Marginal Revolution

Economics Videos from Marketplace

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.

• The credit crisis as Antarctic expedition
• Getting naked in short selling
• Untangling credit default swaps

Thanks to Robby Thompson for the link.

Tabarrok in Variety

"Unstable characters run amok in Tabarrok's oddball oeuvre..."

Apparently, my movie producer brother and I have more than family in common!

Here and here are previous MR posts on my brother's oddball oeuvre.

The ten most underrated science fiction movies

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

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?

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.

Questions which are rarely asked

Who has stolen the most picture with the smallest part?

Grant McCracken offers up some nominations:

Holly Hunter in Time Code
Steve Zahn in Out of Sight
Selma Blair in Cruel Intentions
Siobhan Fallon in Men in Black

Jason Kottke points us to this list.  Can I cite Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride?

WALL-E

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

It has electrolytes!

Yes, you really can buy it now.  Brawndo.  The line between irony and reality grows ever finer.

Roger Ebert is blogging

Here; I wonder if he still reads MR...

I thank Scott Cunningham for the pointer.

Netflix pricing

It looks kind of screwy; 3 movies at a time is $16.99 a month but 8 movies at a time is $47.99 a month.  After three movies, the average cost of a rental (see the link for the numbers) is either flat or rising.  Why go for the 8 movies deal instead of setting up separate accounts and queues, thereby saving money?  Why is Netflix encouraging everyone to do the 3 movies a month version of the plan?  Why are there no quantity discounts past the 3 movies a month margin?  (And, by the way, aren't there still lower prices for newbies, at least for a while?)

I suspect this is one of those pricing models that traps a small number of overenthusiastic patrons into paying more, keep a few others away from overgorging on old Jackie Chan films and then quitting prematurely, and de facto gives most customers a pretty flat pricing structure.  Transparency is sacrificed but does anyone really care?

The pointer is from Angus Hedrick.

seriously

The New York Times reports:

In “The Visitor”, Richard Jenkins plays an economist whose flagging joie de vivre is restored when he takes up drumming.

It opens today in limited release.

It's by the guy who made The Station Agent, a movie about a New Jersey resident with achondroplasia; here is more information.

Markets in *everything*, a continuing series

*Tenure*, the movie, starring Luke Wilson.  Seriously.  They are about to start shooting.

10,000 B.C.

It's not a great movie but it does offer a model of economic growth and the rise of freedom.  To avoid unwanted spoilers, I'll put that model under the fold...

There are increasing returns to scale, set in a general Carneiro-Oppenheimer political equilibrium, albeit with multiple equilibria and possible revolution, depending on the behavior and path of charging woolly mammoths.  Hunter-gatherer societies have martial virtue and also an idea or at least practice of liberty.  They don't have agriculture or easy transport or efficient risk-sharing or an expensive priestly caste.  The desire for plunder, slaves, and tax revenue causes the wealthier agricultural societies to raid the hunter-gatherers.  The hunter-gathers can adopt the technologies of the wealthier peoples more easily than the overlords can/will adopt the ideologies of the hunter-gatherers.  If the revolt succeeds (see the above remarks about multiple equilibria), the result is both liberty and a higher standard of living.  For unknown reasons, female members of the hunter-gatherer society have market power in the agricultural society, even when they are slaves.

I'm not saying that model is true but I have heard worse from social scientists.

The Spanish idea of the film canon

I've been reading César Vidal's El Camino Hacia la Cultura, which might translate roughly as "The Path Toward Culture."  Imagine a Spanish Harold Bloom, yet trying to be more representative than idiosyncratic in his canonical picks.  Overall his choices are what you would expect, albeit with a strong emphasis on modernism and in fiction he stresses the Continental novel of ideas.  The very useful poetry list is full of Spaniards.  Here is his list of the best movies (worldwide) since the 1990s:

Jacob's Ladder (TC: I love this movie), Dances with Wolves, Dreams (Kurosawa), JFK, Glengarry Glen Ross, Malcolm X, Groundhog Day, Schindler's List, Forrest Gump (ugh), The Shawshank Redemption, Braveheart, Fargo, The English Patient, Titanic, The Apostle, Saving Private Ryan, Matrix, Magnolia, The Sixth Sense, Nueva Reinas, El hijo de la novia, Gladiator, Return of the King, De-Lovely, Apocalypto (TC: !...another winner).

The absence of traditional indie cinema and most European cinema is striking.  Sadly Asian movies are missing altogether, except for Kurosawa.  Overall I am struck by a) the gutsiness of this list, and b) the author doesn't seem to see it as gutsy at all.

Library of Lost Dreams

Dutch, a kind of archaelogist of recent America, takes us through the abandoned Detroit School Book Depository.

