17 ms·

- A lot of people watch it with no background knowledge and subsequently don’t quite understand the “best film ever” label, but Citizen Kane is indeed a fantast

- A lot of people watch it with no background knowledge and subsequently don’t quite understand the “best film ever” label, but Citizen Kane is indeed a fantastic film. Just read about Orson Welles first. - Most religious books that have stood the test of time have lived up to the hype. The Bible (especially certain books like Ecclesiastes or Proverbs), The Quran, The Upanishads, to name a few. Again, don’t just go in blind, or you’ll walk away thinking none of it makes any sense. - Lifting weights is indeed worth the hype, and its benefits are more diffuse than just “being able to lift heavy things.” - In terms of old books that are made into modern sci-fi films, I’ve found Philip K. Dick to be absolutely worth the hype. Don’t think I’ve read a bad story by him.

yodelshady 6y ago
Casablanca for me. Oddly I can't think of many stand-out moments in it. If you asked me why you would enjoy it, I couldn't say. But you would.
- eatonphil 6y ago
  I watched this for the first time last week and I was surprised that the plot has remained pretty novel. It's one thing to watch an old movie and recognize it for first producing a certain story (or at least capturing it on film) but I can't think of a similar story to Casablanca and that impressed me. It was also neat to see the film shot just like a play where there are very particular sets each scene. I wish I could have the scene the original play once. A few things I didn't like though was the flashback. There was no subtlety and poor writing. They could have started the film with their time in France. The real plot point wasn't that the two characters knew each other but _why_ she left him. And it was also odd to me that the general was in his headquarters when he learned about the escape attempt but then showed up at the airport... without any men. Anyway, I did enjoy the movie and am grateful to it for introducing As Time Goes By.
- croissants 6y ago
  The stand-out moment for me is when somebody shows Rick his ID (a passport?) and his reaction is just "are my eyes really brown?". I can't explain why I like that bit of characterization so much.
- sircastor 6y ago
  I had a film professor who always thought that Casablanca should be number 1 on AFIs Top 100. I tend to agree with him. I think Citizen Kane is a cinematic masterpiece, but Casablanca has a much better and more coherent story.
  - david927 6y ago
    I've always said Citizen Kane is the best film but Casablanca is the best screenplay.
- Joeboy 6y ago
  Apart from anything else, it's rammed with highly quotable and widely quoted dialogue. Anybody watching it for the first time will probably find themselves thinking "Ah - so that's where that comes from" at least a few times.
- lytfyre 6y ago
  > I can't think of many stand-out moments in it To me, the `La Marseillaise` scene[1] is incredibly powerful. The crowd trying to out-sing the German soldiers with the French national anthem, and the sheer raw emotion of the scene. Amazing character moments from Ricky, Victor, and Illsa. I haven't looked into the veracity, but the legend around the scene is that most of the extras in the bar were French refuges - and the emotion of the scene was very much present on set. Casablanca was filmed during the height of WW2, and came out in 1942, so it does seem plausible. Louis's brief "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" - Handed a pile of his winnings by the croupier - "Oh, thank you very much." exchange [2] is also a fantastically memorable comedic exchange. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeFhSzoTuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeFhSzoTuc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME
LordNight 6y ago
>A lot of people watch it with no background knowledge and subsequently don’t quite understand the “best film ever” label, but Citizen Kane is indeed a fantastic film. Just read about Orson Welles first. Interesting. About 10 years ago I was tired of modern cinema and completely stopped watching new films. After some pause I decided to start watching classic cinema from 1930 onward in more or less chronological order (in the last year i've stopped at ~1800 movies, up to 1995). In general, the quality of 1932-1942 american cinema (and, to a lesser degree, 1945-1950) far exceeded my expectations. And, while Citizen Kane is a very good film and deserves to be seen (it was actually one of the few "critically acclaimed" classic films that I've actually enjoyed), but when seen in context of what was filmed at the time, Citizen Kane doesn't really stand out among its contemporaries that much. A lot of technical details (but not all) that are praised by modern critics were more or less a common thing back at the time. I'd argue that Kane wasn't even the best film of the 1941 year (Sullivan's Travel was better and H.M. Pulham, Esq its equal) and definitely not the best film of the 1930-1950 "golden age" that ended at a very high point with Sunset Blvd. before plunging into the abyss in 1950s. That's all of course only my opinion. On a related note, if you enjoyed Citizen Kane, I'd highly recommend to see a soviet film from 1962 Nine Days in One Year. One of the most visually stunning b/w films in my experience. Thematically different, but stylistically very similar.
- keiferski 6y ago
  Sure, I’m not sure I’d actually call it the Best Film Ever, but it is a great movie. Part of its importance, compared to some of the other movies you’ve mentioned, is the story of how it got made / that it got made at all. Welles had zero film experience, yet was fully funded, and the movie itself was a direct attack on one of the single most powerful men of the era. Welles himself was a larger-than-life character and that’s probably half the reason we are still talking about Kane. Art isn’t created in a vacuum, after all. I’m not sure what a modern equivalent would look like, but imagine a $200 million studio film that eloquently attacks the heads of CNN, The NY Times, and another half-dozen top media firms. That sort of thing would never get made today. Thanks for the other suggestion though, I’ll look into it for sure!
