Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

Movie review: The Big Short

The Big Short is based on a Michael Lewis book that he was frankly surprised that was optioned to be a movie.

big-shortI walked into work at the same time as a colleague and told him I had seen The Big Short the night before. As it turned out, so had he, at a different cinema. I asked him what he thought of it. He said, “It pissed me off.”

I could quit there, I suppose, but need to mention that the movie is about that very real credit and housing bubble that collapsed the economy, and not just in the United States, in 2008. The big banks were greedy and lacked foresight. The government failed to do oversight. The characters here not only predicted it, but they also profited off of it.

The Big Short managed to take an amazingly dense, inherently boring topic and make some detailed sense of it, in part by using folks such as chef Anthony Bourdain, singer Selena Gomez, and Australian actress Margot Robbie (in a bubble bath) to explain some basic concepts. And, in spite of being often infuriating, the film was also rather funny.

This is an imperfect analogy, but it’s like how John Oliver will take a topic such as net neutrality (SNORE) and make you entertained enough to actually care.

There is great acting by Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt, among others. There are odd little vignettes of Pharrell videos and “real life”, there, I think, as a palate cleanser between big concepts, and to show how the world was going on as usual while the system was undermining people’s lives.

The Big Short is based on a Michael Lewis book that he was frankly surprised that was optioned by Brad Pitt and others to be a movie. I’m told Lewis does a great job at making a dense subject understandable and human, though a very different animal. Adam McKay, the writer/director of Will Ferrell movies such as Anchorman and Talladega Nights directed this film and co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Randolph.

The tags near the end suggest that we may not be safe from this disaster happening again. In fact, Michael Burry, Real-Life Market Genius From The Big Short, Thinks Another Financial Crisis Is Looming.

And now for some venting

On December 30, I went to my favorite venue, the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, specifically to see SPOTLIGHT for the 6:15 pm showing, meeting my wife right after work. But, for some reason, it was preempted by another showing of the new STAR WARS, a movie already showing there. Some group had apparently rented out a theater.

Don’t know where this fact was noted, but I felt blindsided, as did others. The ticket seller did not even know until he was told by another unhappy patron. I know this situation wouldn’t have happened under the previous ownership, who would have noted it on their weekly broadsheets well in advance.

And preempting for STAR WARS? I could almost see some special local film. But a film that has grossed domestically, as of that date, $629,034,583, and over a billion worldwide?

Landmark Theatres, you have really ticked me off. The fact that I found a decent film to see in lieu of SPOTLIGHT does not mitigate the dreadful customer service in this situation.

Movie Review: Joy

I was curious whether David O. Russell could pull off a third film with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper (and technically, Robert DeNiro).

jennifer-lawrence-as-joyThis is how I ended up seeing the movie Joy. The choices at the Spectrum in Albany, my favorite movie venue, were showing Joy, The Big Short, The Danish Girl, Spotlight, Carol, Brooklyn, and Youth.

Oh, yeah, and some space opera thing that seems to be somewhat popular. I would have seen any of them, though especially Spotlight and The Big Short.

But we weren’t IN Albany, we were in Oneonta, about 75 miles away, on Christmas weekend. The only crossover between the mall theater in Oneonta and the Spectrum was Joy.

I was interested in seeing this movie in part because it was based on the real story of entrepreneur Joy Mangano, who invented a better floor mop. How can that be a compelling story?

Also, I was curious whether David O. Russell could pull off a third film with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper (and technically, Robert DeNiro) after they had appeared in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. I’m thinking that it feels somewhat rather like the troop of actors who used to show up in Woody Allen films.

This is a pretty solid 100 minute-film. Unfortunately, it ran 124. There’s a lot of nice bits: real soap opera actresses (Susan Lucci. Donna Mills) as the soap opera that Joy’s mom, Terry (Virginia Madsen), though the joke went on too long. As a business librarian, I found the parts with QVC rather interesting; Melissa Rivers played her mother Joan.

I appreciated the actors, including Édgar Ramírez as Joy’s ex-husband/still friend Tony; Diane Ladd as grandma Mimi, the narrator who seemed to disappear for large portions of the film; and Isabella Rossellini, as Trudy, Joy’s financier and the girlfriend of Rudy (DeNiro). But the character of Joy’s half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Röhm of Law & Order) is a movie contrivance, unrelentingly negative.

There IS a good film there, I’m convinced, and Jennifer Lawrence carries much of it. But it’s muddled, and the transitions from scene to scene often didn’t work. I’m not quite sure I “believed” the ending. All of that said, I did enjoy it at the moment, though – and this is always a bad sign – I checked my watch 2/3s of the way through.

Diane Keaton is 70

I do want to watch the movie Marvin’s Room.

Diane_KeatonMy love for the movie Annie Hall is well-documented. Diane Keaton is wonderful in it. I always appreciated the fact that Diane’s given last name was Hall, so all those references about Grammy Hall seemed more genuine. La-de-dah, la-de-dah.

Yet, I remain convinced that, though she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in the Woody Allen film, she was picked as much for the much darker film from 1977, Waiting for Mr. Goodbar. Or, at least, it added to her “body of work” that year that allowed an actress in a comedy to win an Oscar.

Her first claim to fame was performing in the original Broadway production of Hair, in which she refused to disrobe at the end of Act I when the cast performed nude. This was actually controversial at the time, though being naked was contractually optional.

She has appeared in a number of Woody Allen films, starting with Play It Again (1972) through Manhattan (1979), with a cameo in Radio Days (1987) and another starring part in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), all of which I have seen.

Interesting, and I could have noted this last month on Woody Allen’s 80th birthday, I now wait for the reviews and decide whether to see a Woody film. In the days when Diane was his costar, I saw everything he made. That’s probably more a reflection of his filmmaking than her star power, but there it is.

