Back to Back: Wall Street and Inside Job

Watching Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Oliver Stone, 2010) and the documentary Inside Job (Charles Ferguson, 2010) back to back proved to be a real treat.  If you happened to have forgotten what got the world into this economic nightmare in the first place, these two films are sharp, insightful reminders.  Michael Douglas reprises his sleazy, slithery role as Gordon Gekko very nicely.  He manages to convince the viewer right up to the brink that he’s a changed man,  and when his real intentions of greed are revealed, it’s both subtle and shocking even if expected.  I wasn’t really convinced of his semi-redemption towards the end of the film.  The David Byrne soundtrack was perfectly weird.

Narrated by Matt Damon, Inside Job presents a financial axis of evil, involving Washington, Wall Street, and the world’s top academic institutions.  In it, we see a world of insane greed, depravity, and more, more, more.  Money isn’t really a means to end for these people, but a pathology.  The director doesn’t insert himself or his opinions into the documentary heavy-handedly.  Like what a good documentarian ought to do, he allows the interviews and facts to speak for themselves.  The film does well in describing complicated topics such as derivatives and securitization (perhaps made complicated so that the normal person didn’t know he was being taken for a ride until it was too late) and how deregulation allowed lenders, investment banks, insurance company AIG, and crediting agencies to create more and more money on an unstable base.  Mortgages (many sub-prime, fueled by the system and predatory lendors itself) were packaged with other types of loans (e.g student loans, car loans) into instruments known as securities called CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) which were then sold to investors and speculators.  Investment banks then bet against CDOs they didn’t own – AIG promised to pay if there were losses.  Investment banks like Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and Goldman Sachs intentionally made money on investor losses!  

The rampant conflicts of interest between investment banks, government, and academia (Harvard, Columbia, London Business School, etc) and lack of policies for the need to disclose are also discussed.  The very discipline of economics is attacked as being complicit in the 2008 financial crisis.  Deregulation in the 1980 and onward paved the pathway for this inevitably, with almost zero checks & balances or accountability in the system.  Current reforms are presented as being weak at best.  And as always, the poorest segements of society end up suffering the most on account of the actions of a few.   Collective inaction brought the whole system down.  Individual companies’ desire for profits ended up destroying others and their own companies.  Top brass at these places walked away from the wreckage unharmed, with their bonuses and pensions intact. 

If it happened once, what’s to stop it from happening again?  It didn’t stop Gekko.

Beautiful restraint in The Good Wife

What makes the television legal drama series The Good Wife so …good?  Lots of things, but it occurred to me one of the primary reasons each episode sizzles is on account of the restraint expressed by all the characters.  In a landscape of entertainment characterized by lack of inhibition, this represssion and its consequences are refreshing.  I also think it’s a more accurate depiction of the complexity of human relationships.  It’s what the characters do not say and do not do which makes the suspense work.  In this landmine, no one is free – old or young. Everyone has secrets and pasts. What information is known when and through whom as well as who knows who knows, becomes paramount. 

Given this moody atmopshere, when something does actually happen, the viewer appreciates it so much more.  A small kiss shared between Cary and Kalinda, while expected, is savored.  Especially since the characters themselves do no make a deal of it afterward.  The lines between personal and professional goals and motivations are often blurred.  The series works on the strucutralist theory of binary opposition, embraced by Hegel, Levi-Strauss, and others.  Binary opposition, simply defined, are a pair of concepts or terms opposite in meaning set up against each other. 

This self-control and constant undercurrent of hesitation came to a peak in last week’s episode Foreign Affairs (4/12/2011).  All of the things which are not told are brought to light in some fashion or another.  Kalinda tells Will that he should tell Alicia that she’s an amazing woman because “People like to be told.”  Investigator Andrew Wiley tells Alicia that his investigation uncovered a “Leela” (Kalinda) whom with which her husband Peter was rumored to have an affair.  Cary has yet to reinvoke his romantic interest in Kalinda from the kiss a few episodes ago.  Kalinda does not tell Alicia that she slept with Peter, and does not yet know that she knows.  Natalie Flores reveals her feelings for Eli Gold by touching him momentarily on the arm and saying simply “If this were another time.”

