It’s a sad fact that the vast majority of silent movies in Japan have been lost thanks to human carelessness, earthquakes and the grim efficiency of the United States Air Force. The first films of hugely important figures like Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Hiroshi Shimizu have simply vanished. So we should consider ourselves fortunate […]

There are two ways to think about achievement and the idea of getting ahead: Perhaps it’s a race. Getting ahead means beating the competition. But perhaps it’s simply an effort to move forward. A rising tide lifts all the boats, and if you want your boat to have plenty of water under it, that’s far […]

The expression “YOLO” may now be just passé enough to require explanation. It stands, as only some of us would try to deny remembering, for “You only live once,” a sentiment that reflects an eternal truth. Some bodies of religious belief don’t strictly agree with it, of course, but that was also true 24 centuries […]

Human luck doesn’t even out. Regression to the mean explains that in statistics, outlying events tend to be overcome by average ones. But in society, the opposite is often true. A small headstart becomes a bigger one, or a small stumble can turn into something that is hard to overcome. Individuals can work to amplify […]

This Is Spinal Tap came out more than 40 years ago. At the time, says director Rob Reiner in a recent interview at San Diego Comic-Con, “nobody got it. I mean, they thought I’d made a movie about a real band that wasn’t very good, and why wouldn’t I make a movie about the Beatles […]