Throughout history, Jews have been denounced as “moneylenders,” yet, as Carl Menger noted, there are very good reasons why Jewish people have been overrepresented in banking and finance.

Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed provides a compelling framework to examine key political processes.

That is the topic of my latest Free Press column, here is one excerpt:

Though Donald Trump seems to be calling off his latest trade war, the United States has indeed retreated from free trade with a new era of tariffs. It’s a development I rue. But Canada just opened its market to Chinese cars. So Trump did in fact find the recipe to nudge an oft-protectionist Canada toward freer trade, though it is the opposite of what he might have been wishing for. Soon, Canada will have access to better and cheaper electric cars than what we can get in the United States. And even if you think that spyware could make those cars a security risk in Washington, D.C., due to spying possibilities, I am less worried about their proliferation in Quebec and Nova Scotia. Keep them out of Ottawa if need be.

The European Union just worked out a free trade agreement, pending final approval, with Mercosur, a trade bloc encompassing hundreds of millions of people in South America, a region that is likely to be more economically important in the future. The EU also announced it is likely to strike a free trade agreement with India, the most populous nation in the world and one of its fastest-growing economies. However imperfect these agreements may turn out to be, has there been any recent short period with so much progress in free trade?

And this on Mark Carney:

Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s speech on Tuesday garnered a lot of attention, but I think for the wrong reasons. He proclaimed the ability of “middle powers”—that is, Europe and countries like his own—to stand their ground against America and China, but he mentioned AI only in passing. He had no solution to an immediately pending world where Canada is quite dependent on advanced AI systems from American companies (often, incidentally, developed by Canadian researchers in the U.S.). That is likely to be the next major development in this North American relationship, and it will not increase the relative autonomy of Canada or of any other middle powers.

Carney has garnered praise for staking out such bold ground and standing up to Trump. The deeper reality is that Carney can “talk back” in the North American partnership because he knows America will defend Canada, including against Russia, no matter what. Most European countries cannot relax in the same manner, and thus they are often more deferential. What the reactions from Carney and the Europeans show is not any kind of growing independence for the middle powers, but rather a reality where you are either quite tethered to a major power—as Canada is to America—or you live in fear of being abandoned, which is the current status of much of Europe.

Recommended.

The post What Davos (and Mark Carney) get wrong appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

"National[ist] Conservatives have Trump Deification Syndrome (TDS).
    "They feel that He works in mysterious ways.
    "They are faith-based voters."

~ Keith Weiner

Concept Shakespeare, in which plays by William Shakespeare are made contemporary or presented in stylized, potentially more accessible ways, are nothing new to theater, though it’s an unusual quality for motion pictures.

There are a few examples of motion pictures that tackled William Shakespeare’s work in an unorthodox, novel or gimmicky manner.

Jean-Luc Godard’s bonkers 1987 “King Lear” is barely interested in the source material, offers none other than Woody Allen, Molly Ringwald, Burgess Meredith and Godard himself giving half-invested performances and plays like a private joke that only made Godard laugh.

Far more mainstream, if unique for its time, was Baz Luhrman’s “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet” (1996), in which Shakespeare’s character and dialog are interspersed with a modern setting and a kaleidoscopic, hyper-stylized MTV approach.

When it comes to “Hamlet,” arguably Shakespeare’s masterpiece and most performed work, most filmmakers either stick faithfully to the original text or use the narrative blueprint as a means to unfaithfully update the material and lose its beautiful language.

What Michael Almereyda’s 2000 film version of “Hamlet” has to offer is not a definitive interpretation of Shakespeare’s play. In fact, this is far from the most ideal, faithful version of the Bard’s two-act drama and is best viewed by those familiar with the story.

Newcomers may find the film perplexing and frustrating. For everyone else, particularly those familiar with “poor Yorick,” Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and infinitely quotable dialog like “The Play’s The Thing, Where Upon I’ll Catch the Conscience of the King,” this is something refreshing.

