The Producer

Sao Paulo (Photo by andredeak via Flickr)

As I was leafing through the FT, I came upon an amazing photo of two soaring towers in Shanghai. In the foreground was a construction site. The photo was sexy enough to lure me into reading the paper’s mining-industry analysis.

Mining! What was I thinking? Well, it was all worth it for this one little nugget – buried under reams of text about copper prices and the stockpiling of zinc by China:

Rio Tinto, the multinational miner, reminded investors of these fundamentals … . The urbanisation rate of the Chinese population is still only 45 percent, and that is not even mentioning India or Brazil — “50,000 new skyscrapers are needed by 2025″, it adds.

Really? Fifty thousand skyscrapers in the next 15+ years? That’s about 3,300 per year, or 63 a week or nine a day for 15 years!

OK. So I have no idea how Rio Tinto built its projection. For instance, how do they define what qualifies as a “skyscraper.” And I also don’t know how many skyscrapers have been built, on average, each year over the last 15 or 20 years. Maybe Rio’s number is not so amazing.

On the face of it, though, it’s kind of mind boggling.

I went to see Slumdog Millionaire in the theater for the first time and, while it’s true that I enjoyed it, I was surprised that it wasn’t better.

The fact is, it reminded me of the Brazilian movie City of God. Both movies follow brothers/friends from childhood as they and their poverty stricken surroundings grow into something new. In both movies, one boy follows the gangster path, while the other somehow finds his way to a life that is destined to move beyond the slums. And both films make manic-good use of music.

The difference between the two is that Slumdog was entertaining, although it tried to be more than that, and City of God was moving, amazing. It was superior art.

Apparently, this isn’t an original thought. But it is what hit me in the wake of watching Slumdog.

I was talking about this with a friend and we chalked it up to Slumdog being made by an outsider and City being made by Brazilians.

Everyone else I talked to said they enjoyed Slumdog more because, as they saw it, it involved less violence. I think they might see it differently if they watched the films in succession. But, then, maybe so would I!

The 2008 F1 finale at Interlagos was one of the most exciting races in the sport’s history, even outdoing the 1986 championship fight in Australia between Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost. For once, Formula One exuded excitement and grace.

Lost in the excitement of Felipe Massa’s win and Lewis Hamilton’s historic championship was the latest sign that Fernando Alonso stands above them all.

Fomula One my be in the midst of a financial crisis, but it is in another golden age of driving talent. Alonso, Hamilton, Massa, Kimi Raikkonen, Sebastian Vettel, Robert Kubica and Nico Rosberg all bring excitement and talent to the track. But out of that bunch it is only Alonso and Vettel who have proven the can take inferior equipment and win with it.

The job that Alonso has done at Renault this year is proof that he was not diminished by his sojourn at McLaren. The Spaniard has led a talented but broken team from the bottom half of the field to the top three in the span of a season where the top two teams developed their cars at an unprecedented pace.

So, while observers fall all over themselves to predict multiple titles for Hamilton, it is two-time champion Alonso who is own track to add more trophies to his cabinet because there is no better driver in the sport today.