I’ve also Diane Keaton in The Godfather (1972 – she’s in all three films), Reds (1981 – nominated for a Best Actress Oscar), Crimes of the Heart (1986), Baby Boom (1987), Father of the Bride I and II (1991, 1995), The First Wives Club (1996 – which I liked a lot), Something’s Gotta Give (2003 – nominated for a Best Actress Oscar), and The Family Stone (2005).

I haven’t been drawn to see her more recent films, and I see her only in L’Oreal commercials. But I do want to watch the movie Marvin’s Room (1996), for which she received her fourth Academy Award nomination.

“Keaton wrote her first memoir, entitled Then Again, for Random House in November 2011. Much of the autobiography relies on her mother Dorothy’s private journals, in which she writes at one point: ‘Diane…is a mystery…At times, she’s so basic, at others so wise it frightens me.'”

Z is for Ze (or zie)

American University’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion offers a pronoun guide.

zieWhile many of the world’s languages do not, English has historically had gender specificity in certain of their pronouns, particularly in the third person singular (he, she). For many years, a gender-specific, almost always masculine, pronoun was used to express a gender-neutral meaning:

“A candidate should work to the best of his ability, and he must comport himself appropriately.”

A few solutions that been used to improve on this, include “he/she” (clunky), the word “one” (did not seem to catch on), or the third person plural word “they” (which I hate). Some attempts have been made, by proponents of gender-neutral language, to introduce invented gender-neutral pronouns.

In September 2015, “Harvard University made a buzz after allowing students to select gender-neutral options like ‘ze,’ ‘e,’ and ‘they’ on registration forms. In doing so, it joined a wave of other major colleges in acknowledging that gender identity, and the pronouns that go with it, is more fluid than how previous generations understood it.”

American University’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion offers a pronoun guide which states “the practice of asking individuals what pronouns they use for themselves should be done in an effort to respect the diversity of gender identities beyond man and woman.”

Here are some of the gender-neutral contenders, with a breakdown of their strengths and weaknesses:

Ne: Ne laughed. I called nem. Nir eyes gleam. That is nirs. Ne likes nemself.
Ve: Ve laughed. I called ver. Vis eyes gleam. That is vis. Ve likes verself.
Spivak: Ey laughed. I called em. Eir eyes gleam. That is eirs. Ey likes emself.
Ze (or zie) and hir: Ze laughed. I called hir. Hir eyes gleam. That is hirs. Ze likes hirself.
Ze (or zie) and zir: Ze laughed. I called zir. Zir eyes gleam. That is zirs. Ze likes zirself.
Xe: Xe laughed. I called xem. Xyr eyes gleam. That is xyrs. Xe likes xemself.

As noted, “‘Hir,’ although it’s supposed to be pronounced ‘here,’ is read as ‘her’ by many people unfamiliar with the term.” The author prefers ne (n as in neutral) or ve (popular in science fiction), to ze, for reasons of pronunciation in combination with other words, as well as being more gender-free.

I’m not opposed to the use of more gender-neutral language. But the linguistic conservative in me wishes that some sort of consensus would have developed in the past few years, such as when firefighter replaced fireman, and flight attendant encompassed stewardess and steward.

Now, The New York Times Adds ‘Mx.’ to the Honorific Mix, at least on one occasion, in lieu of Mr. or Ms.

Of course, this all has been and will be, a continuing source of debate about whether the trend is cultural sensitivity, or political correctness run amok.

abc 17 (1)
ABC Wednesday – Round 17

The blog at random 2015

The song reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and #10 in South Africa in 1975.

randomThis is a thing I continue to do at the beginning of the year: pick a post for each month of the previous year, using a random number generator. See how well it reflected that year just passed, or did not. Pretty sure I got this from Gordon, who lives in Chicago, who remains the only non-local blogger I ever met.
I think I enjoy this a lot because it’s so…numerical. And random.

The graphic is random. I went to Google, limited to .gov sites, and typed in the word random, and this was the first one to come out.

January: So, unintentionally, I’m taking life lessons from David Brooks.

February: Viola Liuzzo was a white Detroit housewife who was shot to death by Ku Klux Klan members following the voting rights march in Alabama, the march depicted in the movie “Selma.” (This was in a conversation about Black History Month.)

March: Now, Arthur explains this situation more than I’m inclined to. (About NYC newspapers, and George W Bush and Selma)

April: “Devote your energies to a cause that might actually make a difference in someone’s life.” (A quote from some annoying local media persona, with whom I disagreed.)

May: So I checked out Fred’s blog, and liked it so much that I read his entire backlog of articles, EVERY DAY, going back to January 2003. (How I started my blog, on the 10th anniversary, thanks in part to Fred Hembeck.)

June: One of the two or three best James Bond songs, this from The Spy Who Loved Me. (Re: Carly Simon at 70)

July: The need, at least for some of them, to ascribe all the problems in of the world at the feet of religion. (Answering An Arthur question re: ask Roger Anything)

August: Dealing with the environment’s a waste of time? (A real-life- non-Internet, argument I tried avoiding having with a stranger.)

September: For instance, what is the character to the right? (Political correctness, and Donald Trump.)

October: The song reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and #10 in South Africa in 1975. (Re: the song Jackie Blue)

November: However, a few will struggle and it is exactly those veterans who need a Veterans Treatment Court program the most. (My 11/11 post)

December: In some way, the politics are more utopian than the science. (My review of the movie The Martian.

Oddly, I missed all the weekly ABC Wednesday posts. In fact, more than their fair share of posts were from Fridays and Saturdays.

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