"Extreme Economies" by Richard Davies (2019)

 "...people are told they are free to choose the goods they buy and the careers they pursue.  In fact, we are 'slaves' to consumerism, enticed by markets that exist to create false wants.  Fashion exists, for example, to make people feel they have a deep need - in a Maslow sense - for the latest cut of jeans or pattern of dress.  The economics of data are the same, in Mr. Han's view.  Our data is in mass supply and freely supplied by us.  But we are slaves here too, chasing tokens of approval - likes on Facebook and Instagram - that we mistakenly feel are valuable."

Author Richard Davies is a former writer for The Economist.  He's also served as an economic advisor to the British government, and is presently employed as a Professor at Bristol University.  Extreme Economies is his first book.

In Extreme Economies he travels the world seeking out the most unusual areas with respect to production, distribution and trade.  He visits Aceh, Indonesia, which rebuilt itself with surprising speed after a tsunami.  He visits the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, where a remarkable system of trade exists between Syrian exiles.  He travels from there to Louisiana, where he interviews inmates on their own informal economy, and from Louisiana he inspects locations as far apart as the Darien Gap, Kinshasa, Glasgow, Akita, Tallinn and Santiago.  Each economy he visits exhibits its own unique characteristics.

His conclusion?  He sums up his travels by reassessing the value of social capital, and by remarking upon the aspects of economies that economists themselves often overlook.  Places such as Zaatari or the Louisiana prison system, which seem poor from the outside, are actually vibrant when considered from the standpoint of mediums of exchange, adaptability and their impact upon neighboring economies.  He arrives at the conclusion that a nation's GDP is never the end of the story, and that even in a place with high levels of income inequality there may be more than meets the eye.

I found this book very interesting and I recommend it without reservation.  It has a lot to say about the direction our economies may be heading in, and the author is very careful about the statements he makes.

Those living in Taiwan will want to read the chapter on Akita, Japan.  Many communities in Taiwan are experiencing similar challenges, and as our populations age we'll need to overcome many of the same difficulties.  Books like Extreme Economies are one way of doing that.

Related Entries:

"The World for Sale" by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy (2021)

"The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins (2009)

"Nomadland" by Jessica Bruder (2017)

"The Chinese in America" by Iris Chang (2003)

Some Other Movies From 1974

Nice to be back in the 70s.  After working my way up to 2021, I now find myself in a movie era before cgi, before the internet, and before movie stars with chiseled abs.  It was in some respects a more innocent time, when movies often featured characters driving drunk, and everyone smoked like there was no tomorrow.

This first entry for 1974 will be about pop culture; the second will list some news items from that year.  I'll be following this format for the foreseeable future.  At some point I'll probably return to 2021 and the movies I missed, but I'm in no hurry to do so.

The Top 10 Movies of 1974:

The Towering Inferno (love it), Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Earthquake (also love it), The Trial of Billy Jack, The Godfather Part II (classic), Airport 1975, The Longest Yard, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams and Murder on the Orient Express.

Popular Albums of 1974:

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John (great album), Greatest Hits - John Denver, Innervisions - Stevie Wonder (another great album), American Graffiti soundtrack, Imagination - Gladys Knight and the Pips, Behind Closed Doors - Charlie Rich, The Sting soundtrack, The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd, Bachman-Turner Overdrive II ("Takin' Care of Business") and Court and Spark - Joni Mitchell.

1974 Books Later Adapted Into Movies:

Carrie by Stephen King, Jaws by Peter Benchley, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre, All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein, Alive: the Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read, The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth, The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols, Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean, and A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan.

Major Sporting Events of 1974

The Miami Dolphins won the Superbowl, West Germany won the FIFA World Cup, the Oakland Athletics won the World Series, the Boston Celtics won the NBA Finals, Muhammad Ali regained the World Heavyweight title after defeating George Foreman in Zaire (a.k.a. "The Rumble in the Jungle."), Eddy Merckx of Belgium won the Tour de France, the Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup and Jimmy Connors won the Wimbledon championship.

