Hacker Cinema
The Princess Bride
1987 · Film · 99 min
Directed by Rob Reiner
In this enchantingly cracked fairy tale, the beautiful Princess Buttercup and the dashing Westley must overcome staggering odds to find happiness amid six-fingered swordsmen, murderous princes, Sicilians and rodents of unusual size. But even death can't stop these true lovebirds from triumphing.
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86 comments on Hacker News
You seem not to realise that Brooks did not write or direct The Princess Bride and as far as I know has no role connected to the film.
I don’t agree. Yes, every work of art is open to interpretation, but that interpretation has to be informed by the art. There has to be supporting evidence and you have to consume the art holistically.
You can’t, for insurance, conclude that the meaning of The Princess Bride is that Sicilians are dangerous when death is on the line by focusing solely on a single character’s words, ignoring the fact that he is outwitted and dies, and ignoring that the book is primarily not focused on that character. I mean, you can; but then you definitely haven’t understood the film/book.
RIP Rob Reiner. The Princess Bride is one of my all-time favorite movies. I have a theory (born out by experience) that most American-born software engineers can quote at least one line from TBL. I often use it as an opener with new hires.
Death can not stop true love. It can only delay it for a while.
You might enjoy the pandemic-era Princess Bride Home Movie, which Rob Reiner and his father Carl Reiner had a scene in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29s1yU3nGkQ
It's a crowdsourced home-movie version produced by dozens of actors in the midst of pandemic lockdown, recording on their phones and using home made props. The actors rotate through the individual roles so you get a real range of performances. I found it delightful.
Worth checking out the opening scene to get a sense of it
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
Completely tragic. Rob Reiner's movies brought so much good into people's lives. The Princess Bride still remains a favorite. Today is a very sad and inconceivable end.
Can you believe that This is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand by Me, Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, and A Few Good Men were all directed by the same man? What an eclectic set of masterpieces.
Three great movies that he directed that everyone around my age would be relatively intimately familiar with: This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally
> Police are treating the deaths as apparent homicides. According to the L.A. Times, authorities have questioned a member of Reiner’s family in connection with the death. As of Sunday night, the LAPD have not officially identified a suspect, but Rolling Stone has confirmed that Reiner’s son, Nick, was involved in the homicide. A source confirmed to Rolling Stone that the couple’s daughter, Romy, found her parents’ bodies.
Alternative source:
> Senior law enforcement officials report that both had stab wounds
Tragic.
Make them into a drinking game. We watched The Princess Bride the other day (never watched it), I think it's aged pretty well but then I'm old. But if they get bored, make it a game to have a drink or get a point or whatever for every sexual innuendo, lol.
Some films didn't age well though.
And finally, accept it and move on, ultimately it's their loss.
The princess bride DVD cover blew my mind as a kid. Still does actually. One of the best of the genre. https://i5.walmartimages.com/seo/THE-PRINCESS-BRIDE-11x17-Framed-Movie-Poster_6b2f59d6-2708-4cb3-a733-ae30406f2f01.35ae79d73aae53a041b84b14574060cc.jpeg
Also there's the "The Princess Bride: Home Movie": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29s1yU3nGkQ
Note that this isn't really a fan-remake as it's professional actors but with the spliced scenes but it's pretty entertaining.
To paraphrase The Princess Bride[0]:
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: Sooner or later, wanting to write a program editor has ensnared many a skilled developer, only to find it to be a time vampire when considered anything more than an intellectual exercise.
Good luck on your journey. :-)
0 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes/?ref_=tt_dyk_qu
For convenience, I asked ChatGPT to create this table, which summarizes how many times each movie has been mentioned in this conversation so far. It got a few counts wrong (as usual), but it still gives a good sense of the frequency. I hope it can be useful to someone:
| Movie | Number of Mentions | |-------------------------------------------|---------------------| | The Matrix | 9 | | Lord of the Rings Trilogy | 8 | | Pulp Fiction | 8 | | Alien | 7 | | Fight Club | 7 | | Ghostbusters | 6 | | Die Hard | 5 | | Back to the Future | 5 | | Inception | 5 | | Star Wars Trilogy (original) | 5 | | Groundhog Day | 5 | | Terminator 1 & 2 | 5 | | Jurassic Park | 4 | | The Thing | 4 | | The Fifth Element | 4 | | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | 4 | | Ghost in the Shell | 4 | | Interstellar | 4 | | Casablanca | 3 | | Office Space | 3 | | Shawshank Redemption | 3 | | The Godfather Trilogy | 3 | | The Blues Brothers | 3 | | Blade Runner | 3 | | Mad Max: Fury Road | 3 | | Unforgiven | 3 | | Total Recall (1990) | 3 | | The Crow | 3 | | The Princess Bride | 3 | | Akira | 3 | | The Big Lebowski | 3 | | Guardians of the Galaxy | 3 | | American Psycho | 3 | | Indiana Jones Trilogy | 3 | | Kiki’s Delivery Service | 2 | | Ratatouille | 2 | | A Clockwork Orange | 2 | | Mission Impossible (various) | 2 | | Casino Royale | 2 | | Skyfall | 2 | | Ferris Bueller's Day Off | 2 | | Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan | 2 | | Apocalypse Now | 2 | | The Shining | 2 | | Groundhog Day | 2 | | Donnie Darko | 2 | | Dune (2021) | 2 | | Gladiator | 2 | | Predator | 2 | | Seven/Se7en | 2 | | The Dark Knight | 2 | | Snatch | 2 | | Prometheus | 2 | | Schindler’s List | 2 | | The Wolf of Wall Street | 2 | | Dr. Strangelove | 2 | | Silence of the Lambs | 2 | | Kill Bill | 2 | | Real Genius | 2 | | Top Secret! | 2 | | Tenet | 2 | | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | 2 | | The Adjustment Bureau | 2 | | The Expanse | 2 | | Pulp Fiction | 2 |
Here's what I term my "flypaper" movies. If I happen to glance at the satellite TV guide and notice one of these coming up, there's a good change I'll be watching it.
