3-D printing meets Skyfall

Yeah, I know, shut up about the 3-D printing already... but this is seriously cool, and it's becoming clear that 3-D printing is being used in more and more applications all the time these days.

If you thought producers spent millions on James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, which was put through a series of huge explosions and stunts during the filming of Skyfall, including one scene where the priceless vehicle exploded in flames – think again. 

Three replicas of the classic car were created using a large scale 3D printer for the filming of the latest installment from the spy series. 

The models double for the now priceless original vehicle from the 1960s in the film’s action scenes. 

The models were made by British firm Propshop Modelmakers Ltd, which specialise in the production of film props, and used Voxeljet to print the cars, the Daily mail reported. 

“Propshop commissioned us to build three plastic models of the Aston Martin DB5,” voxeljet CEO Dr. Ingo Ederer, said. 

“We could have easily printed the legendary sports car in one piece at a scale of 1:3 using our high-end VX4000 printer, which can build moulds and models in dimensions of up to eight cubic metres,” Ederer said. 

But the British model builders were pursuing a different approach. 

“To ensure that the Aston Martin was as true to detail as possible, and for the purpose of integrating numerous functions into the film models, they decided on an assembly consisting of a total of 18 individual components,” Ederer said. 

“The entire body is based on a steel frame, almost identical to how vehicles were assembled in the past. In addition to the automotive industry, foundries, designers and artists, the film industry represents an entirely new customer base for voxeljet. 

“3D printing is on the cusp of a great future in the film industry. The technology offers fantastic opportunities, since it is usually much faster, more precise and more economical than classic model construction,” Ederer added.

Awesome. That's a perfect example of what this stuff is so great for, and I'm glad to see the creativity and innovation being put to good use. I can't wait to see what comes up next.

[Zee News]

Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve

I talk a lot about the Fed on here, and with good reason. To be an informed citizen in today's America, I think that it's absolutely vital that you know all about the Fed and what they're doing, or else you're bound to make some very bad decisions in your financial and political lives. Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday's election, the real locus of power in our country won't be changing at all—the unelected and unaccountable Emperor Ben Bernanke will still have more power than either Obama or Romney.

My viewpoints on this are echoed by the makers of "Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve", a documentary project that's currently looking for funding on Kickstarter (the doc has been filmed and cut, they're simply soliciting funds for the final finishing and production of the ultimate film). If you want to learn more about the Fed (and you should), this seems like the absolutely ideal starting place.



I think the whole project sounds awesome, and the list of people they interviewed for this is impressive—a who's who of Fed officials, financial commentators, academics, and other well-respected industry pros. They also got Liev Schreiber on board as the narrator, so these guys clearly aren't messing around. If you're so inclined (as I was), throw them a donation on Kickstarter, or at least visit their website or blog to learn more about them. I'll give them the parting shot here, with their own description of the film.

Whether you're buying a gallon of gas in Omaha, a loaf of bread in New York, or a condo in Miami, the Federal Reserve is taking historically unprecedented actions that affect your life.  But even though Ben Bernanke is in the headlines daily, the average person knows very little about America's central bank. 

Narrated by Liev Schreiber, and made by a team of AFI and Sundance award winners, Money For Nothing: Inside The Federal Reserve is the first documentary to take viewers behind the curtain of the world's most powerful financial institution. 

The film traces 100 years of Fed history, details the Fed's central role in the 2008 financial meltdown, and asks whether today's Fed policies are sowing the seeds of an even bigger crisis.   

Whether you're a Fed novice or expert, Money For Nothing presents an incisive look at this controversial institution, and a much-needed forum for intelligent debate about its role in determining the economic future of our nation. 

Join top Fed officials (many of whom are highly critical of recent Fed policies), world famous economists, investors, and traders as they debate the decisions that led the global economy to the brink of collapse - and why we might be headed there again.

So donate, watch, or at least take a minute to educate yourselves. Thanks.

Hungry Hungry Hippos

Now... I am absolutely certain that I joked about this, sarcastically and dismissively, when the movie version of Battleship was announced and released. But now, it's a reality, and I just... I don't even know anymore.

