Daily Dose of Optimism

My Kind of Action Hero: "He Reads...Everything"

I just finished watching "Three Days of the Condor," a 1975 thriller about a CIA operative who uncovers a sinister plot. The movie is a perfect specimen of the 1970s, reflecting both the tumultuous geo-political issues of the decade, and that generation's budding faith in the power of disclosure (you'll have to watch the movie to understand, I won't spoil it here.)

One particular scene was hard to imagine an taking place in an action/suspense movie today, particularly after a two-decade span of action movies featuring a character who could barely speak English, and whose brain was frequently pre-programmed with all the tough stuff:

1: The question was, Mr. Higgins, is he qualifiied with a handgun?

Higgins: No handgun, sir. M-1 rifle and carbine.

2: Evidently, it was sheer luck. Or else...this Condor isn't the man his fiile says he is.

1: Where did he learn evasive moves?

Higgins: He reads. He r--

2: What the hell does that mean?

Higgins: It means, sir, that he reads everything.

2: But I don't understand... (Link)

If I am ever mugged in NYC, I will try this one on them: "Watch out, I read...everything." (Sense of terror instilled in mugger. I return safely to my books.) - Ed

SNL's Nerd-Core Rap, and a King Kong Review

The New York Times pointed me to this Saturday Night Live video, "Lazy Sunday," a nerd-core rap about going to watch the Chronicles of Narnia in New York City, with a diversion to eat cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery. The video was filmed in my neighborhood, and I thought it was pretty funny. Link is here.

On the subject of movies, I saw King Kong last night. The special effects are amazing, and the last two hours are consuming and fast paced, which helps you forget you sat through the first hour, which is quite dull. Other than the fact that King Kong employs heavy use of special effects, for which director Peter Jackson must have developed a tremendous passion while making the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it remains an open question to me why the film was re-made, as opposed to employing the $200 million budget in a re-imagining of the story. (Yes, $200 million.) One part mindless adventure, one part pre-teen love story, I could at least understand why Ann Darrow falls for Kong. Inhabiting a world so full of lifeless characters, Darrow makes an understandable choice in developing an emotional attachment for the only character with any depth in the movie - the ape. This might also explain why we hardly notice the dozens of men (innocent or not) Kong kills along the way. All in all, not a bad movie, but it's too long for me to recommend it to others. - Ed

DDO Media Roundup

I thought I'd share some thoughts on things I've been reading and watching in my free time of late:

Books

Broadbandits by Om Malik - Highly recommended. Consumed about 75% of the book in a few hours on the plane and the rest at home over Thanksgiving. A highly readable, excellent summary of the 1990s telecom boom and bust, covering both the major players (companies and their executives) and the underlying economic drivers. For anyone not already familiar with what the telecom bust was all about, this is essential reading.

Here's a gem from the book on Ravia Suria, the Lehman Brothers analyst who first published on the magnitude of problems in telecom (page number from paperback edition):

When most of his peers were summering in the Hamptons or shopping in Milan, Suria read hundreds of SEC filings, analyzing the financials of companies like Winstar, Focal and Northpoint. His conclusion: in a matter of months, the purveyors of broadband would either have to start making a ton of money, or would simply go broke within months. ...

Suria's findings were startling. Since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, new-age telecoms had raised about $213 billion in debt, and another $62 billion in convertible bonds ... This didn't include the debt raised by the likes of AT&T and WorldCom, which totaled a whopping $265 billion. In comparison, in the heyday of junk bonds, between 1983 and 1990, the total debt raised was $160 billion, and the companies that raised those bonds were mostly cash-flow positive.

"Moreover, the debt from the high-yield and convertible markets does not represent the total borrowings of these young companies, as these numbers do not take into account transactions such as vendor financings, syndicated loans, or lines of credit", Suria wrote in his report. (Page 174)

Let's develop a couple of quick ratios here:

Telecom Boom/Bust vs. 80s Junk-Bond Mania:

• New-Age Telecoms / 80s Junk Bonds = ($213 + $62) / $160 = 1.7x   
• Total Telecom / 80s Junk Bonds = ($213 + $62 + 265) / $160 =  3.4x.

Movies

Walk the Line - The Johnny Cash biopic with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. This is a good movie, featuring strong performances from Phoenix and Witherspoon.

• What's Great: The music. All of it is performed - surprisingly - by the actors themselves. I had already heard Johnny Cash's greatest hits, and originally felt that his music was both monotonous and corny. Post-movie, I walked away with an appreciation for Cash's music, and am already rockin' some Cash, Presley et al as a result.
• What's Not So Great: The script - movie is about 2 hours, 20 minutes, and it DRAGS towards the end. Thinking on why this was, I believe the answer is the movie's insistence on focusing on how June Carter said no to marrying Johnny Cash about 20 times. I think they could have made the exact same points by focusing on her saying no twice.
• Random Item: in the early stages of the developing relationship with June Carter, an overzealous New Yorker started yelling "whore!" everytime she came on screen. Seriously. Fortunately, this died down after a few minutes.

