Other History |

THE BIG SHORT (2015)

October 29, 2018 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Based on the book by Michael Lewis, THE BIG SHORT (2015) brings together solid direction, a stellar cast, and a powerful script to tell the story of the 2008 housing crisis that nearly crashed the world economy. The story focuses on several investors–a socially awkward doctor who reads numbers so well he can predict market trends, a rogue investor group led by a misanthrope, and two brilliant young investors looking for a big trade that will get them a seat at the big boys’ table–as they predict the crash and seek to cash in on it.

This is a complicated topic made simple through good storytelling. Basically, mortgages were aggregated as new investment products with high rates of return. As time went on, higher-risk loans were packaged with them, then very risky loans. Over time, few knew what was even in these products, which kept getting AAA credit ratings by agencies under financial pressure to do so. Then spinoff products began to arise around these products, resulting in say $10 billion becoming $100 billion, without anything justifying it other than the illusion there was value there. The SEC did nothing about it because they were underfunded, and the people who worked there wanted lucrative jobs when they got out of government. When higher-rate clauses in a wave of adjustable rate mortgages began to kick in in 2007, massive defaults cracked the system, which led to its unwinding and crash while revealing just how rotten and corrupt the entire market was.

The investors who saw this coming were modern-day Cassandras. As nobody has ever shorted the housing market, the banks create products just for them, thinking they’re crazy and that they’re making easy money. As everybody had a vested interest in keeping the illusion of stability going, the market kept rising and the AAA ratings held, even as the default rate kept rising. Finally, the system broke, big banks and investment firms were going down or in trouble, and millions of people lost everything. Not the banks, though, which got their bailouts, paid out huge bonuses to their executives, and years later went right back to the same highly risky investment products that got us into that mess.

THE BIG SHORT is a terrific movie that respects the intelligence of its audience, is cynical rather than preachy, and functions as a dark comedy about how the global economy nearly imploded out of sheer greed and willful ignorance. One thing is certain: If somebody can make a buck making a mistake and pass off its consequences to the public, they will do it again and again, and even romanticize the mistake as being brilliant and brave.

BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION (2015)

April 10, 2018 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION (2015) is the first documentary to take a deep look at one of the most influential Black political movements of the Twentieth Century–the Black Panther Party. The film is based on archival footage and interviews with 50 people, including former members, FBI informants, police officers, and others. Watching it, I was amazed at what they achieved, the opportunities they wasted, and the level of government oppression directed at them.

The Black Panther Party formed in California in response to de facto segregation and police brutality. Citing open carry laws, they began arming themselves and shadowing police officers and otherwise patrolling neighborhoods. In response, the State of California and then Governor Ronald Reagan passed legislation to make open carry illegal, with support of the NRA. When Black Panthers showed up in Sacramento during debate on the bill with weapons to make a point, many people were amazed at their audacity, and a national then international movement was born.

From the beginning, the Black Panthers held to a 10-point manifesto. They wanted economic opportunity, decent housing, education, jobs, freedom, a jury by their peers, the release of prisoners, exemption from the draft, and justice. They started child nutrition and other welfare programs in their communities. Their look–black leather jackets, sunglasses, berets, and a gun–influenced fashion, became a Black Power symbol, and helped drive the “Black is beautiful” movement. Despite the male urban guerilla image, the majority of members were women.

The party’s political activity quickly drew the attention of Herbert Hoover, the authoritarian director of the FBI, who focused COINTELPRO activities on destroying the party. Party leaders were subjected to constant harassment, arrest, surveillance, informants, and misinformation designed to create rifts in the leadership. While the open, head-on repression was brutal, it was the more subtle tactics such as sowing dissension that destroyed the party in the end, along with poor leadership in lack of direction. Some of Hoover’s paranoia was earned–the BPP constantly postured and openly called for armed revolution against the United States government. Hoover was particularly paranoid about a “black messiah” figure who would unite Blacks with liberal Whites and start a major political movement, which led to the police assassination of Fred Hampton. The FBI’s tactics were straight up police state stuff, brutal and un-Constitutional.

