Category: Film
*Blitz* (no spoilers)
This is the Steve McQueen movie about the Nazi blitz against London. I found it visually superb, countering clichés (mostly), showing a different and more varied side of civilian life in wartime, and perhaps the best screen treatment (ever?) of what life was like in the earlier “world of atoms”. I objected to the overuse of Dickensian references. In any case one of the best movies of this year, please note we live in a charmed time I hope you are enjoying it.
The Immigration Rap Battle
From the team that brought you Hayek v. Keynes we have the immigration rap battle featuring “George Borjas,” “Garett Jones” and “Stephen Miller” on team build the wall and “Bryan Caplan” and “Alex Nowrasteh” on open the border. I wouldn’t say the actors (AI?), look very much like their real world counterparts but much respect to the author of the rap lyrics who has brilliantly captured the essence of the ideas economically and thematically.
*Conclave*
I would say this was a good not great movie, but I pass along word because it is rare to have a movie so exclusively devoted to both public choice and social choice theory, and realistically so. (Thomas Reese said in an interview that the details on the conclave were pretty realistic too; if you don’t know of Reese his book Inside the Vatican is perhaps the best book on bureaucracy ever.)
I cannot say much more without spoiling the plot. Needless to say, Richard McKelvey would not have walked away from this one feeling refuted…
The film also takes itself seriously in a good way, which these days in Hollywood is increasingly rare.
My excellent Conversation with Tom Tugendhat
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
Tom Tugendhat has served as a Member of Parliament since 2015, holding roles such as Security Minister and chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Before entering Parliament, Tom served in in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also worked for the Foreign Office, helped establish the National Security Council of Afghanistan, and served as military assistant and principal adviser to the Chief of the Defense Staff.
Tyler and Tom examine the evolving landscape of governance and leadership in the UK today, touching on the challenges of managing London under the UK’s centralized system, why England remains economically unbalanced, his most controversial view on London’s architecture, whether YIMBYism in England can succeed, the unique politics and history of Kent, whether the system of private schools needs reform, his pick for the greatest unselected prime minister, whether Brexit revealed a defect in the parliamentary system, whether the House of Lords should be abolished, why the British monarchy continues to captivate the world, devolution in Scotland and Northern Ireland, how learning Arabic in Yemen affected his life trajectory, his read on the Middle East and Russia, the Tom Tugendhat production function, his pitch for why a talented young person should work in the British Civil Service, and more.
And here is an excerpt:
COWEN: Okay. First question, what is your favorite walk around London, and what does it show about the city that outsiders might not understand?
TUGENDHAT: Oh, my favorite walk is down the river. A lot of people walk down the river. One of the best things about walking down the river in London is, first of all, it shows two things. One, that London is actually an incredibly private place. You can be completely on your own in the center of one of the biggest cities in the world within seconds, just by walking down the river. Very often, even in the middle of the day, there’s nobody there. You walk past things that are just extraordinary. You walk past a customs house. It’s not used anymore, but it was the customs house for 300, 400, 500 years. You walk past, obviously, the Tower of London. You walk past Tower Bridge. You walk past many things like that.
Actually, you’re walking past a lot of modern London as well, and you see the reality of London, which is — the truth is, London isn’t a single city. It’s many, many different villages, all cobbled together in various different ways. I think outsiders miss the fact that there’s a real intimacy to London that you miss if all you’re doing is you’re going on the Tube, or if you’re going on the bus. If you walk down that river, you see a very, very different kind of London. You see real communities and real smaller communities.
And:
COWEN: Can the British system of government in its current parliamentary form — how well can that work without broadly liberal individualistic foundations in public opinion?
TUGENDHAT: I think it works extremely well at ensuring that truly liberal foundations are maintained. I mean that not in the American sense; I mean in a genuine, the old liberal tradition that emerges from the UK in the 1700s, 1800s, where freedom of thought, freedom of assembly, the right to own property, and all those principles that then became embedded in various different constitutions around the world, including your own. I think it does very well at doing that because it forces you, our system forces you, into partnership. There are 650 people who you have to work with in some way in Parliament over the next four or five years.