All James Bond movies in chronological order - I get this interest from my Dad - I'm up to the Timothy Dalton Bond movies. Having not watched most of the Connery and Moore Bond movies in a while, I was struck by their corniness, but I remember liking them when I was a kid.

• First Bond Movie:  Dr. No - funny for all the un-Bond-like things Connery does before they figured out the "Bond formula" (action sequence, sex sequence, plot exposition, action sequence, repeat). In Dr. No, Bond a) goes to his apartment and sleeps for the evening (and I believe, he packs his own bags), and b) towards the end - where a newer Bond movie would be blowing up things every 30 seconds, Bond takes a nap on the beach! 
• Worst Bond Movie: You Only Live Twice. Bizarrely, this was written by Roald Dahl, who is better known as a writer of children's fiction. So many unnecessary sub-plots in this movie, including a completely ridiculous half-hour where Bond "becomes Japanese" (including a wedding ceremony) so he can invade an underground base...at night...using stealth techniques...where presumably no one would notice he wasn't Japanese until it was obvious he wasn't on their side. Rivalled in badness only by Live and Let Die, which has the second best theme song and second worst plot (or tied for worst).
• Best Bond Movie: TBD. I hear that On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the best, but I can't get it on NetFlix yet. I remember thinking that The Living Daylights was pretty good, but I haven't seen it in ten years and should be watching again this weekend. I also liked Never Say Never Again.
• Best Combined Theme Song and Movie Plot: View to a Kill. Duran Duran takes the cake on this one, which had me singing "dance into the fire" (quite embarrassingly) for a few days afterwards. And the movie, which features the phenomenal (and young) Christopher Walken and Grace Jones as villains, is decent.

But I digress. The real reason I thought readers would care about James Bond was my observation of the recurring theme of GOLD as a desired payout in the pre-1970s films. Recall the US went off the gold standard in 1971. Some facts about gold ownership:

[As part of changes made to monetary policy in the 1930s], many nations, including the US, banned private ownership of gold using the Trading With the Enemy Act for statutory authority to abrogate gold and silver clauses in US Securities and impose fines of up to $10,000 on those who refused to do so. Jewelry, private coin collections, and the like were exempt from this ban, which in any case seems not to have been enforced too zealously. In 1975 all restrictions on the right of American citizens to own gold were abolished. (Source: Wikipedia)

This likely contributed to some of the mass fascination with the metal. Goldfinger, made in 1964, featured a villain (not a US citizen) who wanted to irradiate the gold in Fort Knox so that the value of his own holdings would increase. This plan's execution was way beyond its time, as it also featured an aerosol nerve gas dispensed by airplane, something we imagine Al Qaeda trying to do today. The otherwise atrocious You Only Live Twice featured a villain demanding $100 million in gold as payment.

By 1975, gold was pretty much ornamental - in The Man with the Golden Gun, the assasin Scaramonga was paid $1 million in cash per hit, even though he used a gold gun and bullets. 1995's GoldenEye was about a satellite.

This all stood out for me because after a few years of inflation with a paper currency, villains (and audiences) could care less about getting paid in gold, and the amount of money required to get people's attention over time became increasingly ludicrous.

The movie that brought home the concept of inflation for a mass audience was Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). The scene where Dr. Evil demands a ransom of "$1 million" only to raise it to "$1 billion" after a few rounds makes this pretty clear. Similarly, note the absence of gold from his demands, which were made one year prior to the lowest market price of gold in ~20 years.

Enough. Have a great weekend. Should be getting some more posts up today/tomorrow. - Ed

March of the Penguins - DDO Movie Review

I saw March of the Penguins Friday night with my girlfriend. Excellent movie.

I can't believe I found a movie about Emperor Penguins so captivating. The 1 hour, 20 minute movie flew by. I am usually more of an action movie type of guy - for example, Terminator 1 and 2 count as fine cinema in my book (but not T-3).

The movie shows the extraordinary effort made by penguins to reproduce every year, and focuses on the individual and group efforts that go into what is actually a complicated and dangerous process.

I found myself feeling that the life of these penguins could be made so much better if we could relocate them all to sunny San Diego, where they could hang out at Sea World and not worry about the freezing winter in Antarctica. The US could surely make the funds and space available - problem solved.

A major lesson in the film for me was that the penguins don't need man to help them out; it's hard to accept, but the difficulty of their life is also the point of their life. In this sense, the penguins offer a lesson for all of us.

The movie also contains an inspiring message of how in at least this corner of nature, couples are critical for child rearing.

See it with someone you love; you may not enjoy it as much if you are single. - Ed