Hacker Cinema
Elf
2003 · Film · 97 min
Directed by Jon Favreau
When young Buddy falls into Santa's gift sack on Christmas Eve, he's transported back to the North Pole and raised as a toy-making elf by Santa's helpers. But as he grows into adulthood, he can't shake the nagging feeling that he doesn't belong. Buddy vows to visit Manhattan and find his real dad, a workaholic.
5 positive1 negative8 neutralfrom 14 commenters
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14 comments on Hacker News
I’m reminded of the beginning of the movie Elf, where the book publisher is informed that a printing error means their latest book is missing the final two pages. Should they pulp and reprint? He says,
> You think a kid is going to notice two pages? All they do is look at the pictures.
I’m quite sure bean counters look at Disney kids movies the exact same way, despite them being Disney’s bread and butter.
With Star Wars you have a dedicated adult fan base that’ll buy up remasters and reworkings. Aladdin? Not so much. Especially in the streaming era, no one is even buying any individual movie any more.
I'm Muslim too and I always find it interesting to see how various non-Christian theists observe Christmas. Obviously we don't "celebrate" but I personally don't see anything wrong with partaking in the secular parts of Christmas (and let's be real, in the west, it's pretty much all secular).
My parents felt otherwise when I was growing up, so my siblings and I weren't allowed to do anything Christmas related, but now my wife and I would do seasonal things like watch a live performance of Nutcracker or Pentatonix or TSO. And can't forget about watching the holiday classic movies like Elf and Die Hard!
Movies I think I truly great I usually only watch once, sometimes twice. If a movie ends and I just sit there thinking to myself… “wow”… I will probably never watch it again.
Movies I watch over and over again are movies that I relate to in some way or find comforting. These are ones I’ve watched at least 5 times, and some I’d bet more than 30 times.
- Back to the Future
- Home Alone
- What About Bob?
- It Could Happen to You
- Matilda
- As Good as It Gets
- Office Space
- Cruel Intentions
- Boiler Room
- Finding Forrester
- Training Day
- Super Troopers
- 8 Mile
- The Transporter
- Elf
- Bad Santa
- Mean Girls
- Saved!
- Garden State
- V for Vendetta
- Thank You for Smoking
- Stick It
- Little Miss Sunshine
- Idiocracy
- Hot Rod
- Run Fatboy Run
- The Other Guys
- Wreck-It Ralph
To name a few.
Mostly, I will watch a movie a second or third time if I am tired and it's on TV and cannot sleep. So there is only a small intersection of films that I have watched multiple times and would admit to watching even once.
So excluding those, from most to least (probably).
- elf
- the Bourne identity
- groundhog day
- ronin
- Willie Wonka (the original)
- the fifth element
- ghost dog (any Jim Jarmusch)
- the blues brothers
- singin' in the rain
- crouching tiger, hidden dragon
- my friend totoro
I am probably leaving out quite a few, but all these films I have seen enough times to reconstruct in my head, scene by scene.
Motion smoothing is so horrible…I don’t understand how TV makers have persisted with it for so long. Surely the people who make televisions appreciate a good picture enough to not spread this nonsense, right?
The effect makes movies completely unwatchable. I was at a friends house watching Elf and it felt like watching Will Ferrell host a Zoom call.
It's also a trope explored in The Hudsucker Proxy and Elf for a wider variety of movies to watch. Both I believe reference that the Empire State Building in New York has (had?) a pneumatic inter-floor (inter-office) mail system. I don't recall if it still operates and I don't know if either or both filmed in the actual ESB mail room or not.
(Also if you want a videogame that plays with the trope, Grim Fandango has a fascinating pneumatic tube mail room and it factors into some of the puzzles. I believe it is also indirectly referencing the Empire State Building.)
For new music (as in recorded and released recently), no. Most of the music I buy is made by artists who probably tour in a van. So, every little sale matters to these folks. And, I'm happy to support them! In regards to some hit record from the 60's that already went 10x platinum (or whatever), I'll grab the free version in a heartbeat.
For movies / tv series, I don't want to bother. I really don't. But, the streaming landscape is just out of control (for lack of a better phrase). Even with just a few services, the signal to noise ratio is heavily noise. Who knew there were so many Christmas movies?! I just want to watch Elf. Oh, it's on the other streaming service? That's weird, it was on here last year!
I just want to buy some of this stuff digitally, so I can watch it without having to Google what service it's on. Or, after Googling it's location, come to find it's been removed recently (looking at you, Netflix). But, a lot of the newer shows are streaming only. Which, leaves one option if you want it on a hard drive.
Happy Christmas Eve! I agree, HN is a great community.
So, what movie are we watching tonight?
I have a penchant for The Polar Express because I love how deep in the uncanny valley it goes, plus the absurdity of Santa appearing as a totalitarian dictator before his adoring fanatic minions somehow gives me great joy. Wandering around the abandoned factory floors and listening to the elf's last minute wrapping up of business reminds me of more than a few Christmas Eve's at work in large office buildings trying to get that last bit of code pushed before the break.
But, you know, Elf is good too.
And it's the same argument as Santa Claus in the movie The Elf. So long as enough people stand in Central Park singing the same song, all is well, just be sure to leave before the party is over, the Clausometer goes to 0, and the police horses trample you.
I don't understand why the major streaming services don't have the good Christmas movies. They all have these new "made for TV" quality awful movies they push really hard.
It's A Wonderful Life
A Christmas Carol
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (old animated version)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (old animated version)
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Home Alone
Miracle On 34th Street
Elf
White Christmas
There's tons of GREAT Christmas movies. On any given Christmas season Netflix might have 1-2 of the greats. Same for Amazon Prime.
I'm confused because it seems like an easy win for these streaming services. Is licensing them really so expensive?
Not going to lie, I thought this was going to be opining on the Christmas movie Elf
I've seen that elf movie. You can do crazy things with perspective...
It's much like you asking your friends what movies they like on Netflix, and the friends answer "Home Alone" and "Elf". Since you don't like those movies, you can't imagine there being any other movie on Netflix you'd like, and write off all movies.
That doesn't really make sense. It's more like the early days of Netflix streaming where people were reluctant to sign up because the selection of movies on there was actually terrible. I didn't touch it for a couple of years despite having access through a Netflix membership, because I couldn't find anything on there I wanted to watch.
The fact is that right now most examples of 3d printing are not that great. People at Maker Faire print out giant dodecahedral hats - admittedly to showcare the alrge print area rather than their taste in headware - or the occasional hard-to-find part. But most of the lower-end printers still produce output that looks highly pixelated, and the properties of the plastic used mean that many items have to be printed with additional structural support. What people see at the moment is like an inkjet printer (good) that can only produce output in Comic Sans (bad) and at low resolution (worse).
The exciting thing about patent expiration is getting around some of the resolution problems. People expect plastic to be smooth, not to look like miniature lego. Ideally you want to be able to print stuff of similar quality to a model aircraft kit. Right now it's OK for large, somewhat clunky items.
That's the nature about the long tail of things: not everything you see will be personally appealing to you. In fact, only a tiny sliver of all possible things will be appealing to you.
The mistake that many people make (not necessarily you), is when they ask for examples of appealing or useful 3D printing, and if your example doesn't appeal to them, then they write off the entire long tail of things to 3D print.
It's much like you asking your friends what movies they like on Netflix, and the friends answer "Home Alone" and "Elf". Since you don't like those movies, you can't imagine there being any other movie on Netflix you'd like, and write off all movies.
3D printing for the masses is so new that no one's seen much of the long tail, and there are things to be printed that are not yet explored.