Saturday, May 03, 2008

Saturday Thoughts + Movie Reviews - Maxed Out and Breathless





Once again, my favorite day of the week. Pretty lazy afternoon, the wife out doing her quilting thing. 2 goals for today: hit the gym and drop the car off for an oil change. Gym is done and the car is at the shop right now. I have a little get together tonight at my friends place (actually he and his wife recently moved closer by so I am looking forward to seeing them). - Unfortunately the wife is heading to a play tonight with her librarian friend.

I recently watched a documentary far more terrifying than even the worst horror film; Maxed Out. The premise is simple: America and it's citizens have a tremendous problem with debt. Consumer debt is completely out of control, primarily through the liberal use of credit cards (the worst kind of revolving debt possible), maxed out equity loans, second mortgages, and other consumer credit (car loans, student loans, etc.) Even more disturbing is the fact that the U.S.A. has effectively been borrowing from one area of the federal budget in order to provide funding for other expenditures, including making interest payments on the American debt owed. This has been a bipartisan process (although it is true that President Bill Clinton had the country running with a surplus and with a balanced budget; a budget Bush destroyed practically overnight.

The other flick was the quintessential cinema of cool, the rookie film of one of the progenitors of the French New Wave, Jean Luc Godard, ... Breathless. Surprisingly I had never seen this before; and having watched it now I get it. There is much about the picture I found annoying, but upon completion I began to examine the flick in a different light. The key, for me, is remembering that this movie came out in 1960, so the many techniques used by Godard were groundbreaking. Having watched decades of films inspired by Godard it's easy to forget that the original is still to be praised for its utter uniqueness. Also the flick gives us today's babe of the day, the pixieish Jean Seberg, shown above.

Hey, if the evil empire wins today they can return to being the best .500 baseball team money can buy!

1 comment:

Da Old Man said...

The instant gratification mentality is widespread. It is destroying our society on every level. Much of government expenditures (waste) is in direct response to this irresponsibility.