Hacker Cinema
Black Swan
2010 · Film · 108 min
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
A committed dancer struggles to maintain her sanity after winning the lead role in a production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake."
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26 comments on Hacker News
This isn't true and sounds like something written by terminally online reddit libertarians.
The Black Swan documentary is primarily about sleazy private sector actors in Denmark. The only remotely state affiliated individuals in the documentary is a business man who was a former small city council member and a bankruptcy lawyer who has previously contracted for Danish government organizations. The system worked fine and the Danish equivalent of the FBI, the NSK, already had ongoing cases of investigations into a lot of the uncovered material.
The only "common" tax fraud in Denmark is when a house needs some minor fixing before being put on sale. Many Danish people will pay their friend's friend to do it for them "under the table" and not as formally contracted and taxed work. This is becoming increasingly harder.
However this is far from the massive systemic corruption in many other countries.
I watch a lot of films, mostly older ones these days, I don't want to estimate how many.
This film has haunted me with its beauty. Not as airy as Mallick's work, a little softer than Aronofsky (The fountain, black Swan are masterpieces).
I think Mr. Nobody attempts a weaker version of this film, cloud atlas also.
Gattaca, inception, 2001, kpax maybe.
This is all just marketing. Many cameras use log profiles, and Hollywood has been using non-traditional cameras for decades.
Black Swan used a Canon 7D: https://nofilmschool.com/2010/12/darren-aronofskys-black-swan-shot-16mm
The funny part is I would not want to shoot a professional film with a phone. How would I recharge it? Dedicated cameras offer pop-out batteries and storage. iPhone won't let you do that.
ok full disclosure, I had not heard the term Black Swan event before and I was trying to remember what happened in the movie
> Satoshi Kon, the director of Perfect Blue and Paprika
(Perhaps these examples were saved for the subscribers-only section) Quite notable is the influence of those two films on later Western films--elements shots in Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream match those in Perfect Blue; the same for Inception and Paprika.
Relevant Every Frame a Painting video essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz49vQwSoTE
Its because the article is not about the similarities between two movies, but about the directors feelings towards those similarities.
Satoshi Kon died before the release of Black Swan. He has no opinion on it.
It is a trippy experience because many objects don't make sense, it's like solving a puzzle without having the reference image. I haven't watched about half of those movies, but of those I could instantly recognize Mad Max, Bill & Ted, Black Swan and Star Wars. The rest were enigmas. Maybe bigger images would make things easier.
>> Your run of the mill Russian is honest about their feelings. Not honest about the facts, no, they can cheat on an insurance filing just fine. But that coldness that so many of them seem to have is often just an outer shell. Once one of them trusts you and gets to know you they're so warm and intense about their love for you. So excited to show you something dear to them. Even devoted enough to learn a new language just to speak to you, even if they're a senior[0]. It doesn't mean the relationship always survives, because that intensity is still there when they're angry, but the highs are so high.
I'm not a great fan of serious literature, but I've read a bit here and there and I think the above should be blindingly obvious to anyone who's read at least as little as I have (basically, Crime and Punishment, three or four pages from The Idiot and Gorsky's The Flaming heart of Danko). Or, anyone who's listened to the music (hello, Chaikovsky? Black Swan? You wanted feelsies?) or watched the movies (Tarkovsky) etc.
I think in the past the literature and the art in general would have been where Western people learned about Russians (and everyone else not in the West, also, but the Russians have a lot of literature). It's a bit of a shame if this has really been replaced by tinny stereotypes promulgated by Hollywood.
What a great idea! I wonder how big the 16mm film communities are in these days of pervasive digital, given the costs of developing film and the risks associated with processing.
What I also found interesting is this site:
https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/movies-shot-on-16mm-moonrise-kingdom-carol/
Everybody knows the famous story of how El Mariachi was made, but I was surprised by some of the other films in the list (eg. Black Swan).
Arguably the most accomplished athlete ever, Michael Phelps, has struggled with these same issues [0]. Today he is more upfront about his suicidal issues and what strategies he uses to help with his mental health. Such issues are incredibly personal, but there does seem to be some correlations with 'Black Swan' people (per the Natalie Portman movie) and later term mental health.
[0] https://www.menshealth.com/health/a24268441/michael-phelps-depression/
If you need someone to talk with please call: 1-800-273-8255.
Alternatively, I'd love to talk with you (the reader of this sentence) as well, Hacker to Hacker.
Certainly.
I find the ancient civilisations, and especially Greece, to be more intellectual, in that the very idea of society, laws, progress etc is under scrutiny and question in a self-reflective way. But even Europe itself was far more intellectual until around the early 20th century.
E.g Compare the top social discourse of early 20th century Vienna or 19th century Paris with today's NYT best-seller list or political pundits. Or compare ancient greek tragedy (which was at the time mass entertainment) to present day mass entertainment (that would be, blockbuster movies at worst and something like Black Swan or Godfather at its best).
From that time on, the emergence of a mass culture (which killed a less extensive but higher quality upper-middle class culture), the prevalence of market values and the blind respect of "experts" (and "progress" as a non-testable goal in itself) killed the intellectual traits I describe above.
Talk about timing. I just wrote up a list for a friend that includes a bunch of weird movies (most of them being head trips). My list includes two Cronenberg movies as well! Though, to be honest, I'm not really a fan of either. Heh, I know this is a little off topic but for those that dove this deep into the thread, maybe you would like to expand your weird movie viewing experience.
01. Eraserhead-- This feature film was the debut for Writer/Director David Lynch. The film is noted for its usage of sound as a theatrical device and "the baby" which is rumored to be created from an embalmed cow fetus. The films script is a scant 21 pages despite a running time of 85 minutes (script pages typically match runtimes).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074486/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraserhead
02. Dead Leaves-- Produced in 2004, this Japanese animated film clocks in at 55 minutes long. The films (thin) plot is composed almost entirely of a chase/fight scene that begins on earth and ends on a space station. The movie's weirdness climaxes when when the mutant baby of the the film's protagonists is born and proceeds to kill a giant space catepillar which is attempting to eat the earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Leaves http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439533/
03. House -- This 1977 Japanese film certainly ranks as one of the weirdest (if not the weirdest) movies of all time. It was unreleased in the U.S. until after a screening at the 2009 New York Asian Film Festival. In an iconic scene, a Japanese girl is consumed by piano monster as a green eyed catch watches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_(1977_film)
04. Jacob's Ladder- Fans of the game Silent Hill should well be aware of this movie from 1990 that inspired many of its elements. Tim Robbins stars as a vietnam war vet suffering from demonic images increasingly polluting his fragile reality. One paticularly gruesome scene includes Robbins being wheeled through a bloody hospital corrirodor filled with limbs and mutating torsos.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobs_Ladder_(film) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099871/
05. Barton Fink- This Cohen Brothers film stars John Turturro as a novelist. The 1991 film closes with a set of iconic scenes including John Goodman exiting a burning hallway (like a badass).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barton_Fink http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101410/
06. Naked Lunch- The first of two Cronenberg films in this category. This 1991 film adaptation of a William S. Burroughs novel features a protagonist who uses bug spray as a chemical escape from reality. Talking insects and failed "William Tell Routines" are just some of the madness this movie contains.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102511/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Lunch
07. Videodrome- David Cronenberg wrote and directed this movie staring James Woods. The movie centers around Wood's character, a sleazy TV exec, who inreasingly loses touch with reality after he comes across a station which airs extreme violence and torture. Key scenes include his merger with a TV set and a VHS tape being thrust into his stomach.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videodrome
08. Donnie Darko (Jake and Maggie Gyllenhall sp?)- Donnie Darko served as philosophical fodder for a whole generation of "Emos". Written and directed by Richard Kelly. The movie stars this brother-sister hollywood team. The movie covers a wealth of ideas including fatalism and time travel. Movie goers will inevitably remember the creepy bunny head that pervades entirety of the film.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246578/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Darko
09. Human Centipede- This 2010 dutch horror film quickly became a meme rivaling Two Girls One Cup for gross-out factor. The film features a mad doctor who connects three unfortunate souls in the most unfortunate way possible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_centipede http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1467304/
10. Brazil- The second installment of Terry Gilliam's "Imagination Trilogy". This 1985 film represents the dreams of adults including navigating beurocracy and chasing true love. Robert DeNiro also provides a notable role as a rebel repairman in the film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(film) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
11. Black Swan 12. Paprika 13. Being John Malkovich 05. Teeth
That's not always the case, scenes of Slumdog millionaire (in the streets) were filmed purely with DSLR, same for the subway scenes of Black Swan. Not a feature film but the entire season 6 finale of House was exclusively shot on a 5D mkII, and a couple of small BBC series have been.
I appreciate that of course 'proper' digital cinema cameras are better, but this shows that DSLRs are very much competent, and they are only going to get better.
"So what have they done lately?"
Not even counting foreign films, here are some darn good productions from the past five years:
Midnight in Paris, Hugo, Drive, Warrior, Black Swan, Inception, Inglourious Basterds, Up, Whatever Works, The Limits of Control, The Dark Knight, WALL-E, Gran Torino, The Wrestler, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild, Ratatouille, The Departed, and The Prestige.
I like the term "rewatchability" but I don't agree with your logic.
Why would you limit your pool of advice-givers to your friends?
They are good for service advice where you need someone you can trust to give you the whole and honest story.
In movies it's beyond that, it's much more important to find people with the closest match to you in movie taste as possible. The more people the closer taste match you will get (goes without saying).
I also don't see the point of giving "quality" scores. I really don't care if a stranger thinks some movie was of high or low quality. I'd much rather know if my taste-twin loved it or hated it. I for example thought Lord of the Rings was super well done and yet super boring. But this opinion of mine only matters to someone who resembles me in movie taste, who hates and loves the same quirky things as I do about movies. And of the two opinions i mentioned (well done, boring) its really only the latter that matters to my twin, he/she should pay most attention to that when deciding if to go and see the Lord, not if I thought the movie was of high or low quality.
But having said that, I like "rewatchability" as a concept to study further. I too would rip of my nails before seeing Black Swan again but I still thought it was a masterpiece. However, I have seen Requim for a Dream (Darren's Arrenovsky's previous movie) again and again although it was also very emotionally intense like the Swan. Just in a different way, less depressive, but killer strong in an exhaustive yet positive way. And then.. yet and still.. I would recommend both movies to everyone I meet. I think both are a must see even though one of them I would never want to see again.
Glen it basically comes down to a genre by genre breakdown I think. If you're looking for a comedy which should inherently have high rewatchability, if any are rated as low then I can assume I should avoid them. For example, in college my buddies and I alternated watching 40 Year Old Virgin and Grandma's Boy for an entire semester. Neither would have the best quality ratings, but they were fun and sure had high rewatchability.
Now take the other end of the spectrum of film like Black Swan or even some slower paced films. I love 2001 A Space Odyssey but am not rushing to rewatch soon (though it has top quality) because it is way too slooow for me. Or take some dramas that while interesting on first glance don't really merit another watch.
Basically I think you should start with a top down approach by genre, and if something like comedy then the dominant factor is rewatchability but then for others it may be "quality" (which itself could be subdivided further into cinematographic elements for an auteur film, the musical score for a certain type, etc). But I feel like maybe you end up going down a rabbit's hole, so perhaps I'm asking more questions than I'm answering.
This is a really important point, and it'll probably justify its own blog post soon, but a quick response would be this:
I'd class United 93 and Black Swan as being, sort of, emotionally exhausting. And yes, I'm not going to rush out see them again. But that's very different to saying they're a bad film. I would suggest that, at high levels of quality, low levels of rewatchability makes it actually a better film, in a way.
Or, at least, it differentiates them from another terrific film like The King's Speech. If you're the kind of person who likes watching beautifully constructed but largely enjoyable films, your tastes will tend toward the top-right of the graph. But, if you enjoy more difficult or harrowing films, your favourite films might be lower on the rewatchability score, on average.
My point is, while quality is quality, a measure of skill and talent, rewatchability is personal, and groups similar films together in interesting ways. Where your favourite films come out on the graph is really not important to anyone but you, when you're looking for more stuff you like.
You may still disagree, but thanks for taking the time to comment :)
-glen.
I really disagree with the premise of this post. Emotional impact (United 93), psychological impact (Black Swan), intellectual demands (Primer) all equate to a lower rewatchability score, since watching the movie takes a lot out of me. However, the more of an impact a movie makes, the higher my opinion of a movie. Because something is light and fluffy doesn't make that movie "better", it just means it's easier to watch.
Rating films this way may do a good job of the "so bad it's good" camp (Snakes on a Plane), but will do an incredible disservice to movies like Black Swan.
I definitely liked the personality that came through the writing. "On the other end of the scale, I think Black Swan is a terrific film, but I’d sooner pull my nails out than watch it again." - well said and a good illustration of the value of the dual scale.
I have spent the last month testing DuckDuckGo as an alternative to having Google as a default search engine.
While I am hugely impressed with the quality of search a one man company can get, I am not impressed with DuckDuckGos results compared to Googles. It works okay for many searches but it sucks a really long-tail queries and its "zero click" information thingy has serious problems distinguishing between the relevant results when more than one is potentially relevant (search for "black swan". The most likely result, the recent movie, isn't even listed though an ancient one from 1942 is or search for "castle" which would normally give the time and tv-station that program is one, except it confuse it with some BBC documentary).
You hear this every year. And it's still true. Hollywood is wall-to-wall sequels, IP translations (games, comics, tv shows, etc. to movies), remakes, and the remake's newer cousin the "reboot".
Yet even so good films are still being made. The Social Network, True Grit (a remake even!), Toy Story 3 (a sequel!), The Fighter, Black Swan, How to Train Your Dragon, and Inception were all great films from 2010 (I haven't seen The King's Speech or 127 Hours yet but I hear those were good too). If this is what the system pumps out while it's horribly broken, I'm ok with more of the same.
There's always going to be a ready supply of churned out pap in any medium. Just go to a bookstore and look at all the crap that they keep pumping out. But that doesn't necessarily stop truly excellent works being published as well. Some of my most loved books have been published in the last several years. And with the internet it's easier than ever to sift through the dross to find the gems.
I chose these movies not necessarily because I felt they were superb (although I loved them all) but because they were critically acclaimed and all received lots of oscar nominations. Almost by definition, they are the best films of the year.
If you compare it to nominated movies ten years ago, Braveheart, Apollo 13, I think they are comparably great.
Additionally, box office returns seem to be at all time highs. Black Swan and True Grit are two films that typically would be destined for "niche" audiences, but have returned hundreds of millions for reasonably small budgets.
Also, I think that Inception will be almost as influential as The Matrix, except in a smaller genre of films (eg: Matrix built upon action movies, whereas Inception was more of a psych thriller) - in my opinion.
Don't you feel this might be kind of a cognitive bias? Like when people poll for the best album of all time and it's always something that was released within the last 3 years of whenever the poll was.
The social network is of it's time and will date really badly, to the point where no one will watch or mention it ever again.
True Grit is a remake so specifically cannot be included as it had to be good enough to have been remade.
Inception isn't ever going to be a classic a la The Matrix.
The Kings Speech will definitely have longevity; Black Swan I'm not convinced will float above just being another film you can pick up for £3 in HMV in a couple of months but then think "well, will I ever watch it?"
Huge Moki.TV fan (http://moki.tv/2481). But also a huge movie fan. I entirely disagree.
Think about this years movies:
The Social Network
The Kings Speech
Inception
Black Swan
True Grit
Will all almost certainly become classics.
I thought "The Social Network" was decent, but I was actually expecting more from Fincher and Sorkin. It could have been a student film, in some ways. I thought many of the characters were fairly two-dimensional and the "two lawsuit" structure was a little forced. It made me think of the examples in a screenwriting class I took in college. (Oh, and it's not a world I live in or aspire to live in.) My expectations must have been too high after all of the great press it received. It had so many raving critics and fans that I had a long period of people telling me I "had to see it" - but I didn't see it until it came out on DVD and then was fairly disappointed. If it is THE film of 'this generation', as some claim, then I think we're in trouble.
I think "Inception" should have won. It was much more creative and thought-provoking, and I thought the acting was also better. Of course, I had no preconceived notions about it - other than a general idea that it was apparently a goldmine of meme material for sites like Reddit. I've only seen snippets of "Black Swan," but the acting looks better than both "The Social Network" and "Inception."
Yes you can. If you see reviews you should take them with a pinch of salt - there's a world of difference between Mark Kermode saying something's good and Nuts Magazine saying something's good.
You can avoid reviews, get a rough idea based on the actors and crew members' other work and a synopsis then decide if it warrants a visit to the cinema. You can go out and read the book the film might be based on.
For example, Black Swan is a film coming out by Darren Aronofsky that's coming out later this year. It stars Natalie Portman as a promising young ballet dancer that's slowly turning into a swan. It's an interesting premise, Aronofsky did Requiem for a Dream, the Fountain and more recently The Wrestler.
As well as Natalie Portman it has Vincent Cassel, both of whom I've loved in films before. This tells me that the film is probably worth seeing at the cinema - it may or may not be good but I can go in regardless of expectations. Unless I hear it's pretty awful then that's what I'm likely to do.