Hacker Cinema
American Beauty
1999 · Film · 122 min
Directed by Sam Mendes
Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
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60 comments on Hacker News
I wonder if this could be explained in a similar way to Hollywood movies. If the movies are designed to please the largest group of people, there is a greater chance people will choose to see it than another movie. The human law professors come with their own personalities, beliefs, and opinions that come through in their writing. An LLM has been trained to please the largest swathe of the population. That doesn't mean the answer is better; just like Captain America isn't necessarily better than American Beauty.
anxiety in the sense you're talking about is a function of private surveillance and in that regard America is much worse. State led surveillance in Chinese public spaces is real and effective in producing compliance (20 years ago public theft, pulling people off motorcycles was a daily occurrence) but in private China is a significantly freer society.
Foucault used to distinguish between models of authority that operate on "make die and let live" vs "let die and make live". China's the former, the US with its moral busybodies both in progressive and religious flavors the latter.
The US now is a society of public disorder and personal policing, China is a society of public order and largely indifference in private life. Of course the former creates anxiety. American Beauty, a film about permanent surveillance without any state, would make no sense in China.
It’s hard for me not to read these “old/small web elegies” as coming from people trapped in a kind of perpetual adolescence leading them to contrive impediments to authoring a static website while grieving over a want for community.
I’m curious about the personal lives of the authors of these kinds of posts and whether there’s any shades of the film American Beauty in them.
> Step 3 - is to hold the belief that because it's unearned that no advantage should be assigned to it, we cannot claim that it's preferable, etc.
This is simply a statement against being prejudiced (racist or sexist). We never needed a new concept or word if thats all "woke" meant.
> That's what makes it a kind of funny insult word, because it's logically unworkable and runs counter to well, literally the entire world.
You're completely misunderstanding what someone means when they use "woke" as an insult. I agree with PG here - as an insult, its basically the same as calling someone a prude / prig.
In context, imagine a statement like this: "Ugh shut up woke people, yes - I know you hate kevin spacey. I don't care right now. He's still an incredible actor and American Beauty is still a masterpiece. Shut up. I'm trying to enjoy the movie."
You can replace "woke people" there with "prude" in that statement and the meaning is unchanged. Essentially, I think there's two separate things: First, being against discrimination in all its forms and second: being really annoying about it. Its that second part - the annoying puritanical finger wagging that people are referring to when they hate on "woke people".
huh, american beauty was 99. i always remember the "plastic bag caught in the wind" scene - when i was in middle school, years before i saw the movie, i was sitting on the sidelines during football practice and saw a plastic bag caught in the wind. it was hypnotizing, enrapturing - i dont know how long i watched, but that floating bag caught against the side of the school building was one of the most beautiful things ive ever seen.
For comedy one needs to subvert expectations, and this is why making light of grave events (Black Comedy) is a big phenomenon.
There are many examples from WW2 comedy to 9/11 memes. Sometimes the examples are more indirect, like in film: American Psycho, American Beauty, Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, Fargo, Don't Look Up, Fight Club, Quentin Tarantino's stuff, etc. All of them deal with dark themes in a light way.
Given the prevalence of this in our culture, the author seems a bit surprised. Maybe they didn't connect it to dark comedy.
I saw it and thought it was awful.
I wonder if there's a sort of imposter syndrome thing going on, not letting people say it's bad.
"I didn't get it, but I'm unclear on the backstory of the roman empire. I better keep my mouth shut or they will know I'm uneducated!"
In comparison some movies are sort of a mess that resolves into something in the end.
Charlie Kaufman movies are like that. I liked synecdoche ny (didn't like anomalisa)
Or even the plastic bag in american beauty.
Ok - most recent movie I would recommend spending your money on: Didi
I was surprised to not see American Beauty mentioned, if you're talking about attention and enchantment I think that's probably one of the most well known films tackling the topic. https://youtu.be/Qssvnjj5Moo
Also reminded me of Joyce who pretty much declared this to be the central job of the artist, comparing it to the Eucharist:
""the artist is a priest of the eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life"
The Crow
The Machine (if you like Ex Machina, try it)
Alien
Prometheus
Fight Club
Secretary
Casablanca
Kill Bill
The Emperor's New Groove
Star Wars Episode IV - The original goodness, not the CGI horror-show.
Star Wars: Rogue One
American Beauty
Dredd.
Hellboy (directors).
Blade Runner (theatrical).
Chocolat.
Noise (Australian film, 2007. Love that one).
