Category: Film
Keynes vs. Hayek, round II
Londenio’s four questions
This was his request:
1. How should I explore the German New Cinema (Herzog, Fassbinder, Wenders, etc.) ?
2. If I liked Benedict Anderson’s *Imagined Communities*, what should I read next?
3. Who is the Douglas Hofstadter of Economics?
4. What is the first non-personal question you would ask if you were to wake up from a 10-year-long coma?
Answers:
1. Herzog’s Nosferatu, Kaspar Hauser, und Little Dieter (German-language version only, and a very underrated movie) are my favorites from this tradition, which past Herzog I do not much admire or enjoy. Not long ago I saw Herzog’s early documentary How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck?, 44 minutes on Netflix streaming, highly recommended, mostly it is footage of auctioneers talking really really fast, and percussively, to a partly Amish audience.
There is Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire, but Fassbinder films I do not enjoy. Try also the TV serial Heimat, which properly can be considered cinematic.
2. Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures, by me.
3. If you mix together Kenneth Boulding, G.L.S. Shackle, and Nassim Taleb, you might get an economics approximation of Hofstadter.
4. Are there major wars going on and how bad are they?
Tyrone’s top ten favorite movies
That was a request from Nick L. My (longer) list is on my home page, scroll down a bit. Tyrone of course is my long-lost brother and evil twin. His list, in no particular order, is:
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
Idiocracy
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Showgirls
Wild Things
Ella Enchanted
The Cable Guy, Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor
Booty Call
Flash Gordon
Pasolini’s Teorema
*Godzilla on My Mind*
The author is William Tsutsui and the subtitle is Fifty Years of the King of Monsters. Excerpt:
Gojira (1984), echoing its predecessor of thirty years before, also aspired to a sober message, this time about the threat of nuclear brinksmanship and the dangeres of atomic energy in all its forms. Drawing on public insecurity…the new Godzilla was intended as a cinematic wake-up call. “We wanted to show how easily a [nuclear] accident could occur today,” Tanaka remarked, “but vivid images of nuclear war are taboo…Gojira (1984) is not particularly subtle in its sermonizing, depicting the monster gutting a Japanese nuclear power plant and scarfing down a Russian submarine….And as in the original Gojira, helpless, peaceful Japan, caught between the two Cold War goliaths, emerges as the innocent, morally superior victim.
Recommended. The Godzilla movies, by the way, are recommended too. Most of them are good and I am not just referring to the obvious choices here.
Why American movies won’t die
Here is a well-linked to article about how American movies are dying in terms of quality. Ross Douthat comments. Most of the arguments are correct, namely that too many big budget movies require a “tent pole” in terms of a connection to a comic book, a famous book (Harry Potter), a TV show, and so on. But the article is still too pessimistic. Here are three reasons why movie quality should survive, albeit with some cyclical fluctuations:
1. The more centrist and mainstream the big budget movies get, the more opportunities are created in the niches.
2. Due mainly to digital editing, the costs of movie production and editing are falling. That favors innovation. Marketing costs are rising, due to an increasing scarcity of attention, and that favors blockbusters Still, this latter factor has self-correcting elements, as mentioned above, and many forms of marketing (e.g., the internet) are cheaper than buying network TV ads. The cost story is complicated, but it should not over the longer run penalize quality.
3. The U.S. population is aging and this will push movies away from some of their more juvenile shortcomings.
Is this our future the culture that is Japan markets in everything?
Since he was "discovered" in 1996, Tokuda has emerged as a major player in Japan's emerging adult movie genre known as "elder porn." He says he has appeared in more than 350 films such as "Prohibited Nursing" and "Maniac Training of Lolitas." In these scripts, Tokuda always gets the girl.
The films play upon well-documented Japanese male fantasies. In each, Tokuda plays a gray-haired master of sex who teaches his ways to an assortment of young nurses and secretaries. Whips and sex aides often factor in the plotlines.
Tokuda is 76 years old and he makes an average of one film a week. It is estimated that "elder porn" now accounts for one-fifth of the Japanese adult film sector.
The article is here and for the pointer I thank Daniel Lippman.