This is a building where our deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day apparently walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste. The interior has been ravaged by fires and the supplies that haven't burned have been subjected to 20 years of Michigan weather. To walk around this building transcends the sort of typical ruin-fetishism and "sadness" some get from a beautiful abandoned building. This city's school district is so impoverished that students are not allowed to take their textbooks home to do homework, and many of its administrators are so corrupt that every few months the newspapers have a field day with their scandals, sweetheart-deals, and expensive trips made at the expense of a population of children who can no longer rely on a public education to help lift them from the cycle of violence and poverty that has made Detroit the most dangerous city in America. To walk through this ruin, more than any other, I think, is to obliquely experience the real tragedy of this city; not some sentimental tragedy of brick and plaster, but one of people.

Pallet after pallet of mid-1980s Houghton-Mifflin textbooks, still unwrapped in their original packaging, seem more telling of our failures than any vacant edifice. The floor is littered with flash cards, workbooks, art paper, pencils, scissors, maps, deflated footballs and frozen tennis balls, reel-to-reel tapes. Almost anything you can think of used in the education of a child during the 1980s is there, much of it charred or rotted beyond recognition. Mushrooms thrive in the damp ashes of workbooks. Ailanthus altissima, the "ghetto palm" grows in a soil made by thousands of books that have burned, and in the pulp of rotted English Textbooks. Everything of any real value has been looted. All that's left is an overwhelming sense of knowledge unlearned and untapped potential.

More pictures here.

Cloverfield

I thought this was a remarkable cinematic event.  But you need to know that the characters are supposed to be vacuous and annoying, and that the opening scene is supposed to be obnoxious and superficial.  The heroism is supposed to be thin.  (The whiney NYT review I read is, in retrospect, an embarrassment.)  And that the movie is supposed to make you feel physically nauseated.  You are in fact witnessing a disaster.  Most of all this is a movie about how the young'uns have no tools for moral discourse and that all they can do is utter banalities and take endless pictures of each other and record their lives for no apparent purpose.  I can't recall any other movie that so completely devastates its intended demographic.  The integration of sound blips and flashing lights is brilliant.  The homage to the tanks attacking Godzilla is loving.  I didn't even know how good this movie was until after the halfway point.  Bravo.

My Law and Literature reading list

The first real meeting of the class is today; we will be reading and viewing the following:

The Bible, Book of Exodus and later selected excerpts.

Herman Melville, selected stories, including "Bartleby"

Franz Kafka, "In the Penal Colony."

Snow – Orhan Pamuk

Neuromancer – William Gibson

Leo Tolstoy – Great Short Works, including Hadji Murad and Ivan Ilyich

Eugene Zamiatyin – We

Jose Saramago – Blindness

Jack Henry Abbott – In the Belly of the Beast

Fernando Verissimo – Borges and the Eternal Orangutans

J.M. Coetzee – The Life and Times of Michael K

Law Lit, by Thane Rosenbaum, selections

Mario Vargas Llosa – Who Killed Palomino Molero?

Francisco Goldman – The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?

Films: Battle Royale, others, including I hope some new releases.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

This movie, with its hints of Metamorphosis and Maya Deren, probably will stand as one of the best of the last ten years.  Of course it has a deeply economic theme: how much of the value of life stems from our ability to trade, and how much from our ability to play games of pure coordination?  Plus the French health care system is so good that all the nurses are beautiful and pay infinite attention to a single patient, or maybe that is just how French movies are made.

Why are Hollywood Unions Powerful?

Glen Whitman asks a good question, Why are unions so powerful in the entertainment industry when unions are generally weak and in decline in most other sectors of the economy?  (Tyler asked the same question several years ago.)

I went to the family expert, my brother the movie producer and he had this to say:

...unlike in most other unionized industries, it's the INDIVIDUAL members of the unions in the entertainment industry that the management / owners want to work with. For example, Tom Cruise is a member of SAG, (I use him as an obvious example, but every other known actor is as well) and if the studios and producers want to make a film with Mr Cruise, and we all do, we have to come to terms with SAG. Similarly, Steven Spielberg is a member of the DGA, same issue. Though writers are not household names, it's the same issue, there are specific individuals who the studios want to be writing their TV shows and screenplays.  It  doesn't matter if Joe or John or Mary is stacking the boxes, flipping the burgers or ringing the cash registers so management can easily hire a non-union member to do the same job, in the film business we need to work with specific individuals who happen to be union members. Thus the power of those (comparatively) few empowers them all.

Combine with a bit of Hollywood leftism and the fact that the big names don't lose much from unions and you have a very powerful cartel.  About the only way to break the cartel would be to turn the big names into owners - this has been done a few times but the stars earn so much anyway that even then the incentives to deviate are small.  You Tube can give is a parade of amateurs but as soon as the amateurs become stars this model suggests that they will be co-opted into the union framework.  Like my brother, I don't see the power of Hollywood unions ending anytime soon. 

Satanists Unite!

Here's a mini-review of my brother's movie Weirdsville. 

