I’ve always been interested in the visual arts, especially painting, film and architecture.  For some reason, painting has much more prestige than the other two.  Many film masterpieces from the first half of the 20th century are lost forever, as no one spent the small amount of money necessary to preserve them.  Buildings such as the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo were torn down and replaced, despite being widely recognized as masterpieces.

A relatively high income professional (doctor, business executive, etc.) cannot afford to buy even a mediocre painting by a famous painter from the 1890s, but can easily afford to buy and live in an architectural masterpiece.  I recently ran across a good example, as Frank Lloyd Wright’s excellent Winslow House from 1893 recently saw a price cut to $1.375 million, a price that would not bat an eye in my home town of Newton, MA, even if it were an ugly colonial.  And let’s not even talk about LA.
At first I thought the low price might reflect a run down interior, which was out of step with the times.  Wright’s buildings often deteriorated over time, due to poor quality construction.  But a slideshow over at Huffington Post shows a beautiful interior, with a nice updated kitchen.  (It’s worth checking out).

Part of the low price reflects the fact that Chicago suburbs are cheaper than Boston suburbs.  And yet, there are obviously lots of affluent people in the Chicago area, and many fans of Wright’s architecture.  The house has been on the market for years, with no takers.  Why don’t I buy it?  I could never convince my wife to move to Chicago.  But if you already live in Chicago, that’s not a valid excuse.

PS.  I wrote this a few days ago, but it looks like a sale is now pending.  The house is over 5000 sq. feet.

God only knows why anyone would be interested in this post, but in an annual tradition I list the films I saw at the theater this year.  As always, don’t see films on my account.  But if you like foreign films, I’d say Winter Sleep (big screen only) and About Elly (TV is ok) are the two recent standouts.

2105 Films

Mulholland Drive (US, 2001) 4.0 Great the first time I saw it; seemed even darker, stranger and richer the second time. (How often does that happen?) Might be my new favorite film. Until the next classic I see.

2001 (US, 1968) 4.0 One of my absolute favorite films. I saw it at age 12, then in my 30s, and then at 59. It holds up very well, but age 12 was best.

Winter Sleep (Turkey) 3.8 Another first rate film by the Turkish director Ceylan. It seemed slightly more conventional than his earlier films, but I still liked it a lot. Four or five outstanding scenes of two people arguing.

Aparajito (India, 1959) 3.8 The middle film in the Apu trilogy, and the only one I had not seen. All three are available in newly restored prints. It would be an understatement to say that they don’t make films like this anymore. The world portrayed no longer exists.

The Quay Brothers in 35 mm. (US, 2015) 3.8 Christopher Nolan put together 3 of the Quay brothers short films, and then a 10 or 15 minute documentary of them working in their studio. Includes The Street of Crocodiles, which might be the greatest work of surrealism in the 20^th century, in any medium. Nolan’s a huge fan, and so am I.

About Elly (Iran, 2009) 3.7 An earlier film by the director of A Separation. Both are excellent films, but this may be even a bit better.

Until the End of the World 3.7 (German, 1991) Captured a brief moment when there was lots of optimism about a coming global village, right after the Berlin Wall fell. The original 2½ hour film didn’t get good reviews, but the restored 5 hour version was lots of fun. Not really a great film in a technical sense, but very enjoyable, and evocative of an era. Good music too.

The Saragossa Manuscript (Polish, 1964) 3.6 A somewhat surreal film by the director Has, which has a sort of 1001 Nights feel to it. Three hours, and the last half is much better, so don’t give up at intermission. Has is another great director I had never heard of—how can I call myself a movie buff? Has Has directed anything else I should see? (Sorry, couldn’t resist)

The Long Voyage Home (US, 1940) 3.6 Really good John Ford film about sailors, with cinematography by Gregg Toland (who did Citizen Kane the following year.)

Rebels of a Neon God (Taiwan, 1992) 3.6 One of the classics of the Asian New Wave, by Tsai Ming-liang.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Swedish) 3.5 As the title suggests, it may not be of interest to those who have seen all 7 Fast and Furious films, twice. Might appeal to Jim Jarmusch fans, but there’s also a bit of David Lynch and even Francis Bacon. Another good director I’d never heard of—Roy Andersson.

Inside Out (US) 3.5 A post-modern deconstruction of the Hollywood dream factory. Both a delightful animated film (from the group that produced Wall-e and Up) and also a sort of documentary on the making of the film. I’ve always kind of wondered if the net utility in life is positive or negative, and the fact that the film had four negative emotions and only one positive emotion tends to reinforce my skeptical view of life. Or (as the film suggests) am I wrong in assuming the “negative” emotions are actually negative?

