Category: Film

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.

WALL-E

by  Tyler Cowen in

Better than better than good.  It is, however, not recommended for children.  WALL-E is to film as Moses and Aaron is to opera, albeit cast with two robots and a bunch of figures from a Botero painting.  The first week gross will be high but I fear that next week some bold genius at Pixar will be fired.

Addendum: Here’s one financial analysis of the movie’s prospects.  And note that movies with no dialogue in the first half hour are not ideal for DVD sales to children.

Mongol

by  Tyler Cowen in

Matt Yglesias offers a good review of this excellent movie, which chronicles the early life of Genghis Khan, or one vision thereof.  There are at least two increasing returns to scale mechanisms in this movie.  First, leadership is focal, which tends to bind groups together and make concentrated rule possible.  Winning battles makes you focal and winning larger battles makes you focal across larger groups.  Second, if you walk or ride alone in the countryside, you will be snatched or plundered.  That causes people to live in settlements and also larger cities.  Put those mechanisms together, solve for equilibrium, and eventually one guy rules a very large kingdom and you get some semblance of free trade.  Sooner or later, that is.  The movie brings you only part of the way there and I believe a sequel is in the works.

Will 3-D movies succeed?

by  Tyler Cowen in

I say basically not:

There’s another potential glitch in Hollywood’s 3-D scheme: Theaters are losing their appeal. “3-D doesn’t address the core problem,” says George Mason University professor Tyler Cowen, who has written extensively about the economics of entertainment. He says that people don’t go to theaters because the screen is bigger or the image is in 3-D; they go because they want to go out. Theaters have suffered to a large degree because they fail to provide their customers with great going-out experiences: They have crummy seats, sell expensive and bad food, and don’t serve alcohol.

Here is much more, do any of you think I am wrong?

The ethanol program is even worse than you think

by  Tyler Cowen in

Thanks to the inflating cost of popcorn, the price of movie tickets is
expected to skyrocket by as much as 30% this year, according to Ricard
Gil, a University of Santa Cruz economist who studies the business.
"You’re going to see a one- to two-dollar increase in the price of a
movie ticket," he said. "And that’s being conservative."

Here is the link.  So what model is required for this to be true?  If movies and popcorn are complements, you might think that higher popcorn prices would imply lower movie prices, to partially restore the cheapness of the overall bundle.  But more realistically, the movie is a loss leader to attract buyers of high-margin popcorn.  If popcorn gets priced out of buyers’ range, movie prices will rise to make up the difference since cheap tickets no longer bring in so much extra revenue at the concession stand.

Thanks to John de Palma for the pointer.

My favorite things Japan, cinema edition

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Kurosawa movie: Ran is the most impressive on the big screen, but Ikiru is a profound study of the psychology of bureaucracy.  There are many many others, including the noir masterpieces and the criminally underrated late period, most of all Dreams.

2. Gangster movie: Should I go with Sonatine?  I don’t know them all.

4. Sexual perversion movie: Audition has an incredible piano wire scene.

5. Hobbesian movie: It’s Battle Royale, hands down, and yes I taught the film this year in Law and Literature.  One of the students was shocked we would cover something of this nature.

6. Ozu movie: Tokyo Story is the one that sticks with me.

7. Dance movie: Shall We Dance? remains a gem.

8. Anime: Grave of the Fireflies is a knockout, an anime movie for people who hate anime (and war).  Make sure you use the subtitles, not the dub.  I love all Miyazaki, maybe my favorite is Princess Mononoke, just don’t expect a coherent Pigouvian vision from it.  Other times I think Totoro is his supreme masterpiece.  Pom Poko, from Studio Ghibli, is essential viewing as well.

9. Mizoguchi movie: First prize goes to the stunning Ugetsu.

10. Godzilla movie: There is the original Japanese first movie, the cheesy but delectable Godzilla vs. Mothra, the implicit retelling of WWII in King Kong vs. Godzilla, Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster (my personal favorite), one of the MechaGodzilla movies (surprisingly good but don’t ask me which one), and the sadly unheralded Godzilla Final Wars.  I’m not sure any of the others are worth watching.

The bottom line: I’m not sure I’ve ever covered a category with so much quality and depth as this one and I’ve just scratched the surface.  And yes, I like Tampopo too, but not as much as most of these.  Gammera deserves a mention too.

The Uncanny Valley

by  Tyler Cowen in

Yet the humans’ skin could not be too realistic.  It was well known that as depictions of humans became more lifelike, audiences would perceive them as more appealing — until the realism reached a certain point, close to human but not quite, when suddenly the depictions would be perceived as repulsive.  The phenomenon, known as the "uncanny valley," had been hypothesized by a Japanese robotics researcher, Masahiro Mori, as early as 1970.  No one knew precisely why it happened, but the sight of nearly human forms seemd to trigger some primeval aversion in onlookers.  Thus, the minute details of human skin, such as pores and hair follicles, were left out of The Incredibles’ characters in favor of a deliberately cartoonlike appearance.

That is from David A. Price’s very interesting The Pixar Touch.  Here is Jason Kottke on The Uncanny Valley.

The Pixar Touch

by  Tyler Cowen in

Steve Jobs had put some $50 million into the company.  It was still reliably losing money year after year.  Now he also faced the possibility of millions more in liability; although Disney had agreed to increase its lowball $17.5 million budget for Toy Story to $21.1 million, it still wasn’t enough.  By 1994, costs were expected to run some $6 million higher.  Hence, Disney forced Pixarto obtain a $3 million credit line to cover its share of the overages — backed, if necessary, by Job’s personal guarantee.  Weary of watching Pixar’s deficits pile up, Jobs had tried to sell all or part of the company many times…

That is from David A. Price’s The Pixar Touch, an excellent book.  It is good most of all on all the false fits and starts behind a successful entrepreneurial venture.