Weirdsville – a dark and devilishly funny comedy about a pair of junkie crooks who can’t seem to catch a break to save their lives. Throw in a couple Satan worshipers, a band of vigilante little people and a pair of curling stone wielding drug dealers and things get, well – considerably weirder. The film is littered with fantastic offbeat and unexpected moments that keep the laughs rolling. Moyle meanwhile, adds his signature rock n’ roll flare and gives the film a cold, gritty feel that keeps you on just enough of an edge. Definitely a trip worth taking.

So who is complaining?  The Satanists!  Here is one email:

I would just like to voice my opinion and state that I do NOT appreciate the way you portray Satanism in the least. Using the same-old watered down mass-media version or not, it still tends to give us a bad name. I am not asking you to remove this movie or change anything on it, just think about it.

By the way, long-time readers of Marginal Revolution may be wondering whether the Satan worshipers in Weirdsville are a commentary on my brother's previous blockbuster.

Weirdsville

Here's a cool idea from a new Hollywood movie producer, a money back guarantee!

Nicholas Tabarrok is putting his money where his mouth is. The producer from Toronto-based Darius Films is certain that audiences will crack up during the screening of his oddball comedy Weirdsville, opening Friday, or he will refund their movie-ticket money come Monday morning.

Tabarrok tells Playback Daily it was a "spur of the moment" idea.

"It occurred to me that this is a common thing... If you buy a product and you're not satisfied, you get your money back... The same principle [should apply] to film," he says.

Brilliant, innovative, incentive-compatible!  You'd think this guy had an economist for a brother or something.

Dylan movie. Sort of.

The new Dylan biopic,  starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw - all as Bob Dylan - is starting to get some coverage.  As a lifelong Dylan fan, I'm excited to see the movie.  The film is currently doing the rounds of the film festivals, and is going into wider release slowly from September through March (depending on your country).

Early reports only whet my appetite:

1. A slew of trailers (both official and unofficial) on YouTube [HT: Cass Sunstein]
2. This is Not a Bob Dylan Movie: a beautifully-written essay in today's NY Times magazine
3. A wrap-up of other reviews, from filmmaker Todd Haynes
4. Some extremely high variance early reviews.

An aside: From many hallway conversations, I can report that Dylan is a surprisingly popular artist among the econ gliterati.

An economist at the movies

Reason magazine, November issue (p.8), asked me to pick the three "best" and "most libertarian" movies of all time.  (Exactly how do those values get weighed against each other?  Like a good economist I sidestepped the aggregation issue and picked what I wanted to.)  My third selection was:

Battle Royale: Why do so few people know this 2000 Japanese cult classic?  The underlying political theme is that totalitarianism can end only in a war of all against all.  This classic of resistance and liberation shows how tyrannous circumstances degrade mankind.

Can you guess my other selections, including my fourth dark horse pick?

Heroes are not Replicable

You know the plot.  Young, idealistic teacher goes to inner-city high school.  Said idealistic teacher is shocked by students who don't know the basics and who are too preoccupied with the burdens of violence, poverty and indifference to want to learn.  But the hero perseveres and at great personal sacrifice wins over the students using innovative teaching methods and heart.  The kids go on to win the state spelling/chess/mathematics championship.  c.f. Stand and Deliver, Freedom Writers, Dangerous Minds etc.

We are supposed to be uplifted by these stories but they depress me.  If it takes a hero to save an inner city school then there is no hope.  Heroes are not replicable.

What we need to save inner-city schools, and poor schools everywhere, is a method that works when the teachers aren't heroes.  Even better if the method works when teachers are ordinary people, poorly paid and ill-motivated - i.e. the system we have today. 

In Super Crunchers, Ian Ayres argues that just such a method exists.  Overall, Super Crunchers is a light but entertaining account of how large amounts of data and cheap computing power are improving forecasting and decision making in social science, government and business.  I enjoyed the book.  Chapter 7, however, was a real highlight.

Ayres argues that large experimental studies have shown that the teaching method which works best is Direct Instruction (here and here are two non-academic discussions which summarizes much of the same academic evidence discussed in Ayres).  In Direct Instruction the teacher follows a script, a carefully designed and evaluated script.  As Ayres notes this is key:

DI is scalable.  Its success isn't contingent on the personality of some uber-teacher....You don't need to be a genius to be an effective DI teacher.  DI can be implemented in dozens upon dozens of classrooms with just ordinary teachers.  You just need to be able to follow the script.

Contrary to what you might think, the data also show that DI does not impede creativity or self-esteem.  The education establishment, however, hates DI because it is a threat to the power and prestige of teaching, they prefer the model of teacher as hero.  As Ayres says "The education establishment is wedded to its pet theories regardless of what the evidence says."  As a result they have fought it tooth and nail so that "Direct Instruction, the oldest and most validated program, has captured only a little more than 1 percent of the grade-school market." 

George Clooney

George Clooney is under attack:

In his new film, George Clooney plays a man who is at the end of his ropes so goes along with the schemes of a huge multinational corporation that harms people in their quest for making money.