Coming Home (China) 3.5   Zhang Yimou returns to form (sort of), with another tragedy starring Gong Li. The political implications of this film may have been much more profound that the Chinese censors assumed.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (US) 3.5 As time goes by my appreciation for Apocalypse Now keeps increasing. The highlights of this documentary (directed by Coppola’s wife) were the clips from the 1979 film. I had forgotten about all the turmoil, such as Martin Sheen having a heart attack. And BTW, Sheen’s performance is superb, and underrated in a film with more famous actors—Coppola has the ability to get the best out of actors.

The Assassin (Taiwan/China) 3.5 Hou Hsiao Hsien directed an “action” film. Naturally there is very little action. But the film is a feast for the eyes.

Hitchcock/Truffaut (US/French) 3.5 The best parts were the in depth coverage of Psycho and Vertigo (my favorite film, forget what I said above). When I haven’t seen a Hitchcock film for a while they begin to seem like light entertainment in my memory. Seeing the clips jolted me into recalling how revolutionary they actually were. Some great clips from the underrated Sabotage, a filmed based on Conrad’s Secret Agent, and one of the few films to do justice to a great work of literature. Even a few good clips from Topaz, a film I hadn’t seen since I was young, and considered a weaker film. It’s ironic that Hitchcock stopped producing great art at almost exactly the moment he became recognized as a great artist. The coverage of his silent work was (unfortunately) rushed.

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (Japan/US) 3.4 Directed by a Westerner, and yet the movie has a very Japanese feel. Nothing special, but I enjoyed this film.

The French Connection (US, 1971) 3.4 A bit disappointing the second time around. Was there ever a bigger screw-up by film critics in the 1970s than rating The French Connection ahead of Sorcerer, which is a far superior film. But TFC wins the Best Picture Oscar and Sorcerer is forgotten. New York has never looked more run down.

Act of Violence (US, 1948) 3.4 As I get older I am increasing drawn to film noir from the late 1940s and 1950s, perhaps because as each year goes by it seems more and more like another world. One I was born into, but is now long gone.

The State of Things (German, 1982) 3.4 A Wim Wenders film about the making of a film. Or perhaps a nightmare where all attempts to complete the film are futile.

Tokyo-Ga (German, 1984) 3.3 Wenders searches for signs of Ozu in modern Tokyo. The film begins with the voice-over: “If there were still sanctuaries in our century . . . if there was something like a holy treasure of cinema, for me, that would be the work of Japanese director Yasujira Ozu.” Like Hearts of Darkness and Hitchcock/Truffaut, best when showing clips of the original.

Ex Machina (US) 3.3 Better than the average, but not as good as something like “Her.” The basic problem is that the ideas in the film are not as interesting as the director seems to assume. Still, the first 3/4^th of the film held my interest.

Mad Max 4 (Australia) 3.3 I really enjoyed the first two films in this series. I suppose this was just as good, but as I get older I tend to lose interest in non-stop action.

The Tales of Hoffman (British) 3.3   Michael Powell films are always worth seeing, although this certainly isn’t my favorite. Very colorful for 1951.

Bridge of Spies (US) 3.3   Spielberg is a very talented filmmaker, but a bit too conservative (aesthetically, not politically) for my taste. It has many of the pluses and minuses that you expect from a Spielberg film. But the performance of the actor playing the Russian spy is outstanding, and almost single-handedly carries the film.

The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick/Alice in the Cities/Kings of the Road (German) 3.3 Three early Wim Wenders films from the 1970s. Each was a little bit better than the one before (say 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4) His next film “The American Friend”, was the breakthrough for Wenders, and is one of my favorite German films.

American Sniper (US) 3.3 The debate over the politics is a big yawn. It’s a movie, and certainly not “pro-war.” Not one of Eastwood’s best, but fairly engrossing.

Mr. Six  (China) 3.2 A film about the generation gap among Beijingers.

Stars Wars (US) 3.2 Forget the rating I assigned, the film is essentially unreviewable. On a technical level everything seems right. Fine acting, good effects, a story very similar to the first couple films. So why does it lack the magic of the first two? I’m not sure:

1. Maybe I’m too old. In that case you’d want to ask younger viewers.
2. Maybe it’s not original enough. In that case you’d want to ask people who didn’t see the first few films.
3. Maybe too much chronological time has gone by, and the special effects no longer seem impressive.
4. Maybe it’s too full of stuff going on, lacking moments where the film would take a breath, create a sense of awe.
5. Maybe the appearance of other planets is too Earth-like, lacking the mystery of visionary sci-fi.

