Category: Film

Economist characters in the movies

by  Tyler Cowen in

Jonathan Falk asks me:

Depending on how you
categorize John Nash’s profession, Richard Jenkins is either the first or second
actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for playing an economist.  How
many “economists in the movies” have there been? 

My basically
unresearched list:
Richard Jenkins as
Walter Vale in The Visitor
Ray Baker as Carl
Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted (very minor role)
Russell Crowe as
John Nash in A Beautiful Mind  (maybe)
Austin Pendleton as
Thomas King in A Beautiful Mind (I actually discussed this with him
once… He told me he had no idea what any of his lines
meant.)
Nick Nolte as
Augusto Odone in Lorenzo’s Oil
Am I missing
anything prominent?

There is of course Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller.  What else?

Why I resumed Netflix

by  Tyler Cowen in

Asa, a loyal MR reader, asks:

Tyler, I just finished reading your Inner Economist book and in there
you said you stopping doing Netflix because you felt that the waiting
Netflix discs sometimes felt like a burden to you. Have you changed
your mind on this? I use Netflix, but sometimes I feel compelled to
watch a disc I have at home just to get "the Queue flowing again" even
if I don't really feel like watching it at the moment. In reality I
should just send the disc back if I don't want to watch it anymore, but
somehow that seems like a waste. I'm wondering if you have more
thoughts on this.

My problem with movies is simple.  I can read faster than some people, but I can't watch a movie faster than anyone.  So the relative price of movie-watching for me is high (the marginal utility of books does not for me decline rapidly) and often I need the big screen to hold my interest.  Nonetheless I read Essential Cinema and the new David Thomson book — both superb — and decided I wanted to see a chunk of movies.  I've already blogged Satantango and Ruiz's Time Regained was a surprisingly good cinematic treatment of Proust (no jokes please).  I'm looking forward to I Am Cuba, Cat People (the original), Peeping Tom, Bottle Rocket, Night Moves, The Letter, Pasolini's Salo, and about fifteen others.  Probably then I'll quit again.

By the way, the movies I liked this year were Man on Wire, Let the Right One In, the first thirty minutes of Wall-E, Encounters at the End of the World, In Bruges, Burn After Reading, and Transporter 3.  I haven't yet seen either Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas) or Gran Torino but I expect to like both.  I even enjoyed Vicki Cristina Barcelona, against all expectations.

Tonight, from this very good article, I read a very good sentence: "In other words, older women are discriminating, which is why so few films are made for them."

Satantango

by  Tyler Cowen in

It's seven hours long and probably the greatest Hungarian movie.  I'm about to start the third of three Netflix disks.  One reviewer described it as "desacralized Tarkovsky."  Another summarized the "plot": "Moving at a pace that would suit a glacier, Mr. Tarr [the director] contemplates a
group of grim-faced, wretched characters whose agricultural collective
has fallen into decay, and who engage in desperate forms of chicanery
as a way of denying their failure."  If you love Tarkovsky, Sakurov, and Hou Hsiao Hsien, this is the next step and it does stand in that league.  The Rotten Tomatoes reviews are very good too, noting there is a selection bias in who watches in the first place.  Here is a review from a guy who started off totally unconvinced but was pulled in.  Hardly anyone knows this movie, I can't imagine why.

A Matter of Life or Death

by  Tyler Cowen in

Also known as Stairway to Heaven, directed by Michael Powell.  It’s one of the best movies, period, and it is finally on DVD, appearing today.  I’ve been waiting for years and I just ordered mine; I’ll also be teaching it in Law and Literature this spring.  It’s a law trial, a primer on Anglo-American relations, a love story, and a meditation on hope and death.  Here is a review.

Research by accident

by  Tyler Cowen in

One day backstage in the ’30s, Larry, Shemp, and Moe were playing cards. 
Shemp accused Larry of cheating. After a heated argument, Shemp reached over and stuck his fingers in Larry’s eyes. Moe, watching, thought it was hilarious…and that’s how the famous poke-in-the-eyes routine was born.

Here is much more, via Craig Newmark.  If you have any evolutionary biology "just so" stories as to why women don’t like The Three Stooges, I’d like to hear them.