Lawrence of Arabia The Maltese Falcon Most Hitchcock films Blade Runner The Man From Snowy River The Martian Monty Python & the Holy Grail The Princess Bride Serenity The Thin Man series The Thing Tombstone Young Frankenstein Monty Python and the Holy Grail Clerks and most Kevin Smith movies Baby Drive and most Edgar Wright movies Fanboys Spinal Tap Kung Fu Hustle Apollo 13
I basically never rewatch movies, but I've seen Dune (2021) at least 8 times. Will probably do the same when part two comes to streaming services. Something about Villeneuve's version really captures the awe of Herbert's universe for me.
One more - The Princess Bride.
My kid's into the old movies I show him but I only pick classics like Princess Bride and Neverending Story that are pretty much timeless, and also terrible B-movies where the oldness makes it even better.
Sure thing! I often use it to add code comments to my powershell scripts after I've written them, sprinkling in quotes from some of my favorite movies from the 80s like Spaceballs, Princess Bride, Airplane, etc...
"User '$username' found. Preparing to eject them from the AD universe." "Failed to import Active Directory module. Inconceivable!" "Failed to delete user '$username'. I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."
Other times I will ask it questions related to scripting commandlets and it often responds in a tone that is more fun to read at least.
"Firstly, ensure you're connected to the mystical realm of Exchange Online. If you're scratching your head wondering how, refer back to the ancient scrolls on how to establish a connection. It involves Get-Credential, New-PSSession, and a bit of patience."
Inconceivable!
Edit: the parent post references the movie The Princess Bride and my reply follows:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means
Yes, the Kimba TV show is about 30 years older, but this show has basically 0 similarities with TLK. It's like saying The Simpsons is the same as The Princess Bride - yes, some individual shots and scenes are comparable but its only when those are taken out of context, and it completely misses the overarching story/themes/characters. And it also misses the fact that the anime has ~3,000 hours of content in comparison to the 90 minute runtime of TLK.
My theory is that all cards will eventually be under $10, because cards like Mana Crypt are opportunities for WoTC to make money via reprints. I’ve only been playing/buying since March, but I’ve seen so many cards dropping dramatically in price, much more often than seeing a card shoot up in price. Reprints help drive sales and justify the higher prices for booster packs.
Cutting staff implies that, perhaps, they anticipate more Universes Beyond and reprints, and fewer original sets with original mechanics. Universes Beyond is great for Wizards because they don’t have to really invent cards, and fans will pay whatever they ask for cards from their favorite shows and movies and games.
This month people are losing their minds over the Princess Bride and Dr. Malcolm Secret Lair sets.
While I'm no big fan - mostly the nostalgia effect - I used to work with someone who never watched Star Wars. I found it hard to imagine.
A few weeks ago I watched "A new hope" with my 13yo daughter, we both loved it. Of course the effects didn't age well, but the story and acting is as strong as it used to be. I'm going to watch "The empire strikes back" with her soon and have to be careful not to spoil the "I am your father" reveal. Though I admit she's not very typical - we're both Whovians ("number one fans", so to speak;-)), so she's accustomed to story, writing and acting being way more important than SFX (which is IMHO the correct attitude, at least most of the time).
I really hope that she'll find some fellow geeks soon.
Also, in my current team at work I used to be the only one who watched (and read) "The Princess Bride". Now one coworker also watched it, and one day we're going to watch it together with the whole team. I think many people nowadays know it only from memes, which is sad - it's a great movie.
The movie is a blast, at least as good as Princess Bride. You could say it does not take fantasy seriously, but this is the point: a world with that much weirdness would also not take itself so seriously. The story is just as I would have imagined as a young DM.
I liked the movie a lot. It felt like a fresh, original entry in the genre of comedy fantasy, next to beloved entries like The Princess Bride, Ladyhawk, A Knight's Tale, and Shrek. It was well-written and directed, even if some of the action sequences (e.g. the dragon cave) were a bit tropey.
They should have called it something else. There's clearly a market for fantasy, as has been seen with the popularity of Netflix's Witcher series (which treads very similar ground), but the Dungeons and Dragons brand has been thoroughly devalued over the years, and doesn't have the same kind of mass-market appeal.
> But that's the thing ... that isn't realistic and, hence, not compelling story.
Huh? Come on, now. It's far more realistic than a wizard learning to cast spells, FFS.