One account of what political elections are for
From David Brooks's new blog:
What do you do after your party wins an election? In a forthcoming study for the journal Computers in Human Behavior, Patrick Markey and Charlotte Markey compared Internet searches in red and blue states after the 2006 and 2010 elections. They found that the number of searchers for pornography was much higher right after the 2010 election (a big G.O.P. year) than after 2006 (a big Democratic year). Conversely, people in blue states searched for porn at much higher rates after 2006 than after 2010. One explanation is this: After winning a vicarious status competition, people (predominantly men, I guess) tend to seek out pornography.
And David's new book is here.
Sentences of the Day
Michael Kinsley on Movie Math.
Richardson says that the film and TV subsidy has brought "nearly $4 billion into our economy over eight years" and has created 10,000 jobs. By "our," he means New Mexico. He says every state should emulate this success.
I do hope MR readers will find this amusing.
*Things to Come* (spoilers for an old movie in this post)
This Alexander Korda adaption of H.G. Wells was in 1936 perhaps the most visually spectacular movie of its time. It looks like the first thirty, black and white minutes of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, yet few people watch the movie today, in part because the actors shout at each other.
A world war starts in 1940 and lasts through the 1970s, fought with barbed wire and Art Deco tanks. A pandemic wipes out half the human race. Technology shuts down and for a while airplanes are a rarity. Afterwards, a highly productive reign of science is established, enforced by air power ("Wings Over the World"). It is centered in Basra, Iraq and we see bombers and drones from Iraq take over England, enforcing a "brotherhood of efficiency, and a freemasonry of science." There is no talk of ethics. Eventually the world comes to resemble a Westin atrium and lobby. Life expectancy goes up, but for hairstylists a cost disease still operates. In 2036 they are facing not a Medicare cost crisis but rather preparing the first trip to the moon.
It is noted that man is "conquering nature" and creating a "white world" and no one seems to flinch; Wells favored eugenics. Everyone becomes increasingly bug-eyed and a Luddite rebellion arises, although it seems to be barked down at the end of the movie.
The distinction between "a good movie" and "a movie which is good to watch" has never been more salient.
Things to Come is on Amazon here and on Wikipedia here. Some stills and commentary are here. Here is an NYT review from 1936: "probably as solid a prophecy as any."
*Secret Sunshine*
This 2007 Korean film is one of my favorite movies of the last few years. It is brutal. Here is a review which avoids spoilers, after that it's hard to say more. There are some copies on Amazon, if you have a region-neutral DVD player. It has not yet come to Netflix.
The *Atlas Shrugged* movie trailer
Via Allison Kasic and Chris F. Masse, here it is. Apart looking like a bad movie, I found this jarring. It should be in black and white, or muted colors, with the palate and overall look of a Visconti film. It has some Art Deco architecture (good), but signs of the modern world intrude at the wrong moments. It should not have high-speed rail (will this confuse conservatives? Did those governors end up cutting Medicaid and coughing up the money?) and it should not postulate unrealistic speeds for freight trains. It should not have 2011 cars and Dagny Taggart should not look like a mousy actress imitating Nicole Kidman playing a local news reporter. "If you double cross me, I will destroy you" doesn't ring true. Hank Rearden's line about only wanting to earn money comes across as either a parody of Gordon Gecko or as something worthy of Gecko's parody. To be properly post-Wall Street, Rearden must somehow contain and yet leapfrog over Oliver Stone's vision; a pretty boy look will not suffice.
My favorite things Egypt
1. Novel: I like all of the Mahfouz I have read, but the Cairo Trilogy is the obvious pick. Here is a very useful list of someone's favorite Egyptian authors and novels.
2. Musical CD: The Music of Islam, vol.1: Al-Qahirah, Classical Music of Cairo, Egypt. The opening sweep of this is a stunner, and it shows both the Islamic and European influences on Egyptian music. Musicians of the Nile are a good group, there is Hamza El Din, and there is plenty of rai. What else? I can't say I actually enjoy listening to Um Kalthoum, but her voice and phrasing are impressive.
3. Non-fiction book, about: Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious. Few cities have a book this good. There is also Dream Palace of the Arabs and Tom Segev's 1967. Which again is the really good book on the 1973 War?