I try not to watch films too many times in quick succession. The repetition dulls the experience for me.
There was a movie subplot that featured something like this as part of the main character's midlife crisis. Something with Kevin Spacey. American Beauty?
People who retire from professional jobs often do pick up part time work that would be classified as "menial" because they want to keep engaged and/or make a little extra money. I've had older Lyft drivers who retired from professional backgrounds including one guy who was a comptroller for an engineering firm in Boston. The WSJ sometimes profiles retirees who fall into this bucket as well. IIRC there was a former CEO who couldn't stand being at home and decided to work at the local airport information counter, maybe even as a volunteer.
My limited understanding is that Palahniuk's book was a kind of fuck you to the publishing establishment (and in that vein, I highly recommend American Fiction).
Fight Club is one of my favorite movies of all time (although I could do with less onscreen fighting). It was (to me) part of a cosmic trilogy of movies ending the millennium:
* Fight Club * American Beauty * The Matrix All three dealt with the concept of sleepwalking through life and the shock of waking up from it.
The 90s with its apolitical cinema like Saving private Ryan or Forrest gump that certainly are not pro american propaganda or other great movies like the Matrix that do not denounce late stage capitalism as soul crushing and has no themes that could be interpreted about taking red pills and feeling more like yourself.
The 90s had a different context sure, capitalism was peaking, we didn't have the crushing reality of the post 2008 world, or the crazy chest bumping Murica militarism of the post 9/11 era. But the 2000s scare, the internet fear, the office jobs being boring/grey and soulless. The slight fear of science and progress (see Jurassic park, gattaca, fifth element), the work culture being inhumane and dehumanising (matrix, office space, clerks, american beauty), the same happened in music with grunge being one of the main genres of the decades.
All of this art was made in the backdrop of probably the most optimistic period of time, Disney had a renaissance, america absolute cleared the floor in the first gulf war, the stock market had an impossible never ending rise, pop music was happier than ever and fashion was in the most sexy, thin, in your face hotness ever.
If you only want to enjoy the 90s happiness without seeing the fact tons of counter art was being made and that our current cyniscim isn't only a product of the post 2008 economic stagnation but also comes from the seeds that were planted at the height of the cultural hedonism of the 90s then you are just straight ignoring some of the biggest hits of that decade.
Photographs or movies involving, for example, nude children, which do not meet the bright-line child pornography standard, are nonetheless in a legal gray area and may be considered to be exploitation of those children if the parents did not give consent. Think Thora Birch at the end of American Beauty.
I'm not saying superhero movies are directly attributable, just that their decline might be a moment for a shakeup. I'm not particularly convinced it will happen because I think streaming and prestige TV have also had a strong effect on what the movie industry does and doesn't do.
In terms of the kind of movies I'm thinking of, looking back through past best picture winners I'm thinking of things like A Beautiful Mind, No Country for Old Men, American Beauty. But also "frat pack" type comedies like Knocked Up, Dodgeball etc etc, they were their own mini industry for a time!
Obviously it's difficult to say which of those would be affected today (effectively asking which movies do we not know about that haven't been made today) but the mid-budget decline is a well documented thing.
That reminds me of the guy getting a burger flipper job in the film American Beauty.
this should be top comment
though honestly I was more influenced by movies than books, I guess strongest influence on hour I vote the world around me had Fight Club, Falling Down and American Beauty plus the car speech in Se7en and Collateral as well, Taxi Driver as well
TLDW crap movies teach us crap lessons
I skimmed through the video which it seems to use as example 4-5 crap movies
I'd like to see this video using Falling down, American beauty, Fight club, Se7en as examples, the first three among the movies which formed me the most and taught me valuable lessons.
I think the distinction is the subjective perception that time has stretched out a thousand years. It's not that time has literally dilated, just that our "normal" perception of time has changed. Perceived time dilation occurs under certain drugs (to include those endogenous to the human body) and the OP thought has been something that has occurred to me (and others) as well. IIRC, the movie American Beauty suggests it in the last scenes.
Movies: - 12 angry men - Whiplash - Prestige - American Beauty - The Thing - V for Vendetta - The Grand Budapest Hotel - Gone Girl - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - Parasite - ... Tarantino or Scorsese movies
Anime: - Howl's Moving Castle - Spirited Away
Not a movie but both great series: - Love, Death & Robots - Black Mirror
I took out a loan and bought a fancy sports car right after I got my first job. I was proudly showing it off to colleagues in the parking lot, when my manager walked by, stopped and smugly said, "I've got you now!" That snide comment taught me so much about life: Do your best to avoid debt and bad managers and/or work environments. Funny thing, when I quit (after selling the car and clearing my debt), that same manager threatened not to pay me unless I finished a project (about another month of work). The movie, "American Beauty", had been out for a little bit, and I stole a line: "So don't pay me." The look on his face was priceless.