  - 6y ago
Causality1 6y ago
How can a movie be a fantastic movie if it requires background reading? That's a failure of storytelling.
- Veen 6y ago
  I think Citizen Kane stands alone. It can be understood as an architypal "power and wealth corrupts" narrative. But our appreciation of art benefits from an understanding of its context and the history of the genre/medium. Citizen Kane may be more meaningful to you if you are aware of Hearst and the related social history in the same way that Wagner's music is wonderful in its own terms, but possibly richer and more meaningful when you understand the philosophy, social context, theology, and mythology he was engaging with as well as the composers he was influenced by and their thinking. All art is produced in a specific historical moment.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- mellosouls 6y ago
  It doesn't require background reading at all. But like many great works of art context can add even more to their enjoyment and impact.
dmitriid 6y ago
> Most religious books that have stood the test of time have lived up to the hype. They really haven't. Not a single one of them. There is, however, organized religion around them that has twisted those book to mean whatever it is that brings the flock. Are they influential? Yes. Have they stood the test of time? Hell, no
- zests 6y ago
  You’re talking about the best selling book of all time (by far). Its more likely that you misunderstand it than all the readers misunderstand it. Its just one of those things that is so popular that people find any way possible to criticize.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - anderspitman 6y ago
    There are two types of religious texts: those that people like to criticise, and those that nobody reads.
    - dmitriid 6y ago
      Among Christians hardly anyone reads the Bible except for a number easy passages. And those passages are invariably in the New Testament. The Old Testament is an unknown quantity to the vast number of Christians. I doubt anyone knows the story of Job or Noah except through what preachers tell them. The Bible a huge book of ancient texts with little structure and inscrutable context that is as alien to a modern person as Mesopotamic cuneiform. Ah, yes, inhabitants of Maktesh, and son of Pethuel, and Cyrus king of Persia, and Sheshbazzar, and... what's for dinner?
  - musingsole 6y ago
    For a good chunk of history, wasn't the bible about the only book you could buy in Europe? Separating the social structures around the bible from the book and trying to talk about it as if it is a product following the same rules as Tom Clancy's next novel is gross and laughable.
marvion 6y ago
> - Lifting weights is indeed worth the hype, and its benefits are more diffuse than just “being able to lift heavy things.” This was unexpected, but true. I started a few month ago, because I moved and noticed that carrying the goceries in the 4th floor interrupted my whole day... Every movement includes moving weight. It basically makes the whole life easier
- User23 6y ago
  As Mark Rippetoe says, “Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.” Harder to kill doesn’t just mean combat either. Real life isn’t like video games either, you can get a great return on strength training time. So good in fact that gaining strength won’t impair your other abilities at all unless you’re planning to compete at the highest levels.
- SyzygistSix 6y ago
  If you want to maintain a high quality of life and an active life into old age, you are going to need to lift weights. Or a similar equivalent exercise that provides impact to preserve strength and bone density. The sooner one starts the better.
- tpetry 6y ago
  For me i was grabbing something not heavy and instinctly went like a deadlift. And i was impressed i am now instinctly grabbing even easy things with correct posture.
aerovistae 6y ago
Seconding Ecclesiastes. I'm an atheist and I have never read a more eloquent affirmation of nihilism. It's fascinating knowing someone had these same thoughts 2500 years ago.
billfruit 6y ago
Many secular books have stood the test of time as well, I would place Plutarch lives and Montaigne's essays on par with the Bible/other ancient religious texts.
burnte 6y ago
> Most religious books that have stood the test of time have lived up to the hype. The Bible (especially certain books like Ecclesiastes or Proverbs), The Quran, The Upanishads, to name a few. Again, don’t just go in blind, or you’ll walk away thinking none of it makes any sense. Seeing as how the Quran was "written" over decades and the Bible over millennia, they DON'T make sense. They're both self-contradictory, with various authors pushing various purposes depending on what they wrote and when. There's value in each, but let's not pretend they're towering forks of art with a singular purpose and vision.
- cercatrova 6y ago
  Yep, they should be seen more as anthologies rather than a single work.
focus2020 6y ago
> "Religious books standing the test of the time.." Humans started to stay in one location after the invention of agriculture which is quite recent about 10000 years. The mass gathering and agriculture Only after the invention of agriculture some people were able to have leisure time and mass organization became necessary. Bible is roughly 2000 years old. Islam is probably 800 years old. The vedic caste Hinduism is about probably 600 to 800 years old. Religion is blip within a blip.