If it's not compelling it's only because the OP's precis went into far too much detail about actual technique for an actual story. The Princess Bride would not have been compelling if the movie actually showed Westley learning each of the fencing techniques he refers to in his duel with Inigo.
An actual character development arc would be something like this:
> In the beginning, character has zero skills, they miss shots and not able to succeed in any battles.... They learn how to "quick draw" in order to shot by instinct... [cue montage] ... [cue Yoda lecture] ... Crucially, the character learns that patience, strategy, and emotional control is the most important, just like a wizard would.
This quote is from "The Princess Bride" movie. The actor who spoke this was also, IIRC, the Grand Nagus in ST:DS9. Brilliant in both roles.
That is a simplistic description of him. From the site you quoted, which is not biased in favor of him, a quote from Koonin:
“Yes, it’s true that the globe is warming, and that humans are exerting a warming influence upon it. But beyond that, to paraphrase a line from the classic movie The Princess Bride, ‘I do not think “The Science” says what you think it says.”
For me, The Princess Bride and the animated Disney Sword in the Stone (and a bit later, The Hobbit) shaped my early understanding of Europe and gave me a life-long love of Europe and European history. I even migrated here from the US in my 30s and, although I have yet to find any dragons, I love the old castles, historical centers, and other reminders of history all around - just enough to keep me connected with the fantasy books and films I loved as a kid.
I'd add The Princess Bride. In some ways the book is better than the movie, in other ways the movie is better than the book.
And in the case of The Hunt for Red October I like the movie better than the book.
You're right. There are certainly some "make you think" movies that win for their portentousness and are promptly forgotten ("Crash" and "The English Patient" -- lookin' at you).
I ran the Google Cinema Club for 10 years. In all that time, no one ever asked for those movies, and we never even seriously considered them.
On the other hand, "The Princess Bride" was constantly being requested, as was "Office Space." There was some reason we couldn't show them; can't remember now what it was.
I do find the thesis in the ending quite weak:
> For a longer time before the gritty period, we all dedicated ourselves to the idea that anything we’d acknowledge as very good had to be both serious and artsy. People really liked Good Will Hunting (see: very serious); it was also a good movie, so it won an Oscar. Zillions of people love movies like The Princess Bride and Happy Gilmore; it’s incredibly likely both dwarf Good Will Hunting in terms of total views, but you can’t even imagine a world where either could have possibly won an Oscar.
[...]
> This is a short article by my standards, but it does have me thinking: What kind of world could we actually live in, if we were willing to treat works of art made with the goal of making us happy as if they were important? What if we were willing to make them? We’ve seen what happens in a world where all the Oscars go to movies that make you cry, or that we pretend make us think even though they generally don't
There are plenty of widely acclaimed movies that can not be considered "very serious", picking some recent Oscar winners as examples with categorizations from wikipedia:
* Parasite ("black comedy thriller")
* Green Book ("comedy-drama")
* The Shape of Water ("romantic fantasy")
* Birdman ("black comedy drama")
* CODA ("comedy-drama")
* La La Land ("comedy-drama")
* Life Of Pie ("adventure-drama")
Are all those completely feel-good movies intended to make you happy? Maybe not, but still its not like happy/humorous/feel-good is completely disregarded category even among grumpy art critics.
In the inconceivable case that this is an earnest question, it's from the movie 'the princess bride'. Highly recommend it.
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Princess Bride (even better than the movie)
But most fight scenes were fake, even before CGI. In fact, almost nobody ever gets hurt on set... and when people do get hurt, its in stunts (not the fight scenes).
The number of "realistic fight scenes" are incredibly slim. Chinese martial arts are mostly Wuxia: a branch of martial arts that was developed for stage performance (flips, spins, etc. etc.) that has very little practical relevance.
"Kung Fu" films (ie: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan) reduce the number of filps... but even then, Jackie Chan's use of hilarious stage props is anything but realistic.
I mean: just imagine "Die Hard", no one can sustain that many injuries realistically and keep going. Its fake action, yes with practical effects / non-CGI (blood packs and stunts), but its still fantasy. And "Princess Bride" duel is fully ridiculous: with more flips and gymnastics than actual fighting (arguably the point: it was a comedy film making fun of tropes).
Anyone who has actually been in a fighting-sport (themselves mostly "fake", as duels took place centuries ago), will instantly recognize the bad form most of these older fight scenes had. Enemies charge the protagonist one at a time (yes: even in "practical" Kung Fu movies with few special effects)
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"Fake" is fine. But there's a lack of progression or understanding going on in a lot of the CGI-fight scenes. They're willing to spend tons of money on big explosions or special effects, but they don't always hit home with me.
The famous "Jackie Chan Ladder Fight" is a good example of a ridiculous fight scene, barely plausible. But its highly imaginative and has a great progression and rhythm. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrRFzwPE0d4). I'm not here because I want to watch a realistic 4-person Bo-staff fight vs a single dude with a ladder (which would almost certainly result in the ladder-user in getting beaten up). I'm here to watch crazy stunts and imaginative fights.
The use of music / rhythm (notice how the fight is on beat to the soundtrack) increases the entertainment value. These little things should be easier in CGI, but somehow aren't being done.
