Tag Archives: Movies

‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Offers A Gripping Story, Gutsy Action, and Rich Social Commentary

Posted on by Ryan Kantor

Before I begin, I would like to send my thoughts and prayers to victims of the tragic movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado.

This is by no means a movie blog, and thus this post is far from a movie review–not to say this blog is foreign to a good movie review or two. However, as The Dark Knight Rises has grown beyond the confines of another summer blockbuster, I couldn’t help but write something about my new all-time favorite movie (I’ll warn you before any spoilers) .

I watched The Dark Knight Rises on opening night, and after becoming so engrossed that I subconsciously starting clapping after the National Anthem concluded during the scene in Heinz Field, I left the movie utterly blown away. It had it all: great action, a gripping story, a fantastic musical score, and rich social commentary. The social commentary was unexpected, but I found that I enjoyed a great deal.

Walking out of the movie with an ol’ pal, it was brought to my attention that Rush Limbaugh had earlier implied that Hollywood liberals named the villain of the movie “Bane,” as a  jab at the venture capital firm, Bain Capital, that was led by Mitt Romney in the 90s. In reality, “Bane”–the villain–was first created in 1993, rendering Rush laughably incorrect. I typically cringe when Rush is unfairly bashed, but he deserves whatever he gets for this gaffe. What makes it even more misinformed is that he should be applauding the movie for its subtle, but real poke at the Occupy Wall Street/hate the wealthy/class-warfare theme that has become pervasive in politics today.

After (here comes a minor spoiler) Bane takes over Gotham, he “turns it over to the people.” The lower socio-economic classes, including freed criminals, take violent control and put the extremely wealthy on sham trials for their “crimes.” Leaders of major companies are sent to freeze to death in the frozen city. As Catwoman makes another’s house/apartment her own, she remarks to her friend that this is in fact somebody’s home, to which her friend responds by saying “it’s everyone’s home.” This theme remains on display from the “bad guys” (and Catwoman who is both good and bad) throughout the movie (spoilers over). One bitter, liberal movie goer bashed the film, saying:

“In a barely-veiled attack on Occupy Wall Street, Bane attempts to win over Gotham’s populace by demonizing Wall Street and the superrich and promising to return power to the people.”

(The liberal blogger continued with his long list of complaints by deriding the fact that the police were framed in a positive light and by exclaiming how wrong it was that the terrorists–hailing from Uzbekistan–were most definitely Muslim. It’s a unintentionally funny read if you care to indulge yourself.)

So while the names may be similar, the sentiments between “Bane” and “Bain” philosophically oppose one another.

To connect the dots I reference what President Obama said in a recent speech, that business owners didn’t “build that,” referring to their own businesses. To avoid taking the President out of context, here’s a whole big segment of his speech from which some feel President Obama displayed his lack of respect for business owners and the private sector:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

So, while the villain, Bane, may share the name of Bain Capital, his political ideology couldn’t be more contrasted from that Bain Capital, Mitt Romney, and the American Right. Bane, his cronies, and Catwoman oppose the wealthy (spoiler coming). Bane and his army attack the stock market, kill business leaders, and plunder Wayne Enterprises, while Cat Woman overtly steals from the wealthy and details her frustrations with their fake concern at charity galas (spoiler over). The “bad guys” and Catwoman are the ones opposing the wealthy, while the billionaire is the hero and protagonist of the entire trilogy.

Who in the 2012 election opposes the wealthy and seeks to harm stock investors with higher capital gains rates? Conversely, who is the multimillionaire philanthropist who owned an empire that they didn’t manage for a few years (like Mitt Romney leaving management duties at Bain in ’99, Bruce Wayne maintained ownership, but didn’t manage Wayne Enterprises for the time span between the second and third movies)? Finally, whose ideology does this movie portray in a darker light? Now shouldn’t Rush be praising the movie, rather than calling it “The Dark Knight Lights Up” and attacking it for a coincidental name similarity?

I welcome you to share your thoughts on the social commentary from this phenomenal movie as well as President Obama quote with which I included in this blog post.

As always, please subscribe to this blog by clicking the “Follow” button at the top of the right sidebar. If you don’t have a WordPress account, you’ll have to enter your email address. You can share your opinions in the comment section below or by tweeting to @Ryan_Kantor. Thanks for reading!

