The Big Short is the 3rd film of the 13th annual Omak Film Festival playing Thursday Feb 25 through Saturday Feb 27 at the Mirage.

The Big Short is rated R and runs 130 minutes.

Showtimes: Thurs Feb 25 – 7.00 *|* Fri Feb 26 – 6.45 & 9.45*|* Sat Feb 27 – 3.45, 6.45 & 9.45

Four denizens in the world of high-finance predict the credit and housing bubble collapse of the mid-2000s, and decide to take on the big banks for their greed and lack of foresight.

Director: Adam McKay
Writers: Charles Randolph (screenplay), Adam McKay (screenplay) |
Stars: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling

Michael Lewis writes in Vanity Fair magazine about his book that is the basis for the film:

“In early 2008, I started working on what became my book The Big Short. I’d written one book about Wall Street, Liar’s Poker, and pretty much assumed I’d never write another, as I further assumed that nothing would ever happen on Wall Street that was as interesting to me as what had happened to me—or, if it did, I’d be the last person anyone on Wall Street would want to tell about it. What caught my attention in late 2007 were the weird, amorphous, and ever growing trading losses in the subprime-mortgage bond market suffered by the big Wall Street banks. Citigroup’s losses went from $6 billion to $40 billion to more than $65 billion. Merrill Lynch announced a $4.5 billion hit, then revised it to $19 billion and then finally to more than $50 billion. Morgan Stanley announced that it had lost more than $9 billion on what appeared to be a bet by a single trader. The big Wall Street banks had become the dumb money. Their employees, the putative best and brightest, and surely the most self-interested people on the planet, were committing mass suicide. How had that happened?”