"The Big Short"

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Stewball
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"The Big Short"

Post by Stewball »

My favorite movie all year so far (Like Sunday, Like Rain, for those who were hoping against hope I'd mention it) has a possible competitor in this, The Big Short, coming out Dec, 23--IF it tells the Truth. More than likely it'll just focus on the small time drama, using the Housing/Financial Crisis as a backdrop. Stellar cast, but the director is best known for an abundance of Will Ferrel shtick, which unfortunately doesn't include his only decent effort, Stranger Than Fiction.

Pickpocket
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Re: "The Big Short"

Post by Pickpocket »

This is an amazing book but the trailer leads me to believe it's just going to be about greed when that was just a small fraction of what was really going on. It was really about mass incompetence. There's a part in the book where one of the guys goes to meet the head of one of the banks just to see if he is intelligent or not. After meeting him, he concluded that he was in fact a moron and decided to short the banks. Also, why does everyone's hair look so fucked up in the trailer? Gosling looks like he has a perm :lol: Side note: I actually emailed Burry after reading this book as his story is fascinating but Lewis didn't dive into how he was able to start his own hedge fund as a trained physician. He responded and actually gave me advice when I was buying my first property. Nice guy

Stewball
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Re: "The Big Short"

Post by Stewball »

Pickpocket wrote:This is an amazing book but the trailer leads me to believe it's just going to be about greed when that was just a small fraction of what was really going on. It was really about mass incompetence. There's a part in the book where one of the guys goes to meet the head of one of the banks just to see if he is intelligent or not. After meeting him, he concluded that he was in fact a moron and decided to short the banks. Also, why does everyone's hair look so fucked up in the trailer? Gosling looks like he has a perm :lol: Side note: I actually emailed Burry after reading this book as his story is fascinating but Lewis didn't dive into how he was able to start his own hedge fund as a trained physician. He responded and actually gave me advice when I was buying my first property. Nice guy


Hmmm, interesting. So are you fessing up here to receiving insider information? I guess it depends on when you received it. You do know the SEC and the IRS are in cahoots, and monitoring the Internet for comments just like that. :roll:

The best book about that whole damn shabby affair is Reckless Endangerment by Morgenson & Rosner, a NYT financial editor and a partner in a NYC research consultancy--good lib credentials apparently going against the grain. And yeah, it's gonna focus on the greed, but it's GOT to, at some point, at least touch on what caused the bubble. No, on second thought, I guess they don't HAVE to, or if they do, they don't HAVE to be accurate. In any case, it'll probably be another exhibit showing that even big names and a quality production (if it is) can't prop up a movie's box when it's low on action, he observed cynically.

Margin Call was another excellent movie on a similar subject and with a superb cast, which bombed at the box grossing only $5.3 mil. But it fooled everybody by only costing $3.5 mil. Put that in the short pipe and smoke it. Burned, or hearkening to the current $5 mil quality flop, Burnt. Heh (the mind doth wander.)

Neonman
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Re: "The Big Short"

Post by Neonman »

This is a great film. I think McKay made the better Farrell films out there, like Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, and although this film isn't as laugh-out-loud funny as them, it's a better film and gets me pretty intrigued as to what films we'll get from McKay in the future. He seems to be channeling Scorsese and Iannucci here without ripping them off, he's developing his own incredibly loose style.

Fun film, one of the best of the year, and I thought it was going to be an underwhelming light comedy.

Stewball
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Re: "The Big Short"

Post by Stewball »

Neonman wrote:This is a great film. I think McKay made the better Farrell films out there, like Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, and although this film isn't as laugh-out-loud funny as them, it's a better film and gets me pretty intrigued as to what films we'll get from McKay in the future. He seems to be channeling Scorsese and Iannucci here without ripping them off, he's developing his own incredibly loose style.

Fun film, one of the best of the year, and I thought it was going to be an underwhelming light comedy.


There's this succinct statement from Jennie Kermodie's review on R/R :
"The Big Short has already received award nominations in comedy categories. It's full of witty observations and is hilarious in places, but you may well hate yourself when you realise what you're laughing at - a final act of empathy. For all its playfulness, it's one of the darkest films of the year."

I'm a big fan of dark comedy (it's the only kind that works anymore, banana peals (and vomit) are just so monumentally passé), but this all leaves me feeling I might end up doing something similar to laughing at what turns out to be a truckload of dead babies.

Would you mind giving your take on what/who the movie appears to be blaming the crisis on (under a spoiler tag)? Thanks.

Stewball
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Re: "The Big Short"

Post by Stewball »

"History vs Hollywood" is becomes an excellent resource. This is their take on this movie: http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/big-short/. As for my question about it, this is the relevant paragraph:

"Does The Big Short paint an accurate picture of the 2007 financial crisis?

