Hacker Cinema
The Merchant of Venice
2004 · Film · 132 min
Directed by Michael Radford
Venice, 1596. Bassanio begs his friend Antonio, a prosperous merchant, to lend him a large sum of money so that he can woo Portia, a very wealthy heiress; but Antonio has invested his fortune abroad, so they turn to Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, and ask him for a loan.
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3 comments on Hacker News
> Branagh's Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing were my gateway.
Branagh's Henry V and Polanski's Macbeth were my gateway.
Don't miss the 1995 Richard III adaptation with Sir Ian McKellen. The 2004 film version of The Merchant of Venice is also worth seeing, if only for Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons.
Just another variant of deepfakes. All movies are “fakes” by definition. They also retrofit ads into live sporting events covering other billboards for over a decade now. None of this is new in fact.
Some people might even prefer the tracking part:
“So if you like wine then the hero of a film could be drinking a particular bottle that you might be tempted to try. Or if you are teetotal the star might be sipping on a bottle of branded water.”
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Wonder how they will redo the dystopian The Running Man with ads:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Running_Man_(1987_film)
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And while at it we already edit text and whitewash news and books. How about adding product placements from finance companies to The Merchant of Venice:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_of_Venice
Your media is your eyes and ears. They can manipulate your actions just manipulating what you people see.
When you travel around the world, this is the first thing you learn: all the people, in all countries are manipulated by the media, controlled by the power structures.
"If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?"
The Merchant of Venice
There is an almost automatic response from an stimulus you perceive. Being real or artificially created does not matter for the brain.
In the supposedly "free countries", they just control the media that most people watch. Most people just does not care.
For example, most Americans have a SouthPark puppet idea of Saddam Hussein, but he was a very smart person. As this person spoke a different language, you could portray the idea that is convenient for helping the interest of the people in power, basically invading a foreign country for stealing their oil.
Most Americans believe that they invaded Iraq because extending democracy, weapons of mass destruction or whatever. But it only takes an hour of talking with real Iraqis(or traveling to Iraq) to know better.
Just one thing, how many films have you seen about Hitler and Nazism, and how many about Stalin that killed more than Hitler. It was not convenient to portray Stalin as he was when he was alive.
Have you seen the image of Putin in the Western media today. Again, just understanding Russian makes a huge difference in how they could manipulate you.
Putin also manipulates their people, but he is not the only one.