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I’ve now seen four of the five movies nominated for the Academy Award for best picture, which are the same movies whose directors have been nominated for their work. My choice for best picture is …
No, you’ll have to wait a bit.
I haven’t seen Frost / Nixon because I saw the original version. You know the one: starring Richard Nixon as the disgraced president. I’ve also read several of Nixon’s books, All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and a several-hundred-page collection of memos from Nixon’s Oval Office desk. After all that research I’ve come to one conclusion: Either Nixon was the most recent Republican president to be honest with the public about how the economy works, or the last to understand how it works.
Of course, he was also a crook. I don’t need to see the movie to learn the history, but I probably will anyway. It’s a tradition. Every year, my wife and I try to see every best-picture nominee before the award ceremony.
Before you read on, take note: If you don’t want to know the plot in any of these movies, stop reading now!
Yesterday we saw Milk, which was fabulous. Throughout the movie I kept asking myself “How come I’d never heard of Harvey Milk until the release of this movie?” Anyway, the acting is great, seems real, and the story reveals an important, still-emerging part of our history.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was quite entertaining, but the longer I’m away from it, the more forgettable it becomes. It was quaint.
Slumdog Millionaire managed to portray some of the ugliest aspects of humanity while still fostering belief in the possibility of redemption.
But redemption is impossible for some people, even though we might wish otherwise for Hannah Schmitz in The Reader. Hands down, this is my choice for best picture.
Best Picture
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost / Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
Directing
David Fincher – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Fight Club, Se7en)
Ron Howard – Frost / Nixon (A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man)
Gus Van Sant – Milk (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester)
Stephen Daldry – The Reader (The Hours, Billy Elliot)
Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later)
February 17, 2009
February 12, 2009
The Reader: one fabulous movie
The Reader amazed me. This movie forces you to erase some black-and-white thinking and color it with never-ending shades of uncertainty. I'm dying to write a review with complete plot summary, but for the sake of my loyal reader, I'll refrain from ruining the story. Nevertheless, here's a little tease:
It begins with Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) reflecting on his past: A secret affair between Hannah Schmitz (Kate Winslet), an older woman, and the teen-aged Michael (David Kross). Eight years later, while a law student attending a criminal trial, Michael learns his former lover lived a past that represents the worst evil of his country's history.
A 20th-century Madame LaFarge records the certainty of Hannah's guilt with her knitting needles while Michael watches in anguish. Hannah is guilty, but she is accused of a leadership role she could not possibly have played.
I'll tell no more. Go see it.
It begins with Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) reflecting on his past: A secret affair between Hannah Schmitz (Kate Winslet), an older woman, and the teen-aged Michael (David Kross). Eight years later, while a law student attending a criminal trial, Michael learns his former lover lived a past that represents the worst evil of his country's history.
A 20th-century Madame LaFarge records the certainty of Hannah's guilt with her knitting needles while Michael watches in anguish. Hannah is guilty, but she is accused of a leadership role she could not possibly have played.
I'll tell no more. Go see it.
Mortgaging our grandchildren to give tax relief to the wealthy
In eight years we've borrowed $5 trillion from our grandchildren to give $4 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country. Now Congress, even our new president, is proposing to borrow more to give the Riches another $200 billion in tax cuts. That's not the change I voted for! The packages currently under consideration will wipe out almost as many jobs as they would save or create.
President Obama ought to go to Congress immediately and say he wants to start over. He should suggest a stimulus bill of $800 billion comprised of $500 billion in infrastructure spending (half of that would pass through to states ready to use the money immediately), $100 billion in aid to the jobless, $200 billion to subsidize new mortgages on existing homes, and $100 billion in tax subsidies for the truly poor. A small additional tax on the upper half of our income earners would provide $100 billion dollars of the funds needed. The rest would be borrowed. With that package, every last penny would stimulate the economy.
Current proposals rely on consumer spending, but American consumers are nearly dead. Let's call them dormant, instead, and they're likely to remain so for several years.
For two decades, consumers fueled our economy with rampant spending while ignoring their savings. Home values tripled. They got a whopping 2,000 percent return on their investment! That's because they only invested 10 percent of the home's purchase price.
In the past year, every bit of that was obliterated—because they only invested 10 percent of the home’s purchase price. The majority of U.S. residents lost all their life 'savings' in the past year. If this stimulus bill gives them $800 a year from tax breaks, they'll save it, not spend it. So $200 billion will provide zero economic stimulus. Unfortunately, borrowing money to provide those breaks will cost jobs by devaluing the dollar against other currencies: Imports become more attractive than goods produced here, we spend our borrowed money overseas and provide jobs for China and India, not the United States.
A better plan would be to raise taxes on the top half of our country's earners: $100 billion should do. Raise the tax rate by 1.5% on any family earning more than $93,000 per year. Take that money and spend it on infrastructure, which will put construction laborers to work—our construction laborers. We need that, because we don’t want them building more new houses.
