Debt, Sin and Balto

Book and Movie Reviews:

Payback by Margaret Atwood. I wish the economy really worked like this. I could understand it if it were all in literary analogies. There should be a class on every college campus called Economics for English Majors. Even though I'm not an English major, I understand A Christmas Carol more easily than The Economist. This book doesn't have much weight though. It's just a nonfiction exploration of the concept of debt by one of my favorite novelists. It's a pleasant, easily-understood read, but it didn't provide many great insights into economics for me. It spurred a lot interest in the novels she referenced, though. I just have trouble finding the economy interesting beyond how it affects populations. I don't care about the stock market too much, even though it's really important. I don't understand business other than businesses provide jobs and paychecks. All this talk about buyouts and merges just confuses me. She doesn't go into that, but just explores debt the concept. Personal debt, debt as sin, the relationship between creditor and debtor, etc. Very interesting, but not very applicable to the current financial crisis, which is what I was hoping to get by reading a non-fiction book about debt.

Balto, 1,2 and 3. [SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen the movies, and for some reason care about the endings, don't read on. I basically give it all away.] Aw.... Balto. I loved that movie as a kid. It's about the diptheria outbreak in Nome in 1925, and the sled dogs that brought the medicine through a storm, the route that later became the Iditerod. Balto (voiced by Kevin Bacon) is a stray half-wolf who loves Jenna, the purebred husky. His rival is a lead sled dog named Steel, who become quite crazy later on in the movie when Balto begins to encroach upon his place in the town. First Balto takes an interest in Jenna, who is the only girl Steel notices, then Balto beats him in a race to find the fastest sled dogs, and then Balto (who wasn't allowed to be on the team because he's half wolf) comes to find the lost sled dog team to help them home, taking away Steel's leadership and reputation in the town. In fact, Steel isn't even mentioned in the 2nd or 3rd movies. He just quietly goes away.

The second movie focuses on Aleu, Balto (no longer voiced by Kevin Bacon) and Jenna's daughter who looks more like a wolf than a dog, and thus is not adopted by any people. Interestingly enough, Balto doesn't get adopted by Jenna's family. He stays living in his abondoned boat with Boris the goose, while Jenna and the puppies live with her family. I suppose it isn't a Disney movie though. Dogs don't have to be subject to human social standards. Aleu moves in with Balto after she isn't adopted. Then she runs away and joins a wolf pack. David Carradine voices the leader of the wolf pack, but Aleu is chosen by Balto's mother (who isn't a real wolf, she's a spirit wolf) as the leader of the pack, and David Carradine doesn't float away on an iceberg with the rest of the pack. Balto goes back home.

Then in the third movie, Balto and Jenna's son, Kodi (short for Kodiak, voiced by Sean Astin), works as an idealistic sled dog for the USPS, bringing mail between Nome and White Mountain. Then Balto's obsession, the bush plane, comes to town, and the pilot (voiced by Keith Carradine) challenges the sled team to a race to see who can deliver the mail faster. Balto is chosen to lead the team, even though he knows they can't win. What do you know, they hit a storm and the plane crashes. The dog team wins, but Balto wants to go looking for the plane. He ends up going alone, though. Or, nearly alone. Muc and Luc and Boris' sexy jazz/beatnik girlfriend come too. Boris was on the plane, and she's worried. Muc and Luc know where it crashed. The point is, his son and the rest of the USPS sled team doesn't go with him. At which point when find out Kodi's full name when his mother yells at him. Then they all go after them and save Balto and the Pilot from certain death. The movie ends with Balto and the pilot flying around in a plane. There are also a couple of stupid, angry bull moose to provide some scary yet stupid and funny parts. Pretty much the only thing the bull moose says is: Are you talkin' to me? I think you're talkin' to me!

In short: Good kids movies. The second one was pretty bad, though, despite David Carradine (who deserved a much less humiliating death, btw. poor dude). The third was better. I like them a lot, though. They're not The Lion King, or anything, but they're not bad. The sequels were better than Disney's sequels for their cartoons (although apparently someone decided Balto 2 and 3 would be better as psuedo-musicals, even though the first one wasn't and Muc and Luc were voiced by Phil Collins, who could have made it an awesome musical, and they started to incorporate crappy CG). When I was a kid, Balto is what made me really interested in wolves and Alaska (I read Julie of the Wolves probably 50 times).

I've been going through the kids movies on Netflix this summer. I've seen many movies I haven't seen before and would probably never see if it weren't for Netflix. I watched Land Before Time XI, for example. Why are they still making those? That train left the station 15 years ago.