yodelshady 6y ago

Casablanca for me. Oddly I can't think of many stand-out moments in it. If you asked me why you would enjoy it, I couldn't say. But you would.

eatonphil 6y ago
I watched this for the first time last week and I was surprised that the plot has remained pretty novel. It's one thing to watch an old movie and recognize it for first producing a certain story (or at least capturing it on film) but I can't think of a similar story to Casablanca and that impressed me. It was also neat to see the film shot just like a play where there are very particular sets each scene. I wish I could have the scene the original play once. A few things I didn't like though was the flashback. There was no subtlety and poor writing. They could have started the film with their time in France. The real plot point wasn't that the two characters knew each other but _why_ she left him. And it was also odd to me that the general was in his headquarters when he learned about the escape attempt but then showed up at the airport... without any men. Anyway, I did enjoy the movie and am grateful to it for introducing As Time Goes By.
croissants 6y ago
The stand-out moment for me is when somebody shows Rick his ID (a passport?) and his reaction is just "are my eyes really brown?". I can't explain why I like that bit of characterization so much.
sircastor 6y ago
I had a film professor who always thought that Casablanca should be number 1 on AFIs Top 100. I tend to agree with him. I think Citizen Kane is a cinematic masterpiece, but Casablanca has a much better and more coherent story.
- david927 6y ago
  I've always said Citizen Kane is the best film but Casablanca is the best screenplay.
Joeboy 6y ago
Apart from anything else, it's rammed with highly quotable and widely quoted dialogue. Anybody watching it for the first time will probably find themselves thinking "Ah - so that's where that comes from" at least a few times.
lytfyre 6y ago
> I can't think of many stand-out moments in it To me, the `La Marseillaise` scene[1] is incredibly powerful. The crowd trying to out-sing the German soldiers with the French national anthem, and the sheer raw emotion of the scene. Amazing character moments from Ricky, Victor, and Illsa. I haven't looked into the veracity, but the legend around the scene is that most of the extras in the bar were French refuges - and the emotion of the scene was very much present on set. Casablanca was filmed during the height of WW2, and came out in 1942, so it does seem plausible. Louis's brief "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" - Handed a pile of his winnings by the croupier - "Oh, thank you very much." exchange [2] is also a fantastically memorable comedic exchange. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeFhSzoTuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOeFhSzoTuc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME

LordNight 6y ago

>A lot of people watch it with no background knowledge and subsequently don’t quite understand the “best film ever” label, but Citizen Kane is indeed a fantastic film. Just read about Orson Welles first. Interesting. About 10 years ago I was tired of modern cinema and completely stopped watching new films. After some pause I decided to start watching classic cinema from 1930 onward in more or less chronological order (in the last year i've stopped at ~1800 movies, up to 1995). In general, the quality of 1932-1942 american cinema (and, to a lesser degree, 1945-1950) far exceeded my expectations. And, while Citizen Kane is a very good film and deserves to be seen (it was actually one of the few "critically acclaimed" classic films that I've actually enjoyed), but when seen in context of what was filmed at the time, Citizen Kane doesn't really stand out among its contemporaries that much. A lot of technical details (but not all) that are praised by modern critics were more or less a common thing back at the time. I'd argue that Kane wasn't even the best film of the 1941 year (Sullivan's Travel was better and H.M. Pulham, Esq its equal) and definitely not the best film of the 1930-1950 "golden age" that ended at a very high point with Sunset Blvd. before plunging into the abyss in 1950s. That's all of course only my opinion. On a related note, if you enjoyed Citizen Kane, I'd highly recommend to see a soviet film from 1962 Nine Days in One Year. One of the most visually stunning b/w films in my experience. Thematically different, but stylistically very similar.

keiferski 6y ago
Sure, I’m not sure I’d actually call it the Best Film Ever, but it is a great movie. Part of its importance, compared to some of the other movies you’ve mentioned, is the story of how it got made / that it got made at all. Welles had zero film experience, yet was fully funded, and the movie itself was a direct attack on one of the single most powerful men of the era. Welles himself was a larger-than-life character and that’s probably half the reason we are still talking about Kane. Art isn’t created in a vacuum, after all. I’m not sure what a modern equivalent would look like, but imagine a $200 million studio film that eloquently attacks the heads of CNN, The NY Times, and another half-dozen top media firms. That sort of thing would never get made today. Thanks for the other suggestion though, I’ll look into it for sure!
- 6y ago

Causality1 6y ago

How can a movie be a fantastic movie if it requires background reading? That's a failure of storytelling.

