Movies Watched -- Flirting (1992)

99 minute running time so the perfect length. I really enjoyed this one. From Australia so subtitles, which my DVD thankfully had, are required to understand the English. I spent the whole movie thinking I was watching young Ben Mendelsohn, but the lead was another guy from Melbourne born in 1969 named Noah Taylor. I got this one because it’s another in my series of Naomi Watts movies … Naomi was born in 1968, Nicole Kidman in 1967 — features all these talented young Aussies when they were in their early 20s.

The female lead is a stunningly beautiful mulatto girl named Thandie Newton (born in England in 1972), the daughter of an actual Zimbabwean princess (I believe it) and an English father.

Teenage love story with an interracial spin, set in the boarding schools (one for girls, one for boys, separated by a lake) of 1965 Australia. Racism, honor, jealousy, friendship, and the usual boarding school horrors.

Sweet story, good writing, good acting. Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote: “a winner of many prizes in Australia, this lovely feature deserves them all,“ and I agree! Green rating.

Just flirting. (Young Naomi second from the right)

Movies Watched -- Persons Unknown (1996)

99 minute running time, which is the perfect length, but this was a terrible movie. Continuing my Naomi Watts series of movies … she’s good in it, but the story is so bad and the writing is so bad and the acting is so bad and the budget is so low — just awful, it wouldn’t even be shown as a made-for-TV movie, straight to the dumpster. Made in 1996, but it feels so out of date, like it’s 100 years old, not twenty. Red rating, avoid like the plague, unless you want to see Naomi tear up on demand in scene after scene.

Nerdy 70s glasses with matching VW bus .. shadow created the pencil mustache

Movies Watched -- Eastern Promises (2007)

100 minute running time, so the perfect length. The second in my Naomi Watts series of movies. This one wasn’t terrible like The International, but it also wasn’t very good — it’s slickly made but the story is kind of lame. Stars Aragorn, Son of Arathorn, who plays a Russian mobster (with a twist, no spoilers). It’s based in London so Naomi gets to work on her British accent, and Aragorn speaks Russian at length, I wonder how well?

There’s one great fight scene in a bathhouse which Aragorn does completely nude. There’s always been a double standard when it comes to full frontal nudity in the movies, so I was glad to see Aragorn willing to put his uncircumcised dingle-dangle on display. The guy who plays Kirill, the main mobster’s son — an old guy with bright blue eyes, really eats up the role. It’s a pity that the lack of long winters in London has turned him into a homosexual. Orphan baby rides off into the night on an old Ural (without sidecar). Yellow rating.

Peter Bradshaw said it was “clunky and inauthentic,” and Tony Lane asks “Must [Cronenberg] cling to his schlocky reputation at all costs?“

Goodbye, Anna Ivanovna

Movies Watched -- The International (2009)

119 minute running time so at least 20 to 30 minutes too long. I’m on a Naomi Watts kick, trying to watch every movie she has ever been in, which may be a mistake. I think she’s super talented and she looks just like the Australian version of one of my closest Chinese girlfriends from back in the day.

This movie was terrible. Clive Owen can’t act, but he has the designer stubble, cleft chin, and deep brown puppy dog eyes that got him some work for a time. Dumb story, badly written. No one is interested in criminal banks, even if they are led by Kai Proctor (god, I loved Banshee). One interesting thing they did was build a Guggenheim Museum set and shoot it up, but this was so idiotic, so incoherent, so pointless. Poor Naomi having to take roles like this with embarrassing expository dialogue. Lots of drone shots of fabulous locales, but just lousy, not thrilling, not interesting … a total waste of time. Red rating, avoid.

Edelstein called it a “slow road to nowhere,” and Rex (sorry, no link) said it “makes no sense at all.”

Teary on demand

Office Art

I had the classic Al Ross (Abraham Roth) cartoon, “Welcome Bagholders” (from December 1981), framed for my spare bedroom, er, home office. The framer did a great job with it.

Stabilizing Transactions

From The IPO Decision by Jason Draho:

“Short covering: The underwriter can take an initial short position in the stock by overselling the IPO. Short covering in the open market creates additional demand that supports the price when there is selling pressure. The short position can alternatively be covered by exercising the overallotment option (OAO). An OAO is a standard feature of IPOs and it grants the underwriter the option to purchase additional shares from the issuer and resell them to investors at the offer price. The typical OAO is for 15 percent of the offer size and is exercisable for up to 30 calendar days after the offer date. The underwriter can completely hedge the upside risk if the short position does not exceed the size of the OAO, yet still maintain buying power to support the price when there is a sell imbalance.

