Hacker Cinema
Love Actually
2003 · Film · 135 min
Directed by Richard Curtis
Eight very different couples deal with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London.
3 positive2 negative7 neutralfrom 12 commenters
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13 comments on Hacker News
Fun!
Amusing little occurrence: playing around with different dates and movies, I got one where the still (from Love Actually) was of a different movie the characters were watching in-universe (Titanic).
Original Star Wars trilogy. Lord of the Rings American Psycho Total Recall (1990) Blade Runner Love Actually The Fifth Element Unbreakable Pulp Fiction Four Weddings and a Funeral Guardians of the Galaxy X-Men X-Men the Last Stand Showing my age here, but I started to lose interest in movies after the 2000s. No I do not want to watch a remake of [Blade Runner, X-Men, etc...]. Also X-Men was great, but my interest didn't stretch to Captain America and Iron Man, so the MCU was a loss for me.
The use of "the" is a gray area which is largely a matter of style and regionalism. Nevertheless, let me try to explain.
I liked the movie. In a conversation, "the" implies both you and the listener are referring to the same movie. e.g., I chatted with a girl in the pub about movies. I mentioned "Love, Actually"; she hated the movie.
I installed ~the~ Python 3.11. With proper names, "the" is sometimes used for emphasis. e.g., In the next deployment, we plan to upgrade our servers to Python 3.11. Yes, this is the Python 3.11 which is infamous among support circles.
good advice to writers from Benjamin Dryer, whose book "Dreyer's English" is full of a lot more of it (and is funny as hell).
"Good writing, I think, ultimately exists between the twin goal posts of as-few-words-as-you-need and as-many-words-as-you-want. I, a natural natterer, lean toward the latterer.
But one must draw the line somewhere. I recommend striking out 'actually' at every opportunity, unless it’s in a discussion of the movie 'Love Actually,' in which case we might want to focus on the title’s confounding commalessness. Similarly, though I would never fault the supreme lyricist Johnny Mercer for the gorgeous 'You’re much too much / And just too very very,' I am on constant alert for 'very,' always looking for the chance to dispose of it. I’d encourage you to do the same."
Sure, and I agree that sex scenes aren't inherently more complex / difficult to film than fight scenes (caveats around CGI, green screen, etc complexities that are more likely required in the latter).
As intimated though, the challenge is keeping China happy - there's been a constant series of articles about this phenomenon.
Beyond the acceptance of ultra-violence along with a distaste for sexuality, consider all the political hand-wringing that led Disney to the Iron Man 3 fracas. [0] Or informed their decisions around promoting any films with a non-white protagonist. [1] But really, any web search on 'how are the chinese market cuts of marvel films different' will get you a slew of results.
Aside - about 15 years ago, while in Hong Kong, I picked up a bootleg DVD of Love Actually (a highly popular, but arguably shite, film). Turned out that the local cut of that film excised every appearance of Martin Freeman & Joanna Page.
[0] https://screenrant.com/iron-man-3-china-version-different-scenes/
[1] https://qz.com/quartzy/1231764/the-story-behind-the-racist-responses-to-black-panther-in-china/
I watched it recently because it was some podcasters favorite movie. I like good romcoms but sadly I personally found Love Actually to be horrible and was surprised by the high ratings. There is no "love" in "Love Actually" there is only lust except maybe the old rock star. Every pictured relationship is extremely superficial. I'm also surprised the sexual harassment issues in two of the stories are not called out more. Then again, 400k people rated it 7.6 which is high so clearly they all see something I don't. There are plenty of romcoms I like though. ... though if you go read the user reviews on IMDB, after the first page or so they get pretty negative, so I'm not alone in not getting it.
I'm sorry but I'm not going to be able to let you say something negative about Love Actually and get away with it... yeah there are cheesy musical interludes, but that's the charm of it - the whole film is designed to be like a box of christmas chocolates.
ps: for Umbrella Academy, keep in mind that it was written by a literal rockstar - explains the heavy focus on music
Speaking of tropes, It's probably because I'm old and jaded but I find it gets harder and harder to enjoy many movies and TV shows because having watched so many I see the tropes.
