I had been planning to write a piece on that thieving prick Jordan Balfour since he is so archetypal of what is wrong with the finance industry. But every now and again someone comes along and does a much better job than you could and saves you the trouble.
Sure, it has a big star and a bigger director and has won and been nominated for numerous awards, but The Wolf of Wall Street is a lousy movie.
It doesn’t deserve an Oscar for anything – unless there’s a category for multi-faceted indulgence.
There is only one small saving grace in the three hours it took Martin Scorsese to remake Ben Younger’s 2000 Boiler Room (by adding more money, more sex, more drugs and vast wads of Leonardo DiCaprio to no better effect).
More here by Michael Pascoe at the Age
Have I mentioned before I HATED this book ;-). Not a chance in hell I am going to see this movie. Scumbag should still be locked up
Thieving scumbag Jordan may be, Sheamus; I still found the book quite entertaining.
Amusingly, just before I finished it my boss advised that we’re set to embark on some more sales training.
“Through which provider this time…” I asked. He replied “a company called Straight Line, headed up by Jordan someone”.
http://www.jbstraightline.com
Wish I’d done some research BEFORE seeing the movie. Humanity at some of it’s worst, crass, disgusting and absolutely nothing to glorify.
Modern day classic…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRf_RN7Dkww
Firstly, let’s get one thing straight: Michael Pascoe is a big fat liar. “The Wolf of Wall Street” is NOT a remake of “Boiler Room”, a rather obscure 2000 film about a college dropout (who isn’t even named Jordan Belfort!) who runs a casino from his apartment. “Boiler Room” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” are not related in any sort of original-and-remake fashion. Just because the films have some similarities to each other, that doesn’t make the more recent film a remake of the earlier work. Using his shoddy form of “logic”, Pascoe would have us believe that “Casablanca” is a remake of “Gone with the Wind”!
As a film reviewer, Michael Pascoe makes a pretty good financial advisor. His comment about how the film “doesn’t deserve an Oscar for anything” shows why Pascoe is (thankfully) not a member of the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I wonder what he knows about film direction that Martin Scorsese does not. Also, Pascoe whines about how the film is too long at three hours. This makes me wonder if he has anything to teach Thelma Schoonmaker about film editing. If Pascoe is going to joust with cinematic giants like Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, he’ll need a bigger lance.
Pascoe’s disdain for Jordan Belfort, for screwing people out of millions of dollars, would be hilarious if not so pathetic. You’d think Belfort was the only one infected with such avarice, not to mention an all-too-common talent for screwing people over. Only two things set Belfort apart from his rivals: he was successful in his ambition to rip off his clients, and he was the one who got caught.
Let’s remember that Michael Pascoe works for the biggest media barons in the country, themselves nothing more than a bunch of lowly cannibalistic shysters. You’d be naive to think for a moment that these billionaires don’t have their own little tax havens far away from Australia. Pascoe gets his mug on “Sunrise”, hardly a bastion of quality journalism, which is presented on the Seven network, a channel awash with junk television, manipulative television advertisements and crappy infomercials. People watch shallow rubbish like “Home and Away” and fall victim to the not-so-subtle social engineering perpetrated by these shows. Seven then sells advertising time to clients that produce promotionals that make people feel horrible about themselves (e.g. nobody will want to date you unless you have perfect skin, you’re not truly a part of the in-crowd unless you have the latest European sports car, etc) and shill products designed to remedy this manufactured inferioty complex felt by the potential consumer.
Pascoe states in his “review” of the film:
“The rubbish is easy to spot, whether it’s promising that trading forex is an easy way anyone can make money, flogging a computer program that magically picks winners, or featuring the latest shyster with some other secret for wealth he (or she) just can’t wait to give away. Yeah, right.”
In other words, Pascoe has a problem with scammers shilling products of rather dubious value—the scammers who advertise in the newspapers and on the television channels that employ Pascoe, essentially paying Pacoe’s salary.
Pascoe is basically the type of schmuck who, in a single beat of his own dark little heart, and would gladly become one of Belfort’s obsequious underlings. Pascoe, who makes his living from giving stock market advice (through corporate media outlets), surely must realise that playing the stock market is a form of gambling—and in gambling, there are winners and losers, and in order for you to be filthy rich, somebody else must be dirt poor. Belfort’s clients, like Belfort himself, took a punt and got burned. No kidding that Belfort is a scumbag—the film didn’t make him seem like anything better. Just because a film has a scoundrel as its protagonist, that doesn’t mean the film has attempted to glorify its subject. As somebody who genuinely loves cinema (not just cinema about stock market gurus), I could shoot holes through much of what Pascoe says in his review, but maybe people should see the film and make their own judgements.
For the record, I don’t play the stock market, and I knew nothing of the film’s subject before watching the movie. I wouldn’t know squat about the stock market, but that’s okay, because Pascoe clearly has no idea how to interpret a film such as “The Wolf of Wall Street”. I’ll gladly stay away from the stocks, but please somebody keep Pascoe away from the cinema. It’s fine to have an opinion, so long as it’s an informed opinion.
You might want to watch Boiler Room again since only the first part relates to Giovanni Ribisi’s bedroom casino. The bulk of the film takes place in and around the churn and burn shop JT Marlin.