Comic Books in 1974:

Marvel debuted their Giant-Size series, The Punisher appeared for the first time in Amazing Spider-Man #129, Marvel raised the cost of comic books from 20 cents to 25 cents, Wolverine made his first appearance in The Incredible Hulk #180, Arkham Asylum appeared for the first time in Batman #258 and the first chapter of Champion du monde (featuring Tintin) was published in France.

Excellent

1. All Fear Eats the Soul

Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed this story of an older widow who falls in love with a much younger man from another culture.  Even given the fact that I'm jumping into the films of 1974 from the films of 2021, I never found this movie boring.  It tells an interesting tale of love in the face of various forms of exclusion, be they sexual, racial or economic.  Prior to this I'd only seen Veronika Voss and Querelle, both of which appeared toward the end of Fassbinder's career, and All Fear Eats the Soul has me curious about the director's earlier work.

It may be worth comparing Fassbinder's work, which is very theatrical and centered around the craft of acting, to Robert Bresson's work, which emphasizes cinematography and other storytelling conventions at the expense of individual performances.  Fassbinder's "New German Cinema" or Bresson's "minimalism?"  By comparing the ranking of this movie to the ranking of Lancelot du Lac (below), you'll know what camp I'm in, but even so I'm glad the two film makers inhabit the same time period.  Between the two and the different types of stories they told there's a lot of room for exploration.

Un-Fun Fact: The star of this movie, El Hedi ben Salem, was seduced by the director in a gay bathhouse before filming.  He was in reality a very violent man battling alcoholism, and he ended up hanging himself in a French prison after stabbing three people in Germany.  The director dedicated his last film, Querelle, to Salem.

2. Arabian Nights

Pasolini's 1974 offering: stories within stories, spanning several continents and several cultures.  It shares a frankness with the work of literature that inspired it, though in Pasolini's version there's more of an emphasis on sexuality, which at times veers into the explicit.  If I were you I'd split it into two sittings.  It seems straightforward, but there's a lot to absorb in the second half.

Fun Fact: This movie was filmed in Iran, Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Nepal.  Star Ines Pelligrini, who was discovered by Pasolini, is half Italian and half Eritrean.

3. Pastoral Hide and Seek (a.k.a. Pastoral: To Die in the Country)

Wonderfully weird Japanese movie in which the director and his double explore their memories of life in rural Japan.  Where a lot of impressionistic movies end up seeming somewhat random, the images built up in this film actually add up to something - even if that something is open to interpretation.  Anyone who enjoys writers like Philip K. Dick or Borges will appreciate this movie's recursive elements.

Excellent?  Or Exploitation?

1. The Night Porter

Critics at the time dismissed it as "Nazisploitation," whatever that's supposed to mean, but I think this movie has a surprising depth that they might have overlooked.  The luminous Charlotte Rampling plays a concentration camp survivor, encountering a former tormentor in a Viennese hotel around the time of the Nuremberg Trials.  The fruit of their meeting is both surprising and disturbing.

As a viewer you have to be brave enough to ask yourself, could someone in a concentration camp become sexually fixated on one of their Nazi overseers?  Was a combination of sadomasochism and Stockholm syndrome possible?  I think that yes, it was, and even though the implications of that possibility are disturbing I don't think the film uses them inappropriately, or otherwise paints a false picture of what happens to the characters in this movie.  There was a spectrum of people sent to the camps, and certainly some of them suffered from various mental illnesses, either directly related to or predating their experiences at the hands of the Nazis.

Add to this the time in which this movie was released.  It was the early 70s, "self-help" was becoming more and more of a thing, and many people, rather than working through their various neuroses, were actually feeding into them.

