simon baker

Limbo

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Travis and Emma sitting in a car

Old wine in new bottles, Limbo is a case – a jeroboam? – of the familiar served up in a starkly different way. A desert noir, an Outback noir more specifically, it’s the latest from Ivan Sen, whose Mystery Road about ten years ago opened up this territory. Now he exploits it, with a savage, scorched-earth aesthetic, in a story about a troubled cop – wrecked marriage, bit of a drug problem – rocking up in a remote Outback town to open the books on the unsolved murder of a local aborigine girl, though the nearest you get to the word “aborigine” in this film is “black fella”. Mystery Road had more or less … Read more

Margin Call

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Jeremy Irons in Margin Call

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 6 March Alan Greenspan born, 1926 On this day in 1926, the economist Alan Greenspan was born in New York City. His father was a stockbroker and analyst but Alan initially seemed to be heading towards a career in music, studying clarinet at Juilliard, playing with Woody Herman’s band, before switching to economics. He gained a bachelor’s and a master’s in economics before becoming an analyst, then a consultant. In 1974 he was appointed by President Gerald Ford as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Greenspan was a member of the Group of Thirty (wise men of economics, essentially) in … Read more