Category: Film

That is the subtitle of the film I saw last night in Mexico City. The title is “Un Dia sin Mexicanos” [A Day Without Mexicans]. The premise of this comedy is that all of the Hispanic residents of California suddenly disappear one day without any warning. Beds are empty, cars are left running, and so on. Not surprisingly, California falls apart.

There are few movies that accurately illustrate market economics and fewer yet that show a good understanding of the theory of comparative advantage. This is one of them, and it can be viewed as a truly libertarian film. I won’t offer any spoilers but the final message is cosmopolitan and explores the question of what it really means to be a Latino. Plus it offers rich insight into how the Mexicans feel they are viewed by Americans. The film does hit a few false notes and has some slow patches but much of it is quite hilarious. And most of the film is in English, if you ever (unlikely) have a chance to see it.

The movie is currently showing on more screens in Mexico City than any other, including “Yo, Robot”, starring Will Smith.

By the way, if you are wondering, the film was partially subsidized by the Mexican government.

No, not an open-air cinema, or a DVD player projecting onto a large screen, but rather a real movie theater:

Lagos is the biggest city in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa, but until recently it did not even have any cinemas.

Lagos now has its first multi-screen cinema complex – a rarity in Africa

That is all the more surprising given that Nigerians love watching films: the country is famous for its thriving and expanding home-video industry.

Now, however, that has all changed, thanks to the Silverbird Cinemas – an upmarket five-screen Cineplex in the heart of Victoria Island.

The project has faced numerous obstacles:

There were cinemas in Lagos in the 1960s, but they began going out of business in the 1970s – partly because of the difficulties of operating under military dictatorship.

Cinemas closed down across the country and today many are used as Pentecostal churches or Islamic education centres.

But even with Ben Murray-Bruce’s enthusiasm, this was not the easiest project to get off the ground.

Nigeria has an erratic power supply, which means that seven generators have been installed to make sure that the films do not stop mid-show and the air-conditioning does not break down.

Mr Murray-Bruce has also had to convince film distributors that it is safe to send prints to Lagos – a city already awash with pirated DVDs of top Hollywood films.

Here is the full story.

Think about this account next time you hear someone blame the small number of African films on Hollywood or Bollywood cultural imperialism.

Imagine that you are trapped on a mountain in the Peruvian Andes, your leg is broken in several places, you are severely dehydrated, bitterly cold, all alone…. and you can’t get this song by Bony M out of your head. You don’t even like the song. Now, that’s hell.

That’s one of the lighter moments in Touching the Void a harrowing, awe-inspiring, true-story of two climbers made into a great movie/documentary. Aside from the sheer entertainment value, very sheer in this case, the move has a lot to say about the diversity of preferences, the will to survive and believe it or not, how to achieve goals. Touching the Void also nicely disposes of that old canard about there being no atheists in foxholes. Highly recommended.

It’s late in the game to be blogging this, but I’ve just seen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9-11. I was dragged to the movie, more or less against my will. I won’t review the film’s well-known problems with the facts. I was at least as disturbed by the implicit racism. For instance it portrayed the Saudis as vile connivers, in a manner reminiscent of 19th century racial propaganda. [N.B. I agree we should trust the Saudi government less, but this is not the point.] Even worse was the segment on the “Coalition of the Willing”; Costa Ricans for instance are shown as a primitive and laughable people who work with oxen.

Most of all the film shows an overall contempt for humanity. The American poor, supposedly the object of Moore’s concern, come across as stupid, inarticulate, and easily duped. The only idyllic paradise we ever see is Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where all appears beautiful.

It is a sad day in Cannes and in the United States when a movie of this kind commands so much attention. There are many important and intelligent critiques of the foreign policy of the Bush Administration, but this is not one of them. On top of everything else, the film was outright boring, especially during the second half.

Spidey II. $40.5 million. First day. Here is the link, and yes it is as good as you’ve heard. Not just an action movie, one of the classic Hollywood love stories.

The character will no longer be known as Peter Parker – but will become the young Pavitr Prabhakar.

