I’ve seen the trailers for The Bridge for the past few months. Now, our local Buffalo News TV critic weighed in with a rave review. I’m sure there will be others. Like The Killing, The Bridge is a dark drama involving a murder. The bridge referred to in the title is the Bridge of the Americas that serves as a border crossing between El Paso and Juárez, Mexico. A corpse shows up in the exact middle of of the bridge making the case both American and Mexican. Like The Killing with obsessive Detective Sarah Linden, The Bridge features Diane Kruger as Detective Sonya Cross, a member of the El Paso police department who suffers from Asperger Syndrome. I’m looking forward to this new series which begins tonight on FX at 10 P.M. EDT. Check for the time in your area.

Director Joss Whedon took a break from editing what was to become the biggest movie of 2012, The Avengers, and with a little help from his friends shot Much Ado About Nothing at his home in 12 days. Whedon’s version is different from the classic Kenneth Branagh/Emma Thompson. It’s shot in black & white. The movie is set in the present. I fell in love with Amy Acker as Beatrice (I had also fallen in love with Emma Thompson as Beatrice so at least I’m consistent). This Shakespearian tale of love, evil, and forgiveness has always been a favorite of mine. There’s more here than meets the eye. GRADE: A-

Robert Shiller teaches at Princeton University and is famous for coining the term “irrational exuberance” (and he wrote a book about it, too). And, if you’re watching the news and the commentator refers to the “Case-Shiller Index” (a national home price measure), that’s Shiller, too. In Finance and the Good Society, Shiller makes the case for fixing capitalism. Capitalism, for all its flaws, is still the best economic system to generate economic activity. But flaws like “too big to fail,” “the 1%,” “CEO compensation,” “insider trading,” and buying political influence threaten capitalism. Shiller addresses these problems in a sensible, realistic fashion. In fact, if you want to you can take Shiller’s Economics 252: Financial Markets at http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/econ-252-11. Shiller avoids most of the jargon usually mucking up books like this. If you want a readable, clear, and intelligence book on our economic problems–and options to solve them–try Finance and the Good Society.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Preface vii
Introduction: Finance, Stewardship, and Our Goals 1
Part One: Roles and Responsibilities
1. Chief Executive Offi cers 19
2. Investment Managers 27
3. Bankers 37
4. Investment Bankers 45
5. Mortgage Lenders and Securitizers 50
6. Traders and Market Makers 57
7. Insurers 64
8. Market Designers and Financial Engineers 69
9. Derivatives Providers 75
10. Lawyers and Financial Advisers 81
11. Lobbyists 87
12. Regulators 94
13. Accountants and Auditors 100
14. Educators 103
15. Public Goods Financiers 107
16. Policy Makers in Charge of Stabilizing the Economy 111
17. Trustees and Nonprofit Managers 119
18. Philanthropists 124
Part Two: Finance and Its Discontents
19. Finance, Mathematics, and Beauty 131
20. Categorizing People: Financiers versus Artists and Other Idealists 135
21. An Impulse for Risk Taking 139
22. An Impulse for Conventionality and Familiarity 143
23. Debt and Leverage 151
24. Some Unfortunate Incentives to Sleaziness Inherent in Finance 159
25. The Significance of Financial Speculation 168
26. Speculative Bubbles and Their Costs to Society 178
27. Inequality and Injustice 187
28. Problems with Philanthropy 197
29. The Dispersal of Ownership of Capital 209
30. The Great Illusion, Then and Now 219

While I am firmly in the Starbucks Blonde Coffee camp, I took a chance on this bag of new Starbucks Mocha Coffee. TARGET was having a “Buy Four Bags of Starbucks Coffee, Get a $10 Starbucks Gift Card” Sale. So I bought three bags of Starbucks Blonde Coffee (Veranda and Willow) and a bag of Starbucks Mocha Coffee. After using up the bag of Mocha, I’d say I’d buy it again. The Mocha taste is prominent (like a hazelnut coffee) and the underlying coffee taste is bold. I’ll drink this Starbucks Mocha as a change from the Blonde coffees, but it will be just an occasional switch. Give this new Starbucks Mocha a try, you might enjoy it.

Frances Ha tells the story of a twenty-something wannabe dancer who struggles to find her footing in New York City (with detours to Sacramento and Paris). Greta Gerwig captures the quirky character of Frances perfectly. Frances’ best friend, Sophie (ably played by Mickey Sumner), struggles for her place in the world, too. Plenty of random events happen which makes the plot lurch from episode to episode. Co-written (with Greta Gerwig) and directed by Noah Baubach, Frances Ha is a different kind of coming-of-age movie. GRADE: B

Back in 1943, when A. E. Van Vogt was just beginning his career as a science fiction writer, Van Vogt wrote a fantasy story for Unknown Worlds. The setting was a depleted planet Earth 200 million years in the future (with the same tone as Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth stories). Ptath, summoned from a previous time line, arrives in this future with an impaired memory. Through trickery, Ptath is manipulated into disarming several of the guardian spells that keep the forces of Evil at bay. Ptath, like many of Van Vogt’s characters, operates with fragmentary information and has to figure out what the Truth is. Even in this early work, plenty of Van Vogtian plot and character devices are at work. You can see the signs of Van Vogt’s future greatness in The Book of Ptath.

The Six-Gun Tarot is R. S. Belcher’s first novel so that explains some of the problems with this weird western. Let’s start with the cast of characters: a sheriff who seemingly can’t be killed, a banker’s wife who belongs to a secret order of pirates and assassins, a deputy who was once a coyote. On top of all that, the End of the World teeters on the brink as an ancient evil attempts to break out of its prison. There’s a lot going on in this book. Too much, really. I wish Belcher had focused on one or two of his exotic characters and told their stories. The Six-Gun Tarot has a “kitchen sink” feel to it as the author threw in every plot and off-beat character he could think of. But, despite my quibbles, I’m looking forward to R. S. Belcher’s next book, The 32 Killers of Golgotha! GRADE: B

The new Lone Ranger movie opens tomorrow, but today this double feature starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels brings back a lot of memories at a bargain price ($5.99 on AMAZON). In the 1950s, The Lone Ranger TV program was a fixture on Saturdays. I watched every episode (but, the truth be told I was also a big fan of Sky King). The Lone Ranger and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold showed up at our local movie theater. Yes, they’re low budget compared to the July 3rd Lone Ranger extravaganza, but fun nonetheless. Sadly, westerns are pretty much a dead genre today, but I still hold fond memories of the Lone Ranger and Tonto and those thrilling tales of yesteryear.

I’m a huge fan of Mark Bittman’s cookbooks. I use HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING constantly. In VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 Bittman shows how he lost 35 pounds by adopting a vegan life-style during the day and then eating anything he wanted after 6 P.M. Bittman provides 60 recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to demonstrate how changing your diet to a more plant-based one pays off in better health and weight-loss. After reading VB6, I’ve decided to give Bittman’s strategy a try. If it works, you’ll see the results at the Albany BOUCHERCON! Check out Bittma’s video below.