Hacker Cinema
Bohemian Rhapsody
2018 · Film · 135 min
Directed by Bryan Singer
Singer Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bass guitarist John Deacon take the music world by storm when they form the rock 'n' roll band Queen in 1970. Hit songs become instant classics. When Mercury's increasingly wild lifestyle starts to spiral out of control, Queen soon faces its greatest challenge yet – finding a way to keep the band together amid the success and excess.
1 positive3 negative10 neutralfrom 14 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
15 comments on Hacker News
All three Star Wars prequel movies compressed into a 6 minute Bohemian Rhapsody parody music video. Posting inspired by this thread (about Bohemian Rhapsody): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44186283
Enjoy.
It's so weird. So many videos talk about "in my last video", yet Youtube is hellbent on you not going there. The same for "this is part one of 2".
If 10 videos has been uploaded since then, Youtube _really_ don't want you to go see part 2. It is so difficult to see the chronology around the current video.
Since I am ranting, I'll also mention how weird the recommendation engine is for not suggesting music videos related to the current video. If you are watching a 30 minute documentary on how "Bohemian Rhapsody" was recorded, the video itself will contain no audio from the song because that will demonetize the video, but there are also no links pointing to the music video anywhere.
ABBA is perfect background music for programming.
Their entire discography is around 3 hours which is how long I can maintain perfect focus, their songs are consistently good so that I don't have to skip bad songs, but not too good so that I stop working and start listening to song. Their songs were not in any movies I saw which means they will not bring memory of certain movie scenes (I'm looking at you Bohemian rhapsody in Wayne's world).
> I worry that by not being challenged I will become complacent.
I'm reminded of the movie Bohemian Rhapsody about the band Queen.
Freddie Mercury had gone solo from the rest of the group, then realized they were his proper peers. So he was apologizing and asking for forgiveness...
FREDDIE: What's it gonna take for you all to forgive me?
Is that what you want, Freddie? I forgive you. Is that it? Can we go now?
FREDDIE: No. I went to Munich. I hired a bunch of guys. I told them exactly what I wanted them to do... and the problem was... they did it. No pushback from Roger. None of your rewrites. None of his funny looks. I need you. And you need me.
> […] or you have designated Oscar-type fare, which as of late means something extremely depressing that says how bad humans are.
In the 2020/2021 season, the nominations included The Father about a man suffering dementia (from his perspective) and Sound of Metal about a drummer going deaf.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/93rd_Academy_Awards
For 2019, we had the best picture nominations include Ford v Ferrari, Little Women, and 1917:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/92nd_Academy_Awards
Previous to that, Bohemian Rhapsody:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/91st_Academy_Awards
Going back one more year, Dunkirk and Lady Bird:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90th_Academy_Awards
Lastly for this discussion, Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, Hidden Figures, and La La Land:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/89th_Academy_Awards
I think these are good counter-examples to your claim that only two types of movies being made.
Another great example is Bohemian Rhapsody, which seems to bearly have any true content. Pitch Meetings [1] (not exactly a serious review but very enjoyable) describes the film as recreations of some Queen performances with lies sprinkled in between.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RajlWbY7uQ
Yes this was explained extensively in the episode 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.
The inventor of their gates found a flaw and reported it. In typical capitalistic fashion the higher ups decided the $ was worth the lives so they silenced/banished him.
I don't think there is such a social contract. As far as I can tell, the only two things Bohemian Rhapsody got right was a) Freddie Mercury was gay, and b) Queen played at Live Aid. One of the villains in the Titanic movie in real life was a hero.
Course they did, but that wasn't MTV's doing. Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody invented the music video as we know it, in 1975.
That was the groundbreaking event that changed everything. The video was as important as the single. Every act from that day on wanted to duplicate or surpass "that video". The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star", was a hit in 1979. It was used unchanged in MTV's launch transmission two years later.
Music programmes were increasingly built around videos and clips, rather than performances. You'd get mostly videos with perhaps just one or two acts miming along to their single, or playing in the studio. By 81 all significant releases came with a video. MTV was just a place to play them back to back. Videos were very well established and expected by then. Which is no doubt why MTV launched.
Video certainly changed style over the 80s, and every other decade, just as they had 1975-81, but what doesn't evolve over a decade? The 80s brought more emphasis on production and direction. By the mid and late 80s videos were being shot on film, ran longer with far bigger budgets. Acts were starting to be created for video first, and with MTV and other music programmes in mind.
Yes, Hollywood isn’t very good at presenting the unvarnished truth.
I felt that the movie and particularly Salier’s (fictional?) role as a competitive observer of Mozart in the movie reifys the absolute genius of Mozart in a particularly effective way.
I notice that my daughter and her friends now really like Queen’s music because of Bohemian Rhapsody. In addition to Amadeus I’ve suggested The Buddy Holly Story, Ray, Coal Miner’s Daughter, and Le Bamba to her—all movies that I really enjoyed that might widen her appreciation of music outside of what she hears most today.
As for happy endings etc., this have always been a mainstay of Hollywood. In the Hollywood satire "The Player" from 1992 it is actually a plot point how a script without a happy ending cannot get produced. (And that movie itself have an improbable tacked-on happy-end to drive the point home.)
For fun I looked up the term "Hollywood Ending" ("a film ending of a conventional type, characterized as sentimental, simplistic, or melodramatic, and often featuring an improbably positive outcome; frequently in extended use."). The first example of this usage is from...1929.