Use another $200 billion to provide nearly zero-percent loans to buyers of resale, non-foreclosed homes. This would bring back a market for housing, while deliberately not encouraging new-home construction: We need to rapidly reduce the supply of houses for sale. This plan also would give mortgage holders incentive to negotiate new deals with their clients, rather than foreclose. To make sure the plan encourages people to buy now, they should know that waiting a year will mean paying a higher interest rate. Each year you wait, the rate goes up.
By the way, stabilizing housing prices will save banks, too. Their Collateralized Debt Obligations will more than double in value once foreclosure rates decrease and real estate prices stop plunging.
Meanwhile, gasoline tax should be raised to bring the total cost to $3.50 a gallon. This would encourage people to invest in alternative-energy vehicles in a way that is more efficient and fair than tax credits: Tax credits provide the greatest benefit to the wealthiest people. High prices provide the greatest benefit to the poorest people—once they slash their gasoline consumption.
One last idea: Bringing all our troops back from Afghanistan and Iraq would save $600 billion per year.
Eventually, perhaps five to fifteen years from now when Great Depression II is over, then we could stop offering artificially low mortgage rates. We allow the market to decide which new-energy technologies to pursue. Renewed consumers would drive market decisions again.
Meanwhile, we need to abandon all the ideas that brought us here: completely deregulating banks and insurance companies, cutting taxes until the government is bankrupt, subsidizing an energy industry that destroys our planet and sends trillions of dollars annually to the most corrupt and brutal governments on Earth, and borrowing money to wage war under false pretenses.
But hey, that’s just my opinion.
Copyright by Todd Lederman, 2009
Feel free to use any part of this (especially to e-mail to your representatives in Congress), but please give me credit for authorship.
President Obama ought to go to Congress immediately and say he wants to start over. He should suggest a stimulus bill of $800 billion comprised of $500 billion in infrastructure spending (half of that would pass through to states ready to use the money immediately), $100 billion in aid to the jobless, $200 billion to subsidize new mortgages on existing homes, and $100 billion in tax subsidies for the truly poor. A small additional tax on the upper half of our income earners would provide $100 billion dollars of the funds needed. The rest would be borrowed. With that package, every last penny would stimulate the economy.
Current proposals rely on consumer spending, but American consumers are nearly dead. Let's call them dormant, instead, and they're likely to remain so for several years.
For two decades, consumers fueled our economy with rampant spending while ignoring their savings. Home values tripled. They got a whopping 2,000 percent return on their investment! That's because they only invested 10 percent of the home's purchase price.
In the past year, every bit of that was obliterated—because they only invested 10 percent of the home’s purchase price. The majority of U.S. residents lost all their life 'savings' in the past year. If this stimulus bill gives them $800 a year from tax breaks, they'll save it, not spend it. So $200 billion will provide zero economic stimulus. Unfortunately, borrowing money to provide those breaks will cost jobs by devaluing the dollar against other currencies: Imports become more attractive than goods produced here, we spend our borrowed money overseas and provide jobs for China and India, not the United States.
A better plan would be to raise taxes on the top half of our country's earners: $100 billion should do. Raise the tax rate by 1.5% on any family earning more than $93,000 per year. Take that money and spend it on infrastructure, which will put construction laborers to work—our construction laborers. We need that, because we don’t want them building more new houses.
Use another $200 billion to provide nearly zero-percent loans to buyers of resale, non-foreclosed homes. This would bring back a market for housing, while deliberately not encouraging new-home construction: We need to rapidly reduce the supply of houses for sale. This plan also would give mortgage holders incentive to negotiate new deals with their clients, rather than foreclose. To make sure the plan encourages people to buy now, they should know that waiting a year will mean paying a higher interest rate. Each year you wait, the rate goes up.
By the way, stabilizing housing prices will save banks, too. Their Collateralized Debt Obligations will more than double in value once foreclosure rates decrease and real estate prices stop plunging.
Meanwhile, gasoline tax should be raised to bring the total cost to $3.50 a gallon. This would encourage people to invest in alternative-energy vehicles in a way that is more efficient and fair than tax credits: Tax credits provide the greatest benefit to the wealthiest people. High prices provide the greatest benefit to the poorest people—once they slash their gasoline consumption.
One last idea: Bringing all our troops back from Afghanistan and Iraq would save $600 billion per year.
Eventually, perhaps five to fifteen years from now when Great Depression II is over, then we could stop offering artificially low mortgage rates. We allow the market to decide which new-energy technologies to pursue. Renewed consumers would drive market decisions again.
Meanwhile, we need to abandon all the ideas that brought us here: completely deregulating banks and insurance companies, cutting taxes until the government is bankrupt, subsidizing an energy industry that destroys our planet and sends trillions of dollars annually to the most corrupt and brutal governments on Earth, and borrowing money to wage war under false pretenses.
But hey, that’s just my opinion.
Copyright by Todd Lederman, 2009
Feel free to use any part of this (especially to e-mail to your representatives in Congress), but please give me credit for authorship.
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About Me
- Todd Lederman
- -- Evergreen, CO
- Authored a childrens book (for 11-year-olds) and working on another. Have not found a publisher--yet. All photos on my blog were shot by me unless otherwise noted.