For me the definition of "Excellent" in this context is whether or not I'll be thinking about a movie later on, and whether or not I'll remember it and compare future films to it.  In the case of The Night Porter the answer is definitely yes.  Will I watch it again?  Probably not, but I'd rank it alongside movies like Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Sophie's Choice or Come and See as WWII-related films that had me reflecting on their content long after I'd seen them.

Further Viewing: Many of director Liliana Cavani's other films sound fascinating.  She came up with Bertolucci and Pasolini (director of Salo and Arabian Nights), and even though she never received the same level of acclaim one gets the impression that her movies have a lot of depth.

Some Good Ones

1. The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires

The biggest loser in this movie is the Chinese expedition leader.  That Swedish countess was ready to get LAID, and you can tell she would have been the fuck of a lifetime.

Aside from that, this Hammer Films/Shaw Brothers co-production (!) is a helluva lot of fun, and whether you're on the "so good it's good" or "so bad it's good" train matters not.  Dracula somehow morphs into a Chinese warlord (!), various pairs of boobies are exposed, and martial arts predominate.  It's a movie that wants to cash in on the horror film craze and the kung fu craze at the same time, and in terms of crass movie capitalism it succeeds brilliantly.

This movie did make me a bit sad about Hong Kong though.  The British once had this wonderful, Asian back yard in which to do things like this, and now Hong Kong is in the bosom of boring, communist China.  The Hong Kong film industry really was a kind of miracle.  Too bad it's not longer with us.

And R.I.P. Peter Cushing.  He had a face that was made for the camera.

Fun Fact 1: Julie Ege, like Christina Lindberg (below) was also a Penthouse Pet.

Fun Fact 2: A sequel, "Devil Bride of Dracula," would have been filmed in India.  Unfortunately this movie was a financial failure and the sequel never happened.

2. The Marseille Contract

Anthony Quinn stars as a DEA agent in Paris, with Michael Caine as a hired killer pursuing a drug dealer.  It's not The French Connection by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still a serviceable thriller even if the ending is weak.  I have no idea what the DEA would be doing in France.  Interpol maybe?

3. Lancelot du Lac (a.k.a. "Lancelot of the Lake")

I recently finished T.H. White's The Once and Future King series, and while I have to say that version of the Knights of the Round Table does more with the source material, Lancelot du Lac offers enough of a spin on the King Arthur mythos to keep things interesting.  Robert Bresson directed this surprisingly violent film, and while I'm not in a hurry to see his other movies I have to say this movie has me intrigued.

4. The Great Gatsby

The middle section puts the "M" in melodramatic, but the performances are solid and Bruce Dern steals every scene he's in.  Robert Redford stars as the mysterious man about town, with Mia Farrow as his ladylove and Sam Waterston as the one who brings them together.  Francis Ford Coppola wrote the script, and even though Jack Clayton's direction wallows in the love triangle aspect it's an obviously lavish production intended to put the story in the best possible light.

Fun Fact: If you look real close you can see Brooke Adams at the party.  This was her second movie.

5. The Year Without Santa Claus

Santa Claus gets tired and decides to skip Christmas.  It's very primitive work of stop motion animation from Rankin/Bass, and only an hour long to boot.  I'm old enough to have had trouble focusing on it, but I'm sure most young children loved it at the time.

6. Swallows and Amazons

Kid's movie in which several British children play on and around an island.  In 2022 what kind of parents would leave their children unsupervised for that long?  And what might the consequences of doing so be?  I know not, but once upon a time I had my own childish adventures, and this movie brought some of them back to me.

Pseudoporn

1. Flesh Gordon

It's actually quite endearing.  The cheap sets, the bad acting, the nonsensical story - it all works.  Hats off to anyone who managed to jerk off to this back in the 70s.  That would have taken both willpower and a lot of imagination.  In Flesh Gordon the planet Porno sends a sex ray our way, and Flesh Gordon, alongside Dr. Jerkoff and Dale Ardor, heads to that planet to confront the evil Emperor Wang.

Not Stoned Enough?