It is a poser that even the most creative of screenwriters might struggle with: how to adapt the children's game Hungry Hungry Hippos into a blockbuster movie. Nevertheless, that is the task facing Hollywood's brightest minds this morning after manufacturer Hasbro confirmed last week that it is planning a big-screen outing for the brightly coloured plastic playthings (Ed. Note: this is what we're talking about. Yeah...). 

Hungry Hungry Hippos is part of a roster of planned films that also includes Monopoly (a project that at one point had Ridley Scott attached) and Britain's Action Man, the latter despite his American cousin GI Joe having already featured twice in multiplexes. Hasbro has been inspired by the multibillion-dollar success of its Transformers franchise in the hands of Michael Bay, and apparently has not let Battleship's disappointing $300m (on a $200m budget) haul earlier this year upset its plans for worldwide domination. 

The latest proposal to bring its range to cinemas has been hatched in partnership with Hollywood film production company Emmett/Furla, which says it will make three movies in the next two years.

I'm being punked, here, right? This is all an elaborate joke? Whatever. Clue was pretty good, I guess... when does Yahtzee come out?





[Guardian]

Quote of the Week

It's the dog days of summer (well, for most of us, anyway—I just saw the neighborhood kids waiting for the bus for their first day of school this morning, so that about does that), which means that there isn't much in the way of news to sink our teeth into. I picked a good time to take a break from the blog, I guess.

So when I went in search of a Quote of the Week with which to announce my return from vacation, I realized that nothing much I'd come across was fresh and new. Sure, this blog post about Obama's quasi-religious pleas for Americans to "believe" in America would've been good fodder for a rant on what America and her political system have become... but the Obama quote in question is four years old, and honestly nothing all that special.

There was also this long blog post on the dangers of cynicism and apathy, which I found to be pretty strongly inspirational but also something that sort of spoke for itself—nothing much for me to add to the conversation.

So since we're resigned to going with something old and somewhat stale, and since I'd prefer to come back from vacation on a lighter note (as opposed to my usual ranting diatribes), I decided to go with an excerpt from this excellent oral history of "White Men Can't Jump" over at Grantland.

"White Men Can't Jump" is an all-time favorite of mine, and I honestly can't believe it's now 20 years old. I always love to read about some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that happens on these movie sets, as well as the original casting ideas (Laurence Fishburne as Sidney Deane? Really??). This one happens to be particularly entertaining, and I laughed out loud reading some of these guys' takes on the whole experience.

So this week's Quote of the Week comes from actor Cylk Cozart (Who? Ohhhhh, THAT guy...), who was originally being considered for the lead role of Sidney Deane before being passed over in favor of Wesley Snipes. In discussing some of the early contenders for Woody Harrelson's Billy Hoyle character, Cozart passed along an interesting experience with a young Keanu Reeves.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Keanu almost broke my neck going up for a layup. He was so wild. He was throwing the ball hard and throwing elbows. He didn't know what he was doing. [Writer/Director] Ron [Shelton] stopped it, like, 'OK, I've seen enough.' I thought, 'Wow, what was he doing growing up? He didn't play ball?'"
                                - Actor Cylk Cozart

Maybe I shouldn't be, but I'm always surprised to find out how unathletic some of the best actors—especially those who come across as "jocks"—can be in real life (see: Vince Vaughn, Gary Sinise).

Maybe that speaks to the magic of the camera, or maybe the ballplayer in me just unrealistically expects everyone to be able to throw a ball without looking like a complete spaz, I don't really know. But it's funny to think that if Keanu was simply a little less of a complete space case on the court, "White Men Can't Jump" could've become an entirely different—and in my opinion, worse—movie. So here's to life's lucky little accidents, for giving us Woody Harrelson and a very memorable movie character. Happy 20th Birthday to one of the greatest sports movies of my lifetime.

