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Many consider 1994 the best single year for movies ever.
I got really lucky that that was also my peak movie going year.
Pulp Fiction
Lion King
The Mask
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Dumb and Dumber
The Crow
Speed
True Lies
Interview with the Vampire
Natural Born Killers
Ace Ventura
Stargate
Clerks
The list goes on. Lot's of movies that turned out to be classics or cult classics, or the start of some great careers.
This was a time when movies were on VHS tapes, and there was a bit before the start of the movie that said something like “have you seen every movie ever made?”[1]
And at the time it certainly felt like we had watch nearly everything that store and one other had over the previous five years.
1. https://youtu.be/VfuzebAAesk?si=z3-HYkZwJK6mmtWP - I think there was at least a couple variations
But the elevator lobby shootout from Matrix -- that scene ruled my home theater configuration for at least a decade
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I watched Dark City years after watching The Matrix (on opening in the cinema) and I enjoyed it very much, have watched it multiple times over the years.
Here is Dark City’s director Alex Proyas: “Alex Proyas on: The Matrix copying Dark City” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytxjsetVIRM
And this is a juxtaposition of some scenes with background music: “The Matrix vs. Dark City.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moW17YHl6B8
This is Mr. Hand [Richard O’Brien] talking in ”Memories of Shell Beach”:
> It was a very groovy movie, you see?
> I remember saying to Rufus Sewell [who played the protagonist], I said, you know, it actually, truthfully, it really doesn’t matter, does it, whether it’s a box-office success because we’re going to get paid as actors anyway, sorry Alex [Proyas] but this is true, we’re gonna get paid as actors anyway and isn’t it nice to be part of something which is groovy?
Existenz was another unique underappreciated movie of that year and whose theme never got picked by any other movie. When Jude Law realizes that the Chinese food he is eating can be put together to assemble the gun my mind was blown.
Saw all of them in 1999 / 2000, my career direction was decided in that brief period.
Also tried 1973 — same (The Day of the Jackal, Soylent Green, Westworld, The Wicker Man, Papillon, American Graffiti, The Sting, Serpico, Mean Streets, High Plains Drifter, Don't Look Now, Badlands, The Long Goodbye, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Three Musketeers, Fantastic Planet, etc.).
I think they simply made better movies decades ago.
It's Christmas, I shouldn't be so negative.
I think I'll indulge in Alastair Sims' version of "A Christmas Carol".
The other lazy writing is the lack of conflict resolution enabling a continuous source of needless conflict, making an entire show out of a situation that could have easily been resolved if there had been a single ‘adult’ in the room. This has the added problem of normalizing the extreme confrontational or evasive communication styles as opposed to productive engagements. I guess this is what happens when TV raises a generation and then that generation goes on to make their own TV shows, each cycle worse than the previous. As bad as ‘engagement’/‘rage bait’ YouTubers are now I shudder to imagine what the next generation would bring.
Many catchy classic Christmas songs were written by Jewish songwriters.
Christmas in the Heart (2009) - 34th Studio album by Bob Dylan
Rudolph has an odd nose, and he gets chosen to lead all the other Reindeer! Kids love this song. You teach it to them when they are young and they'll never forget it!
"I saw a spiral pad... Forty minutes later that song was written. I wrote all the music and some of the lyrics."
- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
- Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire
- The New Testament
My parents felt otherwise when I was growing up, so my siblings and I weren't allowed to do anything Christmas related, but now my wife and I would do seasonal things like watch a live performance of Nutcracker or Pentatonix or TSO. And can't forget about watching the holiday classic movies like Elf and Die Hard!
Happy holidays I guess.
For example, Christmas trees date back no later than the middle ages:
- Yule
- Dísablót
- Koliada
- Lohri
- Saturnalia
- Yaldā Night
- Nardoqan
In the absence of evidence about the timing being affected by other festivals and in the presence of much evidence that all the actual traditions are far more recent than pagan, I don't believe it's fair to claim Christmas has pagan origins. The absolute best we can do is say that its timing may have been influenced by other, pre-Christian celebrations.
Here's another one on Saturnalia from the same scholar:
Later during Soviet times secularish Christmas traditions including Ded Moroz were moved to New Year's.
My general take is that every major religion has some sort of solstice related celebration.
