Hacker Cinema
Happiness
1998 · Film · 140 min
Directed by Todd Solondz
The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.
4 positive2 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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From YouTube links in the comments below. Most are clips and trailers; “Full” means the uploader says so.
6 comments on Hacker News
It was shot and directed by a totally different person, a famous Rusdian documentary director. 4 x 1h parts. It is absolutely glorious.
After the original movie was made, released and got successful, Werner Herzor made a deal with the director and edited 4 hours of original movie in half, while adding his commentary. He made it A LOT worse, sadly.
The only people who rave about it, are the ones who haven't seen the original. Please, do yourself a favor and watch it.
Perhaps the reason why Werner absolutely butchered the film was because he was so out of touch with the subject of happiness?..
I don’t usually rewatch movies on my own, so this is mostly a list of movies I thought were special enough to show other people.
Eighth grade
Mother!
The Thing
Rosemary’s Baby
Hereditary
Dead Ringers
Happiness
Synecdoche, New York
The Triplets of Bellville
> I am also not aware of any mainstream work with a pedophile with any redeeming feature.
The 1998 movie "Happiness" attempted to depict the plight in a humanizing way.
https://youtu.be/_t-kjZ1cxoE
So here's what I do when I buy a movie, either on Blu-ray or via iTunes. I download the remux from Usenet. If there isn't one (rarely), I wait for the Blu-ray to arrive and I rip it myself. There's a U.K. release of Wages of Fear that you cannot get in the U.S. any other way than purchasing the Blu-ray from BFI. (The U.S. Criterion Blu-ray release is missing 5 minutes of footage.)
Even for movies I rent or stream, I often download the remux to watch it, then delete it after watching. It's the only way to avoid bullshit like streaming apps (all of them except Criterion, no matter your settings), not letting me watch to the end of the credits in peace. Or subtitles which are shown below the frame for movies which are wider than 1.78:1. Or, let's say you want to watch RRR in its original language with English subtitles. Netflix only has the rights to the Hindi dub.
I want my money to go to the filmmakers and actors and production crew, but these fucking studios and streaming companies, man. Please, let me pay you to watch the movie in high quality and in peace. Why is it easier for me to pirate content? Like, it takes me 30 seconds to go to https://radarr.home.mydomain.org/, type in the name of the movie I want to watch, click search, click download, wait 5-10 minutes, and now it's there for me to watch.
Contrast that with going to Just Watch, maybe the movie is on a service I pay for, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's on Blu-ray, maybe only on DVD. Want to watch Happiness (1998)? Too bad, not available anywhere except maybe you can find a used DVD on Amazon for $50. How about The Heartbreak Kid (1972)? (Oh, hey, how do you like that, someone put up a copy of it on YouTube last year.) But time and again, movies just aren't available. I really don't understand why they get locked away. What's the incremental cost of taking a movie which has already been digitized for DVD or Blu-ray and making it available on a streaming service or for digital rental or purchase?
Come on Hollywood. Get your shit together.
> The end result is something that tries to be bland, uninteresting, and inoffensive.
"Happiness" is none of those things, and scored 85 on RT.
> It is safer to invest in the next mediocre superhero movie that most people will be fine with than an innovative middle budget drama that might have a harder time finding an audience. That is what is hurting the movie industry.
That, I completely agree with.
Although the trend of more work today than ever is obviously troubling, as an engineer, I can't help but think that the reason we don't yet have what the past promised because "the robots" really are not that great yet--we do, after all, need an entire staff of people to design, test, build, and monitor them.
In addition, for every problem that we solve--global distribution, connectivity, transportation--we create even more. All of these "solutions" require additional infrastructure, research and development, and ultimately, breed entirely new disciplines and fields of study--i.e. STAFF. Additional flexibility breeds complexity.
100 years ago, I probably wouldn't have ventured very far from where I was born. Food would be grown locally. I wouldn't have internet, etc. Today I have MUCH more flexibility, but that comes at the price of complexity. I tend to believe the SUV / iPhone argument but think they're pretty terrible examples. All things equal, I could likely maintain the same level of technology and lifestyle as someone 100 years ago on about half my income. It's simply, not our culture, which is in large part driven by consumerism. Even if I WANTED to, most companies wouldn't allow it.
The real question we should be asking ourselves, is do we need the iPhone / SUVs, etc. And if not, why are we working so hard for them?
The film Happiness [1] also explores the work / leisure balance in depth.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_(1998_film)