In the end, the viewer is left to decide if the party served its ideals or got sidetracked in posturing, but either way, it is certain that the Black Panther Party had a profound effect on a new political and cultural awakening for African-Americans in the ’60s.

OUR WORLD WAR (2014)

April 1, 2018 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

BBC3’s OUR WORLD WAR (2014), a three-part anthology miniseries about WW1, dramatizes the experiences of British soldiers based on war records and firsthand recollections. While a bit uneven, two of the episodes are amazing, very human portrayals of what warfare was like 100 years ago.

Again, this is an anthology series, telling three separate stories set during the Battle of Mons, Battle of the Somme, and the Battle of Amiens. As the stories are based on what actually happened, the events don’t follow a neat plot or character arc, defying expectations and achieving great authenticity. What they all have in common is that men bond during war, that a struggling nation will openly do anything to achieve victory, and that war is hell.

The first episode captures the British Fusiliers encountering a massive German attack at Mons. The episode is likeable but doesn’t seem to find its theme or footing. The director amply uses modern devices, such as a modern score, body cam to follow a runner relaying messages, and overlay maps depicting the enemy forces. These anachronisms generally work, though the body cam was unnecessary and jerked me out of the story. Still, I was intrigued to keep watching.

The second and third episodes are fantastic. The second episode deals with a soldier who signed up to fight and ends up assigned to kill somebody from his hometown in a firing squad. The story is split evenly between him debating his chaplain, who is far from a straw man and makes very reasonable points about what it takes to win, and fighting in a horrific battle. The third episode is by far my favorite, about the crew of one of the first tanks used in battle at Amiens. The tankers have to brave artillery shells, deadly fumes, a faulty engine, and the moral brick in the face that is the horrors they’re unleashing on the Germans with these new and advanced weapons.

If you like military action films, I encourage you to give this a go, but maybe start with episode 2, then 1, then 3 for a big finish.

GODLESS

December 3, 2017 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

GODLESS, a Netflix series, delivers great characters, dialogue, and action in a fantastic Western. Despite a saggy middle, the series starts off great and ends with one hell of a bang.

Frank Griffin (the great Jeff Daniels), leader of a ruthless outlaw gang, searches for Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell), his partner who turned against him. Roy is hiding in La Belle, New Mexico, a town made up almost entirely of women after a mining accident claimed the men.

In classic Western fashion, this is a story of good and evil in the beautiful, harsh, and empty Old West. Griffin is evil, a man of God raised in violence and believing violence is God’s way of teaching us something, and he loves Roy as family, making him a complex villain. Roy is good, an outlaw who turned against the man who raised him from the time he was an orphan looking for a family and finding it in the outlaw gang. They’re kin, and their conflict leads them on an inevitable collision course.

In La Belle, we’re given plenty of other characters and stories we can sink our teeth into. Marshal John Cook (the great Sam Waterston), who is going to get the cavalry to help him hunt down Griffin and his gang. Alice Fletcher and her Paiute son and mother in law, a very self-reliant and independent family who live on a ranch and give Roy Goode shelter. The sheriff (Scott McNairy, a great actor), who harbors a deep despair and is slowly going blind. Whitey, the young and brash deputy who loves the wrong girl. A nearby settlement of Black Civil War veterans (Buffalo soldiers) who just want to be left alone. The mayor, who dresses in men’s clothes and has a relationship with the town’s teacher, a former prostitute. Even the minor characters stand out, from the eccentric German artist to the Quicksilver mining executive to the guy who runs the livery stables.

Only seven episodes, the series introduces these characters and allows them to live and breathe naturally, without anything forced. They’re all likeable, the dialogue is excellent, the pacing good though a big bogged in flashbacks. The show ends with one hell of a bang as everything comes to a head, and the denouement is very satisfying.

This is the kind of TV I love–focus on characters and story, characters we can root for and agonize over if they don’t make it, realistic personal battles for redemption, no heavy-handed moralizing (which I thought we’d get with an Old West town run by women, and a nearby settlement run by Blacks), a terrific villain, defied expectations, and a fantastic climax.

Recommended, and a must if you like Old West stories.

The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-19

November 6, 2017 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

In 1918-19, the Spanish Flu burned its way through the world’s population of two billion in less than two years, killing more people than died in combat among the 19 nations involved in five years of fighting during World War I.