He will also have a more modest costume, wearing a dhoti, the loincloth worn by men in India.

Spider-Man would become an Indian boy in Mumbai and dealing with local problems and challenges, he added.

Spider-Man India will interweave local customs, culture and mystery to make it more relevant to the readers, set against the backdrop of monuments including the Taj Mahal and the Gateway of India.

The Green Goblin villain will be replaced by Rakshasa, an Indian mythological demon that has shape-shifting abilities.

Here is the full story. Thanks to Curtis Melvin for the pointer. And here is an Indian joke on The Simpsons.

I saw Hitchcock’s Vertigo yesterday, for about the sixth time in my life. I had forgotten how perverse it is, how much the theme of male impotence and voyeurism runs throughout the movie, how deeply sadistic Jimmy Stewart becomes, and how much the movie flirts with the theme of doubles (compare Scotty and Kirby, for instance, or think about Scotty’s ex-beau). I’ve been watching “Japanese extreme” cinema lately, films such as Audition, which have to be seen to be believed. Vertigo is at least as sick as any of those. Vertigo also has the most successful integration of cinematography and musical score that I’ve seen. Watch it again if you can, especially if it is shown on a big screen.

Over at Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux asks, “Suppose that a movie with exaggerations on a similar scale [to The Day After Tomorrow] were made by a free-market enthusiast. That movie might contain some of the following scenes:”

A ten-cent increase in the federal minimum wage casts millions of blacks and Hispanics into permanent unemployment and despair; all of the unemployed women scrape up pennies by offering themselves as prostitutes, while all of the unemployed men swarm to the suburbs to rape soccer-moms and then riot so violently in the cities that the Empire State building, the U.S. Capitol, the Sears Tower, and the Bank of America building all crash violently to the ground, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including a kindly book-peddler specializing in works by and about Ayn Rand….

Cool movie. I hope Don options the rights.

The first German film to compete in Cannes in 11 years, it [The Edukators] tells the story of three idealistic youths who break into rich people’s villas and move around their furniture, leaving behind notes with messages such as: “You have too much money.”

Their aim is not to steal from the rich to give to the poor, but to make their targets question their privileges. When they are surprised by one of the homeowners, they kidnap him and are forced to put their ideals into practice.

“I’m really happy to present this film in the country where the word revolution was invented,” Weingartner told a news conference in this French Riviera resort.

As is often the case, the remainder of the story surpasses any comment I could offer:

Critics at Cannes clapped and cheered during scenes in which the kidnappers and their victim intelligently debate how youthful idealism eventually fades.

Weingartner avoids a simplistic ending, but leaves open the possibility that each of them is changed by the experience.

Here is the full story. Here is more information on the movie. Don’t forget that the alternative title of the film is “The Fat Years are Over.”

Troy, the movie version of Homer’s The Iliad, is out today. Here is one report, from the May 14 Entertainment Weekly:

While Pitt’s character got tweaked, the rest of The Iliad went pretty darn Hollywood. Briseis, a slave girl captured by the Greeks — speechless in Homer’s tale — becomes a royal priestess and love interest for Achilles…More notably, no gods interfere with battles in Troy. “I didn’t want them in,” says screenwriter Benioff.

The screenwriter notes that activist gods would make the movie too much like The Clash of the Titans. My rhetorical question for the day is why clashing polytheistic gods make for a less broadly saleable story than do human heroes. And does this help explain why monotheistic religions have been growing at the expense of polytheism for some time now?

Thanks to Yana for the pointer to the EW article.

The Cannes film festival starts this week, despite a threatened labor disruption. Yesterday I learned that the term Asia Extreme, the hot style in world cinema right now, has been copyrighted. “Asia Extreme” movies view John Woo as a quaint forefather and go much further in terms of throwing the book away. Are you interested? I’ll recommend Battle Royale for horrific Hobbesian violence, and The Audition for shocking sexual drama. Both are Japanese, and neither is for the fainthearted. But if you feel jaded by most movies, a bit bored, and are looking for something conceptual, this is definitely the next step.