corbett, both, were worthy spots for our eyes to land, both working against type in prior filmic and tube outings. Both also thicker and older-longing. Maybe Keanu and these two took a bouillabaisse-thickening course so they'd finally look grown up. While they usually play cherubs, here, you knew they were up to no good. As with most police procedurals, the women play a decidedly ancillary role, though the wife of Keanu's slain partner was a model of subtlety and controlled rage.

To be perfectly truthful, from scanning the credits, we can often tell the malefactors and bad guys by an Insta-matic assessment of the variables, how far down the particular casting ring-toss is, then doing a fast Chinese menu of likelihood for almost any plot development. This film proves we can do it with the champs. Maybe too many Monk repeats have chiseled our detective chops.

The plot provides ample twisty turns and reverses, so most viewers won't really predict how a particular section will resolve. Good guys are bad; bad guys are good–or are they? We must admit our expectations for this film were not very elevated, but we were agreeably surprised, and the film could even sustain (yikes) a second viewing. The dialogue, especially, was fast and suitable to the milieu, revealing that script-writer cohorts are darkly familiar with the genre and dirty-copville. Evokes the Gere/Garcia/Travis 1990 pleaser, "Internal Affairs." We observe that this procedural evokes particularly convoluted scripting and storylines, quite a treat compared to the pared-down rom/com or sit-flic fare offered in many top-grossers lately. The periodic skycam overview of LA shown strategically throughout the film provided a "Batman" or "Blade-Runner"-like darkling threat-presence, evil glinting in the sick-yellow slits of illumined night windows lit when all should, one supposes, be extinguished.

A minor cavil is the gory evident whenever Reeves and "Disco" (Chris Evans) do their solo clean-up raids against the presumed bad guys. Another is the protagonist's girlfriend: Why is she Hispanic? How come he's taken to her hospital when he gets nicked? Why is she the nurse on duty when he is gurneyed in? Coincidences like this bug the nitpicky. Why, when all the cops get together for a kegfest, do they all seem to have Hispanic Playboy bunnies as main squeezes? It rang false, and every appearance of Amaury Nolasco got under my skin. These men are not themselves Hollyweird stars; as cops, they would not have access, one believes, to such choice non-native female pulchritude. Nor would they all catch the exact Barbie-doll replica as Reeves engages.

LA itself is cinematically captured as moody and patchy, not clichetic. Much like the 'patchy' police, a law unto themselves, never giving an inch: There are precious few honest ones. Or if they happen to manage to be, they don't get to stay alive very long. Subplots involving kidnapped illegals and drug-trade operators, while not new, are important for those who don't follow the news as closely as they should.

Caveat popcorn-er: This may not be your cuppa joe. But if you cotton to sweaty cop capers… all in, "Kings" rates Aces for entertainment, acting, plotlines - and high Jacks for resolution.

Feb

9

On the Popcorn Aisle — 9 February Offerings 

Fool’s Gold –starring the effervescent charmer, daughter of Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson and the hunk-a-hunka Matt McConnaughey, tried too hard, was a meld of recent Nicholas Cage and Harrison Ford adventures, but somehow failed to ignite–despite charming central characters and mumbly-peg villains who were no more scary than a Saturday-morning kiddie show–any discernible tension or suspense. It was nice looking at the chemistry between Hudson and White Teeth-and-Pecs–but the whole event failed to ignite, despite derring-do on seaplanes, graveyards, grotto caverns, sunken treasure salvaging and a raft of sunny shots of the Caribbean.

Donald Sutherland, estimable in dozens of films, never convinced with his British accent, his spoiled daughter’s ditziness wore thin as soon as she alit from her chopper on Sutherland’s yacht, and the plot holes–how did the trio of brigands find the two salvagers on the island in the pitch of night, without making a sound as they stole up somehow on them? How could Matt escape death umpteen times with merely a chaste scrape over his eyebrow, when others would have severe and debilitating brain damage from head trauma?–left many observers cynical throughout. (I turned and watched their expressions.) Nice scenery, though.

A favorite of mine, though at first I was reluctant to even attend –fearing the documentary would be… icky– Praying with Lior has won world plaudits for its longitudinal film-history of Lior Liebling, a Down Syndrome child of Rabbi Debra (Devorah) Bartnoff. Rabbi Bartnoff died of breast cancer when Lior was still quite young, 6, but director/producer Ilana Trachtman continued the filmography of this charming child in his somewhat unconventional—but lovingly Jewish– family setting. Lior’s father, Mordecai Liebling, a nationally known rabbi and former director of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, remarries, a sensitive Lynne Iser, his three siblings struggle to varying effect against the constraints of having a ‘special’ child in the family, and Lior persists with courage, wit, humor and goodwill. Mostly, the elder two manage very well. This viewer was haunted by the youngest daughter, who plaintively tells the camera that she never gets attention, because her brother has always merited the spotlight, in his trajectory to having a bar mitzvah despite his learning disabilities. Bluegrass and klezmer, the ancient Hebrew liturgies and daily prayers, make this a melodic outing perfectly suited to the thrust of Lior’s life: Bar Mitzvah speech and Haftarah. Perhaps most important, Praying with Lior has been hailed for encouraging greater involvement in faith practices for persons with disabilities. Lior shows it can be done—beautifully. Held over an extra week in NYC.

Caramel is a more charming, more surprising, “Steel Magnolias,” set in a Beirut that is pretty much like Boca Raton, from the look of it. It frames the film in cameos of women frequenting, loving, living and working in a beauty salon. The beauteous salon owner, Layale (Nadine Labaki) is in an unhappy affair with a married paramour. Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri), engaged to a Muslim, agonizes over what will happen when he learns she is not a virgin. There are doctors for that, as the girlfriends bring her for a slight ‘repair,’ just as the practice of plastic surgery runs through the film, the way it might in Rio. Jamale (Gisele Aouad), an aging actress, still gorgeous, competes desperately with younger women for TV commercials, and seamstress Aunt Rose (Siham Haddad), cares for her demented elder sister, Lili (Aziza Semaan). Rose poignantly sacrifices a potential marriage to a distinguished gentleman because of her obligation to Lili. The film winds through the lives of these women, in Arabic—though they are all Christian—and French (English subtitles) in a way that is entirely involving. Most startling to this viewer, of course, is the normalcy of their lives and concerns, without a whiff of the jihadism or chaos we have come to associate, unfortunately, with today’s Lebanon. Excellent being transported back to the lovely looking one-time Beirut, “the Paris of the Mid-East.”