1. The Island at the Top of the World

Before Disney was a media conglomerate, whose marketing strategy decided the fate of nations, they were making weird movies like this one, in which dudes were riding zeppelins to the north pole and discovering Viking settlements.  While watching it I often regretted the fact that I hadn't fired up a bowl beforehand.  This movie would've been twice as good if I had.

Fun Fact 1: John Whedon, who wrote the screeenplay, was Joss Whedon's grandfather.

Fun Fact 2: Mako is in this.  He plays an eskimo.

Fun Fact 3: British director Robert Stevenson had a very successful run of films at Disney.  He also directed Old Yeller, The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, Mary Poppins and The Love Bug.

Cheesy Fun

1. Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter

Caroline Munro... it was only a matter of time before she'd be a Bond girl.  Who else could make Barbara Bach look average?

And speaking of Hammer Films, this one's more in line with what they were known for.  Creepy movies produced on the cheap, often done with a nod and a wink at the audience.  The title explains most of the plot, which aside from the European setting isn't all that different from The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires above.  It was supposed to be the first in a series, but an R rating and a lukewarm response put an end to those plans.

2. It's Alive

"Hunting and killing babies doesn't seem to be my specialty."  Really, Detective?  Ya think?

This movie does three things right though: 1) The way it sets up its premise, with the wide angle lens roving through the hospital hallways.  This lends a sense of surrealism that makes the whole thing work. 2) Star John Ryan, who sells the fuck out of a ludicrous concept.  3) The fact that they never show the baby in its entirety, which adds a sense of menace to the proceedings.

Further Viewing: Director Larry Cohen contributed a lot to 70s and 80s horror cinema.  Other movies in his filmography include God Told Me To, Q, The Stuff, Maniac Cop and The Ambulance.

Firmly in the Realm of Exploitation

1. Thriller: A Cruel Picture

Swedish rape/revenge film along the lines of I Spit On Your Grave.  The selling point of this movie seems to have been explicit sex and slow motion gunshots, and it's chock full of "what the fuck" moments from beginning to end.  I watched the uncut version, and let me tell you that if you haven't seen it you're not missing anything.  Some claim that this movie influenced Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, but I think Switchblade Sisters, which also features a monocular protagonist, is a more likely candidate.

Fun Fact: Star Christina Lindberg posed for both Playboy and Penthouse in the late 60s and early 70s.  In June 1970 she was a Penthouse Pet.  She also appeared in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Some Bad Ones

1. Dirty Mary Crazy Larry

I saw that ending coming from a walnut grove away.

For what it's worth, Peter Fonda and Adam Roarke star as two guys evading the law after robbing a supermarket, with Susan George thrown in as a woman Fonda's character picks up.  Most of the dialogue in this movie is laughable - it's like they tried to cram in every "hip" expression they possibly could - and Susan George might be one of the worst actresses in the history of cinema.

2. Caged Heat (a.k.a. Renegade Girls)

Directed by Jonathan Demme!  Everybody had to start somewhere I guess.

But this movie is actually quite boring.  It's the most famous of the "women in prison" films, but as Roger Corman movies go there are more memorably bad examples.  The star of this movie, Erica Gavin, was also featured in Vixen!, the first X-rated movie ever made.  The best thing I can say about Caged Heat is that Gavin's costar Juanita Brown is very beautiful in it.

Porn

1. A Touch of Sex

A songwriter visits L.A. hoping to make it big.  Unfortunately for him he sees phantom people having sex everywhere.  Spoiler Alert: In the end he has sex with the phantom people.

Related Entries:

Some Other Movies From 2020 (2)

Some Other Movies From 2021

Some Other Movies From 2020

Movies of the Late 2010s, Ranked in the Order I Enjoyed Them

"Through Black Spruce" by Joseph Boyden (2008)

"I slip back to the bedroom with the big window.  I need to be alone for a moment, to try and get some grip.  Fashion magazines lay scattered on the bed.  As the girls laugh and dance in the other room, I look through these magazines.  I try to find a picture of Suzanne.  But I can't.  I begin to panic.  My head feels light enough that it might float right off my body.  My arms tingle.  I'm calmed by my hands, by the raised veins like little maps."

