Hacker Cinema
Forrest Gump
1994 · Film · 142 min
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events—in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.
15 positive6 negative1 mixed43 neutralfrom 65 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
70 comments on Hacker News
> For each of those films, at least one company was and is earning $$$, but the talent doesn't get to make a revenue sharing deal with those companies.
That doesn't sound right. Traditionally, and in particular in the case of Forrest Gump, the distinction is between people who contract for a percentage of net profit (always zero) and people who contract for a percentage of gross revenue. The revenue is measured at the same point either way; it's just about whether you got suckered or not.
Movies like Forrest Gump, Return of the Jedi, Men in Black or Harry Potter 5 all managed to lose money, according to "GAAP".
If that's not creative accounting, I don't know what is.
For the academy awards, to its defense, it was competing against Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, Four Weddings and a Funeral, or the Madness of King George. I can barely name one good movie a year these days, and certainly none that makes it to the oscars. The contrast with the 90s is brutal.
2 Star Trek tv shows airing and one in development and a movie came out. West coast grunge scene in full effect. Kurt cobain died. MLB baseball strike after a killer Montreal expos team and then no World Series. OJ trial. Friends debuted. Channel tunnel opened. Mandela elected. PlayStation debut. Amazon founded. Yahoo founded. Netscape founded. USA World Cup. NAFTA. QR code invented. The Downward Spiral. Justin Bieber born. Shohei ohtani. Born. Nixon died. Jackie Kennedy died. Senna died. Ukraine gave up its nukes. Guantanamo reopened. Kim Il-sung Died. Forrest Gump.
1994 was wild
For me very few movies are interesting. They've become expensive soap operas.
Visionary directors like the cohen brothers, spielberg, scorsese, and the writers of that era have just given way to blandness it seems.
10,20 years ago you had the Matrix and Forrest Gump.
Today you have, for example, Jay Kelly and Die My Dear. Well produced soap operas. These movies are literally just...a run of the mill story.
And Im not cherry picking.
Vanishingly small number of movies today seem to have a unique vision or be compelling..at least to me.
They even managed to turn Star Wars from a space opera into a space soap opera.
The OG film for that was Forrest Gump. It is often lauded as one of the first movies to use CGI heavily but in completely, and intentionally, unnoticeable ways...
>The aesthetic just does nothing for me
Like what? This is like saying the aesthetics of Hollywood films just does nothing for me. Which can be Forrest Gump and the Avengers Endgame too
That's basically how Hollywood accounting works, with some of the highest grossing films and franchises in history not paying a penny in tax due to showing a 'loss' on paper.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) ended up with a $167 million loss on paper after grossing nearly $1 billion. According to New Line's accounts, the LOTR trilogy made "horrendous losses" and no profit at all. Same as Forrest Gump, Men in Black, and Return of the Jedi.
The Music industry is far worse in its financial machinations.
With some minor exceptions, the companies involved in this are all American.
"Groundhog day" of course
most of Schwarzenegger movies because he is cool
Back to the future trilogy
Fight club
Some of the best soviet ones (Kin-dza-dza, Garage, Mimino, Irony of fate etc.)
Rocky
Forrest gump
what if they followed the Apple stock advice in movie Forrest gump? They would have millions already.
The 90s with its apolitical cinema like Saving private Ryan or Forrest gump that certainly are not pro american propaganda or other great movies like the Matrix that do not denounce late stage capitalism as soul crushing and has no themes that could be interpreted about taking red pills and feeling more like yourself.
The 90s had a different context sure, capitalism was peaking, we didn't have the crushing reality of the post 2008 world, or the crazy chest bumping Murica militarism of the post 9/11 era. But the 2000s scare, the internet fear, the office jobs being boring/grey and soulless. The slight fear of science and progress (see Jurassic park, gattaca, fifth element), the work culture being inhumane and dehumanising (matrix, office space, clerks, american beauty), the same happened in music with grunge being one of the main genres of the decades.
All of this art was made in the backdrop of probably the most optimistic period of time, Disney had a renaissance, america absolute cleared the floor in the first gulf war, the stock market had an impossible never ending rise, pop music was happier than ever and fashion was in the most sexy, thin, in your face hotness ever.
If you only want to enjoy the 90s happiness without seeing the fact tons of counter art was being made and that our current cyniscim isn't only a product of the post 2008 economic stagnation but also comes from the seeds that were planted at the height of the cultural hedonism of the 90s then you are just straight ignoring some of the biggest hits of that decade.
See also How Hollywood Studios Manage To Officially Lose Money On Movies That Make A Billion Dollars
For example, consider the case of Winston Groom who was promised 3% of the net profits of a film based on a little book he wrote called Forrest Gump. As noted, Paramount would later argue that the film, which cleared almost 13 times its production budget, a total of $700 million at the box office or about $1.2 billion today, had actually lost $62 million, all in an attempt to weasel out of paying Groom, among others.
https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2020/06/how-hollywood-studios-manage-to-officially-lose-money-on-movies-that-make-a-billion-dollars/
that's not necessarily a good guide. Let's say you make a lot of money. You can pay your executives millions, have lush offices with swimming pools and tennis courts, company jets etc and report razor thin "profits". Not that they're doing that - but you can creative accounting your way out of reporting profits.
For instance, the star wars movies, forrest gump, lord of the rings, men in black and harry potter are all still not technically "in profit": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
That's why money in - money out is a better barometer for insurance and people with star power negotiate different terms these days like percentage of "dollars in". I made a video a couple years ago with a writer friend who is now on strike about this.
(I'm cutting out the first 5 minutes of chit-chat and it's processing on youtube, but if you see this after that happens, just go to the beginning) https://youtu.be/QZBqjZS3hZA?t=296
You don't think Robert DeNiro is an actor? While he's fairly typecast, he doesn't really play the same person in every film.
Tom Hanks plays.. Tom Hanks. He had one divergent role as Forrest Gump, but otherwise, the actor that played in Castaway feels like the same guy that played in Big.