I don’t know what to think of this

by  Tyler Cowen in

Via Jezebel,
I learn that a Japanese porn company is making "charity porn." They’ve
sent some porn actresses to Kenya, and filmed them having sex with
impoverished local Africans for their Naked Continent series.
The production company, Natural High, has proudly proclaimed that the
director made an $11,000 donation to a local charity, and will donate
another $10 for the purchase of every DVD of that particular film.

At some level it doesn’t sound right but I guess I can’t find it in myself to oppose this venture.  Here is more.  I thank Amanda for the pointer.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Brad DeLong has a very good post on banking reform (a more logical idea than a huge fiscal stimulus, though I’m not sure it would work) and Megan McArdle has a very good post on the automakers.

Questions that are rarely asked

by  Tyler Cowen in

Richard Green writes to me:

If the likes of Hitchcock and others could turn works that were mediocre in literature into great films, I wonder what mediocre films could have been great literature.

The point is not to come up with a list (though some of you will) but rather to ponder what we can learn about literature as a medium.  He continues:

…literature adapted from films is almost (and this is a hedge because my experience says invariably) hack work, rushed and held in the lowest regard...Is it because literature is the elder medium, and has a higher status which would prevent condescension to recognising a prior from another medium? Is it because creation is more personal to a individual writer than the inevitable collaboration of film, and so they are loath to allow others’ work in?

Movies need (at least) a plot and a script and that can be taken from a book, with results of varying quality of course.  But I do not have an equal understanding of which factor of production is scarce to writing a good novel.  Do professional writers benefit more from showing originality in creating a world and also creating a language?  There is plenty of fan fiction based on Star Trek and the like but few professional writers take this same tack.

A simple default hypothesis is that movies are more powerful and more real than books.  So a movie based on a book won’t necessarily be overwhelmed by its source but a book based on a movie will be.  Of course there are many books adapted from oral tales so maybe it is the addition of the pictures that is so overwhelming.  I know only a few books adapted from paintings, most notably Gert Hofmann’s excellent Der Blindensturz.

Economics Videos from Marketplace

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Paddy Hirsch the senior editor at American Public Media’s Marketplace radio program has produced a number of delightful videos on economic matters.  The videos are witty, accessible but also well-informed – ideal for a senior high school or undergrad class and also a great place to crib notes if you want to explain to people what is going on when they ask you at parties (Yes, this does happen to me but admittedly I may go to different parties than you.)  Here are a few of my favorites.

Thanks to Robby Thompson for the link.

The ten most underrated science fiction movies

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is one such list.  It offers up:

1. Primer
2. Aeon Flux
3. Body Snatchers (1993!)
4. Tron
5. Sleeper
6. eXistenZ
7. A Boy and His Dog
8. Enemy Mine
9. Gattaca
10. Silent Running

My picks would have been Mission to Mars and Titan A.E.  Sunshine is also quite good and not so well known.  At times I regard What Dreams May Come as science fiction.  Can I call John Carpenter’s The Thing underrated?  (Is Gattaca underrated?  I don’t think so, not any more.  Is the wonderful eXistenZ underrated?)  Then there are the three Stars Wars prequels, each deeply underrated (unlike The Clone Wars, which defies every rational choice theory known to mankind).  But we’ve had other comment threads on the prequels, so don’t flame me on that one.  Offer up your picks, with an explanation why.

Man on Wire

by  Tyler Cowen in

This movie is both a first-rate documentary and riveting social science.  It is excellent on how Frenchmen differ from Americans, how young men differ from old, what is art, why some people follow others, how we are led to folly by small steps, whether human behavior can be explained by signaling theory, and the motivations and roots of terrorism, among many other issues.  Here is one good review.

Why don’t Americans like foreign movies?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Tyler Cowen…argues that movies are about
familiarity. "A feeling of comfort has to be there" for a movie to
succeed, he says. That is the reason that "Americans don’t like foreign
movies," Mr. Cowen says. A Bollywood movie with Indian cultural themes
and actors sells tickets with the Subcontinent’s three-million strong
diaspora in the U.S., but not with the average American.

And will India embrace Hollywood?

…some predict that as India liberalizes, the movie landscape may
alter. "If India becomes like Bangalore then more Indians will start
watching Hollywood," Mr. Cowen explains, referring to the whiz-bang
technology capital of India, populated by upper- and middle-class
youth. As more Indians get wealthier, their tastes will reflect that
currently exhibited only by the upper classes.

Here is the whole article, most of which is about Bollywood.  Here is earlier coverage on the same theme.