Hacker Cinema
The Perfect Storm
2000 · Film · 130 min
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
In October 1991, a confluence of weather conditions combined to form a killer storm in the North Atlantic. Caught in the storm was the sword-fishing boat Andrea Gail.
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> Bruce Willis may exist in the Ocean’s universe, but the 1995 film Twelve Monkeys, which co-starred Brad Pitt, does not. Movies like Fight Club, Seven, Batman & Robin, The Perfect Storm, Saving Private Ryan, and The Untouchables can’t exist.
This is horrible logic. Just because the actors may not exist doesn't mean other actors weren't cast for the parts. There is no reason to believe the movies don't exist, just in a different form.
Extreme weather generally involves intersecting weather systems. For example, 'The Perfect Storm' of movie fame was the intersection of the remnants of a hurricane coming up from Gulf of Mexico with a polar cold front coming across Canada and as I recall a low pressure system out around Nova Scotia. The timing of these events was basically random; if the events had been staggered a few days apart instead of hitting at the same time, it wouldn't have been a perfect storm.
So, where models predict an increase in such events comes down to increasing probabilities of the individual events, kind of like throwing the dice twice as often as before, then you're going to get double sixes (i.e. extreme events) more frequently.
As far as the attribution of specific events, well, you can look back in history and say, historically we've had these events every 100 years or so, so we shouldn't expect three such events over a twenty-year period. This is similar to how a casino might suspect a player is using a loaded die.
However, for one specific event, is it possible? Plausibly you can examine the details of a single event and ask, okay, are there physical characteristics here directly related to climate change, in the same way one could examine a die to see if it was really symmetrical or not? One could perhaps use expectation results, i.e. "we expected this kind of extreme weather event to occur with greater frequency outside the regions where they normally take place, according to frequency results in models forced with extra CO2" etc.
Really though, it's when you get 500-year floods every 5-10 years in Europe, then you know you're 'testing the historical limits'.
> Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not,
It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging existing IP. Here are the top ten box office films of 2020:
* Bad Boys for Life (sequel) * Sonic the Hedgehog (videogame) * Birds of Prey (comic book) * Dolittle (book) * The Invisible Man (book) * The Call of the Wild (book) * Onward (original) * The Croods: A New Age (sequel) * Tenet (original) * Wonder Woman 1984 (sequal, comic book)
Two originals. Now go back 20 years:
* Mission: Impossible 2 (sequel) * Gladiator (book) * Cast Away (original) * What Women Want (original) * Dinosaur (original) * How the Grinch Stole Christmas (book) * Meet the Parents (remake) * The Perfect Storm (book) * X-Men (comic book) * What Lies Beneath (original)
Four originals. Go back another 10 years:
* Ghost (original) * Home Alone (original) * Pretty Woman (original) * Dances with Wolves (book) * Total Recall (short story) * Back to the Future Part III (sequel) * Die Hard 2 (sequel) * Presumed Innocent (book) * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (comic book) * Kindergarten Cop (original)
Five originals. Another ten years to 1980:
* The Empire Strikes Back (sequel) * 9 to 5 (original) * Stir Crazy (original) * Airplane! (original) * Any Which Way You Can (sequel) * Private Benjamin (original) * Coal Miner's Daughter (original) * Smokey and the Bandit II (sequel) * The Blue Lagoon (book) * The Blues Brothers (SNL sketch)
Five originals again. I'm going by top box-office gross here because I think that's a good proxy for what is successful. You can look at other years, but there is a very clear (but not overwhelming) trend towards movies based on familiar content. It's not clear whether studios are leading audiences or vice versa. Probably some iterative process of both.
There's also a clear trend away from dramas. I think that's because drama (and non-slapstick comedies) tend to rely heavily on specific cultural norms for their effect which makes them translate poorly. There is a very clear trend especially in the last decade or so of Hollywood focusing on movies that will also do well in China in particular.
I have been known to get into arguments about this sort of label. My argument is that it is not sexist seems to be backed by Linda Greenlaw (made famous in the movie The Perfect Storm) who is called by many "the best fisherman", and on her website, describes herself "Between her three New York Times bestsellers and her role in the Discovery Channel's current hit series Swords, Linda Greenlaw has undoubtedly become America's best-known fisherman."
I don't win many over with this argument, but I think there are better places to spend our energy in not making women and girls feel uncomfortable in this profession. We as an industry are doing a terrible job.
And I think that "developer" is a good label in any case.
We have a broader semantic navigation technology that is driving this site. Shortly we will be doing apps for books, video games, and business.
We think that why movie recommendations are so hard is because people might like the same movie for different reasons. For example, if I told two friends that I liked the movie "Titanic", and asked for a recommendation they might separately recommend "The Perfect Storm" and "Avatar". Two very different movies, but both would count as good recommendations for different reasons. The problem, is that when a person recommends a movie to you, they have already filtered it according to what they thought was interesting about the movie.
Having said that it is still the best way to discover new movies. We believe that easy to use semantic browsing is a good middle-ground for any information discovery.
nanocrowd is very cool. I have not heard of the company before, but they have a very interesting take.
Didn't I see a Doctor Who episode just like this? The Doctor must defeat the head of the space program, who turns out to be the Marquis de Sade doing a Doctor Strangelove-flavored Werner Von Braun impression?
One of the most memorable scenes is the one where the Doctor and his companion sit down to dinner with the villain and debate literature. Suspicions are aroused when the villain laments the unhappy ending of Apollo 13. "Why couldn't it have been more like The Perfect Storm?"
In the end the guy is stalked and killed by the spectral ghost of Laika the dog.