Opening in “New York City, 2000,” this “Hamlet” maintains the iambic pentameter (meaning, Shakespearean dialog) but is set in the last year of the 20th century. Taking place at “Hotel Elsinore” and portraying the events at “Denmark Corporation,” the tale of the Danish Prince is now an American yarn of businessmen who, literally, get blood on their hands.

Ethan Hawke plays Hamlet, now a tortured young amateur filmmaker whose wealthy mother Gertrude (Diane Venora) has re-married after the death of her husband (Sam Shepard). The Ghost of Hamlet’s father appears and informs his son that he was murdered by his wife’s new husband (Kyle MacLachlan).

Hamlet plots his revenge, dragging his secret love, Ophelia (Julia Stiles), down with him.

The cast is excellent. While this is Concept Shakespeare, no one is playing it that way, as everyone here is giving sincere, dedicated turns. Hawke is perfect, bringing his youthful, Gen-X teen angst to his portrayal.

Stiles is stronger than I expected as Ophelia and Liev Schrieber is first-rate as her brother, Laertes. Shepard is ideally cast and so is Steve Zahn, playing Rosencrantz as a barfly slacker.

Michael Almereyda’s HAMLET (2000) Starring Ethan Hawke, Julia Stiles, Sam Shepard, Kyle MacLachlan, Diane Venora, Bill Murray, and so many others.

Now playing on @criterionchannl in our Pop Shakespeare collection! https://t.co/vQzGa3zdVo pic.twitter.com/cHeoykl6Wu

— Criterion Collection (@Criterion) July 9, 2024

The biggest surprise is Bill Murray as Polonius: Murray isn’t a natural with Shakespearean prose and it shows. Instead, his self-styled performance, in which he plays the role as a bureaucratic suck-up, feels like Murray is adapting the language to his familiar persona.

It’s odd at first but fascinating to watch. Murray makes the role his own, even capping the “Look to it, I charge you” soliloquy by tying his daughter’s shoe.

There are other weird, post-modernist touches that bear mentioning. Hamlet gives his “To Be or Not To Be” speech while walking through the aisles of Blockbuster Video. As he broods from aisle to aisle, “The Crow: City of Angels” plays in the background.

The famous soliloquy has frequently been interpreted as a question of suicidal contemplation, something Hawke literalizes by opening the speech with a gun to his temple.

The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father vanishes into a Pepsi vending machine and, in a brilliant touch, “The Mouse Trap,” the play-within-the-play about Hamlet’s stepfather, is now a cheeky film-within-the-film.

Almereyda has made an experimental, weird but purposeful re-imagining. It has similarly deconstructive goals as Godard’s “King Lear” but maintains a clarity of theme and a fidelity to the source.

This low-budget and truncated yet still effective “Hamlet” is full of beauty and arrestingly different choices. Almereyda’s style is subtle, but he manages to find gorgeous imagery in unlikely places.

The one misstep is the climactic sword fight, which is now a rooftop sword match. It makes no sense having Hamlet brandish a gun but take on his opponent in a classical duel. While well-acted, this sequence is a dud and is the only one that could have used another unorthodox rethinking.

The artistic value of this “Hamlet” is that it’s distinctly Warhol-like, a reflection and dissection of established ideas and iconography of the source material, not a mere reproduction. Like a Warhol painting of an instantly recognizable individual, this begins with the expected, takes it apart and finds new ideas and a fresh staging of a durable, essential work of theater.

Kenneth Branagh’s three-hour, word-for-word 1996 adaptation, Laurence Olivier’s classic interpretation from 1948 or even Franco Zeffirelli’s exciting but questionable 1990 Mel Gibson version (where scenes were added) are better examples of faithful stage-to-screen adaptations that maintain the essence of the story.

Only Almereyda’s “Hamlet” offers the odd but one-of-a-kind pleasure of hearing Murray declare, “This Above All Else: To Thyself Be True.”

The post This Wasn’t Your Typical Take on ‘Hamlet’ appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.