4. Movie, set in: Cairo Time. This recent Canadian film avoids cliche, brings modern Cairo to life, and is an alternative to many schlocky (but sometimes good) alternatives, such as The Mummy, Death on the Nile, Exodus, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and so on. There is Agora. Egyptian cinema surely has masterpieces but I do not know them. If you're wondering, for books, I could not finish Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings.
5. Favorite food: I was impressed by the seafood restaurants on the promenade in Alexandria. Food in Cairo did not thrill me, though I never had a bad meal there.
6. Philosopher: Must I say Plotinus? I don't find him especially readable.
7. City: I enjoyed Alexandria, but I can't say I liked Cairo beyond the museum (much better than any Egyptian collection outside of Egypt) and the major mosques. The Sphinx bored me. The air pollution prevented me from walking for more than an hour and there was cement, cement. and more cement. The ride between Cairo and Alexandria was one of the ugliest, most uninspiring journeys of my life. The Egyptians were nice to me but I never had the sense that anything beautiful was being done with the country. Let's hope that changes.
8. Opera, about: Philip Glass, Akhnaten. But wait, there's also Aida, with Callas. And there's Handel's Israel in Egypt. Handel set a lot of his operas in Egypt, including Berenice and Giulio Cesare.
Diane Rehm is Egyptian-American but I don't know her show. The new biography of Cleopatra is smooth but the narratives made me suspicious. Was Euclid Egyptian?
What are the highest prices for video art?
Bill Viola's Eternal Return sold for $712,452 in 2000. The rest of the top ten is all by Viola, Nam June Paik, Matthew Barney, and Bruce Nauman, with the #10 work going for $234,814. I like video art, but to buy it…to me that is one very expensive movie ticket. I did, however, shell out for a Netflix subscription, so at the margin I can watch Black Narcissus for nothing.
The data are from the new and interesting book Art of the Deal: Contemporary Art in a Global Financial Market, by Noah Horowitz.
Request for movie opinions
From DL, a loyal MR reader and correspondent and link sender: "Mine [request] would be: what movies have you seen recently and were they good or not? I have recently seen Black Swan, The King's Speech, The Fighter, Rabbit Hole, Casino Jack and Somewhere."
I wrote: "Aronofsky's *Black Swan* = *Red Shoes* + *Repulsion* + Cronenberg + Tchaikovsky + something else too." Overwrought, but I liked it. The King's Speech was an extremely well done hammy manipulation, tugging on all the right strings and targeting the American soft spot for Brits. True Grit suggests the Coen brothers are more superficial than they seem, rather than the contrary; rewatch the original for a better time. The rest remain below my watch threshold for now, though Somewhere is due to come to Fairfax. Even good movies about boxing I don't seem able to enjoy. Political biopics I never like.
Important 2010 movies that weren’t released in most of the USA
These are the ones that are popping up most often on the "Best of 2010" lists, although some of them have earlier formal release dates, often because of Cannes. Most of these have been shown only in New York and Los Angeles, but they all are likely to appear on Netflix and some are there already.
1. Valhalla Rising, an English-language but Danish production about early Scandinavian visitors to the New World. It's violent and arty at the same time and it was one of my favorite movies of the year.
2. Vengeance: a good mix of French noir and Hong Kong action drama, with a dose of Memento, starring Johnny Halladay and set in Hong Kong and Macau.
3. Everyone Else (Alle Anderen): A German chronicle of a dysfunctional relationship between two young people on vacation, standing in for a story about Germany itself. It asks whether the intelligent, indecisive Germans are simply aspiring to become thoughtless jerks. A strong film, with a dose of Roissy.
The ones I have not seen (not yet on Netflix) are:
4. Enter the Void, French, bombastic, receives very mixed reviews.
5. The Strange Case of Angelica, Portuguese, by a 102-year-old director. I am likely to see this movie today.
6. Vincere, a Mussolini love story, has that been done before?
7. No One Knows About Persian Cats: The rock scene in Iran, by Bahman Ghobadi, who did the excellent "A Time for Drunken Horses."
8. Monsters: Northern Mexico, immigration, and visiting space aliens in a UK production; most people seem to like this one.
9. Secret Sunshine: A long Korean drama from 2007, which receives very strong reviews.