Last Minute Gift Idea + Best Movies of the Year

My favorite movie of the year comes out on DVD this Tuesday. In the true spirit of the holidays, I've informed my family that someone *must* get it for me for Christmas.

The movie? Once [amazon]. Anyone who's the tiniest bit romantic should love this movie along with anyone who likes music similar to Damien Rice. It's hard to explain beyond that. It's a romantic musical but it's not a typical romance nor a typical musical. It's just a great story about two people meeting and developing a relationship. (Sort of in the documentary-style spirit of my favorite movie, Before Sunrise, but less romantic.) Very simple and realistic yet amazingly beautiful, along with great musical performances. (Bonus movie gift recommendation: Collector's Editions of Blade Runner come out on Tuesday in DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray!)

This seems as good a place as any for a "Best of the year" list, so here's the cream of the crop for films this year. I chose to do a top 3 because no other films I've seen come very close to these picks.

1. Once
2. Away From Her
3. Enchanted

Once was a joy to watch and kept me thinking about it for weeks after seeing it. Away From Her, about a man dealing with the onset of Alzheimer's in his wife, is one of those difficult to watch movies that truly deserve to be watched. Lastly, we have Disney's Enchanted. This is a perfect "desert island movie" that you could watch over and over and never get bored. Amy Adams is funny and cute as the princess-to-be while James Marsden is surprisingly hilarious as the prince.

Two musicals on in my top 3 movies of the year? I'm surprised myself. I'm definitely not a fan of traditional musicals but these films show that the genre can be much more broad than we usually see. (By the way, my favorite pre-2007 musical is The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.)

Lastly, let me say that I have seen No Country for Old Men and it's not the best movie of the year despite what many others have said. It's interesting, for sure, but Stephen Hunter's review hits the nail on the head. It's an amazing display of skill but the joke's on us and it's not that funny.

Why aren't prostitutes paid like stadium vendors?

Tonight I watched a documentary called American Pimp. It was fairly interesting although it was difficult to watch the pimps talk so easily about manipulating women. I think I was made most uncomfortable by the fact that I sometimes felt that they were kind of charming. (That was an awkward sentence. Unintentional symbolism? Yup, that's it.)

Anyways, the most interesting thing I learned was the percentage that prostitutes get of their revenue. Zilch. (I'm not sure how exactly they're paid but that much was clear.) This seems like a bad business plan since it gives little incentive to the women to generate additional revenue. That is, in theory the pimps could make more money by giving the prostitutes a cut so that they work harder. Stadium vendors, for example, get paid based on how much they sell. What is different about prostitution so that this business model doesn't apply?

Perhaps the answer is that it's not different and the industry is due for a shake-up from an economics savvy pimp. But street prostitution has been around so long that I doubt a flawed strategy has persisted. Especially when the alternative is so obvious. Thus, I do think it's correct to ask why the commision-based model doesn't apply.

I'm tempted to relate the situation to the one described by Levitt and Venkatesh of crack dealers working for peanuts in hopes that they can work their way up the organization. But there is no up for these women. Or perhaps "up" is an occasional night out with their pimp. (Okay, I'm getting more depressed now.)

Alternatively, pimps may not need to offer a carrot (percentage of revenue) if their sticks (psychological and physical punishment) are effective enough to get their prostitutes to work as hard as they can. I think this is more likely the case. The pimps can easily monitor their prostitutes effort and punish them if they don't seem to be working hard. Both the cost of monitoring and the cost of punishing are probably low. Monitoring is cheap since the pimps don't have much else to do and the cost of punishing is cheap since the women lack other options. (Well, they could go to another pimp but I wouldn't rule out oligopoly behavior amongst the pimps as far as this is concerned.)

Turning the question around, why aren't stadium vendors paid like prostitutes? I think it's likely that monitoring and punishment are relatively expensive. (And, obviously, punishment is limited.) So, anyone have the data to test this hypothesis? (Perhaps a better question is: what data would you need to test this hypothesis?)

A trip to the movies

I know I'm not alone in being irritated by people talking during a movie. But I *really* hate it. For me, going to the theater involves strategy to minimize the likelihood that someone talking will bother me. The most important thing is to make sure no one is sitting directly behind you because their whispers and popcorn-chomping will usually carry forward. Here are some strategies I have tried:

1. Get to the theater at the last minute so no one is likely to come in after you and take the seats behind you.

I don't like to get anywhere at the last minute so this one's a no go for me. Plus you might end up with really bad seats.

2. Get to the theater early enough to get seats in the very back.

This is my personal favorite. I'm usually willing to pay an extra 10-15 minutes so that I don't have to deal with annoying people or I don't have to engage in #3.


3. First, find seats no one is sitting behind. Second, make people think sitting behind you might be a bad idea.

I'll often rest my hands on top of my head and shift awkwardly in my seat. Nothing too blatant. On a related note, to incentivize people away from sitting in front of you, you can always rest your feet against the seat in front of you. (On the other hand, they may choose to sit in behind you as an alternative. And putting your feet *on* the seat in front of you comes off as rude if there's some possibility that someone would want to sit there.) Of course, interfering with someones experience once they've sat down is unacceptable.


4. If all of these have failed, you can always move to more attractive seats once the movie has started.


The only problem with this solution is that you may not have very good options to move to.

If you're wondering, I went to see Two Days in Paris this weekend. It didn't meet my expectations based on its high (89%) tomatometer score. It wasn't funny enough to make its cynicism bearable. Plus it was weird because the story was told from Julie Delpy's character's perspective while the conflict was centered around her costar's character. Strange choice although maybe not surprising since she was also the director.