Hacker Cinema
The Mighty Ducks
1992 · Film · 101 min
Part of The Mighty Ducks Collection
Directed by Stephen Herek
After reckless young lawyer Gordon Bombay gets arrested for drunk driving, he must coach a kids hockey team for his community service. Gordon has experience on the ice, but isn't eager to return to hockey, a point hit home by his tense dealings with his own former coach, Jack Reilly. The reluctant Gordon eventually grows to appreciate his team, which includes promising young Charlie Conway, and leads them to take on Reilly's tough players.
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7 comments on Hacker News
It always surprised me how baseball never caught on in the UK. American football did a little better, but not by much. Same with NHL to be honest, interest in hockey seemed to peak with the Mighty Ducks movie.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your list, even though some of those are mediocre at best, but yeah I did mean per year, and limited to Hollywood (Parasite for instance not counting). And no, ok, I will also straight up disagree with the second Knives out Movie which I thought was absolute trash. A perfect example of poor storytelling and the form over substance of modern cinema.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.
Who remembers the World of Warcraft oriented Thottbot web site, and how it pivoted to farming and selling gold, and who was involved, and what they're doing now? It's a fascinating, lurid, and twisted story, worthy of its own Connections episode by James Burke.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Thottbot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thottbot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_documentary)
WOW is extensible in Lua, and there are lots of cool, even sophisticated extensions, including Auctioneer, which analyzed and remembered histories of items and prices on the auction house, and helped you make lots of money selling items in the game.
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/auctioneer
The Thottbot web site was an enormously useful catalog of ALL WoW items (and monster drops, weapon stats, monster spawn locations, and character profile data), which was gathered by the Thottbot WoW plugin written in Lua, that monitored network messages and kept a journal of every object a player encountered, then uploaded them to the Thottbot web site.
Thottbot was originally created by Bill "Aftathott" Dyess and run by Wowhead, but then was bought by a company named ZAM (for Alakazam).
https://www.wow-pro.com/wowhead-sells-to-zam-ige-for-over-1-million/
Then ZAM was bought be a slimy gold farming company called IGE, whose parent company was RPG Holdings, and they incorporated it into their gold farming and selling empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGE
Through a dramatic saga of infighting and scams and scandals and lawsuits, ex-child-actor-who-turned-into-a-banana then underage-sexual-abuse-scandal-triggered-dot-com-scam-video-streaming-company-ipo-meltdown-involved and now Trump-boot-licking-crypto-bro-new-age-burning-man-whack-job and failed-presidential-candidate Brock Pierce spun the company out into Affinity Media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brock_Pierce
Brock Pierce worked with none other than Steve Bannon at Affinity Media, farming and selling virtual gold online. That was where Steve Bannon discovered and started fanning the toxic hateful easily manipulated sexually frustrated incel culture that he exploited and replicated to launch GamerGate and the Alt Right MAGA whack-jobs, which led to electing Trump, which led to the insurrection on January 6, 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon#Entertainment_and_media
https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1354727245449990145
>1/ Hey guys, remember that time Steve Bannon ran an army of game virtual currency miners in Asia, for sale to westerners at discount prices, arbitraging attention for profit? That was awesome...
John Oliver did a hilarious story about Bitcoin featuring Brock Pierce:
Cryptocurrencies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg
Here's Brock Pierce spouting cryptocurrency bullshit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg&t=1182s
And here is Brock Pierce as a child turning into a banana:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg&t=1220s
John Oliver recommended "Just google Brock Pierce Scandal, that's all I'm saying there."