In real life, George Clooney is a man who makes lots of money, but takes money to promote the products of a huge multinational corporation who promotes products that harms children.

The movie is the new Michael Clayton and the product is Nestle, in case you didn't know.  Clooney responded: "I'm not going to apologize to you for trying to make a living every once in a while.''

The critique is that some mothers mix dirty water with the dairy formula and give their kids diarrhea, from which some of these kids die.  (Yes I do know that breast milk has other health benefits for kids.)   But isn't dehydration the major mechanism of death?  Forgive me for sounding flip, but shouldn't Nestle be advertising its dairy products to mothers with kids with diarrhea, so then they wouldn't die?  (Even dirty water is better to drink than doing nothing and usually it will save most lives, or so I have been told.)  Isn't one way of looking at the problem that Nestle doesn't have good enough ads?

Flipness aside, Clooney supposedly is not being paid for his role in the movie, so his behavior raises a question for utilitarianism.  Should not a saint work for evil causes, earn more money, and subsidize good causes with the surplus?  I believe this depends on whether good or evil causes rely more on cash flow, whether good or evil causes invest resources more productively toward their good or evil ends, and the costs of mixing good and evil causes in terms of symbolic values.

Under what conditions will evil causes end up manned exclusively by good people?

Markets in everything, *not*

Ten movies that were never made, and why not.  The Schwarznegger-Verhoeven Crusade intrigues me most.

Will Hollywood displace Bollywood?

Here is a recent piece on the attempt of Paramount and others to take on Bollywood on Indian turf.  Here is the longer version of what I wrote to the reporter:

I would be surprised if the Hollywood effort were to succeed.  After all, *Bride and Prejudice* was not beloved by most Indians.  Conscious efforts to mimic other genres and styles usually fall flat; how many composers today try to write in the style of Mozart, much less succeed?  The Hollywood giants are very effective in making expensive, celebrity-laden movies and most of all marketing them well.  I don't expect this model to capture the appealing idiosyncrasies of Bollywood production.  The Bollywood (and other Indian regional) styles have sprung from what are by Hollywood standards highly informal ventures, sometimes even with ties to the Mafia, and deeply rooted in Indian cultural fantasies.  The power of those fantasies won't survive further corporatization.

I'm sure the Hollywood movies will attract a lot of attention at first, especially in major Indian cities?  Who isn't curious to see one's portrait painted by outsiders?  But will these films ever win over the heart of the Indian countryside?  My best guess is "no."

It's not so unusual for American or globalized culture to bend to local taste.  McDonald's in India serves lamb burger and curry, not the American Big Mac.  Indian pop music and Indian classical music remain robust.  What is unusual is for Hollywood, or some other outside force, to try to copy the native style so exactly.  And that is unusual for a reason -- it usually doesn't work.  Cultural creativity is a delicate force, requiring a very definite balance of elements.  Hollywood probably cannot succeed where Bollywood already has gone.  By the time Hollywood has a good copy, Bollywood will have moved on to something just a bit different, and a bit more in touch with the Indian population.  Who after all knows the Indian population better than Bollywood?"

Ingmar Bergman dies at 89

Here is one obituary, here is Wikipedia.  His six-hour Scenes from a Marriage is probably my favorite movie, ever (in the more common abridged version only the first installment makes sense, but it is still a knockout).  The Seventh Seal is his most overrated movie; Wild Strawberries and Fanny and Alexander are also famous but not his best stuff.  The dreamy Persona is the next one to try, or at 83 minutes probably the best introduction to his work.  Winter Light is splendid on a big screen.  Smiles of a Summer Night was my favorite movie in my thirties.  The hilarious Devil's Eye -- a take-off on Faust and Don Giovanni -- is the most underrated.  At least twenty of his movies are worth seeing, just dig in and keep going.  I am still sorry I never saw his theatrical production of A Winter's Tale when it came to NYC.

Don't be tricked by the biases of fiction

Robin Hanson (who else?) writes:

...teen romp movies tend to portray parents and teachers as inept, clueless, sexually repressed, but ready to help when help is wanted.  If so, teens should realize that parents and teachers probably know more, are more sexually satisfied, but less available to help, than teens realize.  We should be able to find hundreds of other applications, such as using the standard biases of science fiction.

Haiti fact of the day

Even in hard times, Haitians go to the movies.  Now they're also making them in record numbers — about 10 feature films a year — rivaling Cuba as the Caribbean's biggest movie producer and often outselling better-financed imports.

Here is much more.  Here is part of the story:

The arrival of inexpensive digital video cameras and editing equipment opened the door to budding Haitian filmmakers, lowering production cost from hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to about $40,000 — money that typically comes from private sponsors or local investors who receive a percentage of the film's earnings.

Haitian immigrants to the U.S. support the market as well.  Here is the Haiti Internet Movie Database.