The most heart-warming, and quirkiest, film of the past month is the Israeli film, The Band’s Visit, which takes as it departure point the befuddlement of a musical troupe from Egypt in a forgotten Israeli town. How the eight men in powder-blue oompa-pa uniforms conduct themselves among the little-town inhabitants of Beit Hatikvah is never less than enthralling, instructive, gently amusing and enjoyable. No politics intrude. Just the courtly graces and manners of these lost musicians as they try to get their bearings, find their way through the night, and make plans for getting to the correct city for their inaugural cultural center performance. It pleased from the moment the men arrived on a lonely bus in the broad, deserted spaces of nowhere, and continued through gentle love affairs, near-misses, instructional aids to having a romance for the painfully geeky and shy. Utterly charming.

The Counterfeiters goes Speilberg’s Schindler’s List one better. The true story of a crack printers team which, under the demands of their concentration camp commandos, precisely replicated first the pound sterling, and then, after much deliberate delay, the dollar, to finance the failing nazi armed forces in the waning days of WWII. It is never less than grittily engrossing, brutal, plain—but elevating, as it copes with the moral dilemma of living better than the other camp internees while helping to bring down the economies of the UK and the US.

Ira Sachs’ Married Life stars the ever-beguiling Pierce Brosnan and Patricia Clarkson, the beauteous Rachel McAdams in a restrained performance against the tight-lipped yearning of Chris Cooper. It is a meditation on the grass always being greener in someone else’s bed. As a hothouse study of how married couples make their peace with the barely acceptable versus the unattainable, it is a compelling exercise. The title is a-drip with irony, of course.

For the distaff side, I admit I was not offended by the latest Rambo, starring McCain’s main man, Sly Stallone, with a throng of slim, mean, muck-enrobed “Vietnamese” and sundry US hard-bodies from various TV shows. It features that unusual coda: The Americans get their men (and woman) and we are the undisputed good guys, limned against the nastiness and cruelties of the Viet Cong captors and whatnot. It doesn’t really matter what the plot is, but lots of heads pop off, blood spurts from bisected ‘enemies,’ leaping and special effects are well integrated with the endless monsoon rains, and no one is mud-free for a second in the whole 90-plus minutes. The movie is what it is, so don’t imagine you’ll get a meditation on the nature of moral depravity.

Teeth, a film that sneaks up on you, treats two subjects rarely handled in film today, amusingly mixes horror and fascination with v.  d.  and, um, castration in modern small-town America. Although it has moments few men would celebrate, it also pays back incestuous brothers, inamoratas and bad prom dates. It’s hard to recommend it to men, but women might find it diverting—no one loves and leaves this babe without serious, really serious, complications.

The Hottie and the Nottie, featuring Paris Hilton, Christine Laken and “the” Greg Wilson (that’s how he bills himself), is one of the worst films of 2008, and we’re just two months in. It is disgustingly misogynistic, worse even than the Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn vehicle, Death Becomes Her (1992). It’s the yuckiest of ugly ducklings (Christine Laken) made fun of for half the film for every conceivable ‘sin,’ like comedones, bad hair, poor skin, horrific teeth, moles, you-name-it, until the transformative swan is achieved, via Hilton’s ministrations and ‘help,’ to rope in a half-way attractive swain by twisting oneself inside out for the obvious consumerist view of “acceptable.” Laken remade is actually more attractive than Paris Hilton. No one in the screening I saw waited for the screen credits, and left the second it wrapped. Dreadful. My partner would have left in the first 5 minutes. Marion DS Dreyfus 20©08

Jan

13

The new New York Times glowers on 8th Avenue,

chill end of '07, since they moved last

month from their musky centenarian

digs on dingy W. 43rd, infamous

for streetworn lunch-pails and the deadcold

coffee styros of restive strikers.

Betimes, as you grind uptown nightly,

there it squats, the balky Times upright in its im-

posing blackish-pewter cladding, a hulk-

ing virtual vegetable scraper

Pushy on its erratic, dit-dah horizontal

haunches, dispersing its jotted tremble-lights

for all the world, so mind-fill-

streaky:

Mostly, however, it glowers

like a stiff-backed,

pissed-off

peppermill.

Jan

9

McDonaldsJust caught on the news that Mc Donalds will add a 'coffee bar' and make more dramatic changes to their drink menu than they have in the past 30 years. I enjoy their Bravo coffee and am sure I will enjoy the drink additions when they reach my area. Mc Donalds is apparently still setting the pace in many areas as it was also announced that Starbucks now plans to make changes.

Sam Marx adds:

Although Starbucks gets a different niche of customers, this not good news for Starbucks .

A coffee bar and wi-fi at McDonalds, then Starbucks really has a problem.

Adam Robinson reflects:

I've always believed that the ethos of a corporation pervades, DNA-like, throughout all manifestations of the corporation, however small the "cell." If you want to discover the values of a company, you can look anywhere, from its choice of stationery down to the cleanliness of its floors.

Back to Starbucks. It was telling for me regarding the company's values that, living as I do five blocks from the former World Trade Center, I was shocked that in the days following, when rescue workers, many of them volunteers, flooded the area to begin cleanup, the local Starbucks was selling bottles of water. I'm as much a capitalist as anyone, but the outrage this opportunism occasioned in the local community, and subsequent bad publicity — Starbucks quickly reversed its policy and began handing out bottles for free – rankles to this day. The positive publicity it could have garnered by donating the water to relief workers would have more than paid for the negligible profits "sacrificed."

Ray Kroc was fanatic about cleaning his stores, and making everything perfect. Moreover, McDonald's franchisees are a powerful force for innovation and market research. I doubt that Starbucks has any such credo. And were I a fundamental investor, I'd bet on McDonald's in the race with Starbucks.

Ryan Carlson adds:

A worthy read about McDonald's is Ray Kroc's Grinding It Out. My favorite passage:

The key element in these individual success stories and of McDonald's itself, is not knack or education, it's determination.  This is expressed very well in my favorite homily: 'Press On: Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.'

Henry Gifford dissents:

Starbucks and McDonalds offer entirely different products in terms of the cultural experience they sell.

On Broadway in Manhattan, two blocks from me, there is usually a homeless person "working the door" at the McDonald's, opening the door for customers and asking for spare change. Once McDonald's put a guy with a bow tie there to open the door for free, but that didn't last long, and the homeless guy is there every day. Also, the workers in McDonalds don't hesitate to stand around and chat and ignore customers.

At Starbucks a block away I've never seen a homeless person "working the door," (nor at any of the other stores nearby), I don't see homeless people sitting there, and the workers have a spring in their step.

Jim Rogers counters:

As someone whose first career was in the hospitality industry, I can state that McDonald's moves markets in more ways than one.