[Grantland]

"Inside Job" and bank criminality

A little over a year ago, I posted a Quote of the Week (and also this follow-up) from Charles Ferguson, the director of the Oscar-winning documentary "Inside Job". Ferguson was complaining about the lack of prosecutions of fraud committed by financial executives, a topic I've also discussed here more times than I can remember.

However, until this week, I hadn't actually watched the documentary—not until Barry Ritholtz tipped me off to the presence of the entire movie on Vimeo. I'd avoided "Inside Job" in part because I (arrogantly and incorrectly) thought that I had read and learned everything there was to know about the financial crisis already, and figured that the film probably didn't have much new to add to the discussion. How wrong I was.

The greatest compliment I can give to any non-fiction piece is that it's worth reading even if you think you already know everything about the topic in question—that certainly applies here. "Inside Job" provides incredible access to a who's who of characters in the mess that is our financial system, from economists to bankers to politicians and everyone in between. Ferguson pulls few punches, and he is particularly harsh with respect to the (role of the) academic world, including my alma mater.

Like many pieces on the topic, I think "Inside Job" is a little too forgiving of the borrowers who made the real estate bubble possible, but that's certainly nothing new here (and I've discussed that dynamic before as well). All in all, though, if you haven't yet watched the doc, I highly recommend it. It does a great job of showing just how ugly things have been behind closed doors at our banks, and also how this financial crisis is far from over—in fact, it may still be in its early stages.


Inside Job, Narrated by Matt Damon (Full Length HD) from jwrock on Vimeo.

But if you don't have the time to watch the film, and you somehow still doubt my assertions that banks continue to commit crimes that have systematically gone unpunished... just read this little post (also courtesy of Barry Ritholtz) and be done with it. In fact, I'll just go ahead and reproduce the whole thing right here.

Here are some recent improprieties by the big banks:

- Laundering money for drug cartels. See this, this, this and this (indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis)

- Laundering money for terrorists

- Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this

- Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here

- Charging “storage fees” to store gold bullion … without even buying or storing any gold. And raiding allocated gold accounts

- Committing massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them (and see this)

- Pledging the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers. See this, this, this, this and this. This would be like selling your car, and collecting money from 10 different buyers for the same car

- Cheating homeowners by gaming laws meant to protect people from unfair foreclosure

- Committing massive fraud in an $800 trillion dollar market which effects everything from mortgages, student loans, small business loans and city financing

- Engaging in insider trading of the most important financial information

- Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See this, this, this, this and this

- Engaging in unlawful “frontrunning” to manipulate markets. See this, this, this, this, this and this

- Engaging in unlawful “Wash Trades” to manipulate asset prices. See this, this and this

- Otherwise manipulating markets. And see this

- Participating in various Ponzi schemes. See this, this and this

- Charging veterans unlawful mortgage fees

- Cooking their books (and see this)

- Bribing and bullying ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments

The executives of the big banks invariably pretend that the hanky-panky was only committed by a couple of low-level rogue employees. But studies show that most of the fraud is committed by management.

Indeed, one of the world’s top fraud experts – professor of law and economics, and former senior S&L regulator Bill Black – says that most financial fraud is “control fraud”, where the people who own the banks are the ones who implement systemic fraud. See this, this and this.

But it's all okay, because Wall Street is our Main Street, love 'em or hate 'em, right? Bullshit.

That list should just about do it for the "banks never committed any crimes" line of argument, forever. So, watch "Inside Job" if you haven't already—and even if you have, watch it again. It's worth it.

[Barry Ritholtz]
[Max Keiser]

Song of the Week(end)

I realize that I've neglected to post the Song of the Week(end) for the past two weeks, immediately after promising that I'd switch it to the '80s Soundtrack Song of the Week(end). My apologies.

I'll make it up to you today with a trio of '80s soundtrack gems, all of them from the king of the '80s soundtrack, Kenny Loggins. Enjoy, and have a great weekend, people.

When hypocrisy is good business: "The Lorax"

Alright, I may be coming at you today with another flurry of posts to send you into the weekend. As usual, I promise nothing, but I've got all sorts of good intentions.