The milestones (from the source code):
//<10 seconds 'A single frame of a film': 100ms, 'It would take light to go around the Earth': 133ms, 'A blink of an eye': 400ms, 'The time it takes light to reach Earth from the moon': 1255ms, 'The fastest Formula 1 pit stop': 1820ms, 'The fastest 1/4 mile drag race time': 3580ms, 'The fastest Rubik\'s cube solve': 4221ms, 'The fastest 40-yard time at the NFL Combine': 4240ms, 'The fastest 1 liter beer chug': 4370ms, 'A skippable Youtube ad': 5000ms, 'A full bull ride': 8000ms, 'The fastest 100m sprint': 9580ms, //10 Seconds 'The Wright Brothers first flight': 12000ms, 'The fastest 200m sprint': 19190ms, 'The fastest 50m freestyle swim lap': 21300ms, 'The Westminster Kennel Club dog agility record': 28440ms, 'A typical television ad': 30000ms, 'The fastest NASCAR lap at Daytona': 40364ms, 'The fastest 400m sprint': 43030ms, 'The fastest NASCAR lap at Talladega': 44270ms, 'The fastest 100m freestyle swim lap': 47050ms, //1 Minute '"Just a minute"': 60000ms, 'The fastest Formula 1 lap at Monaco': 74260ms, 'The fastest Formula 1 lap at Monza': 81046ms, 'The fastest 800m sprint': 100910ms, 'The fastest 200m freestyle swim lap': 102960ms, 'The fastest Kentucky Derby time': 119400ms, 'An NHL penalty box time for slashing, tripping, or holding': 120000ms, 'How long it takes to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge (without traffic)': 135000ms, 'The duration of the "Millenium Force" roller coaster': 140000ms, 'The longest Super Bowl national anthem': 156000ms, 'One round of a boxing match': 180000ms, 'The average song length on Spotify': 183000ms, 'The fastest 1,500m run': 206000ms, 'The song "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley': 215000ms, 'The fastest 400m freestyle swim lap': 220140ms, 'The fastest 1 mile run': 223130ms, 'The duration of the "Steel Dragon" roller coaster': 240000ms, 'The duration of "The Beast" roller coaster': 250000ms, 'The song "4:33" by John Cage': 273000ms, 'The longest sky diving freefall': 276000ms, 'The Any% speedrun of Super Mario Bros for NES': 294948ms, //5 Minutes 'An NHL penalty box time for fighting': 300000ms, 'The average duration of a typical sky dive': 330000ms, 'The average time for a drive-thru order': 356800ms, 'The time it takes Jeff Bezos to make $1 million': 402000ms, 'The fastest race car lap around the Nurburgring': 403300ms, 'The time it takes light to reach Earth from the sun': 500000ms, 'The time it takes a rocket ship to reach outer space': 510000ms, 'A typical marching band show': 515000ms, //10 Minutes 'The length of the first space walk': 600000ms, 'The longest a human has held their breath (non-oxygen assisted)': 695000ms, 'The average duration of popular Youtube videos': 702000ms, 'The time it takes an average human to walk 1km': 710000ms, 'The fastest 5K run': 757350ms, 'The average time to bake a pizza': 810000ms, '1% of the entire day': 864000ms, //15 Minutes 'A typical commute in the United States': 960000ms, 'The fastest superbike lap of the Isle of Man TT': 1002778ms, "MLK's \"I Have A Dream\" Speech": 1020000ms, 'An average baseball inning': 1200000ms, 'The song "2112" by Rush': 1233000ms, 'The first angels to appear in the movie "Angels in the Outfield" (1994)': 1275000ms, 'An episode of The Office, Seinfeld, or Rick & Morty': 1320000ms, 'The time it takes to drive the entire Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel': 1380000ms, 'The song "Octavarium" by Dream Theater': 1440000ms, 'A typical Super Bowl halftime show': 1500000ms, 'The fastest 10K run': 1584000ms, 'It takes for Bobby Boucher to get his first game snap in the movie "The Waterboy" (1998)': 1719000ms, //30 Minutes 'The average time to bake a cake': 1950000ms, 'The time it takes until the launch in the movie Apollo 13 (1995)': 2081000ms, 'It takes WALL-E to arrive at the Axiom in the movie "WALL-E" (2008)': 2164000ms, 'The shortest war in history (Anglo-Zanzibar War)': 2280000ms, 'It takes Harry Potter to arrive at Hogwarts in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer\'s Stone" (2001)': 2381000ms, 'The album "Thriller" by Michael Jackson': 2539000ms, 'The album "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd': 2589000ms, 'An episode of Breaking Bad, House, or Firefly': 2640000ms, 'The boot camp sequence in the movie "Full Metal Jacket" (1987)': 2730000ms, 'The album "Abbey Road" by The Beatles': 2823000ms, 'It takes Simba to become an adult in the movie "The Lion King" (1994)': 2849000ms, '10% of a typical work day in the United States': 2880000ms, 'The album "Kid A" by Radiohead': 2996000ms, 'The time limit for the essay portion of the SATs': 3000000ms, 'The time it takes a standard ice cube to melt at room temperature': 3150000ms, '0.01% of an entire year': 3155692ms, 'The album "Fearless" by Taylor Swift': 3221000ms, 'The time it takes for the basketball game to start in the movie "Space Jam"': 3222000ms, 'An episode of Game of Thrones, True Detective, or The Sopranos': 3300000ms, 'It takes Harry and Lloyd arrive in Aspen in the movie "Dumb and Dumber" (1994)': 3394000ms, 'The album "Jagged Little Pill" by Alanis Morissette': 3443000ms, 'The fastest half-marathon': 3451000ms, //1 Hour 'An episode of Top Gear': 3600000ms, 'The inception of Robert Fischer begins in the movie "Inception" (2010)': 3847000ms, 'Riding the longest subway line in NYC from Queens to Inwood': 3900000ms, 'The time it takes Jeff Bezos to make $10 million': 4017600ms, 'It takes before Sean Connery says "Welcome to the Rock" in the movie "The Rock" (1996)': 4022000ms, 'A flight from Syracuse to New York City': 4140000ms, '5% of the entire day': 4320000ms, 'The album "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John': 4580000ms, 'The album "Scenes From A Memory" by Dream Theater': 4626000ms, 'The movie "Primer" (2004)': 4740000ms, 'It takes to fully charge a Tesla (at 440V)': 4788000ms, 'The ferry duration from Long Island, NY to New London, CT': 4800000ms, 'The movie "Toy Story" (1995)': 4860000ms, 'A drive from Syracuse, NY to Rochester, NY (87.5 miles)': 4920000ms, 'The movie "The Lion King" (1994)': 5280000ms, 'The longest State of the Union