In The Good Wife, as in real life, witholding information can be just as deadly as revealing it.  Information which may have been harmless if only exposed and handled earlier in the timeline, become dangerous monsters.  Needless to say, there is plenty of dramatic irony.  But the real treat is that we as viewers journey along with the characters as they figure out their motivations, desires, and goals.  We are with them as they make decisions, backtrack, and change their minds.  We are with them as they suppress personal emotion for what they perceive to be the greater good, or allow personal ambition and secrecy to damage friendships.  The show is extremely adept at introducing as well as handling baggage between characters.  The layers are a complex, seeming abyss.

Ironically for a series structured aroung a beginning with a sexual scandal, The Good Wife shows almost Victorian restraint vis-a-vis the subject.  Here we have the constant jostling of the supergo, ego, and id.  What sets it apart from reality tv as well as its competitors such as Gray’s Anatomy, is the power of the superego, and how that can be personally and professionally just as self-destructive.

All I Need is You: The Sequel to Rio that Never Was (until now)

Duran Duran comes back with a vengeance with All You Need Is Now (released in full on March 22, 2011 and earlier as a 9-track I-Tunes exclusive in December 2010).  But did they ever really go anywhere?  All You Need is Now is DD’s best record since The Wedding Album, and possibly since Rio.  In fact, it sounds a lot like Duran Duran combined with Rio. Some critics are railing them for it - so, if they get Timbaland to produce their record and go for an edgier, more modern sound, they’re trying too hard, and if they harken back to their own original sound, it’s bad too?  I guess the boys can’t win.  

 

The record is a welcome follow-up to the flop Red Carpet Massacre, too indulgent for its own good.  In his book Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, Rob Sheffield notes that the band has remained successful because they’ve honored their female fan base. They never tried to be a guy’s band.  Well, in Massacre, they went from honoring to mocking women – choosing to exalt and criticize fallen women of Hollywood (the Paris Hiltons, Lindsay Lohans, etc), carictuarized as models in smeared lipstick and sprawled on the floor as part of the album photo shoot. Come on, guess what? Tsk, tsk. The fans didn’t like it. Make no mistake: I love DD, because they love me.  They don’t even need to know me to love me.  They worship women.  “A single random meeting with your eyes
and now I am beaten. And now I’m going nowhere, I know I’m going nowhere.” Say it, Simon.  Say it.
  

Anyways.  Like many others, I thought this album deserved a real review instead of the short, think-I’m-so-smart paragraph Rolling Stone gave it.   All You Need is Now takes us into the dark, lush, icy soundscapes Duran Duran does so well thanks to Nick Rhodes. The title track returns to fine form by paying homage to Duran Duran’s female devotees: “You come on delicate and fine. Like a diamond in the mind.” It provides us with a dark sequel to ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ (more specifically, the video) with ‘The Man Who Stole a Leopard,’ an odd beauty and the beast tale of obsessive, misunderstood desire.  Then there’s the soul-train worthy, disco (forget neo) ‘Safe (In the Heat of the Night). ’Girl Panic!’ is probably the best song on this album and most similar to DD of old, along with a couple of  ‘Chauffer’-like croon tunes, ‘Leave a Light On’ and ‘Before the Rain.’ ‘Blame the Machines’ and ‘Being Followed’ recapture ‘Careless Memories.’  The themes parallel Rio: paranoia, voyeurism, but sexual panic more than frustration (that’s long gone) — so it does end up missing that vocal desperation.

 

Simon LeBon’s idiosyncratic, disaffected monotone is smooth as a 2005 Bordeaux, ironic as ever. Duran Duran’s staying power works in large part because of his voice and the fact that they can still write great songs.  Yet even after three decades, DD keeps a few mysteries from us.  Like who’s Rio anyways?

