Happy holidays from the banks

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:10:00 +0000

Never mind President Obama's audacity of hope. It's the audacity of the banks that takes your breath away. Mean old Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life" seems like Father Christmas by comparison.

A recent report that Citigroup and Goldman Sachs may have received preferential treatment getting doses of the swine flu vaccine was enough to give Ebenezer Scrooge the yips. Then came news that in order for us to get back the taxpayer bailout money we loaned it, Citigroup is receiving billions of dollars in tax breaks from the IRS.

And there's a new study this week, "Rewarding Failure," from the public interest group Public Citizen, revealing that in the years leading up to the financial meltdown, the CEOs of the 10 Wall Street giants that either collapsed or got huge amounts of TARP money were paid an average of $28.9 million dollars a year.

Disney’s “A Christmas Carol”: Bah, humbug!

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:06:00 +0000

Robert Zemeckis' excitable reimagining of the Dickens classic is a triumph of something -- but it's certainly not the Christmas spirit. The movie overflows with fa la la la las and snowflakes and rosy-cheeked Victorians, many of whom are granted numerous opportunities to point right at you, dear audience member. But the 3-D film is flat, the CGI-enhanced characters oddly waxen. In the center of the action is Jim Carrey -- or at least a dead-eyed, doll-like version of Carrey -- playing Scrooge, the ghosts, a younger version of himself, and probably a dozen other parts. As a general rule of thumb, one Jim Carrey is plenty for any movie.

Though motion-capture technology has improved since Zemeckis' prior attempts, "The Polar Express" and "Beowulf," the process still ranks several notches below the Country Bear Jamboree on the suspension-of-disbelief scale. Why is Zemeckis so fond of the technique? And what's up with having the same star play almost all the parts, just as Tom Hanks did in "Polar Express"? Have we learned nothing from "The Klumps"?

Salon.com > A Christmas Carol

Happy holidays from the banks

Disney’s “A Christmas Carol”: Bah, humbug!