Joseph Boyden is a Canadian novelist living in Ontario.  He's written three books, which form a trilogy centered around the same family.  Through Black Spruce is the second book in this trilogy.  The third book, The Orenda, has also been reviewed here.  

Once praised by many within Canada's First Nations community, and hailed as an "authentic voice" representing the experiences of Canada's first peoples, the author has since come under scrutiny after his claims of First Nations ancestry were called into question.

For my part,  I'm really not interested in whether Boyden can claim First Nations ancestry or not.  I care about the content of his stories, and this idea that only members of a group can tell stories about that same group is ridiculous.  Would it have been better for Boyden to stay quiet on the matter of his ancestry?  Probably, but results of DNA tests and a memoir written by his ex-wife (however good it might be) don't invalidate the quality of his fiction.

On to the book at hand.  In Through Black Spruce a young Cree woman journeys south to Toronto, Montreal and New York to look for her missing sister.  At the same time her uncle, an ex-pilot remaining in their small town, gets on the wrong side of a local drug dealer.

If, like me, you've read The Orenda don't feel any trepidation regarding this book.  Parts of Through Black Spruce are certainly violent, but nothing in it approaches the bleak savagery of The Orenda.  The ending of The Orenda left me devastated, and I'm not sad to say that the ending of Through Black Spruce is both a lot more hopeful and a lot more forward-looking.

Is Through Black Spruce as good as The Orenda?  I'd have to say no, it isn't.  Through Black Spruce might be a lot sunnier (stories of survival aside), but it lacks the focus of The Orenda, and the ending doesn't quite come together as it ought to.  It's definitely a good book, and moreover a good book all the way through, but the protagonist's day of reckoning is almost an afterthought, as if the author couldn't decide how to tie together the two stories he was telling.

I'm planning on reading the first book in this trilogy, Three Day Road, whenever I come across it.  It won a lot of awards at the time, and I'm thinking it's probably better than Through Black Spruce.

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"Soul Mountain" by Gao Xingjian (2000)

"Roots" by Alex Haley (1976)

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Some Other Movies From 2020 (2)

For further background on the year in film, please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2020 entry.

The following thing happened in 2020:

• COVID.
• Wearing masks
• Washing hands frequently.
• Abject terror.

Excellent

1. The Sound of Metal

Riz Ahmed stars as a metal drummer who loses his hearing.  My brother's in a touring metal band, and the details felt right to me.

2. The Courier

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as a reluctant spy passing on Russian secrets to the West on the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  There's nothing revolutionary about this movie, it's just a solidly written and solidly filmed story of the world - and a single man - on the brink of ruin.  Cumberbatch might make most of his money playing Doctor Strange, but between this movie and The Imitation Game he's proven his talent many times over.

3. Another Round (a.k.a. "Druk")

Four teachers in Denmark study the effect of continuous alcohol consumption on their daily lives.  The director has a light touch and doesn't dwell too much on the darker parts of human nature.  Mads Mikkelson is great in the lead, and the rest of the cast pulls their weight.  It was nominated for several Oscars, and won for Best International Feature Film.

4. Nomadland

The book that inspired this movie was also reviewed here.  The movie is a work of fiction, while the book is a nonfiction account of individuals struggling to survive an economy dominated by Amazon and other corporations.  Both the film and the book highlight a lot of the same problems and personal struggles, but as you'd expect the movie is more of a personal journey and less of a broader picture.

As you're probably aware this film would go on to win Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress at the last Academy Awards.  It won several other awards as well, and probably deserved all of them.  As far as the movies I've seen from 2020 go, only Another Round (above) comes close in terms of story and characterization, and I'd be hard-pressed to say which movie I liked better.

Fun Fact: Director Chloe Zhao split her time between filming this movie and pre-production on Eternals.  I'll be seeing Eternals this weekend and I'm really looking forward to it.

5. The Father

Anthony Hopkins picked up a second Oscar for this look at a man in the grip of senile dementia.  Be warned it's not a happy movie, and for me it brought back memories of 2014's Still Alice, another movie in which the protagonist comes to question his/her own sense of reality.

Fun Fact: This movie was the second adaptation of Florian Zeller's play.  The first was 2015's Floride ("Florida").

Some Good Ones

1. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Mugen Train

Why DID this movie make so much money?  Why was it such a hit?  Was it all because of COVID?  Or does this anime have a following I'm not aware of?  Am I really that old?  Is it 2021 already?

I skipped over this in the theater because I had no idea what it is.  I've just watched it and I still have no idea what it is.  Something something demon slaying something.  It was the highest-grossing movie of 2020, and the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time.  The story, involving a demon who possesses a train and attempts to kill our heroes in their dreams, is somewhat interesting, but really, only a unique combination of COVID-inspired circumstances could have led to this movie doing as well as it did.

2. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Not nearly as funny as the first one, but of course Sacha Baron Cohen is so famous now that "hiding in plain sight" isn't possible.  This sequel definitely has its moments, but I found myself smirking at it more than laughing out loud.

3. Greyhound

Tom Hanks captains a WWII destroyer in search of a Nazi U-boat.  I can't say it's a bad movie, but my attention wavered at times.  I suppose the reason was the level of detail this movie goes into.  The details make it seem very authentic, but listening to Hanks bark orders at various people got old after a while.  Surprisingly he also wrote the script, by himself, without any co-writers.

Fun Fact 1: This movie was shot aboard a Canadian ship from the time period, the HMCS Montreal.  It was filmed in 2018, but COVID pushed the theatrical release back so far that Sony eventually gave up altogether, and sold the film to Apple, which released it digitally.

Fun Fact 2: Tom Hanks also pops up in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm above.  The Borat sequel offers a colorful explanation of how he famously contracted COVID.

4. Soul

Disney/Pixar film in which a jazz musician encounters the afterlife.  It's aspirational in the way Wall-E was aspirational, and while it's good I can't say it's that good.  I think Wall-E made an even bigger point about what it means to be human, whereas what Soul is saying is more of an affirmation of things we already know.

5. Boss Level

In another part of the multiverse Frank Grillo starred in a big budget, cinematic adaptation of The Punisher.  That movie was also directed by Joe Carnahan and it was AWESOME.

In this part of the multiverse Grillo stars in Boss Level as a man forced to repeat the same day.  No, it's not Groundhog Day, no, it's not Edge of Tomorrow, but Boss Level is an engrossing action movie with an endearing sense of humor.  Oh, and Mel Gibson's the bad guy.  Definitely worth a look.

6. The Croods: A New Age

The funniest comedy of 2020?  Quite possibly.  Definitely better than Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.  Croods 2 has all the weird charm of the original while managing to seem fresh 7 YEARS after the first movie.

7. The Night House

Rebecca Hall should be in more movies like this.  She's got this wonderful, evocative face and a way of saying every line as if there was some kind of secret pain behind it.  In The Night House she plays a bereft woman discovering her deceased husband's secret, and with any other actress in the lead this film would have only been half as good.  I'm not familiar with director David Bruckner's other movies, but he recently finished the Hellraiser reboot, and after seeing this film I'd be interested in seeing that one.

8. A Quiet Place Part II

Of course it's not as good as the first one.  Still, as sequels go they knocked it out of the park.  Emily Blunt returns with her three (mostly) silent children in tow, this time with Cillian Murphy as an underdeveloped character who probably causes more trouble than he's worth.

