Hacker Cinema
Dead Poets Society
1989 · Film · 129 min
Directed by Peter Weir
At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
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16 comments on Hacker News
> There's no 'white' culture, there is modern North American culture and it's not something that belongs to a particular complexion.
This doesn't seem right to me. WASP culture absolutely does exist. Anyone can see it in full display by watching films like Dead Poets Society or Home Alone.
I can easily rattle off movies and music from the last decade
If you have recommendations for good recent drama, I'm interested to hear your suggestions. Let's limit it to interpersonal conflict, by which I mean a movie that follows multiple persons and multiple viewpoints. Think Closer or Dead Poets Society, not Lady Bird or Juno.
Terrible.
Imagine that you want to make a film that is an unholy amalgam of Scrooge, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Dead Poets' Society and The Breakfast Club. Imagine that your audience is oblivious to any nuance and you're not so creative, so you will need to employ the standard tropes of bratty prep school kids, mother whose son was killed before his time, bookish professor with a heart of gold and life lessons at the end for all our protagonists.
Trowel on the schmaltz like it's wet concrete and multiply the cringe by 1000. Now you have a decent description of this movie.
I’ve added some movies I love too :)
Books ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho ‘Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress’ by Steven Pinker ‘Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You’ by Bill Burnett, Dave Evans ‘Exhalation’ and ‘Stories of Your Life and Others’ by Ted Chiang
Movies ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ ‘Dead Poet’s Society’ ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ ‘King Richard’ ‘Shawshank Redemption’ Anything Studio Ghibli
Your comment reminds me of the line from Dead Poets Society:
_We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for._
PS: how good was that movie?! So Good!
Dead Poets Society (1989 film)
Good call. I saw that one so long ago that I'd almost forgotten about it, but it was very good. In fact, now that you have mentioned it, I think I'm going to go back and watch it again. Don't think I've seen it since I was in high-school.
Henry V (1989 film)
I randomly saw it one night on PBS. I thought I had caught it in the middle of the movie, not realizing I turned it on the moment it started. I was pretty young and had no real interest in literature, the arts, whatever. But it looked neat "hey a dude in a castle" ... and I realized ... I kinda understood it. I couldn't explain it word for word in plain English, but I got the metaphors and the story enough hand was hooked. It opened up a world to me that I didn't think was within reach.
Certainly doesn't hurt that the film is absolutely packed with great actors.
Dead Poets Society (1989 film)
Bunch of kids find inspiration at a stuffy school from a special teacher and some poetry that they might have otherwise found to be stuffy and simply passed over had they not looked at it differently.
Plan 9 is the successor to UNIX. Inferno OS is the successor to Plan 9. If you use either for a while, you'll appreciate how well-designed the system is. That, in itself, is valuable. It doesn't need to bring a profit to your startup to justify its existence and use.
> We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
From the movie Dead Poets' Society. Emphasis mine.
The claim “often regarded as the greatest of all novels” right in the opening is so hyperbolically naive and unmatched by the general level of the piece that one wonders if some marketing person added it to boost up the clicks.
Even if one adopts the mundane definition of topping all time greatest lists put together by various organizations, I still think this would apply to War and Peace, as commented here Anna Karenina probably would be a better candidate.
People who make such claims should be forced to watch the first classroom episode in Dead Poets Society till they get the idea.
> Williams was great in just about anything he was ever in, I wouldn't attribute that to Nolan.
I don't know, I might. You don't even see Finch for half the film, only hear him, and the villain left an impression on me not unlike Kiefer Sutherland's villain in Phone Booth (an otherwise unremarkable film). I can't think of another villain role that Robin Williams performed, probably because nobody was brave enough to take that kind of risk with a heavyweight positive actor -- Insomnia came out a few years after Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society, which helped establish his mastery of drama, but nobody wanted to make him the bad guy. Nolan did, and it was very satisfying to watch.
(I take that back, One Hour Photo was great, too. I knew I was forgetting one.)
I gave links to the funding situation for charter schools in two different states. I can give more if you want. I don't think you can claim that I have not spent some time reading up on where charter schools get funding.
You consistently respond by pointing to a single charter school. No one has ever claimed that there aren't some excellent charter schools. But why should I believe that Success Academy Charter Schools is characteristic of charter schools as a whole?
Of course a school's method's can make a difference on the students. There's a entire genre of movies on the topic. I mentioned "Blackboard Jungle". Another example is the turn-around at George Washington Preparatory High School, which was portrayed in the movie 'Hard Lessons'. There's "Dead Poets Society" based in part on the teaching impact of Samuel Pickering, and "Lean on Me" is based on principal Joe Clark and Eastside High School. As a New Yorker, you should well know of NYC's history with alternative schools, which includes public alternative high schools like 'The High School of Performing Arts', which was the basis for the movie 'Fame'.
But the choice of pedagogy has very little to do with the the complaints about 1) extra opportunity for graft in charter schools, 2) a general funding preference for charter schools over public schools, and 3) charter schools which are held to lower minimum standards than public schools.
The advice attributed to Kleinbaum is actually from the movie Dead Poets Society, written by Tom Schulman (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097165). Googling for "Kleinbaum + Dead Poets Society" suggests that it is a novelisation that came later: http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Poets-Society-N-Kleinbaum/dp/1401308775.
The Shining
Dead Poets Society
It's a Wonderful Life
TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard
Memento
(M) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
And what about you? What are you favourite movies?
This is how America ruins it's best children. I know the story so well, I only had to read the title, though I did skim the article to be sure.
Children need to be given goals and challenged, not constantly told they are good enough. Children need to be shown a path to improvement, not reassurance on their accomplishments.
There's a reason Americans fascinated by movies about hard loving teachers who are proud but never satisfied with their students, like in the Karate Kid or Dead Poets' Society (dating myself there.) Unfortunately we can't bring ourselves to actually challenge our children and sacrifice their short term glee for long term fulfillment.
Thank you, corin_, for the name of the movie, i.e., Dead Poets Society. I was about to skim Robin William's IMDB and find it.
Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero
That's where it comes from, and "have little trust in the future" alludes to death even if it doesn't state it.
"Memento mori" is actually used generally to refer to art, while "carpe diem" is solely an idea - and I much prefer the latter for, while it has the same meaning, it is from the positive point of view, not the negative.
Personally I can't think of "carpe diem" (a favourite phrase of mine, incidentally) without hearing Robin Williams speech that is shown at the end of this article.
- We are food for worms, lads
- Believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is going to stop breathing, turn cold and die.
- Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they are capable?
- These boys are now fertilising daffodils.
(If you haven't seen Dead Poets Society.. you should. Wonderful film.)