Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 9 – People making more cause other people to make less.

Posted on July 4, 2015 by ralphkoppel

Alternate Assumption: People making more cause other people to also make more.

Income inequality is one of the hottest political issues in America today. People don’t think it is fair that some people make substantially more money than other people. Proposed solutions include increasing taxes on the wealthy, raising the minimum wage, and limiting the pay of CEO’s. The key assumption in this whole debate is that the total amount of wealth is a fixed pie. People who take a bigger slice of pie force others to take a smaller slice.

It is a basic principle of economics that wealth is not a fixed pie. It grows and contracts. The key to growing wealth is voluntary transactions. For example, you buy a cup of coffee. You are buying the coffee because to you the coffee is worth more than the money that you are paying for it. The coffee shop owner sells you the coffee because to him or her, the money you pay is worth more than the coffee. You both feel you are better off by making this transaction. If not, you wouldn’t make the transaction. This transaction has made both you and the coffee shop owner better off than if you hadn’t made the transaction. In essence, you are both a little bit wealthier.

The key here is that the transaction is voluntary. If the transaction is not voluntary, wealth is not increased. If someone steals your money, wealth is not created. When government taxes you, wealth is not created. It is only when the transaction is voluntary, when both parties to the transaction think they are better off, that we create wealth.

Steve Jobs was exceptionally good at creating wealth. When he returned to Apple as CEO, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. Now Apple has the highest market value of any company in America according to the latest rankings by Fortune magazine. Steve Jobs earned billions as a result. He was not the only one who benefited, however. Millions more benefited from his success. pPeople who invested in Apple, work for Apple, work for companies who sell to Apple, work for companies who develop software for Apple, or who simply enjoy using iPhones and iPads are all better off. Would all of these people have better lives if we stopped Steve Jobs from creating wealth because he made too much money?

In the feudal societies of the middle ages, most transactions were not voluntary. Nobles forced serfs to work for them and taxed from them just about everything they had. Kingdoms grew wealthy not from innovating and creating but from plundering weaker kingdoms. In these feudal societies, the assumption that one person growing wealthier causes others to become poorer was valid. It is also why society did not progress for over a thousand years. This assumption is also true in a modern autocratic society where dictators plunder from the rest of the population.

It is not true, however, in societies where most transactions are voluntary, where there is economic freedom. The Heritage foundation ranks each country by economic freedom. Look at their rankings: 2015 Index of Economic Freedom. Note that the most economically free countries are also the wealthiest countries. The least free countries are the poorest countries.

Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who is currently running for president, is calling for a top tax rate of 90%? Why should an investor put money into a risky new company that might become the next Apple if when the company fails, the investor loses everything, but if the company succeeds, the investor only gets to keep 10% of the gain. The investor doesn’t make this investment and just puts the money in the bank for a safe low interest. As a result, society loses the next Apple.

The belief that people making more cause other people to make less is a very popular, very dangerous, very bad assumption.

The Most Memorable Movies of All Time – Part 6: The Greatest Movie of All Time

Posted on June 14, 2015 by ralphkoppel

Today I complete my look at memorable movies by selecting the most memorable movie of all time. My last four segments each looked at movies over 20 years and at the end I chose the most memorable movie from each time period. Here are the links to my previous installments:

The Most Memorable Movies of All Times – Part 1

The Most Memorable Movies of All Time – Part 2: the 30s and 40s

The Most Memorable Movies of All Time – Part 3: the 50s and 60s

The Most Memorable Movies of All Time – Part 4: the 70s and 80s

The Most Memorable Movies of All Time – Part 5: the 90s and 00s

To recap, here are the criteria for choosing the most memorable movies:

Memorable movies become part of our culture. They may directly become part of our culture, showcase stars who become part of our culture, or launch a genre that becomes part of our culture.
Sequels of memorable movies are not eligible.

These were my picks for the most memorable movie of each period:

30s and 40s – The Wizard of Oz
50s and 60s – The Sound of Music
70s and 80s – Star Wars
90s and 00s – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Which of these is the most memorable?

The Sound of Music was obviously a highly memorable movie, but I don’t think it has had nearly the same impact on our culture as the other three. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone had had an enormous impact on our culture, but it is still fairly recent. If forty years from now it still is as big as it is now, then if I am still around I will reconsider this elimination, but for now I am thinking it just hasn’t been around long enough to be called the most memorable movie of all time.

This leaves us with two movies: The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars. I have gone back and forth in my mind between these two movies. My first inclination was to choose the Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz was released 76 years ago and it would be difficult to find anybody of any age who was raised in America who doesn’t know and love this movie. With that being said, I don’t think any movie has ever had the impact of Star Wars on our culture.

In December 1977, I worked in the toy department of a department store. Christmas was coming and, over six months since the debut of Star Wars, the toys were still not available. We sold gift cards that could be placed under the Christmas tree and could be exchanged for Star Wars toys when they became available. Star Wars, in fact, was the pioneer in merchandising toys based on movies.

Many years later, in the mid nineties, I remember walking through a toy store, more than ten years since the Return of the Jedi and well before the prequels were released. The toy store still had an entire section just devoted to Star Wars toys. I was amazed how the appeal of Star Wars persevered. Now, almost forty years since Star Wars premiered in 1977, the December release of the new Star Wars movie is possibly the most eagerly anticipated film of all time.

The force is strong with Star Wars. Star Wars is the most memorable movie of all time.

Website Changes

Posted on June 7, 2015 by ralphkoppel

I took a pause in my blog entries to add a guide page which categorizes my previous blogs and makes them more accessible. If you are new to the blog, I would suggest you begin with the introductory and basic philosophy section. I also changed the look and feel of the site. I hope you like it.

“President Obama is too Intelligent for Republicans to Understand”: Revisiting Bad Assumption 1

Posted on April 19, 2015 by ralphkoppel

I have a friend who is a delightful person and highly intelligent. That being said, she constantly bombards Facebook with far left wing links. I often look at these. As I have said before, if you can’t argue the other side of an issue, you don’t know enough to argue your own opinion. Frequently I see the bad assumptions I talk so much about permeating these articles. The other day I saw one such article that stood out by the audacity of its title:

The Simple Truth: President Obama is Too Intelligent for Republicans to Understand.

I highly suggest you click on this link for a moment and read this article. I also suggest you revisit my previous blog post:

Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 1 – If we disagree, you are either mean or stupid.

I would now like to analyze this article. The author, Allen Clifton, provides three examples which “prove” how much smarter Obama is than the Republicans. I would like to take a close look at each of these examples. I would then like to talk a little about how intelligent Obama really is.

Obamacare

Obamacare is Clifton’s first example of the “big picture thinking” that Republicans are too stupid to grasp because “Republicans seem unable to understand anything beyond the spoon-fed bumper sticker talking points they’re given by the GOP and the conservative media.” Clifton states that in the long term medical rates will go down because increased preventative care will cause a reduction in more expensive treatment down the road. Let’s assume that Clifton’s premise is true that increasing preventative care is a force that will drive down healthcare costs. The “big picture” piece that Clifton is missing is that there are many, many forces at work in the market. Some of the forces push costs down and some push costs up. For example, Obamacare reimburses doctors at a significantly reduced rates compared to private insurance. As a result, many doctors are refusing to accept patients with Obamacare. At the same time, Obamacare enrollment is increasing. With supply going down and demand going up, this inevitably is a force to either push costs up, or if costs may not go up because of regulations, it will cause a shortage in medical care. Here is an article from USA Today titled “Some doctors wary of taking insurance exchange patients” explaining the situation.

