little, adj.
8. not strong, forceful, or loud; weak
9. small in consideration, importance, position, affluence, etc.
12. amusingly small or so considered: a funny little way of laughing.
13. contemptibly small, petty, mean, etc., or so considered: filthy little political tricks.
That’s a good yardstick for me, too. The novella and the movie have both stuck in my head ever since I read/saw them, and that is another yardstick of something that is just plain good.
Wait a second… you’ve never even seen Casablanca? Usually considered one of the top 5 movies of all time?
That’s fine if you haven’t, of course, it’s just kind of weird. It’s such a cultural touchstone and so highly regarded; I can understand not liking it but I don’t understand not having seen it.
Re Biggirl
Got to get past me first.
MiM
Sorry for the hijack.
Should I answer this and continue my newbie picking (not that I noticed he was a newbie until it was pointed out to me) or should I leave it alone? Should I address the idea that there are factual answers to why a person may like a thing or should I post rhetorical questions that I do not expect answers to? Or should I start calling myself Red and pretend I’m Irish?
Don’t ask me - you might not like the answer. Another question. If I joined early in 2006, does that make me a newbie?
You two are on your own!
(get a room)
But dude, all of those meaningful replies were Cafe Society material, not General Questions material. Newbie or not, you don’t seem to have a basic grasp of where discussions about movies should go.
They go in Cafe Society, not in General Questions. Pretty simple.
That’s irrelevant. Factual questions about movies go in this forum, too. Just like factual questions about video games, cooking, TV Shows, etc. I take it you don’t hang around in this forum often enough to notice that?
Ya know, this could have been an interesting GQ or , more likely, GD (IMHO?) if a specific movie had not been mentioned.
What physical or physiological things influence Zeitgeist?
Are there certain elements needed before something becomes popular in Pop Culture?
Or something along those lines.
But to ask what makes a particular movie (or song or book or perfume or name or anything) popular-- and expect a factual answer not based on the subjective strikes me as, um, how do I put this. . . futile.
Quite a few in this thread say it is popular because was well made, thought-provoking and well acted. But there are other movies that I[ think are all of those things that are not popular at all. There are movies that I think are slapped together, have no lasting impact and are acted by chatbots that are wildly popular.
There is absolutely NO accounting for taste. It’s silly to try.
Whereas in the film, Freeman’s character is called Ellis Boyd Redding.
Morgan Freeman has a rather reddish complexion-my WAG.
IMHO (and with apologies for any redundancy) one of the reasons that it rates so well is because it a uniquely perfect adaptation of the work of an insanely popular author. This means you’ll generally have the positive ratings of the author’s fanbase, without the negative effects of people influenced by their opinion that it’s a bad adaptation. This is helped enormously by the fact that the length of the source material is perfect for a feature film, without requiring necessary sins of omission or addition. Cf. the reaction to (the execrable) Simon Birch.
I was totally prepared to nitpick this movie to death when it came out, and the only objections I had aren’t of the sort that are likely to diminish the experience for… uh… anyone, really:[ol][li]The shorter title (and the change-up of the eponymous Rita Hayworth poster to indicate the passage of time to Bo Derek) break some of the symbolism of Andy’s “rebirth.” (Really, does anyone care?)There’s a little bit of dissonance going on when you cast Morgan Freeman as “Red” and leave the nickname intact. (The nickname is easy to take as jailhouse irony; better that than a lesser performance.)[/ol][/li]
This movie is one of the few perfect adaptations the written words out there. The only adaptation I can think of that’s as good is A Scanner Darkly, and it suffers from not having anything anywhere near the broad appeal of Shawshank Redemption’s story, as well having a visual style that draws a lot of negative comment.
[quote=“Larry_Mudd, post:73, topic:514310”]
[ol][li]The shorter title (and the change-up of the eponymous Rita Hayworth poster to indicate the passage of time to Bo Derek) break some of the symbolism of Andy’s “rebirth.” (Really, does anyone care?)[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
This little bit, I think, is another hint at why the film is so popular: to me, after having seen it, came across as an almost perfect Campellian hero myth. I think that also helps to explain the observation made upthread that the film speaks to large swaths of people across large swaths of cultures/countries/backgrounds, etc. That, combined with great (practically iconic) performances, a well-done score, and a happy ending, and you have a winner. It’s the kind of movie I’d sit through commercials to watch. On Telemundo.
Don’t know. It was okay, even pretty good (considering how obvious the plot turns were and how sappy it was), but it was far from great.
I am one of the many who rated this movie a 10 on IMBD. (And I saw it when it was first released, having read Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redepmtion years before.) It tells a great story, with great dialogue, and great acting, and it has one of the coolest endings of all time.
Oh, and the Mozart scene? One of the best of all time.
Personally, I can’t explain just why Shawshank is so great.
That said -
The film is like a damn hypnotist. It’s on, I can’t help but watch it.
This has gotten me into trouble many times. It should be bed time - but hey! Shawshank is on!
I always end up watching it to the end. I love this movie so much.
Freeman and Robbins are good, no doubt. The tempo of the movie is slow, but steady. I can’t quite explain why it gets such a hold on me. But it does.
I put Shawshank in my top five favorite films. And I still don’t know why. It’s just…so true, I guess.
I guess Bo Derek would. (In a hurry to get dinner on; didn’t proofreed. ;))
I dislike Shawshank, and my husband loves it. I think it’s a guy equivalent of a chick romance flick, featuring a romance between 2 men, with suffering, revenge and truimph, and then they live happily ever after together. My husband doesn’t watch it when I’m at home anymore.
Boomer culture, I guess. Very few people in my age group tend to watch movies before, roughly, 1980. I know plenty who won’t watch black and white movies on principle. You can quote them famous lines all day and they’ll have no idea what you’re talking about unless they heard it on SNL or something.
They’ve probably heard of Casablanca though. From one of these lists, most likely.