Thomas's mini movie reviews

(This post slightly buries Chris's post about financing. Scroll down and read it.)

Mini-reviewed: Smokin' Aces, The Fountain, Children of Men, Hot Fuzz

On Sunday, my roommate and a couple friends of his got crazily trounced in WoW (see footnote 1) and were very pissed off, so to cool off we went and grabbed a couple movies to watch. We rented two movies (Smokin' Aces and The Fountain) and I bought a used copy of Children of Men, a movie that came heavily recommended by my brother. So we ended up watching all three of those movies on Sunday with only an hour break between the two rented ones and Children of Men. Hot Fuzz we watched a month ago, but I'll mini-review it anyways.

I'll give a quick summary before I start:
Best Movie Overall by far: Children of Men
Hella good Comedy: Hot Fuzz
Sucks: Smokin' Aces
and... The words Good and Bad do not apply to this movie: The Fountain

And here's the mini-reviews, in the order I watched the movies:


Hot Fuzz

From the same guys who brought us of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz is a comedic masterpiece that will have you laughing non-stop from start to end (2). Nicholas Angel, an uptight London police officer, is reassigned to a small village after making the rest of the force look bad by being too good. The village is very quiet and quite free of crime, making it a poor match for the over-achieving police officer Angel. However, after a few suspicious deaths in the community, Angel is propelled into a flurry of crime-fighting action, and even finds the true meaning of love along the way (a few of the women in the back of the theatre went "awwwww" on us).

Seriously guys, if you haven't seen this movie yet, then by all means drop what you're doing and go see it (3). If you liked Shaun of the Dead, then you'll like this movie. It's like Shaun of the Dead but no zombies and more over-the-top gore (think Shaun's body mutilation and subsequent zombie-bashing with a torn limb scene). Opinion varies on which is better (I side with Shaun of the Dead because I like zombies), but the level of comedy is all up there. The biggest drawback is that at times the English accent becomes near unintelligible. But nonetheless, this is an excellent action comedy, and was more than worth the jugular ripping $9.50 they charge for student tickets.


Smokin' Aces

It's a common trade-off to sacrifice plot for action, a trade-off that Smokin' Aces attempted at. Some succeed at it like The One. Some fail, like Smokin' Aces. No plot whatsoever, and not enough mindless violence and action to fill the void. Watching the entirety of Star Wars: Episode II for Yoda's lightsaber action is a better use of time.


The Fountain

A deep philosophical movie about death. The Fountain presents three intertwining story lines that while never meet (they are set several hundred years apart from each other) mirror and parallel each other. The first of the three is set in the past, where a Spanish conquistador is trying to find the biblical Tree of Life in an attempt to save the Spanish Queen from certain death by the Inquisition. The second is about a scientist trying to find a cure for brain tumors, which is wife is dying from. The third takes place in the 26th century, where an astronaut is traveling in space with a dying tree trying to reach Xibalba, a dying nebula. All three characters are portrayed by Hugh Jackman, and share the common goal of trying to fight off death from someone (and in the case of the tree, which is implied to be the dying Tree of Life, something) they love.

I'm very torn about this movie. It wasn't a good choice for a group of guys to watch (philosophical movies tend not to be, much less one on death), but it's a very deep and fascinating and beautiful movie, even if absolutely confusing the whole way through. I don't think I'd ever recommend this movie to anyone, largely because the subject matter is not one for casual viewing. But if by chance you want to watch a philosophical movie about death, then it might be worth your time to give this movie a go.

I think I'll buy the DVD at some point.


Children of Men

When my brother recommended this movie to me, he described it as "bladerunner kind of good." Somewhat ironically, the director of Children of Men described his movie as an "anti-bladerunner" movie. Nonetheless, this movie is absolutely phenomenal, and my top pick of these four movies. Given limited time, watch this one, unless you're really in the mood for comedy, then watch Hot Fuzz.

Children of Men takes place in 2027. For some reason, all women stop being able to conceive, and no child has been born for 18 years. The world has fallen into chaos and only Britain stands with a government intact. But even Britain barely stays standing, as millions of refugees are trying to enter the borders and an immanent danger of internal social collapse has left Britain worn and tattered. However, in the midst of the chaos and social unrest, an illegal refugee woman shows up pregnant and promises to be hope for the future. Theo, an ordinary man who has ran out of hope for the future, is tasked to deliver the pregnant woman to safety.

Part of the reason Children of Men is such a terrific movie is that it maintains Theo as a completely ordinary guy. He can't take six shots to the chest and live, he doesn't have ungodly skills with weapons and he certainly can't pull out any magical tricks and turn into a rock. He's simply a former political activist turned office worker who has just flat ran out of hope and the world doesn't give him any reason to hold any, since a world without anyone under 18 and no more on the way is just about as good as done. And yet as belittled he is in the face of the dying world, he has to do something quite epic in trying to protect the only pregnant woman. The epic quality of the movie I'd argue rivals, perhaps even surpasses, that of Lord of the Rings.

I bought the DVD, so if any of you back in 'toga want to watch Children of Men after I get back, call me up. I definitely won't mind watching it again. I should be back on the 15th of June.


That's it for the reviews. Done more or less out of avoidance of work, but hey, if this was somewhat useful to you in choosing a movie then awesome.

