The Shining

someone needs to remix this movie. here's what to do:

- remove 80% of the music. too many times this movie spills into overkill because of the combination of jack nicholson + crazy modern classical music. I think nicholson by himself = already spooky (plus also funny, which is another thing the shining should have exploited more)

- ...which means you need to hire an editor to make this movie happen in under 2 hours, so all dialogue and extended pan shots of (admittedly beautiful) scenery don't go stale

- structure the movie around the bar scenes. these move at a good pace, don't have a bunch of dramatic overkill, are funny, nice to look at, and give a great idea of jack's motivation to kill, are good barometers for his madness.

- hold off on the scariest images until the end. dropping the blood coming out of elevators in the first 20 minutes is bad pacing for a movie that in general takes its time getting to the finish line

You're silly in the head.

someone needs to remix this movie.

I mean, did you SEE that awful miniseries?!

"remixing"/"re-imagining"/"tweaking" this film would be like taking a runny, pungent dump on "The Mona Lisa." Don't fuck with it.

Maybe they could CGI Shelly Duvall out of the film and put Winona Ryder in instead, as a way of appealing to the young people. Also, they could get Greedo to shoot first.

- hold off on the scariest images until the end. dropping the blood coming out of elevators in the first 20 minutes is bad pacing for a movie that in general takes its time getting to the finish line

i agree with this, jack's descent into madness happens too suddenly - you don't get much of a sense of what he's actually like before he goes crazy so there's no counterpoint. then, when he does, it goes on for too long. really great movie but it's totally improvable.

I'm not so sure about holding it off until the end, though. The first shining that Danny has in the bathroom (about the elevator and the split-second splice of the twins) is very effective for presaging/foreshadowing and captures the viewer's attention quickly.

I do think when Shelly Duvall finally sees the elevator, though, it's been shown too many times by that point and not effective.

I'm trying to think if any other Great Director's Worst Film has inspired such slavish devotion...

I can only assume you've seen Fear and Desire. And A Clockwork Orange.

slavish = people like it?

I do think when Shelly Duvall finally sees the elevator, though, it's been shown too many times by that point and not effective.

Much as I'm totally not in the business of "improving" movies, I sort of agree with this. I never really thought it was right that Duvall literally sees the bloody elevators.

I think the bloody elevators work best in that trailer. (Eric, I will give you Fear and Desire, I meant since Kubrick became Kubrick.)

To me to the degree it works at all it's a Grand Guignol Kramer vs Kramer, only there's no genre universe in which those 2 actors would be married to each other. I was a squeamish little teenage pussy when it debuted and it didn't scare me much.

I'll probably see it once more, thanks to the doubtsthis has planted, and be done with it forever.

I think the entire movie should've taken place in the pantry.

the shining is the only post-strangelove kubrick i have any great attachment to, though i'd prob like barry lyndon more now.

the whole bit with shelley running around at the end is pretty silly, though.

you don't get much of a sense of what he's actually like before he goes crazy so there's no counterpoint

true enough, but if you're looking for observant portrayals of plausible humans that the movie seems to care about, Kubrick might not be your thing.

honey, can't you see i'm BUSY?

also, there's more than a hint that Jack was plenty crazy long before we come in -- he's an abusive alcoholic prone to fits of rage. So when he turns raging and abusive, well... there you go. It's frightening not because "wooo! Ghosts!" but because his wife and son are familiar with this Jack already. But again, Kubrick doesn't much care about the humans in his movies, so it's all pretty fuzzy.

the shining needs a different second half. the only genuinely scary bits - the subliminal visions - are in the first.

but don't you see he was always the caretaker!

I'd remix this movie by using it as kindling

I was with Morbz re: this being Kubrick's worst movie but then I remembered Eyes Wide Shut

only scary part is the very end, with the boy being chased through the maze

Love the rest of the film, but it's not very scary.

I think my three favorite Kubricks these days are Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jack and the Shining, in that order.

It pains me to say this, but... the book is better.

Kubrick doesn't much care about the humans in his movies

Sorry kenan, this is kind of the standard superlazy comment re SK. The conversation between Danny Lloyd and Scatman shows otherwise, I think.

The dysfunctional couple in Eyes Wide Shut is much more compelling, even if it's also hard to imagine those two actually being marri... oops.

scariest moment aside from discovery of Jack's novel:

TUESDAY

It's true I'm hardly going to get recognized as a thinker for accusing Kubrick of being emotionally cold, but how is it not true?

I find Paths of Glory, Lolita, Barry Lyndon, EWS all emotionally HOT at crucial junctures. (particularly their finales)

yeah man paths of glory alone kinda disproves yr theory kenan

and I think the moment where Nicholson awakes crying from his dream of killing Danny is one of the few jolts of interest coming from that character, Big Bad Wolf shtick aside (also, good drooling).

Kubrick is certainly misanthropic about certain types of people, but that makes him no more of a cold bastard than thousands of artistic types

or me, for that matter, but I do not make movies.

Sure you don't.

lol Everyone's gone to the movies, now we're alone at last.

Kubrick's films (for the most part) couldn't exist if he wasn't deeply interested in people - many of them don't do much but follow the characters as they move through their lives. (That's what's interesting about the Shining, and why it's a failure as a 'scary movie' - if you re-fashioned it as above into an exciting scary movie, it would be completely forgotten.)

Dr. Strangelove, The Killing and A Clockwork Orange would be the exceptions I see - and I dunno about ACO, I dislike it too much to really think about it.

I think my three favorite Kubricks these days are Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jack and the Shining

Replace FMJ with Lyndon and that's my top 3.

Now I'm awfully glad you asked me that, Lloyd, because I just happen to have two twenties and two tens right here in my wallet. I was afraid they were going to be there until next April. So here's what: you slip me a bottle of Bourbon, a glass and some ice. You can do that, can't you, Lloyd? You're not too busy, are you?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2008/jul/03/channel4.television

god, i love this movie :-)

I return after a long absence and see my post is rebirth. Hey of that!
How are you EISBAR

hello hanle y -- i am fine! :-)

are you still puzzled about "the shining"?!?

Yay Scatman Crothers! Drives eight million miles in a milkfloat just to get chopped in the chest with a fire-axe!! He also has the same poster on his bedroom wall as Chef in South Park.

mark sinker is correct -- i wonder if this was deliberate, and if anyone ever thought to ask stone or parker about it?!?

nyah

Hello Hanle y.

come and play with us, hanle y ... come and play with us, forever -- and ever -- and ever

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=84Lcj1emzeo

:-)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I used to work with a woman who, at 35, wore her hair in that exact same style. Frizzed, and then HARD combover with highly visible part.

She was creepo for many, many other reasons, too.

Hanle y Deus, back again with icemoths.

A Stephen King fan has published an 80-page version of the book which novelist Jack Torrance obsessively writes during King's The Shining, where his descent into madness is revealed when his wife discovers that his work consists of just one phrase, endlessly repeated.

And you thought Jack was crazy?

To go back to the OP, where does the idea that the movie is about the revenge of dead Indian souls (and is thus political) come from? Some old Film Comment review maybe? Cuz you have to squint awful hard even to see clues that this might be the case: OMG Calumet baking powder! and shit.

Umm, I think it comes from the source novel?