Feb

5

BIG MIRACLE aka Everybody Loves Whales

Directed by Ken Kwapis Reviewed by Marion D.S. Dreyfus

Cast: Drew Barrymore, Kristen Bell, John Krasinski, Dermot Mulroney, Vinessa Shaw, Ted Danson, Stephen Root, James LeGros, Rob Riggle, Bruce Altman

Drew Barrymore is the very dictionary pic of a bleeding-heart liberal, and naturally, her character is a Barbra Streisand-style loudmouth (in “The Way We Were” and a dozen other irritating stereotyped Jewish campus radicals)(albeit cute) called Rachel Kramer.

We are up in Barrow, Alaska: whale country. It’s 1988. A newsie reporter (Krasinski) import recruits his ex-gal pal (Barrymore) to rescue the family of gray whales trapped under the ice up near the Arctic Circle. This event really happened. It was apparently all over the papers and on every news program for weeks. (Were you aware of this ubiquitous unfolding drama when it was playing out? What were you doing then that you could have missed this 24/7 rescue story in the far north?) Three whales caught amid a vast unbroken swath of ice, with winter closing in, intuit it is almost impossible for the family to escape into the open seas without asphyxiating.

The open space they keep surfacing in is fast icing in as the temperatures plummet to 20, 30 and 40 below. Forced to come up for breath every few moments at the only opening in the frozen waterway, and whether the whales in the film are real or animated synthesized creatures, the heart goes out to them.

They know they can’t make the miles-long swim to the open water without breathing. How the news media alerted the listening and watching public—especially school kids, but not confined to them alone—to their predicament makes for a cheering tale. Along with the good-natured indigenous Alaskans are the charming, mild-mannered talents of John Krasinski, a latter-day Jimmy Stewart, we think, for cowlicky, grinning Aw shucks-ism; the beauteous Kristen Bell (almost too pretty to believe, even as a newscaster, even in the almost total immersion cold-weather protective swaddling everyone sports) and sturdy Dermot Mulroney as a chopper rescue and haul pilot for incoming color and opposing viewpoints.

Ted Danson is a standout as a dim but PR-savvy oil magnate. (No matter how adorably such films are premised, it’s always appropriate to point a finger at the big bad oil companies and sigh with delight at the radical noisemakers at the company proxy meets. What’s redeeming here is that the Richie Rich’es realize it’s in their interest to help these magnificent creatures survive, even if it costs millions, and does not figure on the company books.) There is lots of joshing nudge-nudges from 20:20 hindsight.

The Ken Kwapis fluke-tailed nature story is refreshing, wrenching, full of icy, snowy vistas and wise Inupiak elders. It is also (Holy blubber, Batman!) full of the fattest-looking cast this side of a Goodyear blimp-assembly warehouse. Everyone is hugger-muggered in down and bulk, puffy scarves and fur-lined everything else. Faces are scraggly with ice-particled beards, and pens stick fast to the absent-minded tongue.

Among the film’s charms are the interpolations of actual news clips of Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, lovely Connie Chung, “President Reagan” and a flotilla of much-fresher-looking TV stars of today’s vintage (Larry King’s suspenders are some 23 years younger). A Russian ice-breaker and its tough crew feature prominently, as do the inklings of a Cold War thaw. Near the end, the camera cuts to a surprise talking-head TV appearance of a well-known personality, catching alert audience members by surprise, though it is perfectly reasonable to see this person in that setting at that time. Another excellent aspect is that the Inupiak are shown as deeply moral, ethical people with a great deal of dignity and thoughtfulness about their millennial ways.

No nudity. No Anglo-Saxonisms. A small cache of extraneous subplots as the predictable people find their predictable liplocks. A film for children (even if they don’t know a soul in the cast and clips of the original incident) and their parents, singles or teams of sled dogs, immigrants and fishermen.

A big hand to “Big Miracle.”

Feb

5

Jackie Robinson Taking a Bat to Prejudice:

Jackie Robinson swinging a bate many New Yorkers leaving home for work on April 15, 1947, he wore a suit, tie and camel-hair overcoat as he headed for the subway. To his wife he said, "Just in case you have trouble picking me out, I'll be wearing number 42."

No one had trouble spotting the black man in the Dodgers' white home uniform when he trotted out to play first base at Ebbets Field. Suddenly, only 399, not 400, major league players were white. Which is why 42 is the only number permanently retired by every team.