I was 10. My classroom “job” was to take the attendance to the office. No one was in the main office, I could hear them in the back room so I wandered back. I got there right as the first tower came down. The way all the adults were screaming, was clear it wasn’t a movie. I stayed for a few minutes listening to the news anchor going over the events of the day before being sent back to class and told not to tell anyone.
My fifth grade teacher, who I’m still friends with today, said she’d never seen a kid with that look. She eventually got me to tell her what happened. I guess I said something like “Americas being bombed. The big building in New York is on fire and the other one fell over and the pentagon blew up.”
I don’t remember saying that, but I do remember how furious she was at me saying that was a horrible story to make up. We had TV’s in each class, she was going to turn on the news to show me it wasn’t true, begged her not to. She called the front office, couldn’t get through (assuming they were still watching TV).
She went on her computer, started crying. Composed herself, dropped whatever we were learning that day and she put on The Princess Bride - still can’t enjoy that movie.
She let me sit behind her desk and we’d attempt to refresh websites to get updates on what was happening, both of us occasionally crying.
They didn’t send us home for a few hours, but it’s always been a weird feeling knowing that of all the 600+ kids in that school, I was the only one that knew what was happening, and only a handful of adults did, the rest going about their day without just sitting there knowing what was happening.
Her and I are still friends to this day, that experience really bonded us. She’d suspected I was on the autism spectrum, my parents wouldn’t get me evaluated, and school was pretty rough for me. I’d have been held back in multiple grades, possibly not even graduate if she hadn’t gone to bat for me with every “problem” teacher I had at various schools in my district year after year, getting me put in “good” teachers for various subjects, getting me into advance classes even though my grades hadn’t previously warranted it, etc.
No idea where I’d be in life had I not wandered into the back office, and her and I had that experience.
> I wonder if the bulk of the The Princess Bride counts as a nested flic, since it's a bedtime story.
From the “Contribute” page[1]:
> Nestflix is a wiki dressed up as a streaming platform that catalogs fictional films and tv shows inside real movies and tv shows.
The Princess Bride scenes were neither film nor show, so it doesn’t count.
> Or Aladdin (1992), framed as a tale told by a peddler. I was disappointed that the story didn't come back to the peddler at the end, it felt like an unclosed parenthesis.
That was the original idea[2][3].
[1]: https://nestflix.fun/contribute
[2]: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2019/08/26/aladdin-watch-original-ending-proving-peddler-robin-williams-genie/2088293001/
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLdSUxsBHDM
The peddler has Robin Williams voice and is therefore implied to be the genie.
The new movie also implies the genie to be the storyteller, as Will Smith tells the story of Aladdin in the live action version. But this time, the storyteller is a sailor.
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Shaharazad was the first to tell the story of Aladdin in 1001 Arabian nights. So it always was a story inside a story. Shaharazad wants to delay her execution, so she keeps telling stories to the sultan.
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Princess Bride novel is written by fictional authors, who are providing historic and dueling commentary. It is clear that some of the later fictional authors have erased part of the story.
So it too is a book within a book (which translated into a movie within a movie, with grandpa removing some bits of the story to make it more palpable to the kid)
There are theaters that are dedicated to playing older movies, and they apparently turn enough profit to subsist in some locations. I think that makes this a top comment on HN with a profitable use case complaining that there's not enough around.
Also, I would watch the shit out of the Good the Bad and the Ugly in a theater. Same with original Star Wars (which I think happened during extra trilogy releases occasionally), The Matrix, the Princess Bride, and anything in that vein which either has a cult following, is a different/better experience to watch in a theater, or both.
Their Princess Bride home movie is fantastic.
Couple years ago, my american boss mentioned that he liked the poisoned cup scene in Princess Bride, and if you do also, you should watch the poisoned cup scene in "The Emperor and the Golem". The movie itself I am not sure, but the sheer brilliance of that one scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zYy9lXwumQ (unfortunately no subtitles)
The premise of the scene is that emperor Rudolf II. invites Tycho de Brahe to explain heliocentrism, and he uses cups of wine to demonstrate, but the emperor's one is poisoned.
The sibling comment describes the truth behind the quote, but the most famous (contemporary pop culture) source of it is the movie The Princess Bride.
It's a quotation from "The Princess Bride" so mostly a joke. The land war the movie is referring to is Vietnam, not generally considered an American success story.
In the movie the humour comes from the incongruity of the fantasy setting with the knowing political aside.
There's a few theories out there around sensory processing difficulties, which I've been looking into a lot lately to pretty good effect. Check out The Highly Sensitive Person. (Seriously. get yourself a pair of earplugs and see how that alters your sense of focus on moderately interesting tasks, if it does anything, you should read the book). The TLDR is that when engaging in a task you have to reach the correct activation level to perform it, and it's a struggle for some people.
Some people think that a lot of ADHD people or misdiagnosed, others that it's just another symptom of ADHD.
Which is why some people have to fidget, or listen to music, or move around in order to get stuff done. Or why I'm a worse driver if I can't have the radio on.
The pinnacle of this for me was about half a dozen years ago, I was slugging out some code for a personal project. But I was also feeling nostalgic for an old movie (can't recall which, but let's say it was The Princess Bride). So I put it on in the background. But this isn't quite getting me in The Zone, so this is the scene my partner walks into:
I'm sitting on the couch typing. In all likelihood my knee is bouncing (makes laptops a bit tricky). There's 90's music coming out of my laptop, The Princess Bride is on the TV.