As World War I was ending, an even bigger threat loomed—the Spanish Flu, which followed in the wake of mass troop movements during the war, and ravaged the armies on both sides of the trenches. In fact, the Spanish Flu may have played a decisive role in ending the conflict; it is believed that the flu dramatically weakened the German Army and caused its last great western offensive to fail in 1918, bringing the war to a close.

In the spring of 1918, Spain, a neutral power, did not have wartime censorship and so was the first to report the epidemic that subsequently became known as the Spanish Flu, the Indian Flu, the Naples Soldier and other names around the world. The flu, however, was thought to originate in Canton, China, although the first recorded cases occurred at a U.S. Army base in Kansas. At first, the flu seemed mild, although millions caught it, eight million in Spain alone, including King Alphonso XIII.

As summer turned to fall, it turned deadly. The flu burned its way through every continent except Antarctica. Doctors were helpless against the scourge. Public authorities shut down public places such as churches and theaters. Some even passed laws against sneezing in public. People wore gauze masks in public. Wherever the flu struck, people displayed the best and worst of human nature—courage, charity, fear and prejudice.

In October, the epidemic peaked in the U.S. and Canada. Thousands were dying every day. Then the number of cases declined until the Spanish Flu disappeared the following July.

Some 22 million Americans got sick and more than 675,000 died out of a population of 103.2 million. As a result of the Spanish Flu, the average life expectancy of Americans dropped by 10-13 years. Globally, the Spanish Flu killed 40 to 100 million people, or up to five percent of the world’s population of two billion. About one billion caught it. Based on today’s population, this is the equivalent of more than three billion people catching it and 130 to 320 million people dying.

Americans Fight on Russian Soil in 1918-19

November 4, 2017 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Let me tell you about the time the U.S. Army fought the Red Army on two fronts on Russian soil. That’s right, from September 1918 to July 1919, nearly 13,000 American troops fought in Russia as part of an international invention in the Russian Civil War that had started immediately following the 1917 revolution.

The Russian Civil War had two major contestants, the Red Army (Bolshevik socialists) and the White Army (monarchists, capitalists, alternative socialists, democratic and undemocratic). Additionally, the Green armies (rival socialists and non-ideological) fought both the Reds and the Whites.

Fearing Bolshevik socialism, eight countries intervened to prevent the Reds from consolidating power. The British and French had three objectives. First, prevent the capture of Allied war materiel in Arkhangelsk. Second, help the Czech Legion stranded on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Third, get Russia back in the war and reopen the Eastern Front. They asked the Americans for help, and President Woodrow Wilson agreed, overriding objections from his War Department.

The U.S. sent 5,000 troops to Arkhangelsk (in North Russia) and nearly 8,000 to Vladivostok (in East Russia). In Arkhangelsk, the Americans arrived to find the war materiel had already been captured by the Reds and moved. Under British command, they went on the offensive to help the Czech Legion and pushed the Reds back for six weeks, though they failed to link up with the Czech Legion. The front became too large to sustain, and American forces went on the defensive. During the following winter, the Reds went on the offensive and pushed them back, inflicting many casualties. Conditions were miserable. Morale plummeted, and unrest began to spread in the ranks.

In Vladivostok, U.S. forces stayed under American command, with General Graves seeing his mission as limited to protecting Allied war materiel and refusing to take part in offensive operations.

Early in 1919, mutinies in the Allied armies were spreading. President Wilson ordered the withdrawal of American forces from Russia.

The Red Army went on to defeat the White Army by 1920, though it took until 1934 to completely crush all resistance and gain control over the entire country. An estimated 7 to 12 million Russians, mostly civilians, died during the war from the fighting and various hardships, including the Spanish Flu. Relations between the Soviet Union and the Allies started on very cold terms as a result of Allied intervention and countries like the U.S. refusing to formally recognize the USSR. President Warren G. Harding called American intervention a mistake and blamed the Wilson administration.

In 1930, the last American dead from the North Russia campaign buried in Russia were returned and re-buried at the “Polar Bear” Monument in Troy, Michigan. The last surviving veteran of that expedition passed away in 2003.