Hacker Cinema
Mashhad
1970 · Film · documentary · 16 min
Directed by Hossein Torabi
A documentary about the holy city of Mashhad, highlighting the contrasts of faith and modernity under Shah in the Iran’s early 1970’s. Narrated by late poet Ahmad Shamloo.
4 positive4 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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8 comments on Hacker News
> You get flooded by info that you never need in your daily life or in near future.
My brain holds on to the weirdest shit. Back in May my wife texted me: "Hot Lips died" and I immediately replied, "Loretta Swit or Sally Kellerman?"
And thinking about that: why in the world should I remember either of their names? But seriously: Sally Kellerman? I saw the MASH movie when I was...ten? I'm pretty sure never since then.
And just typing that, my brain gremlin is cataloging everything it recalls from the movie: Elliot Gould, sure. Donald... oh crap. So this right here is the crux of the issue: objectively I know I shouldn't care, like, AT ALL. But right now I have a subprocess running to retrieve that guy's last name. I know his son was the star of 24, and Stand By Me, and he's escaping me at the moment, and my brain Will Not Stop until it recalls... Sutherland! Kiefer Sutherland, and Donald his dad.
<sigh> I could be remembering something important. I do remember actually important things -- but I could remember more important things if my brain didn't care deeply that Gary Burghoff was the only person to play the same role in the movie and the TV show.
Blockbuster carried the latest movies from all the studios. Everything newest and most desirable. They had a smattering of classics and art house and older genre films, but mostly it was about everything latest and greatest.
Netflix streaming seemed like that at first, but better! Now, they have a tiny slice of content. And as a content-producer, they seem willing to throw money at anything B-list.
Meanwhile, the studios became more risk averse as people started preferring to watch at home. Then theaters shut down and studios became more risk averse. And Netflix and Amazon arose and started playing studio games and studios became even more risk averse.
That trajectory of fear is mirrored in the content. The 1970s were known for directorial freedom and risk-taking. The 70s gave us Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Star Wars, Animal House, Annie Hall, Rocky, Halloween, Smokey and the Bandit, Deliverance, MASH, and more - not all high art but all complete gems. Every decade since, we've seen a gradual progression toward samey-ness.
Someone had mentioned recently that one of HN's biggest problems was overly pedantic responses get better upvotes rather than actual content. This has a caused HN to devolve into a fact correctness engine rather than a content engine. To be fair, this is something I've done in that past too.
Yes, I did use a rhetorical phrase to make a point, but one that's pretty prevalent in modern culture and especially when it comes to triage. Perhaps google phrases like "Doctors forced to play God", etc. Ironically, the first hit that comes up is this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8163641/NHS-doctor-reveals-shes-forced-play-God-coronavirus-patients-overwhelm-wards.html
I really recommend that you go watch episodes of MASH from the 1980's. Particularly the episodes where the doctors have to triage cases that might be savable if they weren't in a field hospital. If the US president says we're in a war, we should all refresh ourselves up on what meatball surgery is during an actual war.
Not a fan of poetry, or, happiness.
Happiness, for lack of a better word, is boring.
Happiness is boring in the same way being angry al the time is boring; people evolved to notice change. Every single one of our senses only works by detecting change.
Take smell for example. Your nose detects a difference in the smell of the air. When I burn things in the oven, I get used to the smell after a while but when my wife comes home she says: 'Ahh, cooking again earlier?'
Taste is the most obvious one. Fast for a month then eat a corn chip. You will taste that simple food so deeply you could pinpoint the field the corn was grown in. Now eat a million corn chips. You quite literally won't even taste the last one.
Put a fan on in your office, you'll forget its on. Randomly have someone turn it off and the difference will be a bit painful that change is so obvious.
Gain 100 pounds, you get used to the feeling of it. Lose the 100 pounds, you'll get used to that feeling too. If you didn't, people who were obese would strive to be out of pain. There is pain in being heavy, but you get used to the feeling of your body.