You're focusing on a very specific niche. Sci-fi and adventure were rarely the interest of good film makers, so few sci-fi or adventure films were made.
But that does not reflect on the larger film industry of the 80s and 90s, which was producing many more incredible movies which stood the test of time. 1999 alone gave us Fight Club, The Talented Mr Ripley, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, The Iron Giant, Eyes Wide Shut, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, The Green Mile.
There has always been a lot of schlock cinema being produced, but right now it is dominating much more than in the last few decades.
Lol -
1) Ok, let's say it's not your heyday, but then what are you basing your claim of 'business done at the strip club' off of? Stories you've heard? You said you didn't even experience it second-hand, so how do you have this information?
2) Did you read the article at all? a) Operating in secret: "but newspapers like the New York Times hid the unflattering reports to continue getting 'spoon-fed stories" - sounds like he dedicated a fair amount of work-time to otherwise needless PR then. b) Hiring a party planner: "Gates would visit one of Seattle’s all-nude nightclubs and hire dancers to come to his home and swim naked with his friends in his indoor pool" - sounds like he spent a lot of time in strip clubs & would pick his favorites. How likely do you think it is that all-nude strippers willing to go to a John's house are also on-board with cutting said party short so their John can get back to work? As you state, it was the 80's so I'm sure everyone was sober enough to make that decision every time.
3) The literal quote is "I never took a day off in my twenties, not one." He doubles down IN THE QUOTE. I agree he's a hard worker, but it's not good to tell a generation of up and coming entrepreneurs that they should strive to 'always be on call' when Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt, etc. etc. all have VIBRANT personal lives that REQUIRE TIME OFF. That's the only point I'm trying to make. Time off is important and even an actual psychotic hard-worker like Len Bosack admits it.
4) Kevin Spacey is an actual pedophile (Anthony Rapp was 14), so EXTREMELY weird example. I don't think people shouldn't watch American Beauty (it's the second-best film set in Sacramento!), but to glorify him the way you do IS kind of sus.
5) I was just making a joke about the 'business in strip clubs' thing. I think sex work is great when done right (Evidenced by the fact that I know what a strip club is like on the inside). It's one of the most innately human things we do. I just think you're out way over your skis.
A false accusation might come from a man. A couple of scenes from a couple of films:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJVXg1AHQTY American Beauty (1999)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu_xTC5Gc2U Sexy Beast (2000)
(I can recommend both films in the unlikely case that you haven't already seen them.)
None of Office Space, Clerks, or Magnolia were enjoyed by masses upon initial release. And some that got acclaim on your list have faded a lot since then (e.g. American Beauty).
You know what was enjoyed by masses from 1999 that you left out? Star Wars Episode 1.
Check back in twenty years to see what movies from the recent past hold up, and how many of them aren't from Marvel...
Yeah, I miss the good old days of movies with no political message whatsoever such as The Matrix, Forrest Gump and American Beauty.
Nowadays you have: superhero movies, sequels, remakes, empowerment of certain groups that aren't me, movies with a political message, or some sad dour art house movie that makes you walk out feeling bummed out about life.
Compare 1994 or 1999 movie releases to 2021.
Fight club, the matrix, forrest gump, Magnolia, office space, sixth sense, american beauty, clerks, etc.
Nowadays: the father?, Mank?, black messiah, , chicago 7?
It's not about creating magical new worlds with thought provoking ideas anymore.
Maybe I'm explaining it poorly but film seems to have gone the way of the music industry.
Commodified instead of inspired.
I LOVE going to the movies.
I just wish there was something I wanted to see.
I wonder if the ceiling will slowly fall until we digitally erase everyone that society has any qualm with from movies and media.
or, going another step into it..
Imagine a movie production group being okay with something like reproducing American Beauty but with Kevin Spacey deep-faked with a new actor due to his allegations and criminal charges.
I think we're slowly approaching that point -- a digital exclusion list that can be implemented by the production company and without actor support.