Her head is about to explode. You would think I was killing kittens. She has an ADHD diagnosis, and this plan I have enacted is so anathema to her coping mechanisms that she can't even bear to witness it. Which is too bad because I was getting rather a lot done.
Healthcare startups are a like a 'land war in Asia'... "only a fool would make such a blunder" (via The Princess Bride, perhaps the best film of the 1980's.)
Selling anything to medical practices is remarkably difficult, due to the difficulty of getting a meeting. They may have to lose $250 in billable time to meet with you, and they are bombarded with sales calls from everybody under the sun. Getting adoption is worse, with overworked staff actively hostile to change. I watched a friend sink his heart and cash into a medical research survey system only to find out how impossible of a market it is to break into.
And it is a land war. Selling into large companies is hard fought, but possible. The long tail is practically impenetrable for a software system, not when they could allocate capital to revenue generating marketing, equipment, and staff. I worked at trying to market a low priced medical supply item into a long tail of allied healthcare professionals and found that there is virtually no network effect. That is to say, people who share the same medical profession have very little interconnected outside of a very local level, and the work they perform is so physically and mentally draining that they don't really want to spend a lot of time online after hours talking about vendors, or talking with others in their field at all. Durable medical equipment and consumables sales are really driven by incumbent field sales reps more than ecommerce, even still in 2020. Land war.
Look at how difficult a time big tech has had taking on electronic medical records systems. Technology is not the bottleneck.
There are plenty of health tech startups finding traction, and I do believe medical professionals want to continually improve themselves and their practices with whatever tools and information is available to them. The fact is, $40K isn't enough capital to win a land war, no matter how great the solution is (and its looks great). I'm sorry OP had to find that out the hard way.
PS. There is a growing array of health focused startup accelerators that can provide seed money, but more importantly the expertise to navigate the sales and regulatory challenges unique to healthcare.
I've been reading - and absolutely loving - As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride. For anyone here who loves that movie (it's inconceivable if you don't), I highly recommend it.
You also have to watch out for the degenerate cases of competition that arise when the sold products are not commodities. The less a product is substitutable by another from its category, the more meaningless the competition is. On the commodity end, you have grocery stores; for most products, you have true competition because all grocery stores sell mostly the same stuff (and from the same brands). On the "meaningless competition" end you have streaming services like Netflix and HBO. Movies, TV shows, videogames are mostly non-substitutable goods (if you want to watch Star Wars, being told to go watch Princess Bride instead isn't going to cut it). Streaming services are so full of exclusively licensed content that they don't compete - you have to subscribe to those that have content that interest you. This is kind of like a cartel, but arises organically, bottom-up, instead of from explicit collusion.
The book is by definition a classic. The movie is not my favorite of Baz Luhrmann's. What's this got to do with Roma?
Speaking of Great Gatsby, I did enjoy Burning.
The Princess Bride... now that’s a classic.
The Princess Bride, by William Goldman.
I found the book after I saw the film, and it was a revelation that even the action sequences are better in the book.
I find Casablanca, Tombstone, and The Princess Bride to be the most quotable movies I've ever seen. We had the same experience with Casablanca, some of the shots/scenes don't always pan out and the gun fights are a little hokey but the writing and story is great.
It has more memorable lines that any other movie, save perhaps Princess Bride. People know the lines who have no idea they were in the a movie (and some even weren't).
> "I’m getting myself involved in a land war in Asia."
This is a humorous reference to the movie "Princess Bride," not a call to arms for neo-colonialism.
I remember there's an episode in The Princess Bride where Goldman interrupts Morgenstern and says “At this point there's a long section about [I forget what] that I cut out because it isn't important to the plot, except that along the way Fezzik obtains a Holocaust Cloak, and I'm only mentioning it because I don't want you to wonder where the Holocaust Cloak came from.”
I would have liked to have seen something like that in Anathem: two sentences along the lines of “Then we had to get to Siberia by driving an APC over the North Pole, but the less said about that the better” and then the book moves on.
I should have clarified: there's no sampling bias. These are incredibly popular movies. Here are some movies not on Netflix streaming that I've wanted to watch this year: Gladiator. Star Wars IV. Shawshank Redemption. The Wizard of Oz. When Harry Met Sally. The Princess Bride. All Star Trek movies. Goodfellas. Lord of the Rings. Gone with the Wind. All Godfather movies. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Airplane. American Graffiti. The Usual Suspects. All Jim Carrey movies except a bad one (the Grinch) and one I've never heard of (the Number 23). Toy Story. There's Something About Mary. All Austin Powers movies.
The last time I tried searching for a good movie to watch on Netflix streaming, I gave up after 10 minutes. I'd think of one movie after another after another. Nothing was there. All it could suggest was "related titles," as if that's what I would want.
I'm not going to claim to be a connoisseur of literature, so perhaps I've just overlooked the greatness. The point I was trying to make is that the book takes a great many pages to advance the plot relatively little. If you're familiar with the musical adaptation and are expecting a more plot-driven novel, you probably won't find that the book meets those expectations. I have not seen any of the movie adaptations, and cannot comment on them; on the basis of your recommendation, I probably will not.