Away From Her

I often ponder how much meaning a single moment can have; a related question is whether it matters if this single moment is connected to many years of complementary life experiences.  Meditations on the nature of marriage and also identity remain favorite topics of mine.  The morally complex Canadian drama Away From Her concerns the evolution of Alzheimer's in a woman and her husband's reactions.  It is one of the best movies I have seen, ever, though it is hard to say more without spoiling the surprises.  It is guaranteed to make you cry, and I'm not referring to the ending.  For the wonks it even has some bits on health care policy.

Here is more information.  And if you are interested in Alzheimer's, John Bayley's Elegy for Iris is one of my favorite books.

Knocked Up

This humorous and philosophical film -- strongly recommended -- also offers an implicit market failure argument: raising children is the main thing that goes on in a marriage, yet few of us choose life partners on that basis.  The film suggests that a random allocation might be better than selecting a partner on the grounds of smarts, common interests, attractiveness, how good he or she makes us feel, and so on.

I can think of a few hypotheses:

1. Common interests in life are correlated with common philosophies of child-rearing, so all is well in the marriage market.

2. High-status men and attractive women are also best at raising children, so seek those sorts of partners in any case.

3. Forget what your utility function seems to be telling you, seek a partner who is willing to do all the dirty work when it comes to kids.  Seek submission.  This is worth way more than you at first think.

4. Common interests hinder effective child-rearing, since it means the partners have more to lose when children take over their lives.  Opt for a low expectations marriage.

5. We should require prospective marriage partners to play sophisticated computer games, mimicking the familial struggles they will later face.  In the limiting case, dating should be replaced by joint kid-raising sessions, using small and unruly robots if necessary (the film in fact portrays this).

6. Judith Harris was right, genes matter but not how you raise your kids.  Marry whomever you want, following nature's dictates, and neglect the little buggers that result, it doesn't matter.

None of these hypotheses, in my view, replace the default option of simple market failure.  And yes this is one of the biggest institutional failures in the entire world.

Facts about cinematic subsidies

For every dollar received in global (non-Austrian) box office by Austrian films, 28 dollars are spent on film subsidies. 

Scroll through this document to page four for comprehensive -- and scary -- EU figures.  Only the Czech Republic and Poland, both of which have very low subsidies, have ratios under one.  France and Denmark, two of the more successful European film-producing countries, have ratios between three and four, meaning that four dollars are spent to produce one dollar of overseas revenue.

It is remarkably difficult to make movies that people in other countries wish to see, and it is not obvious that film subsidies are helping matters.

Coasian movie reviews

I bet that if the Sandman and Spiderman could have just gotten away from their positional stances (“I need to take money” and “I need to catch crooks” respectively), to their underlying interests (“I need to help my little girl” and “Dude, I’m all about helping the people”), they could have found some common ground.  There was opportunity there, and it could have saved a lot of expensive plate glass and I-beams and cars being thrown about.

I do think the Sandman didn’t open his mind to lot of options that became available to him when he got particle-ized.  I understand that you do what you know, and he had conceptualized himself as a thief and a fugitive.  Maybe those were his most lucrative options when he was a man, but as Sandman, I don’t think he had to be an outlaw to make a ton of money.  Considering his strength and versatility, I bet any construction firm would have hired him in a flash.

Here is more.  Here is my earlier post, The Macroeconomics of Superman.

Better than nothing

Lucas will make two more live-action films set in everyone's favorite galaxy far, far away.  These films will likely be an hour each, and will air on television, though he doesn't know on what channel (The Sci-Fi network?).  Says Lucas of the films, "they won't have members of the Skywalker family as characters.  They will be other people of that milieu."

Here is one report.  The episodes are supposed to be set between installments III and IV and they are scheduled for 2009.

The funniest sentence I read today

Incubus is a 1965 horror film that was filmed in Esperanto and starred William Shatner.

Via Jason Kottke.  The first link includes a pretty amazing trailer for the film.

The Host

Mix a South Korean Erlkonig into Godzilla, with a good dash of comic relief and anti-authoritarian satire.  This is not a movie for everyone, but if you are even thinking of going you must.  Here is Wikipedia.  Here are reviews.  Here is the trailer.  It's the biggest grossing movie in Korea, ever.

Why Oscar speeches are so boring

The audience is too supportive, and we perform better in front of strangers or even a hostile crowd.  Here is further explanation.

The Lives of Others

That's the new German movie with the rave reviews and the foreign language film Oscar, but don't be fooled.  The movie is technically excellent, but not thoughtful.  It is part of a more general, and disturbing, trend in contemporary German culture to whitewash the past.  The film shows many small acts of defiance against the Stasi, as if to redeem an otherwise sorry East German record.  Last year -- fortunately I cannot remember the title -- we were shown the German martyrs against the Nazis. 

Don't economists emphasize the marginal unit?  Can't we have at least one movie about small acts of defiance?  In principle yes, but characters implausibly discover the brotherhood of man and viewers are fed uplifting final homilies, a'la Schindler.  Natasha, who lived with her equivalent of the Stasi for many years, had a similar reaction of partial disgust and incredulity.