At least it isn't a new precedent.[0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union
it depends on your age, I don't think you can really change your world view based on movie if you are in 30s or older, but you can be definitely influenced if you are teenager and into 20s
taking this into consideration I would recommend these parts of the movies, you can find them all on YouTube without watching whole movie:
Se7en - final John Doe monologue about innocence of his victims in back seat
Collateral - Vincent monologue on back seat about not doing anything with your life
Fight club - pretty much all movie, very influential, should be mandatory for teenagers
American beauty - less extreme version of fight club for older men that you can rebuild your life even in higher age
the big Lebowski - if you care about your clothing maybe it can help you to watch Lebowski
the beach - encouraged me to travel more, although wanted already before
> If The Great Wall had turned out to be the massive hit everyone was expecting, this process might have continued. But The Great Wall was not a hit. It was a massive flop—in China, America, and everywhere else.
OK, I don't go the the movies a lot [1] so am generally unaware of much of what is in theaters, but I do watch a lot of TV live (as opposed to on DVR) on channels that have ads and on which studios run lots of ads for the movies that they expect to be big, so I'm usually aware of what is opening that the studios are expecting to be big.
I don't recall ever hearing anything about this movie before reading that article. Was there something anemic about their advertising in the US? Or were the ads just so forgettable that I did see them but completely ignored or forgot them?
[1] My complete movie theater history for the last 20 years: American Beauty, Gladiator, second two Matrix movies, the three Lord of the Rings movies, the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Wild Wild West (by accident...was trying for Star Wars and went into the wrong theater), How to Train Your Dragon 2, How to Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World, and Avengers: Endgame.
> But Hollywood have always done this - recycling old ideas in new wrapping. And Hollywood have always been criticized for being vapid entertainment, empty spectacle etc.
Not to this degree. The last good year for movies was 1999. This is the list of major releases that year:
The Matrix
Fight Club
The Sixth Sense
Toy Story 2
The Green Mile
American Beauty
Being John Malkovic
Office Space
The Iron Giant
Magnolia
Austin Powers
American Pie
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Eyes Wide Shut
Dogma
Galaxy Quest
The Insider
Notting Hill
Man on the Moon
Analyze This
Detroit Rock City
Mystery Men
Bicentennial Man
This is not even the entire list, just the ones I enjoyed and I'm bothering to type.
You can't look at that list and honestly say nothing has changed, because it's just not true. The energy and creativity has clearly moved somewhere else, to TV and streaming services.
This year alone there's two FANTASTIC shows, Chernobyl and Stranger Things S3 that definitely deserve praise.
Yep, definitely we have much more freedom of travel and work. which is great if you embrace and are prepared and ready for that lifestyle. keep doing your thing! another book/movie that addresses the american dream trap is revolutionary road by yates, i'd recommend the book if you like american beauty. but these are both cultural artifacts of a different era IMO
I'm just amazed somebody can come to this conclusion.
20 years ago you had to go to the shop, buy ONE film for $15 from a limited shelve, bring it back home, put it in a device you bought specifically for that film format and that does only that, navigate through a dubious UI, be forced to watch ads, then eventually get to the film. If you didn't like it... too bad.
Now for the same price, you have access to thousand of movies __and__ TV shows. No ads. Instant watching. Most of them were release on TV or on theater so basically same quality than other channels.
And people complain ?
I mean I do think the general level of quality of movies and TV shows is going down, but it has nothing to do with netflix. The good/sucks ratio is plummeting much the same on every medium (and I think it's because of us voting for crap with our money, like for most things in our society).
Well, I guess it's beautiful some people arrived at such a level of comfort in their life that they consider that amazing commercial offer to be not up to their standard.
> PC propaganda
While their original content do try to target specific niches including PC and SJW trends (it makes sense IMO), there are plenty of excellent content on netflix that don't follow this trend. Just opening my front page: Ajin, Rick and Morty, black mirror, battle royal, altered carbon, lastman, dirk gently, breaking bad, american beauty, pulp fiction, drive, trainspotting, house of cards, david chapelle, mad max furry road...
Yes, things like Sabrina, disenchantmenent, etc are pandering to a certain crowd. So what ? You can just click on something else. There is a lot of something else.
> the story was thoroughly researched and reported in depth by a team of professional journalists working for the New York Times
No. It was Ronan Farrow that originally broke the story. The NY Times took their sweet time before going after someone that was an ultra-major Democrat party donor. The Weinstein story was rejected by multiple "professional" news outlets.
The "professional" journalists working for the NY Times KNEW about the Weinstein story as far back as 2004, but spiked it under pressure from various Hollywood interests. Professional journalists aren't supposed to spike stories for political reasons and that's exactly that the Times did in 2004.