Share repurchases by the underwriter in the open market are referred to as syndicate covering transactions and are subject to the same Regulation M disclosure requirements as penalty bids. In practice, investors are not informed that a particular trade is a short-covering transaction. The underwriter only has to include a statement in the prospectus indicating that it may engage in stabilizing transactions in conjunction with the offering of securities.”

And the same is true for every following offering of securities, although “Stabilizing is prohibited in an at-the-market offering.“

Movies Watched -- Green Book (2018)

129 minute running time which means it was at least 30 minutes too long … I would cut out the punching the cop scene / Bobby Kennedy phone call and the YMCA rescue scene, since they were both no doubt fictionalized to give the movie a little more drama, but frankly it didn’t need it and moviemakers should always be looking to cut cut cut.

Stars Aragorn, son of Arathorn (who has put on 50 pounds in around 15 years), and Remy Danton, acting ever effete … never forget that Jimmy Breslin called Mayor Dinkins "a fancy shvartzer with a mustache."

This wasn’t badly made, but it was pretty heavy-handed (Barry Hertz called it “Racism for Dummies,” which made me laugh) and also didn’t spare the heartstring music, which annoyed me. Nice to see Linda Cardellini get some movie work (I loved her in Bloodline … well, I loved everything about Bloodline). The Negro Motorist Green Book itself does interest me, it was more than the black AAA guide, it was a directory to all the service providers who didn’t discriminate based on skin color, put together by a black postman and his network of other black postmen. That’s fascinating.

Solid yellow rating for sure but doesn’t get the coveted green go.

Dick Brody hated it and called it a “bland, regressive flip on ‘Driving Miss Daisy,’” which may seem overly harsh, but I see what he’s saying and largely agree with him.

Christ, I’m blacker than you are!

Movies Watched -- Siberia (2018)

97 minute running time, which is a good length, but this was a terrible, terrible movie. I got it out of a Red Box on a lark, and regret it. A Rotten Tomatoes score of 11% (which I learned after the fact) is generous.

An idiotic non-story, badly written. Multiple gratuitous sex scenes, completely unrealistic for a 51-year-old guy (even if he is fit), except for when he was performing Keanulingus. His Russian (actually Romanian) lover was sort of different because she had buck teeth and weird bones — I liked that.

Keanu still can’t act, everyone knows this, including Keanu, but he looks good with his stubble and no eyelashes (1/4 Chinese after all), and thankfully doesn’t open his mouth much, except to perform Keanulingus.

Blue diamonds, private jets, jacked-up Range Rovers, comical Russian gangsters … these are things that might appeal to a certain kind of teenage boy, but even he would throw up his hands about this one.

It’s a complete mystery to me how movies like this get made. Who funds them? Taxpayers in Manitoba? God almighty.

Rex hated it (“direction looks phoned in from a toll booth in the Ukraine … the screenplay is incomprehensible”) along with everyone else.

Burn the house down (with the movie producers trapped inside)

Movies Watched -- Battle of the Sexes (2017)

121 minute running time so at least 20 to 30 minutes too long. I didn’t hate this one. The story of the World Tennis Association is interesting, though they whitewashed Bille Jean’s relationship with Marilyn (which ended badly). The girl who plays Billie Jean King is much more attractive than Billie Jean ever was, and Steve Carell is good as Mike Myers playing degenerate gambler Bobby Riggs. Good production values, slickly made. Also works in some pro-homosexual propaganda, as Hollywood likes to do these days. Not a green rating since it’s overly long, but a solid yellow for sure.

My favorite old fag and brilliant movie critic, Rex Reed, predictably loved it.

Dorky 70s Eyeglasses

Movies Watched -- The Disaster Artist (2017)

103 minute running time, which is a good length, but I found it sort of unbearable and watched it at 1.5x. Tells the story of a brain-damaged guy named Tommy Wiseau who, along with his friend Mark, made a movie called The Room, which is apparently so terrible that it became a cult classic — I’d never heard of it. It’s a sad story, an awful story really about this deranged guy and his efforts to write, direct, and star in a movie. Maybe Tommy got the money from a medical malpractice lawsuit? He spent $6 million apparently, and the people who helped make the movie were happy to take it, the lowlifes. Red rating, avoid.

Dick Brody also wasn’t thrilled.

I feel you.