So not exactly a recent development.
As for every movie being a "super-hero martial arts movie." - well this genre is certainly big at the moment, but by far isnt the only type of movie. If you look at the most recent Oscar awards, you will see movies like Roma, Vice, The Favourite, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book. These are mainstream Hollywood movies (almost by definition, this is what the Oscars awards) but there is still a span of genres and narrative styles. I don't see this as notably more homogenized than any other year.
And despite the hand-wringing over superheroes, I would like to point out that the "Marcel Cinematic Universe" is actually a pretty original concept in itself. Never before have such a complex shared universe and storyline unfolded over so many coordinated movies. I don't know if this is particularly worse than bygone Hollywood fads like westerns, sword-and-sandal epics, musicals etc.
But if you don't like superheroes there is still plenty of movies to choose from, since the overall number of movies released is steadily growing.
That reminds me of the movie "Bohemian Rhapsody" where Freddy Mercury splits off from Queen to write music independently.
But he returns saying:
"I went to Munich. I hired a bunch of guys. I told them exactly what I wanted them to do... and the problem was... they did it. No pushback from Roger. None of your rewrites. None of his funny looks. I need you. And you need me."
The best movies I saw this year were Bohemian Rhapsody (Critics: 61%, Audience: 87%) and Alita: Battle Angel (Critics: 60%, Audience: 94%). Maybe Rotten Tomatoes should be looking into how their critics are reviewing movies instead of banning "trolls"? If you read some of the critic reviews for the movies I mentioned, they are equally tinged with cultural and ideological opinions.
I think this is why conservatives are so up in arms about this movie. The majority of critics lean left and give high ratings to movies that align with their values. But when conservatives attempt to promote their own opinions about a movie, it's censored because "trolls". At this point, I give more weight to an army of fans, or haters, than a small group of critics.
It's also interesting how the NY Times, New Yorker and The Atlantic will write an essay afterwards that give "nuance" to the details of these types of events. Typically with a liberal bias.
A victim of Tom Branson if Hollywood is to be believed.
I've almost stopped watching "movies" entirely but my wife really wanted me to watch "Bohemian Rhapsody" with her. Basically a giant pack of lies to fit the story into the "music biopic" narrative arc. Hollywood has fully embraced pandering to the masses, and their demise to the Netflixes of the world couldn't come sooner.
Friends who once gathered in garages to thrash out songs on guitars and drums are now as likely to get together to brainstorm ideas for apps
Kind of a case in point: Smashing Pumpkins' drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, who is the CEO of a tech company focused on live events (https://www.modeproject.com/liveone-crowdsurfing/#liveone-film). He got the gig through a connection with Groupon's Andrew Mason.
I think the study of bands' management styles really does give useful insights into creativity and venture creation. Bands (more than most startups) represent an almost ideal opportunity to have a balance of complementary job responsibilities; it's then up to the members (or leader[s]) to creatively optimize the output, including song creation, live performances, recording, fan outreach, marketing, etc.
One area where things get interesting is when professional management gets involved. I was intrigued by that part in the article about the grizzled manager telling Tom Petty to put his foot down, and the repercussions that followed. This manager cut his teeth working with Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, perhaps the two most mercurial and insistent creative forces of the late 60s rock scene. It's interesting to think what would have happened had Petty hired someone else who had a different perspective.
Another area that fascinates me is when things go wrong, and how these entities adjust. The scene in Bohemian Rhapsody where Freddie Mercury splits with the record exec who doesn't like opera is fictional, but a true story that is even more bitter is the split with Queen's early manager Norman Sheffield, a former drummer and later founder of the UK's first Apple dealership. Listen to the first track off the album Bohemian Rhapsody, written by Mercury, "Death on Two Legs," probably the ultimate rock diss track. It's so powerful and bitter. It amazes me they didn't try to work it into the movie, although that may relate to the fact that it is unfamiliar to most audiences, probably because radio was reluctant to play it back in the day.
A third topic is scaling the business. I've written about Led Zeppelin in the past (see http://leanmedia.org/lean-media-example-led-zeppelin-i/) and believe the band was the ultimate rock startup: A talented creative team that clicked, an experienced pro (former Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page) leading the way, using audience feedback cycles to help shape the first songs before they entered the studio, and management that didn't try to mess with the creative core.
Manager Peter Grant was a fearsome character (https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-last-days-of-led-zeppelin-g-force), but only focused on the business end (especially touring) and let Page lead the way in the studio and on stage. Because Led Zep was bootstrapped and didn't have a record deal when they started, they didn't have some record executive trying to call the shots in the studio and they worked quickly. Inception was in August 1968 and the release of the first album took place in January of the following year. Led Zeppelin II was similarly lean, recorded while they toured. Four of their first five albums were certified RIAA "Diamond" albums, each selling more than 10 million copies (see http://leanmedia.org/chart-shows-rise-fall-music-album/) which I think may be a record.
Yet by the mid-70s Led Zeppelin really bogged down. They started living the rock star life, and were doing massive tours that sucked the energy out of the band. Physical Graffiti took something like 18 months to produce (yes, it was a double album, but still). By the late 70s, Page and Bonham had serious substance abuse problems and the creative mantle passed to Jones and Plant. The band folded after Bonham died in 1980.