Weinstein's office in Tribeca was right downstairs from the Tribeca Film offices. It was on the 3rd floor. Spend a few hours in that building and you could probably have heard a dozen stories in whispered tones about Harvey. Some professional journalist from the NY Times should have had this story years ago. A high school journalist could have written this! And Kevin Spacey? Anyone who in Hollywood would have known about Spacey as far back as 2004, or perhaps earlier. It was an "open" secret. So open that it was a joke. It started becoming more "known" when Spacey was working with Sam Mendes on American Beauty in 1999.
Give me a fucking break. Professional journalists sat on this story, ignored it or conspired to crush it. It took a rookie, Ronan Farrow, trying to make a name for himself while on a personal mission against that horrible abuser Woody Allen for this to all break.
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/russell-crowe-matt-damon-helped-spike-a-weinstein-expose-in-2004-former-nyt-journalist-claims-20171010-gyxkn4.html
Yea I feel like a lot of these break downs of film overanalyze and make too cerebral the art of movies.. For example when Sam Mendes was filming American Beauty he said he did not realize the film he was making until they got into the editing room. From all of the youtube movie break downs you would believe that everything was intentional and deliberate and you should already know the movie you are going to make out of the gate instead of discovering and pivoting along the way
> I notice in Ebert's reviews an appreciation of films as mere entertainment in cases where is what they intend to be, and an appreciation of films as art if that is what they aspire to. In fact, one of my annoyances at his (often excellent) reviews is that he seemed to apply consciously lowered standards when he thought that a film wasn't aiming too high, which led to him recommending films that were close to mediocre, because they hit the mark they were aiming for. There is a certain integrity in this, of course.
I think he did a great job voicing his own standard, which I think makes a lot of sense, in his review of Shaolin Soccer (https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/shaolin-soccer-2004):
> "Shaolin Soccer" is like a poster boy for my theory of the star rating system. Every month or so, I get an anguished letter from a reader wanting to know how I could possibly have been so ignorant as to award three stars to, say, "HIDALGO" while dismissing, say, "Dogville" with two stars. This disparity between my approval of kitsch and my rejection of angst reveals me, of course, as a superficial moron who will do anything to suck up to my readers.
> What these correspondents do not grasp is that to suck up to my demanding readers, I would do better to praise "Dogville." It takes more nerve to praise pop entertainment; it's easy and safe to deliver pious praise of turgid deep thinking. It's true, I loved "Anaconda" and did not think "The United States of Leland" worked, but does that mean I drool at the keyboard and prefer man-eating snakes to suburban despair?
> Not at all. What it means is that the star rating system is relative, not absolute. When you ask a friend if "Hellboy" is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to "Mystic River," you're asking if it's any good compared to "The Punisher." And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if "Superman" (1978) is four, then "Hellboy" is three and "The Punisher" is two. In the same way, if "American Beauty" gets four stars, then "Leland" clocks in at about two.
> And that is why "Shaolin Soccer," a goofy Hong Kong action comedy, gets three stars. It is piffle, yes, but superior piffle. If you are even considering going to see a movie where the players zoom 50 feet into the air and rotate freely in violation of everything Newton held sacred, then you do not want to know if I thought it was as good as "Lost in Translation."
I'm torn as well. Some of my favorite movies and shows involve some of these recently exposed actors/producers. Shows like American Beauty, KPAX, Gangs of New York, etc. I get the knee jerk reaction of shunning the movies. But, if they go away entirely, that's a shame. It's also painting with a broad brush. Many other unaccused artists were involved in these things and will suffer along with the accused.
Hopefully this will be mostly focused at new opportunities for the specific offender versus past works.
A couple reference points, among many, could be the 1968 film "The Swimmer" or the 1999 film "American Beauty". It's probably best expressed through fiction: reading factual descriptions may prove useless.
It's an American thing to idolize the middle class, and it's a human thing to be deeply discontented with what you have idolized, so really you have a lot of choices in the genre.
I've thought about doing something like Lester from American Beauty, where he just quits his job and works at a fast food restaurant. Maybe just for a few months. I've never worked at a cafe or a restaurant so I want to see what that's like. I think I will start a cafe with my wife one day, so it would be good for me to have some personal experience.
I don't think I could contribute much to an NGO if I had to leave my technical skills at the door. But that's certainly a domain that I'm interested in.
