~ Mark

You don’t have to have perfect wisdom to get very rich – just a bit better than average over a long period of time.

Charlie Munger. Applies to more than investing, of course.

Classical Fans Tell Stories Of ‘First Loves’ : Deceptive Cadence : NPR

~ Mark

I was homeless, and working holding a sandwich board on the side of the road. It was so dull! I saved up for weeks and got a Sony Discman for $50.00. Now I had something to listen to while I worked. The Discman was so expensive that all I could afford was an Excelsior Gold recording of the fourth and sixth symphonies that was lying in a discount bin for a dollar-fifty. When I was playing it for the first time, in my board, pacing up and down the block — because if you stopped moving at anytime, the police would ticket you for loitering — I suddenly burst into tears. I felt like Beethoven was there with me, saying, “I know this sucks. But look— here is the whole world, outside, birds, the sky, the sun, and here you are! You are in it! Buck up!”

Classical Fans Tell Stories Of ‘First Loves’ : Deceptive Cadence : NPR

~ Mark

I never took a business class, except accounting. When I was a boy, there was a man who came to the club every day at 10:30am. I asked my dad about him – he had such a good life! My Dad said, “He gathers up and renders dead horses.” I learned from that.

Charlie Munger.
~ Mark

We also look for three things: intelligence, energy and integrity. If [they] don’t have the latter, then you should hope they don’t have the first two either. If someone doesn’t have integrity, then you want them to be dumb and lazy.

Warren Buffett.

Et Dieu… créa la femme (And God Created Woman)

~ Mark

Et Dieu… créa la femme (And God Created Woman). This is the film where Brigitte Bardot first got attention for the sex kitten thing. It’s an okay story, nothing special. I did appreciate many of the shots, lighting, and sets, especially the interiors. Definitely skippable, though. A funny coincidence: both this movie and the one I watched right before it, Blast of Silence, feature scenes where the emotional tension is heightened by quick cuts to musicians playing Latin music on hand drums. I assume this is a cliché that appears in other films of the era. See also: mad scene.

Blast of Silence

~ Mark

Blast of Silence. A Criterion essay cleverly calls it “the best movie ever made about a common, important, and unjustly neglected American experience: the really bad business trip”. It’s a great film noir that will only take 77 minutes of your time. It came out near the tail end of the genre’s peak, but in some ways it feels prototypical. Distilled. Lovely shots of New York City as he wanders in a sort of malaise. The hard-boiled voiceover really drives the misery home. Gangsters, dames, old friends-who-aren’t. Loneliness and disaffection. You know the clock is ticking on this guy from the very first moments. Nice appreciation at Bright Lights.

~ Mark

oldhollywood:

The rejection slip Essanay Film Manufacturing Company (1907-1925), a motion picture studio mostly remembered today for its series of Charlie Chaplin films, sent screenwriters whose submissions were found wanting (via Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture)