Hacker Cinema
Anora
2024 · Film · 139 min
Directed by Sean Baker
A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.
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13 comments on Hacker News
"Have you tried translating these monosyllable words (ga, ma, pa, etc) into English?"
There is a toggle on the top that goes from Swaras to Solfrege - which is the western notation for music.
There is a floating window now that shows what the mapping is between each register and the note, so that it becomes easier for folks to understand the correlation.
"I wonder what the cross over will be like when you do 'western' film and media."
All of the 408 films that you see there is Hollywood films. The list of the movies that constitute this data is listed here : http://arc.quanten.co/browse
"You might want to have a way to tie this to something that the user has already seen as an intro."
If you want to see how this breaks down, We've put out two sample content - one is Anora (which won the Oscar for Best picture last year) and in terms of TV Shows we have also mapped the Pilot episode of The Pitt (though the data used for the analysis was only films)
you can access the complete breakdown for the film and series here:
http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/film http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/series
"I'm interested in why you all wanted to do this project at all."
I used to host a filmmakers club in my open floor office for a few years and used to listen to filmmakers talking about how they make films. While I come from the software world where everything can be A/B tested and there is a beta, test, feedback, iterate, release cycle, it felt odd that films lack any of it - and it is pretty much a hit or miss. And unlike software, you don't get a chance to re-release a film. And the lack of any meaningful audience data and structure data, felt like a huge gap - one that artistic sectors like music and culinary arts have quite well bridged, but the visual story telling world hasnt. That's where the wheels started to churn - that was almost 11 years ago.
If you aren't a filmmaker that can be tough. Filmmakers think in beats - for everyone else it is like looking at the skeleton and trying to guess the shape of the animal.
Check the sample page for Anora, it might help : http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/film
(scroll down to the bottom to see the narrative beat structure)
We've made a few of that data fully visible. Try this :
http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/film (Anora) http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/series (The Pitt S01)
I would not say that this is due to a social media bubble - HN is the only social media i use, i have friends along the political spectrum, and still i can relate to many of the points that the author raised. At one point, I found myself increasingly uncertain and conflicted about my own "actual convictions", and "underlying motives", and whether someone else (even potentially!) labeling me as a creep or assuming poor intentions automatically makes me one. Some unfortunate preceding life experiences corroded my self image as well, which might have contribute to it, but that's not the point.
I'd actually go further and argue that what appears to twist this social fabric inside out is not only the online nature of the interaction itself, but the corporate centralized algorithmic nature of it. I am in no way a proponents of decentralizing everything (social media, money, infra, etc) for the sake of it - most systems work more efficiently when centralized, that's just a fact of reality. Maybe the fact that ads, corporate communications (linkedin -speak posts / slack / mcdonald's twitter account) and social interactions now live in the same space (and barely distinguishable in feeds) must have somehow forced these spaces to use the most uniform neutered language that lacks subtleties allowed in 1:1 communications? So people speak in political slogans and ad jingles instead of actual thoughts? Because these spaces NEED people to speak like that to stay civil and "corporately acceptable"? I am just brainstorming, in no way suggesting that a "free for all" is a solution.
I watched a movie called Anora recently, and toward the end there's a dialogue along the lines of
- If not for these other people in the room, you'd have raped me! - No I wouldn't. - Why not? - (baffled and laughing) Because I am not a rapist.
One way to interpret this movie, this dialogue, and what follows is that the main female character has been used and abused her entire life by the rich / capitalist system in general / embodied by a character of a rich bratty child of an oligarch in particular - that her world almost assumes this kind of transactional exploitation as a part of human relationships - and struggles to feel safe without it - almost seeking more exploitation to feel somewhat in control. And the other person in the dialogue above (who is not a rich child) counters that by asserting and knowing very well who he is (and isn't), and that knowledgeable doesn't require or provide any further justification.
Tldr maybe the magical dream of a conflict-free society where people understand each other is not ours after all - maybe it is the ideal grassland for ad-driven social media to monetize our interactions in a safe controlled fashion? one evidence towards that is the de-personalized neutered templated nature of the kind of "advice" that people give online to earn social credit - that leaks into real world 1-to-1 interactions in the form of anxiety of being "watched and judged" - as described by the author?
> Buzzy films from “Anora” to “The Substance” are undone by a relentless signposting of meaning and intent.
Can’t read the article because of paywall, but citing The Substance here from all possible movies is… weird? I agree with the title, and although there’s some literalism in The Substance, there’s also tons of subtext in it, so that’s a pretty terrible example. I’m guessing the rest of the article is extremely elitist, and no movie is good enough for the author except for obscure Eastern Europe movies from the 60s?
Anora, Oppenheimer, and Everything Everywhere All at Once are not lowest common denominator movies. the academy has many issues but i dont think its catering to mass appeal and dumbing down
Serpell's interpretation of Anora is dismissive and shallow. the point is Disney infects the American mind and Baker's made that point across half his movies and in some cases incredibly blatantly. its implied and Serpell categorizing it under New Literalism goes to show they're probably right in many cases, but also use it as a convenient excuse to avoid analysis
> movies that aspire to win academy awards, are meant to be played to the world wide lowest common denominator
That's not the kind of films that tend to win the major Oscar awards. Those tend to be either a bit artsy (e.g. Anora this year) or "serious" biopics/history movies (e.g. Oppenheimer last year).
Hollywood has always been a little bit dumb, a little bit over-written. It's hard to have both artistic individualism and a reliable business. This is not a new trend.
The examples are not very good. I would take Gladiator II, but Megalopolis was a self-funded project which is completely out of left field, and The Apprentice... I'm not sure what it's an example of. Many more titles are dismissed with a couple words. They really lose me when it comes to Anora. That's quite possibly the worst take I've heard about that film yet, and I've read some Letterboxd reviews.
> What feels new is the expectation, on the part of both makers and audiences, that there is such a thing as knowing definitively what a work of art means or stands for, aesthetically and politically.
Before rushing to judge today's movies, shall we remind ourselves what popular movies 20 years ago were? There were some real stinkers there, too, and they were not more smartly written in this regard. They just weren't.
> The point is not to be lifelike or fact-based but familiar and formulaic—in a word, predictable.
Has this person forgotten Titanic, one of the best-selling movies of all time? It's extremely formulaic, predictable, and intentionally so. It's basically opera, not really a new genre.
- Anora: really good movie. Bit rude at the start but leaves you thinking about it a long time after. Also ended up arguing a lot with my whife what it was actually about. - The Return: not bad a bit long but a good rendition. - Day of the Jackal: This was good series.
For comparisons, Wikipedia's opening paragraph for Anora reads:
"Anora is a 2024 American comedy-drama film written, directed, and edited by Sean Baker. It follows the beleaguered marriage between Anora (Mikey Madison), a young sex worker, and Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of a Russian oligarch. The supporting cast includes Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, and Aleksei Serebryakov."
I haven't seen the film, but it doesn't seem incompatible with ChatGPT's briefer description.
>these descriptions seem perfectly fine in that they're accurate and meaningful
The description of Wicked doesn't mention either The Wizard of Oz or the Broadway musical. So yes, the descriptions don't contain obscene mistakes like calling Wicked a courtroom drama. If that is enough for you to call these "accurate" while ignoring the vagueness or the 1 in 10 failure rate on the Anora description, fine by me. But you must have some weird definition of the word "meaningful" to apply that to descriptions like the one of Wicked. That simply isn't a helpful way to describe that movie.
> I haven't seen Anora so I'll give you that one
It was literally the first movie in that list.
You tried making a counter example and the first part of it was already wrong.
That’s the point. Not that it _cant_ give good answers, but whether it does or not is a crap shoot.
Now to analyze how correct it was we need to verify each movie it gave… It’d be faster just to read the movie descriptions.
In every post about LLMs there is someone to blindly say something like this.
When in reality if you ask ChatGPT for 10 good movies from this year you will get this.
Anora - Directed by Sean Baker, a compelling drama about the life of a sex worker in Coney Island.
Challengers - A provocative tennis drama directed by Luca Guadagnino, starring Zendaya.
Dune: Part Two - Denis Villeneuve's continuation of the epic science fiction saga.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - An action-packed prequel exploring the origins of Furiosa, directed by George Miller.
Inside Out 2 - Pixar's sequel that dives deeper into the complexities of human emotions.
Wicked - A musical fantasy adaptation directed by Jon M. Chu . The Zone of Interest - A thought-provoking film about Auschwitz, directed by Jonathan Glazer.
The Idea of You - A steamy romance starring Anne Hathaway.
Hit Man - A comedy thriller starring Glen Powell.
The Outrun - A powerful drama about a recovering alcoholic, starring Saoirse Ronan.
Let me know if you'd like more details about any of these!
Which is a great list.