And there’s four of us currently going for leadership at the Conservative Party. There’s one reason why, despite the fact that we’re competing almost in a US primary system, the way in which we are dealing with each other is very different, is because we’re all going to have to work together for the next four years. Whoever wins is going to have to work with the other three, and the idea that you can simply ignore each other isn’t true. There’s only 121 of us Conservative MPs in Parliament, and what this system forces on us is the need to deal with each other in a way that you have to deal with somebody if you’re going to deal with them tomorrow. I think that’s one of the reasons why the British political system has endured because it forces you to remember that there’s a long-term interest, not an immediate one, not just a short-term one.
Recommended, highly intelligent throughout, including on China, Russia, and Yemen.
The case why culture is not stuck
From the excellent Katherine Dee, here is just one excerpt:
TikTok sketch comedy is in the same lineage of theater. It invites a suspension of disbelief from the audience, creators often play multiple characters, rapidly switching between roles with nothing more than a change in voice, facial expression, or camera angle. And importantly, it’s funny. When the whole feed is taken together, it’s almost digital vaudeville: a song, a short sketch, a physical feat, slapstick, animal acts and satire, one after another, in a personalized variety show on your phone.
And:
It’s a spectrum. At one end, we have Internet Personalities, with their cults of devotion. In the middle, we find fan culture, where some fans become prominent figures within their fandoms, stars in their own right. These Big Name Fans occasionally break out to create their own media kingdoms, as was the case with E.L. James, who authored Fifty Shades of Grey, itself originally Twilight fanfiction, and Cassandra Clare, who began in the Harry Potter fan community, before going on to write several popular fantasy series. At the other end of the spectrum are anonymous creators, whose approach to authorship is almost medieval: their projects are not about them as individuals, but the meme, the project, the aesthetic, the vision. They are less like the expressive individualists of Modern art, than the cathedral builders of the Middle Ages.
Much has been said about memes as art and the collective labor and imagination that goes into their creation, but it extends further than that. It’s not just memes. Creating mood boards on Pinterest or curating aesthetics on TikTok are evolving art forms, too. Constructing an atmosphere, or “vibe,” through images and sounds, is itself a form of storytelling, one that’s been woefully misunderstood and even undermined as shallow. Many of these aesthetics have staying power, like “coquette” and “cottagecore.” They’re not passing fads or stand-ins for personalities or subcultures. They are more than ever-evolving vectors for consumerism. They’re a type of immersive art that we don’t yet have the language to fully describe.
But that is the case with so much of what’s new. We won’t understand it until it’s in the rearview mirror.
Interesting throughout. Of course AI-aided creations will be the next step in this process. Maybe you don’t like a lot of these new forms, perhaps because they do not have the nobility and grandeur of say Bach. One simple point is that it is not optimal for every period in culture to focus on exactly what you want from it. This point is rarely recognized. Diversity across time is valuable as well!
*Megalopolis* (only modest spoilers)
A fascinating movie, far more interesting than most of the slop they send your way. And it is visually stunning, with an excellent cast to boot.
One is never quite sure how to feel about what is shown on the screen, but one side of forces here are pro-growth, pro-billionaire, pro-YIMBY, and pro-science. The film itself is strongly anti-crowd and anti-populist. Contra some other recent trends, there is one trans character and that person is a villain.
It is all set in a future “alternate universe” America, where something like the Roman Senate rules and society is falling apart, both stagnant and decadent. Exactly who or what was at fault? In this parallel universe, there is no internet, few immigrants, and very little feminization. Women are sexually attractive and voracious, yet kept in their place. Some other technologies are quite advanced — physical technologies — so that a miracle city can be built. Should it be built? Can it be built? That is a central theme of the plot.
