Hacker Cinema
White Christmas
1954 · Film · 120 min
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Two talented song-and-dance men team up after the war to become one of the hottest acts in show business. In time they befriend and become romantically involved with the beautiful Haynes sisters who comprise a sister act.
2 positive4 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
> The movement of a lifeless prop goes from "oh wow that was creepy" to "oh that is a piece of plastic with some paint on it". Our ability to discern what things are is pretty strong.
You can really start to see this when watching older movies (say, 30 or 50 years old) in HD. These movies were never intended to be viewed on a 16:9 1080p or 4k screen. A good example is Wizard of Oz (1939) or White Christmas (1954). -- the whole movie just feels like a set. You can clearly see the makeup they are wearing.
Even older shows like Seinfield or Friends can have this kind of feel. These were always intended to be shown in 4:3 480 on some crappy CRT. Not 16:9 at 1080p...
I think that’s missing the point. Most movies are mostly forgotten, and the merits of the story and storytelling carry the movie as a thing.
If you pick a mediocre movie in 2019 and compare to a mediocre movie in 1959, the garbage storyline will be the thing you will turn the movie off for.
In my mind, the weakness with CGI overuse is it enables lazy/sloppy practices that don’t scale. Similar to in graphics work where Photoshop is abused to create impossible edits for expediency.
My family has a tradition of watching Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” every holiday season. It’s quaint how you can see the painted backgrounds and stages… the opening scenes feature cardboard bricks and cheesy props. The point of the article is that this era of filming is bland and will look cheesy in the future because of the reliance on tools. You can already see it today - compare the Sony Spider-Man movies to the last iteration - the age is apparent.
I don't understand why the major streaming services don't have the good Christmas movies. They all have these new "made for TV" quality awful movies they push really hard.
It's A Wonderful Life
A Christmas Carol
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (old animated version)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (old animated version)
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Home Alone
Miracle On 34th Street
Elf
White Christmas
There's tons of GREAT Christmas movies. On any given Christmas season Netflix might have 1-2 of the greats. Same for Amazon Prime.
I'm confused because it seems like an easy win for these streaming services. Is licensing them really so expensive?
Talk about overthinking it! This thread highlights the recurrent conflict that arises because my Myers-Briggs personality type is INFJ, but most programmers are not.
To me a Christmas movie is a movie with the spirit of Christmas running through it, however weakly. Another definition I have is this. A Christmas movie is a movie that is fun to watch around Christmas. Die Hard meets both of these definitions.
Die Hard is not, however, a typical Christmas movie. It's a movie more for people who are sick of the normal Christmas movies and want a break. Because of this special status, people who think of Die Hard as a Christmas movie feel a greater camaraderie than people who think, say, White Christmas is a Christmas movie. For example, at a Christmas party one of my friends wore, as his "Christmas sweater," a gray sweatshirt with the words "Ho ho ho" written in red.
Another thing that makes Die Hard special is the thought and care that the director put into it, https://vimeo.com/76739972
Interestingly though, they have very little content that is 40+ years old. In the United States, there are currently just 10 films available from the 1960s. Five of those are Bollywood films and three concern Barbara Streisand. There are only four films from the 1950s, including White Christmas, which always make good August viewing.
There are so many amazing films from those two decades. Where are they?
>Another exception occurred in November 1954 when, 30 minutes into a screening of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas at Radio City Music Hall, in an auditorium with around 6,000 patrons, a seat exploded and injured two women and two boys. Apologetic theater ushers asked 50 or so patrons near the bomb site to watch the remainder of the film from alternate seats, allowing ushers to rope the area off so the police could investigate after the movie.
Contrast this 50s crowd with the mass hysteria over the slightest disturbance today...
Can you imagine people today sitting to watch a movie in a theatre where a seat had just exploded and hurt people -- not to mention the total hysteria from the authorities jumping in like it's the end of the world.