The girl with the lost earring

Like most girls, I lose earrings.  There are multiple levels of lost. Sometimes lost just means the missing pair is hiding out in the tangled mess of your jewellery box.  I often leave earrings behind at my girlfriends’ places, who considerately return them to me the next time I see them, or offer to mail them to me. Sometimes lost means you know where it is, but retrieving it might be logistically impossible or not worth it – especially when it’s a tiny gold hoop you were wearing in the second hole in your left ear.  But you end up thinking about that one little earring – you know it’s on the carpet in a corner somewhere and probably has either gotten vacuumed up or hasn’t gone anywhere at all.   Sometimes, earrings just fall out of my ears. 

 

A few weeks ago, I lost a shiny gold plated, long chandelier earring from Aldo on a street in the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. I never found it again, so I threw away its pair.  They were pretty, but not real gold. I never lose Indian gold earrings. Usually at least 22 karat, they always come equipped with secure, thick, often tortuous screws to keep them clamped on your ear, so sometimes, you can’t even put them on or take them off yourself.  How many times have I said (even at this age) “Mom, I can’t put this earring on!” (insert pouty face while taking the earrings over so she can help you and after some wailing and after some “Let’s try putting on the screws first,” they go in.) 

 

Just days ago, I got in the car and noticed only one earring of a favorite, costume pair of crystal/silver earrings was on my ear.  A friend of mine from India had gifted them to me.  I looked everywhere for the missing one - under sofa covers, on the carpet, in my handbag.  I even traced my footsteps the day before in the parking garage and my office, including the conference rooms I’d been in. I knew it had fallen away somewhere. My boyfriend swore he saw a silver glint on the pathway that morning, so I figured perhaps I’d lost them there.  He heroically recovered a silver, crystal earring for me: however, it wasn’t mine.  The next afternoon, I found it – the missing earring was on my car seat.  

When you lose an earring, it may surface, it may be lost forever. Or it might be right under your nose – or seat.

 

The Good Wife Re-Cap (2/15-3/18)

I watched the previous four episodes (2/15- 3/8) of The Good Wife in a marathon session. They are some of the best EVER.  The series continues its clever construction of suspense, chronicling the trials and tribulations of lawyer Alicia Florrick (played by Juliana Margulies in her best role to date), who decides to go back to work after a 15-year stay-at-home hiatus and stand by her politician husband Peter Florrick (Chris Noth, who was *wasted* on Sex and the City) despite his involvement in a high-profile sex scandal.

These past few weeks have sure turned up the heat with Alicia re-exploring (introspectively) her love for her boss and Georgetown Law classmate Will Gardner, the reinvigoration of implied romance between Cary Agos and bisexual Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi), Peter closing in on winning the race for State Attorney (his job before going to jail), and the surprising but short-lived softening of sharkish Eli Gold (Alan Cumming) as he manages his attraction to political collateral Natalie Flores (America Ferrera).

The sub-plotting is masterful. When the series focuses on the campaign, I can’t wait to get back to the legal case of the episode, when it focuses on the legal case, I can’t wait to know more about the FBI investigating Kalinda.  Speaking of law, the show has also explored some first amendment cases in interesting ways.  The series makes no apologies for the shadier moral quandaries of motives and tactics, leaving us on somewhat existential ground. Except for Alicia saying “It’s wrong” and then you’re like come on, why don’t you do something about it then??

In one of the episodes, Alicia’s gay brother encourages sister to break the rules and to indulge her naughty side for once.  “It’s Alicia time!” he says in his advice to her on how to seduce her boss Will.  Indeed, I think the viewers are left wanting, waiting for Alicia to make her move in her career, love life, and family.

For a legal show, The Good Wife is a doozie of a thriller.  The series paints Chicago with noir-ish edges that could have been lifted right out of BladeRunner, employs sexual tensions from the frames of Gladiator, and dark, perverse suspense from Alien.  This is classic Ridley Scott all over.