The difference in demographics, however, is a present condition and certainly not a necessary condition. McDonald's has always put its eggs in two baskets: families (especially those with small children) and value. In the past, their offerings were weighted more heavily on the family side of the spectrum. Now, thanks to a number of cultural shifts (including those driven by Starbucks), McDonald's has realized that they can capitalize on the public's perception of additional value. Before, it was all about quantity (the Super-size phenomenon). Now, it's about quality (better coffee, more aesthetically pleasing decor, fresher menu items). In the past 24 months, the majority of McDonald's top line revenue growth has been driven by menu items at the top of the price scale, especially new salad offerings. There are a couple of interesting points that McDonald's has embraced: the masses (or at least a historically large percentage of the masses) will pay for quality, and design makes a difference. It made a difference in attracting the kids thirty years ago, and now it's making a difference as it re-attracts adults (with or without children) with Wi-Fi, coffee, and more pleasing decor.

Marion Dreyfus opines:

Whatever the relative merits or demerits of the individual loci, the Starbucks habituee will not 'descend' to the perceived downmarket of McD's, which is a brand-association drummed into our consciousness by millions of ad messages over decades. The food may be better, the prices definitively so, at McD's, but the smart set will not cotton to the overbright, plastic-dominated perceived lower-ranking environment of kid-friendly McD's.

The escalation of prices for a simple beverage to unheard-of stratospheres is one thing that has, to date, ensured the rarefied perception of Starbuck's as being compatible with the upward-striving status-jumper.

So unless McD's radically alters its branding, the trendoids will find it distasteful to step lively in those swinging doors, even if their coffee tastes more acidic and sets them back more by a factor of twice or thrice the McD's coffee.

Ken Smith comments:

Ronald McDonald is five blocks east of me in Seattle, a short walk downhill a ways. Property they have is also just a short walk uphill to Childrens' Hospital. Parents can stay at Ronald's place while visiting kids, many with cancer. Ronald's facility is commendable for its architecture. One can have nothing but praise for Mr. Ronald, whose plastic body is standing out front of the facility, smiling with welcome. Kids love him.

Vitaliy N. Katsenelson analyzes:

SBUX stock is transitioning from 'growth' to 'value' investors. However, it is not cheap enough for value guys. At least not yet. Also, with current news cycle it will likely see the other extreme of its valuation. In the not so distant future it will probably have to rationalize its store base, close some underperforming stores and slow its growth expansion.

Jim Rogers notes:

Fast-food restaurants, due to their staffing policies, are much more likely to employ legal immigrants than you might think. The biggest offenders in the food world for using illegal labor: high-end restaurants, because they lack the institutional oversight and back-office support to adequately check a lot of prep cook and porter staff applications (and some are simply dishonest). If you're looking for a trade opportunity in the event of some strict anti-immigration policy, short higher ticket restaurant groups.

Scott Brooks writes:

McDonalds will have to work hard to overcome their persona. They have cultivated that image for a long time. I have often joked (with an air seriousness to it) that one of the greatest inventions/innovations of the 20th century was the McDonalds Playland!
 
I absolutely hate the food at McDonalds and will move heaven and earth to not eat there. But my kids like it. So when the wife needs a break and the kids want to go play, I'll take them to McDonalds, buy a few Happy Meals and let the kids play and eat.
 
Actually, they don't so much eat as graze. They play, come back and grab a few fries and bite or two of their burger/McNuggets and go back to playing.
 
As much as I don't like the food at McDonalds, they are an incredibly innovative company that I respect immensely. And with their distribution chain and the demographics of America changing, don't underestimate what McDonalds is capable of.
 
That clown may look stupid, but underneath there is a shrewd businessman!

Nigel Davies ponders:

I'm just wondering what the real appeal of McDonalds is and what really gets people in the doors.

I often eat at McDonalds during tournaments because there's usually one around, probably they won't poison me and if they do (and I live) I can sue them.

On the other hand my five year old son much prefers the relatively civilised atmosphere of Pizza Hut, so much so that I can use the 'Would you like to go to McDonalds for lunch?' gambit as a threat. Now it turns out he quite likes pubs that do food, but the big thing here was getting him in the door and outside his comfort zone. Now he does miss the balloons but there again he's taken a liking to turkey.

So it seems to me that a lot of this is down to parental choice, the main driver here being cost. Of course most parents are going to be struck by severe pangs of guilt should there be even a whiff of a rumour that the food served up is unhealthy. So with BSE (Mad Cow Disease)/cholesterol etc appearing on the horizon, it was inevitable that McDonalds would take a hit until it overhauled its menus and image.

In this respect I see the coffee/WiFi as being a really clever means of making them look like Starbucks and feeding off the modern, trendy and healthy image of the coffee house chains. But are they a 'competitor'? I really don't see it, and I don't see a Starbucks denizen suddenly switching to McDonalds because of the cost. To me it looks more like an image thing to get the old customers back in the doors.

Julian Rowberry submits:

Starbucks never really caught on here in Australia. Its brand name and attempt at exporting US culture is a tad brash for the local market. Plus there's already a vibrant cafe scene. The Maccas Cafe has been here for years. It's aiming at the fast and convenient 'healthy eating' market that companies such as Subway feed on. Not branded wanker latte drinkers.

Alston Mabry recounts:

Burger KingAt Burger King the other day (I'm not a big fan of fast food, but I am a Coke addict, and my dogs love the burgers on the dollar menu), I hit the drive-thru, and when I pulled up to the window, the Latina there said they needed to cook the burgers and would I mind pulling into the parking lot in front for about three minutes (they know their cooking times). No problem. I don't mind waiting in the car because I always have a good book to listen to, this time Adventure Capitalist. I'm listening away, and the pooches are quiet in the back, when I notice it's been almost ten minutes. So I go back through the drive-thru, and there is a young guy at the window this time. I start to explain, and he thinks I'm placing an order. His English is good, but he is obviously from Mexico or Central America. I show him my drink and the ticket and he gets it and starts rattling away in Spanish with the staff. I realize he is the shift manager. He comes back, apologizing profusely, and explains that they accidentally gave my food to somebody else who was also waiting, that they will cook fresh burgers for me and that he will bring them out to me personally. I think he was worried that I would be angry, but I wasn't at all. We park again, and a few minutes later he appears with the food and apologized otra vez.

The point of the story is this young guy. He was a good-looking kid, maybe twenty. He was running the show, working hard on his English, taking reponsibility for the results, apologizing for mistakes and personally delivering the goods. And here was Burger King providing the structure for him to be successful. Not a dead-end job at all, not for this guy. I was very impressed.

Scott Brooks adds:

I had an funny thing happen in fast food to me in about 1985. I was a manager of a Taco Bell, putting myself through college. We had hired a new girl who had previously worked at Burger King. It was her first day and I had her working the drive-thru.
 
