CB: If someone walks up to you and tells you that the sky is blue, you don’t need to look up to make sure they’re right. The sky was blue when you were playing with your friends in the park when you were eight and was blue when you left for work this morning. Paintings by Rembrandt and Monet tell you that the sky has always been blue. It’s a matter of common knowledge - things that we understand and don’t have to think about because of logic or sense. But while the sky may always be some shade of blue, there are some things that we think we understand, when the truth is that we have no idea
EW: Freakonomics, based on the megaseller by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, is a linked series of documentary vignettes, each of which purports to illustrate some vital yet whimsically counterintuitive principle about how life really works. It's applied economics as fortune-cookie wisdom. The best segment is one directed by Alex Gibney that explores the rigged aspects of sumo wrestling, an ''honorable'' sport that's actually run the way the Mob once ran boxing. It's a mini-essay.
NY Timeout: The 2005 best-seller made it fashionable to look for unlikely statistical explanations; watching its cowriters—amiable, buttoned-down prof Steven Levitt and sarcastic journo Stephen Dubner—tease and parry in the movie version, it seems like they’re having tons of fun. But despite a roster of off-kilter documentarians each directing an episode, Freakonomics only partly delivers the sense of traipsing into uncharted territory (which the text supplied on nearly every page).
CS:
ComingSoon.net has an exclusive TV spot for Freakonomics, available on Video On Demand, iTunes, Amazon On Demand, PlayStation Network, Xbox Marketplace this Friday, September 3rd, and opening in theaters on October 1st.
Freakonomics is the film version of the best-selling book about incentives-based thinking by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Like the book, the film examines human behavior with provocative and sometimes hilarious case studies, bringing together a dream team of filmmakers responsible for some of the most acclaimed and entertaining documentaries in recent years: Academy Award winner Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Casino Jack and the United States of Money), Academy Award nominees Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), Academy Award nominee Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) and Seth Gordon (The King of Kong).
