171–180 of 306 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of my headcanon for Sneakers is that Agent Abbot (Jones) is actually Admiral Greer (Jones' character from The Hunt for Red October / Patriot Games / Clear and Present Danger ), set a bit earlier in his career, and going under a codename while working CyberOps for NSA ;-)
Same!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of movies have been released on BD100. Very out of date list: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=294596 On a site that I am a member of there are nearly 1300 BD100 rips available.
Interesting. I was looking back at my BluRay collection (physical) the other day, looking for a UHD movie to test with, and in my memory, all BDs with UHD, but to my surprise, very few of them were actually UHD, with most just being HD (1080p). I doubt there's in in my collection that are BD100; could I even play them? Currently using a PS5 as my BD player, and PS4 and PS3 before that.
UHD discs are fairly noticeable at a distance as they usually use black disc cases instead of blue. They’re somewhat niche (if Blu-ray wasn’t already niche) and often sell at a premium, so I suspect unless you’ve been seeking them out you won’t have them barring the odd multi format bundle.
One of the great things about Sneakers is that the McGuffin's core concept still holds up as reasonably credible 30+ years later. I first saw this movie in the mid-90s, and it sparked a mild fascination with how cryptography (specifically, RSA) works, that arguably influenced my career path. Fun fact: Leonard Adleman (the A in RSA) drafted the words and slides used for the lecture scene: https://molecularscience.usc.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That, and its cousin the shaky cam. "Let's make things difficult to see and hear. That makes for better cinema!" Jackie Chan once discussed action scenes in US movies versus his movies. Western films: cut before the punch lands, maybe cut a few more times. Hong Kong moves: just show the action in one scene.
A great example of this is Hard Boiled 1992, the Hospital Shootout. I think audiences are beginning to appreciate continuous scenes and are becoming more frequent in western films. The most recent one I can think of is John Wick 4, when it goes top down. Some of the recent Michael Bay movies are so aggressive when it comes to cuts, the average shot length must be 2 or 3 seconds.
An excellent episode of Every Frame A Painting is "Michael Bay --- What is Bayhem?" It explains in detail in what way those particular movies are poorly made.
I was shocked when I rewatched this recently just how good the cryptography technobabble is in this movie. Specifically the scene where the professor is presenting on breaking public key cryptography. The very first thing he mentions is a number field sieve. Nice work hiring whatever cryptography consultant that got for this scene.
I think the only part that really pulled me out of the movie was when they were testing the device and it was decrypting a dial-up feed random character by random character on the screen. It wasn't "Hackers" bad but it was still pretty unbelievable.
But upon reflection, I find it forgivable, because if you think about what it would've taken to make it accurate, and then enough narrative to explain it to the fraction of the audience not up on the technical details, you've got a recipe for 15 minutes of yawns.
The story is no more or less valid for that directorial shorthand, and it could easily be replaced with an authentic scene if you really wanted to. It would break the pacing but not the plot.
Re: negative re-masters I can’t help but notice that a number of older and very prominent shows on streaming services are clearly ripped from a video cassette. For example, the older Simpsons episodes on Disney Plus. Some of the episodes have very prominent dot crawl which is unacceptable for a digital format that you pay for. I also can’t imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the show was composited to vide…
> I also can’t imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the show was composited to video tape. Happens more than you'd think (in the past, at least - it's obviously much easier now with digital storage.) Couple of examples I remember off the top of my head: re: Adrian Maben making a Director's Cut DVD of "Live In Pompeii"[0] "While searching in the French and English film laboratories for the unused negative we…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love both, for similar but different reasons. Hackers captures the naive idea of the scene really quite well. It's goofiness allows the naivety to remain, past the overwrought characters and Hollywood's downright misunderstanding. It feels like it's accidentally great. But then again, maybe it just tickles to the surface the sense of wonder I had way back then.
Accidentally great, yeah. If I allow myself to believe that the producers of Hackers knew they were making a spoof of Hollywood hackers in general, I can sit back and enjoy it as a masterpiece. But at the time, that was not at all clear. And I'm still not actually convinced. It certainly wasn't marketed as a comedy; it seemed to be drinking the same drama-aid as The Net and other breathless wankery at the time. In wh…
Certainly far better than The Net, as low of a bar as that is.
One of the great things about Sneakers is that the McGuffin's core concept still holds up as reasonably credible 30+ years later. I first saw this movie in the mid-90s, and it sparked a mild fascination with how cryptography (specifically, RSA) works, that arguably influenced my career path. Fun fact: Leonard Adleman (the A in RSA) drafted the words and slides used for the lecture scene: https://molecularscience.usc.…
When I was a kid we had a VHS recording of Sneakers, with the beginning of an episode of Letterman at the end. I remember my mom liking it. Fond memories. I need to watch it again. A couple of scenes: Carl: We've got customers. Martin: Shoes? Carl: Expensive. Martin: *fixes tie* Look busy, guys. And another: *after apparently inconveniencing Liz, the group is walking out* Cosmo: We'll call you a cab. Liz: "Thank you.…
When I first watched this movie, I felt like this was a weak moment in the film. "Computer dating" at the time was laughably bad, so seeing a character regard it as infallible ruined the immersion.
With age and experience, I now see that some people just throw themselves behind certain technologies, and fail to find flaw. So maybe this character was just a misguided computer dating evangelist, blind to the technology's failings.