As I recall, structurally, the novel is somewhat like The Grapes of Wrath, with expository sections interspersed with sections that directly advance the plot. I quite liked that about the Grapes of Wrath. I'm not sure if I take issue with the exposition/advancement ratio in Les Miserable, or if I feel less of a connection with the period Les Miserables is set in.
For children or not, I certainly won't hold The Princess Bride up as example of greatness. I would claim that the fact that it works as a send-up of a genre, including the alleged abridgement, is illustrative of something.
Why would you write so many sentences to simply say that you couldn't finish a great novel? There's nothing wrong with The Princess Bride... but it's for children.
Try reading it again. It's worth it, I assure you. It's vastly better than any of the film adaptations or the musical.
> Now that I think about it, the movie Ender's Game was pretty faithful to the source novel, but probably fell down as a movie because of it.
I felt the same way about Watchmen. The film is remarkably faithful (mostly), but I guess the flow/rhythm/pacing just doesn't work the same way on-screen as it does on-page.
Interestingly, there are examples of the book author also being the screenwriter and doing a fairly loose adaptation. The most prominent example that comes to mind is The Princess Bride; the book had a much darker and more cynical tone than the film.
Does anyone else find this a really bad metric? This list is relatively static if princess bride is still on there. What about the top 10 by year? Most people want to see the best and latest movie not the best older movie.
And of these 31 remaining almost half are missing in the Swedish Netflix:
5. Back to the Future 6. Gladiator 7. Sunset Boulevard 8. Cinema Paradiso 9. Django Unchained 12. Reservoir Dogs 13. Braveheart 17. Amadeus 21. Trainspotting 24. There Will Be Blood 25. Spotlight 26. The Princess Bride 27. Zootopia 29. Jaws 31. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
And yet Netflix want the same monthly cost for less of a service. Why?
The Princess Bride.
I've given it away seven times & purchased it eight.
Like every book, it's different from the movie. I'm not going to say it's better than the movie, but I'm also not going say the movie is better either. Both are just so amazing in their own right that I adore them both.
They don't have rights to stream any decent movies
That seems hyperbolic. Just browsing around (I decided to cap this at 5 minutes):
The Interview
Forrest Gump
Major League
Pirates of Carribean
Hot Fuzz
Armageddon
Kingpin
A League of Their Own
Inglorious Basterds
Scarface
Django Unchained
Legally Blonde
E.T.
Days of Thunder
The Princess Bride
Crocodile Dundee
Clear and Present Danger
V for Vendetta
Galaxy Quest
Running Man
Big Trouble in Little China
Talladega Nights
Kill Bill (1 and 2)
Star Trek Movies (including The Wrath of Kahn)
Tommy Boy
Team America World Police
Lilo & Stitch
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Wayne's World
Clerks
Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure
Even if he wasn't a lovable giant all the time, his work in Princess Bride is so perfect, a giant playing a giant in a giant way—and you will never see a remake of this movie.
There's definitely a danger of Philosophical Questions. But what you want isn't necessarily philosophical.
I shamelessly stole the "What do you want?" question from the tv show Babylon 5. Here's the original, meaningful answer from that show, by Ambassador Londo Mollari:
"All right. Fine! You really want to know what I want? You really want to know the truth? I want my people to reclaim their rightful place in the galaxy. I want to see the Centauri stretch forth their hand again, and command the stars! I-I want a rebirth of glory, a renaissance of power. I want to stop running through my life like a man late for an appointment, afraid to– to look back, or to look forward. I want us to be what we used to BE! I want…I want it all back, the way that it was! Does that answer your question?"
Of course, this leads to a gigantic galactic war and the deaths of billions, but that's another story.
Another one that comes to mind is Inigo Montoya, from Princess Bride. He knows exactly what he wants - he wants revenge for his father's murder. He may take odd jobs as a hired sword, but it's all in service of finding the six-fingered man and killing him.
So at a certain point, you don't have to keep asking philosophical questions. You just need to understand what motivates you, deep down. Inigo Montoya didn't have to ask why revenge mattered. He loved his father, and that was enough.
Or something like "movie with andre the giant". Google gets Princess Bride as result #2. DDG doesn't have a direct link to that in the first batch. I think Google handles ambiguity better (what users are searching for when they don't know how to express it). Of course, Google tends to overdo this too such that simple keyword searches ain't what they used to be.
PRINCESS BRIDE (THE BOOK) SPOILERS
The great thing about it, IMO, is that the novel's not about the story from the movie, really, but nevertheless you can do to it what the protagonist is doing to the fictional Princess Bride book and tell it to your kids as if it were the movie, by skipping the "boring parts", i.e. the important parts if you're reading it as an adult. It's a great and funny adventure story for kids, wrapped in a melancholy meditation on relationships with children and recapturing lost time and experiences for adults[1], which is (rightly) absent from the movie. The story itself tells you how to adapt it for reading to kids. It's its own instruction manual.
I absolutely love the notion of a kid picking up the book as an adult, expecting the story their parents read to them, and being surprised by the discovery of the real story, hidden from them in exactly the same way the bits about economics and such were from the protagonist. It's simply brilliant, and a scenario I fully intend to set up for my kids :-)
[1] This is from memory—I read it several years ago, and if I revisit it I'm sure my take would have more nuance now, and would find this to be an embarrassing misreading or oversimplification.