address': 5280000, //Duplicate time... //1.5 Hours 'The movie "Mony Python and the Holy Grail" (1975)': 5460000ms, 'The movie "Monsters, Inc." (2001)': 5520000ms, 'An average duration of a soccer game': 5700000ms, 'The movie "Reservoir Dogs" (1992)': 5940000ms, 'The longest Innaugural address': 6300000ms, 'A drive from Orlando, FL to Tampa, FL (84.6 miles)': 6660000ms, 'An SR-71 flight from New York City to London': 6896400ms, 'The movie "Alien" (1979)': 7020000ms, //2 Hours //'25% of a typical work day in the United States': 7200000ms, 'The average duration of an NCAA basketball game': 7200000ms, 'The movie "Star Wars: A New Hope" (1977)': 7260000ms, 'The fastest marathon time ever ran': 7299000ms, 'The time it takes to listen to every studio album by Nirvana': 7667000ms, 'The movie "Dogma" (1999)': 7680000ms, 'The average duration of an NBA basketball game': 7860000ms, 'The movie "The Matrix" (1999)': 8160000ms, 'The movie "Fight Club" (1999)': 8340000ms, 'The movie "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994)': 8520000ms, 'The movie "Forrest Gump" (1994)': 8520000ms, 'A drive from New York City to Philadelphia (94.6 miles)': 8520000ms, '10% of the entire day': 8640000ms, 'The movie "Inception" (2010)': 8880000ms, 'The movie "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018)': 8940000ms, 'The movie "Pulp Fiction" (1994)': 9240000ms, 'It takes Voyager 1 to travel 100,000 miles': 9360000ms, 'The movie "Avatar" (2009)': 9720000ms, 'The average duration of an NHL hockey game': 9750000ms, 'The movie "Saving Private Ryan" (1998)': 10140000ms, 'The movie "The Godfather" (1972)': 10500000ms, 'The movie "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001)': 10680000ms, //3 Hours 'The average duration of an NFL football game': 10800000ms, 'The total time limit of the SATs': 10800000ms, 'The movie "Avengers: Endgame" (2019)': 10860000ms, 'The average duration of an MLB baseball game': 11280000ms, 'The time it takes for a standard ice cube to freeze in a freezer': 11700000ms, 'The movie "Titanic" (1997)': 12600000ms, 'A drive from Boston to New York City (215.9 miles)': 13560000ms, 'Alex Honnold\'s free solo climb of El Capitan': 14160000ms, //4 Hours 'Half of a typical work day in the United States': 14400000ms, 'The flight time from New York City to Los Angeles': 19800000ms, 'The time limit of one session of the Bar exam': 21600000ms, 'It takes Voyager 1 to travel 250,000 miles': 23400000ms, 'The fastest swimmer to cross the English Channel': 24900000ms, //>8 Hours 'A full typical work day in the United States': 28800000ms, '0.1% of an entire year': 31536000ms, 'The time it takes Jeff Bezos to make $100 million': 40173000ms, 'The time it takes to assemble a car': 57600000ms, '1% of an entire year': 315360000ms, 'It takes for the Lōʻihi volcano to rise above the surface of the ocean becoming a new Hawaiian island': Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER //285,616 years
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your list, even though some of those are mediocre at best, but yeah I did mean per year, and limited to Hollywood (Parasite for instance not counting). And no, ok, I will also straight up disagree with the second Knives out Movie which I thought was absolute trash. A perfect example of poor storytelling and the form over substance of modern cinema.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.
What's disappeared isn't the small independent super-low budget movie... as you said, that market is more active than ever. It's the >$10 million movie that everyone in the country can enjoy, has a name brand actor or two, but isn't just some recycled comic book tripe. Forrest Gump. The Big Sleep. Kramer vs. Kramer. Three Men and a Baby. Four Weddings and a Funeral. Terms of Endearment. etc.
Slmudog Millionaire was 91% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, grossed $378 million, was nominated for 8 Oscars and won Best Picture, won 7 of the 11 BAFTA Awards for which it was nominated including Best Picture, and launched the careers of both of its stars.
Humbly, I suggest that "western audiences" enjoyed the movie a great deal and had no problems with it and that the issues you are having are your own and stem from your inability to understand the thematic issues of the movie rather than a failure of the movie itself.
Interesting that you cite Forrest Gump as your example, since your problems with Slumdog are the same problems that I have with Forrest Gump: it jumps so quickly through Forrest's life that it fails to meaningfully explore the significance of any of the individual moments of his life other than his connection to Bubba and Sarge.
> But the point of the movie was that his luck on the game show was good karma for the decisions he made at the major points of his life. (Contrast with his brother.)
Sure, but perhaps very unsatisfying to a Western audience where one wants stronger connections between decisions and consequences.
Consider "It's a Wonderful Life": Although the struggles and misfortunes were not that great, it's also a movie where the protagonist consciously made decisions that led to a poor life, and in the end benefited significantly because of those decisions (and not just materially). The connection between his decisions and the outcome is much stronger.
Still, that was only a small part of why I didn't like the movie much - it merely added insult to a greater injury - that of not developing the various arcs that appeared. Imagine watching Forrest Gump where each of his life adventures was significantly reduced. The story would still be the same, but a lot less satisfying.
It's from the US. Sees candy boxes are loaded with random chocolates and you won't know what the chocolates contain until you put one in your mouth.
The quote was made famous by an old US movie starring Tom Hanks. The movie is called Forrest Gump. Fittingly, the character who said that quote is mentally challenged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJh59vZ8ccc
Maybe I was too young to know any better, but I loved the 90s movies - from T2 all the way to matrix including 5th element.