"No. At best it paints an incomplete picture of the mortgage bubble/crisis. According to Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal, the movie puts too much of the blame on Wall Street corruption, while failing to examine the less severe but more compelling causes for the bubble. While choosing to merely criminalize the bankers, it oversimplifies what actually happened. The movie also never answers the question as to how the mortgage bubble formed."

Amazing, but if it had, it probably wouldn't have made it past the second run circuit. Clint Eastwood should have directed it. But I still hope that it will be worthwhile to some extent.

Neonman
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Re: "The Big Short"

Post by Neonman »

Stewball wrote:
Neonman wrote:This is a great film. I think McKay made the better Farrell films out there, like Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, and although this film isn't as laugh-out-loud funny as them, it's a better film and gets me pretty intrigued as to what films we'll get from McKay in the future. He seems to be channeling Scorsese and Iannucci here without ripping them off, he's developing his own incredibly loose style.

Fun film, one of the best of the year, and I thought it was going to be an underwhelming light comedy.


There's this succinct statement from Jennie Kermodie's review on R/R :
"The Big Short has already received award nominations in comedy categories. It's full of witty observations and is hilarious in places, but you may well hate yourself when you realise what you're laughing at - a final act of empathy. For all its playfulness, it's one of the darkest films of the year."

I'm a big fan of dark comedy (it's the only kind that works anymore, banana peals (and vomit) are just so monumentally passé), but this all leaves me feeling I might end up doing something similar to laughing at what turns out to be a truckload of dead babies.

Would you mind giving your take on what/who the movie appears to be blaming the crisis on (under a spoiler tag)? Thanks.

[spoiler]Greedy motherfuckers[/spoiler]. That to me seems to be who the movie is blaming the crisis on, and does rather bluntly and forwardly as it comes to its depressing denouement. Would you agree?

Stewball
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Re: "The Big Short"

Post by Stewball »

Neonman wrote:[spoiler]Greedy motherfuckers[/spoiler]. That to me seems to be who the movie is blaming the crisis on, and does rather bluntly and forwardly as it comes to its depressing denouement. Would you agree?


Yeah, but like I said, it completely ignores the government pushers/enablers which plays up to the class warfare hatemongers. The bankers just closed their eyes and let themselves become a herd of scapegoats. And the beat goes on.

mattorama12
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Re: "The Big Short"

Post by mattorama12 »

Stewball wrote:
Neonman wrote:[spoiler]Greedy motherfuckers[/spoiler]. That to me seems to be who the movie is blaming the crisis on, and does rather bluntly and forwardly as it comes to its depressing denouement. Would you agree?


Yeah, but like I said, it completely ignores the government pushers/enablers which plays up to the class warfare hatemongers. The bankers just closed their eyes and let themselves become a herd of scapegoats. And the beat goes on.


I finally caught up with this yesterday. I don't think your assessment is accurate here. It certainly focuses on Wall Street, but it very explicitly shows how the government was asleep at the wheel. There is a scene at the Vegas pool where the SEC representative basically tells one of the Brownstone guys that the SEC isn't overseeing the mortgage securities at all, and basically admits to regulatory capture.

Really, I also think it's unfair to say that it simply blamed "greedy motherfuckers." As pointed out earlier in this thread by PickPocket, greed was one of the contributors, but mass incompetence was the other. The movie was pretty explicit in that, as well, with Gosling even getting a line about how there's no functional difference between criminality and stupidity in this situation.

Stewball
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Re: "The Big Short"

Post by Stewball »

mattorama12 wrote:I finally caught up with this yesterday. I don't think your assessment is accurate here. It certainly focuses on Wall Street, but it very explicitly shows how the government was asleep at the wheel.


To say that is to ignore what the government did with The Community Reinvestment Act, Dodd-Frank "Affordable" Housing, Clinton's "National Partners in Home Ownership" with Janet Reno threatening banks with litigation if they didn't write what came to be called sub-prime loans, and then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying bundles of those loans from them banks. How can you call that "asleep at the wheel"?

There is a scene at the Vegas pool where the SEC representative basically tells one of the Brownstone guys that the SEC isn't overseeing the mortgage securities at all, and basically admits to regulatory capture.


Way too little, much too late, and as lost in the crowd as a bimbo by a Vegas pool. Regulators first enabled government pressure on the banks by overlooking the sub-primes, and then the banks took advantage of the situation They later gave cover to those regulators with new jobs on their payrolls--working for the ones they used to regulate. If you're telling me any of this was made clear by that one brief scene, I must vehemently disagree.

Really, I also think it's unfair to say that it simply blamed "greedy motherfuckers." As pointed out earlier in this thread by PickPocket, greed was one of the contributors, but mass incompetence was the other. The movie was pretty explicit in that, as well, with Gosling even getting a line about how there's no functional difference between criminality and stupidity in this situation.


I don't like the word greed as it's being used so often, implying that it's always bad. Greed can be good if the rights of others are honored. "Incompetence" is a similar red herring, used here as just another smokescreen. If something is corrupt, we need to call it corrupt.

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