The drive thru "dings" with her very first customer. She says into the microphone: "Welcome to Burger King, can I help you." I thought it was pretty funny, she thought it was pretty funny, but the guy in the drive-thru began laughing hilariously.
 
But he placed his order and pulled to the window. The reason he was laughing so hard? It turns out he was the guy who owned the Burger King where she used to work.

Jan

8

Old ManThis weekend, we hit Portsmouth, Exeter, Manchester (of course), and rally at St. Anselm's — where it is all happening.
 
The feeling we get, traversing the state, is that Hillary has her people plumping on intersections, jockeying with sign holders from Edwards, even on very same four or five square feet! and many signs on traffic triangles and such, but we saw a huge tilt toward Obama among hoi polloi.
 
Don't recall a single Huckabee sign or poster or knob-hanger. There's the respect that maketh money of such great moment.
 
Not much evidence of Ron Paul, though I did meet up with very cute and sexy men/boys who told me they had "flown in from all over the states," using $50K raised "mostly on the Internet" as one attractive Dakotan told me. They are staying "with families" and selling their guy hard, but the locals have not reported (to my hearing) a single vote for the guy.
 
McCain seems to have an edge, following their enchantment of 2000 (McCain by 20 points) and Romney is still very much in play. Rudy has his defenders and adherents. At the debate and thereafter (at our late-night party after St. Anselm's), people spoke approvingly of Rudy's bringing up Islamo-fascism as the key threat facing us, and that theme thence picked up by the others, including Romney and McCain. No sloughing it off as a "bumper sticker" (Edwards, 2007).
 
Edwards, with signage and lawncards everywhere, fighting with a few stragglers for Gravel (!), Richardson, even a stray Duncan Hunter yard sign, did not seem to have an operational machine working anywhere we were campaigning so hard on the retail-politiciking end.
 
Whether they wanted my guy or not, the people were sharp and informed, very friendly, except for some who groaned they "did not want to discuss politics, please!" because, as one guy shoveling his driveway grumbled with a rueful grin — "Don't ever move here…" "Why?" I asked, "too cold in winter? Too much snow?" "Naw, too many pollsters and politicos. We sometimes get as many as four people a day from different campaigners! Too much!" Every home is receiving cascading doorlit and mailers, and banks of callers unearth the vaguest tendril of a proponent with call after call, at all hours, even during live debates.
 
Again and again in the lanes and roadways and neatly laid out clapboard and shingled soapboxes and single-family homes of the state, people brought up the same trio: What about stopping those illegals and invading millions? What about Social Security - what's going to happen there? What about the cost of oil and fixed energy — how long are we going to be paying the Middle East for energy?
 
What will the Democrats do to address these issues? Their focus seems to be apart from these concerns. Even Democrats — as well as the famously "undecided independents" so beloved of pollsters and campaigners, seemed embarrassed to note that by far the leading resume on the Dem side was Bill Richardson, yet, in slightly embarrassed voices, they admitted they would be voting for Obama or Hillary — recognizing there were no great resumes on either of these two front-runners. The old "electability factor" determining a vote that would not ordinarily go to that default candidate.
 
No one could explain specifics of what, exactly, Hillary's "experience" consisted of, though she slings that "35 years of helping others" around the media airwaves like a rodeo cowgirl rehearses her lasso.
 
Saturday evening saw the last-minute switch of GOP/Dem debates, so that the GOP slate went first, followed by the Dems. Hillary was widely derided for her attempt at self-deprecating humor in answer to the "unlikable" question: "Gee, my feelings are hurt…"
 
Sunday: Loads and loads of people hors de combat at church, their cars missing from driveways that still boasted the semi or snow-plow on the alternate driveway. Fantastic, "War of the Worlds" massive silo in Exeter scared us half to death: Another Three-Mile Island manifestation? Turned out to be a water silo.
 
What is the value of distracting voters in the midst of listening to your guy answering live challenges by calling them away from the debaters and toward their ringing phones? Made little sense to us.
 
On the other hand: no taxes, crisp, clear, clean air; bracing neighbors; and a congeries of excellent little boites and eateries. Lots of independents actually still on the fence, two days before the vote. Surprising events: Coming across two other British women, cuties, from Manchester (my birthplace) out wandering around trying to promote Obama, with no clear idea why, precisely, except their vague, hand in the air tracing a loose flourish, "Change…?" And "…Maybe he can do something about global warming…?"
 
And the second: A new move-in, ex- of NYC, who was not even on our wavelength, invited us in for juice and cookies — and a needed loo break. Home-baked Toll Houses! Delightful runners, dog-walkers, snow-shovelers, slender citizens, all. We saw not a single portly Hampshirite in days, not a one.

Jan

5

ViolinIt was going to happen. I have put it off in favor of other matters for decades. Yet, somehow, in the back of my mind, it never left my agenda as a priority through all these years. Today I purchased my first violin. I have been inspired by various individuals to embark on this journey, not the least of which was Vic, in his printed memories of his father.

The catalyst was my son's music teacher, who, each day, tolerates my standing by the salon door admiring the incremental progress of her diminutive understudies.

I am very excited. Somehow I know that it will make me a better speculator. A better thinker.

Marion Dreyfus adds:

As to your speculation on whether buying (and presumably playing) a new instrument will help you as a thinker, the answer is yes. Studies have long supported the supoposition that the parts of the brain responsible for learning the operation and performance of an instrument, and the subsequent ‘training’ of these new parts of the brain, produces a charge in the cortex such that there are more afferent and efferent pathways than before. The brain creates a specialty ’space,’ as it were, for developing familirities and competencies, and these add to the speed of synapses and add to the total brain enhancement process that we, hopefully, encourage daily by hobbies, investing in the puzzles of life, solving predicaments, discerning this choice from that, and the myriads of fine discriminations that determine our passage through the week and the world. So, yes, you will be giving your brain a ‘grad course’ in additional storage ‘rooms’ and thinking alternatives.

Dec

30

Standing Like a TreeRecently I started to crystalise some, let's say, 'intuitions,' into more conscious thoughts. The bridge between the two was to read quite a few books on Chinese martial arts and the concept of 'Chi' as a kind of life force. Despite a widespread belief in the existance of 'Chi' there is no evidence that such a thing exists. There is, however, some evidence for the health benefits of 'Chi generating exercises'.

To cut a long story short I decided to try it for myself and found classes for Zhan Zhuang. Frankly I was sceptical, as there was no scientific reason for doing so and no means of testing the outcome on my personal sample of one. The only means of judging would be my own senses.