WRT "The Princess Bride", I've read it a few times as well. My perspective is slightly different, reading it after watching the movie many times. I agree that it "has its own sort of whimsy", especially in the context or meta-story, but when I first read it, I was struck by how similar the humor is to the movie.
If memory serves me, almost all of the memorable lines and jokes from the movie come word-for-word from the book. I'd assumed some of the jokes, e.g., those by Miracle Max (Billy Crystal) or Fezzik (Andre the Giant), were adapted to suit the actors. But they weren't. I don't know if that speaks to the quality of the writing or the casting or what.
I've read "The Princess Bride" about as many times as I've seen the movie, which, while I haven't kept a close count, is a lot. I don't know that it's something I'd recommend to everyone, but the book has its own sort of whimsy that is distinct from the movie, though both are enjoyable.
Kerouac's "On the Road" is another that I read often. Somewhere in the once-a-year phase.
"Slaughterhouse Five" is another I read with some regularity, and I find it different every time I read it, as I have a new set of personal beliefs with which to apply to it approximately every time.
The "Dread Pirate Roberts" moniker is from a (wonderful) movie called "The Princess Bride". In it, the hero assumes the mantle of the "Dread Pirate Roberts", and is at least the fourth successor to the title. It's an interesting factor in this case, because the choice of name hints that the "Dread Pirate Roberts" handle was chosen so it could be passed from person to person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHZGqBVBCRw
I am beginning to see the significance of the name "Dread Pirate Roberts".
In The Princess Bride, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/ it was actually a title that was handed down, and the current Dread Pirate Roberts is the third one.
The Princess Bride has wonderfully quotable dialogue, e.g. "Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts."
Not unexpected of course, the demand for narcotics and other services is still out there. I can't help but wonder if this isn't a bit like becoming the new head of some terrorist organization, the target is now painted day-glo orange and we know that it is not only on the 'radar' of law enforcement, its a priority target. The clock starts, and a number of resources are now tasked with taking you out.
Of course the genius of the Princess Bride with respect to the DPR character is that the character cannot be killed or captured or prosecuted, because it isn't really a person, it is an idea. And that was wonderfully illustrated in the book, film, and now in world around us.
Fictional character in the movie Princess Bride. Also the name of a pirate in the 2004 remake of Sid Meiers Pirates also mentioned the name "Dread Pirate Roberts", or fairly close to where the character Bart Roberts refered to himself as "The dread pirate Bart Roberts".
The name "Dread Pirate Roberts" is (quite cleverly, IMHO) picked up from the character from The Princess Bride [aside: go watch the film -- it's great fun!].
It is possible that this "person" is much like Satoshi Nakamoto, given that in The Princess Bride, the pirate is not actually one person, but a series of individuals who periodically pass the name and reputation to a chosen successor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Pirate_Roberts
Sweet! I'll probably like it, then. ;) It's amazing how many movies and stories are similar on some level, yet have completely different aspects that make them both enjoyable and interesting (e.g., The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor). If I never saw another romantic comedy again because it was too similar to the Princess Bride (etc), or never looked at a new programming language "because it's pretty much like lisp/python/etc" again, I'd miss out on a lot of good stuff.
I'm over 20, and I've never heard of the author, group, song, or movie.
For another data point, I know plenty of people who had never heard of The Princess Bride, Firefly or Monty Python before me telling them.
There is no level of popularity which ensures universal familiarity. You should always assume ignorance is genuine. See also: http://xkcd.com/1053/
Movie reference. The Princess Bride.
I'd like to speculate that the name of the founder(s) is a small hint towards them being US-Americans:
The Dread Pirate Roberts is a fictional character from The Princess Bride (book and movie), who in the novel turns out to be not one person, but a title given from one retiring pirate to the next successor because it's easier to work as a pirate when everybody is scared of you.
In this case, it's a fun way to hint that Silk Road is not operated by a single person, but by a group from what I think are US-Americans. There I merely speculate: I think the movie was a success in the US but not much in any other country. In fact, the only people who've quoted the movie to me are US-Americans.
Can people from other countries weigh in on this? Would non-Americans choose this as a pseudonym?
>All of the advice given at these events are bullshit by this definition. startup founders literally have no idea why things take off and they have no idea why they win
So William Goldman wrote an entire book on this very subject - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_the_Screen_Trade#.22Nobody_Knows_Anything.22
That book has chapter upon chapter upon chapter with the same exact advice - "Nobody knows anything"
Goldman says after he wrote the book, his phone simply stopped ringing for four full years, because he calls everybody a liar - the director, producer, screenplay writer, actor, story consultants, everybody - none of them know why one movie works & another doesn't. Finally, it was The Princess Bride in 87 that salvaged his reputation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Bride_(film) )
I used to be a Film Major and it was repeatedly banged into our head that "Nobody knows anything", so we couldn't say "your script sucks" when our classmates read their script ideas aloud in class.
He's not quoting the article. He's mis-quoting the film The Princess Bride:
Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
He's not quoting the article; he's quoting The Princess Bride (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes).
