Monday, November 29, 2010

Making Money Without







Over the weekend, news broke that Universal moved their prequel of John Carpenter’s The Thing, also called The Thing, into release date limbo. Official word from the studio was the film was “not yet ready” and fanboy worry and speculation began. Does the film suck? Do the effects looks stupid? Performances stink? All of the above? The answer, in fact, is none of the above. Producer Marc Abraham clarified to Hitfix that while they already have a cut of the film, the release date shift has allowed them to schedule additional photography that will “enhance existing sequences,” “make crystal clear a few story beats” and “add punctuation marks to the film’s feeling of dread.”


So while we are going to have to wait a little longer to see director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s version of The Thing, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton, the film we do eventually see will be better for it. Read more after the jump.


In his discussion with Hitfix’s Drew McWeeny, Abraham reportedly stressed that “they’re looking at everything right now to make sure they’ve got what they need.” This is luxury very few studio films have. Once a movie is saddled with a release date, they are usually beholden to it. Filmmakers work and work and work on the film until the prints need to be locked and sent to theaters. The film is then ripped from their hands so we can see it. So, at a certain point, story becomes secondary to just making sure the effects and sound are up to theatrical standards. If franchise films like Transformers or Iron Man didn’t have to adhere to a release date, 90% of the time, some reshoots would make the film infinitely better.


Every so often Warren Buffett goes on TV and calls for higher taxes. This from the guy who’s paid, according to Forbes, perhaps less than $10 million in taxes, a tiny percentage of his $50 billion net worth. I say perhaps because, to the best of my knowledge, Buffett has never made his tax returns public.


Buffett is big-business, with his Berkshire Hathaway holding company stock selling (today) at $119,675.00 per share. Berkshire Hathaway has 1 million shares, which means that Buffett heads a company worth more that the gross national product of a few small Latin American countries.


How does Buffett manage to pay so little in taxes? For one, Buffett, who wants everybody to pay for big-spending big government, donates sizable amounts to tax-exempt philanthropies, such as the Gates Foundation. Forbes, again,

He donates appreciated Berkshire Hathaway stock — which costs him pennies on the dollar — to charity, and receives a fat, juicy tax deduction at the appreciated price without having to pay a capital gains tax on the appreciation. (And, note that the money actually sits in his own charitable organization.) He’s saving income taxes with the ordinary deduction so it’s essentially a tax shelter.


He builds up his massive net worth and doesn’t have to sell stock while deferring capital gains. When he does take a capital gain, it’s at a 15% rate, and he lives in a low-tax state.


Buffett has been known to complain that he paid taxes on the lower-rated capital gains rate rather than the higher income-tax rate. Well, play me the world’s smallest violin, Warren.



Mind you, I’m all for capitalism. America is the greatest country in the world because historically it afforded its citizens the ability to legally prosper and live in abundance. What I object to is billionaires who got their own aiming to prevent anyone else from attaining the same, or more, as they.


This latest time around Buffett was on ABC’s This Week, and told Christiane Amanpour that “People at the high end, people like myself, should be paying more taxes”,



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