My attendance at these classes naturally caused great hilarity when I told some hard-headed colleages about it. At this point I laid it on thick by explaining that ideally I should stand with my fellow trees in the park and absorb sunlight. Of course I was testing them, sensing their reaction as I built my hypothesis.

What is this hypothesis? Simply stated I suggest that the nature of a scientific education can actually lead to bad thinking, especially if it is pursued to the detriment of non-scientific activities. This is not so much the fault of science as the difficulty humans have in properly applying its methods. The search for a testable hypothesis causes the frustrations that lead to data-mining and failure to falsify hypotheses.

So where do the trees come in? Well, what I've noticed (and I know this is completely untested) since starting Zhan Zhuang is a much greater self-awareness, more energy and a reduction in tension. My chess experience suggests that such effects lead to better thinking, which in turn implies they'd probably lead to better science. The irony here is that many scientists just couldn't bring themselves to do stand like a tree because of the cynicism engendered by their methodology.

Some thoughts:

1) It's better to hire traders who like fresh air.

2) Science has nothing to say on the matter of various ancient practices which 'enhance the senses,' and this is why even really smart guys like Daniel Dennett manage to completely miss the point.

3) If you ever see a tree that tries to stand like a human, get the heck out of there.

Jim Sogi adds:

Studies of the brains of monks who have meditated for 20+ years show structural changes. Practice of breathing, meditation and other techniques manifest in physical changes, changes in alpha brain waves, change in heart and breathe rates. Practice of Kung Fu and other physical martial arts have beneficial health effects, and application to trading as well.

Nigel Davies clarifies:

There are two types of learning involved here. One is learning by 'reason', the other is subconscious 'body learning' of the type involved in Zhan Zhuong. The latter develops things like 'awareness.' My hypothesis is that those who rely on learning by reason alone (and this is the main focus of Daily Spec) are prone to a multitude of errors because they have not developed their 'senses' (or rather other parts of their brain that are not directly associated with reason). I have met such people both on the chessboard and in the trading world, and invariably they talk a good game but are unable to function well within it.

'Descarte's Error' is relevant to this way of thinking, with some brain-damaged individuals discussed therein performing well on 'tests' but failing hopelessly when they were let out onto the street. Substituting 'brain undeveloped' for 'brain damaged' and I suggest that we have a similar effect. Not of course the same level of disaster, but certainly an inability to function at the highest levels of difficult professions.

Marion Dreyfus extends:

The reports of changes recorded in the minds/cerebra of monks are numerous. I wonder if the same can be said of absence of sex? What the monks do is active: They actively calm their minds, and actively bring themselves in concert with their fellow chanters. They breathe synchronously and deeply. They sit in relaxed alignment. These are active conditions.

Is a mere absence of sex in any way equivalent? Not having sex is not a discrete action or series of actions deliberately undertaken. In fact one would argue that a person not enjoying this life-function practice is always on the qui vive to find sex and ameliorate the absence condition. One is always tippy-toeing to locate a prime subject of supply, as it were. But not finding it is not really like co-aligning breathing, balanced postures, deep meditation or efforts at releasing of tensions and earthly concerns. Contrarily, I believe that people who have not had sex for a while still ideate and fantasize and focus on Getting It much of their waking hours, so it is the inverse of monkish contemplation.

Thus I doubt that the two are parallel at all. I therefore doubt that sexlessness alters the brain over time. Except for men. (Who become crazed and completely nuts.) (Or so they would have us distaff siders believe.)

Dec

29

CBOTI probably have enough info gleaned from old-time pit traders to write a large book. I loved to hear the stories and teachings those old guys had to share, and sought out as much of it as they were willing to tell me. However, much of that information is anecdotal and it would be hard to apply the scientific method to most of it. I did learn a whole bag of tricks for extracting extra cash while trading in the pit, but most of the tricks are either mechanical in nature, or educated guesses (such as estimating how much wheat is for sale in the pit at any given time).

I did learn one slam-dunk way of pulling out money out of the pit. I worked hard at identifying new, inexperienced traders who were certain losers, and fading all their trades. This technique worked out very well for me. However, identifying certain losers is a skill in itself and takes time to develop. Pit traders can have a special insight/feel for the market, but only the net winners have that feel. A majority of those who step up to the plate to trade don't make money, and fade into oblivion.

Steve Leslie responds:

In poker, the professionals are sharks; they prey on the weak, in poker vernacular, the dead money. That is why they are called fishes or pigeons. Professionals avoid tangling with each other — it is far easier to exploit the weakness of the youthful or inexperienced rather than the wizened veteran. Therefore the professional uses time to his advantage by patiently waiting for the amateur to venture out into the waters and make a mistake. It is similar to the Highlander television show from some years back. For the Highlander to gain more power, he must kill his adversary by taking off his head. Same in poker, by destroying your opponent you assume his chips and as a result, his power.

Larry Williams extends:

While the gummint guys say, and rightfully so, "Past performance is no assurance of future success" there is one exception to this I have found and isolated: Advisors, funds, newsletters, etc., that have not done well in the past will not do well in the future. Jeff's pit wisdom does spill over to outside the pits as well.

Phil McDonnell adds:

I performed an analysis a year ago that showed that among mutual funds the worst performers were predictably among the worst in the next time period as well. The results were statistically significant for the worst group. However among the best performing funds there was no correlation. Superior performance did not persist probably because many people  mimic the trading styles of the most successful traders of the last time period. It is a bit like the generals who are always fighting the last war.

Steve Leslie writes:

Ken HeebnerI hope this complements Dr. McDonnell's work since I am sure he did some deep research on this. With respect to his comments a few points can be made.

First, I assume that he is talking about open-ended mutual funds. There are significant differences between open-ended funds and close-ended funds. And even open-ended funds who no longer accept new accounts but only money from existing shareholders. This is a very complex field, evaluating performance of mutual funds because there are so many variables that exist in the arena. Fund managers change, inflow of capital, hot markets such as large cap growth, value, international, etc. With respect to performance my first question would be how performance was measured. Was it against an index or against a peer group? For example if a fund were a midcap growth fund, was the evaluation against other midcap funds or against the Russell 1000, S&P, etc. In short, were these absolute performance or relative performance comparisons?

When I was a broker, I know that if a fund had exceptional performance the prior year, the sales rep for the company would come in and push performance. Then the brokers would take the literature and push it to the clients. Money would flow into the fund, making it more difficult for the manager to manage. Therefore the fund was a victim of its own success and performance would suffer. The most startling examples of this were in the late 1990s and 2000 when tech funds had great absolute numbers. Every sales rep who came into the office was pushing these funds. Dramatic amounts of money would flow into the funds thus putting tremendous pressure on the managers. All the clients wanted to buy were the hot funds. Nobody would buy value funds, which over the next several years would have been the proper investment.