I am not expert enough to say whether the forces pushing costs up or those pushing costs down will prevail. This certainly is a subject for reasonable debate. Clifton, however, looks at one small piece of the overall “big picture” and makes a definitive statement while ignoring the rest of the picture. At the same time he derides Republicans for being too stupid to look at the big picture. Ironic, isn’t it?

The Minimum Wage

Clifton’s second example of Republican stupidity is the minimum wage. He notes that Republicans call it a job killer and refute this with this powerful argument: “It’s not.” I’d like to refer here to Dr. Thomas Sowell about the minimum wage:

Minimum Wage Madness: Part 1

Minimum Wage Madness: Part 2

Minimum Wage Exploitation (if you prefer audio)

Dr. Sowell is basically stating that a minimum wage job is the bottom rung on a career ladder. A person with no skills works for a low wage. In the process, the person gains skills that allow him or her to earn a higher wage. A company will only hire a worker, at minimum wage or any other wage, if the company expects that the value received from the person exceeds what it costs to employ that person. As the cost rises, fewer people will be hired. This is basic economics. When we raise the minimum wage, we are cutting off the bottom rung of the ladder. As a result, some people will never, ever climb that ladder.

This does not mean we should not raise the minimum wage. In any policy, there are winners and losers. There are trade-offs. If we raise the minimum wage, the clear winners are people who now have a job at the new higher wage. It is very easy to see that they are better off, and they know it. There are losers too, but they aren’t so clear and the losers may never know they are losers. The primary losers are people who never get hired who would have gotten hired if the minimum wage had not risen. If the employers have to raise prices to pay for the higher wages, the consumers who pay the higher prices are also losers. The companies who have to pay hire wages without getting more for their wages are also losers, although I am sure that this would be unimportant to Clifton.

Clifton also claims that the workers will make more money, spend the money, and this will help the economy making everybody a winner. This would be true if the higher salary was due to increased productivity, to the worker earning more because the worker is worth more. When productivity increases, the pie gets bigger. If, however, this is just an arbitrary raise without any productivity increases, the pie isn’t getting better. It is just being cut differently. This means that every extra dollar that the higher minimum wage worker spends, somebody else is spending a dollar less. There is no spending boost in the economy.

The key point here isn’t to say that the minimum wage shouldn’t be raised. The key point is to say that it is complicated, that there are trade-offs that should be weighed. Clifton is denying the complexities of the issue and proposing a simple answer. Remember that Clifton’s whole point was to say how stupid the Republicans were and how Republicans didn’t understand the issue.

ISIS

Clifton states, “When it comes to ISIS,Republicans just want to send in troops and ‘crush the terrorists’.” Note that Clifton put “crush the terrorists” in quotes. I am not sure who he is quoting. I have not heard a single reputable Republican advocating sending American ground troops to fight ISIS. Clifton is raising a straw man argument. He is saying his opponents are for a position and then ridiculing the position, when his opponents don’t have that position. Clifton states:

When it comes right down to it, I really do believe a huge part about why so many of the non-racist Republicans are against President Obama is because many of them are simply unable to grasp his “big picture” thinking that drives a lot of his policies. That requires intelligence and far too many conservative would rather just be told what to think by Fox News. They want their policies to be so simplified and catchy that they fit on bumper stickers.

He is clearly stating that Obama has a “big picture” policy, that Obama’s understanding is so much better than the Republicans’. Is he referring to the same Obama who over a year ago scoffed at ISIS as a threat calling it the “JV team.” Here is a link to a Politifact article which shows Obama’s statement and stating that his later denial of referring specifically to ISIS is false. Obama also removed all troops from Iraq, overriding his top advisors who wanted him to leave behind a residual force. This Time article “Leon Panetta: How the White House Misplayed Iraqi Troop Talks” references former Obama CIA leader and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on this subject. On the way to taking over major Iraqi cities, such as Mosul, ISIS had to cross a wide open desert which would have made them sitting ducks to an air attack if we had kept a residual force.

Why therefore should anyone believe that Obama has this “big picture” view of ISIS that the Republicans are just too dumb to understand?

Obama: The Super Genius

In addition to saying that all Republicans are idiots, Clifton is stating that Obama is such a genius that his detractors, idiots such as Dr. Thomas Sowell, can’t keep up with his intellect. I ask where is the evidence that Obama is such a genius? I am not saying Obama is stupid. After all, he graduated from Harvard Law School. What about Obama though should make us think he is that much more intelligent than his opponents? Obama still has not authorized the release of his grades in college. Does anybody really think that if his grades were exemplary, he wouldn’t release them?

I will tell you what shocked me more than anything else when it comes to realizing Obama’s understanding of policy. In 2011, in an interview with NBC’s Ann Curry, Obama blamed unemployment on advances in technology:

There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.

By Obama’s logic, we never should have invented the plow. For example, lets say we have an agrarian society where it takes everyone’s efforts to grow enough food to feed the society. Then somebody invents the plow. Now only half of the people are needed to do the farming. We can say that the plow made half of the society unemployed. Now, however, the labor that has been freed from farming can do other things. People can be blacksmiths, shoemakers, merchants and artists. Overall, the society is wealthier than it was before.

The concept here is that technology increases productivity. Productivity is the total value of goods and services produced divided by the costs of providing these goods and services. Productivity from labor can be thought of as the total value of goods and services produced per working hour. A person’s productivity represents the most somebody is willing to pay that person. When we increase productivity, we can pay the person more. New technology may cause some people to lose jobs in the short-term. The proverbial buggy whip employees were put out of work by the invention of the automobile, but overall society was better off.

This is something that they teach in Economics 101. It is simple, basic economics. When Obama blamed unemployment on ATM machines and other technology, he showed he did not understand the basic facts about economics. This is the man who is in charge of the economic policy of the United States. This is the super genius whose knowledge leaves everybody else in the dust.

I don’t think so.

Bad Assumption 1 Revisited – If we disagree you are either mean or stupid.

I don’t know Allen Clifton. I think he is probably a fairly intelligent person. Like my friend who posted this article on Facebook, he is also probably a nice person. I think he is also totally blinded by bad assumption 1. By demeaning his opponents, by saying they are all stupid, this means he doesn’t need to seriously look at their arguments. This also means, he doesn’t need to examine his own arguments, his own views. As I have said previously, just about every issue has two sides. If you can’t argue the other side assuming that your opponent is a well-meaning, intelligent person, that means you don’t really understand the issue. I think we are all much better off if we can jettison this bad assumption.

The Most Memorable Movies of All Time – Part 5: the 90s and 00s

Posted on April 11, 2015 by ralphkoppel

Today I continue my series on memorable movies by looking at the movies of the 90s and 00s. In particular, I think it is interesting to compare the most memorable movies with the movie selected as the best picture of the year. At the end of this list I pick the most memorable movie of this time period. In my last segment, I will pick the most memorable movie of all time using the finalist from each time period. Of course, any list compilation is made to be disagreed with so I welcome other views on these movies.

To recap, here are the criteria for choosing the most memorable movie from each year:

Memorable movies become part of our culture. They may directly become part of our culture, showcase stars who become part of our culture, or launch a genre that becomes part of our culture.
Sequels of memorable movies are not eligible.