My friends consider me a cultural Germanophile (I could do "My Favorite Things German" for weeks), but I tend to be a cynic about the blacker historical episodes in the German past.  I used to hate the slow, tortuous, and pretentious Nazi-Angst movies of Fassbinder and his ilk, but they've aged surprisingly well, and they came much closer to striking the appropriate tone.

Addendum: Here is one good review (spoilers); by the way if you know the Hong Kong original, Infernal Affairs, you'll find The Departed almost impossible to watch.  I walked out.

Burning Annie

A loyal MR reader mailed me a copy of his movie, Burning Annie.  A depressed college guy fails in love and lust because he obsesses over the pessimistic Woody Allen movie Annie Hall.  (You can put it in your Netflix queue, and it plays in NYC 2/7, here are reviews).  He refuses to tell bed-ready, nubile young women that he loves them, or even likes them, because he is unwilling to make himself vulnerable and open to rejection.  I wonder how much truth-telling stems from this motive. 

How one fictional Indian views Hollywood

I liked the special effects, of course, but on the whole the film [a Schwarznegger movie] bored me.  Like many of these American films, it had one good idea and clung to it so hard that it seemed poor in emotion and range.  The scenes seemed flat because even in the most dramatic moments the American actors spoke quietly to each other, as if they were discussing the price of onions.  And there were no songs. Finally, ultimately, most American films were sparse and unrealistic, and didn't interest me very much.

That is from one character in Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games, my early pick for novel of the year.

Otherwise I am learning just how good a writer Roberto Bolaño can be, I see Bogota women run into the men's room to avoid even a slight line at the ladies room, and I've figured out how to eat well here, it is fundamentally a baking culture.

Idiocracy

Made by the director of Office Space, this politically incorrect dystopian comedy portrays a future where dysgenics have made everyone a moron.  It should appeal to those who enjoy watching stupid people behave stupidly, not to those who demand legitimate filmmaking.  In other words, it's pretty damn funny.  There are some classic lines, like "Welcome to Costco, I love you."  DVD only.

How to appreciate Shakespeare

...right now, at this very moment, one can see more great Shakespeare, one can find more transformative Shakespearean experiences, from what is already on film even in the form of tape or DVD on a television screen than the average person, even the average critic, will see on stage in a life time.

That is from Ron Rosenbaum's generally quite good The Shakespeare Wars.  His list:

1. Orson Welles, Chimes at Midnight [TC: also Welles's best movie]
2. Peter Brook, King Lear
3. Richard III, with Laurence Olivier
4. Hamlet, with Richard Burton

To this list I would add Welles's Othello and -- more controversially -- Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Haitian voodoo scenes and all; Rosembaum is more positive than negative about that one, but it doesn't make his list.

Apocalypto, part II

Bryan Caplan went to see the film again, with my theory in mind.  He came up with the following (spoilers beneath the fold)...

The Stations themselves are usually a series of 14 pictures or sculptures depicting the following scenes:

    1. Jesus is condemned to death

Apoc: Jaguar Paw captured by cultists.

    2. Jesus receives the cross

Apoc: JP tied to slave line.

    3. The first fall

Apoc: First fall (guy forced to rise without help)

    4. Jesus meets His Mother

Apoc: Testicle-eater sees his mother-in-law?

    5. Simon of Cyrene carries the cross

Group saves wounded guy at end of slave line.

    6. Veronica wipes Jesus' face with her veil

???

    7. The second fall

???

    8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem

Mayan women laugh at the guys getting painted blue.

    9. The third fall

???

   10. Jesus is stripped of His garments

???

   11. Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross

Brought up to top of pyramid.

   12. Jesus dies on the cross

Eclipse saves JP.

   13. Jesus' body removed from the cross (Pieta)

JP sent back down the pyramid.

   14. Jesus is laid in the tomb

???

Overall, amazing parallelism.

And then in a later email:

...Jaguar Paw definitely returns to save his wife and sons on the third
day.

Right on.  But for the last few Stations, I see a deliberate non-parallel with the Christian story.  I view the film as concerned with Islam as much as the Mayans.  It replays the (supposed) Islamic "myth" that Jesus climbed down off the cross, saved by a miracle, and joined his wife and kid to live in India (to complicate matters, only a minority of Muslims believe this, but many quasi-informed Christians think this is a very common Muslim view).  Gibson's movie is saying "OK, let's say that happened.  Jaguar Paw makes a miraculous escape.  But earthly triumph is still no means of salvation and it cannot replace the Christian notion of sacrifice; you can run but you can't hide.  The plague is coming.  The Spanish ships are coming.  God is coming.  We must throw ourselves on God's mercy.  Islam is no good, salvation lies only in Christ."

I also wonder if all that throat-slitting was not a reference to Daniel Pearl and various jihad-based webcam assassinations.