> but I believe that after Terminator 2 and Jurassic park there was garbage for a few years
But lion king, toy story, pulp fiction, shawshank redemption, fargo, forrest gump, etc were released soon after jurassic park. Garbage isn't the word I'd use to describe these movies.
Forrest Gump is in the same category as Die Hard and The Godfather, the book is just mediocre but the movie is great.
I'm glad that thanks to the internet and proper journalism, we have a better view on things. I grew up mainly in the 90's, with action movies from the time - think Rambo and co.
I don't remember watching anything that glorified the Vietnam war though. Full Metal Jacket showed how it was a shitshow. On a weird kind of lighter note, Forrest Gump showed how people died or were gruesomely injured. Rambo may have been the only one that tried to portray it somewhat positively? I don't quite remember.
Wish the article would note that he won the Oscar for the Forrest Gump screenplay, not Dune.
I kept rereading the article and wondering how he got an Oscar for a movie that was just released.
Nobody lives forever.
The other day I was comparing the movie "Forrest Gump" to the TV show "Quantum Leap".
Both recapitulate the time period 1950-1985.
Forrest Gump is an idiot who stumbles through situations without understanding their significance; somehow he comes out on top of a life put together from the covers of Time magazine. His childhood friend is a victim of drugs, AIDS and the counterculture.
Sam Beckett, the hero of Quantum Leap, "leaps" into a crisis in someone's life at the beginning of each episode; his mission to set right what once went wrong.
Sam is an expert physicist, pianist, martial artist, and actor. Sam agonizes over the problems of the people he leaps into. But you know he is satisfied, that he finds this mission to be meaningful -- even if he never gets home he's found a purpose for his intellect.
When I first saw "Forrest Gump" and the spell it cast over my older family I had the feeling, for the first time in my life, that I could kill someone (Robert Zemeckis, the director) because of the danger of their ideology.
I don't feel that way today, actually I like many Zemeckis films, but I was offended at the idea that you could let it all wash over you without experiencing a moment of critical distance.
Sam to me is like Faust from the 2nd part of Goethe's play, who escapes Mephistopheles clutches by finding, in the service of other people, a moment that he wishes time would stop.
Forrest Gump and Fight Club were deeply political. The former is deeply rooted in humanist left-wing ideology, and the latter in exploring the alienation of masculine identity in modern society.
Also, you're listing empowerment of groups other than yourself as a negative?
I must be misinterpreting that because the implication seems to be that you actually don't want to watch movies where anyone but your own demographic (I assume white male) are portrayed in a positive or empowering light. Or maybe you simply don't care for or can't empathize with such portrayals. If so fair enough, but that's your personal taste, not a failure of the movie industry as a whole.
Yeah, I miss the good old days of movies with no political message whatsoever such as The Matrix, Forrest Gump and American Beauty.
Nowadays you have: superhero movies, sequels, remakes, empowerment of certain groups that aren't me, movies with a political message, or some sad dour art house movie that makes you walk out feeling bummed out about life.
Compare 1994 or 1999 movie releases to 2021.
Fight club, the matrix, forrest gump, Magnolia, office space, sixth sense, american beauty, clerks, etc.
Nowadays: the father?, Mank?, black messiah, , chicago 7?
It's not about creating magical new worlds with thought provoking ideas anymore.
Maybe I'm explaining it poorly but film seems to have gone the way of the music industry.
Commodified instead of inspired.
I LOVE going to the movies.
I just wish there was something I wanted to see.
But well, 98 years since they started their bike tour, an Indian's passport would be Indian and not British, and that would shut many borders (unless they can show enough financial stability to satisfy immigration authorities that they're not going to stay illegally), it would be hard to think they'd be hired for odd jobs in the western world or have the Pope welcome them, so my cheap conclusion would be, privileged Non-Westerners would also be able to do a world tour, but middle class ones?
But what an adventure, it's almost like the movie Forrest Gump, with them witnessing history and even meeting characters like Mussolini.
My original point was really meant to be that I don't think any of this is deep, and that article seems to (acidentally) back that up. I spent a fair amount of time with philosophy students when I was at university and they would often waste time getting tangled up in semantics having discussions that sounded deep but really weren't. The solution is: accept that words have meanings that are fuzzy around the edges and don't let it worry you. There are contexts where you actually must let it worry you (e.g. determining if someone broke the law) but come up with a tighter definition in any circumstance like that, while accepting that the word will still be used more loosely in other contexts.
I hadn't seen that article before and didn't mean to refer to it. In fact the author is making an exceedingly simple mistake confusing two totally different things. The first is that a word that has a fuzzy meaning, and you notice that by looking at the edges of its meaning (e.g. is something still a vehicle if it doesn't transport people?). As I said, that is expected and not worth dwelling on. The second is using it as an analogy: is a salad a vehicle for dressing? Is a film a vehicle for an actor? Getting mixed up with the first question is a pretty basic mistake. When Forrest Gump says "life is like a box of chocolates" (technically a simile because of use of the word "like" but similar idea) you might think it's silly but not because the box of chocolates doesn't satisfy the literal meaning of "life". As with salads and films, that's not the edge of the meaning of the word; it's the very core meaning of the word used in a different context.
Likewise, the film Forrest Gump should not be considered sound investment advice
Reminds me of how Paramount claimed Forrest Gump lost money because they owed Winston Groom 3% of the profits. So they found a way to make it not profitable.
https://konvexity.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/what-accounting-lesson-winston-groom-learned-from-the-movie-forrest-gump/
That is cool use of AI !
Sidenote: I always had this idea for "video compression" I'm by no means an expert in compression.
1) Take like the top 10 most "VISUAL DIVERSE" movies (imagine Forrest Gump(slow drama) VS ToyStory(anime) Vs Rambo(fast paced visuals)
2) "Encode/compress"(I know these terms are not interchangeable) the movie as a "diff/ref" to the "most similar" movie from step 1
2b) This the "diff/ref" can be many forms "sliding window" over x section of y amount of frames.
3) The "end-user" or "destination" have these "10-master-movies" locally on hdd and together with the local-data can construct the original "frame" or "movie" from the compression and local-movie on disk.
Tl;DR Try to compress a new movie by saying "the top corner of frame 1-120" is very similar to MasterMovie-2-FrameXYZ-Frame-ABC
4)
Currently reading: Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. A fun, quick read about something I knew nothing about.
I'm sure you'll get all the classic HN recommendations so I'll pick two that are a little different:
* Nobody's Perfect: Writings From the New Yorker, by Anthony Lane. Lane was responsible for writing reviews of many prominent movies from the 90s. We now know which of those movies hold up (Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction) and faded away into cultural oblivion despite insane amounts of hype (Godzilla from 2000, Pearl Harbor), and I enjoyed reading contemporary treatments of both. Why spend the time to read such reviews? Because Lane is a master of his craft. The blend of dry British humor, insightful critiques, and his surprising accessibility makes for really enjoyable prose. Also, the pieces are quite short, so I can read two or three before bed and have natural points.
* Meet Me in the Bathroom -- an oral history of the NYC music scene from 2001 to 2011. You can make the argument that the Strokes are directly responsible for the money-soaked Manhattan we have today. The Strokes, LCD Soundsystem, and TV On The Radio were hugely inspirational to me growing up so it was really neat to watch them look back on this crazy time in their own words. But really, it's a story about transitions. New York transitioning after 9/11 to what it is today; the transition of the music industry (the author makes a compelling point that although the Strokes and Vampire Weekend were both NYC-based bands that blew up 5 years apart, their trajectories couldn't have been more different); the influence of blogs and the kids who ran them had on this global industry. It's a fascinating to reflect on what is really just the not-so-distant past and see how much has changed.
I’d argue they’ve been here for a while and we just called it “cinema”. Remember all the superimposed historical scenes from Forrest Gump?
The technology got easier, everyone became a publisher, and now we have a more prickly name for it.
Truly a great show. As mentioned, one of the inciting incidents takes place in the first episode. Although it’s a bit much and makes you want to hit stop. I promise it’s worth it. It’s like a Forrest Gump of the tech industry and tackles so many current issues that we are still dealing with along the way.
US citizen asking here, to dispel any immediate ambiguity: what sort of papers do you mean, or what examples in other countries is there that you speak to?
Example, the closest thing to “papers” here-if I understand your “papers” to mean identification, would be a “driver’s license” (or just a plain state ID card which one is not compelled to possess, at least not at the National level) but that’s more a thing certifying your knowledge of how to safely operate a motor vehicle, understand local laws and the like-which I understand to be consistent with some other countries.
It’s not really a document certifying one has “permission” to travel freely about the country though. If I wanted to walk from a Charleston South Carolina to San Francisco, and cross every state border along the way, I’m allowed to. This level of freedom is illustrated pretty beautifully in a scene from the movie Forrest Gump
https://youtu.be/tWzbCk18wTw
> but how many streamed Friends who completely missed it's original run?
23 year old here. I had never seen Friends, thus I never had any nostalgic interest in visiting it.
One weekend last year I had an onsite interview in Denver just before a blizzard hit, snowing me into a Motel 6 for 2 days. No wifi, so I did nothing but watch Friends and Seinfeld reruns on the TV. Probably the first time I'd used a television in my adult life.
I also caught Forrest Gump for the first time late that night. Not a bad film.
I'd say it is unsavory in the same way today's movies are "manufactured" to extract the most value from american and chinese markets. Where decisions of film locations, dialogue, plot, etc are driven by marketing and political aspects of these two major markets. And the "art" comes after the market research.
"ars gratia artis" doesn't apply to Forrest Gump. It was manufactured out of marketing data. It was the 90s version of most recent nostalgia film "Ready Player One". I know it won a bunch of awards ( which I put no credence or value on ) but it is film saccharine. Forrest Gump is one of the forefathers of the current movie industry.
Forrest Gump had a $55 million production budget and a $71 million marketing/advertising budget:
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/25/movies/gump-a-huge-hit-still-isn-t-raking-in-huge-profits-hmm.html
> "there are absolutely choices you can make for marketing rather than artistic reasons"
That is fair. I believe it's also the case that when evaluating art, it's easy to conflate those reasons with one's own POV and demographic biases.
In other words: Forrest Gump is cynical pandering to Baby Boomers... but [this-year's-Marvel-superhero-movie] is an artistic gem, and The Dark Knight or Black Panther got robbed at the Oscars, etc.
Just because a movie is created because of cynicism on the part of the production company does not mean that it is created because of cynicism on the part of the filmmaker, crew, or editors.
A filmmaker will flagrantly appeal to the cynicism of the producers in order to produce a film they believe in wholeheartedly. Forrest Gump is probably a great example of it.
Spielberg and Ron Howard definitely make middle-of-the-road appeal-to-everyone films.
But so did Shakespeare. Middlebrow and excellent are not mutually exclusive terms.
Oh, and Michael Bay is represented on the Wikipedia List of Film Auteurs page.[1]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_auteurs
This is being a bit too "edgy" for me. Not to defend Forrest Gump as an all-time great or anything, but is there really something wrong or unsavory about its conception?
What you call "exploiting a demographic" is more like "having a target audience instead of trying to be all things to all people". Sure, Boomers are a huge generation. But they were entering their 50's when Forrest Gump came out... and studios usually aim at 18-34 year olds because that's who spends the most time and disposable income at the movies.
What you call "Spielberging" is probably just a combination of cinematography, soundtrack, and accessibility over hipster snob appeal. In other words, good mass-market filmmaking.
Maybe this particular movie isn't your cup of tea, but there's nothing negative or cynical about this. "Cynical" would be hijacking HN threads to bring up urban walkability, UBI, random potshots at Baby Boomers, or any of the other standard hot buttons that typically guarantee upvotes and validation.
Baby Boomers! The film Forrest Gump was basically Baby Boomers: The Movie.
It was a Greatest Hits album of everything the stereotypical Boomer would consider great and memorable about their childhood and young adulthood.
> Forrest Gump didn't need any machine learning.
No, it just needed a massive demographic the studios could exploit the Hell out of by taking a semi-popular novel and Spielberging all over it.