To update my comparison of memorable movies versus Oscar winners, in the nineties and zeroes four of the twenty Oscar winners I named as the most memorable movie of the year. An additional six were on my honorable mention list. In total,of the 80 years I have examined so far, only nine of the Academy Award winners made my list as the most memorable movie of the year. An additional twenty-two made my honorable mention list. So 49 of the 80 Oscar winning movies during this period did not meet my criteria for being memorable.

In my next segment I will look at the most memorable movies of each twenty year time segment and give my choice for the most memorable movie of all time.

1990 – Ghost (Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg)

Non-Quotes – Sultry Pottery Scene

Comments – I was wavering back and forth here between Pretty Women, Goodfellas, and Ghost. Then I thought about which quote or scene I would choose from each of the movies. That was the tie breaker.

Honorable Mention – Home Alone | Pretty Woman | Misery |Goodfellas | Dances with Wolves

Best Picture – Dances with Wolves

1991 – The Silence of the Lambs (Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins)

Quotes– I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

Comments – There are some movies that I just assumed would unquestionably be the most memorable movie of whatever year they came out in. I assumed that Beauty and the Beast, arguably the best movie ever made using conventional animation, would definitely be the most memorable movie of its year. That was before I realized it debuted in the same year as The Silence of the Lambs. Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter was a character for the ages. Recently Silence! The Musical appeared Off Broadway and the prequel television show Hannibal is still on the air.

Honorable Mention – Beauty and the Beast | City Slickers

Best Picture – Silence of the Lambs

1992 – Basic Instinct (Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone)

Non-Quote– Sharon Stone Crossing Her Legs during Interrogation

Comments – Sharon Stone’s performance as a sultry suspect made Basic Instinct a sexy thriller for the ages.

Best Picture – Unforgiven

1993 – Schindler’s List (Liam Neeson)

Non-Quote– Whoever save’s one life, saves the world entire.

Comments – In 1993 we had a fascinating face-off for most memorable movie. You can still ride the Jurassic Park theme ride at Universal Studios. Jurassic Park was not only an action adventure movie that nobody forgets, it also the trailblazer in realistic computer animation. Schindler’s List, however, is an incredibly powerful movie. Many people will say it had more impact on them than any other movie in their life. As a side note, I would not have thought to put The Sandlot on this list, but I have heard younger people tell me that this is the most quoted movie they know,

Best Picture – Schindler’s List

1994 – Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks)

Non-Quote– Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.

Comments – Forrest Gump is one of my favorite movies ever. I liked the movie so much that afterwards I read the book it was based on. The book was one of the worst books I ever read in my life. For example, in the book Forrest becomes an astronaut who goes into space with an ape. The spaceship crashes and he is on an island with cannibals. Although Forrest is an idiot, he is also a chess genius. Every day he has to play the cannibal king in chess and if he loses the game the king will eat him. From this mess they sifted out a great idea to make one of the most memorable movies ever.

Best Picture – Forrest Gump

1995 – Toy Story (Tom Hanks, Tim Allen)

Quote– To Infinity and Beyond

Comments – Toy Story would be the most memorable movie in almost any year, both in its own right as a beloved and delightful move and by its historical, groundbreaking technical achievements as the first fully computer animated movie.

Honorable Mention – Apollo 13 | Braveheart | Clueless | Babe

Best Picture – Braveheart

1996 – Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise)

Quote– You had me at Hello.

Comments – In a light year for memorable movies, Jerry Maguire edges out Fargo. It is both a classic love story and a biting commentary on sports and sports agents.

Honorable Mention – Twister | Scream | Fargo | Mission: Impossible

Best Picture – The English Patient

1997 – Titanic (Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio)

Quote– I’m the King of the World

Comments – Prior to Titanic’s release. I had decided that I had no desire to see it, that it would be too depressing. After its release, with all of the buzz, I changed my mind and saw it, then saw it again, and saw it again, along with everybody else in the world. Titanic became at the time the biggest hit ever by excelling both as a big budget disaster spectacular and a classic romance.

Honorable Mention – Men in Black | The Full Monty | Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

Best Picture – Titanic

1998 – Saving Private Ryan (Kate Winslet, Tom Hanks)

Non Quote– Omaha Beach Scene

Comments – In my opinion, Saving private Ryan is memorable not for the heart of the movie itself but for the opening sequence showing the D-Day invasion of Omaha Beach that is the greatest war sequence ever depicted in a movie.

Honorable Mention – Shakespeare in Love | There’s Something About Mary | The Truman Show | The Big Lebowski

Best Picture – Shakespeare in Love

1999 – The Sixth Sense (Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment)

Quote– I see dead people.

Comments – The Sixth Sense is remembered both for Haley Joel Osment’s classic line and for what I would deem as the best surprise ending in movie history. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is not eligible as sequel (well prequel) but Jar Jar Binks deserves special distinction as the most ridiculed movie character in history.

Honorable Mention – The Matrix | American Pie | The Blair Witch Project

Best Picture – American Beauty

2000 – Cast Away (Tom Hanks)

Quote– Wilson!

Comments – Cast Away gained eternal fame for its searing portrayal of the friendship between a man and a volleyball.

Best Picture – Gladiator

2001 – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Daniel Radcliffe)

Quote– Wingardium Leviosa

Comments –This was another great year for memorable movies. The Lord of the Rings or Shrek would have been the most memorable movie in almost any other year. Both of them however fall short of the impact made by the boy wizard with the lightning shaped scar. When a memorable movie is an adaptation of a highly memorable book or play, it can be difficult to separate how much of the memory stems from the original source and how much stems from the movie. I think that the movie is memorable if when people think of the book, they visualize the movie. For example, Gone With the Wind was one of the best selling books of all time, but when people think of Scarlett and Rhett they think of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. In contrast, there was a 1970’s animated adaptation of Lord of The Rings that nobody remembers, at least not fondly. Now when we think of Gollum, we think of the CGI-Andy Serkis Gollum from the 2001 movie and its sequels. Likewise, Harry Potter will always look like Daniel Radcliffe.

Best Picture – A Beautiful Mind

2002 – Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire)

Quote– With great power comes great responsibility.

Comments – Tobey Maguire perfectly captured the angst of a normal person who gains extraordinary abilities. Spider-man’s extraordinary success was the true catapult for the wave of Marvel super hero movies to follow.

Honorable Mention – My Big Fat Greek Wedding | Chicago

Best Picture – Chicago

2003 – Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Johnny Depp)

Quote– The code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules.

Comments – Johny Depp’s creation of Captain Jack Sparrow turned an ordinary movie into a memorable movie. In my opinion, Depp has tried since this movie to make more memorable quirky characters such as Willy Wonka and the Mad Hatter but he has never come close to repeating his magic from the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie. As a side note, the Academy Awardsd got it right this year by giving the best picture to The Return of The King. Unfortunately by my rules this movie is ineligible as a sequel for the title of most memorable movie. Fortunately, from his perspective, I don’t think Peter Jackson cares.

Also, I talked in the 2001 section about how a memorable movie based upon a memorable book makes people think of the movie whenever they picture the book. The 2003 dud Cat in the Hat is a good example showing the contrary. Everybody knows about the Cat in the Hat. Nobody envisions Mike Myers as Cat in the Hat.

Honorable Mention – Finding Nemo | Bruce Almighty | Seabiscuit | Kill Bill Vol. 1

Best Picture – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

2004 – Mean Girls (Lindsay Lohan)

Quote– She made out with a hot dog.

Comments – The year 2004 was the year of the sequel with Shrek 2, Harry Potter 3, Spider-Man 2, Meet the Parents 2, and Oceans 11 2 (some actual names slightly different) ruling the box office. Of the original movies, Mean Girls stood out. It took a cliche and became the cliche. Now when people think of vicious high school girls, they think of this movie. It was funny and original. It was grool.

Personally, The Incredibles is one of my favorite all-time movies and one that I think should rank with the most memorable movies. The fact, however, that it seems that nobody but me ever talks about it unfortunately makes it not make this list.

Honorable Mention – Napoleon Dynamite | The Passion of the Christ

Best Picture – Million Dollar Baby

2005 – Batman Begins (Christian Bale)

Quote– It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.

Comments –Batman Begins is eligible. It is a reboot, not a sequel. Christian Bale’s powerful performance at Batman made the character relevant to a new generation.

Honorable Mention – Madagascar | Brokeback Mountain | The 40-Year Old Virgin

Best Picture – Crash

2006 – The Devil Wears Prada (Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep)

Quote– You have no style or sense of fashion.

Comments – Conspicuously absent from this list is Casino Royale, the Daniel Craig reboot of James Bond. As a reboot and not a sequel, it is technically eligible and my first inclination was to rank it as a memorable movie. After contemplation, I decided it just wasn’t that memorable. Even though it was technically a reboot, actually it was just another James Bond movie that wasn’t that distinguishable from the other James Bond movies. This contrasts to the 2005 movie Batman Begins which I believe was memorable in its own right.

In The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep’s performance as Miranda Priestly forever defines the boss from hell. All future bosses from hell will be forever compared to Miranda.

On the continuing theme of memorable book vs. memorable movie, although The Da Vinci Code did very well at the box office, I think that it was quite forgettable. The book will be remembered; the movie will not.

Honorable Mention – (none)

Best Picture – The Departed

2007 – 300 (Gerald Butler)

Quote– This is Sparta

Comments – This truly was a miserable year for memorable movies as once again sequels ruled the box office. One movie that did stand out was 300, a stylized comic book retelling of the historical battle between Sparta and Persia. It has become a symbol of heroism against impossible odds.

Honorable Mention – Transformers

Best Picture – No Country for Old Men

2008 – Twilight (Kristin Stewart, Robert Pattinson)

Quote– I’m on a special diet.

Comments – It seemed that the biggest debate in 2008 was not Obama vs. McCain; it was Team Edward vs. Team Jacob.

Honorable Mention – Iron Man | WALL-E

Best Picture – Slumdog Millionaire

2009 – Avatar (Sam Worthington)

Quote– (absolutely none)

Comments – I hated Avatar. The plot was Dances With Wolves in space. The characters were unappealing. So why then did I see it twice? This otherwise terrible movie had the greatest special effects in any movie ever. It provided a breakthrough in 3D technology that is still being felt today. For special effects alone, it became the top grossing movie of all time. For every other most memorable movie in this list I provided either a famous quote or a famous scene. Showing the special effects from Avatar on a small computer screen would not do it justice, and nothing else is worth showing.

Honorable Mention – Star Trek | The Hangover | The Blind Side

Best Picture – The Hurt Locker

1990-2009 – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Post 2009

In baseball, a person is not eligible for the hall of fame until five years after their retirement. I believe the same rule should hold for memorable movies. I have had favorite movies (The Incredibles) that I would have been sure at the time would be memorable that weren’t. There have been other movies (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) that I could not have imagined anybody would remember that became part of our culture. With this in mind, these are my quick picks for the most memorable movies from 2010-2014. In five years we can see if anybody remembers them:

2010 – Despicable Me

2011 – The Help

2012 – The Hunger Games

2013 – Frozen

2014 – Guardians of the Galaxy

Indiana and Shades of Gray

Posted on April 5, 2015 by ralphkoppel

Most of the time when politics and morality combine, it doesn’t take me too long to decide where I stand on the issue; however, sometimes an issue arises where two important values seemingly collide. The controversy over the Indiana Religious Freedom law is in one of these grey areas. Basically, the law was in reaction to the uproar caused when a bakery, citing religious values, refused to make a cake for a gay wedding. The law led to a furor of opposition and a boycott of Indiana saying that it legalized discrimination of gays. This resulted in a counter-furor from those saying the law did not discriminate and is being unfairly maligned and it just protects the rights of people to exercise their conscience.

It is not my intent here to debate the Indiana law itself. I am not a lawyer and I make no claim either way on the merits of the law. What intrigues me is the underlying issue. Should government require the bakery to make the cake for the gay wedding?

Let me preface this by saying that I personally support gay marriage. I have stated repeatedly on this blog that I believe that adults should be able to engage in any voluntary interaction, whether that be business or personal, without government interference. Gay marriage certainly fits this criteria.

The grey area results from the apparent conflict in two values I hold deeply:

I believe that discrimination is reprehensible.
I believe that people should be free to live their lives as they see fit unless their free choices interfere with the rights of other people to live their lives as they see fit.

In the simplest case, there can be a conflict if, for example, a person says that it should be his freedom to not serve gays, or blacks, or Jews, or people with red hair in his bakery. I don’t want to take the time to argue this out here (perhaps in a future post), but to keep it short, I feel that the value against discrimination is stronger than the value for personal freedom. Why then is my gut instinct to say that while the bakery should be required to serve gays who show up to buy a cake, the baker should not be required to make a cake for a gay wedding. Why is there a difference? They both appear to be discrimination.

First, I want to say more about what this issue is not about. In many discussions of discrimination, one can argue if there really is discrimination. If a police department does not hire many black policemen, is it discrimination against blacks or is it because there aren’t enough qualified black candidates? In this case the baker clearly stated that the reason was because he did not want to cater the wedding because it was gay. This is clearly intentional discrimination. Second, in many instances of discrimination there is a question of public vs. private. It can be legally acceptable to say you will not invite a minority to join a private club, but you can’t refuse the minority entrance to your business. In this case, it is a business and clearly it is public and not private.

So this brings me back to my gut instinct. My first thoughts were that I cannot morally justify this instinct. Refusing to cater a gay wedding isn’t substantially different than refusing to sell a gay person a cake. There are a couple of techniques I use when I am trying to battle a moral gray issue. The first technique is that if I am not the aggrieved party, I try to come up with a comparable situation where I would be the aggrieved party and then see if my reaction would be the same. I am not gay but I am Jewish. If my son was having a Bar Mitzvah and the baker told me he refused to cater Bar Mitzvahs, how would I feel then. I believe I would be angry, but I would certainly not hire a lawyer and try to force the baker to cater the Bar Mitzvah. I would not be happy, and I would probably tell everybody I knew to never go to that baker, but I wouldn’t think there should be a law forcing the baker to do the catering.

My other technique is to reverse the situation and see if it changes the way I feel. If the baker strongly supported gay marriage and was asked to cater a convention dedicated to banning gay marriage, should the baker be forced to cater the convention? Should a strong Democrat be forced to cater a Republican event? Should anybody be forced to cater a Ku Klux Klan rally? Reversing the situation didn’t change my views on this issue. It actually made them much stronger. So I decided I was right in my views. I just still had no understanding of why I was right. What is the moral distinction between saying that the baker must serve gays and not saying the baker must cater a gay wedding?

I finally found what I believe is the answer. Before stating it, I think it is important to broaden the issue. First, while the Indiana law cites religious concerns, I think that religion is much too restrictive in discussing this issue. I would like to say that the issue involves someone who has any type of moral concern, whether it stems from religion or a deeply held conviction that is not based on religion. The opposition of an atheist to catering the Ku Klux Klan should bear no less weight than the opposition of a Catholic for example. Second, my opinion on the actual issues should not matter. The rights of a Democrat to refuse to cater a Republican event or a Republican to cater a Democrat event should be the same. Finally, of course, we are talking about much more than serving customers or catering. The issue refers to any form of public interaction. For example, should a politician be required to speak at a pro-choice or a pro-life organization?

I finally decided that the difference is that if the baker refused to serve gays, he is refusing to serve people based upon who they are. When he refused to cater a gay wedding, he refused to support the statement they were making. A wedding makes the statement that two people love each other. A gay wedding makes the statement that two people of the same gender love each other and that this is good. Refusing to support a statement is exercising first amendment rights for free speech. Refusing to serve a person just because of who they are is not free speech. It is just discrimination.

When I have a Bar Mitzvah for my son, I am making a statement that I think that the Jewish heritage is good. When someone holds a political event, the event is clearly making a statement. In every instance where I felt that the government should not force the business to serve the customer, the event was making a statement. In the instances where I felt the business should be forced, there was no statement. While it can be argued that, for example in the famous civil rights lunch counter protests, the blacks who showed up at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in North Carolina were certainly making a statement, the general behavior of people showing up at a lunch counter is not a statement. They are just hungry. Once again, it shouldn’t make a difference on which side of an issue I lean to in determining if the person should be forced to do something he or she does not morally agree with. The operative philosophy can be paraphrased by the famous quote, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

One argument against what I just stated could be that by participating in an event that makes a statement, you are not inherently supporting that statement. For those who make this argument, I would like to refer them to the recent event where the Republican House Majority whip Steve Scalise was castigated for speaking to a white supremacist organization and he finally apologized for it. People may associate you, rightly or wrongly, with any statement made by any event you participate in. By participating, you may not be actively supporting the statement, but you certainly aren’t opposing it enough to refuse to participate. Even if others don’t think that, you might think that yourself. That should be enough. Therefore I believe that forcing a person to support a statement is a violation of the person’s right to free speech.

One might also argue refusing to cater the event is not speech, it is actually non-speech. Clearly though non speech is a form of political speech. Frequently in history tyrants have required subjects to say loyalty oaths. Failure to say the oath could result in execution, torture, or imprisonment. Certainly the tyrants thought that non-speech was a form of political speech. So should we.

I think that this key distinction helps clarify the issue. This may not remove all of the shades of grey from the discussion, but to me at least it adds a framework for looking at a difficult issue. I would be interested in how others look at this.

Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 8 –The enemy of your enemy is your friend.

Posted on April 4, 2015 by ralphkoppel

Alternate Assumption: The enemy of your enemy may also be your enemy.

This was actually next on my bad assumptions list, even before Netanyahu gave his speech before Congress highlighting this point. In Netanyahu’s speech he stated that even though ISIS is our enemy and Iran is fighting ISIS, that does not make Iran our friend. Both ISIS and Iran want an Islamic Caliphate to rule the world. Their fight is over who is going to rule over the caliphate.

The thought process behind this assumption is that we have a black and white world, that every issue has two sides. In actuality, an issue may have many sides. Just because we both oppose a solution, that doesn’t mean we agree on the same solution. I see this a lot in the common poll question, “Do you think the country is on the right track?” Very seldom does the majority of the country think we are on the right track. Typically the party out of power uses this as evidence that the majority of the country supports them. This is just silly. If 60% of the country think that we are on the wrong track, that could mean that half of them think we are too liberal and half might think we are too conservative.

This assumption has its biggest implication in foreign policy. It certainly did not start with Iran. Many people in World War II thought that Stalin was our friend because he was fighting Hitler. Both Hitler and Stalin wanted the world to be ruled by an iron-fisted dictatorship. They just disagreed on who should be the dictator. The United States just agreed on a new treaty with Iran, and now many are saying that we are really allies. For example, Slate.com ran a column titled “Iran and the U.S. Are Allies Against ISIS but Aren’t Ready to Admit it Yet.” This is at the same time that Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is shouting “Death to America!” Iran and the United States may have a common enemy, but they are certainly not our friend.

While this assumption is most obviously seen in foreign policy, it rears its head in many places. For example, two of the American left’s most fervent issues are gay rights and women’s rights. They were furious when a baker wouldn’t bake a wedding cake for a gay marriage. Certainly any candidate who is not pro-choice has no chances of winning the Democratic nomination for any significant office. At the same time the left wing has been fervent supporters of Muslims, even radical Muslim groups such as Hamas. These same Muslims often brutally suppress women and they kill gays. Am I the only one who sees something unusual in this? Why does the left so fervently support Muslims?

I have tried to figure this out for a while. This is my current theory. The radical Muslims state that the United States is an evil imperialist country. The far left believes that the United States is an evil imperialist country. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Therefore the left supports their friends, the Muslims. Note that I don’t believe the radical Muslims have the same false assumption as they would be more than happy to remove the head of any American, regardless of political affiliation.

Now I realize that I certainly don’t have the evidence to support my theory. I am offering it as a possible explanation. I could be totally wrong. If you think I am wrong, then don’t just say so. Offer me a better explanation for this gaping contradiction. I’m waiting.

The Most Memorable Movies of All Time – Part 4: the 70s and 80s

Posted on March 25, 2015 by ralphkoppel

Today I continue my series on memorable movies by looking at the movies of the 70s and 80s. In particular, I think it is interesting to compare the most memorable movies with the movie selected as the best picture of the year. At the end of this list I pick the most memorable movie of this time period. In my last segment, I will pick the most memorable movie of all time using the finalist from each time period. Of course, any list compilation is made to be disagreed with so I welcome other views on these movies.

To recap, here are the criteria for choosing the most memorable movie from each year:

Memorable movies become part of our culture. They may directly become part of our culture, showcase stars who become part of our culture, or launch a genre that becomes part of our culture.
Sequels of memorable movies are not eligible.

To update my comparison of memorable movies versus Oscar winners, in the seventies and eighties two of the twenty Oscar winners I named as the most memorable movie of the year. An additional seven were on my honorable mention list. This is a higher percentage than we had in the previous four decades. In total,of the 60 years I have examined so far, only five of the Academy Award winners made my list as the most memorable movie of the year. An additional sixteen made my honorable mention list. So 39 of the 60 Oscar winning movies during this period did not meet my criteria for being memorable.

1970 – MASH (Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould)

Quotes – Oh Frank, My lips are hot. Kiss my hot lips.

Comments – This was a difficult year to pick the most memorable movie. Airport is mostly memorable for spawning a series of disaster films, but Airport itself is less memorable. Love Story has the top quote with “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Patton begins with the highly memorable speech in front of the American flag. MASH won out though for providing the most impact on our culture. While it can certainly be argued that the TV show was more memorable than the movie, the movie is what started it all. As an aside, it was an incredibly funny movie.

Honorable Mention – Love Story | Airport | Patton

Best Picture – Patton

1971 – Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood)

Quotes – Do I feel lucky, well do you punk?

Comments – Dirty Harry’s great line, frequently misquoted as “Do you feel lucky, punk?” catapulted this movie to become possibly the most memorable cop movie of all time. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a very strong contender for the most memorable honor. Gene Wilder’s classic performance as Willy Wonka far outshone Johnny Depp’s performance in the recent remake.

Honorable Mention – Fiddler on the Roof | The French Connection | A Clockwork Orange | Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Best Picture – The French Connection

1972 – The Godfather (Marlon Brando)

Quotes – I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.

Comments – The Godfather is unquestionably one of the most memorable movies of all time. If you don’t agree, I’ll have to make you an offer you can’t refuse. In most other years Deep Throat would be the most memorable movie both as the most memorable pornographic movie of all time and for its title being the namesake of the secret informant in the Watergate scandal. Fortunately since The Godfather was the most memorable, I did not have to try to find an acceptable film clip from Deep Throat.

Best Picture – The Godfather

1973 – The Exorcist (Linda Blair)

Quotes – Your mother sucks c**** in hell.

Comments – With green projectile vomit, Linda Blair’s head turning 360 degrees, and a sweet girl turning into a demon, The Excorcist may be the most talked about horror movie of all time. As a side note, I loved the Sting in 1973. It won best picture and it was the top grossing movie of the year. At the time, I would have bet just about anything that The Sting would become a classic memorable movie. Instead, it has virtually disappeared.

Honorable Mention – American Graffitti | The Way We Were | Soylent Green

Best Picture – The Sting

1974 – Blazing Saddles (Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder)

Non-Quote – The Campfire Scene

Comments – In 1974 Mel Brooks produced two of the most memorable comedies of all time in Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Between the two, however, the competition of most memorable isn’t even close. Blazing Saddles is ingrained in our culture as one of the funniest movies of all time. Note that The Godfather II is not eligible as a sequel to a memorable movie.

Honorable Mention – Young Frankenstein | Benji | Earthquake

Best Picture – The Godfather Part II

1975 – Jaws (Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw)

Non-Quote – The Opening Swim

Comments – It is still hard to go to the beach without Jaws somewhere in your mind. Jaws is highly memorable in its own right as one of the greatest suspense movies of all time. I think that the score by John Williams is the best ever at having music heighten the emotional experience. Moreover, it was the breakout movie that made Stephen Spielberg one of the most famous directors of all time.

Honorable Mention – The Rocky Horror Picture Show | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest | Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Best Picture – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

1976 – Rocky (Sylvester Stallone)

Non-Quote – Rocky Running Up The Steps

Comments –Rocky is the most famous boxing movie of all time and is the classic underdog story. It introduced Stallone as one of the top action movie stars ever. The stirring movie theme still makes the blood rush.

Best Picture – Rocky

1977 – Star Wars (Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher)

Non-Quote – Use the force, Luke. | A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Comments –Of all the years and all the memorable movies, this is by far the easiest choice. The Christmas after Star Wars was released, I worked in the toy department of a department store. The Star Wars action figures were not yet available so we sold gift cards that could later be exchanged for the figures but could be placed under the tree right away. In addition to being one of the most memorable movies of all time, Star Wars pioneered the tie in of toys and other merchandise to movies. A long long time later, Star Wars toys are still among the most popular. Star Wars has not left the forefront of our culture since its release and the new movie due later this year may be the most highly anticipated movie of all time.

Honorable Mention – Close Encounters of the Third Kind | Saturday Night Fever | Oh, God! |Annie Hall

Best Picture – Annie Hall

1978 – National Lampoon’s Animal House (John Belushi)

Quote – Toga! Toga! | Double Secret Probation

Comments –In 1977 it was easy to pick the most memorable movie. In 1978, it was much more difficult. Animal House, Grease, and Superman are all strongly a part of our culture, but I believe Animal House was slightly above the rest. It ranks as one of the funniest comedies of all time and spawned countless toga parties.

Honorable Mention – Grease | Superman | La Cage aux Folles | Halloween

Best Picture – The Deer Hunter

1979 – Alien (Sigourney Weaver)

Non-Quote – Alien bursting out of stomach

Comments –In my opinion, Alien is the scariest movie ever made. The constant suspense of knowing the alien was somewhere in the ship and never knowing when it was going to strike kept me constantly at the edge of my seat.

Best Picture – Kramer vs. Kramer

1980 – Airplane! (Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty)

Quote – And don’t call me Shirley

Comments –We go from 1979 from the scariest movie ever made to 1980 and the funniest movie ever made. Airplane was the first in a long series of movies with quick silly gags piled one after the other. It was the first and the best. As a note, 1980 also marked the year for two great sequels: The Empire Strikes Back and Superman II. They are not listed because of my rule that sequels of memorable movies aren’t eligible. This is probably a good moment to comment on why I set up that rule. I actually had Harry Potter primarily in mind. For eight years we had a Harry Potter movie almost every year. Clearly the Harry Potter franchise is highly memorable. It is the franchise as a whole that becomes part of our culture, however, more than the individual films. I did not want to debate which of the films was most memorable. I therefore set the rule that the after the first memorable movie, the sequels are not eligible. Therefore, while The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the Star Wars franchise, it is not eligible this year.

Best Picture – Ordinary People

1981 – Raiders of the Lost Ark

Quote – I hate Snakes! | Indiana Jones’ non Sword Fight

Comments – The year 1979 had the greatest horror/suspense film ever, 1980 had the greatest comedy, and 1981 had the greatest action adventure. Harrison Ford was perfect as Indiana Jones, and the movie provided more thrills per minute than any movie ever. Add the deft touch of humor and the magnificent soundtrack and you have an action adventure movie for the ages.

Honorable Mention – Arthur | Body Heat | Escape from New York | The Road Warrior

Best Picture – Chariots of Fire

1982 – E.T., the Extra Terrestrial (directed by Stephen Spielberg)

Quote – E.T. phone home.

Comments – Although 1982 had many memorable movies, I never had any doubt that E.T. would be my pick as most memorable movie of the year. This Stephen Spielberg classic is still loved over forty years later. For an example of how a movie effects the culture, in 1982 the St. Louis Cardinals had a rookie sensation named Willie McGee. McGee was a bit unusual looking and got the nickname E.T. McGee, a nickname he was not particularly fund of. In a playoff game against Atlanta, which I attended, McGee hit a long shot to right field. By the time McGee reached third base, the outfielder hadn’t even retrieved the ball. He could have crawled home. He just dusted himself off though and stayed on third base, oblivious of the shouts from his coach and the crowd to go home. After the game, the joke in St. Louis was “What is the difference between E.T. and Willie McGee?” E.T. went home. Willie McGee stayed at third.

As a side note, after my earlier siting of my rules against sequels, someone might notice that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is on my honorable mention list. To explain, my rule wasn’t against sequels, it was against the sequels of memorable movies. While 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture might be considered memorable in the sense that it was the first Star Trek movie, the movie itself was so plodding, boring, and unmemorable that when they wrote Star Trek II and all other Star Trek sequels, the producers decided to act as if the first movie never existed, basically to create a time warp and wink it out of existence. If the Star Trek people themselves deemed that movie to be unmemorable, who am I to argue. Star Trek II therefore makes the list.

Best Picture – Gandhi

1983 – National Lampoon’s Vacation (Chevy Chase)

Quote – I don’t know why they call this stuff Hamburger Helper. It does fine by itself,

Comments – This year was a major drop off in terms of memorable movies following a string of great years. National Lampoon’s Vacation is a classic comedy that anybody who has made a cross country trek can identify with. As a sequel, Return of the Jedi is not eligible.

Honorable Mention – Flashdance | Risky Business | The Big Chill | Scarface

Best Picture – Terms of Endearment

1984 – The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger)

Quote – I’ll be back.

Comments – The Terminator is classic both as science fiction and as action adventure. It made Schwarzenegger a mega-star. The underlying premise, which I won’t mention as it would spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it, is brilliant. This was of course followed by Terminator II which did tremendous box office and destroyed the brilliant premise of the first movie.

Best Picture – Amadeus

1985 – Back to the Future (Michael J. Fox)

Quote – Are you telling me that you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?

Comments – The DeLorean car would have long been forgotten if not for this movie. Michael J. Fox made this time travel movie a movie for all time. As a fun note, Back to the Future II went forward to 2015. Did you fly your car to work today?

Honorable Mention – The Color Purple | Cocoon | The Goonies | The Breakfast Club

Best Picture – Out of Africa

1986 – Top Gun (Tom Cruise)

Quote – I feel the need, the need for speed.

Comments – I love most of the memorable movies I discuss here. I didn’t particularly like Top Gun. Still, I have heard it referenced countless times over the years and I think it has had a bigger impact on American culture then two movies I liked much better, Crocodile Dundee and Little Shop of Horrors. Overall, 1986 was a very forgettable year when it comes to memorable movies.

Honorable Mention – Crocodile Dundee | Little Shop of Horror

Best Picture – Platoon

1987 – The Princess Bride (Cary Elwes, Robin Wright)

Quote – As you wish | Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Comments – My first thought was that Fatal Attraction would be the most memorable movie of 1987. That was before I realized that The Princess Bride came out in 1987. I will confess that The Princess Bride is my favorite movie of all time. It is a great action movie, a great comedy, and a great romance. I personally must have quoted from this movie at least ten thousand times. Could somebody else have quoted it more? Inconceivable.

Honorable Mention – Fatal Attraction |Good Morning, Vietnam |Lethal Weapon |Dirty Dancing | Wall Street

Best Picture – The Last Emperor

1988 – Big (Tom Hanks)

Non-Quote – Chopsticks on big piano at FAO Schwartz

Comments – One could make a good argument for any of the honorable mention films to be called the most memorable movie of 1988, but in my opinion, Big with Tom Hanks stands out just a bit from the others. This was not Tom Hanks first movie, but it is the movie that made him a major star.

Best Picture – Rain Man

1989 – When Harry Met Sally (Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan)

Non-Quote – I’ll have what she’s having.

Comments – This was a great year for memorable movies starting new trends. The Little Mermaid led Disney’s second golden age of animation. Batman started the trend of blockbuster, gritty superhero movies. When Harry Met Sally led a wave of modern romantic comedies. Any of these would be the most memorable movie in most years, but they all came out in 1989. When Harry Met Sally wins by a nose.

Best Picture – Driving Miss Daisy

1970-1989 – Star Wars

The Most Memorable Movies of All Time – Part 3: the 50s and 60s

Posted on March 7, 2015 by ralphkoppel

In a previous post, I identified what I thought was the most memorable movies of the 30s and 40s. Today I continue by looking at the movies of the 50s and 60s. In particular, I think it is interesting to compare the most memorable movies with the movie selected as the best picture of the year. At the end of this list I pick the most memorable movie of this time period. In my last segment, I will pick the most memorable movie of all time using the finalist from each time period. Of course, any list compilation is made to be disagreed with so I welcome other views on these movies.

To recap, here are the criteria for choosing the most memorable movie from each year:

Memorable movies become part of our culture. They may directly become part of our culture, showcase stars who become part of our culture, or launch a genre that becomes part of our culture.
Sequels of memorable movies are not eligible.

Based on comments I received after my last post, I added a lot more direct link to film clips. Every quote on this list is linked to the video of that quote. I also added a few more.

As an interesting note, in the 40 years I have examined so far, only three of the Academy Award winners made my list as the most memorable movie of the year. An additional nine made my honorable mention list. So 28 of the 40 Oscar winning movies during this period did not meet my criteria for being memorable.

1950 – Cinderella

Quotes – Bippity Boppity Boo

Comments – This Disney classic is still one of the best. While there have been many versions of Cinderella, this version is by the most famous. As far as an effect on our culture, how many times has a movie been called a Cinderella story? ironically, this includes the recently released Fifty Shades of Grey. In a personal note when our daughter was one to two years old, she must have watched Cinderella at least three hundred times. For some reason, she fixated on the villainous cat and whenever she wanted to watch it she asked for “Meow Cat.”

Honorable Mention – Annie Get Your Gun |Sunset Boulevard, Born Yesterday

Best Picture – All About Eve

1951 – A Streetcar Named Desire (Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh)

Quotes – Hey Stella! | “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers,

Comments – This movie has amazing acting led by Marlon Brando, cementing his claim to stardom and women’s fantasies, and Vivien Leigh winning her second best actress award.

Honorable Mention – Alice in Wonderland, The African Queen, Strangers on a Train, The Day the Earth Stood Still

Best Picture -An American in Paris

1952 – Singin’ in the Rain (Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor)

Quotes – I’m Singin’ in the Rain

Comments – Over sixty years later, Gene Kelly’s title masterpiece is still arguably the most famous one person song and dance routine ever. Interestingly, only two songs, Make ‘Em Laugh and Moses, were original to this movie. All of the other songs, including the title tune, had been used elsewhere before.

Honorable Mention – High Noon

Best Picture -The Greatest Show On Earth

1953 – Peter Pan

Quotes – You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!

Comments – Once again a Disney animated film is the most remembered. The Peter Pan ride still has the longest lines in the Magic Kingdom. One can debate whether the book, the Disney movie, or the play originally starring Mary Martin had the biggest role in embedding Peter Pan as a fixture in our culture and in our cabinets:

Best Picture -From Here to Eternity

1954 – White Christmas (Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye)

Quotes – I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.

Comments – Bing Crosby’s rendition of Irving Berlin’s classic title song remains a favorite and is forever associated with this movie, but most people don’t know (including me until now) that it Crosby first sang it in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn.

Best Picture – On the Waterfront

1955 – Oklahoma (Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones)

Quotes – Oklahoma where the wind comes sweepin down the plain!

Comments -This was Rogers & Hammerstein’s first big hit. Every high school has performed its since then at least twenty times.

Honorable Mention – East of Eden

Best Picture – Marty

1956 – The Ten Commandments (Charlton Heston)

Quotes – Behold his mighty hand!

Comments -This movie defines the biblical epic. Charlton Heston is and will always be Moses.

Best Picture – Around the World in 80 Days

1957 – An Affair to Remember (Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr)

Quotes – See comments.

Comments -I will confess that I have never seen this movie. I have, however, heard quite a bit about it, particularly the planned meeting on the roof of the Empire State Building but I personally am not aware of any famous quotes from the movie. Nevertheless, I have heard so many women say they have watched it many times and cried every time. The movie Sleepless in Seattle paid reverence to An Affair to Remember. I seriously considered naming Old Yeller as the most memorable movie of the year. Together these movies made 1957 the weepiest year in movie history.

Honorable Mention – The Bridge on the River Kwai |Gunfight at the OK Corral | Old Yeller

Best Picture – The Bridge on the River Kwai

1958 – The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (special effects by Ray Harryhausen)

Non -Quote – Ray Harryhausen’s monsters

Comments This was a tough year to pick a winner. There were a lot of memorable movies, but there wasn’t one that greatly stood out from the rest. I finally decided on the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid. I couldn’t tell you any of the actors and until I saw this clip I couldn’t quote a single line from this movie. But I remembered the monsters and the special effects. Ray Harryhausen was the master of special effects for that era. Incidentally, almost fifty years later, Universal Studios Islands of Adventure now has an Eigth Voyage of Sinbad stunt show.

Best Picture – Gigi

1959 – Some Like it Hot (Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe)

Quotes – Well, nobody’s perfect.

Comments – In 2000, the American Film Institute named Some Like It Hot the funniest American movie of all time. Its comic device of having men hide out pretending to be women has often been duplicated but never been equaled. This was was a great year for memorable movies. I was strongly tempted to choose Plan 9 from Outer Space by being memorable for being what many people call the worst movie ever made.

Best Picture – Ben-Hur

1960 – Psycho (Anthony Perkins)

Non-Quote – The Shower Scene

Comments – Alfred Hitchcock made many memorable movies but Psycho is by far the movie that is most embedded in the American culture. The new TV series, The Bates Motel will be starting its third season next week. Alfred Hitchcock

Honorable Mention – Spartacus |The Little Shop of Horrors | The Magnificent Seven

Best Picture – The Apartment

1961 – West Side Story (Natalie Wood)

Quote – I just met a girl named Maria.

Comments – Great music, great choreogropy, and an emotion-wrenching modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet made West Side story a classic.

Honorable Mention – The Parent Trap | One Hundred and One Dalmations | Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Best Picture – West Side Story

1962 – To Kill a Mockingbird (Gregory Peck)

Quote – You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

Comments – After 1939, 1962 ranks as the second best year for memorable movies in my research so far. Lawrence of Arabia, The Music Man, The Miracle Worker, and Dr. No all would have been the most memorable movie of any other year. The American Film Institute ranked Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch as the greatest movie hero of all time. I and almost every other school child in America saw To Kill a Mockingbird as part of our education. It is the one lesson in school that nobody ever forgets.

Best Picture – Lawrence of Arabia

1963 – The Pink Panther (Peter Sellers)

Non-Quote – The character Inspector Clouseau

Comments – The year 1963 made me question my self-imposed rule against sequels. From Russia with Love was the second James Bond movie. The first James Bond movie, Dr. No, came out in 1962 and it would have ranked as the most memorable in almost any year that didn’t have To Kill a Mockingbird, and I was sorely tempted to rank it as the most memorable movie of the year in compensation. At the same time, The Pink Panther first establishes Peter Sellers in the unforgettable role of Inspector Clouseau, but the character didn’t reach his zenith until later films such as A Shot in the Dark in 1964 and The Return of The Pink Panther in 1975. The best Clouseau quotes and scenes were all from later films.

The reason I set this rule in the beginning is that so, for example, we didn’t have eight years in a row of Harry Potter movies on the list. I finally decided, however, that my original rule was a good one. The original movie is what begins the memory. Later installments may surpass the original, but the original is the key, and it should “compete” in its own year. A sequel shouldn’t be recognized as a consolation prize.

Honorable Mention – It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Nutty Professor, The Great Escape

Best Picture – Tom Jones

1964 – Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke)

Quote – Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Comments – Mary Poppins is without any close competition the favorite movie of my childhood. The story was literally and figuratively magical, the music was captivating, and the insertion of live characters into animated sequences was groundbreaking.

Honorable Mention – My Fair Lady | A Fistful of Dollars | The Unsinkable Molly Brown | Dr. Strangelove

Best Picture – My Fair Lady

1965 – The Sound of Music (Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer)

Quote – The hills are alive with the sound of music.

Comments – Picking the Sound of Music as the most memorable movie of 1965 is as simple as do re mi. For the last fifty years, I doubt any music teacher has ever had to teach an American child what the names of the seven notes are.

Honorable Mention – Dr. Zhivago

Best Picture – The Sound of Music

1966 – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton)

Quote – What a Dump!

Comments – The poet Virginia Woolf gained far more fame from being referenced in this play and movie title than she ever got from her poetry.

Honorable Mention -none

Best Picture – A Man for all Seasons

1967 – The Graduate (Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft)

Quote – Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me? | Plastics

Comments – While 1966 had a paucity of memorable films, 1967 was quite a memorable year in cinema with numerous films that made an impact. Among these, Mike Nichols’ The Graduate stands out, from the soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkle, the witty script, and Dustin Hoffman’s brilliant acting.

Best Picture – In the Heat of the Night

1968 – Planet of the Apes

Quote – We finally really did it. You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell! | Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!

Comments – 1968 was another great year for movies. It illustrates perfectly too the difference between a wonderful movie and a memorable movie. Oliver won the Academy award for best movie of 1968. Personally, I love Oliver. It has a classic story and a delightful musical score. To me, personally, it is a very memorable movie. It didn’t last though. I would have guessed at the time that the song Consider Yourself would become a classic. It didn’t. The movie didn’t stay as part of the American culture. The memorable line, “Please sir, may I have some more?” can be attributed more to the book than to the movie.

In contrast, Planet of the Apes is part of our culture. The surprise ending at the statue of liberty is classic. It spawned numerous sequels with a reboot in 2001. This last year, In 2014, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was one of the most popular movies of the year. In fact, all of the honorable mention movies have had a greater impact on our culture than Oliver.

Best Picture – Oliver!

1969 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Quote – Kid: I can’t swim. Butch: Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you.

Comments – Redford and Newman were one of the great teams in movie history. This movie made them legendary together.

Honorable Mention – Easy Rider | True Grit

Best Picture – Midnight Cowboy

1950-1969 – The Sound of Music

Top Ten Bad Assumptions: 7 – Judge a policy based on its benefits.

Posted on March 2, 2015 by ralphkoppel

Alternate Assumption: Judge a policy based on its benefits and its costs.

This is probably the bad assumption that we see the most. Policy A helps people. Therefore Policy A must be good. If anyone opposes Policy A, that must mean that they don’t want to help people. This bad assumption usually involves government spending, but it doesn’t have to. It also applies to both sides of the political spectrum. A “Jobs bill” might hurt the environment or a “Clean Air” bill might cost jobs.

Generally, any policy has both costs and benefits. The costs frequently involve spending money, but there can be other costs as well. For example, raising the minimum wage might reduce the number of minimum wage jobs. One can debate whether the benefit justifies the cost, but too frequently there is no debate as people only look at the benefit.

The debate on global warming provides a good illustration for this. Recently Bill O’Reilly said something to the effect that even if global warming claims are exaggerated, it can’t hurt removing pollutants from the air. It certainly can hurt. We each can drastically reduce our carbon footprint. All we need to do is to stop driving and stop using electricity produced by coal-fired power plants. Is it worth is? If the threat is dire enough, yes it is. If the threat is remote and speculative, then it probably isn’t. We need to compare the benefits of reducing the carbon emissions to the cost of doing so. Is it worth giving up driving? Is it worth losing the millions of jobs we would surely lose if there was no more driving? You decide.

Right now the national debt is approximately $17 trillion. Of this, $7 trillion has been accumulated in the last six years under Obama. This should alarm both conservatives and liberals. Let’s say you are a devout liberal and you believe that government has the obligation to help the needy. There is a new proposal to spend $50 billion on anti-poverty programs. The question you typically ask is does this program provide real help to people who need help. Let’s assume the answer is yes. As a result, you support this bill.

I suggest that you are asking the wrong question. The question you should ask is does this program provide enough help to justify borrowing the money from China that one day our children and grandchildren will have to repay. Moreover, since you believe that government should help the needy, does it provide enough help to the needy today to justify the fact that there won’t be any money available for government to help the needy in future generations?

We can’t just look at the benefits. We need to look at the benefits and the costs.

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