In this episode of Good Bad Flicks I discuss the action thriller Hackers. In one of the best examples of style over substance, this movie is all about being flashy. However, it does an excellent job at just that and ends up as one of the best and most fun ways you can kill 90+ minutes. Highly recommended. The movie is also one of Angelina Jolie’s early works.
This week was a bit stressful. After I recorded my audio I discover the mic was screwed. So I had to run out and get a different mic and re-record my audio at 2 am friday night. I wasn’t used to this one and I had to build the most ghetto pop filter ever so I apologize for the letter popping or if it comes off breathy. I did my best to tone it down.
The show must go on though, and I think this is still a darn good episode. Hope you do too.
Amazing episode. I didn’t notice any sound problems at all. I remember watching this movie only because I saw a trailer for it on TV last year with Angelina Jolie and her “showercap” head. Glad I checked it out. BTW, that fake Max Headroom thing was creepy as all hell. I went to Youtube to check out the full version and got all douche chilly. Another great vid, can’t wait for #50.
Woah! Detective Bunk as. . .a police officer! His comebacks aren’t quite as creative when he doesn’t have HBO giving him a leg up in the colorful metaphor department (double dumb ass on you, and so forth. . .)
As for Lorraine Bracco, definitely miscast here. She IS a good actress but they just didn’t realize what material they were giving her to spew out with her accent. Only Harvey Kietel can pull off using a thick New Yorker accent in different genres or period pieces (Last Temptation of Christ anyone. . .)
And as for Fisher Stevens (post Pfieffer, pre-Oscar). . .this was the beginning of the ‘end’ (more like the middle, now that the guy is an Oscar winning filmmaker). . .
I never got into Lorraine Bracco. I know a lot of people liked her in the Sopranos but I only watched a few episodes. I couldn’t get into it because I just don’t like Mafia shows.
Fisher Stevens is one of those guys that has always been solid. No matter what I’ve seen him in he’s always been good. He was in a show back in the early 90s called Key West that I really enjoyed and ever since then I’ve always liked the guy.
Interesting. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who didn’t like a mafia show or two. Bracco was also in Goodfellas where I think she was nominated for an Oscar. She was VERY good in The Sopranos. She had this amazing arc in the show where she was raped and she was debating whether to tell her patient, mob boss Tony Soprano, to ‘take care of it’. It was very good. But she does have an acting ceiling. . .no doubt. . .and in Hackers, she’s hitting her head against it constantly.
Did you get my Agent Bunk reference? Another HBO show The Wire, one of the greatest written shows of all time, features Hackers oft-hacked agent played by Wendell Pierce. He was in Stay Alive also. The guy is a cursing machine but is absolutely HILARIOUS in The Wire. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0682495/
I know I mentioned Law and Order: Criminal Intent in a previous comment but here it is again: Fisher Stevens played a ‘Howard Stern’ shock jock who ‘committed suicide’.
I also like Fisher but for various reasons: he was a major part of my childhood with the Short Circuit movies, I came to appreciate him as an actor later, and I’m starting to ‘love’ him now as I grow old and appreciate the craft of character actors, etc. I never saw Key West but I’ll have to check it out.
Thanks for the response. It’s always fun talking to you! 🙂
Goodfellas is one of my all time favorite movies but oddly enough, in general I don’t like mafia movies. Often they are well done but many times I just don’t care. Not really sure why.
Never watched the Wire either but I heard it was tremendous. I hope they put it on HBO go so I can watch the whole series.
Oh I forgot about Fisher in Short Circuit! He was very funny. That guy can play just about anything.
Did I dream it or is there an episode you did on Johnny Mnemonic? If you haven’t done Johnny Mnemonic any chance you might in the future? Love that one from 1995 too.
Along the same lines but more recently… have you seen a movie called Cyber Wars? (That’s the US title…I think in Europe it was called Avatar…and somethin else in Singapore)
It very much has a Johnny Mnemonic/Hackers feel but its from 2004, only got a Euro theater release and straight to DVD in the US. That and The Gene Generation are 2 of the my favorite hacker/cyberpunk B movies of the 00s.
Haven’t done Johnny Mnemonic…yet. Been working on it off and on for a while. I’m a fan of the movie and have a lot to say, I just want to make sure to get my thoughts together. Most likely it will be a serious episode, talking about the “real” version of the movie, the Japanese version. (an added subplot, different soundtrack, and scene structure) If you haven’t seen it you should track it down, it is the best version of the movie.
Haven’t seen Cyber Wars but Netflix has it so I’ll check it out.
By subplot, do you mean the daughter of the Yakuza? Or the digitized board member?
I’ve only ever seen the 1:43 extended cut, which I assume is the Japanese one. Seemed that subplot was still underdeveloped. But I was also somehow watching with the misguided assumption Max Headroom = Johnny Mnemonic, so I was constantly waiting for the glitchy avatar to talk to Keanu about the info locked in his head.
Like War Games was for you (also a big favorite), Hackers was (one of the things) that got me into hacking around AOL 2.0 . But back in the altavista/yahoo days, the information was outdated or hard to find. And 2600 Magazine was not entry-level. I remember downloading and trying to use a Wardialer way back then! Useful in the WarGames era, but almost useless by the Hackers era.
Did you ever get into the AOL proggie scene back then? Magenta? FateX? Trying to mimic their features got me into programming in Visual Basic. Fun times.
follow:
This week was a bit stressful. After I recorded my audio I discover the mic was screwed. So I had to run out and get a different mic and re-record my audio at 2 am friday night. I wasn’t used to this one and I had to build the most ghetto pop filter ever so I apologize for the letter popping or if it comes off breathy. I did my best to tone it down.
The show must go on though, and I think this is still a darn good episode. Hope you do too.
Amazing episode. I didn’t notice any sound problems at all. I remember watching this movie only because I saw a trailer for it on TV last year with Angelina Jolie and her “showercap” head. Glad I checked it out. BTW, that fake Max Headroom thing was creepy as all hell. I went to Youtube to check out the full version and got all douche chilly. Another great vid, can’t wait for #50.
Thanks! I’m just overly critical sometimes but thankfully most folks either don’t hear or don’t mind the flaws.
The Max Headroom incident is crazy! I probably could have talked about it more but I didn’t want to shift the focus too far away from the movie.
This coming week is going to be a top ten list, to give me more time to work on Episode 50. 50 is going to be huge!
Woah! Detective Bunk as. . .a police officer! His comebacks aren’t quite as creative when he doesn’t have HBO giving him a leg up in the colorful metaphor department (double dumb ass on you, and so forth. . .)
As for Lorraine Bracco, definitely miscast here. She IS a good actress but they just didn’t realize what material they were giving her to spew out with her accent. Only Harvey Kietel can pull off using a thick New Yorker accent in different genres or period pieces (Last Temptation of Christ anyone. . .)
And as for Fisher Stevens (post Pfieffer, pre-Oscar). . .this was the beginning of the ‘end’ (more like the middle, now that the guy is an Oscar winning filmmaker). . .
I never got into Lorraine Bracco. I know a lot of people liked her in the Sopranos but I only watched a few episodes. I couldn’t get into it because I just don’t like Mafia shows.
Fisher Stevens is one of those guys that has always been solid. No matter what I’ve seen him in he’s always been good. He was in a show back in the early 90s called Key West that I really enjoyed and ever since then I’ve always liked the guy.
Interesting. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who didn’t like a mafia show or two. Bracco was also in Goodfellas where I think she was nominated for an Oscar. She was VERY good in The Sopranos. She had this amazing arc in the show where she was raped and she was debating whether to tell her patient, mob boss Tony Soprano, to ‘take care of it’. It was very good. But she does have an acting ceiling. . .no doubt. . .and in Hackers, she’s hitting her head against it constantly.
Did you get my Agent Bunk reference? Another HBO show The Wire, one of the greatest written shows of all time, features Hackers oft-hacked agent played by Wendell Pierce. He was in Stay Alive also. The guy is a cursing machine but is absolutely HILARIOUS in The Wire. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0682495/
I know I mentioned Law and Order: Criminal Intent in a previous comment but here it is again: Fisher Stevens played a ‘Howard Stern’ shock jock who ‘committed suicide’.
I also like Fisher but for various reasons: he was a major part of my childhood with the Short Circuit movies, I came to appreciate him as an actor later, and I’m starting to ‘love’ him now as I grow old and appreciate the craft of character actors, etc. I never saw Key West but I’ll have to check it out.
Thanks for the response. It’s always fun talking to you! 🙂
Goodfellas is one of my all time favorite movies but oddly enough, in general I don’t like mafia movies. Often they are well done but many times I just don’t care. Not really sure why.
Never watched the Wire either but I heard it was tremendous. I hope they put it on HBO go so I can watch the whole series.
Oh I forgot about Fisher in Short Circuit! He was very funny. That guy can play just about anything.
Anytime. 🙂
Did I dream it or is there an episode you did on Johnny Mnemonic? If you haven’t done Johnny Mnemonic any chance you might in the future? Love that one from 1995 too.
Along the same lines but more recently… have you seen a movie called Cyber Wars? (That’s the US title…I think in Europe it was called Avatar…and somethin else in Singapore)
It very much has a Johnny Mnemonic/Hackers feel but its from 2004, only got a Euro theater release and straight to DVD in the US. That and The Gene Generation are 2 of the my favorite hacker/cyberpunk B movies of the 00s.
Haven’t done Johnny Mnemonic…yet. Been working on it off and on for a while. I’m a fan of the movie and have a lot to say, I just want to make sure to get my thoughts together. Most likely it will be a serious episode, talking about the “real” version of the movie, the Japanese version. (an added subplot, different soundtrack, and scene structure) If you haven’t seen it you should track it down, it is the best version of the movie.
Haven’t seen Cyber Wars but Netflix has it so I’ll check it out.
Still have to check Gene Generation.
By subplot, do you mean the daughter of the Yakuza? Or the digitized board member?
I’ve only ever seen the 1:43 extended cut, which I assume is the Japanese one. Seemed that subplot was still underdeveloped. But I was also somehow watching with the misguided assumption Max Headroom = Johnny Mnemonic, so I was constantly waiting for the glitchy avatar to talk to Keanu about the info locked in his head.
Like War Games was for you (also a big favorite), Hackers was (one of the things) that got me into hacking around AOL 2.0 . But back in the altavista/yahoo days, the information was outdated or hard to find. And 2600 Magazine was not entry-level. I remember downloading and trying to use a Wardialer way back then! Useful in the WarGames era, but almost useless by the Hackers era.
Did you ever get into the AOL proggie scene back then? Magenta? FateX? Trying to mimic their features got me into programming in Visual Basic. Fun times.
The whole religion angle with Lundgren that was almost completely removed from the US cut.
My computer hacking was very limited, nothing special at all. Now some of the stuff that goes on makes my brain hurt.
He’s wearing Google Glasses. This movie is predicting the future.
Much like how a lot of current tech had its design lifted from Star Trek, I do wonder if one of the Google techs was a fan of Hackers.