A few nights ago we finally got around to watching Sinners (imdb | rotten tomatoes). It was, as I had heard, in roughly two parts: one part setup as the twins return home to Mississippi, and the second part all vampire-fighting. Both parts were very good, but there was a third element I wasn’t expecting: blues.

It was filmed in Louisiana but set in the Delta — there was even a Clarksdale road sign. I heard a version of “Wang Dang Doodle” for the first time in about forty years. There was a Charley Patton reference and even a Buddy Guy sighting.

Yeah. Excellent movie all around.

Side note: the more movies I see him in, the more I appreciate Michael B. Jordan’s retainer-snapping hotness.

Robert Redford died this week. To be honest, I wouldn’t have guessed he was 89. It struck me when I thought back about his movies how much they were part of my life, but maybe not the ones you’d think.

I never saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Never saw Jeremiah Johnson or The Candidate. Never saw The Way We Were or Barefoot In The Park or The Sting or The Natural (except the scenes any sports fan has seen) or Out Of Africa or A River Runs Through It or The Horse Whisperer or Ordinary People, his directorial debut for which he won so many awards.

Of the ones I have watched, many of which were lesser-known, I’m watched them A LOT. I watched Three Days Of The Condor a bunch as a teenager (and since) because my parents had it on VHS. I’ve watched All The President’s Men, Sneakers (another Dickinson household favourite growing up), Spy Game, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier more times than I can count. I watch Quiz Show, which he directed, probably twice a year.

It also JUST occurred to me as I was going through his IMDb listing that both his character in Sneakers and Brad Pitt’s character in Spy Game were named Bishop. Just now, despite having watched them dozens of times. Anyway.

Maybe I think fondly of him in these movies because he’s not really a sex symbol in any of them, except maybe Condor. He’s Bob Woodward. He’s an aging security consultant. He’s an underestimated spy. He’s a scheming bureaucrat. He’s funny. He’s charismatic. He was principled and he let his politics (which I agreed with, as far as I know) and environmentalism come through in his movies.

He was a talent, and he was a beauty, and he was a character, and he stood for something. There won’t be many more like him.

I just had The Big Short on in the background, and something about the ISDA scene has always bugged me. I think I just figured out what.

Around the 1:00 mark, as they make their pitch to get an ISDA, Charlie explains that they’re “doing 30 million right now, but [they] started four years ago with a hundred and ten thousand.” The JP Morgan Chase peon explains that they’re $1.47 billion under the requirement for an ISDA, but to “keep up those returns and give us a call way down the road.” We, along with Jamie and Charlie, cringe with embarrassment.

Here’s the thing though: if they do keep up the same returns they’ve had in the past four years, they’re already more than halfway to that ISDA minimum.

The compound annual growth rate to have gotten from $110,000 to $30,000,000 in four years is 306.4%. That is, they’re quadrupling their money each year, and then some.

That means that a year from when that meeting takes place, Brownfield would have grown from $30 million to $122 million.

A year later it would have grown to $495 million.

If they kept going, they’d hit the $1.5 billion minimum for the ISDA just two years, nine months, and fifteen days from the time of that meeting.

I get that sustaining 306.4% returns for almost seven years is a stretch, but someone working on “Ted’s desk” at JPMC should be able to do enough quick math to determine that growth rate and not brush these guys off as being “way down the road”. Even a movie version of someone who probably never existed.

OK, I feel better now.

A few movies I/we’ve watched of late:

Watching The Substance (imdb | rotten tomatoes) in a crowded theatre was a trip. At once a treatise on feminine beauty standards as well as a disgusting body horror, it was a squirmy affair.

Napoleon (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a bit of spectacle (especially the battle at Austerlitz) but somehow still mostly banal.

Buy Now! (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a decent anti-consumerist documentary wrapped around a very dumb AI assistant narrative device. Just in time for Black Friday, though.

After roughly a decade of meaning to, I finally watched What We Do In The Shadows (imdb | rotten tomatoes) and it was as good as I’d imagined. It spurred us to start watching the show, which is obviously filmed in Toronto. It also introduced me to an excellent 58-year-old song which I somehow never remember hearing before.

Last week, when I was sitting down to dinner, I read the news about James Earl Jones passing. An absolute icon from my childhood on, even though it was years before I knew anything other than his voice. Darth Vader is truly one of the all-time great movie characters, and embodied by Jones’ voice as much as — perhaps even more than — David Prowse’s physical acting.

Only when I thought back through his filmography, though, did I realize how many more of James’ roles were meaningful to me over the years: The Hunt For Red October (and the other Jack Ryan films), Field of Dreams, Dr. Strangelove, even Conan. Plus a small but very hilarious part in Sneakers. There were also dozens of noteworthy film performances before I was old enough to know them, not to mention Broadway acclaim. And I was too old to have childhood memories of The Lion King, but chalk up another iconic voice performance.

RIP.

.:.

Spoilers, obviously:

I watched Civil War (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last weekend. It was a lot more reporter-centric than I expected it to be, and a lot less shoot-y. Sure, there was a big battle scene at the end, but up to that point it was an interesting look at how confusing, logistically challenging, and weirdly pocketed an American civil war would be now. Most of all, it showed how the worst elements of society would suddenly feel even more empowered, or at least unchecked. Looking at you, uncredited Jesse Plemons.

Finally, last night, and for some reason in the middle of one of the worst snowstorms Toronto has experienced all winter, we went to see Dune: Part Two (imdb | rotten tomatoes) in the theatre.

First, it was as sweeping and grand and beautifully shot as I’d heard. I’m glad we saw it on a big screen, though it wasn’t their biggest…part of me wishes I’d seen it on an epically big screen the first weekend.

Second, I like how this film played up the religious angle, especially the sectarian divide between the Fremen. It seemed a clearer evolution to me of the jihad vs. how the book seems (in my memory, anyway) to jump to it more jarringly.

Third, I thought they improved on some gaps / weak points in the book. Chani and Paul’s journey, for example. Or Chani in general, frankly. Denis Villeneuve was open about making Chani and stronger character, and it showed here, right down to the final shot. And in terms of plotline, too, it felt like it deviated from the book in just the way it should when there’s obviously another film (hi there, Anya Taylor-Joy) coming, a luxury Frank Herbert likely didn’t have.

So yeah: worth the wait, and deserving of the heady reviews it’s been getting.