Movie Junction

“There are three ways to make a living in this business: Be first. Be smarter. Or cheat.” --John Tuld, “Margin Call” Director J.C. Chandor’s “Margin Call” (2011) opens with a long, notable sequence that truthfully highlights the main cause of the 2008 financial crisis. Here we see Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), who heads the Risk Management division, getting fired by his firm. Surely, those were extraordinary times, calling for cutbacks and reducing operating costs. But of all the employees, firing the Risk Manager of a financial firm is not the right place to start the layoffs. Not only does a move like this spell fear within the organization, but it also shows how “smart” people on Wall Street were acting without any concrete business strategy. After all, it is the responsibility of a Risk Manager to assess the risks posed by complex financial instruments. Risk management is an integral component of any financial firm, and in ideal market conditions, mortgage-backed ...

It’s hard to describe director Alex De La Iglesia’s “The Last Circus” (2010). In simple terms, one can call it a story of obsessive love. But on the other hand, there is a lot going in the film that makes it a bit more complex to describe. We have two circus clowns who are emotionally unbalanced and have psychological problems, and everything they do in real life is contradictory to their professional display. In fact, the term “clown” or “joker” or “jokester” serves as a metaphor for bland platitudes in the lives of the film’s characters. Jokers are supposed to be happy people, or at least that is the impression the world gets about jokers. They entertain even in tough times, and again, at least, on the surface, they are a nice group of people.   This, however, is not true for the jokers in “The Last Circus” who are nothing but bizarre and psychotic. Above all, these jokers are dressed in heavy, unusual outfits, with one joker completely armed with machine guns...

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” -- Franklin Roosevelt, 1933 Back in 1970s, Francis Coppola had a Midas touch. Anything he wrote and directed pretty much turned to gold. He was in top form both as a writer and director. Coppola’s rise to stardom started when his screenplay for “Patton” (1970) won an Academy Award for Best Writing.   Then came the big one…”The Godfather” (1972). The movie won two Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Screenplay, cementing Coppola’s position in Hollywood as one of the best directors at the time. Coppola’s “The Conversation” (1974) is sandwiched between his dual masterpieces in the “Godfather” series, “Godfather II” (1974) released eight months after the release of “The Conversation.” Coppola also wrote the script for “The Conversation,” and the film won the coveted trophy at the Cannes, the Palme d’Or. Coppola was again nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Screenplay category, but he didn’t win this time ...

When I was in India, my access to news was always through a national newspaper, “The Times of India.” Even though in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when TV was becoming popular in India, the expensive cable subscription meant people would still fall back to newspapers for news about their local community and nation. The newspaper subscription was very cheap, and the national newspapers like “The Times of India,” “The Hindustan Times,” and “The Hindu” had record subscribers in the metros. With a diverse landscape, India, at that time, had a huge pool of local and regional newspapers. But then like any other new trend, cable TV started gaining momentum in the late ‘90s, with lower subscription fees. People started spending more time in front of their TVs. In addition, TV also opened a new outlet for advertising. With people cancelling their subscriptions and advertising revenues shifting new avenues, newspapers were left struggling everywhere around the country, trying to fully g...