Sunday, September 26, 2010

Wall Street 2 movie was so-so

I was really looking forward to see the new Wall Street 2 movie ("Money Never Sleeps") and although it had quite a few good moments, overall it just wasn't as satisfying as I had hoped. Despite the severity of the recent financial crisis, the movie just didn't have the visceral punch that I though Oliver Stone would bring to this encore.

Michael Douglas was great, but he was great in the original, so no new ground was broken there. "Jake" as his nominal protégé was okay, but not great. His girlfriend, Gordon's daughter was... well... pathetic (or more charitably I could say that this was great acting to portray a pathetic character) but maybe that was intentional to forcefully illustrate how "toxic" the cretins of Wall Street really are.

The ending was quite lame, but maybe given the current cultural context Mr. Stone felt obligated not to leave people in a state of complete despair. That would be bad for ticket sales.

On the positive side, the acting of Frank Langella and Eli Wallach as aging investment bankers was absolutely fantastic.

As I noted, there were plenty of great individual scenes and lines such as you saw in the two trailers.

Maybe the bottom line is that Mr. Stone did in fact portray the culture of Wall Street and its denizens as being irredeemably "toxic", although his lame ending inscrutably seemed to let them off the hook and even excuse illegal activity.

There were a few scenes that reminded me of Wall Street activity that I hope the so-called Volcker Rule will eliminate or at least dramatically reduce, but only time will tell.

Maybe that is ultimately the fatal flaw with this movie: there is too much in it that is borderline documentary and cuts painfully too close to the bone. At the end of the credits it reminds us that it is a work of fiction and that similarities to real people and places is... "unintentional." Yeah, right. Sure, they changed the names of the investment banks, but we all know who they were talking about.

-- Jack Krupansky

The New York Times article... in Portuguese

The New York Times article from Friday by Sewell Chan entitled "Small Gifts Sent to Ease U.S. Debt" that quotes me about making contributions to pay down the public debt and has my picture has been translated into Portuguese on this Brazilian web called Economia with the translation entitled "Para pagar dívida de R$ 23 trilhões, uma doação de R$ 554 - Crescem nos EUA as contribuições voluntárias para diminuir o rombo nas contas do governo, mas impacto sobre os débitos é mínimo". My original quote in The New York Times:

"I get mixed reactions," said John W. Krupansky, 56, a software developer in Midtown Manhattan who started reading about economics during the dot-com crash a decade ago, and has blogged about his tax deductible gifts, nine so far, of $25 each. "Some people are annoyed; they think the right thing to do is complain about the debt, not actually do something about it. Other people are amused that anyone would waste their time to do such a thing."

Translated into Portuguese:

"Ouço reações diversas", diz John W. Krupansky, de 56 anos, desenvolvedor de software no centro de Manhattan que começou a ler sobre a economia durante a crise das empresas pontocom, há uma década, e tem escrito em seu blog sobre suas doações - nove até agora, cada uma de US$ 25. "Algumas pessoas ficam irritadas. Elas pensam que a coisa certa a fazer é reclamar da dívida, e não fazer algo concreto sobre isso. Outras pessoas se divertem com a ideia de alguém perder seu tempo para fazer uma coisa dessas."

-- Jack Krupansky

Friday, September 24, 2010

Huh, I'm in the paper for trying to pay down the public debt... in the New York Times!

Huh, my meager efforts to take responsibility for paying down the public debt have gotten me a little attention... in The New York Times of all places! Today they are running an article by Sewell Chan entitled "Small Gifts Sent to Ease U.S. Debt" that actually quotes me:

"I get mixed reactions," said John W. Krupansky, 56, a software developer in Midtown Manhattan who started reading about economics during the dot-com crash a decade ago, and has blogged about his tax deductible gifts, nine so far, of $25 each. "Some people are annoyed; they think the right thing to do is complain about the debt, not actually do something about it. Other people are amused that anyone would waste their time to do such a thing."

And they even ran my picture.

-- Jack Krupansky