You have a good point, but you used an imperfect film to demonstrate it. Forrest Gump was just about as cynical a film as you could imagine, and succeeded precisely as predicted. That kind of cynical filmmaking, explicitly targeted at demographics with earnings projections in place before casting begins, is precisely what this AI-driven concept will end up with at its worst.
A better example would be the works of the Coen brothers, or David Lynch: Even if you don't like them personally the fact remains they have an audience, and they most certainly weren't made to order based on market forecasts. They represent the auteur theory in action, being the products of distinctive creative minds who impressed their equally distinctive visions upon them.
"Success in the movie industry relies on a studio’s ability to attract moviegoers—but that’s sometimes easier said than done"
No it isn't. Just make a good movie. Forrest Gump didn't need any machine learning.
The only reason someone might use this is when your strategy is "spray and pray", create crappy movies that insult everyone's intelligence and you need to figure out is it worth launching at all.
Forrest Gump is one of my favorite movies.
I'm from Germany, not the US and the first time I watched it as a teen I only got the obvious references. Each time I rewatched it, I found more and more references to US history, which just made the movie even better for me.
I'm finding it's wrong/irrelevant or empty more than it's right, and even when it's right it's pretty much just the wiki info for whatever place is mentioned.
These are taken from the front page of the first 2 categories I tried, and at least half were just empty.
---
Sunset after the rain Baton Rouge, LA source
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera; with their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight.
---
Salt River Canyon, Gila County Arizona source
Sal may refer to:
---
Aerial view of the Amazon Rainforest [3450 × 2118] source
Ra (; Ancient Egyptian: rꜥ or rˤ; also transliterated rˤw; cuneiform: 𒊑𒀀 ri-a or 𒊑𒅀ri-ia) or Re (; Coptic: ⲣⲏ, Rē) is the ancient Egyptian deity of the sun.
---
The Lower Falls, Yellowstone National Forest [2304x3306]. source
Forrest Gump is a 1994 American romantic comedy-drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom.
> So, why would anyone participate in this program, if the best possible outcome is that Amazon uses your idea, makes millions, and does not pay you a cent?
This is what happened to the author of Forrest Gump. The reason there was no sequel despite that movie's massive success was that he was too proud to sell the rights for the sequel when he'd gotten screwed on the first one.
However, it seems likely, given the first movie's massive success, that he could have gotten a pretty good price the second time around.
Always be careful with what you think the best case is.
Wow, what an unfortunate name. I'm not even American and I recognized the problem immediately.
I'm sure I've heard the slur used in movies (Forrest Gump, maybe?)
After reading parts of the thread, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know the connotations of the name. Yet, they will save themselves a lot of trouble if they just rename the project.
Trying to defend the name on the grounds that they didn't know and that it is a slur that fell out of fashion in the 70's will not help them.
Even if it is the best tool of its kind, I still wouldn't want to use it with a name like that, if just to avoid embarrassment when talking to my colleagues.
That is really great - I never would have guessed how you did it.
> photoshop my legs and arms out
This reminds me of the first time I saw Forrest Gump. For some reason I didn't know who Gary Sinise was, and all through the movie I thought the actor playing Lt. Dan actually was a double amputee.
And in the flashback scene that showed him walking, I marveled at how they were able to fit him with artificial legs that let him walk so naturally!
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-10/entertainment/ca-14048_1_gary-sinise
The lab I work in publishes, and has continues to extend, the studyforrest dataset for quite a few years now.
http://studyforrest.org
Most of the consumers so far have been neuroscience researchers and statisticians, but we do hope (and think) that there's value for a wide variety of interests.
There's a bunch of different data, but the highlights are fMRI scans of people watching and/or listening to the movie Forrest Gump, eye tracking, and detailed annotations of the movie. We are also about to begin acquiring simultaneous EEG and fMRI.
http://studyforrest.org/data.html
Accessing the data is easy, and, as great admirers of Joey Hess, we also have it available in a git annex repo. :-)
http://studyforrest.org/access.html
---Alex
[EDIT] Given that this thread is about open source datasets, it's probably worth mentioning that the license is PDDL.
https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1.0/
It's a common refrain that films based on other stuff are always worse, but I think it's sampling bias. When a movie is based on a mediocre source, people often just don't realize that the movie isn't original. The fact that a movie is "based on" is more likely to be known if the source is good, and reversion to the mean means that these are likely to have movies that aren't as good.
For one example, Forrest Gump is based on a pretty crappy book. It's mildly entertaining but it's pretty wacky and definitely not the amazing classic that the movie was. For another one that turns up a lot, The Godfather is said to be a lot better than the book, although I haven't read it myself. One more, Pirates of the Caribbean, while not exactly deep and meaningful, is a pretty fun movie based on a pretty mediocre amusement park ride.
I will admit that I can't come up with any good movies based on a video game.
Another source of trouble, I think, is that a movie based on something well known can survive on name recognition, so it doesn't have to be good. A Warcraft movie could be good in theory, but they probably haven't bothered.
They don't have rights to stream any decent movies
That seems hyperbolic. Just browsing around (I decided to cap this at 5 minutes):
The Interview
Forrest Gump
Major League
Pirates of Carribean
Hot Fuzz
Armageddon
Kingpin
A League of Their Own
Inglorious Basterds
Scarface
Django Unchained
Legally Blonde
E.T.
Days of Thunder
The Princess Bride
Crocodile Dundee
Clear and Present Danger
V for Vendetta
Galaxy Quest
Running Man
Big Trouble in Little China
Talladega Nights
Kill Bill (1 and 2)
Star Trek Movies (including The Wrath of Kahn)
Tommy Boy
Team America World Police
Lilo & Stitch
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Wayne's World
Clerks
Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure
> "The stupidest thing someone can do is overestimate themselves," [from the OP] //
That's a worrying conclusion - there's a thin line between not trying for fear of failure and considering that it's only rational that something is beyond you so you should not try.
My young son has many times told me he is unable and will always be incapable of doing certain things. Many of those things he can now do because we didn't accept his considered limitations. To his mind we were overestimating his ability to do and to learn to do.
IMO sometimes it's right to try even when we [feel we] know we will fail - drink driving isn't one of those times [except in very limited circumstances where it could be made relatively safe (cf Mythbusters)].