As near as I can tell the myth of the pagan origins of Christmas has its roots in fundamentalist Christians who wanted to abolish things that aren't contained in the Bible. "Pagan" made a good rhetorical whip at the time, but it's since been taken as a serious approach to history by popular culture.
ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/share/676c8fd1-b6e0-8005-a86f-d43ac17634...
Grok: https://x.com/i/grok/share/8fQKIFO1WGl3nDVZ6uFaJmPTW
†Grok on proving negatives: https://x.com/i/grok/share/kcHkjqzJ5lx5kMyl4GL0nMuw3
I provided a source from a religious studies scholar on Christmas trees specifically (one of the most frequently-cited "pagan" traditions). If you can point me to something with similar provenance I'll read it, but I'm not going to waste time on LLM responses.
Saturnalia? (I’m watching your video.)
Given how diversely Christmas is celebrated, it seems wild to conclude that it hasn’t been significantly affected by predecessor celebrations.
What is the argument for it not having influenced many modern Christmas practices, including but not limited to the celebration’s timing in the West?
FWIW, I'm very open to the timing having been shifted to coincide with other festivals, but that's not what most people mean when they say Christmas has pagan origins. They're not saying that Christmas isn't actually the day Jesus was born (I'm totally on board with that idea), they're saying that X, Y, and Z aspects of the Christmas celebration were originally pagan and were adapted for Christianity. I have seen no compelling evidence in favor of that claim about any aspect of Christmas traditions, and I've seen plenty against.
The drunken revelry?
1. Christmas has its origins in Saturnalia, but the only remaining similarity is the approximate date and the drunkenness.
2. Humans will happily accept any excuse to get drunk during the longest nights of the year.
I lean towards option 2 as a much simpler and more likely explanation.
Personally for me, it's a good excuse to take time off work and hang out and feast with people who also have time off work. I personally think that (at least in the States) it's basically a Commercial Holiday, in that it just encourages over-consumption, consumerisation.
It's not something I personally want to do for my family, but I don't think any less of families that do that.
Soviet style New Year's is still celebrated in a number of post Soviet countries including I believe to some extent in some of the Muslim ones. It's also celebrated by post Soviet Jews in Israel and to some extent the US. Although the recent full scale invasion on Ukraine might effect popularity due to it's Soviet association.
In fact my friend's house is featured in the top link on HN right now. He's helped me with my own show.
Talk to them about their youth, when they were wild and rebellious. Find out what trouble they caused. Remind them, and it just might crack the encrusted exterior a little bit.
Classic.
If you are Jewish, Christmas obviously isn't nearly as important to your (often nominally) Christian neighbors and there isn't much to do on Christmas day. If you decide you don't want to cook, Chinese restaurants are way over-represented in the choice of open restaurants. Once you do that for a couple years it becomes its own tradition.
I grew up in a Catholic household but my family, after years of making Turkey and spending hours cooking, for the past few years has switched to Chinese food on Christmas. I don't miss the turkey and gravy.
I came into this thread thinking that I don't really have any great Christmas memories. My family was poor growing up, my parents shouldn't have been together for as long as they tried to make it work, and my father had a lot of issues with drugs and alcohol. But now that I think about it, these Christmas Eve memories with my wife are my favorite.
Source: family apocrypha.
This is all apocrypha, so take it with a grain of salt. But my understanding is that this would be a case where marit ayin would not be a significant concern, since the Chinese dishes in question were not visually identifiable as e.g. pork.
Or another framing: if you were a semi-secular family (like mine) that tried to keep a semi-kosher home, it would be easier to eat a dish that contained finely minced pork or shellfish or similar. American Chinese food fits those parameters while also being available on Christmas, etc.
But my favorite was Christmas 1999. My girlfriend was out of town with her family and there was no reason to go home to mine, so I was alone (my roommates were with their families too). I decided to go to the movies in Emeryville.
I was going to see Galaxy Quest, Bicentennial Man, and Man on the Moon. The timing lined up perfectly to see all three. About 50 other people were there to do the same thing. When it was time to go in for the first movie, a staff member came out and told us that it would start about 30 minutes late. This would of course cause us to miss all the other movies.
About 30 people stepped forward at the same time and asked to speak to the manager. :). We explained to him that it would throw our whole schedule off. Since it was Christmas, he was kind enough to adjust the schedule so that we could all see all three movies.
That was a great day.