I would also love to do something in the film industry. I would start as an assistant, and eventually do something with special effects. I also enjoy editing.
Maybe writing. I don't think I'm a very talented writer, but I might try to write a novel one day. I've tried to write a few screenplays for short films, and so far they've just been awful. It's a lot of fun, though.
Where is this data? Are you talking about the hilarious statistic that 94% of subscribers are happy with the service?
I tried to watch a film last night and searched for all of these very popular films.
* Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
* 28 Days Later
* Go
* Gladiator
* American Beauty
* Speed
Then I gave up. When you try 6 very well known films and none of them are on there it changes how you think of the service from "most stuff is on there" (like Spotify for example) to "I have to search Netflix to find something I like" (like a normal TV channel). It's very different.
> I think it was the unified purpose, the school catchment area, maybe. That proximity.
My high school was super-stratified. The cliques were out of control.
As an adult, I have much more control over my surroundings and have found a place that fits me (it took some time - I've lived in two countries and 7 different cities). At 46, I'm much more comfortable with who I am and liking what I like than when I was 16. Teenagers often try so desperately to fit in that it ends up taking a long time to discover who they really are. BTW, I love how the movie American Beauty addresses this.
These days I have the resources to do what I want to do. That includes eating out with friends, going to baseball games, or just to the park to play with my kids and dog. I think the only time I get the sense of stifling that you describe is when I go to a formal event but that too is an experience I want.
Or how about a watching list? I'll start:
- "Happy People: A Year in the Taiga " http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1683876/
- "Oh Boy" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954701/
- "American Beauty" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/
- "Amélie" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211915/
When I was a kid: Hackers (watched it around 30-40 times when I was a kid), War Games, Matrix, Sneakers pushed me into being developer, but the most impact on my current life had American Beauty as it made me thinking about working less. Another movie that I can think of is Social Network - It motivated me to on my side projects harder.
mainstream: American beauty, Pulp fiction, No country for old men, American History X, Saving Private Ryan, Taken, The pianist
classics: Lawrence of Arabia, The Shawshank Redemption, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Terminator I & II
hipster: Knife in the water (Polanski), Come and See (Idi i smotri - best war movie I've seen), Haute Tension (french horror movie), Requiem for a Dream, Trainspotting, City of God, Blue Is the Warmest Color, Goodbye Lenin, The cube
The internet may demonstrate this at an accelerated level but books and newspapers and especially talk radio have been manufacturing outrage for years and people have been lapping it up...
I'm reminded from a scene from the movie "American Beauty". Colonel Frank Fitts is reading the newspaper with a disgusted look and comments "This country is going straight to hell!".
And I'm guessing we have all seen people like this. They can't wait to read the news and become outraged.
> they would like to be engaged as people
Actually, that's a creative embellishment you've contributed. The quotes from the models do not support your inference. They merely portray the actions of the men, not the preferences of the models.
The writer labels it a "pretty common complaint," but the sentence “And then you get the creepers who like to take photos without asking” could be equally taken to be backdoor bragging. Plenty of women describe encounters from strangers in order to brag about their attractiveness. (See the movie American Beauty, for example).
Plenty of women appreciate the attention of men. In fact, later on, one of the models says, "I love my techies."
Downvote me if you want - this is a throwaway - but if you ever want to understand women, you'll re-read my words until you understand them.
It's hard to get any detail of the proposed changes from the tabloid Metro (a paper distributed for free, usually by being left on the seats of public transport).
Usually the laws are nuanced. Thus, you can still buy American Beauty even though it has the uncovered breasts of an underage actress.
But this government has done stupid things - and it wouldn't surprise me if they ban pornography of consenting adults with clear disclaimers (and paperwork) that the scenes are simulated and the films contain pre- and post- scene interviews with the actors.
It is not banned in the UK.
The proposed laws are stupid, but making shit up is not useful for discussion.
We went through the same nonsense when the Sexual Offences Act 2003 was introduced, and yet we can still walk into shops and buy American Beauty and other films.
Torrents don't consist 90% of those things either. The largest audio torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/100/0/5 is a sample library for use in creating your own songs. The largest video torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/200/0/5 is a collection of the X-Files TV show; #2 is a collection of 50 classic movies (A Clockwork Orange, American Beauty, Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now, and so on) --- the movie equivalent of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The largest software torrents on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/300/0/5 are chess tablebases --- used for research into the game of chess --- Microsoft Windows 7, and auto repair software called Alldata. The top "other" torrent on http://thepiratebay.se/browse/600/0/5 is a preservation copy of GeoCities, which contained the full weirdness of the late-90s web in miniature, and after a duplicate of the same torrent, #2 is an archive of chemical journals.
