Tag: film

How the Trading Places Final Scene Works

Ever wondered how Louis & Valentine bankrupted the Dukes and made their fortune in Trading Places? Well, Straight Dope user Billdo explains commodity trading:

Commodity futures are a little different. With futures, you promise to buy or sell the physical commodity at at a specific date for a specific price (For example, Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice for December 1 delivery at $100). Everyone in the market is either promising to buy or sell on the delivery date at the specified price. Unless you actually produce FCOJ, or use FCOJ in your business, you are trading speculatively. Unless you match the number of contracts you’ve sold and the number you’ve bought by the delivery date, you will have to pony up the OJ (or buy it) at that date (though actually you’ll probably be able to buy or sell the OJ on the spot market if you cannot deliver or use the physicals, though the spot market price can vary significantly). Needless to say, commodity future trading is very risky (and is subject to the same sort of margin calls as short selling of stock).

Now what Ackroyd/Murphy did was initially sell contracts for delivery at a later date. That is to say, they promised that by the delivery date they would get enough OJ by the delivery date to cover their contracts, either by obtaining the physical OJ, or by buying offsetting contracts in the market. When everybody thought there would be little OJ supply, the price of this promise to sell and deliver was very high. When everybody found out there would be ample supply, the price of this promise to deliver dropped significantly. After the price dropped, they bought back offsetting contracts for delivery (or looked at another way, they got a promise that they could buy the same amount of OJ at the delivery date that they had earlier promsed to sell). Having equalized their position, they could leave the market with the money they made.

Now when you’re in the market with more promises to sell than promises to buy, you’re known as having a short position, and if you have more promises to buy, you’re known as having a long position. In some ways this is similar to having a short position in stock or long position in stock (actually owning the stock), but the key difference is that there is an actual delivery date called for.

Now you too can win the $1 bet.

Pentagram’s Design for Fantastic Mr. Fox is Wrong

The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox: A Film by Wes Anderson Based on the Book by Roald Dahl
The design team at Pentagram just announced the release of The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox: A Film by Wes Anderson Based on the Book by Roald Dahl (amazon payola link). This companion book goes behind the scenes of Anderson’s new stop-motion movie opening soon. A movie which I am excited to see – watch Fantastic Mr. Fox trailers, and agree with me.

I hate to say this, but Pentagram screwed up.

Royal Tenenbaum's World of Futura
Wes Anderson tends to use similar themes, actors and cinematography throughout his body of work, creating a distinct visual style. To the point, Anderson like Stanley Kubrick, only uses the Futura type family in his movies.
For me, the genius of using Futura is that the typeface is a bit of a cypher; depending on how you use it, say when you need to typeset a sign, you can evoke either a vaguely old or futuristic feeling. This is especially useful in a film setting when you can add physical context around that sign, to reinforce that feeling. The opening title in Star Wars, the famous A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… does the same thing. It sets the scene.

Anderson uses Futura in the same manner, with most of his movies set vaguely in the past – or at least an alternative present.
So to see another typeface on a work which has Wes Anderson’s byline on it is shocking. And jarring.

Pentagram should have, and must have, known this. So why the odd decision to typeset the cover in, what looks to be, Baskerville? A typeface developed in the 18th century? Let’s give the benefit of a doubt and say that they knew Anderson’s use of Futura, but were forced by some other reason to use a serif typeface.

Later
Some have wrote in that the choice of type was to try to replicate the original Roald Dahl typography. I thought about the Roald Dahl angle, but from Pentagram’s and Amazon’s write-up, it is clear that this book illustrates Wes Anderson’s vision of the movie, complete with “making of” images, footage stills, etc.

29 Nov 09 Update
Pentagram’s blog (which is quite nice btw) has The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox update full of nice photos and this gem:

Wes Anderson was closely involved in the book design. He provided Hyland with his starting point, the book Truffaut by Truffaut, and worked in conjunction with the Pentagram team, approving overall structure, layouts and use of font.

Interesting that Anderson approved the typography according to Pentagram.