Pretty intense vision.  Gibson is repugnant, and his approach is distant from my own worldview, but I am still thinking about his splendid movie.

Negative real rates of return, part II

Apocalypto, yes storage costs for goods are positive in the movie.  The film is about theology; virtually frame-by-frame it is commentary on Passion of the Christ, the Bible, or both.  Call it mishnah, if you wish; the reviews I read didn't get this at all.  The movie's central question is what the idea of a miracle, or salvation, can mean in a non-Christian world.  I found it remarkable, but I can't imagine it drawing many viewers beyond the curious, the omnivorous, the Mayan, and the deeply committed.

Here is my previous post on negative rates of return.  Comments are open, but if you wish to simply complain about Mel Gibson, please use this old space.

Addendum: Here are reviews.

I also enjoyed the preview for *Casino Royale*

 

The Queen

One of the few must-see movies of the year.  In addition to its dramatic virtues and superb acting (read Matt's review), it offers economics, public choice, and political philosophy.  The moviemakers appear to understand Thomas Schelling on focal points and convention, "showing that you care" theories of signaling, David Hume on public opinion, and Michael Oakeshott on tradition, among many other ideas.

Do violent movies cause violent crime?

No, at least not in the short run.  Rambo gets the bad guys off the streets.  And for a while they even seem to calm down:

What is the short-run impact of media violence on crime?  Laboratory experiments in psychology find that exposure to media violence increases aggression.  In this paper, we provide field evidence on this question.  We exploit variation in violence of blockbuster movies between 1995 and 2002, and study the effect on same-day assaults.  We find that violent crime decreases on days with higher theater audiences for violent movies.  The effect is mostly driven by incapacitation: between 6PM and 12AM, an increase of one million in the audience for violent movies reduces violent crime by 1.5 to 2 percent.  After the exposure to the movie, between 12AM and 6AM, crime is still reduced but the effect is smaller and less robust.  We obtain similar, but noisier, results using data on DVD and VHS rentals.  Overall, we find no evidence of a temporary surge in violent crime due to exposure to movie violence.  Rather, our estimates suggest that in the short-run violent movies deter over 200 assaults daily.  We discuss the endogeneity of releases.  Potential interpretations for our results include a cathartic effect of movies, displacement of crime, and decrease in alcohol consumption.  The differences with the experimental results may be due to experimental procedures, or to sorting into violent movies.  Our design does not allow us to estimate long-run effects.

Here is the full paper.

When should we consume culture in small, sequential bits?

I almost always read novels in bits.  That is, I put the book down for a few times before finishing it.

I rarely watch movies in bits.  That just seems wrong.  But, assuming we are watching on DVD, why?  Why do pauses ruin a movie but not a book?  I can think of a few hypotheses:

1. Movies manipulate our neurophysiology over a two-hour time horizon.  If we restart in the middle after a two-day pause, we are not worked up in the right manner.

2. Most books are longer than most movies, but there is otherwise no good reason for the difference in our consumption pattern.

3. We like the idea that we are "reading Camus," and thus we wish to stretch it out.  Few people get comparable status or feel-good values from watching movies and thus there is no need to prolong that experience.

4. We don't actually like reading enough to keep on paying attention for so many hours in a row.

The ever-wise Natasha notes that we are mostly likely to read action novels -- such as The da Vinci Code -- straight through without pause.  But action movies are the easiest to watch in bits.  Ever try just a half hour of Jackie Chan?  Wonderful.  But breaking up a good drama is criminal.

Your thoughts?

Gun control really works

At least in Tony Jaa's [Ong Bak] new pro-animal rights, anti-Chinese, martial arts film The Protector, set mainly in Sydney.  Here is my previous post on Muay Thai, and yes in this case seeing is believing.

Why Paramount dumped Tom Cruise

Mr. De Vany and W. David Walls, an economist at the University of Calgary, took those factors into account.  Looking across a sample of more than 2,000 movies exhibited between 1985 and 1996, they found that only seven actors and actresses — Tom Hanks, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jodie Foster, Jim Carrey, Barbra Streisand and Robin Williams — had a positive impact on the box office, mostly in the first few weeks of a film’s release.

In the same study, two directors, Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone also pushed up a movie’s revenue.  But Winona Ryder, Sharon Stone and Val Kilmer were associated with a smaller box-office revenue.  No other star had any statistically significant impact at all.  So what are stars for?  By helping a movie open — attracting lots of people in to see a movie in the first few days before the buzz about whether it’s good or bad is widely known — stars can set a floor for revenues, said Mr. De Vany.

Here is the full story, on the new economics of cinema. 

I am a bit closer to an efficient markets view on this question.  Stars don't matter much per se.  But many stars -- or their agents -- are good at picking the right movies to star in.  Other more critical inputs, including good scripts and marketing expenditures, follow these stars around.  The value of the star drops out of the regression, but the star was still the key certifier to get the quality put into the movie in the first place.

