Stanley Kubrick RE-poll

*Sellers

Still like George C. Scott's performance here, despite all the stuff I read about his out-of-control behavior in various Ava Gardner books.

There are few Scott performances I don't relish.

yeah I get exactly what you mean about PS there, it's as predictable as watching a washing machine doing a cycle.

I kind of get that Peter Sellers's mugging might bother some and that Strangelove has some kind of Big Lebowski-level of quotability that can also be irksome, but I still don't care.

Peter Sellers does kind of bug me in Lolita though.

Does the movie even need him playing three characters?

Love some Xenakis but not into airfix models and actors in ape costumes.

You mean Ligeti, calz.

Peter Sellers does kind of bug me in Lolita though.

He's terrible in Lolita, ruins the film.

Peter Sellers does kind of bug me in Lolita though.

― Ansible Dave’s Killer Breadboard (James Redd and the Blecchs

See, I love him in Lolita! That's one of the rare successful transpositions of a literary character to the screen.

He's completely different from any concept I had of Clare Quilty. Frank Langella was much better.

Probably not. But I like the Mandrake interplay with Ripper and Bat Guano at least. Just thank your lucky stars he knew when he was licked and they had to get Slim Pickens to play Maj. Kong.
(xp)

self-clowning here shows how many times I've watched 2001!

fair enough james redd, it's still a million times better than any Nolan movie, just mentioning this because Kubrick sometimes get's the blame!

Ground control to Major Kong.

I'm voting "The Killing" btw.

^good choice!

I've only seen it once or twice and it's stuck in my memory as a really top notch gritty noir

If you really want insufferable Peter Sellers, he sets the bar pretty high here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUZCXaStvnc

xpost
I'm guessing at least some of that grit comes from Jim Thompson (and another plus point for Kubrick - he often picked v interesting writing collaborators).

Sellers' Strangelove is a Goon Show skit, but I think he's genuinely funny in the other two roles ("It's the strings in my legs" - Terry Southern!). Tho yes, Scott is funnier.

He's insufferable in so many movies tbh.

The Killing also has a super-complicated flashback time-scheme which really works well, iirc.

Or maybe it just goes backwards, speaking of Nolan, been awhile.

Lolita is sort of interesting in its own right but as an adaptation always seems to me to be completely miscast, except for maybe Shelley Winters who is almost typecast in that type of role but still.

I’d agree that Sellers isn’t at the top of the pack in terms of laugh-getters for me in Strangelove but I still don’t mind him in it, i can forgive him for being predictable (or w/e) in it because after all its not hard to see the machinery at work with the other performances either tbh, the fact that everyones recklessly mugging is most of the fun.

The only thing that bugs me about Sellers in Strangelove is that he's clearly riffing on Bob Newhart as the president and I cant help but imagine Newhart doing it & being funnier

I can just tolerate James Mason as Humbert Humbert if I somehow think of that performance as a piece with some of his other roles such as in Bigger Than Life or North By Northwest but I’d much prefer somebody else who could play a louche Continental like, say, George Sanders pretending to speak German in Man Hunt.

Ah, interesting point about Bob Newhart.

by the time I saw Strangelove I was already familiar with Python and the Goons and despite having also seen 2001 and Clockwork Orange, I was still expecting to see something with much broader humor in the satire, so I was initially a bit disappointed. These days I find the movie more unsettling than funny which I think was the intention. Sellars is goofy as the title character, but his other two characters are very good I think.

I think if Bush/Cheney and Trump had never happened, Dr. Strangelove would seem more dated than it does

ICYMI, Jemaine Clement's imitation of David Bowie here is actually 2/3 James Mason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8f_XCH3zmM

The only thing that bugs me about Sellers in Strangelove is that he's clearly riffing on Bob Newhart as the president and I cant help but imagine Newhart doing it & being funnier

I've noticed Sellers doing this in other films, he was obviously a brilliant mimic.

I also love Mason and (esp) Wilson in Lolita.

Wilson? From Castaway?

