Watching Steven Soderbergh’s comedy The Informant! (with Matt Damon as that guy back in the 1990s who squealed to the feds about how he fixed the price of lysine for Archer Daniels Midland) reminded me of Econ 101, where you learn about the glories of competitive markets. Traditionally, economists draw their examples of “perfect competition” from agricultural commodities like corn, which … [Read More]

Having listened to country music on and (mostly) off since Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” four decades ago, I checked in on Billboard’s Top 30 Country chart to see if anything was new. A possible advantage about not knowing much about what I’m talking about when it comes to music is a certain ability to see the forest through the … [Read More]

Extract is the third live-action film written and directed by Mike Judge, creator of the hit animated TV series Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill (which will broadcast its final episode this coming Sunday after 13 seasons). Judge’s first was 1999’s Office Space and the second was the dysgenic sci-fi satire Idiocracy, which 20th Century Fox hostilely dumped into … [Read More]

Many of you will still be alive in 50 years. It’s interesting to think about what life will be like in 50 years technologically and otherwise. Predictions are risky, especially when they’re about the future, but I believe we can make some pretty good guesses. To predict a predictable future, you need to look at the past. What was technological life … [Read More]

I should first admit that it took quite a lot for me to actually go see Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino’s latest about a special Army unit of Jewish avengers, led by a half-Cherokee Good Ol’ Boy, who rampage through German-occupied France, killing, scalping, and/or branding top Nazis, eventually slaughtering no less than the German Führer. I’m certainly not against counter-factual reverie, … [Read More]

While watching Inglourious Basterds, I had time on my hands to ponder once again whether Quentin Tarantino’s variegated gifts and inclinations would have made him even more suited for other careers. Reviewing Kill Bill: Vol. 2 back in 2004, I wrote, “His talents, while broad, don’t mesh well together. He should instead direct others’ scripts, while reserving his own writing—with its … [Read More]

Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp’s Malthusian fable of post-Apartheid Johannesburg. District 9, a violent science fiction movie set in a Johannesburg slum inhabited by 1.8 million feckless refugee space aliens, is the critical and commercial ($37 million opening weekend) hit of the moment. Yet, few Americans (except the black critic Armond White, who has made himself wildly unpopular with fanboys of … [Read More]

Mad Men is one of those historical TV shows which is pleasant to look at, but has almost no historical verity to it. In this, it reminds me of the HBO/BBC production of Rome, a television series I’d characterize as “Los Angeles and Chav scum in togas.” Historical drama generally tries to portray itself as historically accurate, but it’s generally telling … [Read More]

I was trying to watch with my wife the DVD of He’s Just Not That Into You, which is to romantic comedies what Watchmen is to superhero flicks: a confusing bundle of plotlines about the upscale romantic entanglements of what used to be called yuppies. To pass the time while a heartbroken Ben Affleck moves out of Jennifer Aniston’s condo and … [Read More]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince earned a record $394 million worldwide in its opening week, an extraordinary amount for a film based on the sixth (and penultimate) installment in J.K. Rowling’s series of fantasy novels. The striking title certainly didn’t hurt. The term “Half-Blood Prince” evokes ancient political longings for a leader destined by birth to unite two squabbling clans, … [Read More]