Hacker Cinema
White Noise
2022 · Film · 136 min
Directed by Noah Baumbach
Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler studies at The-College-on-the-Hill, husband to Babette, and father to four children/stepchildren, is torn asunder by a chemical spill from a rail car that releases an "Airborne Toxic Event" forcing Jack to confront his biggest fear - his own mortality.
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15 comments on Hacker News
> It currently features 36 fantastic films and also White Noise (2022).
_oof_
Hahaha, I expected the criticism of my comment to be that too much of what I was counting as good is "high brow", in fact. Too artsy-fartsy. Leaning too much toward "The Green Knight" and not enough toward "Jaws".
[EDIT] Here, lemme just list the 2022 movies that I think were worth a watch if you're at all into the kind of thing they were doing:
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Glass Onion Top Gun: Maverick Bullet Train All Quiet on the Western Front Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Crimes of the Future Death on the Nile Everything Everywhere All at Once White Noise Nope Prey The Sadness You Won't Be Alone Dual The Northman The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (arguably just a less-exciting RRR, but hey, it makes up for it by also being shorter and non-horror comedy *is* a bit weak lately, so it gets in) Watcher Dashcam (one of the most interesting movies I've seen in a long time—you may hate it, but you'll feel *something*, damnit!) The Banshees of Inisherin
This is just ones I've seen (I usually manage, like, 1/2 of the films in a year that I want to watch, at best) and excluding a few that did in fact suck or that I didn't think quite merited inclusion (e.g. The Menu) or that are good for what they are but are pretty narrow in appeal (Violent Night). Like, I hear Cyrano is great, Emily the Criminal, Bodies Bodies Bodies, The Whale, and a bunch of others, but haven't made it to them yet (and, inevitably, I'll end up never watching some of them).
"Quite a few of those are sequels, remakes, or adaptations! White Noise was a book! Death on the Nile! One of those is a marvel movie!" yeah, I know—good luck finding an era in Hollywood when a ton of the films, and even a ton of the good films, weren't such. I reject that as, specifically, a complaint about this moment in cinema (it has more merit as a criticism of cinema in general)
And how was it the train company's decision to burn the hazmats?
I don't think that's how hazmat cleanup works in the real world. On a local level, I believe hazmat teams are part of the fire department. At least that's how it is in Boston. I briefly chatted with the guy who is in charge of hazmat cleanup for the city and he said they do hazmat cleanup all day every day. Constant incidents in a big city.
Nothing about this train situation makes any sense. Why has the federal government not reassured everybody by hiring a slew of independent testers?
Not to mention the preemptive Netflix movie about this exact thing: https://www.google.com/search?q=white+noise.
Yes google it if you don't know what I'm talking about everyone. A movie made about the same thing in the exact place where this current thing happened. The townspeople were extras in the movie. I feel like we are all being taken for a huge ride.
Holy crap. Is this a real life version of the film White Noise[0]?
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Noise_(2022_film)
More than eerily, it's where the crash in that film was staged.
https://decider.com/2023/02/13/train-derailment-ohio-same-town-white-noise-train-crash-filming-location/
> Last week, in an instance of life imitating art (or vice-versa), a train carrying harmful chemicals derailed in the very same town used as filming location for White Noise‘s on-screen crash.
> One resident, Ben Ratner, had the crazy experience of not only having to evacuate his own home this week, but also acted out the scenario earlier as an extra in White Noise.
Eerily similar to the recent Netflix movie "White Noise": https://www.netflix.com/title/81317320
There's this movie "White noise" (2022) with Adam Driver, which depicts almost this incident. And I'm sure there are more such movies... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Noise_(2022_film)
Here's something for your daily dose of "that's strange:" In 2021 residents of East Palestine, Ohio were extras in filming a train derailment scene for the movie "White Noise"(2022).
"Ratner, 37, is in a traffic jam scene, sitting in a line of cars trying to evacuate after a freight train collided with a tanker truck, triggering an explosion that fills the air with dangerous toxins."
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/health/ohio-train-derailment-white-noise/index.html
> When Ben Ratner’s family signed up in 2021 to be extras in the movie “White Noise,” they thought it would be a fun distraction from their day-to-day life in blue-collar East Palestine, Ohio.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/health/ohio-train-derailment-white-noise/index.html
The film adaptation of White Noise is about a freight train crashing and releasing toxic chemicals in the air and was filmed in Ohio around this area so yeah it seems like a very apt connection to make
2022 - Kimi, After Yang, Crimes of the Future, White Noise, Official Competition, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Tar, Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
2021 - Nightmare Alley, The Card Counter, Zola, The French Dispatch, Come True, Don't Look Up, I Care A Lot,
2020 - I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Mank, The Sound of Metal, Possessor, His House
2019 - Climax, Uncut Gems, Parasite, Vivarium, First Cow
2018 - The Clovehitch Killer, Prospect, Mute, Anon, Mandy, The House That Jack Built, Cam, Sorry to Bother You
2018 had a glut of Netflix sci-fi B-movies that I think are very solidly good if not so great. I think they're underrated so I included them. I might have also messed up on the years.
These are all films I've seen. There are many others that I suspect are even better that I haven't seen.
> An example of where they can miss the point is Noam Baumbach's latest film 'White Noise' which is has been critically misunderstood [2]
Not to go too far off track, but I blame a huge amount of that misunderstanding with how Netflix has marketed the movie. Expectations play a big part in appreciation and understanding - at least initially.
I pay pretty close attention to what movies are coming out and I hadn't even heard of White Noise. Wikipedia says they spent 100mn on it. Geez...
Left field advice here, but I'd recommend helping out on a movie, or even making your own short. If you want to understand film literally nothing comes close. This sounds intimidating, but it's no more of a bar than attending a local Kino Cabaret Event [1] or similar. If you work on a film through production - even a simple two day shoot and edit, you'll start to build an intuition for how the medium works. The more you participate in creating it, the more you'll understand film in its native language. There's a strong analogy to learning to programme / basic hacking projects -> understanding software and hardware.
In as much as film appreciation courses and youtube critical videos can be interesting, or draw your attention to things you've missed, they're usually from an external interpretive lens. An example of where they can miss the point is Noam Baumbach's latest film 'White Noise' which is has been critically misunderstood [2]. Meanwhile all the filmmakers I know are in awe of it technically and structurally.
1 - http://kinokabaret.org/
2 - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/white_noise_2022
I want to point out that this is a plot point of recent Netflix movie WHITE NOISE.