Moneyball – I Dive Into The Numbers

Posted on by Ryan Kantor

Along with watching Clemson down FSU in Death Valley, and jump to 13th in the AP poll, I saw Moneyball in theaters this weekend. I had already read the book and wrote one blog post about the book and another about the theory and style of play as a guest blogger on LenNY’s Yankees. Here are my thoughts on the movie and some mathematical insights into the theory of Moneyball.

Moneyball the Movie

Despite not being a baseball fan, Brad Pitt plays Oakland A’s GM, Billy Beane, who finds a young Yale economics graduate to help him build a baseball team around hard numbers instead of flimsy intuition. The movie opens with the Yankees beating the A’s in the 2001 ALDS, which for a Yankee fan like myself was great. Beane’s various conflicts with those who didn’t want to see change in the organization (namely managers and scouts) were very entertaining, but Jonah Hill who played the nerdy Yale grad, Peter Brand, stole the show, giving some comical relief to what is a somewhat serious movie. The movie focuses much more on the relationship between Beane and his daughter than the book, which largely excluded the topic. In fact, I’d say the movie was about Billy Beane while the book was about the players Beane picked out and the theory itself. Overall, the movie is worth seeing despite being more of a character study than an in-depth look at Moneyball as a baseball theory.

The Statistics Behind Moneyball

On to the numbers! As my subscribers know (…and thank you to everyone who has already subscribed.) I’m currently in a Masters program that spends quite a bit of time on the type of regression and model building that Moneyball is based upon (You can subscribe by clicking the “follow” button on the top of the right sidebar). For a class project, I’m creating a model that can predict the amount of runs a team will score based on various batting statistics.

Now I’m just getting started, and there is a lot of work left to do, but so far all my findings are backing up the theory behind Moneyball. My math shows that batting average is statistically insignificant in predicting runs, while OBP was highly relevant. A home run is worth 1.62 runs, a single .22 runs, a double .61 runs, and a triple 1.39 runs. A stolen base is worth .18 runs, but a caught stealing hurts more than a  stolen base helps. AL teams score about 12 runs more per season than NL teams, everything else held constant. I’m sure these numbers will adjust slightly as I tweak the regression and update the 2011 season with the stats from the last few weeks of the season. Right now I am basing those numbers on the previous four seasons and this year’s stats as of mid-Septemeber.

I thought the baseball crowd and the marketing research crowd would both find that bit interesting. I was certainly entertained when my SAS output told me that batting average wasn’t even significant enough to include in the model. Now the question is, do I consider adding OBP to my fantasy leagues?

Black Swan: The Most Overdone Movie of All Time?

Posted on by Ryan Kantor

I thought the trailer looked terrible, so I didn’t see it in theaters. Seeing Black Swan nominated for an Oscar only made me feel more confident my decision was correct, since the critics always seem to get it wrong (Traffic and more recently King’s Speech both got acclaim and were both awful). Tommy D bought the DVD and gave it multiple recommendations, so I finally gave in and watched it all the way through.

I think if Tommy wasn’t sitting next to me I would have bailed an hour in. The entire premise of the movie was simply to watch a ballerina’s (Natalie Portman) surreal mental breakdown. It was just too weird. Too creative. Too overdone. Too much!


It tried too hard to do something special with a very bland premise. At one point her arms turn into black wings to symbolize her embodiment of the character she plays in the ballet. At another point she imagines her knees snapping backward as she becomes the swan.

Black Swan is an abstract painting of a movie, and I don’t recommend it. I’ll leave it at that.

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The King’s Speech: A film fit for an ordinary citizen

Posted on by Tommy D

Amidst my depressingly large amount of work for UGA’s MMR program, I am happy to have a little time here to post about a movie I saw recently (before the onslaught of schoolwork).

After hearing about how great The King’s Speech was, and seeing all of the Oscars it won (most notably Best Picture and Best Actor for Colin Firth), I figured I had to see it, so I rented it through Netflix. I ended up being pretty unimpressed overall. While the movie was by no means terrible, the fact that it fell so short of my expectations inspired me to write this review (my first one) on the Netflix site:

I really wanted to love this movie, especially after all of the acclaim it received and the positive words I heard from friends and family. However, when I watched it, I was quite underwhelmed. It is certainly a very well-acted film, and Colin Firth deserved his Oscar. Geoffrey Rush was great as well, but the overall progression of the story was slow. I was waiting for it to become more climactic and emotionally-moving, but it never really did for me. It was a decent movie, but in my opinion, quite unworthy of all the praise it received, most notably its Best Picture Oscar.