The researchers seem to call a lot of things stupidity; ignorance IMO is not always through stupidity, equating lack of self-control and stupidity again seems strange to me. There's some overlap for sure.
Lastly, isn't part of the point of the movie Forrest Gump that the eponymous hero does things that are out of ignorance or apparent low-intelligence but that are nevertheless revealed to be acts of heroism, inner-strength, love, longstanding fortitude. Lieutenant Dan doesn't hold back in showing how foolish he sees Gump but "Stupid is as stupid does" and it turns out what Forrest does - courage under fire, friendship with the friendless, gumption beyond normal endurance, and willingness to just do [ignorant, or perhaps wilfully dismissive, of those who see or call him as stupid] - isn't stupid after all.
"I, Robot" was a great movie, but not based on the book.
"Starship Troopers" was, as I like to repeat a quip, "based on the back cover of a novel by Robert Heinlein".
"Frozen", while not involving a contract to the long-deceased author, is allegedly based on "The Snow Queen" though I fail to see the connection.
There are numerous other examples of a movie being almost entirely unlike the book for which rights were purchased at significant cost. Producers seem to often go to great lengths to ensure an even tangentially involved author is at least satisfactorily paid. Sure, there are famous examples where the reverse is true ("Forrest Gump", IIRC), but it seems in everyone's interests to err on the side of generosity where due, lest a case like this one codify outright screwing of the sources of ideas - and their eventual defense in substantially less profitable ways.
Forrest Gump, which was released two months later had a significant number of digitally recreated deceased people, as well as the current standing president (used without permission, iirc).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109830/
Unknown-ish authors are -- like Winston Groom, when he agreed to have Forrest Gump made into a movie, and got screwed by "Hollywood accounting" because he'd accepted a percentage of the profits.
Well known ones have enough negotiating power to demand a cut of the gross receipts and merchandising.
--
Edit: A little more on the Winston Groom aside from Wikipedia:
Winston Groom's price for the screenplay rights to his novel Forrest Gump included a share of the profits; however, due to Hollywood accounting, the film's commercial success was converted into a net loss, and Groom received nothing. That being so, he has refused to sell the screenplay rights to the novel's sequel, stating that he "cannot in good conscience allow money to be wasted on a failure".
It's a non sequitur. It does not follow that because the anti-war protester that Jenny hooks up with beats her that the movie is trying to portray anti-war protesters as woman beaters. It can only be a shocking bias if it's so shocking for it to occur.
It also doesn't fit the actual movie. The movie has Jenny making the same poor decisions over and over because that's what her background leads her to. Her personality leads her to protest the injustice of Vietnam, her view of normal gravitates her to the worst of the other protesters. Her personality leads her to being a liberated woman of the 70's, while at the same time drawing her into the culture of abuse and self-abuse that put her in the position to be one of the early contractors of HIV.
There is no bias, this really happens. Jenny was a complex character that was controlled by her demons.
The major characters of Forrest Gump are really portrayed quite realistically.
First, women are just 20% of all AIDS victims. Mind not blown, Mr. Un-PC Dude.
Second, that shows a fair degree of missing the point of fiction. Sure, in real life, where everything happens according to cold statistics, promiscuous women will tend to get more AIDS than non-promiscuous women and non-promiscuous heterosexual men. Granted.
But this is fiction, a work of art which has an audience and a message, where everything happens because the author wants to. Even if you don't want to, even if you're scared shitless of communicating a Message, you are in fact, as an author, putting a point across. It might not be a message that you as an author subscribe to, but the work is there, and the point is made; and you're just a bad author. And people are naturally adept at finding the core message of works of fiction; we as a species seem to like narrative a lot.
We look at those Nazis melting at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie, and we instinctively get it: they were punished because of their arrogance and evilness (in this case Naziness). Even one Nazi got stigmata, as a symbolical punishment and marker of his inherent badness, that is, Naziness. It's all narrative, and a message gets made, namely that being Nazi is kind of a bad deal. Take Elon Musk, he's the hero in a narrative that pits the Startupy Original Innovators (good) against Sclerotic Big Corporations like Boeing (bad); and it's hinted that badness will be punished at the end and good will prevail, as it is defined in the (narrow, a bit unfair) context of that narrative. A very common and crude narrative structure; and very powerful, by the way.
So, this guy watches Forrest Gump in a culture that tends to shame women that have casual sex, and sees that it just so happens a woman that has casual sex then has (is punished with, the mind readily answers, since it's just too much of a coincidence...) AIDS, because this author just decided for it to happen. And this guy then infers the writer has made a moralizing tale where sluts get AIDS. Now, maybe this author was just clueless and didn't think through the implications of his, or her, decisions; but I wouldn't blame the GP for looking at Forrest Gump that way.
Are you saying anti-war protesters can't be women beaters? That liberated women can't get AIDS? That in the late 70's prostitutes were guaranteed ways of getting this disease that wasn't widespread yet?
Forrest Gump had very real characters. Jenny had a shitty life, which continued to be shitty by her choices. This really happens to people from shitty backgrounds because they don't recognize shitty situations as shitty, but as normal. Had she stayed with Forrest, her life wouldn't have been that way, but she still could have been the strong woman that was part of her personality. She just didn't recognize when a good thing came her way.
Lots of people did heroin and hookers before AIDS was everywhere, not all of them contracted HIV. That's the nature of a mystery disease. Lt. Dan also fell into a depression that Forrest helped pull him out of, just by being a good influence. Lt. Dan had the life Jenny could have, Forrest made the lives of people around him better by being a good person. Between that and the rapid changes the world went through from 1950 to ~1985 is what the movie is about.
It's not a propaganda film, despite your strongest wishes that it were.
In the movie Forrest Gump, there is a scene taking place in the late 70s or early 80s where Jenny is explaining to Forrest that she is ill and the doctors do not know what it is. She dies a few years later. It is never stated explicitly, but the idea is that she was suffering from AIDS, which she contacted during her years as a promiscuous drug addict groupie.
