The release of Margin Call—which fictionally (and rather scathingly) chronicles 24 hours in the life of a major Wall Street firm during the September 2008 financial crisis—in the midst of the Occupy Wall Street protests is a further indication of a change in global popular mood.

 

The film by J.C. Chandor of course took some time to prepare and create; it has now emerged in a situation where the hostility of millions for the bankers and the super-rich is an acknowledged fact of everyday life. It is to the credit of the filmmakers that they embarked on the project, with whatever trepidations and limitations, when they did.

Margin Call attempts to enter into the thinking, motivations and psychology of the Wall Street power brokers who helped crash the world economy in 2008.

Norman Corwin, one of the last living links to radio’s golden age, a producer and dramatist whose innovative use of sound effects and unusual narrative devices attracted new audiences to serious programming, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 101.

His death was confirmed by Chris Borjas, his caretaker.

Mr. Corwin was a prolific writer and producer for CBS in the 1930s and ’40s, best known for his dramatizations of American history, vivid human-interest reports from abroad during World War II, adaptations of American literary works and dozens of radio plays.

One of his most celebrated broadcasts came eight days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when four American radio networks simultaneously carried “We Hold These Truths,” a kind of docudrama produced for the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, with performances by Orson Welles, James Stewart, Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore and Walter Huston.

The program, broadcast live from Hollywood, ended with a live speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House and a performance from New York of the national anthem by Leopold Stokowski and the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

 

David Zelag Goodman, a prolific screenwriter who, with Sam Peckinpah, wrote “Straw Dogs” and was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the romantic comedy “Lovers and Other Strangers,” died on Monday in Oakland, Calif. He was 81.

The cause was progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurological disorder, his wife, Marjorie Goodman, said.

Mr. Goodman’s most memorable work involved converting a Gordon Williams novel, “The Siege of Trencher’s Farm,” into the psychological thriller “Straw Dogs” (1971). The film starred Dustin Hoffman as an American mathematician pushed to violence by marauding hooligans at his adopted British home. A remake was released this year.

Elizabeth Taylor, the actress who dazzled generations of moviegoers with her stunning beauty and whose name was synonymous with Hollywood glamour, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 79.

When you're a young, beautiful and largely unknown actress, one of the biggest decisions you'll have to face is whether or not you're willing to appear nude in a movie that could launch your career.

The arrival of the Coen brothers' movie "True Grit" on Wednesday is likely to bring Charles Portis a new surge of attention he has no use for. Mr. Portis, the author of the 1968 novel on which the new film is based (as was the 1969 John Wayne version) is allergic to fame.

The invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq is one of the major imperialist crimes of the modern era. It deserves to be treated and re-treated by filmmakers, American filmmakers in particular.

Jodie Foster has been good friends with Mel Gibson since they worked together on 'Maverick' in 1994, and that won't change because of his ugly racist rants taped by his ex, she tells MORE magazine.

If one theme animates "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers," it's the theme of decision-making. The film's subject, Vietnam War-era whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, earned his PhD in economics at Harvard in the arcane subject of decision theory. There's even an Ellsberg Paradox in experimental economics, which describes people's behavior when faced with uncertain outcomes.

As a strategic analyst with the Rand Corp. and the Pentagon in the early 1960s, Ellsberg specialized in decision-making in crisis conditions. His expertise led him to contribute to a top-secret report commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1967, studying the history of U.S. decision-making in Indochina.

The acclaimed director may have to cool his heels in prison for months.

The film "Iron Man 2" isn't set to come out until next summer, but you would never have guessed that from a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly featuring Robert Downey Jr. summoning all the gravitas a man in red plastic can muster.

To be fair, the magazine was covering the cinematic buzz coming out of the San Diego Comic-Con last month. The gathering served as a marketing vehicle for upcoming movies, including "Jonah Hex" and "Iron Man 2." But when people weren't gawking at Megan Fox ("Jonah Hex") and Scarlett Johansson ("Iron Man 2"), they may have taken in a panel with comics writers. After all, Comic-Con started as a way for comic fans to buy, sell and discuss the objects of their passion.

But the celebrity dazzle obscured the strange reality: Movies based on comic books often turn into box-office hits, but their sources rarely see a related boost. Why?

I haven't seen the movie, nor do I plan to. I thought "Borat" was humorous in places, but that it mostly took advantage of simple, unaware people, many who had no chance to even understand the crude joke Sacha Cohen was playing in them. Anyone can make fun of people who are not aware of other cultures . To my mind, "Borat" was a cheap and offensive brand of humor.

I'm guessing "Bruno" is more of the same. From what I've read it tries to inflame the prejudices that some have against gays, while at the same time laughing at them. This seems to be the only style of humor Sacha Baron Cohen can do. Pretend to be someone and then make fun of the people who believe you are who you say you are.

But I'm wondering if gays are offended by his use of stereotyping and other over-the-top behavior in portrayal of a supposed "gay" person. Some comedians would be able to pull this off if they had more of an affection for other people.

Cohen is just using people to further his one-trick career.