Hacker Cinema
Sleepless in Seattle
1993 · Film · 105 min
Directed by Nora Ephron
After the death of his mother, a young boy calls a radio station in an attempt to set his father up on a date. Across the country, an engaged woman becomes convinced that they belong together, despite their never having met. Will their paths collide despite the odds?
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7 comments on Hacker News
I'd forgotten what an unusually strong and culturally-resonant line of movies the man had without (I think) the popular acclaim you might associate with them, like a low-profile Spielberg.
Spinal Tap
The Princess Bride
When Harry Met Sally
Sleepless in Seattle
Stand By Me
etc
A great loss, RIP
I just did a quick search on Walmart.com for DVDs <= $6 and found plenty of mediocrity but also:
- Shawshank Redemption - Despicable Me 1 & 2 (for $5 total) - Scream 1-3 (again $5 total) - Beverly Hills Cop 1-3 (same) - Tombstone - Unforgiven - ET - A Star is Born (2018) - Sleepless in Seattle - The Thing (1982) - Seabiscuit - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - Titanic
I would say any of these movies is better than 95% of the movies available for streaming on Netflix (conservatively).
That said, I do wonder if times really were simpler back then - in the sense of the way people thought.
Movies seem to be simpler back then. Watched Sleepless in Seattle a while back. I heard it was very popular back in the day. Well … I’m not that impressed, sorry to say. The plot is very simple and a little weird when viewed using today’s social mores. Direction and pacing is adequate. Or maybe I just don’t get it.
I think “things got more complicated” as “information velocity” increased, first with newspapers, then the radio, then TV, and finally the internet - the internet can even be broken down into before ubiquitous social media, before internet video became “trivial”, …
I believe the lack of a moral element is due to Hollywood movies normalizing cheating. I mentioned it elsewhere in these comments, but there's a lot of celebrated cheating in widely popular movies (both classic and modern) like Casablanca, The Notebook, and Sleepless in Seattle.
Perhaps the behavior came before the movies, but I'm skeptical because it seems to be the natural behavior to avoid pursuing people in relationships (it will probably cause emotional trauma for the person in a relationship, as it would be natural to feel guilty about cheating, though I indirectly know of a person in a relationship who seemed to have felt no guilt about cheating at all).
>And for such a person, perhaps it's alien to consider that others don't suffer such a temptation.
The idea that temptation out of a relationship can be celebrated is reinforced by Hollywood movies. There's a lot of celebrated cheating in both classic and modern popular films like Casablanca, The Lady Vanishes, The Notebook, and Sleepless in Seattle.
Your view is admirable and I hope to share it, but popular movies are a strong force for people taking the opposite view as it normalizes the behavior of leaving a committed relationship for other people.
Seems like any one data point would be worthless. If I like "Sleepless in Seattle" (which I didn't) it might be because of Romcom (no) or because of Ryan (no) or because of Hanks (yes). I wonder if there's a cluster of 10 movies, which if you knew the answer about all 10, it would predict how you would feel about a specific #11.
cause seattle never sleeps
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108160/)