
The field of economics can study more than the workings of economies or businesses, it can also help explore human behavior in how it reacts to incentives. Economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner host an anthology of documentaries that examines how people react to opportunities to gain, wittingly or otherwise. The subjects include the possible role a person’s name has for their success in life, why there is so much cheating in an honor bound sport like sumo wrestling, what helped reduce crime in the USA in the 1990s onward and we follow an school experiment to see if cash prizes can encourage struggling students to improve academically.
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Tag Archives: USA
Beyond the Time Barrier (1960) Edgar G. Ulmer, Robert Clarke, Darlene Tompkins, Arianne Ulmer, Romance, Sci-Fi

A pilot testing an experimental new rocket powered craft manages to fly into the future and land at the now deserted airbase he left. He ends up in a city with people who are suspicious he is a spy and who want to keep him to procreate with the rulers daughter because the majority of the inhabitants are sterile. He manages to escape and return to his own time but ages dramatically.
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Canadian Bacon (1995) Michael Moore, John Candy, Alan Alda, Rhea Perlman, Comedy

The US economy is in a rut, and so is the president’s approval rating. What we need is a good war, but the Russians aren’t interested. Hey — how about that big polite country to the north? Niagara Falls Sheriff Bud B. Boomer takes this all a bit too seriously, though.
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Deathsport (1978) Allan Arkush, Nicholas Niciphor, David Carradine, Claudia Jennings, Richard Lynch, Action, Sci-Fi, Sport

Futuristic Science Fiction about a sport to the death, using “destructocycles”.
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King Lear (1987) Jean-Luc Godard, Woody Allen, Freddy Buache, Leos Carax, Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi

Everything returns to normal after Chernobyl. That is, everything but art. Most of the great works are lost, and it is up to people like William Shakespear Junior the Fifth to restore the lost artwork of the human race. He finds strange goings-on at a resort enough to remind him of all the lines of the play, dealing with mob boss Don Learo and his daughter Cordelia, a strange professor named Jean Luc-Godard (sic), who repeatedly xeroxes his hand for no particular reason. He is followed by four humanoid goblins that keep tormenting Cordelia. There is also the gentleman whose girlfriend, Valerie, isn’t always visible. Then the film is sent off to New York for Mr. Alien to edit.
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Here’s to the Future! (2014) Gina Telaroli, John Budge, Begonia Colomar, Daniel Kasman, Documentary

On a late-summer Sunday in 2011, a female director gathers a team of filmmakers, writers, musicians, artists, critics, and friends in an apartment to recreate a scene from Michael Curtiz’s Depression-era drama The Cabin in the Cotton. Over plates of pasta and glasses of red wine, a round robin of non-professional actors take turns performing the same scene, again and again, In different permutations. With a freedom Influenced by pre–Code Hollywood, cameras, phones, and laptops are scattered around & set at almost every possible angle, documenting the action both in front of and behind the camera as it unfolds, from rehearsals to equipment adjustments to the banter between takes. An intimate. playful, and spontaneous look Into the collaborative cinematic process emerges. a snapshot of the filmmaker’s perennial struggle to capture fleeting moments before the day (and light) slip away.
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The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980) Piers Haggard, Richard Quine, Peter Sellers, Helen Mirren, David Tomlinson, Comedy

Fu Manchu’s 168th birthday celebration is dampened when a hapless flunky spills Fu’s age-regressing elixir vitae. Fu sends his lackeys to round up ingredients for a new batch of elixir, starting with the Star of Leningrad diamond, nabbed from a Soviet exhibition in Washington. The FBI sends agents Capone and Williams to England to confer with Nayland Smith, an expert on Fu. Nayland suspects Fu will kidnap the king and queen and demand the George V diamond as ransom. Scotland Yard recruits Alice Rage to stand-in for the queen. Fu nabs the “fake” queen; Rage becomes enamored of Fu and aids him in his quest for the George V diamond.
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The Thirteenth Chair (1929) Tod Browning, Conrad Nagel, Leila Hyams, Margaret Wycherly, Drama, Mystery

Although his murdered friend was by all accounts a scoundrel a true “bounder” Edward Wales is determined to trap his killer by staging a seance using a famous medium. Many of the 13 seance participants had a reason and a means to kill, and one of them uses the cover of darkness to kill again. When someone close to the medium is suspected she turns detective, in the hope of uncovering the true murderer.
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A Stranger in My Arms (1959) Helmut Käutner, June Allyson, Jeff Chandler, Sandra Dee, Drama

Air Force test pilot Pike Yarnell reluctantly attends the memorial service for long-dead Donald Beasley, his navigator during the Korean War; recalling, in flashbacks, their painful days together on a life raft. In Beasley’s home town, Pike is repelled at Donald’s wealthy mother’s enshrinement of her dead son; bemused at his frankly amorous pursuit by Donald’s younger sister Pat; and increasingly charmed by his attractive widow Christina. What will the final flashback reveal?
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Cattle Empire (1958) Charles Marquis Warren, Joel McCrea, Gloria Talbott, Don Haggerty, Western

After serving a five year prison sentence for allowing his men to destroy a town in a drunken spree, a trail boss is hired by the same town’s leading citizen to drive their cattle to Fort Clemson. Complicating matters, a rival cattle baron also hires the cattle driver to lead his herd.
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