Veen 6y ago
I think Citizen Kane stands alone. It can be understood as an architypal "power and wealth corrupts" narrative. But our appreciation of art benefits from an understanding of its context and the history of the genre/medium. Citizen Kane may be more meaningful to you if you are aware of Hearst and the related social history in the same way that Wagner's music is wonderful in its own terms, but possibly richer and more meaningful when you understand the philosophy, social context, theology, and mythology he was engaging with as well as the composers he was influenced by and their thinking. All art is produced in a specific historical moment.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
mellosouls 6y ago
It doesn't require background reading at all. But like many great works of art context can add even more to their enjoyment and impact.

dmitriid 6y ago

> Most religious books that have stood the test of time have lived up to the hype. They really haven't. Not a single one of them. There is, however, organized religion around them that has twisted those book to mean whatever it is that brings the flock. Are they influential? Yes. Have they stood the test of time? Hell, no

zests 6y ago
You’re talking about the best selling book of all time (by far). Its more likely that you misunderstand it than all the readers misunderstand it. Its just one of those things that is so popular that people find any way possible to criticize.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- anderspitman 6y ago
  There are two types of religious texts: those that people like to criticise, and those that nobody reads.
  - dmitriid 6y ago
    Among Christians hardly anyone reads the Bible except for a number easy passages. And those passages are invariably in the New Testament. The Old Testament is an unknown quantity to the vast number of Christians. I doubt anyone knows the story of Job or Noah except through what preachers tell them. The Bible a huge book of ancient texts with little structure and inscrutable context that is as alien to a modern person as Mesopotamic cuneiform. Ah, yes, inhabitants of Maktesh, and son of Pethuel, and Cyrus king of Persia, and Sheshbazzar, and... what's for dinner?
- musingsole 6y ago
  For a good chunk of history, wasn't the bible about the only book you could buy in Europe? Separating the social structures around the bible from the book and trying to talk about it as if it is a product following the same rules as Tom Clancy's next novel is gross and laughable.

marvion 6y ago

> - Lifting weights is indeed worth the hype, and its benefits are more diffuse than just “being able to lift heavy things.” This was unexpected, but true. I started a few month ago, because I moved and noticed that carrying the goceries in the 4th floor interrupted my whole day... Every movement includes moving weight. It basically makes the whole life easier

User23 6y ago
As Mark Rippetoe says, “Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.” Harder to kill doesn’t just mean combat either. Real life isn’t like video games either, you can get a great return on strength training time. So good in fact that gaining strength won’t impair your other abilities at all unless you’re planning to compete at the highest levels.
SyzygistSix 6y ago
If you want to maintain a high quality of life and an active life into old age, you are going to need to lift weights. Or a similar equivalent exercise that provides impact to preserve strength and bone density. The sooner one starts the better.
tpetry 6y ago
For me i was grabbing something not heavy and instinctly went like a deadlift. And i was impressed i am now instinctly grabbing even easy things with correct posture.

aerovistae 6y ago

Seconding Ecclesiastes. I'm an atheist and I have never read a more eloquent affirmation of nihilism. It's fascinating knowing someone had these same thoughts 2500 years ago.

billfruit 6y ago

Many secular books have stood the test of time as well, I would place Plutarch lives and Montaigne's essays on par with the Bible/other ancient religious texts.

burnte 6y ago

> Most religious books that have stood the test of time have lived up to the hype. The Bible (especially certain books like Ecclesiastes or Proverbs), The Quran, The Upanishads, to name a few. Again, don’t just go in blind, or you’ll walk away thinking none of it makes any sense. Seeing as how the Quran was "written" over decades and the Bible over millennia, they DON'T make sense. They're both self-contradictory, with various authors pushing various purposes depending on what they wrote and when. There's value in each, but let's not pretend they're towering forks of art with a singular purpose and vision.

cercatrova 6y ago
Yep, they should be seen more as anthologies rather than a single work.

focus2020 6y ago

> "Religious books standing the test of the time.." Humans started to stay in one location after the invention of agriculture which is quite recent about 10000 years. The mass gathering and agriculture Only after the invention of agriculture some people were able to have leisure time and mass organization became necessary. Bible is roughly 2000 years old. Islam is probably 800 years old. The vedic caste Hinduism is about probably 600 to 800 years old. Religion is blip within a blip.