All I know is that the director (JJ Abrams) is no Stanley Kubrick. I was never really immersed in the film, rather I was watching it as an outsider. Don’t get me wrong, I also noticed many of the things the critics were impressed by, but a few days later the film no longer resonated with me. (I should add that I liked the first two films a lot, and the other 4 were a fairly pleasant way to pass the time. But I haven’t seen them for years, and am not a Star Wars junkie, so my opinion is pretty worthless.)

Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made (Brazilian/Finnish 3.2) A 1994 documentary by Kaurismaki, where Jim Jarmusch interviews Sam Fuller about an unrealized film project that was supposed to be produced in the Amazon rain forest, using native tribes. Forty years later Fuller returns, and the highlight of the film is when he shows some film clips to the same tribe–how they used to live 40 years ago. It’s hard not to be moved.

The Hateful Eight (US) 3.2 The first half was very amusing and enjoyable, but after intermission it became a long slog through multiple bloodbaths. I lost interest.   Tarantino’s weakest film (and I’m a big fan of his films).

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. (US) 3.0 The second half of the film was actually pretty decent. Of course it was still an utterly forgettable piece of Hollywood fluff. Tom Cruise may be losing his edge; he no longer seems to have that aura.

Love and Mercy (US) 2.9 As a drama it’s not all that impressive, but if viewed as a documentary it was kind of interesting.

Mockingjay, Part 2. (US) 2.8 I’m too old for this sort of film.

Shanghai (China, 2010) 2.8 Wonderful actors and nice cinematography, but a very lame effort by the director. See it for Gong Li, Chow Yun-fat and Ken Watanabe (Plus John Cusack, the “star”).  Or better yet, don’t bother.

Spectre  (UK) 2.8  Lots of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  Some of the individual scenes were handsomely filmed, but otherwise utterly forgettable.

The New Rijksmuseum (Dutch) 2.8 More pictures! Show more pictures in the film, and also show more in the actual museum, (which somehow shrank after a $500 million renovation.) Depressing.

The Left Ear (China) 2.5 Routine coming-of-age drama. If you want something in that genre, see Summer Palace.

Goodbye to Language (French) 2.0 I never really cared about anything in this Godard film. In 3-D. It probably went over my head.

On TV our whole family watched the entire Twin Peaks on Blue-ray, which was even better than the original. My all-time favorite TV show (especially the parts filmed by Lynch, as you’d expect). Episode 1 is a masterpiece. After Twin Peaks I tried Breaking Bad, but gave up after the first two episodes. I just can’t get interested in TV, except for a few comedies. TV is mostly about people, which tend to bore me. I’m interested in visual images. That’s why I like film better.

I no longer have much time to read books, but did read a few.  In social science I read the Hive Mind, which I liked a lot, and The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior, which had some very interesting ideas.  For pleasure I read lots of books that were loosely related to Japan, including as Seiobo There Below, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Kissing the Mask, and Eleven Dark Tales.  Among other books my favorites were Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas, and The Lycian Shore by Freya Stark.  It was my first book by each author, but I’ll certainly read more.  And of course Knausgaard, who I can’t get enough of.  I love travel writing, and Shadows of the Silk Road was another masterpiece by Colin Thubron.  Biggest disappointment was Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.  What once was a lovable curmudgeon has turned into a grouchy bigot.  I also read a few books by R.L. Stevenson that I’d never read before (The Wrecker, The Wrong Box, and the Ebb Tide.)  My vision of retirement has always been to move someplace hot, and sit out on a patio reading (or re-reading) 19th century Anglo-American books (Stevenson, Melville, Conrad, Hawthorne, Kipling, Chesterton, etc.)  That’s all I want to do.

Matt Yglesias takes up the challenge I made in a recent post I did on the economic problems in southern Italy:

Everyone likes to visit Southern Europe with its good weather and tasty food, but policy wonks abhor the failure of Greece, Italy, Spain, etc. to achieve anything remotely resembling economic convergence with their chillier neighbors to the north. And while US liberals like to throw the Nordics in the face of small government boosters, Scott Sumner echoed by Tyler Cowen says “I’d have more confidence in progressive ideas if they even had an explanation for the failed welfare states of southern Europe.”