Next is, what style does the manager employ, growth vs value, largecap vs midcap vs smallcap vs international? One year may be too short a time to evaluate superior performance of mutual funds — 3, 5, 10 year numbers are much better barometers of perfomance. Trends in the market can last longer than just one year. For example over the last 3-4 years international funds have had their day in the sun. I am confident the worm will turn and they will begin to tire. The next hot sector may be largecap U.S. growth, or other sectors. The jury is out on this. In fact, the Morningstar five-star ratings system is based on 3 year past performance. I believe the highest-rated Morningstar funds for the past three years tend to be worse absolute performers the next three. Conversely, the worst performers the last three years, the one stars, can be the best performance group. Once again the dynamics are in place for things to change.

Finally there are some fund managers who have withstood the test of time. Ralph Wanger, Kenneth Heebner, Bob Olstein, Bill Miller, to name a few, all have had stellar long term results but even they have had bad years.

Ken Smith remarks:

Performance in youth does not predict performance in aged. Performance in pre-marital bed does not predict marriage results. Performance in school does not predict performance at work. And so on.

Dr. McDonnell worked on performance of top mutual funds, found we can't predict future from present results.  I have looked at charts for many years, in fact I began at age 22.  Now just short of age 79.  Of course there was a hiatus when charts were not available.  Overall my experience determined a squiggle on a chart from five years ago will not correlate with a squiggle I will find when the market opens next year.

Marion Dreyfus agrees:

What Ken says in regard to former performance not being valid for future success should be received doctrine, and yet seems not to be. In terms of financial investments, people extrapolate out as if the law is concrete: If it returned 8% in the past 10 years, it will continue to run that way in the future. We take a lifetime to unlearn easy mistakes.

Dec

29

Imaginary WitnessIn "Imaginary Witness," now at the IFC, Greenwich Village, opening January 2008, the documentarians have produced a technically sophisticated, visually imaginative, scholarly documentary that manages in the space of 100 minutes or so to investigate the belief system and history of the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of Hollywood, the development of the anti-Semitic meme conflict (more accurately, the age-old revivified hate-Jews bloodlust conflict) and the aftermath of the H!tlerian Anschluss. The documentary's enormous achievement is in bringing all this together to show incontrovertibly the total misunderstanding of the US role that shaped the policy follies of the West in general and the U.S. and U.K. in particular. The potentially deadly results are summed up in the foreboding title. "Imaginary Witness." They marinated in their lassitude juice. They were pathetic witnesses of no value whatsoever, until it was far, far too late.

This viewer, considering herself knowledgeable, learnt that the Hollywood of the late 1930s and 40s were gingerly on the side of the Germans so as not to antagonize their film-going publics. Those who declared alarm over the rise of death camps and rumblings with statistics of dead and collected Jews were treated like prior versions of Kucinich-nutter Smurfs. Even flanks of bearded, congregational rabbis.

Narrated authoritatively by Gene Hackman, this film culls thousands of newsreels, films, TV serials, broadcasts and archival footage of Hollywood greats past and present to assemble a damning stab of shame at the lacklustre, not to say supine, reaction of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Congress, and the public in general to the obscene plight of Europe's Jews.

ShoahThe standout reference I expected to see, the nine-hour documentary "Shoah," was entirely absent. I puzzled why. "Shoah" was not a Hollywood product, however: Produced by Claude Lanzmann in France and Poland, it fell outside the bounds of the archival deconstructions in "Imaginary."

Again and again through the lenser, the lucid and scalpel-sharp commentary and analysis by Fordham Law Professor Thane Rosenbaum, a personal favorite of mine from numerous symposia and film festivals he has helmed a few blocks from my home, himself the child of Survivors, pierced the Stygian black and white captures of sorrow and pity.

Featured throughout are film luminaries such as Charlie Chaplin ("The Great Dictator") and Stephen Speilberg ("Schindler's List"), and the thoughtful exegeses of other great analysts and scriveners who sat in on the writing of the plays, or screenplays, film or parody. Painful irony of the tacit cooperation accorded H!tler when he requested that all Jewish members of crews working in the European field be fired, and all were, was that every single one of the executives so doing were themselves emigres from Europe. All Jews.

"The Pawnbroker," "I was a Nazi Spy," "The Pianist," "Anne Frank," "Judgment at Nurenberg," "To Have and Have Not" and on and on. Not so many. But each adding to the canon of documenting the unheard of and unthinkable. Until very late in the game, all US films that dealt with the Jewish question were all in 'gentleman's agreement' code. Not one even mentioned the word "Jew" at all. Instead, the Power Lunchers That Be in filmland called the subjects of their risky A- and B-list films "non-Aryans." Don't hurt the feelings of the Germans. Watch those European filmgoing audiences. Globalize the suffering of Anne Frank so she is not too "ethnic."

This is not a rehash of other omnibus films on WWII. Much that is exposed is first-time compilation. It captured only seven people in the audience at the public showing at the International Film Centre in NYC, one person having the temerity to chew popcorn. But this is a film that will command its enduring, if deathly silent, audience.

And that email that's circulating, about how Ike wanted to capture and document the release of the death-camps, so ''no one would forget what occurred there," in 50 or 60 years? Turns out it's that rarity today: It's actually true. He sent in a flotilla of Hollywood cameramen to record what they saw.

Dec

25

KosmosKosmos has an excellent chemistry set available for the American market, and all its products are of the highest German quality, including their physics, electronics and solar sets. Truly remarkable to see in America, considering Toys R Us and Walmart don't carry hobby items any more, and it's very hard to get LBG 16 gage train equipment for kids at reasonable prices in the US. The only science items I see at the mass marketers are logo type licensing or naming-rights items associated with a quasi-governmental museum that are are totally third hand — except for the Elenco line of snap circuits and the University of Cambridge line of electronics laboratory gear, which, although vanities like the Smithsonian's, do not appear as derivative. I was responsible for getting Kosmos into the US (but it cost me, it cost me) after pining for their products for my kids after seeing their beautiful sets available only in Europe in Germany. The two best toy companies I have ever seen are Galt Toys in England and Kosmos in Germany. I wish I had more time to play with all their great products myself — my children and grandchildren will provide that function.

Marion Dreyfus adds:

With reference to trains and sophisticated toys, my friend's father has an entire room of considerable dimension set aside for a smashing Lionel railroad, with scenery and fire engines and bridges and cabooses and all manner of extremely costly but exacting trains and paraphernalia he has been pretending to fire up and furnish with more and more amazing controls and bells and whistles (literally) for so-called grandchildren. But whether he has granduns or no, he is down there playing with the immaculate miniature chuggers. He of course hopes for the rationalization of grandkids, but if they don't come, n'importe… It is always a deep pleasure to be able to take the controls and send those eight-car similacra racing over hill and dale. to be invited into this sanctum is high privilege and I cherish the engraved invites I have been accorded.