In my opinion it is one of the most powerful scenes in the movie, in the sense that it does an amazing job with taking the viewer back to that time period where AIDS was a mystery disease.
Sorry to say it, but this certainly smells like cargo-cult science. First, I'm not a scientist, and not even a Nobel-prize winner, but for example I cannot understand what question 3) has to do with "science". I did have 2 dates in the past month, but I'm at one of the lowest points of my life, because, guess what? the missing context really matters (I'm about to get divorced).
The same goes for question 4) . I chose A, "Yes", assuming it was a good movie worth seeing, but lacking the above-mentioned "context" (is it "Forrest Gump" or "Delta Force IV"?) any answer you give it's just to satisfy the interviewer. And yes, people DO go and see movies that they know they're bad.
A little less reading on "behavioral economics" or "animal spirits" and a little more reading of Hume will do everyone a ton of good.
Sure - I would love the creators of the content to get paid.
Unfortunately the writer of Forrest Gump didn't get paid because the movie made a loss, Stan Lee didn't get paid for Spiderman because the company that made it sold it their distribution arm for $1. Peter Jackson and various actors didn't get paid properly for LotR because the studio can keep the accounts secret.
Having more people is a blessing and a curse. Same with having a tight nit group of people.
With more people, the pro is that there is more activity. With this, you have an effective mechanical turk of some sort since there are so many people to get help from and one of those people can be very useful. The con is that conversations are overloaded, so many try to post one liners to achieve top listing status in a thread. This discourages those with better experience and insight to make a comment since they have to spend a long time on a comment only to have it buried and ignored. The other con is that only pop submissions or submissions that take the least amount of time to consume (r/pics) have the most upmods. Take Hacker News. I remember when it was like reading a programmer's mailing list. Now with so many people, the most we can relate to are tech gossip.
With less people conversations are more focused and detailed. The con is you have to be lucky to have experienced individuals to provide better insight.
Still, don't quote me on this stuff. This is something a social scientist can explain better.
Nonetheless, complaining about the degradation of an online community isn't really something to get worked up about (and this is from a guy with a signed reddit bobble-head and a first issue reddit sticker). Entropy is a fact of nature. It's like a group of friends who had such a fun time together for a certain era then end up hating each other. Or like Forrest Gump who reminded me as a child that how your life is setup now isn't how it will always be. I cried when I saw that movie as a child for I knew my care-free childhood life was gonna be over anytime now and...shit, I just realized that happend.
The importance of the <popular movie person> mentioned in the movie preview is directly proportional to how good the movie is going to be. e.g., "From the director of Avatar..." is probably going to be a good movie. "From the sound editor of Forrest Gump" doesn't have quite the same chances.
I can't recall what movie it was, but I once saw a trailer that touted itself as "from the company that distributed <not very good movie>." The movie proved to be terrible.
Touching the Void - I love this legendary true story of two mountaineers' first ascent of a peak in the Andes for the survival aspect of it. Grit, determination, and patience are three qualities I truly admire. It is a must watch even if mountaineering/climbing doesn't interest you.
Apollo 13 - for how ingenuity, teamwork, and a calm head can help you overcome the most challenging of problems. I wish I was born in that era and had the opportunity of working among that group of people. The pursuit of a cause greater than oneself.
Shawshank Redemption - much has been said about this movie.
Forrest Gump - odd choice I know, but it's a remarkable story of serendipity. We often fail to realize just how much of life is purely a matter of chance.
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
I think it's just a question of perspective. I think an awful lot of stuff has changed the past 20 years. Think of the effect of Internet. Hell, right now I'm sitting in a Starbucks (also unexistent in 1990) in London, UK and sharing my thoughts real time with people all around the globe! How awesome is that! There are a lot more examples.
In terms of popular culture, musical genres such as boy bands of the 90's, drum and bass, goa, nu-metal have came and gone; some truly remarkable movies have been made, think of Forrest Gump, The Matrix, Amelie or Trainspotting.
More specifically my home country (where I don't live anymore unfortunately) has seen the end of communism and people had to grow used to a capitalist environment which affected every aspect of their lives.
And yes, believe me, you would look extremely silly if you've worn 90's style clothes so please don't.
I can't really tell what it does just by glancing at it.
The name implies that you track movies somehow, don't know what that means. "About" says you recommend movies. That's not the same as tracking movies, but maybe you recommend them by tracking them. I'll try to log in and see.
Tried logging in with facebook connect, it just brought me to another login page. So I created an account. I liked the are you human thing.
I did NOT like being confronted with an upgrade to premium proposition as the very first thing I saw after logging in the first time. Presumptuous. Let me use the thing at least once, so I can find out what it does, much less do I want to pay for it.
I added one movie. When the popup disappeared, my dashboard still said I haven't added any movies yet. Disconcerting. Had to click Movie Log and come back to Dashboard before my newly added movie showed.
What's that box with the string of blue pearls at the top of the dashboard?
I clicked Recommendations, and based on one movie entered I got recommendations. I think it's fair that the recommendations appear random, since I only entered one movie, but you do mention "secret sauce" as part of your methods. Based on your recommendations I think your secret sauce is a RNG; I entered Casablanca and you recommended Forrest Gump, Vertigo and Watchmen, among others.
That sideways Facebook thing over on the right is irritating, it covers up your Secret Sauce speech and I have to scroll the page around to move it away from the FB tab.
Signed out.
Clicked Sign In Using Facebook at the very top of the front page, and got ... a giant pixelated blowup of the Despicable Me picture that you feature on the front page, at this url:
http://test.themovietracker.com/iphone#home
None of the links do anything useful (because I'm not an iphone?).
Clicked Sign Out and I get a blank page and no page ever loads.
Back button to front page.
Clicked Sign In top right, and just for fun clicked the fconnect button in the popup. Same result as above, some kind of iphone-centric page.
Filled in my email and password, clicked Go Inside and got a blank page at this url:
http://test.themovietracker.com/process_ajax_login
Clicked on Create a New Account, and instead of creating a new account I filled in my email/passwd. Clicked Go Inside and was informed of bad login credentials. Tried again, and got the iphone page.
Went back to the create account page and tried logging in again. iphone. So I can't get in anymore.