The ostensible purpose of this particular post is to share with you what just might be the greatest movie review ever written. You may have heard about the movie version of "The Lorax" already, and you almost certainly have if you watch Fox News (which, if you're reading this blog... ehhhh, you probably don't, but I digress). You see, many on the far right have latched onto The Lorax as their most recent cause célèbre, vilifying the movie as Hollywood's latest attempt to "indoctrinate" our kids with a dangerous message of conservation.

I could seriously spend hours unpacking the idiocy behind that one, but I won't bother. Because, as New York Times movie reviewer A.O. Scott points out, ultimately the joke is on Fox News. In a piece that is honestly one of the greatest examples of journalistic criticism in recent memory, Scott unleashes the awesomest, meanest, most beautifully-crafted negative review I've ever read (well, at least since Homer Simpson's review of "The Legless Frog").

Having donned recyclable 3-D glasses and seen the thing for myself, I’m not sure whether to mock the enemies of “The Lorax” for their cluelessness, to offer them reassurance or to compliment them for being half-right. Thematically the movie... dutifully lectures its audience on the folly of overconsumption and the virtue of conservation. At times the imagery takes on a dark, almost apocalyptic cast as it surveys the smogged-up, denuded landscape where the trees used to be and the shiny, commercialized pseudo-utopia (called Thneedville) that an alienated humanity, having lost the memory of nature, now calls home. 

Don’t be fooled. Despite its soft environmentalist message “The Lorax” is an example of what it pretends to oppose. Its relationship to Dr. Seuss’s book is precisely that of the synthetic trees that line the streets of Thneedville to the organic Truffulas they have displaced. The movie is a noisy, useless piece of junk, reverse-engineered into something resembling popular art in accordance with the reigning imperatives of marketing and brand extension. 

This is not a matter of hypocrisy or corporate green-washing on the part of the filmmakers, nor of reflexive Loraxian dogmatism on my part. The corporate entertainment system has shown itself perfectly capable of injecting soul into what it sells, and at inflecting some of its products with a critical spirit. “Wall-E” is a transcendent example, brilliantly embracing its own contradictions, but there are plenty of other movies, animated and not, that manage to pay tribute to the beauty of the natural world even as they revel in giddy, merchandising-friendly artifice.

Wow, wow, wow. Seriously, every word of this thing is perfectly chosen, and I highly suggest that you read it in its entirety. I read it aloud to my wife last night and I could barely finish the thing without grinning like an idiot at the sheer brutality of it all.

But the thing is, Scott is dead on. I've already seen The Lorax shilling for Mazda SUVs and doing random promotional spots for TBS (two of apparently 70 "launch partners" for the film, many of whom have tenuous ties at best to any environmentalist movement), and I'm sure there's more on the way. All I know is, if I see the Lorax showing up courtside at Lakers games, I'm outta here.

As I said earlier, ultimately the joke is on Fox News here for assuming that The Lorax's "message" is in any way genuine. After all, the directors and producers are doing more damage to their own "message" with this hypocrisy than any conservative broadcaster could ever do. Actions always speak louder than words, and their actions here are extremely loud and in your face.

As a business entity, "The Lorax" is essentially doing what just about every corporate titan is doing these days--attempting to co-opt the "green" movement as a corporate slogan, spending more money publicizing its supposed good deeds than was ever spent actually pursuing those same deeds. It's brilliant P.R., but it's also in most cases incredibly dishonest and fraudulent.

Interestingly enough, Fox News could actually learn a little something from The Lorax here--these days, it's good business to pretend to be green, whether or not you actually are. Actually, I'm pretty sure the Republican Party of today is built on just this kind of hypocrisy... ironic, isn't it?

[New York Times]

Song of the Week(end)

This week's Song of the Week(end) actually follows loosely in the theme of my last post, about baseball's forgotten (or underappreciated) former stars.