I think what you're probably thinking of is not library shelves but library checkouts. And I think that you'll find that library checkouts did consist 90% of trashy paperbacks, the text equivalent of pop movies, back when people got that kind of stuff from libraries instead of online.
Reminds me of Annette Benning in American Beauty: "I will sell this house today. I will sell this house today."
Not starting on activities because you don't like them or you don't feel not comfortable will drag you down. You'll be thinking about it all day. I tell myself in the morning to the most unpleasant thing on my to do list first. Eat the hairy frog first! I learned from Randi Pausch. Worth watching every minute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0
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The wording of SB6251 seems rather confusing to me -- I wonder if the intent was to make it intentionally vague.
As it was written, if the only qualification is that "an individual who is less than eighteen" "must be depicted", then I would think that the Seattle Public Library would clearly be guilty of dozens of these felonies, for all of the movies with underage nudity that you can see on their own webpage that they make available to borrow, like the Academy Award-winning "American Beauty".
Ooooh... 1999. Fight Club. Go. American Beauty. The Matrix. Boys don't cry. Austin Powers. The Sixth Sense. The Talented Mr. Ripley. The Cider House Rules. Magnolia. Mansfield Park. The Red Violin. Trick. American Pie. ;)
That is despite the fact that installment movies of James Bond, Star Wars, Toy Story, etc., that year.
Everything seemed great that year. Or perhaps if was also a good year for me, and therefore everything seemed good because of that...
As I read this, I kept thinking of the movie American Beauty. If you found this post through-provoking or disagree with it, watch this movie.
Reminds me of the scene from the movie "American Beauty". After he gets laid off from his soul-sucking office job, Kevin Spacey's character applies at a fast-food burger joint saying "I want a job with the least amount of responsibility."
I'd be more interested in knowing why he quit McDonald's. I had (teenage) friends who busted their asses there...many say it was the toughest job they had.
Sounds like he wanted to experience life as part of the proletariat, but discovered that "American Beauty" was well, just a really good movie.
Well, the story is a combination of typical archetypes retold with pretty pictures. That much I cannot argue about. And I think that what you are really saying by "the plot sucked" is "it's too archetype driven". I'm basing this on:
>I personally found the warmed over "Stupid White Man penetrates exotic closed society and rises to be leader of it, seducing the native woman" plot tiresome, repetitive and tedious
Sure the characters ranged from a bit 2-d (the Col.) to well fleshed out (Neytiri (watch it again if you don't believe me)) and the acting ranged from "will probably win an award it was so good" Saldana to "thanks for showing up and picking up your paycheck" Weaver. But that's nothing different than you'll find in almost every movie -- the principles are fleshed out and the supporting cast is flat.
Why can't we have more 'smart' movies like Erin Brockovich/Schindler's List/Fight Club/District 9/Oldboy/etc. (archetypes of David vs. Goliath, Greed and Bullies) or The Incredibly True Story of Two Teenagers In Love/Léon/American Beauty/Mississippi Masala/South Pacific/Moulin Rouge/West Side Story etc. (Forbidden Love) or Lawrence of Arabia/Dune/Hunt for Red October/etc. (Lovable Turncoat)... you ask? And I'd counter that all of those are as archetype driven as any other well known flick (archetype stories provided in parens).
You see where I'm going with this. Even if you don't agree with all my movie choices as being "good" or "smart" you'll at least have to agree that most movies that are at least reasonably well known are pretty much based on a dissection or aggregation of common archetypes. How many times has Romeo and Juliet been retold almost verbatim? And by and large the audience enjoys these things and says "oh the plot was so good" when really, they are just a rehash of old story ideas. We even group movies into archetype driven categories "love story", "ghost story", "suspense", etc.
So yes, I was being "cute" with my notional art-house flick. But if you want to find something not driven by archetypes, where the artists consciously try to avoid those things, you have to go there, or to France or Italy perhaps. Here, http://www.imdb.com/chart/top this is the top 250 movies on IMDB not by dollars but by rating. How many of these are "smart" movies meaning "not a rehash of archetypes"? Very few if any.