Some Bad Ones

1. Greenland

Starring Gerard Butler!  BIG red flag.  The first half of this movie isn't bad, even if it'll remind you of far superior world-ending movies like War of the Worlds, 2012 and Armageddon.  The second half is where they get into trouble - so many pauses in the flow of action so that various characters can have "moments."  In terms of dramatic impact it's on par with 70s disaster epics like The Towering Inferno or Earthquake, films that walk a line between tragedy and unintentional humor.

2. Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula

Why not just call it Boat to Busan?  Maybe they figured that would go over people's heads?

Whatever the reason, this movie is basically Escape from New York set in Korea with zombies.  Of course A LOT of zombie movies have ventured into similar territory, from the countless Night of the Living Dead sequels, to the Resident Evil sequels, to whatever other zombie movies aren't in those two long-standing franchises.

Train to Busan 2 doesn't add anything to the genre.  It's not even as good as the original.  The car chase near the end goes on for way too long, various zombie-addled soldiers do predictable things, and as in Greenland above characters seem to have endless time for "moments" in the midst of firefights, zombie attacks or combinations thereof.

3. Mulan

Whitewashing!  Bad!  Shooting in Xinjiang!  Bad!  Misrepresenting Chinese culture!  Bad!  Not as good as the original!  Bad!  No talking dragon!  Bad!  No songs!  Bad!  Bad!  Bad!

Actually Mulan wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  Could that actress pass for a man?  Hell no.  Is this movie terrible?  Not by a long shot, but it gets very implausible toward the end, and the fact that this is a Western movie made for Western audiences becomes glaringly obvious.  The Chinese people in this movie don't act very Chinese, and the conclusion is far from satisfying.  

And what about the fellow soldier she liked?  Did "female empowerment" mean that she had to give him up?

Fun Fact: The bad guy look familiar?  That's Jason Scott Lee, who played Bruce Lee in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.

Related Entries:

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Some Other Movies From 2020

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"The World for Sale" by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy (2021)

"The Monopoly money, which looked a bit like a cheque, carried the logo of Cargill Cotton and the signatures of two of its top local executives.  It didn't matter that the bills didn't bear the signature of the governor of the Zimbabwean central bank, or the wildlife scenes that typically decorated Zimbabwean banknotes.  They were soon being accepted alongside Zimbabwe's official currency at shops across Harare.

"In all but name, Cargill was acting as the country's bureau of engraving and printing and its central bank.  It took out adverts in a local newspaper, instructing Zimbabweans that the banknotes 'should be treated as cash.'  It issued more banknotes in 2004, with denominations as high as 100,000 Zimbabwean dollars."

Javier Blas and Jack Farchy are reporters working for Bloomberg News.  Blas is the Chief Energy Correspondent, and Farchy is the Senior Reporter for Energy and Commodities.  Searching the Bloomberg site for articles they've written reveals a host of reports closely related to the subject of The World for Sale.

The World for Sale is about commodity traders.  I'll agree that it sounds boring, but once you understand the pivotal role these traders have played in world markets since the 1970s it's anything but.  Put in the most general terms, the rise and fall of these commodity traders mirrors the rise and fall of the world economy, and many world events that seem political have arisen from economic factors which are directly or indirectly related to the global trade in commodities.

With the opening of the Russian oil market after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the commodity traders have won and lost fortunes, many accumulating billions on careful speculation.  In the modern era oil is key to their business, and in the quest for oil reserves commodity traders often cross into "gray areas" which involve bribery, theft and sometimes even murder.

I'm glad I read this book.  Before reading it names like Glencore and Vitol were just names to me, but now I know what they do and how they do it.  I also know how they've influenced the course of world events behind the scenes, everything from destabilizing the Middle East, abetting the rise of communist China, and drawing the ire of the U.S. government, which has used its power over the banking system to limit the scope of the commodity traders' operations.

If you're not interested in economics you'll struggle with this book, but if you're on the fence don't worry, it never gets that technical.  It also tells a very personal story of men falling victim to their own ambitions, while offering insight into several world events.

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