To be sure, the film has flaws galore. Some parts of the plot make no sense, and Coppola repeatedly chooses to go “over the top,” when most of the time he did not have to. Periodically the characters lapse into Latin or quote Shakespeare. The plot at some points ceases to be linear. I am uncertain how to interpret the implied politics, but I am pretty sure they are not mine.
I was never tempted to walk out, nor did it ever drag.
Matt Yglesias has a good and perceptive review.
Meta-lesson: Don’t let them tell you when to retire.
Civil War
I knew Civil War (now streaming on HBO/Max) was going to be good when just a minute or so in you see an explosion in the distance and only later do you hear the sound wave. [Mild spoilers may follow.] Shortly after, we meet war journalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst in a standout performance). I thought, “She looks like Lee Miller,” and seconds later, the name is dropped. In the next shot, Lee is in a bathtub—a clear sign you’re in the hands of a master. It is not without import that Lee Miller photographed Dachau or a little less obviously that she was a pioneer of the surreal. Both will reappear in Civil War.
In a scene where the journalists need to buy gas, they offer $300. The armed attendant scoffs, “$300 will get you a ham sandwich.” “$300 Canadian,” comes the reply, telling you everything you need to know about the state of the economy.
Civil War was written and directed by Alex Garland, who also made Annihilation, Ex Machina, and the underrated Dredd (the 2012 reboot not the Stallone movie). Many viewers expected Civil War to serve some lectures about red state/blue state politics, but it doesn’t. Tyler makes astute comments about the hidden politics (and reviews the movie here).
My interest was more on how the film portrays war—war is hell but it’s also fucking amazing. The photojournalists at the heart of the story justify their actions as serving a higher purpose, but in reality, they have become addicted to the adrenaline. Civil War shares themes with Nightcrawler. The journalists also share more than they think with the sick fucks who also love war because it gives them a chance to torture and kill.
A great scene at the climax incarnates the “when one dies, another is born” trope. The lead character starts to feel and gain a moral code, only to be killed for it, while the apprentice simultaneously sheds hers, emerging as a new, amoral hero. And it’s all caught on film. Karma is a bitch. The transition isn’t surprising given the logic of the setup but it is handled with originality and grace.
Recommended, given the obvious strictures about violence and serious themes.
*Vertigo*
The author is Harald Jähner, and the subtitle is The Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany 1918-1933. I quite enjoyed this book, which focuses on elements such as the dance, or the growing prominence of the automobile, as essential elements of Weimar. Here is one good passage:
In the early 1920s most people didn’t go to see a particular film, they just went to the cinema. For that reason, many cinema owners didn’t think it necessary to set a particular time for the screening to start. Films were just shown one after the other, ini any order. People came and went, they pushed their way along the rows of seats in the middle of the film and watched for as long as they flet like it. If the projectionist wanted to go home early he just played the film speeded up, silent films can take that. More importantly, there was no need for the audience to listen, so they made any amount of noise, chattted, applauded or commented bawdily on the action.
Recommended, and the author stresses just how rampant sexual harassment was in Weimar employment relations, even relative to other, earlier periods of time.
Hollywood evidence on McCarthyism
There is a new NBER working paper on this topic by Hui Ren Tan and Tianyi Wang, here is the abstract:
We study a far-reaching episode of demagoguery in American history. From the late 1940s to 1950s, anti-communist hysteria led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and others gripped the nation. Hundreds of professionals in Hollywood were accused of having ties with the communist. We show that these accusations were not random, targeting those with dissenting views. Actors and screenwriters who were accused suffered a setback in their careers. Beyond the accused, we find that the anti-communist crusade also had a chilling effect on film content, as non-accused filmmakers avoided progressive topics. The decline in progressive films, in turn, made society more conservative.
Here is extensive (positive) commentary by Alice Evans:
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- Dissidents who had organised against the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) were 27 to 32 percentage points more likely to be accused.
- Celebrities – actors with more experience and Academy Award nominations were more likely to be accused.
- Actors and writers involved in progressive films were more likely to be accused.