Everyone agrees about Southern Europe

What’s interesting here is that there actually doesn’t seem to be much disagreement about Southern Europe. Sumner references explanations “tied to cultural differences” as the main ones he’s heard — in other words, it’s nothing to do with welfare state design. But he dismisses that as an inadequate response for progressives to offer because those are “conservative explanations.” But Robert“Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy” Putnam isn’t a conservative. When I asked Cowen how he explains Southern Europe he pointed to Edward Banfield’s “Moral Basis of a Backward Society”. Francis Fukuyama has also treated the subject well in his recent books “The Origins of Political Order” and“Political Order and Political Decay”.

These authors all stake out somewhat different accounts but there is a broad family resemblance. Southern Europeans are stuck in a dynamic of low trust, excessive localism, and extreme reliance on family networks. There is a lack of impartiality in institutions and an ethic that “doing what’s right for my family” rather than “following the law” is the right thing to do. A country that gives you the mafia rather than a correctly functioning legal system and police services is also not going to give you highly effective schools or job training programs.

I think Yglesias is falling into the trap that often ensnares Paul Krugman, assuming that the accurate view must ipso facto be the liberal view, as liberalism is a reality-based ideology.  Yes, Putnam is not a “conservative”, but his explanation most certainly is a conservative explanation.  To see that more clearly, imagine if Putnam offered a similar explanation for the lower income levels among blacks, Hispanics and Native Americas.  He would be treated as a conservative.  He would be accused of “blaming the victim.”  He might be accused of being a racist.

I am aware that “culture” is the explanation that most thoughtful people on both the left and the right would offer for the economic travails of southern Europe.  But that doesn’t make it a progressive explanation.  Progressive explanations don’t seem to “blame the victim”.  I say, “seem to”, because my views here are at variance to both the left and the right.  Unlike the right I don’t blame people for their culture; to me it’s just something in the air, like weather.  And unlike the left I think culture explains a lot of economic inequities.

Here’s an analogy that might help.  Conservative Republican legislators in Nebraska recently abolished the death penalty in their state.  That doesn’t make opposition to the death penalty the “conservative view” on the death penalty.  Rather those legislators basically adopted the liberal view on the issue.  They basically said “we’ve been wrong for all these years.” If liberals want to say “we’ve been unfair over all these years in characterizing conservatives who point to culture as being racist as being racist if they use cultural explanations for poverty, and we are sorry” that’s fine with me.

PS.  Any commenter who mentions the phrase “No true Scotsman” is hereby required to reread my post 100 times, out loud.

HT:  TravisV

Occasionally I get bored with economics, and would rather talk about something else.  (In any case, there’s not much to say until they do the last minute Greek deal, or not.)  Here are some interesting links that I ran across:

1.  From an article on the poet Charles Simic:

His opposition to any utopian project, including nationalism, which would place a collective interest above the safety of the individual, is unremitting. As Slobodan MiloÅ¡ević was taking power in Serbia, Simic warned early on that he was “bad news,” and for his pains was denounced by Serbian nationalists as a traitor. His answer: “The lyric poet is almost by definition a traitor to his own people.” As he saw it, “sooner or later our tribe always comes to ask us to agree to murder,” which is one good reason he has resisted tribal identification with a passion: “I have more in common with some Patagonian or Chinese lover of Ellington or Emily Dickinson than I have with many of my own people.” Leery of all generalizations, he insists again and again that “only the individual is real.” As the civil war heated up, he found that his appeals to forgiveness and reasonableness were met with total incomprehension and finally hatred.

2.  This quote from Schopenauer reminds me of the internet:

Bad books are an intellectual poison that destroys the spirit. And since most people, instead of reading the best to have come out different periods, limit themselves to reading the latest novelties, writers limit themselves to the current narrow circle of ideas, and the public sink ever deeper into their own mire.

It’s from a delightful book by Enrique Vila-Matas, entitled Bartleby & Co., consisting of nothing but footnotes to a book that was never written. Highly recommended for fans of Borges, Calvino, Walser, Musil and Pessoa.

3.  In the same spirit, Morgan Warstler sent me this quote from Mark Twain:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

And even more so for (imaginative) travel to the past and future.  When I read internet discussions about what “we all should think” about social practice X, I sometimes have the feeling that the writers couldn’t care less about what the public view was 200 years ago, or will be 200 years in the future.  All that matters is the eternal here and now.  The most notable exception is Scott Alexander.  I’d always known that there were math geniuses, physics geniuses, composer geniuses, etc.  But not social science geniuses.  Sure there have been brilliant economists like Irving Fisher, Milton Friedman and J. M. Keynes, or even some of the top bloggers.  But none of them make you say “wow, how did he do that?” Until Mr. Alexander, who seems to have arrived from another planet to enlighten us childlike earthlings.  If he ever forms a new “ism”, you can sign me up.  This recent post is far from his best, but he somehow emerges without a spec of dirt clinging to him, whereas I’d end up covered in “mire.”

