Movies Watched -- The Breaking Point (1950)

97 minute running time … this was good, I enjoyed it … Manó Kertész Kaminer (Michael Curtiz) was a great director … I’m not a big fan of Jacob Garfinkle (John Garfield), but the other actors were all good, and the writing was really good (based on a Hemingway story) … interesting that this movie was “disappeared” after Garfield was blacklisted, and a real shame since it’s probably Curtiz’s best movie (much better than the overrated Casablanca). Thanks to John Farr for the reco. This is a green-go.

Give a little … roll with it … relax!

Movies Watched -- Rosetta (1999)

In French. 95 minute running time. This won the Palm d’Or, but there ain’t that many French-language movies every year so there are some real clinkers that have won the title… this was a depressing tale about a teenage girl who has an alkie mother and no father … they live in a trailer park … the girl suffers from terrible menstrual cramps and is always running from one place to the next … she’s desperate to find a job though it doesn’t really ring true given the European welfare state … she’s pretty, she has good bones as does her alkie mom (again this doesn’t really ring true) … friendship and betrayal touched on. I wasn’t thrilled with this. SPOILERS: I did appreciate the humor of the botched suicide attempt.

You have a normal life. I have a normal life.

We Will Walk Hand In Hand

Bill Frisell’s version of “We Shall Overcome” … I dig it.

Movies Watched -- Brooklyn Castle (2012)

92 minute running time .. sweet documentary about the chess team at a public middle school in Brooklyn (I.S. 318) … the kids are mostly black and Hispanic and they have won every middle school competition at the national level for a long time … two white teachers, John Galvin and Elizabeth Vikary, lead the chess club … Vikary is interesting for sure, she seems to be somewhere on the autism spectrum (FIDE std 2149) … they try to dramatize things with budget cuts threatening the program post-GFC (not able to fly 57 kids around the country twice a year, plus the train trip to Saratoga) … I enjoyed it.

The answers really aren’t clear to anybody

Movies Watched -- L'Eclisse (1962)

In Italian. 125 minute running time so at least 30 minutes too long. Monica Vitti is nice to look at but I wasn’t interested in the boring? love? story (despite the stock exchange scenes) and fast forwarded through it. Next!

Movies Watched -- Amores Perros (2000)

In Spanish. 153 running time so way way way too long … three overlapping stories of people living in Mexico City, which is sort of a gimmick … one story low-lifes and dog fighting, another story about a man who leaves his wife for a model who is then in a horrific car accident, the model, not the man), and the last story is about a former college professor who is now a bum / hit man. Amores Perros is translated as “Love’s a Bitch,” so they’re all love (and betrayal) stories of sorts, but none of the characters is likable … I got what the director was doing (“the anguished nature of love”), I only wish he had been able to do it in 100 minutes or so….

Andrew O’Hehir wrote a good review … “cruelty and violence … are always evil and always corrosive.”

Name the baby Octavio

Feel Like I'm Born To Lose

Son Little with “Neve Give Up” … big fan of Son Little and love the way he ends this one:

Movies Watched -- A Special Day (1977)

In Italian. 105 minute running time. I have no idea how this ended up in my queue but I’m glad it did since I LOVED this movie … it’s a great story shot in interesting ways, just really well done, absolutely a green-go. Ah, it was John Farr who recommended it, which figures, and I agree with him 100%. Bravo, Ettore Scola!

“You’re not like the others, you’re here with me,”

Ain't Got Much Goin' My Way

Soul Scratch with “The Road Looks Long” … I dig it:

MicroSectors™ ETNs

Hadn’t heard of these before today:

BNKU 3X Leveraged Exposure (Equally weighted 10: BAC, C, GS, JPM, MS, PNC, SCHW, TFC, USB, WFC), ave vol 223,000

BNKD -3X Inverse Leveraged Exposure, ave vol 71,000

BULZ 3X Leveraged Exposure (Equally weighted 15: AAPL, ADBE, AMD, AMZN, CRM, FB, GOOGL, INTC, MSFT, MU, NFLX, NVDA, PYPL, SQ, TSLA), ave vol 3.16MM

BERZ -3X Inverse Leveraged Exposure, ave vol 64,000

FNGU 3X Leveraged Exposure (Equally weighted 10: AAPL, AMZN, BABA, BIDU, FB, GOOGL, MSFT, NFLX, NVDA, TSLA), ave vol 7.06MM

FNGD -3X Inverse Leveraged Exposure, ave vol 719,000

GDXU 3X Leveraged Exposure (75% GDX, 25% GDXJ), ave vol 732,000

GDXD -3X Inverse Leveraged Exposure

NRGU 3X Leveraged Exposure (Equally weighted 10: COP, CVX, DVN, EOG, MPC, OXY, PSX, PXD, VLO, XOM), ave vol 193,000

NRGD -3X Inverse Leveraged Exposure, ave vol 123,000

OILU 3X Leveraged Exposure (25 components, exploration and production of oil and gas), ave vol 107,000

OILD -3X Inverse Leveraged Exposure, ave vol 67,000