Marlowe Cassetti reminisces:

I quick search found many physics and chemistry sets from Thames and Kosmos, and on Amazon they have an array of science kits from physics to microcontrollers to perfume to fuel cells. Oh, if they were available in the 1940s when I was a child! I did have a chemistry set, erector set, and microscope. My father, a physician, valued learning. And what discoveries I made as a child — it opened up a world of wonder. Then as a twelve year-old I branched off into model aviation and that changed my life forever. My father was never supportive of that hobby. He considered it play rather that anything useful, but it taught me the foundations of physics and engineering. Years later he put my NACA and NASA research reports in the trunk of his car and would show them to anyone who asked about me. I'd finally arrived.

Ken Smith extends:

Your chemical experiments brought to mind Leon Lederman, who works with particles, enjoys the things as if they were toys. All he would want for Christmas is a new particle. In one of his books he wrote:

When I was growing up in the Bronx, I used to watch my older brother playing with chemicals for hours. He was a whiz. I'd do all the chores in the house so he'd let me watch his experiments. Today he's in the novelty business. He sells things like whoopee cushions, booster license plates, and T-shirts with catchy sayings. These allow people to sum up their world view in a statement no wider than their chest. Science should have no less lofty a goal. My ambition is to live to see all of physics reduced to a formula so elegant and simple that it will fit easily on the front of a T-shirt.

Particle physics folk are looking for a formula so simple a child can play with it, like a toy perhaps. They'd like a formula that did not cover the entire blackboard.

My trading could use a formula like that. The nearest I've found is P&F squiggles!

Nov

17

REUTERS
German Invents 'Spray-On' Condom to Fit All Sizes

"In a survey we conducted, men had a two-fold reaction to the idea. Some said it's a great idea and would help them because they can't find conventional condoms that fit them. Others say they can't imagine it working in practice. There's the romance factor: applying the condom does interfere with the s-x act."

From the distaff side: I think it would be erotic to watch it go on, and add to the sensual pleasure. Could be a hoot.

Nov

17

Just a  string around your finger:
 
Today at 2 pm, "Schopenhauer's Loves" — Soldiers and Sailors Club, 37th/Lex. $4. 

Tomorrow at 3 pm, Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" — St. John's University in Staten Island, Student Center Gym near Howard Avenue. $20/half-price students/seniors. Taxi from the ferry. (I know, I know, I don't expect many Manhattanites. Staten Islanders, however, will throng.)

Nov

13

MonicaCurvy women may be a clever bet

Women with curvy figures are likely to be brighter than waif-like counterparts and may well produce more intelligent offspring, a US study suggests.

At last, a reason for all this dizzying shape! If one thinks about it analytically, the women who do not proffer capacious hips — long a man's unconscious gauge of fertility and child-bearing — and ample breasts — also a subconscious signal of fertility and nurturance — then most men interested in prolonging their line would reject these waifs as wanting in all the right aspects that would procure their seed a nice nest and upbringing into the world.

The waif is another analog for the child who might not make it. Robust children/women manage to advance into adulthood and fecundity. Waifs maintain the semblances of the undernourished and the continually childlike. Neither of these is attractive to healthy/discerning men with seed to inseminate into the ready and able.

If the waifs then get the less assertive men — because the assertives are the one with first call on all women, and will likely select the most robust women for linkage and childbearing — then the strong confluence exists that the lesser in all characteristics men will achieve their females, likelier to be less desireable than the [smarter][faster][more assertive] alpha males.

The mating of these men with the more robust women ensures children who will survive the prolonged assaults of childhood diseases, and the accidents attendant on being near poorer circumstances. That almost definitively leads to the scenarios that breed smarter offspring. Selection toward the fertile and ripe as opposed to the frail and wanting.

Nov

12

retail RVs for the leftover retirees

who couldn't climb up to Sanibel Island or Naples

they sun and sweat in the traffic of tourists

both the harijans outside the

gated communities,

sharing with the time-share condo'ers

(yuppies still reaping the yippee!s

of the dot-com mad 90s)

a hop-skip-and- a-jimmie

from the Okeechobee holler and the

south-central swamps;

picture the car paths

that mishmash of minivans and RVs

SUVs and 'wagons, puff-up rafts abrim with

spanky coolers of Kool-Aid and Coors

weary, cranky moms'n'pops, forgetful,

unstrung and weavy between two lanes

their gas caps gosh, a-slosh,

white-and-tan vans

steered by big-haired blue-heads

and teeth-in-a-tumbler octagenamen

pale vestige owlick of the tippy-top sports

dreary steering whee!s

doing the white-knuckle 28 in a 55. . .

or leatherette-tan taut talkers

on their Nokias to their brokas,

swerving 'round the whooshing swooshing

monster semis with their statement roll bars

and pride-of-polish gunracks

workin' off their shifts before they hit

their Gr-8 Bowl-Mor Lounge,

the rough salad of funsters outta the

mud flats doing 89 in a 55

hurling toxic hellmouth out their

roll-downs to the tepid

tourgroups in timid seatbelt aghast,

escapism not the half of it cum

Ft. Miz'ry (nee Myers)

Nov

11

Norman MailerI am sad to see Norman Mailer's passing, though I did not always agree with him. He was an exalted writer and thinker. When I worked for Esquire, I was impressed at how remarkable his 'raw' copy was, requiring little in the way of emendation or in fact any orthographic edifications. He was a thinker and moralist (though I again add I did not agree with much of his recent thinking), loved women and rambunctious s-x (five stars for that, right there!), and was a protean personality and magnificent brawler in life on tiers too many to enumerate.

Not a herringbone wobbler, he thought through his positions and expanded and elucidated them. He was intoxicating in many of his justly celebrated books, The Naked and the Dead, Armies of the Night, and others. If he occasionally bobbled the game, as he did with The Executioner's Song, he was prone to be forgiving of those who, like himself, manifested a scrivener’s gift.

I have a bolus in my throat as I write: He was not a man to easily dismiss, or one to welcome a shortage of. Who will not rue his absence in the coming sure-to-be-Vesuvial 2008 elections? Who will not miss his naughtiness and prolific expansions on everything sociological and gravitous?

A humorous reminiscence: When Citibank instituted robot paper and delivery bots, some decades ago, they called them "Norman" — because they were "Norman mailers."

