#hackers (1995)

[ysm-room]

Alternative Babes

Times when Matthew Lillard played some alternative characters. It all started with Emmanuel Goldstein, a.k.a Cereal Killer from the crime thriller movie Hackers (1995). Then Doug Van Housen from the thriller drama movie Animal Room (1995). Next is Tim LaFlour from the comedy movie Senseless (1998) and closely followed by Steven ''Stevo'' Levy from the dark comedy-drama movie titled SLC Punk! (1998).

What I love about those roles is that they showcase just how much being ''alternative'' can vary from person to person. Cereal Killer show the more D.Y.I Cyberpunk/Grunge fashion, while Doug seemed to be more the minimal Goth kind, then with Tim it's the classic 90's Punk look and finally with Stevo it's the Punk-Rocker. What do you guys think?

[fadeintoyou1993]

ANGELINA JOLIE as Kate HACKERS (1995) dir. Iain Softley

[victusinveritas]

A 17-year-old high school student in Dayton, Ohio, has been fined and placed under house arrest after authorities discovered he had hacked into the city’s outdated traffic control system and quietly fixed the timing of several major intersections.

Kameron Price, a self-taught coder and robotics club member, reportedly used a Raspberry Pi and a decommissioned school-issued Chromebook to gain access to the municipal traffic grid. Over the course of several weeks, he rewrote the timing logic for at least five major lights along West 3rd Street—drastically reducing backups during rush hour and syncing green lights to reduce stop-and-go congestion.

“He didn’t disable anything or cause danger,” said a traffic engineer speaking on condition of anonymity. “Honestly, his code was more efficient than what we were using.”

But city officials said the changes violated multiple laws, including unauthorized access to a government system and interference with public infrastructure. Kameron was cited under a local ordinance pertaining to unauthorized modification of municipal services—a misdemeanor typically reserved for utility tampering.

According to Kameron’s parents, he initially took it on as a side project after watching his bus get stuck at the same broken intersection every morning for weeks. “It would take longer to go three blocks than it did to get across town,” his mom explained. “He got tired of watching everyone waste gas and time just sitting there.”

Public reaction has been overwhelmingly in Kameron’s favor. A video of the intersection running smoother than it has in years has gone viral, and a local radio host dubbed him the Subway Surfer of traffic flow. Online petitions calling for the fine to be dropped have already surpassed 50,000 signatures.

“Honestly, give the kid a job,” one commenter wrote. “He’s doing more for this city than whoever programmed those lights in 1998.”

So the more I look into this story (found on Facebook so I never should have trusted it) on Google, the less I find it to be, ya know, true.

Also, the image below the purported mugshot might be the most AI thing I've seen in a goodong (typo, but keeping it because a goodong while is longer than a good long while, you know it is) while. I try to be less shit about just posting stuff I find without verification, but I'd been up for hours doing backbreaking labor (my back is not happy) getting my folks through SeaTac along with their luggage.

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[thefaiao]

Here's a portrait I did based on the movie Hackers (1995), which I'm posting on its own because I want to talk about this movie!

I had never watched the movie before working on this commission, but it was truly magical to watch. I've been kind of taking in what I watched over the last days and it has given me so many thoughts that I don't even know to begin. Watching without any knowledge of how the movie was received, I was shocked to learn that there is a major split in opinions about the movie, which has left me completely puzzled. How can a movie, that in my eyes is simply phenomenal, be even able to receive such negative reviews to this day?

I think the keyword here is what I used to describe the movie: magical. There is a magic circle that needs to be accepted and entered for you to truly enjoy the movie, and see how the silly sequences are a depiction of reality that is juiced up, and not a substitute of reality. If you just take the movie at face value, you won't be able to appreciate how this effect works. You'll think just because an interface is translated as two obvious HACK buttons, they can in no way actually be depicting hacking. But they are, the movie does a lot to show its appreciation and love for the scene, with accurate references to relevant books, multiple little "tricks" like phreaking and resetting the phone to call someone other than your lawyer when you get arrested. You can appreciate that effort and also how it was dressed up to resonate more with a larger audience, and keep the movie's amazing pace!

Now there are also things that maybe were taken for granted in movies of this time. The set design and costumes are fantastic, and somehow still feel fresh today. Maybe they are not realistic but they are effortlessly cool in a way I think almost no one does well nowadays. All the characters are visually strong and are immediately identifiable, on top of having great chemistry and represent a decent variety of archetypes. Despite being a movie, it communicates strongly that this world is bursting with life and character, that the game is not set, and that there is still future ahead of us. They have a scene of the main guy wearing lingerie in a dream, and the main girl joyously, sincerely smiles at the thought. That is a deep understanding of the human spirit.

Yet it kills me! It kills me that people watch this movie and think it's "terrible" or "cringy", that they don't have eyes to see how much heart it has. People have convinced themselves that reality can only exist within their brain specifically, that there is no use for magic, even in movies, even in books and games. What's the point of being smart if you just want all the answers handed to you? The abstraction is not a defect, it's a working piece.

The people who saw the world through these cold lens have removed all of the punk and empowerment that the movie champions. They boiled down the culture to just code and went on to make lame companies that serve to optimize suffering and take the people's ability to actually interface and express themselves through computers and electronics as a whole.

You can accept both the material reality and understand the purpose of abstraction and interpretation beyond furthering material gain. Perhaps the movie didn't intend to show me such a complex message, but that's what I got from it, and it gave me room to interpret it that way, allowed me to be curious.

That's all I have to say. Maybe I'm preaching to the crowd, but whatever. When you approach something, have heart! Without your heart, your head would have no blood, and your mind, no thoughts. Treasure, and use, it!

[nma-nekro]

✨💥HACK THE PLANET🌐🗯️❕

🥣👾💾📟🛼🥪🍟🍕🖱️

[pink-carnelian]

we need to bring back this vibe and I’m so serious

[nygmatic-wound]

matthew lillard as cerial killer in hackers (1995) is my actual girlfriend

[soapdispensersalesman]

Hackers (1995)

Dir. Iain Softley

Costume design by Roger Burton

[radicaloptimisms]

Jonny Lee Miller in Hackers (1995)

[rose-bunny-28]

They represent gender cause yes

[ysm-room]

Not my work, this time.

Just dropping here some of my favorite Matthew Lillard pictures. Where he looks cute as fuck, hot as hell. Perfection...One may say. Which one is your favorite?

[of-fear-and-love]

Matthew Lillard in Hackers (1995)

[fantastickkay]

Hackers soundtrack CD booklet (1996)

[emptyjunior]

When will big Hollywood bring character design like this back

[debian-official]

Got a fun gender but not sure how to present? Watch Hackers (1995)

you're welcome