Addendum: Here is Art DeVany's blog, and here is Art on beer and pizza.

The Lady in the Water

It is probably the best movie this summer.  It creates its own world and draws you in.  Forget the bad reviews from writers who do not take obscure Catholic theological debates seriously (well...theology is not my cup of tea either, but I will pretend for the movie's sake.  If you can accept the Jedi...).  The absurd parts of the film, like the descent of the monkeys, are supposed to be absurd.  It is about the miracle (yes miracle, as in miraculous) of the incarnation, the fact that anyone can be special, our stumbles toward the truth, the apparent arbitrariness of earthly justice, and most of all that we have no choice but to believe in something "absurd."  The strongest connection, of course, is to The Book of Job and then to Lewis's Narnia.  The film also has a first-rate sense of humor, which is increasingly rare in Hollywood today.

Here is one good (Christian) review.  It is no surprise that the Catholic Kelly Jane Torrance also liked it.  Yet the movie bombed.  It is sad to think that Hollywood is about to neuter one of America's most accomplished and original filmmakers.

Update on *Atlas Shrugged* the movie

Here are the details.  It will be a trilogy.  Many millions will be invested.  Philosopher David Kelley is serving as consultant.  Angelina Jolie remains very interested in the Dagny Taggart role.  It will probably drive me further into the hands of Veronica Mars.

Harry was Correct

Harry: You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Sally: Why not?
Harry: What I'm saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form - is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
Sally: That's not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.
Harry: No you don't.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: No you don't.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: You only think you do.
Sally: You say I'm having sex with these men without my knowledge?
Harry: No, what I'm saying is they all WANT to have sex with you.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: How do you know?
Harry: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally: So, you're saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
Harry: No. You pretty much want to nail 'em too.
Sally: What if THEY don't want to have sex with YOU?
Harry: Doesn't matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.
Sally: Well, I guess we're not going to be friends then.
Harry: I guess not.
Sally: That's too bad. You were the only person I knew in New York.

Here's an abstract from a recent meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (no online paper that I could find):

Getting Both Sides of the Story: Sexual Attraction and Sexual Events Between Opposite-Sex Friends

Matteson, Lindsay K. (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, matteslk@uwec.edu); Gragg, Brittany I.; Stocco, Corey S.; Bleske-Rechek, April

Debate exists on whether opposite-sex friends experience sexual attraction to one another and, if so, whether that attraction adds spice or strife to the friendship. Little systematic research, however, has evaluated these questions; and existing studies have not asked for both friends' perspectives. In the current study, 89 pairs of young adult opposite-sex friends (mean friendship duration = 2 years) reported on their friendship. Men reported more sexual attraction to their friends than did women, and this sex difference endured after controlling for men's greater sexual unrestrictedness. Approximately 25% of friendship pairs had romantically kissed, and over 10% had "fooled around." Attraction to friend was not related to friendship duration, and sexual events occurred at various time points in the friendship, suggesting that attraction to friends isn't something that is "overcome" with time. We discuss our findings in the context of mainstream literature suggesting that opposite-sex friendships are inherently platonic.

Harry was Correct

Harry: You realize of course that we could never be friends.
Sally: Why not?
Harry: What I'm saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form - is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
Sally: That's not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.
Harry: No you don't.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: No you don't.
Sally: Yes I do.
Harry: You only think you do.
Sally: You say I'm having sex with these men without my knowledge?
Harry: No, what I'm saying is they all WANT to have sex with you.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: They do not.
Harry: Do too.
Sally: How do you know?
Harry: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally: So, you're saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
Harry: No. You pretty much want to nail 'em too.
Sally: What if THEY don't want to have sex with YOU?
Harry: Doesn't matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.
Sally: Well, I guess we're not going to be friends then.
Harry: I guess not.
Sally: That's too bad. You were the only person I knew in New York.

Here's an abstract from a recent meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (no online paper that I could find):

Getting Both Sides of the Story: Sexual Attraction and Sexual Events Between Opposite-Sex Friends

Matteson, Lindsay K. (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, matteslk@uwec.edu); Gragg, Brittany I.; Stocco, Corey S.; Bleske-Rechek, April

Debate exists on whether opposite-sex friends experience sexual attraction to one another and, if so, whether that attraction adds spice or strife to the friendship. Little systematic research, however, has evaluated these questions; and existing studies have not asked for both friends' perspectives. In the current study, 89 pairs of young adult opposite-sex friends (mean friendship duration = 2 years) reported on their friendship. Men reported more sexual attraction to their friends than did women, and this sex difference endured after controlling for men's greater sexual unrestrictedness. Approximately 25% of friendship pairs had romantically kissed, and over 10% had "fooled around." Attraction to friend was not related to friendship duration, and sexual events occurred at various time points in the friendship, suggesting that attraction to friends isn't something that is "overcome" with time. We discuss our findings in the context of mainstream literature suggesting that opposite-sex friendships are inherently platonic.