Oct

22

While imperfect, "The Kingdom" addresses the push me/pull me aspect of our ''allies", the Saudis. They are 'helpful' when face to face, less helpful in all other encounters, making redress of terrorist outrages hard to accomplish. (By the way Jamie Foxx gets better and better). The film spent months being sampled and screened, ostensibly waiting for a new hook of some sort of terrorist explosion that, thankfully, failed to materialize. Jennifer Garner is in the film, barely; I was hard-put to explain what she was doing there, especially given her unSaudi skivvies and camo gear. (Where was the official complaint from the royals? Where was her burqa?) The thumbnail non-Robert Wuhl mini-history at the start of the film is alone worth the trek to the ‘plex. In its complex back and forth of Saudi cooperation, hostility, insolence and veiled hatred in the unraveling of blame for a ghastly explosion killing many Americans resident in the US compound there, the film serves to remind viewers that Saudi Arabia is but another of the many coiled snakes hissing at us with forked intentions in that part of the globe. This movie is what I like to call an actioner. The last part of “Kingdom” releases weeks of your suppressed animosities and rage with its shooting, carnage and revenge opera. My kind of flick.

“Reservation Road” could be termed a non-buddy film starring two strong male actors who otherwise would be viewed as likely Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid types. In the film, tension over an accidental fatal hit-and-run builds almost unbearably, with the audience subtly cheering on the perpetrator of the crime, Mark Ruffalo, as the sympathetic hero, versus the obsessional, unrelenting Jean ValJean [anti-]hero of Joaquin Phoenix. Both men turn in taut and stomach-churning performances, abetted by the somewhat over-the-top ministrations of the ever lovely Jennifer Connelly. Computer search plays as large a role as any of the live actors.

“Sleuth” reprises the film and dramatic Broadway productions of the past 30 some years, starring Michael Caine as the older, wealthier, cuckolded older playwright, and the handsome, feckless but not unresourceful Jude Law in the role once played by both Michael Caine and the late and much-missed Christopher Reeve. This too is a non-buddy partnering of matched opposites, with the sleek, techno-gee-whiz centerpiece home of the older Caine playing a significant role in the proceedings. Law is having it on with Caine’s lissome missus, and Caine makes Law pay for every illicit assignation. But getting to the dénouement is more than half the frissonage and fun. It has its charms, especially if you haven’t seen the earlier incarnations of this classic standby of point-counterpoint of men over a woman. And of course, it’s more about matching wits against an egregious opponent than it is about jousting for the favor of the female.

Melancholy and occasionally plain unbelievable, the film instantiation of the popular book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “Love in a Time of Cholera,” features amiable and unforced performances by Javier Bardem and numerous buxom beauties, much breastly bareness, and the requiting of long, long unrequited flames from youth. The protagonists age astoundingly gracefully over the course of 50 years, and the heroine is only the slightest bit tinged by the passing cavalcade of annii. Bardem has his way with ladies only too willing to avail themselves of him for some reason (he asserts after 616 or so that it is because he is so “accommodating,” but he has the temerity to tell his long-lost love after all these on-screen assignations that he has—of all the brazen balls!—remained a virgin waiting for his one true love). Early on, the capable Liev Shreiber and incendiary John Leguizamo perk up the film, largely wasted talent cameos that go nowhere, apparently. The book was less unlikely, though there is always a surrealistic, almost hyper-fantastic element to the works of Marquez.

Probably a strong contender for the Oscars is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s gritty and thrombotic performance in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” also starring Albert Finney, a sclerotic Ethan Hawke, a sometimes-nude Marisa Tomei, and a tight ensemble in this heist gone terribly wrong for all the tragic yet expectable reasons. I thought nothing could top Hoffman’s Truman Capote, but this one is feral and dark, unforgiving in its sweaty trajectory into the unforgiving abyss. Not one character in the lot has a smile for the entire duration. Surprising passages give the viewer a dyspeptic view into his or her own difficult yet rationalized moments. This film was probably the poster child for that despairing not-so-bon mot: “Sh!t happens.”

The most important of the documentaries seen recently is “Unknown Soldier,” which puts the lie to those tunnel-visioned Germans who for the past 60 years pretended only the SS was responsible for tormenting, abusing and killing average Jewish citizens in Germany during the lead-up to WWII and the infamous Camps. The documentary scrupulously examines the vast paper archives newly discovered and calls on eyewitnesses to lift this particular granitic elephant. The squalid moral self-blindness is forever laid bare as the grainy footage and the damning documents and the survivors point imperturbable fingers at the vast mass of those Germans, who can never again claim they “didn’t know,” or certainly “were not implicated” in the horror of the Holocaust. They did. And they were.

Oct

19

Two years ago, I just about jumped out of my skin when I walked into a convenience store and saw a large sign saying "October 19, 1987." A closer examination revealed the purpose of the sign: "You must have been born on or before this date to purchase cigarettes."

Marion Dreyfus recalls:

On October 19, 1987, a friend sent me a two-pound box of Leonidas to commemorate the flight I was on wherein he met me. He went on to Paris, I to London. When I arrived, I was told the market had fallen 500 points. I was in shock, thought my informant was joshing cruelly. But these layers of deliciousness are almost a suitable make-up for the huge loss suffered.

Sam Marx writes:

I remember that weekend of October 1987 well. The Dow was around 3,000 and Friday had a 100 point selloff.

That evening on Rukeyser's Wall Street Week, Martin Zweig predicted a crash for Monday, which did occur. That prediction truly cemented his reputation. If anyone hears or reads of a Zweig prediction this weekend, please tell me!

But to compare that weekend to now without taking into account the underlying technical structure (market P/E, option implied vol, etc.) is misleading. For example, implied vol then was very low, today it is moderate.

Sep

9

Weak hands chattering,
kibbitzers manipulate.
Strong hands place big bets.

Marion Dreyfus replies:

Nice haiku Big Al
despite arduous topic
Obvious: Gifted!

Sep

7

RoshIt is traditional before the New Year (for Jews, anyway) to ask forgiveness of those one may have injured or hurt. But it is also an adjunctive corollary of the cleansing period run-up to the New Year period to thank people for what they have done for one throughout the preceding annum. I want to thank Vic and Laurel and all the other Daily Speculations contributors for providing me so many hours of information, education, rigorous intellectual content, market tips and tops, insights, friendly comments and support when most needed, sophisticated and silly-goose humor,  the beloved trashy moment or two, and even joy. What a privilege to be among your ranks. Thank you, all.

Rich Bubb adds:

I echo Prof. Dreyfus's sentiment and thoughts. Vic and Laurel did a great deal of work, shepherding and entertaining at Spec Party last month. We had a great time.

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