4.  Peter Hessler wrote three wonderful books about China.  Here’s an article discussing his amazing popularity in China:

I asked why they read him. After all, they must know China better than a Missourian.

“He shows us a familiar country, but one we never saw before,” said one young man, a twenty-five-year-old engineer named Brian Cheung. “He cares about the lives of ordinary people.”

A tall young man of twenty-nine stood in the background. When the crowd thinned out, he stepped forward and identified himself as an English teacher at a local university.

“I’d like to hear more from him about politics. I feel we need to know more about Liu Xiaobo and Charter 08,” he said of the imprisoned dissident and his manifesto for political change.

“But if his books were about that he wouldn’t be here promoting his books,” I said. “Those kinds of books can’t be published here.”

“I know, I know.” The young man said. “But I still want to know about that too.”

“And yet you’re here.”

“He notices things about China that make us think. He sees a slogan on the wall and describes it, just like that. No commentary. Just the slogan, and when it’s told like that, it seems absurd, laughable, like Kundera’s The Joke. And we think: What are those slogans doing there? They are absurd. And then you start to think: Why?”

When I read The Joke I thought to myself, “what would it be like to live in a society where one’s life could be ruined by a single joke.”  I don’t have to wonder any longer.

5.  And speaking of China, I found this to be an intriguing observation:

But why do I feel that China””and Sinologists””would be better off to relax about the idea that “we have great novels, too”? I feel this because I think that setting up literary civilizations as rivals (although I can understand the insecurities that led Liang Qichao and others to do it) only gets in the way of readers enjoying imaginative works. What does it matter if the author of Chin P’ing Mei might be less than Flaubert? Why should anyone have to feel defensive?

Let me put it the other way around. Novels were not the primary language art in imperial China. Measured by volume, xi, translatable as “drama” or “opera,” would be in first place, and measured by beauty, calligraphy or poetry would be. Should we compare poetry across civilizations? If we do, classical Chinese poetry wins easily. The contest is almost unfair, because, as my students of Chinese language eventually come to see, the fundaments of language are different.

Indo-European languages, with their requirements that tense, number, gender, and part of speech be specified, and with the mandatory word inflections that the specifications entail, and with the extra syllables that the inflections add, just can’t achieve the same purity””a sense of terseness and expanse at the same time””that tenseless, numberless, voiceless, uninflected, and uninflectible Chinese characters can achieve. In a contest, one person has a butterfly net and the other a window screen. Emily Dickinson might have come to be known as the greatest poet in world history if she had written in classical Chinese. Should Westerners feel defensive that this was not the case? Far better just to inherit what we all have done, and leave it there.

For decades the baseball world obsessed about batting averages.  Then in the late 1970s an obscure night guard at a pork and beans cannery named Bill James published a book pointing out that the emperor had no clothes.  That batting averages and many other baseball statistics were essentially worthless, not measuring what everyone assumed they measured (such as offensive prowess.)

The batting average treats singles and home runs equally, and doesn’t even include walks, which can be a good way of getting on base.  I recall reading Bill James in the early 1980s and wondering how anyone could disagree with him.  It was all so obvious.  The sum of on base percentage and slugging percentage picks up the dual mandate; get on base, and drive in runs.

For years, the economics profession has been obsessed with inflation and inflation targeting.   Yet inflation treats supply shocks and demand shocks as if they were the same thing, and doesn’t even include the prices of new houses (the main data point for the housing bubble.) Wouldn’t it be neat if some obscure academic from a small school came along and pointed out that the emperor had no clothes?

We need a single statistic, like OBP plus SP in baseball.  Something that incorporates the Fed’s dual mandate, not just one side of the mandate.  Something that adds inflation and growth to focus on what the Fed can actually control.  Any ideas?

PS.  The publishers thought no one would be interested in Bill James’ ideas, so he was forced to self-publish his early books, and would’ve done well with something like Amazon KDP, had that existed in his time.  Perhaps our monetary policy reformer will be forced to self-publish his ideas in a blog.

PPS.  Do you think Brad Pitt looks more like Beckworth or me?  And who would play the villain (i.e. Bob Murphy?)

PPPS.  Some statistics nerds tried to go beyond Bill James, and argue that OBP and SP shouldn’t have equal weights.  People; you need to realize that there is beauty in simplicity.

PPPPS.  For those who don’t know, in 2006 Time magazine named Bill James one of the 100 most influential people are Earth.  And that was for changing the way we think about baseball.