Hacker Cinema
Any Given Sunday
1999 · Film · 163 min
Directed by Oliver Stone
A star quarterback gets knocked out of the game and an unknown third stringer is called in to replace him. The unknown gives a stunning performance and forces the aging coach to reevaluate his game plans and life. A new co-owner/president adds to the pressure of winning. The new owner must prove herself in a male dominated world.
1 positive1 negative2 neutralfrom 4 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
4 comments on Hacker News
I too have a similar subjective sense from being in and around film and video production over the last couple decades about that "cinematic something" look we associate with film. However, I'm not sure we're being accurate in thinking it's entirely the frame rate. Certainly that's part of it but I think it's entirely possible we'd view 30fps as every bit as good - if all other things were equal.
I think very few people (including myself) have ever seen a true side-by-side test where everything other than 24fps vs 30fps is perfectly identical. This is because correctly engineering such a head-to-head test is surprisingly difficult. In addition to having identical (or nearly identical) content shot in cinematic style, there are several other variables which each have to be technically correct. These include having the same signal chain from camera shutter speed, capture, compression, edit and grading to distribution format, playback device and display.
One thing that's especially tricky is whether the 24fps content ever goes through a 3:2 pulldown conversion (or similar). A significant amount of high-quality big-screen-film-sourced content originally made in 24fps goes through this sort of pulldown when viewed at home - even when the source is 24fps (whether Blu-ray, Netflix, Amazon or Apple). This pulldown process definitely imparts a look many associate with being "cinematic". Yet what we see in an actual theater is native 24fps so that's what we need to match for an accurate comparison.
Having recently upgraded my dedicated high-end home theater I was surprised that every device from playback source (streaming box or Blu-ray), AVR and 4k HDR projector - while being native 24f capable - defaulted to having the native 24f turned off in settings (thus silently applying a real-time 3:2 pulldown to the native 24f source). This was only discovered during detailed calibration using test signals. This means many people's impressions of 24fps may actually have been formed watching 24fps content automatically converted to 30fps with 3:2 pulldown by their source, AVR or display.
I suspect associating my subjective sense about "cinematic" with the label "24fps" may not only be erroneous but unfair to 30fps. Technically, 30fps has advantages in reducing motion judder on fast-moving objects and camera pans. A good example of this is the Hollywood-produced pre-digital 24fps Oliver Stone football movie "Any Given Sunday" which was shot entirely on film. They did the best they could with 24fps but some of the fast, ball-tracking camera pans are extremely distracting - something 30fps would have definitely helped if it had been an option back then. Nowadays, for the first time, the industry has some freedom to choose frame rates and I wonder if, done properly, 30fps might be a better option in which us film-look purists would lose nothing of what we love but gain in reducing some unavoidable artifacts from 24 frame's limitations.
No director is perfect. Oliver Stone had a few duds, but he also made some excellent movies: JFK, Any Given Sunday, Platoon, Talk Radio, Wall Street...
If you have to criticize him, you could say that his recent movies have not been up to the bar he set in the '90s -- but it definitely was a very high bar.
I'm much more worried about Gordon-Levitt playing Snowden, from the trailer he looks pretty bland.
I was just at a conference where our "leader" spent 20 minutes trying to get the sound to work on his presentation while we all sat there fighting to stay awake. When the sound emerged we were forced to watch a video clip from the movie, "Any Given Sunday". -In this case, I wish the incompatibility had existed permanently.
On a serious note though, this IS a problem that arises often.
Well, I upvoted them back to normal :)
Anyway here's my list:
Even if you don't watch this movie called Any Given Sunday, you can find Al Pacino's 5-min inch-by-inch speech. That's the best I've seen. You can look it up on youtube. Worthy 5min :) It sort of dopes you with inspiration.
My favourites (may mostly include lesser known movies):
"The World's Fastest Indian" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412080/) It's based on the real story of Burt Munro, an old hobby biker, from New Zealand who sets the world's fastest land speed record on his Indian motorcycle beating all odds like an unfit, aging body (with prostrate and a ticking heart) and very little money to spare. It's not known that much. But Anthony Hopkins is good in that movie.
This movie is a bit different, there are no bad guys and it's really awesome to watch. Gives you a very different perspective of the world ("everybody is good" sorta thing). It left me in tears after he breaks the world record in the end.
Others: Dead Poet's Society ("Carpe Diem - seize the day"), Walk The Line and a 1990 movie called Chaplin (for which Robert Downey won an Oscar for playing Charlie Chaplin) and ofcourse Forrest Gump ("life is like a box of chocolates you'll never know what you get")
Also Mongol (Story of the rise of Gengiz Khan told from a different perspective). Some other language. But you'll get sub-titles.
And if you like Bollywood (Hindi) movies, try "Lagaan" and "3 Idiots" (this is a must watch).
After reading a lot abt Chariots of Fire, I'm going to watch it this weekend.
EDIT: if you like watching action cartoons, you should try watching Transformers - Cybertron series. Although gets a bit repetitive after a few episodes (loop: "beat villian. he returns again"), the "we are a team" quote echoes thru-out.
P.S: If you notice closely in Forrest Gump, when Tom Hanks is narrating that his friend put his money in a fruit company and it seems like he's looking at a letter for shareholders, you'll notice that the letter contains Apple's old 'colorful apple' logo :D