- Thomas


Footnotes (4):

(1) For the WoW cognoscenti: they were in a raid fighting Gruul and lacked their best geared dps and had too many healers who kept getting too close to each other and getting each other killed with shatter(1a). Wiped I believe at least seven times before they gave up.

(1a) For the WoW non-cognoscenti: Shatter is a spell that does damage to the people who stand too close to each other, and increases as they get closer to each other. So people got to watch their distances less they get themselves and the poor blokes around them killed. I actually found this very amusing, mostly because I don't play WoW but also because that's just the kind of sadistic torture they put themselves through in raids. Go Blizzard, and En Taro Tassadar!

(2) Well, not really. So don't sue me.

(3) I think it's out of theatres now. Alternate methods are probably available. Also, DVD come out in a few weeks also. But hey, that means you can go see Children of Men instead. That's a good compromise.


(4) I wonder if there is a way to do superscript with this WYSIWYG editor. Hrm.

Measuring Fund Performance: Alpha/Beta

(For those of you who don't know, Jayant and I are working at a hedge fund in Connecticut. We don't know anything about investing or finance, but we sort of have to learn, so in the spirit of learning, Jayant and I will be presenting a series of posts, each explaining a specific topic related to finance or financing.)

Evaluating the performance of actively managed portfolios is an important topic. Percentage increase in value (return) may not necessarily give a complete picture of how well the fund or strategy worked. Many other factors may confound the relevance of the return percentage metric. Just as a batter's RBI alone doesn't tell you how good the player is, return (absent any other factors) is a poor measure of a fund's performance.

An important component missing is the idea of a benchmark - I tell you that I got an 67 on my final. Is that good or bad? Obviously, you need to know the mean to tell how well I did. Similarly, a fund's return is like my score - we need context.

Another component is adjusting for risk. In investing, risk encompasses both risk of losing value and risk of gaining value. Perhaps a better term would be "luck" - we want to subtract out the component of luck in the success or failure of a fund.

The model of evaluation is this: first, we select a baseline that we wish to compare our fund to. The S&P500 is a common choice.

Second, we adjust for risk by subtracting out each year's return by a risk-free asset (cash, for example, is a risk-free asset). Note that we do not have to take inflation into account - we are merely looking at percent changes. The actual value of the investment is irrelevant.

Next, we correlate the risk-adjusted returns with the risk-adjusted returns of our baseline fund. We create a set of pairs that we can then plot and perform a linear regression. The terms of the regression, alpha (the y-intercept) and beta (the slope) are the factors that we use to evaluate the fund's performance.

Alpha is a measure of how much better than baseline the fund performed. An alpha of 0 is no improvement (imagine plotting the baseline versus itself - the regression would necessarily pass through the origin). The higher the alpha, the more money the fund made over the baseline.

Beta is a measure of how much more or less volatile the fund's performance is relative to the baseline. If beta equals 1, the fund is just as volatile as the baseline (once again, imagine plotting the baseline against itself). Beta = 0 means the fund is perfectly stable - a horizontal regression line means that the fund performed the same no matter how well the baseline was doing.

In summary, returns do not give a complete picture of the performance of a fund. Instead, we evaluate the fund relative to a baseline, usually the S&P 500 or a similar index, adjust for risk, and evaluate a fund in terms of 2 factors: alpha, how much the fund would return if the baseline would have returned 0, and beta, the volatility or instability of the fund. These 2 factors together provide a slightly more complete view of fund performance.

-chris

Home!

I'm home! I've actually been home since last Friday...What to say? I'm watching The Sopranos on A&E, waiting for my mom to get home so I can eat. I'm posting from my brand new MacBook. The only way I could be more of a California yuppie would be if I was in a Starbucks, listening to my iPod, and cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions at the same time.

Yay, rambling is fun. It's weird not having anything to do, but I'm not complaining. I suppose I have a few things that I need to read before I start my job, but it's pretty dry stuff so I'm going to put that shit off. Jayant and I leave on June 6th - when do you UC kids come back?

Alright. More TV!

-chris

Starcraft 2

www.blizzard.com

that about sums it up.

if you havent seen it yet.

the new transformer trailer. dude....

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/transformers.html

-DK

Road Trip!

So I'm driving my car back home from PA with a couple of my brothers. I've got finals until Friday (5/11) so we should in toga around 5/13ish. That is assuming we only stop in the city which name starts with a "C" ends with an "O" and in the middle is "hicag."

Anyhow back to hardly studying.

Alex "is it studying hardly or hardly studying" C

summer internship

this is an update for my summer internship.
work has been not exactly what i've expected. i think i've only done one project where i get to do some designing, the others are all manual work.
on the first day the boss guy asked me to clean out their storage. the door to the storage room is 6 feet tall. i've hit my head on it 2 times now. you think i'd learn the first time..... now theres a big mark on my forehead. then after that i get to use my designing skills to find the perfect proportion on where the lable should be put. and then i get to hold a 2 thousand dollars camera to take reference photo of them.
day two, spending 4 hours fixing up their 2nd office and putting up a sink... from ikea. and then sort recipt.
today is the third day, i learned that if i bring my computer to work i might get to do stuff thats more related to design. maybe..

how are everyone else's summer/school stuff.

-D"miss speaking english"K

p.s. edit* who ever told me there are no more wii in taiwan is totally wrong. glare (irving). i can get atleast 20 in every store.

oh and i moded my wii. (obvious joke. haha...)

dk made an oops

i'm going to be at home over the summer, not in LA.