Movies Watched -- Frozen River (2008)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

97 minute running time … this was slit-your-wrists depressing, a low-budget movie about a poor single white mother living in the northern border town of Massena, NY who gets involved with a young Mohawk woman who is a smuggler of illegals (mostly Chinese) across the frozen St. Lawrence river from Canada… (the beautiful blonde upper-middle class white woman who wrote this script and directed the movie went to Sarah Lawrence, which shouldn’t be confused with St. Lawrence county) … anyway, damn, I had to fast forward through most of this because the sadsack people and muddy, down and out places were just too awful to watch at normal speed… I think the star was a good actress, she looked like a version of Bonnie Raitt if Bonnie had grown up in an upstate New York trailer park instead of Beverly Hills.

That sicko John Farr is to blame for this reco. You can give it a miss.

I just want my double.

Being The Change

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Dominique Fils-Aimé with “While We Wait” … pretty cleverly done, I love the transition … beautiful voice and smart songwriting; I dig it:

There Are Currently 31 Alternative Trading Systems in the US

Added on by C. Maoxian.

These active “dark pools” exist in addition to the current “lit” 16 stock exchanges in the US.

Listed by trading activity … the top four ATS’s do around 60% of all ATS trades, the top six around 75%, the top ten around 90%; in terms of ATS volume, the top ten ATS do around 75% of the total, the bottom 20 around 25% (because of block trading):

  1. UBSA — UBS ATS (UBS)

  2. SGMT — SIGMA X2 (Goldman Sachs)

  3. INCR — INTELLIGENT CROSS LLC

  4. CROS — CROSSFINDER (Credit Suisse)

  5. JPMX — JPM-X (J.P. Morgan)

  6. EBXL — LEVEL ATS

  7. LATS — THE BARCLAYS ATS (Barclays)

  8. MSPL — MS POOL (ATS-4) (Morgan Stanley)

  9. JPBX — JPB-X (J.P. Morgan)

  10. KCGM — VIRTU MATCHIT ATS (Virtu)

  11. IATS — IBKR ATS

  12. MSRP — MS RPOOL (ATS-6) (Morgan Stanley)

  13. MSTX — MS TRAJECTORY CROSS (ATS-1) (Morgan Stanley)

  14. BNPX — BNPP CORTEX ATS (BNP Paribas)

  15. MLIX — INSTINCT X (Bank of America Securities)

  16. ITGP — POSIT (Virtu)

  17. PURE — PURESTREAM

  18. ICBX — CBX (INSTINET CONTINUOUS BLOCK CROSSING SYSTEM)

  19. XSTM — CROSSSTREAM (Fidelity)

  20. BIDS — BIDS ATS

  21. CODA — CODA

  22. BLUE — BOATS

  23. LQNA — LIQUIDNET H2O ATS

  24. BLKX — INSTINET BLOCKCROSS (Nomura)

  25. LQNT — LIQUIDNET NEGOTIATION ATS

  26. LMNX — LUMINEX ATS

  27. DLTA DEALERWEB

  28. CBLC — CITIBLOC (Citibank)

  29. PJCX — XE (Piper Sandler)

  30. STFX — STIFEL X (Stifel, Nicolaus & Company)

  31. AQUA — AQUA

Movies Watched -- Swingers (1996)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

96 minute running time but felt like an eternity … some funny bits at first but then it turned into this pathetic Gen-X whiny white guy loser thing, talk talk talking, borrrriiinnnggg … neat to see Vince Vaughn when he was young and gorgeous, before he became a fat, dissipated old guy like someone I know (he’s exactly my age, nearly to the day). Jon Favreau also got fat and unrecognizable in that last 25 years. I hated this movie and fast forwarded through most of it. Give it a miss.

West coast representation

Movies Watched -- Lone Star (1996)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

134 minute running time … way way way too long and way too convoluted, flashbacks almost never work. I went to fast forward after 30 minutes … third story line involving a black family (Doctor Miles Bennett Dyson the father) which I didn’t get at all, maybe if they had cut that story line out the movie would have worked or at least been bearable … tons of talking, maybe the script looked good on paper but it made for a terrible movie. Oh, it’s a John Sayles movie? No wonder it’s no good. Give it a miss.

Mick LaSalle wrote about another Sayles’ movie: “the stories are bland, the connections are incidental and the dramatic payoff is nonexistent.” I think that’s true for all of them. LaSalle continues: “[Sayles’] ideas are just banal: Things change. Progress is destabilizing. The relentless spirit of free enterprise can sometimes do more harm than good … He needs to say something else.”

No one mumble mumble stays in love for 23 years

Movies Watched -- Brown Bunny (2003)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

92 minute running time … after loving Buffalo ‘66, I thought I’d check out Gallo’s other movie, Brown Bunny, which I also liked, but can’t recommend because I watched a great deal of it on fast forward (very little dialogue) and it ends with a graphic cock-sucking scene which would put a mainstream audience off … but this is an art house movie, and I like Gallo’s humor and a lot of the shots he frames … it’s a tragedy / heartbreak movie with the story all revealed in the last five minutes or so. I enjoyed it but my tastes are not common.

Change your mind?