That this was directed by Richard Linklater is probably reason enough to watch it, but it’s also one of those high-school coming-of-age movies that went on to become a cult favorite. As one of Linklater’s earliest movies, it’s apparently the first one to have any recognizable stars in it even if most of them were unknowns when they appeared here. Watch out in particular for a very young and slightly chubby Ben Affleck in a supporting role.
Black Coal, Thin Ice is an unusual and evocative title. Unfortunately it also has nothing to do with the film’s Chinese title which translates literally as Daylight Fireworks, a phrase that is relevant in the story in at least a couple of instances but is less poetic in English. The discrepancy is notable enough that director Diao Yinan addressed it but I’m not sure that his explanation makes much sense. At least this choice suggests that he has a good sense of aesthetics, as the film itself aptly proves.
For the benefit of everyone who isn’t an expert on insects, let me just say that this film has nothing to with dukes or the region of Burgundy. Instead, the title of this film refers to a specific species of butterfly. Since this never gets said in the movie itself, I had to go and look it up. What this film is about is the sadomasochistic relationship between two women with insects, butterflies and moths in particular, being a recurrent theme.
Sometime this year CIMB Securities started sending me a Daily Trading Ideas report every day by email. They’ve been touting it as investment advice that is immediately actionable. Now, CIMB’s analysts’ reports have a rather poor reputation and are often the subject of mockery on the LYN investment forum, mainly because of their extremely optimistic price targets assigned to stocks. But it’s hard to objectively assess how wrong they are since in theory it is perfectly possible for stock prices to deviate from what they ought to be worth even across extended time frames.
Technical analysis is a different matter. I may not know much about the subject and I certainly don’t know how to do it, but I do know that its supposed to predict market movements in the very short term based completely on momentum factors that are not directly connected to stock fundamentals. This means that it should be possible to assess the accuracy and usefulness of their stock tips. To be safe, I collected price information for their stock picks for the Malaysian market only for 21 days following the publication of each report beginning in around July 2015.
I haven’t mentioned this before but the reason why I’ve taken to adding the date of release behind each of the movies that I write about is that the same titles are used often enough that confusion is a real issue, and that is without even going into the question of remakes. As such this Russian film that was released last year has nothing to do with the American documentary that I wrote about not too long ago despite sharing the same title though the Biblical allusion in both cases are obvious.
This War of Mine earned some pretty impressive kudos when it came out. That’s no surprise given its premise of playing a group of civilians looking to survive a siege of their home city. Heck, the developers even partnered with a charity for children who are victims of war for authenticity. Looking at the screenshots, I also found the two-dimensional cutaways of buildings with lots of elements that you can interact with to be very appealing.
Double Indemnity is probably a film that needs no introduction. It is considered the paradigmatic film of the noir genre and set the stage for all others noir films to come. After watching it however, I realized that it’s highly unusual even for a noir film. The protagonist in this case is neither a police officer nor a private investigator. Instead, he is, as the audience learns from the opening narration, both the mastermind and the perpetrator of the crime that is at the center of this film.