The Daily Biff - 2007 03 22

Currently playing on my computer (tune in: pls, asx)

Thu, 22 Mar 2007

Movie Review: Million Dollar Baby

Title:	Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Rating:	6/10

Ok, yes, Million Dollar Baby came out a long time ago. But Kristy and I are just getting around to seeing this "Oscar winner". It's hard to separate the political charged content of this movie from the performances. But if you do, you will find that apart from good performances by the three leads (especially that turned in by Eastwood himself), Million Dollar Baby is just an average film. Moving, yes. Profound, no.

The story tells of a 30-something Hillary Swank that wants to box. She has picked out a trainer (Eastwood), but the trainer will have none of it. So she Shows Her Resolve(tm) and eventually Eastwood begrudingly agrees to train her a la Meredith Burgess in Rocky. She quickly becomes very good (of course).

Meanwhile, certain elements of the story... the old family dog, the stereotyped white-trash family... are all introduced so that we can feel some sense of empathy for Swank's character when she decides to kill herself (oh... oops... uh, spoiler alert). Frankly, it doesn't work... and I'll give you two reasons why. Reason #1: During the entire movie we are bombarded by the fact that Swank's character isn't a quitter, that she can pull herself up by her bootstraps, she can scrape by during the tough times, etc. Yet when the going gets tough, the tough well... quit. Reason #2 is the real life example of Reason #1, namely: Christopher Reeve.

Quitting, e.g. suicide, is not a real compelling reason to make a film in my humble opinion. Pass.

:: Posted by rus on Thu, 22 Mar 2007 11:40 pm
:: Filed under /reviews/movies

[0 comments] [permanent link]

Fired
I fired one of our financial managers today (Chuck) after 7+ years of mixed results. It wasn't personal (Chuck is a fine person), it was just business. Chuck had recently moved from Morgan Stanley to UBS and requested that each of his clients move with him. And so today I declined his invitation, officially ending our business relationship. Chuck's key adviser stayed with Morgan Stanley and now works with another team; we have decided to follow this adviser to her new team.

Yes, this was big. Real. Big. Hopefully the next seven years will yield better returns than the last seven.

:: Posted by rus on Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:19 pm
:: Filed under /daily_journal/2007

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