'Margin Call' as Inefficient Propaganda
Here is a very negative take on Margin Call, the new "thriller" (it's not really) about a boutique Wall Street firm that suddenly finds out that it's been engaged in garbitrage (did I just make that up??? Google says "not really") and its VOLATILITY METRICS ARE THROUGH THE ROOF and OMG SELL SELL SELL THIS CRUD TO DEUTSCHE! Which is kind of hilarious. I love that there's a movie with a plot based on analysts and graphs. Also Demi Moore gives her best performance ever, and of course I'm including her star turn in Charlie's Angels. Also MARY MCDONNELL is in it, deliciously briefly, and I'd watch dog food commercials if she starred in them. So while describing the film-going experience as spending "107 valuable minutes of your life hate-watching poorly-scripted/directed banker-propaganda that tries to make you believe that, despite their obvious flaws and all, deep down those Wall Street bankers are complex human beings, just like you and me" is technically correct, it's also technically correct that people on Wall Street are complex human beings, just like you and me! And actually the film is pretty clear that, in speed-selling off a heap of dung to get out first, the fictional film and its fictional brokers and risk management folks are just being the biggest jerks imaginable—not tortured heroes, but pretty much Grade A Assholes. But yeah, it's kinda silly. And also: just so phenomenally functionally untrue, though I appreciated their detailed approach to financial math. I did spend about a third of the film trying to make up some puns about Quinto and quants. (I spent another third gazing upon Zachary Quinto's randy eyebrows.) Anyway, while it's a problematic movie politically, and fascinating/unbelievable, is it more problematic than The Skin I Live In and it's vast rapeyness? Whatever, this is all moot now, the new Harold and Kumar is out, and that's a flick we can all get behind. (Seriously, best franchise ever.) (via)
Whoah whoah whoah. Bankers are PEOPLE?? Next you'll tell me Republicans and southern whites with strong accents are people too.
The problem is there is a class of Young Republican for whom asshole is an ideal. Who "ironically" idolize characters like Patrick Bateman and Gordon Gekko. These are people who entirely buy into the idea that self-interest is a virtue, and they are accomplishing a moral good by fucking over other people. Maybe all bankers aren't this way, but the profession tends to encourage it.
Mary McDonnell was easily the best thing about Independence Day, a film with much to admire.
It's a well executed drama. Yes, even Demi Moore is sharp and spot on, and that should tell you something. It's infinitely better than whatever Oliver Stone has been doing, precisely because it doesn't paint the "bad people" as simply openly evil. The fact that they honestly believe they are no better or worse than the rest of us, and are simply more "successful" (trillions in losses notwithstanding) is what makes them a lot more scary.
What an inefficient, ranty, pointless "review." Is this the kind of thing The Awl publishes? Remind me not to come back.
@muck We have an open seat at table 171,900.
@muck Would you like the government to remind you?
@muck Don't come back now, y'hear!
A great book to read by a really smart, thoughtful and humble person that realized he was doing soulless work is My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance by Emanual Derman.
This movie lost all credibility for me when they had the scene where the board has to convene at 2:30 a.m. (I don't think I'm spoiling anything here, really), and they all show up in full suits with the women in full hair and makeup. Unless the point of that scene was to imply that wall street types are actually androids who "sleep" in suspended-animation pods, fully dressed. In which case, it worked. Also, Demi Moore is a terrible, terrible actress.
I just need to know when Jeremy Irons turned into Martin Scorsese.