Jackie Robinson's high school teachers suggested a career in gardening. Robinson's brother, Mack, had finished second to Jesse Owens in the 200-meter dash at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Whites who won medals found careers opened for them. Mack, writes Jonathan Eig in " Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season," wore his Olympic jacket as a Pasadena, Calif., street sweeper, while Owens found himself racing against horses at county fairs, "one small step removed from a circus act."

To appreciate how far the nation has come, propelled by what began 60 years ago today, consider not the invectives that Robinson heard from opponents' dugouts and fans but the way he had been praised. "Dusky Jack Robinson," as the Los Angeles Times called him, alerting readers to the race of UCLA's four-sport star, ran with a football "like it was a watermelon and the guy who owned it was after him with a shotgun."

 full article here.

Feb

3

This is a field perhaps with some semblance to speculation with all the things that can go wrong and given the difficulties in pinpointing and salvaging potentially valuable targets.

Following is a recently reported multi-billion dollar find (of Russian platinum and gold).

The company is Sub Sea Research:

The Sub Sea Research crew had spent months in 2008 futilely scouring a wide swath of ocean off Cape Cod in search of the SS Port Nicholson, a merchant ship that sank in 1942 while laden with platinum now believed to be worth $3 billion.

But on the morning of Aug. 27, 2008, as the rest of the crew slept, deckhand Dave St. Cyr spotted an unmistakable three-dimensional sonar image on the monitor in front of him. It was a large ship resting on its side.

“I woke up the captain, and I said to him, ‘You might want to see this,’ ’’ St. Cyr said.

By the end of this month, the Maine company expects to begin harvesting the bountiful treasure, considered to be among the most valuable precious-metal finds ever from a shipwreck. Playing a key role in the effort: a remotely operated vehicle tethered to the Sea Hunter, a 214-foot salvage ship currently docked in East Boston.

The Port Nicholson, a British steamer, was sailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to New York when a German U-boat torpedoed it during World War II, despite a heavy military escort. Four people died, while 87 were rescued.

Since then, it has remained on the ocean floor about 30 miles off Provincetown. The cargo, then valued at about $53 million, was a lend-lease payment to the United States from the Soviet Union.

“Maybe I’ll buy a small island in the Caribbean,’’ joked Greg Brooks, a partner in the private Sub Sea Research company that searches for shipwrecks worldwide. He and his wife Kathy started the company in 1984.

Sub Sea Research obtained legal rights to the shipwreck and its cargo after completing an admiralty claim in federal court and publishing announcements in three major newspapers. A judge will determine a final ruling on ownership after the cargo is lifted out of the water.

About a decade ago, Sub Sea Research brought up a few million dollars in silver coins from a pirate ship off the coast of Puerto Rico, and most recently the crew focused on shipwrecks off the coast of Haiti. But with the political instability that has upended that country in recent decades, securing any sort of legal agreement was difficult, Brooks said.

“There are shipwrecks from the 1500s still there, about 20 or so really good ones, and we’ve tried to negotiate,’’ Brooks said.

In May 2008, the crew left Haiti and returned to Maine. That month, the company’s historical researcher learned about the Port Nicholson through recently declassified files, and the search was on. It took months to find the ship, because it was about 15 miles from where it was reportedly sunk.

After a sonar device located the wreckage, the crew sent down a remotely operated vehicle with a camera, which identified the shipwreck b y the lettering on the side of the vessel and other markers. The crew then used the remote to search for the cargo, but after numerous passes were unable to locate it.

Crew members then realized, through research of another shipwreck, that at least 30 boxes scattered in and around the ship that seemed to have been used for ammunition were actually full of platinum ingots. Each box weighs approximately 130 pounds, too heavy for the Sub Sea Research remote to lift. The crew is currently awaiting arrival of the stronger remotely operated vehicle to lift the boxes.

Turning the ingots, or bars, into cash will take some considerable effort.

“It’s not an easy task,’’ Brooks said. “There’s a good possibility there are about 10 tons of gold down there, too, and maybe some industrial diamonds. “We know people who own smelting manufacturing companies who will buy what we have,’’ he said. “But at the same time, we don’t want the market to drop because of this. We’ll have to be careful.’’

From this article.

Feb

3

The capacity for rigorous thought; the flexibility and resilience to adapt to changing circumstances; the love of disciplined risk-taking; the hungry intellect: perhaps successful speculators already display those qualities in other life domains and then learn to apply them to markets.

Feb

2

The meeting of the NYC Junto on Thursday February 2, 2012 will feature the annual celebration of Ayn Rand 's birthday; main speaker will be Donald Luskin . All are invited: General Society Library, 20 West 44 St., between 5th and 6th Aves., NYC, 7:30pm.

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