I think the most obvious pattern in many modern TV shows/movies is the musical interlude. You insert some famous pop song as 3 minutes of filler and try to transfer the affection for the song to the show.
A recent example is in The Umbrella Academy one of the characters dances to "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tiffany. It is entirely superfluous. It's not a new technique. I recently watched Love Actually for the first time and it had at least 3 of these types of scenes. When they happen though I just tune out as my brain screams "you're being manipulated". They're filler. They're like "design by committee" or "marketing checklist".
Related is the downbeat 3 minute musical interlude montage. Something disappointing to the character happens and then there's a downbeat montage of them brooding etc. IIRC Angel had 1 or 2 per episode but they're all over in modern shows.
taped to the boom box playing Peter Gabriel you hold aloft outside their offices
That's Say Anything. It's a movie from the previous century. The scene from Love Actually you can actually recognize from gifs and recent SNL parodies.
Yup, that is indeed a problem. 'Race' in the U.S. is, I believe, really a cypher for class, and where in other countries someone born to a lower-class can learn to fit in among a better class, it's impossible to change one's race.
This also hurts immigrants from other countries: they may be well-educated but on first sight they appear to belong to a lower class. It's very unfortunate.
There's also the reverse effect, notably lampooned in the film Love, Actually: if you've a British accent, Americans will assume you're posh.
'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves' and 'Love Actually' are my favorite AR movies.
I think many, if not most, of the people in this conversation really are forgetting that taste is subjective. What you view as a terrible film is often what millions of people enjoy. What you view as great cinema millions of others would find boring.
As an antidote most people I know do not share the same tastes as me (I find the 30s-50s as my golden age of cinema and love Humphrey Bogart) as I with them. While my wife can't stand black and white movies (with a few exceptions) I also really dislike most modern romantic comedies (with a few exceptions such as Love Actually). Of course she says she enjoyed the black and white movie that I made. :)
This also holds true to television as well. I don't want to keep up with the Kardashians or see which C-list celebrity has the best dance moves. Other people didn't want to watch Rubicon or don't want to watch Portland Timbers soccer. (I also think I'll be much worse off with unbundling of cable channels as the niche channels are often included in packages with more popular channels and will likely die off without enough interest and pricing power to sustain the programming.)
John August, a screenwriter with a great blog and podcast and a geek at heart, has made the observation that talented writers are starting to prefer working with TV (channels such as HBO, Showtime, AMC, FX, etc.) as they're given more latitude to tell their stories than they are in a feature length film for a studio. So, if you were to ask me for a prediction (and you didn't), that is the way I imagine the industry going with Amazon, Netflix, etc. picking up some of those shows as well. Those, along with live sports, will continue to draw audiences as they provide topics of conversation for the majority of society. (Obviously you and your group of friends are too sophisticated for that and discuss philosophy and indie rock but you're a small segment of society.)
You can never please everybody. And you'll likely go broke trying.
Personally I'd say put the book down and just do it, but then I've been writing since I was 15.
My best advice would be to read a really good novel while you're writing, because there's something about seeing a novel unfold whilst you're writing one that seems to help the process along. You'll likely get through 3-4 books (if you read like me) when writing a novel and this can really help in the beginning because you see something started in the beginning really unfold at the end and it's like 'holy crap, thats the best thing in the entire book', then you have a moment thinking 'well why the fuck aren't I doing something like that!', then you do.
The other advantage in reading while you write is that I think it reassures you when you get blocked, because 99% of the time you'll think the story is going too slowly, however that's because it takes like 10-100 times longer to write something creative than it does to read it. I think it was Richard Curtis (Notting Hill/Bridget Jones/Love Actually) who made this point; he was asked why there's such a large gap between all his great award winning movies and he said quite simply, 'because it takes a lot of time to write something important to me'. This is quite well illustrated by his writing credits, he switches between writing a blockbuster movie and TV comedy (Mr Bean) with his friend from university.