I have heard a version of "Humans adapt" for my whole life. I think it's more than that. I think it's more like 'Humans ride the wave of change." We are so symbiotic with change we don't even notice that change is the thing we both fight and enjoy.
Why do I rewatch episodes of MASH? Because it's both the same and different each time. I watch all eleven seasons over and over and what happens? I notice nuance. That's me detecting change. It's hard to exhaust the nuance because there is just so much of it. I see patterns, like how Hawkeye acts drunk or how Hot Lips manages her hair.
What is hard is FORCING change. That's the tricky bit. Lose the weight, win the lotto, date your dream girl. Now that evolution that has kept you safe by detecting change fights you because you are way outside your comfort zone and what you are used to.
Subconsciously, many of us, would do the things that will help us get back to safe harbor: stifle and defend against self imposed change.
I think focusing on happiness is a poorly defined goal. I'd say to enjoy happiness but strive to have peace.
> Also, I’ve seen MASH.
MASH the film or MASH the TV series? Both are comedies, and both are loosely based on “MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors”, which is a memoir.
Actually it has a movie industry. Many movies from Czechoslovakia period are being considered "classic" and are still popular, with quotes from them being used all the time.
For foreign movies, there were also cases, when the dubbed versions were better (sounded better) than originals - for example Louis de Funès movies or MASH.
Not really.
I'm a pirate. I have little compunctions about downloading whatever-have-you. Part is convenience, part is I've been burned before, part is I want to spend money on tangibles, part is literally just 'fuck you drm'.
Is it wrong? Well, it's certainly a tort. I'm not doing it for some morally superior good. I'm doing it for myself and my family.
We can curl in bed, and watch XYZ movie. And if it stinks, it gets the delete. I don't have to deal with any number of factors from screaming kids to DRM; I just double-click and it plays in VLC. I was watching MASH on netflix..... until they removed it from the live collections, 8th season in. Am I buying it? Nope. Downloading.
If anything, the biggest draw to me is open source stuffs. I can get and give it, and use it for my files. There's no reason for lock-in, so they play nice.
Edit: And yes, I do pay for Netflix. Bang for the buck, it ~is~ easier than finding links online. Even if I can't store and download locally, it's great for watching filler fluff I don't want a copy of. Media I want to have, I just download anyways.
I love FFC. I'm a current UCLA film student - Coppola's alma mater. One thing to think about: UCLA has always been the "indy, intellectual" film school. It's our rep, internally and (to an extent) externally. When Coppola left UCLA to work in Hollywood, he was branded a sell-out by his fellow students.
One thing to think about w/ this whole "crush Hollywood" thing is this: most of your favorite movies (assuming you've got a boner for the New Hollywood period like I do) were a result of an aging, out-of-touch entertainment monopoly making desperate, reactionary moves to save itself. The old system didn't work, the people in charge had no idea how to fix it, so they went crazy taking risks on young directors. FFC, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman, de Palma, Lucas - all the really top-drawer American filmmakers, honestly - were a result of this period of blind desperation.
There would be no Godfather without Hollywood. No Apocalypse Now. (also no Taxi Driver, no Star Wars, no Indiana Jones, no MASH or Nashville) In the absence of Hollywood, you get movies like Youth Without Youth and Tetro - two wonderful oddities, but you'd be hard pressed to make the case for them against Coppola's early masterpieces.
The beautiful and horrible thing about Hollywood is that it's a system designed to throw huge stacks of cash at storytelling problems. It's fucking absurd, because money has never been capable of solving those kinds of problems - practice and gut instinct are what create good stories. But when strong storytellers are placed in an environment which supplies nearly unlimited resources, totally amazing things happen. Yes, we can all point to Heaven's Gate, New York New York, and Coppola's own One From the Heart, but flops like those are the inevitable flip side of the system I've just described: talented people can abuse unlimited resources just like anybody else.
I guess what I'm saying is: I'd be seriously depressed if Hollywood were to vanish. Yeah, it produces a lot of shit, but its high water marks have never really been replicated by any other mode of production.