Hacker Cinema
Lucky Number Slevin
2006 · Film · 110 min
Directed by Paul McGuigan
Slevin is mistakenly put in the middle of a personal war between the city’s biggest criminal bosses. Under constant watch, Slevin must try not to get killed by an infamous assassin and come up with an idea of how to get out of his current dilemma.
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3 comments on Hacker News
Hmm really? Even on the Wikipedia page for 7 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7), one of the first things it says is “7 is often considered lucky in Western culture and is often seen as highly symbolic.” And FWIW you can see the Wikipedia edit history, that isn’t a recent edit, nobody here is messing with it :)
“Lucky Number 7” is a common phrase, there was even a popular movie that played on this, “Lucky Number Slevin” (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0425210/). It’s one of the first numbers I’d think of as a “lucky number.”
While I agree with Spielberg's realization that modifying his prior work was a mistake, there's something I would like to be able to do with movies as a consumer that I wish streaming services offered.
Hollywood seems obsessed with three things: Guns, sex and objectifying women.
While not every movie has guns, the sex and objectification is pretty much everywhere. Perfectly good movies have utterly unnecessary sex scenes that make them impossible to watch with kids. In some cases this is also uncomfortable in family gathering settings.
Two examples that come to mind (there are thousands):
Die Hard. He opens an office door, only to expose a couple having sex. Of course, the woman is fully exposed, while the guy is not.
Lucky Number Slevin. The main character walks into his apartment only to find his girlfriends on all fours on the bed having sex with a guy. Again, full sexual exploitation of the woman, of course.
The Last Kingdom (series): Once again, sex everywhere. No value whatsoever to the story. It's a great series. Unwatchable with kids and in other settings.
Battlestar Galactica (the one with James Olmos): Excellent series. Sex everywhere. No nudity that I can remember, yet scenes of oral sex and other forms of sex without showing full body nudes. Fucking unbelievably unnecessary.
Outlander (series): Might as well be labelled porn. It's a sex-fest. Humping in any way possible at any possible time and even male-to-male rape. Nothing whatsoever to add to the story, which would have been amazing without all that shit in there.
The Queens Gambit (series). Fantastic series about chess. My kids are really into chess. Fuck if we are going to watch it with them. No nudity, yet drugs and sex are featured. The character is fictitious, which means there was no need for any of it. The producers just wanted to include sex and drugs. This one can't be fixed. I am not going to watch a show with my kids that implies taking drugs can make you smarter in any way.
There are tons of movies and shows with similar problems. Movies that are excellent and yet the producers feel it is necessary to insert a stupid sex scene that adds absolutely nothing to the story and is of no value whatsoever other than to show boobs bouncing and feature women as sexual objects.
Notice I did not say anything about movies like Fifty Shades or Gray, Wall Street or Eyes Wide Shut. Those are movies where the story justifies some of what they feature. There could be an argument related to female objectification, that's about it.
I am not a puritan, by any means. I just think this is stupid, wrong, unnecessary, detrimental and destructive to women. Having a daughter changes your perspective on what's out there in popular culture. Great movies and series are being ruined all the time by inserting sex where it is unnecessary, and it is usually at the expense of women.
Getting back to the first paragraph. I wish there was a setting on streaming services to be able to watch these movies with those scenes cut out or replaced by alternative scenes shot and chosen by the creators.
In the case of Die Hard, the couple could be kissing, taking a nap, playing chess...anything. The point is they were distracted and did not react to the emergency. In the case of Slevin, the sex scene could either be completely cut out or replaced with something different.
That, to me, would be a feature very much worth having. Hollywood's obsession with sex and the objectification of women is a problem that does not seem to receive the attention it should.
Sounds a bit like the Shmoo, of Shmoocon fame.
> Are you familiar with The Shmoo, Mr. Fisher? Comic strip I liked as a boy. The Shmoo was a loveable creature, really. Laid eggs, gave milk... ...and died of sheer ecstasy when looked at with hunger. The Shmoo loved to be eaten. It could taste like any food you desire. Shmoo hide cut thin made fine leather. Even Shmoo whiskers made excellent toothpicks.
> In essence, The Shmoo supplied all of the world's wants. I only bring up the case of The Shmoo because of its relevance to you and the reason you were brought here.
(via Lucky Number Slevin, which is a vastly underrated movie IMO)