About three brothers in Detroit who formed a band called "Death" in the 1970s. Here's a New York Times article about them: This Band Was Punk Before Punk Was Punk. I wasn't especially interested in this story and fast forwarded it after an hour in. A really fascinating movie about another unknown musician from Detroit was recently made: Searching for Sugarman ... that's one you should watch.
ETF Trading Portfolio Update -- July 4, 2014
No changes this week. Another week like the last in the bonds (TBT) and they will reverse for sure.
Movies Watched -- The Act of Killing
This one was hard to watch and I stopped after 100 minutes (with another hour to go). Movie is about the death squads in Indonesia who murdered around a million "communists" in 1965-66. A lot of those killed were ethnic Chinese. There's a paramilitary organization called Pancasila Youth that still exists, has millions of members, specializes in intimidation, shakedowns (again of Chinese merchants), vote rigging, etc. Weird, I didn't know Indonesia is that screwed up.
The movie tried to mix in these strange performance art pieces, bizarre. Made an uncomfortable viewing experience ("the banality of evil") that much worse. It didn't help that the sidekick of one of the executioners (seen dancing on a former killing ground in screenshot below) looked exactly like Stephen Chow's sidekick in Kung Fu Hustle.
Movies Watched -- The Crash Reel
Told the story of a professional snowboarder named Kevin Pearce who suffered a terrible fall (see below) in 2009 and is brain damaged as a result. Documented his recovery which was pretty amazing ... he's a genuinely sweet kid, has a really nice, strong family behind him ... when they did play the crash reel of all these skateboarders and BMXers, and snowmobile and dirtbike jumpers, I admit I covered my eyes, couldn't watch it. 22 foot walls in the half pipe present a lot of risk. I had a childhood friend who was in a terrible car crash and is also brain damaged as a result ... he too made a remarkable recovery, but like Pearce, is not his old self. Good movie to show to someone who takes outsized risks, it might make them think twice.
NQ Mobile Closes at $4.58
No great surprise to those of us who have been following this stock: NQ Mobile Inc. Announces Changes to its Board of Directors and Provides Status Update of the 2013 Annual Audit. Can't wait to read Frederick Ziegel's next company update. He's an analyst at Topeka Capital Markets who has been bullish on NQ (Buy rating, $33 price target), even after everyone else (Piper Jaffray, Macquarie, Cannacord) wisely suspended coverage.
Movies Watched -- The Stories We Tell
Spoilers ... the filmmaker tricks the audience by mixing real old family film footage with re-created scenes ... I wondered why there was so much old film footage at first .... anyway, the story of a Milkman's Child, i.e., the girl's father isn't her biological father and she doesn't learn that fact until she's in her twenties. The people who really suffered here, besides the girl, were her mother and real father who kept the secret, and the man who raised her, once he learns the truth. Her siblings are hurt too, but not as badly as the older generation. All the young people in this movie are really attractive and intelligent and articulate, despite being Canadian (a joke). I don't think I would have found the story as engaging if the people had been dumb and ugly.
Fine Wine Price Versus Macau Gaming Revenue
Deutsche Bank keeps this kind of interesting chart:
They use the Liv-ex Fine Wine 100. They're not all French wines, there are a couple Italian wine components like Ornellaia and Sassicaia.
Singapore 10,000 Dollar Bill
Sad to read that the SG$10,000 will be retired. Equivalent to around US$8,000, it's a favorite of drug dealers, coal barons, smugglers, property developers, gamblers, and day traders everywhere.
Movies Watched -- Muscle Shoals
A small town in Alabama where the Fame recording studio, and later, Muscle Shoals Sound recording studio were established ... Great black artists like Arthur Alexander, Percy Sledge, etc. record music backed by an all-white band comprised of talented local teenagers (pictured below) ... later Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, so many greats featured ... Lynyrd Skynyrd, Duane Allman, The Rolling Stones, and countless others make their appearance. Interesting, esp. in the context of the civil rights movement. Heard a new expression from Rick Harris, maybe it's well known in the South, but not to me: "shitting in high cotton" ... means riding high, good days, I guess.
Movies Watched -- Room 237
A movie about a movie ... presents various crackpot interpretations -- Injun genocide, the Holocaust, faked Apollo landing, etc. -- of Kubrick's The Shining, some more interesting than others. Several of the analysts sound like potheads, one guy in particular with the tell-tale stoner's laugh. An hour in you begin to tire of these kooky theories, but I did watch it to the end. The screenshot below is from a screening of the movie being played forward and backward at the same time, done to reveal it's "secrets," I suppose. See, Jack's a clown.