https://www.google.com/search?q=brock+pierce+scandal
Brock Pierce was deeply and notoriously involved with the DEN sexual abuse scandal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Entertainment_Network
Before he worked with Steve Bannon, now-convicted sex offender Marc Collins-Rector was Brock Pierce's original partner in crime at DEN (which been called "the poster child for dot-com excesses"), and when DEN's IPO collapsed when the child enticement indictments were leveled, they both fled their LA party mansion and went on the lam together, then got arrested by Interpol in their party mansion in Marbella, Spain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Collins-Rector
Fucked Company made a hilarious documentary all about DEN in the format of a South Park style swf file, which was eventually uploaded to youtube, but has since been taken down. But I saved a copy of the swf file, although I don't know how to view it now. (Anybody know how to convert it? VLC is supposed to play it, but it's not working for me, just playing audio...):
https://donhopkins.com/home/movies/FuckedCompany_DigitalEntertainmentNetwork.swf
>Dot Com Boom & Bust - Digital Entertainment Network
>A parody of the founders of Digital Entertainment Network. DEN was "a quintessential example of the excesses and lack of control of the dot-com craze."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company
Here are some stories about Steve Bannon's involvement with Brock Pierce and virtual gold farming:
Trump Campaign CEO Once Worked for a World of Warcraft Marketplace
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/stephen-bannon-world-warcraft-gold-farming-donald-trump/
>Stephen Bannon brought quite the varied résumé to his new gig as CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. At various points, Bannon has worked as an investment banker, earned money off Seinfeld royalties, overseen a biosphere, directed films, and run an alt-right news site. But one of the stranger blips on his career path came in the mid-aughts, when Bannon joined and eventually ran a company that made its name and fortune as an online marketplace to sell virtual gold to World of Warcraft players and other online gamers.
Trump's Campaign CEO's Little Known World of Warcraft Career
https://www.wired.com/2016/09/trumps-campaign-ceos-little-known-world-warcraft-career/
>BEFORE HE BECAME CEO of the Donald Trump campaign, and before he took over the alt-right media outlet Breitbart, Steve Bannon made his living selling virtual gold on the Internet.
The Decline and Fall of an Ultra Rich Online Gaming Empire
https://www.wired.com/2008/11/ff-ige/
Brock Pierce was appointed as a board member to the Bitcoin Foundation, and several people resigned over his links to sex abuse:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/some-in-bitcoin-group-resign-over-new-board-members-link-to-sex-abuse/
And here is a photo of Brock Pierce at Trump's inauguration proudly wearing a red "Make Bitcoin Great Again" cap.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155736654012782&set=a.112810102781.118888.749357781&type=3&theater
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/01/13/crypto-puerto-rico/
>‘Crypto colonizers’ in Puerto Rico try to sell locals on the dream. A new wave of wealthy investors is moving to the island. Locals are greeting them with excitement — and suspicion.
There is a documentary called "An Open Secret" all about all the underage sexual abuse, cocaine, guns, threats, extortion, and all kinds of other shit that went down at DEN, which showed interviews with the people involved, including lots of evidence like videos and photos and printouts of emails from Brock Pierce and others proving what happened, but apparently Brock Pierce or other alleged Hollywood child abusers who didn't like what the documentary said sued to take it down and suppress it, so it's not on youtube any more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Secret
SAG-AFTRA Threatened To Sue Director Amy Berg Over ‘An Open Secret’
https://deadline.com/2015/06/sag-aftra-threatening-sue-an-open-secret-director-amy-berg-1201438339/
I found the PG-13 version here:
AN OPEN SECRET. Official PG-13 version. Copyright Esponda Productions LLC #AnOpenSecret
https://vimeo.com/142444429
>In light of the long awaited revelations of sexual abuse in Hollywood finally being reported ESPONDA PRODUCTIONS presents AN OPEN SECRET for free for a limited time . A film about the sexual abuse of children in the entertainment industry in Hollywood. Please support our efforts of raising awareness by sharing with your friends and colleagues. #AnOpenSecret #BeCourageous #ReportIt #LifeGetsBetter. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook @AnOpenSecret.
No, this isn't just a bunch of Q-Anon Pizzagate bullshit. It it all went down and was well documented a long long time before Q-Anon. Although it may have inspired some of those conspiracy theories via psychological projection.
