![]() Selena Gomez is paired with behavioral economics expert Dr. Here is an incongruous, dadaesque set-up. Steve Carell, center, Ryan Gosling, far right In case anyone doesn’t grasp the M.O., she lounges in a bubble bath sipping champagne. Margot Robbie also deploys direct address of a breathier nature to aid in understanding mortgage-backed securities (stacking a bond with bad mortgages). Take these examples: To sum up credit default swaps (investing in the failure to repay, a financial instrument that shorts the booming housing market), Ryan Gosling breaks the fourth wall and, sounding like he has swigged a couple cans of Red Bull, addresses the camera - and the spectator - head-on. But cast to alienate the adoring masses who they count on to embrace them? These pros do it, nothing more and nothing less, in order not to upset the film’s carefully calculated balance.) (It’s one thing in an ensemble with so much star wattage for actors to settle for lower billing than they are accustomed to, another for them to refrain from chewing up the scenery in order to magnify their presence. Ironically Brechtian in an ubercapitalist context, these unpretentious and viewer-friendly distancing devices are accessibly democratic and, of course, marked by extensive comic edge. Wisely and productively, he creates amusing, surreal tableaus outside of the main narrative that are more suggestive than definitive. McKay neither glosses over esoteric terms nor instructs characters to simply and directly explain them inside their usual haunts. The cliché “knowledge is power” holds: Control remains concentrated in the hands of a small specialized circle. He goes with whimsy here as well, while methodically dissecting and castrating a famously boring industry that safeguards itself with an incomprehensible vocabulary. Former head writer for Saturday Night Live, his feature work before The Big Short barely touches on anything heavier than Will Ferrell’s lovable awkwardness. McKay ( Anchorman, Step Brothers, Talladega Nights) knows from funny. Watching everyone scramble for the exit, the quick-thinking Baum mutters presciently, “Ordinary people are going to have to pay for this.” Once they find out that Bear Stearns’s stock is rapidly plummeting, the listeners are no longer captive. In the middle of his smug oration, all the Blackberries in the large hotel hall start to vibrate simultaneously, sounding like a well-orchestrated chorus of desperate crickets. A committed insider, Miller, after reassuring the audience that all is well with his company, throws his lot in with the first trader: Subprime mortgages are in no way out of control. Warming up for Alan Greenspan, Baum sits on a stage set up for debate with cocky Bruce Miller (unearned certitude seems to be the norm with these people) of Bear Stearns. The second depends not on verbiage but on precision timing. In order to challenge an arrogant but respected trader’s optimistic - and totally incorrect - assurance during a lecture to nervous colleagues that “losses in subprime are being contained at five per cent,” Baum gruffly interrupts him with rhetorical questions over and over again. The first scene is predicated on the comic potential of repetition overkill. He plays pushy, unpolished idealist Mark Baum (in the actual story, Steve Eisman), a hedge-fund manager who runs Morgan Stanley subsidiary FrontPoint and one of the assorted financial-industry outsiders - misfits, to be accurate - who populate and invigorate the film. ![]() To compensate, however, the ever-dependable Steve Carell fuels the jocularity in both spots. When a term completely sidesteps consciousness, it is probably unavailable to the unconscious-site of the split-second manufacture of humor. Most people don’t even know what the latter word means. Hold on: hilarious and securitization jammed into the same sentence? ![]() Two scenes, hilarious in completely opposite ways, take place in the middle of an otherwise enervating securitization session at the American Securities Forum in Las Vegas. Adam McKay, Anthony Bourdain, Barry Ackroyd, Christian Bale, Finn Wittrock, John Magaro, Margot Robbie, Michael Lewis, Ryan Gosling, Selena Gomez, Steve Carell, The Big ShortĪdapted by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay from The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis’s behind-the-scenes book about the 2008 housing market crash, McKay’s star-stuffed The Big Short is a brilliant demystification. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |