Inception

The boss, Saito, sitting at the head of a designer table, where a boss should sit.

I've always enjoyed dreams. Sex dreams. Goal-oriented dreams. The American Dream.

The latter happens to be one of my favorites. When I sit down to see a film, do I want to be absorbed in the mundane aspects of the day-to-day lives of the fucking poor, inferior, lumpenproletariat? (See: Little Miss Sunshine, Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof, etc.)

Hell no. I don't worry about money, and I don't like watching other people worry about it. It's fucking boring. Pointless. Indicative of people not trying hard enough. (Perhaps this is why I can't stand reading about welfare).

No. Hollywood audiences like to go to movies to escape. And so movies have made a functional shift, from displaying prole reality to displaying my reality: the world of the hyper-, hyper-rich.

A mere glance at the top-grossing movies this week reveals the truth about what consumers want to see. The Expendables: Badasses (probably rich) blow shit up. Money's no object. Eat Pray Love: Successful, upper-middle-class bitch with a nice wardrobe jet-sets around the world. Money's no object. Cats & Dogs 3D: The Revenge of Kitty Galore: Even I don't need to tell you that cats and dogs don't give a fuck about money. They just laze around and eat, get stroked, play and fuck all day--which just about describes my life every minute.

Enter Inception. A bold, clever, even nightmarish, tale about Corporate Espionage. Say it slowly, let it roll off your tongue. Corporate. Espionage. The two scariest words in the American language.

As a prominent and respected and fabulously wealthy businessman, I've had my share of worries about C.E. Back at Harvard, they taught us the most important lesson any capitalist will ever learn: Don't. Trust. Anyone. That's just the basic tenet of capitalist society, and the main reason why I have my hitman on speed-dial.

But back to the plot. A rich financier pays some dream-stealers millions to fly first-class, wear expensive suits, wine and dine in expensive European cities with bad exchange rates (EURO: 1.2807--invest when the PIIGS get their shit together) and exhibit brief and unsatisfying flirtations. It's a hard world out there for a mind-invading spy. Well actually, I take that back--it's an exceedingly easy world, given that they seem to have every luxury and consumer good they could ever want. The cost is a little bit of stress on the job.

The interactions between the CEO-venture capitalist and Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) were most telling. DiCaprio is essentially bonded to his boss--if he fails, his life and well-being are over. I think we'd live in a better world if the employee-employer relationship were more permanently like this.

Overall, the theme of the movie seemed to be: You are always someone's slave, even if you're living well while enslaved. It's a good message to take home, especially for the lower-classes. After all, that is the American Dream, isn't it?*

Rating: $$$$$ (3 USD / 5 USD)
INVEST : Euro (1.2807), your local mind-invading startup

*That is, except for bosses like me. My "dream" involves golf, Moët, and copious amounts of hookers.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Okay, wow, it's been a hard year for Mike McDougal, MBA. After losing my board position at Goldman Sachs and having to mortgage, then mortgage my mortgage, then time-share (I cringe to think) my properties in Dubai, Vegas, and Manhattan, I was feeling pretty low. I almost had to stoop to taking taxis instead of limos (key word: almost) and even started shopping at Whole Foods instead of Dean and Deluca. Not gonna lie, that was a tough, cognacless three days.

So you'll have to pardon the lack of film-reviews–I was almost on the streets for a while there. Thank god for the commie-in-chief and his "bailout package." They should've called it the "increase-McDougal's-stock-options-package." I was practically force-fed cash by the feds, to the point that I'm sitting pretty again, working a couple hours a week, and even had enough stimulus cash to buy a yacht of my own (I needed somewhere to bang interns that was less conspicuous than the office or the wife's bed). I take back everything I ever said about that terrorist bastard president–he truly is one of Us.

Anyway, I popped this DVD into my HDTV flat-screen in the bar of my yacht while I was doing blow and getting a beej from a 22-year-old Columbia student intern, so my memory of the film's just slightly hazy. But from what I saw between Grey Goose martinis (BUD: 50.55 buy!) and unprotected sex, this latest in the Harry Potter franchise couldn't've been more relevant to our times. What better film to renew our hope in the capitalist system?

Is that a WSJ they're reading?

I know what you're thinking here. You're thinking, "Mike, what the fuck does Harry Potter have to do with capitalism?" But bear with me a second.

Now I don't know if the movie was all that different from the book (I don't read so-called "literature," outside of the good book--that is, the Journal!) but this film was absolutely a parable about capitalism. Think about it. What is it that the little wiz-kids are fighting against? All those earth-toned, turtlenecked Slytherins and dark wizards and hobbits and whatevers don't represent just a fairytale. They represent socialism.

Consider Harry Potter's life story. Poor kid, grew up in a broom closet, inherits a vast fortune from dead parents, now he's a famous for being famous a lá Paris Hilton. See what I'm saying? He's a trust-funder!–an inheritance baby, like me and my kids and most of Wall Street. Harry Potter is the epitome of the American dream, and proof that you can be rich by doing no work whatsoever. Hell, that's what American capitalism is all about.

But Harry's a swell little motherfucker, and he definitely deserves all those sacks of galleons he's squirreling away. (I guess they don't have estate taxes in the wizard world, or else really good interest rates in the Goblin banks). And so far, he's turned out to be a pretty good investor. That broomstick he bought (FBOLT: 12.3 Buy! Great product placement), the military-prototype invisible shield bullshit, his security detail and his grades and girlfriend and drugs (I'm just assuming) seem to be working out pretty well for him.

Voldemort, on the other hand, is a poverty case-in-point. He's got tons of followers but no investment strategy. If he's so "powerful," why does he seem to be squirreled away in old squats, rather than raising money from his legions? Doesn't he have a business plan? If I had enough investors who'd drunk my Kool-Aid (KOOL: 23.03 Sit on this one), you can bet I'd run my empire out of Bermuda, that's for sure, not some dingy dark recess.

You know who else wears all black? Socialist Beatnik freaks. Prof. Snape pictured, with former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

The only real reason I can think of that Voldemort wouldn't take advantage of his power to raise capital is that he's running some kind of grassroots organization. The movie hints at this, but it's clear that Voldemort doesn't want money, just people to believe in his cause. Yeah, you heard me–he's essentially a community organizer. And everyone knows they never win.

If you haven't apparated yourself out of this mental recession yet, I highly recommend Harry Potter. Nothing beats watching a scrappy young trust-funder weasel his way out of various crimes just by using the power of his name. What can I say, I can relate–I do it every fucking day.
-MMD, MBA

Rating: $$$$$ (4 USD/5 USD)
Buy: Grey Goose (BUD) Firebolt LLC (FBOLT)
Hold: Kool-aid (KOOL)

PS: Since writing this article, I uncovered some more literary evidence that Voldemort's character is a metaphor for Marxism. According to the Wikipedia article I had my underlings summarize for me, Voldemort's apparently also a "half-blood." Half-wizard, half-human. Probably that kind of biracial upbringing contributed to his fucked-up views. Remind you of any other socialist starlets?

Iron Man

What warm-blooded stock broker wouldn't love a movie starring a high-powered capitalist? Billionaire Tony Stark is a real American hero. He's a war profiteer who loves cars, gadgets, pussy, and fast food cheeseburgers. Best of all, like the best of capitalists, he's quite literally heartless! Milton Friedman must be saluting the flag from his fucking grave.

This movie begins with Tony Stark, a freedom-loving MIT graduate (unlike most of the Marxist pinko bastards that come out of Cambridge) showing off his company Stark Industries' (STK 75.51) newest missiles to the American government in the terrorist hotbed of Afghanistan. There's a couple badass explosions involved, and a few free market-haters get their asses kicked, but not before the Arabs manage to kidnap Stark and force him to build his Jericho missile for them. But instead of building it, he builds a motherfucking suit and beats the shit out of those Osama motherfuckers. Free Market: 1. Terrorism: 0!

The message here is clear: Tony Stark/Iron Man/America is the motherfucking pinnacle of techno-capitalist invention. If you want your kids to grow up big and rich, like me, pack 'em in the Hummer and take 'em to see this shit. In one scene, we see Iron Man save a bunch of starving Afghanis from a group of jihadi motherfuckers. Them A-rabs cheers him as he flies away. The subtext is obvious here, folks: America is the fucking Freedom-Giving Bomb-diggity. Paging Ayn Rand: Your vision is complete--Tony Stark IS Motherfucking Howard Roark, and he's not raping Dominique Francon. He's raping Terrorism.

And then when Tony Stark uses his American brilliance to invent his way out of the cave, defeating the terrorists, and goes back to America and the first thing he wants is a Burger King (BKC 26.88) cheeseburger, I was so full of goddamn patriotic pride and shit that I had to leave the theater to call my broker and tell him to buy 10,000 shares immediately.

Message: American CFOs like Howard Stark are motherfucking badass, ergo America is motherfucking badass, ergo the goddamn jihadi motherfuckers in Afghanistan can't live without our damn help. Those whateverastanis should be thankful they've got America on our side, lest Iron Man fly over and lay a smack down on their sorry asses. Really, Iron Man is just glorified symbolism for the American Military-Industrial complex, and hence a big fuck-you to pussyfooted multilateralists and isolationists like Eisenhower and Chomsky.

Now that I think about it, this is the kind of film I think I'd really like to see with Michael Bloomberg, or Ronald Reagan, or even Dick Cheney. I can just see the old bastard Cheney sobbing in ecstasy at the sight of a modern Halliburton Hero like Tony Stark kicking the collective Ass of the Enemies of the Free Market.

Next, we see the Stark Industries company takeover actualized with a physical battle between Stark and company CEO Obadiah Stane, dressed in full ass-kicking (American-mined) iron/titanium regalia. This is where the movie got a little too "moral transformationy" for my Rich Ass. Here, the CEO (Stane) attempts to off Stark from the board by trying to kill him, while Stark plays Mr. Passive Nonviolent. Hold on, Stane, real capitalists don't do it like that. We just smear our enemies in the tabloids and tempt them with paid hookers. Murder's a bit too much of a liability, especially when it's carried out in person by the guy who wants to off you. At the very least hire a hit man to do the job. Didn't he see Michael Clayton?

Rating: $$$$ 1/2 (4.5 USD / 5 USD)
Product Placement: Burger King, Audi, 7-11
Invest in: Burger King (BKC 26.88), Stark Industries (STK 75.51), Halliburton (HAL 45.89)