It's pretty simple really, if you don't want your intelligence to be insulted (meaning you don't want an archetype driven story), you end up with a movie about a vapid cowgirl/model with giant thumbs or a movie director that can't focus on making movies because he's too busy with all his mistresses (which is actually just a retelling of the "guy with too many girlfriends archetype"). And given that non-archetype driven movies are typically poorly rated and attended by the open public, either you are particularly "smart" or those movies tend to suck.
The difference is that The Catcher In The Rye is well-written, whereas American Beauty is tripe, and Donnie Darko is low-budget tripe. AB overstates everything and generally treats its audience like idiots (and hey, it won an Academy Award for that), and Donnie Darko is incredibly incoherent and so withstands every possible interpretation.
Compare that to the titular scene from Catcher In The Rye:
"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like — "
"It's 'If a body meet* a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."*
"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."
She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye." I didn't know it then, though.
"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."
It suffers from being out of context, but basically Holden - the first talker - is talking with Phoebe about his life, and it's really immaculately done. Listen to his words. He doesn't come across as a phony-hating phony. He's just a confused guy trying to talk to his sister. The dialogue is a little dated in its construction, but it's still concise and powerful and it does pretty much exactly what it's trying to do. He mentions he wants to catch these children, but at the same time the narrator's admitting that he was wrong about this when he said it. And he doesn't come across as a douche, he comes across as a scared college student. The "douche" interpretation comes from people who skimmed the book and resented it from the beginning. I had that attitude for a while. It's not fair to the book.
In American Beauty, Kevin Spacey is an over-the-top pervert whose death was completely welcomed. In Donnie Darko, Jake Gyllenhaal is filthily melodramatic. Holden Caulfield, though, is really easy to sympathize with. He's not at all a broken, cliched character. It's hard even to call him cliched when you look directly at the soliloquy lines. Here are two samples from around the same part in the book:
The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.
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The part that got me was, there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You'd have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn't. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn't take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart. I'm not kidding.
This isn't just Salinger writing "Oh man I hate how fake people are". It's him providing this view of the world again from this frustrated kid. And he's pessimistic about it and you can read the book as saying he's wrongly pessimistic - I do - but his pessimism isn't at all melodramatic and you can read Catcher In The Rye without it catching you up at all. I read it for the story: The leave from college, the search for his family, the incident with the hooker, are all really moving and engaging bits of story, and Holden's frustration is accurate enough that you can sympathize it even when you disagree with him.
If you look at "Catcher" as a critique of Holden Caulfield, you're still doing the book a disservice. Catcher In The Rye is first and foremost a story, and if you try reading it without analyzing it you'll probably find that it holds up terrific even when it's not a part of literature. That's the part of these books that all this analysis ignores: The point is always to tell a story, and the rest of this is just the icing on top.
Let me ask you: why do you make your text fixed-width? It's got to be a conscious effort because you do it repeatedly, and it makes the rest of us cranky.
I haven't seen the movie yet, and for the record? "Just like films" means nothing. Unless you're fascinated in the art of filmmaking - if you're a "buff" - it doesn't count. I have friends who "just like films" who watch The Notebook and American Beauty and cite those as "incredible films", and that just doesn't count. The people who really like films are the ones who get deep into them.
But I haven't seen Citizen Kane, so I'll withhold judgement.
Oh, well if you're referring to petty, childish stuff like that, I have no argument. Telling the difference can be hard sometimes, so all I can really recommend is that you keep an open mind. You seem to be doing that, though.
American Beauty is in my top 10 movies of all time; I recommend it highly!
My undergraduate education was in Industrial Engineering. Industrial Engineers are the outsourcers. They have been portrayed memorably as "efficiency experts" in movies such as American Beauty and Office Space. There will always be jobs for Industrial Engineers, until they start outsourcing the outsourcing.
I'm coasting along now with a 2.8 GPA and a willingness to let it slip to a 2.0. I'm an industrial engineering student and you may remember us as the efficiency experts from movies such as Office Space and American Beauty. The salary for an Industrial Engineer in Pittsburgh is almost constant for anyone with a QPA over 2.0. Those with better grades just get to work for a more nationally known firm instead of a local manufacturer.
College is so aversive to me because all it does is prepare me to work for someone else, at a guaranteed salary of 55k per year (sixty by the time I graduate?). True failure for me will be taking a job as an Industrial Engineer. I can't think of anything I want to do less. But if I haven't become successful by the time I graduate from college and no one is funding me, I won't have much of a choice.
I'm running my current startup like a business. We're not seeking funding and we're growing very slowly. We have no costs so everything we make is profit. We haven't made any profit because we haven't actually sold anything but we'll get there eventually.