You see, one of my favorite things to do in my spare time is to watch old movies--not necessarily great old movies, or old favorites, but solid-if-not-spectacular movies from my childhood that I'd completely forgotten about. It's interesting to see how well some of these movies hold up over time (many of them, not well), and sometimes even more fascinating to watch actors I'd long since forgotten about or their excellent alternative, eventual stars in early-career roles that you'd forgotten existed (think Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise).

Then, there are the soundtracks--I swear I've watched So I Married an Axe Murderer a thousand times, in large part because the soundtrack cracks me up every time. Which, finally, leads me to the point of this post. This weekend, I sifted through the old DVD rack and settled on The Saint, a semi-entertaining action flick with Val Kilmer and Elisabeth Shue. I got a kick out of re-watching it (hey, I know that guy, he was in EuroTrip!), and the soundtrack had a couple of treats as well.

Treats like this song, which I'd completely forgotten about, but is now your Song of the Week(end). Take it away, Sneaker Pimps.

Renting movies

I'm back around after a long weekend, and I'll be in and out today and tomorrow as well on some family business, but I thought I'd share this amusing infographic on the changing (improving?) movie rental industry, courtesy of Barry Ritholtz.

Of course, as an Amazon fanboy, I'd also point out that a ton of movies (many more than Netflix Instant) are available for instant rental on Amazon.com (as well as through iTunes), but I digress. Funny stuff anyway.

Studying movie sequels

Courtesy of BoxOfficeQuant comes this awesome infographic studying whether or not Hollywood sequels lived up to the quality of the original--a pertinent study with The Hangover Part II and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (#4 in the series) set to dominate the box office this summer. The results shouldn't really surprise any of us (below the line means the sequel was worse than the original), but it's interesting nonetheless.

That clustering on the far right side of the graph indicates that the best original movies have a little better chance of producing better sequels--that's where we see movies like Godfather II, Toy Story 2, and The Dark Knight, all of which were fantastic originals with equally entertaining sequels.

Things are a little tougher for mediocre (terrible?) movies like Big Momma's House, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, and Agent Cody Banks, where the sequels were just stale remakes of material that was already fairly weak, a point that is reflected in the data.

Incidentally, this is some data I'd love to have in front of me to play around with, because I'm kinda bored and this is exactly the type of idle data-crunching that I enjoy (wait a second, there was a sequel to Teen Wolf?). But for now, I'll just enjoy this graphic and then end up ignoring it anyway when I go to the movies this summer.

[BoxOfficeQuant]
(h/t Barry Ritholtz)

Pretty cool

This short video comes courtesy of Barry Ritholtz, and it provides a very well-edited short history of the art of movie title pages. It's pretty cool to see the evolution from static pages to complex animated designs with high relevance to the story to follow. Barry was nice enough to list out all of the included movies, a list which I've copied below. Enjoy.



Intolerance
Phantom of the Opera
King Kong
Modern Times
My Man Godfrey
Make Way For Tomorrow
Citizen Kane
The Maltese Falcon
Gun Crazy
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Lady in the Lake
Fallen Angel
The Thing
Singing in the Rain
The Man with the Golden Arm
Anatomy of a Murder
Psycho
North by Northwest
Vertigo
Grand Prix
To Kill A Mockingbird
Dr. No
The Pink Panther
Goldfinger
Dr. Strangelove
Bullitt
Barbarella
Soylent Green
Mean Streets
Star Wars
Saturday Night Fever
Superman
Alien
Raging Bull
The Terminator
Brazil
The Untouchables
Do The Right Thing
Forrest Gump
The Naked Gun
Cape Fear
Reservoir Dogs
Delicatessen
Natural Born Killers
Freaked
Se7en
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Mimic
Donnie Brasco
Mission Impossible
Dawn of the Dead
Fight Club
Catch Me If You Can
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Fall
Casino Royale
Six Feet Under
Carnivale
Dexter
Mad Men
Iron Man
Juno
The Kingdom
Wall•E
Sherlock Holmes
Up In The Air
Zombieland
Scott Pilgrim vs the World
Buried
Robin Hood
Machete
The Social Network
Enter The Void