> It's presumptuous to imply that one knows what someone else is thinking.
I agree and sympathize. But incidentally, the original use of that phrase was not so presumptuous. In case you (or anyone reading this) don't know, the original quote is from the movie "The Princess Bride", where one character repeatedly says that some possible event would be "inconceivable" and then that event happens--he also exclaims that some events that have just happened are "Inconceivable!". Another character tells him, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." It's "don't think it means", not "doesn't mean": this contains a proper amount of uncertainty for being a deduction about someone's likely thoughts based on observation of their actions.
And, as a matter of fact, cynicalkane's comment was similar: "I don't think [thing] means what you think it means." Also he didn't include an adaptation of the "You keep using that word" part--I would have found that irritating, being an excessive use of movie references that would make nonsensical writing if the movie didn't exist--but cynicalkane's comment flows naturally, and I consider it a proper use of the phrase. I can only assume that you have seen a bunch of other comments using the presumptuous form (if we want to be grumpy old men, we might say "perversion") of the quote, and cynicalkane's comment was similar enough that you thought of the other comments and decided to complain here. (I haven't actually seen the presumptuous form myself, though I'm willing to believe you've seen it enough to be irritated--and a quick google suggests it does have a large presence. I'd probably be annoyed too.)
Not sure the point was to be grammar cop. I, at least, took it as a line from The Princess Bride (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes?qt=qt0482717)
That's incredible. Going through the art for the first movie, I imagine in my head a movie that is much more "fantasy" (the genre) than what came out. Like something a little more Labyrinth and a little less Princess Bride (not that Star Wars is anything like those two movies, just trying to articulate)
It's been years, but we'll see what I can remember (and attempt to write out on my iPhone, no less). There's a whole preface to the book where the author recounts his efforts in tracking down this old book that his grandfather used to come over and read to him. He tries for years so he can get a copy for his son, who he only sees on special occasions because of the divorce. In the preface, the author describes finally finding the book, at great expense, and sending it to his son, and his being terribly bored and underwhelmed by it. This dissapoints him, because he remembers it as the greatest story ever told. Then when he cracks it open, it is nothing like he remembers. The book, he says, is full of fifteen page essays about what everyone wore in court, or what they would eat at a banquet. But the book he remembers is a swashbuckling tale, with true love and all that. So he works out a deal with his publisher to cut out all the boring stuff and re-release "the good parts" version of The Princess Bride, the parts his grandfather used to read to him, and that, he says, is the version you, the reader, are about to read. Throughout the book there are Author's notes like "323 pages about the politics of trade imbalances removed here". So the reader is left thinking, wow, what a gem of a book this guy happened to find, buried in all that nonsense!
In fact, the entire "autobiographical" conceit of the finding and editing of the book is a farce, a carefully constructed fiction. William Goldman wrote every word himself, and in fact his life details don't match those that he presents of himself, including the divorce and even having a son. I assume you have seen the movie? Everyone has seen the movie. The movie is also written by Goldman, who is a master screenwriter, so it's one of those rare movies that is every good as the book it's based on, just shorter (as movies must be). So if you enjoyed the movie (and you did, right?) then you'll also love the book. And if you hadn't read all this, you might come away from reading the book thinking that in fact none of the good stuff was even penned by William Goldman at all, but instead just cribbed together from a heavily abridged book by "S. Morgenstern", a man who never actually existed outside the imagination of William Goldman.
Ask me what the book gains from being presented in this off the wall fiction-disguised-as-truth approach and I'm not sure if I could answer, except to say that it makes the whole reading of the book in some way better. Like the movie, how if it wasn't a story told by a grandfather to his sick videogame obsessed grandson, would lack some of its special appeal. Except in the movie version you never see the grandfather/grandson parts as anything but a story-outside-a-story, in contrast to the way the book is presented, which lets the reader come to his own conclusions.
I would be careful with this comparison. Many BluRay disks of older movies are just upscaled from the DVD (I'm guessing here - not actually sure how it's mastered) and aren't significantly different than what you would get with an upscaling DVD player.
You would have to get a "recent" movie mastered specifically for BluRay to see the difference. I've done this several times myself (specifically "The Princess Bride" - which appears to be an upscale, and "How to Train your Dragon" which is significantly clearer).
i suspect that most hacker minds are cool with raw data but i found that the storyline made it easier to digest. if you were to ask me about the company and #s tomorrow, i'd still remember.
but maybe that's b/c the Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies.
either way, props on the creativity.
I remember the first time I worked out that life's not fair. There's no over-arching justice to ensure that just because someone beats be at one thing they won't beat me at another. Nature as a whole has no sense of fair play. The best you can do is get on with life.
Having said that, if you treat people well you often find that their sense of fair play gives you a safety net.
But always remember:
"Life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something." — William Goldman (The Princess Bride)
ADDED IN EDIT: I've just been checking - although the line is in the film, it's not in the book.
There was a RPS programming competition which tested various algorithms against each other:
http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~darse/rsbpc.html
My favorite was Iocaine Powder. The strategy is explained in more detail here:
http://www.ofb.net/~egnor/iocaine.html
Iocaine is also a reference to a well known scene in The Princess Bride
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes?qt0482733
The Princess Bride.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/
Go watch it right now.