Quicker and easier to read than the paper. I also would like to see numbers on how many exactly were in fact communists.
That was then, this is now
The fairly quick on his feet Captain Queeg nonetheless was relieved of his command:
Circa 1954.
Fernand Pajot’s list of best documentaries ever
I know most of them, a very good list:
So far I have as S Tier:
The Act of Killing
Apollo 11
Planet Earth 1/2
The Beatles Get Back
Searching for Sugar Man
Free Solo (?)
Citizenfour (?)Anything else?
Did not make the list, but great:
Herzog stuff
Blue Planet
Our Planet Behind the Scenes
The Last Dance
The Vietnam War
My Octopus Teacher
Meru
Man on Wire
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Honeyland
The Century of the Self
The Elephant Queen
Magnus
Exit Though the Gift Shop
I suggest adding Robert Flaherty’s Louisiana Story, and also that Strauss-sympathetic movie about fans of The Shining, room something or other it is called? What else?
Nat Friedman discusses Sora, and image wisdom
NF: Yeah, I interviewed the Sora creators yesterday, the day before on stage at an event and it was super interesting to hear their point of view. I think we see Sora as this media production tool, that’s not their view, that’s a side effect. Their view is that it is a world simulator and that in fact it can sort of simulate any kind of behavior in the world, including going as far as saying, “Let’s create a video with Ben and Daniel and Nat and have them discuss this,” and then see where the conversation goes. And their view is also that Sora today is a GPT-1 scale, not a lot of data, not a lot of compute, and so we should expect absolutely dramatic improvement in the future as they simply scale it up and thirdly that there’s just a lot more video data than there is text data on the Internet…
And then Andrej Karpathy, I was talking to him the other day too, and he said, “There’s something strange going on-”
[Ben Thompson] And a picture is worth a thousand words by the way, so the number of tokens there is just astronomically larger.
NF: He was exploring this idea that the world model and image and video models actually might better than in text models. You ask it for a car engine, someone fixing a carburetor and just the level of detail that can be in there is extraordinary, and maybe we made a mistake by training on the text extracted from Common Crawl and what we should do instead. I asked him for his most unhinged research idea. He said what we should do instead is train on pictures of web pages and when you ask the model a question, it outputs a picture of a web page with the answer and maybe we’d get way more intelligence and better results from that.
That is from his dialogue with Ben Thompson and Daniel Gross, gated but worth paying for.
What are your favorite non-violent movies?
From Jonathan Birch on Twitter:
What are your favourite nonviolent movies? I don’t mean romcoms, I mean movies that in some way exemplify or explore the idea of nonviolence.
Sorry, but Gandhi doesn’t do it for me. What actually comes to mind is that old Bruce Dern movie Silent Running. Or how about Babette’s Feast? The LLMs in general cough up politically sanctimonious movies. Is it crazy to suggest Vincent Ward’s Map of the Human Heart, admittedly a tragic work too? Terence Malick’s Tree of Life is a natural pick, but somehow it has never registered with me. Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night surely is in contention.
The culture of Hollywood vs. the culture of Bollywood
In Hollywood movies, the most shameful thing is to be poor.
In Bollywood movies, the most shameful thing is to be unmanly or unfeminine. https://t.co/Qd1S02dE5J pic.twitter.com/Oa1b3O6AOR— Whyvert (@whyvert) May 14, 2024
And a comment: “In Bollywood movies throughout multiple eras, the most shameful thing has always been disrespect of parents/family. By a wide margin.”
My Conversation with the excellent Coleman Hughes
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the episode summary:
Coleman and Tyler explore the implications of colorblindness, including whether jazz would’ve been created in a color-blind society, how easy it is to disentangle race and culture, whether we should also try to be ‘autism-blind’, and Coleman’s personal experience with lookism and ageism. They also discuss what Coleman’s learned from J.J. Johnson, the hardest thing about performing the trombone, playing sets in the Charles Mingus Big Band as a teenager, whether Billy Joel is any good, what reservations he has about his conservative fans, why the Beastie Boys are overrated, what he’s learned from Noam Dworman, why Interstellar is Chris Nolan’s masterpiece, the Coleman Hughes production function, why political debate is so toxic, what he’ll do next, and more.
Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: How was it you ended up playing trombone in Charles Mingus Big Band?
HUGHES: I participated in the Charles Mingus high school jazz festival, which they still do every year. It was new at the time. They invite bands from all around to audition, and they identify a handful of good soloists and let them sit in for one night with the band. I sat in with the band, and the band leader knew that I lived close by in New Jersey, and so essentially invited me to start playing with the band on Monday nights.
I was probably 16 or 17 at this point, so I would take the NJ Transit into New York City on a Monday night, play two sets with the Mingus Band sitting next to people that had been my idols and were now my mentors — people like Ku-umba Frank Lacy, who is a fantastic trombone player; played with Art Blakey and D’Angelo and so forth. Then I would go home at midnight and go to school on Tuesday morning.
COWEN: Why is the music of Charles Mingus special in jazz? Because it is to me, but how would you articulate what it is for you?
Here is another:
COWEN: If I understand you correctly, you’re also suggesting in our private lives we should be color-blind.
HUGHES: Yes. Broadly, yes. Or we should try to be.
COWEN: We should try to be. This is where I might not agree with you. So I find if I look at media, I look at social media, I see a dispute — I think 100 percent of the time I agree with Coleman, pretty much, on these race-related matters. In private lives, I’m less sure.
Let me ask you a question.
HUGHES: Sure.
COWEN: Could jazz music have been created in a color-blind America?
HUGHES: Could it have been created in a color-blind America — in what sense do you mean that question?
COWEN: It seems there’s a lot of cultural creativity. One issue is it may have required some hardship, but that’s not my point. It requires some sense of a cultural identity to motivate it — that the people making it want to express something about their lives, their history, their communities. And to them it’s not color-blind.
HUGHES: Interesting. My counterargument to that would be, insofar as I understand the early history of jazz, it was heavily more racially integrated than American society was at that time. In the sense that the culture of jazz music as it existed in, say, New Orleans and New York City was many, many decades ahead of the curve in terms of its attitudes towards how people should live racially: interracial friendship, interracial relationship, etc. Yes, I’d argue the ethos of jazz was more color-blind, in my sense, than the American average at the time.
COWEN: But maybe there’s some portfolio effect here. So yes, Benny Goodman hires Teddy Wilson to play for him. Teddy Wilson was black, as I’m sure you know. And that works marvelously well. It’s just good for the world that Benny Goodman does this.
Can it still not be the case that Teddy Wilson is pulling from something deep in his being, in his soul — about his racial experience, his upbringing, the people he’s known — and that that’s where a lot of the expression in the music comes from? That is most decidedly not color-blind, even though we would all endorse the fact that Benny Goodman was willing to hire Teddy Wilson.
HUGHES: Yes. Maybe — I’d argue it may not be culture-blind, though it probably is color-blind, in the sense that black Americans don’t just represent a race. That’s what a black American would have in common — that’s what I would have in common with someone from Ethiopia, is that we’re broadly of the same “race.” We are not at all of the same culture.
To the extent that there is something called “African American culture,” which I believe that there is, which has had many wonderful products, including jazz and hip-hop — yes, then I’m perfectly willing to concede that that’s a cultural product in the same way that, say, country music is like a product of broadly Southern culture.
COWEN: But then here’s my worry a bit. You’re going to have people privately putting out cultural visions in the public sphere through music, television, novels — a thousand ways — and those will inevitably be somewhat political once they’re cultural visions. So these other visions will be out there, and a lot of them you’re going to disagree with. It might be fine to say, “It would be better if we were all much more color-blind.” But given these other non-color-blind visions are out there, do you not have to, in some sense, counter them by not being so color-blind yourself and say, “Well, here’s a better way to think about the black or African American or Ethiopian or whatever identity”?
Interesting throughout.