Hacker Cinema
Ocean's Eleven
2001 · Film · 116 min
Part of Ocean's Collection
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Less than 24 hours into his parole, charismatic thief Danny Ocean is already rolling out his next plan: In one night, Danny's hand-picked crew of specialists will attempt to steal more than $150 million from three Las Vegas casinos. But to score the cash, Danny risks his chances of reconciling with ex-wife, Tess.
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14 comments on Hacker News
> In what sounds like an Ocean's Eleven film plot, prosecutors say these "unwitting" victims were cheated out of at least $7m (£5.25m) in poker games - with one person losing at least $1.8m.
Definitely a lot of work but that seems like a half decent payday to me.
Sometimes translators make weird decisions. Ocean's eleven in Latam Spanish was "La gran estafa" (The great swindle), which to me sounded much more generic, then came Ocean's twelve and they called it "La nueva gran estafa" (The new great swindle). On the 3rd movie they had to give in and called it "Ahora son 13" (Now they are 13), losing the connection to the others completely. For the next one they didn't even bothered and called it "Ocean's 8: las estafadoras" (Ocean's 8: The swindlers).
Bonus: the original movie from the 60s was named "Once a la medianoche" (Eleven at midnight). I would have preferred they kept that name.
> I'm an American in my 40s. I've never seen "glorification of scams" in any mainstream culture
Some very popular movies that come to mind (Some of these may not be intended to be glorifying scams, but to many unsophisticated viewers, they absolutely are):
- The Social Network
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- Uncut Gems
- The Godfather
- Scarface
- Ocean's Eleven (and Twelve and Thirteen)
- Emily the Criminal
- I Care a Lot
- Nine Queens
- Punch-Drunk Love
> I've also never seen any sort of "hyper-masculization" shown in a positive light in mainstream culture
More movies!
- The Godfather (again)
- Pulp Fiction
- Fight Club
- American History X
- Gangster Squad
- Django Unchained
- Expendables
- Every Fast and Furious movie
- (Nearly?) Every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie
> it's common to see masculinity referred to as as "toxic" and equated with negative traits or externalities
I think this is (usually?) a misunderstanding. People refer to toxic masculinity, a set of problematic behaviors some men exhibit as part of attempting to appear "manly" that includes traits such as: homophobia, glorifying unhealthy habits (e.g., drinking like a man, don't cry like a woman, mental health issues depicted as "weakness", etc.) They're not referring to masculinity, itself, as being toxic.
And lamer than I had anticipated.
While the actors faces are intrinsic to our memories of those films, there is nothing in the films existence intrinsic to those precise faces and identities.
The existence of nothing hinges on Julia and Tess existing as dopplegangers except the plot of the film itself. And if Julia Real didn't act in Ocean's Eleven, her star needs not be diminished: she'd have taken some other project which could be a hit. Maybe even several in the time it took to film Ocean's Eleven in the real world.
The article's author's brain is wrapped up in la-la land and the cult of personality.
Eh, I'm gay and I still agree: those types of shows get a bit boring sometimes. I'm all for representation but it shouldn't be the only point of a show: it shouldn't be "here's Ghostbusters, the exact same film all over again, but with women!", or "here's Ocean's Eleven, the exa"- eh, you get the point.
I'm sure some people will hotly contest that these shows/movies are genuinely works of art, and representation just happens to be a bonus, but that's not how it feels when watching a load of this tedious paint-by-numbers pablum.
(This isn't to say that there are no instances where I feel the opposition to minority/female casting was driven more by bigotry than by people's finely-honed critical faculties. Of course there are. But I happen to think it cuts both ways in this case: many of those shows/movies are just godawful, and trade on the "you're a bigot if you don't like this!" card to drive sympathy/virtue demand, from people who want to feel like Rosa Parks for going to the cinema.)
There's nuances and an art to pop though. Take Ocean's Eleven. It's fundamentally a crowd pleaser movie with a star studded cast, a conventional genre and a happy ending. But it's executed perfectly. Soderbergh has a mastery of the form that shows even when he's making pop. You see this with The Beach Boys or The Beatles or even Ed Sheeran, where the music is superficially enjoyable but there's a depth to it nonetheless. Take Jacob Collier's deconstruction of Stevie Wonder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZP6nogQYPg
I could see Ocean's Eleven and Wizard of Oz, but anyway the other movies felt a bit obscure so nothing else.
The last one, Star Wars, I think needs some deep inspection to get it and is missing the Vader ( which I think anyone with identify with the movie)
To me the wizard of Oz was very obvious and I've never seen the movie, just children's books and maybe a few screenshots. But it's still strange; for example ocean's eleven was immediately my first thought for the according image, but I don't even know why. I don't recognize anything specific in that image, and it doesn't have a distinct set of colors either.
> It seems like consolidation was a lesson we learned a few decades ago and are in danger of forgetting.
Despite groans to the contrary, I don't think consolidation is the reason services like Netflix/etc. are so popular and why cable service is starting to become considered gauche.
I posit that it's entirely about:
1) The on-demand content that services like Netflix/etc. provide 2) To a lesser extent, the discoverability of content
I don't want to watch Game of Thrones on Sunday evening. I want to watch it now. I want to re-watch Ocean's Eleven tonight, not Thursday during the day. Netflix (in theory) helps me with that. Cable service doesn't.
I want to watch an action movie, and one that I can actually watch right now. Netflix helps me with that. Cable service doesn't, unless I just put on whatever the "action movie" channel is showing.
Hell, cable service providers try to offer some of this already - it's just that their selection sucks. It's either incredibly old movies, or movies that no one wanted to see the first time around. Or it's just the latest episode of a popular television show, or the first season and we're on season 12 now.
Again, despite what people might say I don't think they really want a la carte programming: They want a Spotify subscription for television and film.
Since the player was making hundreds of simultaneous requests, it sounds like a race condition in the casino's server-seed mechanism where the player was able to get the server-seed of future bets.
Obviously, the server only wants to divulge the server-secret of closed-out bets so that you can verify them as provably fair.
> Strange choice to put a picture from the Ocean's Eleven series at the top of the article, seeing as how the thieves in those films are considered the protagonists/heroes.
It's not so strange after reading a number of these HN comments.
Strange choice to put a picture from the Ocean's Eleven series at the top of the article, seeing as how the thieves in those films are considered the protagonists/heroes.
I think a bit more information included with the article to verify this was actually a 'hack' would be helpful. I mean, was this akin to counting cards or what? It's hard to tell from the article.
Not only that, in Ocean's Eleven they don't just place bets, they break into a vault, so the only similarity with the film seems to be that a camera feed was involved.
That's what's known as a "high-concept pitch." It gives people a broad idea of what the thing is about and gets people excited by connecting it to something that's already well-loved, but often belies the actual details and intentions behind the thing. The bigger and more iconic the comparison, the more smoke and mirrors are likely being used.
For example, "Inception" could be pitched as "Like 'Ocean's Eleven' meets 'The Matrix'". It's not inaccurate, but all it's actually meant to convey is "It's a heist movie with trippy visuals." If you go into the theater expecting either of those movies, you're probably going to be a little bit confused.
Lots of people are Jacks of All Trades, but masters of none. Take, for example, the Ocean's Eleven/Twelve/Thirteen movie franchise. Everybody had skills and roles to play. It wasn't possible for one person to be in all places all the time, nor was it possible for a single person to perform each job.
This blogger...lots of attitude, but doesn't sound like a team player. Attitude will take you only so far.