But Brock Pierce's deep involvement with the Alt-Right, MAGA whack jobs like Steve Bannon, and Bitcoin bros, as well as his latest hypocritical presidential campaign to end human trafficking (and the fact that he also attended the Mindshift conference that Jeffrey Epstein supported, after he had already been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor), just goes to show how much that Q-Anon Alt-Right MAGA bullshit is all just about psychological projection and hypocrisy.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-brock-pierce-the-presidential-candidate-with-ties-to-two-pedophiles-who-wants-to-end-human-trafficking
>Meet Brock Pierce, the Presidential Candidate With Ties to Pedophiles Who Wants to End Human Trafficking
>In the trailer for First Kid, the forgettable 1996 comedy about a Secret Service agent assigned to protect the president’s son, the title character, played by a teenage Brock Pierce, describes himself as “definitely the most powerful kid in the universe.” Now, the former child star is running to be the most powerful man in the world, as an Independent candidate for President of the United States.
>Before First Kid, the Minnesota-born actor secured roles in a series of PG-rated comedies, playing a young Emilio Estevez in The Mighty Ducks, before graduating to smaller parts in movies like Problem Child 3: Junior in Love. When his screen time shrunk, Pierce retired from acting for a real executive role: co-founding the video production start-up Digital Entertainment Network (DEN) alongside businessman Marc Collins-Rector. At age 17, Pierce served as its vice president, taking in a base salary of $250,000.
>DEN became “the poster child for dot-com excesses,” raising more than $60 million in seed investments and plotting a $75 million IPO. But it turned into a shorthand for something else when, in October of 1999, the three co-founders suddenly resigned. That month, a New Jersey man filed a lawsuit alleging Collins-Rector had molested him for three years beginning when he was 13 years old. The following summer, three former DEN employees filed a sexual-abuse lawsuit against Pierce, Collins-Rector, and their third co-founder, Chad Shackley. The plaintiffs later dropped their case against Pierce (he made a payment of $21,600 to one of their lawyers) and Shackley. But after a federal grand jury indicted Collins-Rector on criminal charges in 2000, the DEN founders left the country. When Interpol arrested them in 2002, they said they had confiscated “guns, machetes, and child pornography” from the trio’s beach villa in Spain.
>While abroad, Pierce had pivoted to a new venture: Internet Gaming Entertainment, which sold virtual accessories in multiplayer online role-playing games to those desperate to pay, as one Wired reporter put it, “as much as $1,800 for an eight-piece suit of Skyshatter chain mail” rather than earn it in the games themselves. In 2005, a 25-year-old Pierce hired then-Goldman Sachs banker Steve Bannon—just before he would co-found Breitbart News. Two years later, after a World of Warcraft player sued the company for “diminishing” the fun of the game, Steve Bannon replaced Pierce as CEO.
The lesson: Be careful who you buy virtual gold and Bitcoin from, and never trust MAGA Bitcoin Bros!
Tether obviously, but this paragraph in particular was a wild ride:
"Even by crypto’s often-surreal standards, Tether has a peculiar history. The company was founded in 2014 by Brock Pierce, a cryptocurrency evangelist who, as a child actor, starred in the “Mighty Ducks” movies. He and his partner, Reeve Collins, later handed control of the firm to a former plastic surgeon named Giancarlo Devasini, who has stored some of Tether’s assets in a bank in the Bahamas run by one of the creators of the “Inspector Gadget” cartoon."
I'm still ramping up on D3 and I'm trying to learn as much as I can. Do you find it helpful to supplement this Mighty Ducks movie along with a healthy diet and adequate sun exposure? Is it possible to jump straight to D3 or is it recommended to work your way through D1 and D2 first? Thanks.
It is like one of those movies that did not age well. Sort of like Mighty Ducks and Fight Club.
Hmmm I read the analysis and I don't think it's all that meaningful: just like numerous other films Inception has some themes which it explores (regret, guilt, grieving/loss). If the exploration is insightful enough, then the audience can learn from it. Is Mighty Ducks a metaphor for filmmaking because emotions are just as real in a hockey match as they are in a movie, as they are in real life?
The film touches on some ideas like the intoxicating power of the imagination but I think saying the whole film's a metaphor for filmmaking goes a bit far and the evidence is stacked against his analysis.