*Winters

Peter Bull gives Strangelove's funniest performance imo

Yeah he’s good

I've noticed Sellers doing this in other films, he was obviously a brilliant mimic.

it sticks out to me in Strangelove especially bc its literally paired with Newhart's trademark routine, the extended onesided straight-man phone call, at a time when Newhart had released half a dozen hugely successful albums of that gag over the previous few years so obviously no accident. always struck me as bizarre that no one ever seemed to remark on that, its a pretty brazen choice.

had to look up Bull was the portly soviet union guy, yes brilliant as well.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41xs2QnoalL._SX389_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

#onethread!

(xp) First ever Pozzo in "Waiting for Godot" - in English that is.

I mean #onefilm maybe, although A.I. doesn’t quite count as Kubrick.

https://scontent-man2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/41626354_1889212937825022_8817086693501829120_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=TkYnFAi5-hkAX8z5yJK&_nc_ht=scontent-man2-1.xx&oh=00_AfCiyMtSuT4GTnamB7a_IR7qqiKITqz0jIgjydWpFX_iTA&oe=650B2B4B

I’ve expressed my opinion many times and have argued with multiple people here, and am reminded that ilx is the only place I want to discuss films.

Barry Lyndon and The Shining are really great, but I still think 2001: A Space Odyssey is the greatest film of all time

i could def be argued towards that trio in that order

Sometimes I feel like SK is kind of My First Auteur in that he makes highly entertaining films with such overt tropes and signature flourishes that you can’t help but be drawn into his cult. I say this as acknowledgment of my own basic taste rather than sneering at others.
Some days it’s Barry Lyndon, some days it’s The Killing, some days it’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for me.

I get that it's beautiful to look at on the big screen (and the soundtrack is the best thing about it for me; I couldn't not see it after looking at the music choices). But I don't see anything very profound in HAL, and what engages your intellect in this?

― xyzzzz__, Monday, January 9, 2023

I'm probably not going to express my ideas here very well, but:
besides the overwhelming visual impact of viewing it on a big screen and the soundtrack, what engages me most is its story about leaps in evolution that seem almost impossible, its vision of the past, and its stunning imagination of the future. HAL's dysfunction is focused on a moment in the middle of the film - possibly predicting something we as humans are going to be facing in the not too distant future - but the span of time in the movie is so vast

― Dan S, Monday, January 9, 2023

I think all of it as amazing, the visuals, grandiosity, the metaphysical quality, the disconnected narrative in three parts that could be pieced together through closely watching, the sense of becoming, the weirdness of so many scenes especially those with the monolith, the stargate sequence, the old man in the classical bedroom which anticipated AI by 55 years at least, and the strangeness of the last scene

Feel like reading that Ian Watson article on the other thread(s) about working with Kubrick is now starting to sink in: all that OCD energy that goes into the preproduction process can only be reined into something useful by the discipline of actually making the thing.

"The Killing" has one of my favorite endings of all time.

Sacrilege or no, I've come to really like the Soderbergh cut of "2001."

THE KILLING is on youtube for free with ads and i'll probbaly watch it tonight.

my vote is for BARRY LYNDON but i do really like most of his films

I tend to confuse The Killing with Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, heist films co-starring Sterling Hayden.

Re A Clockwork Orange, the book not the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-yk2el2b8k

rewatched The Killing and as much as I enjoyed the film it's hamstrung by one of my pet hates - the voiceover

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Suspicions more or less confirmed, held against the prior poll. Also, good job ILX

not sure what you mean about suspicions confirmed, or "held against the prior poll", but there were a lot of votes

my eyes wide shut-heads are once again the most correct

Glad Clockwork got nothing. The Killing and Paths of Glory are, I think, on the short-list of greatest American films of the '50s, but that's just the nature of click-polls that they'd sink to the bottom.

agreed, i grew up in a TCM household and rarely anything caught my attention - it wasn't until seeing films like those that i wanted to go back and revist the era.

I don’t think Paths or Glory or The Killing’s positions would necessarily be that much higher in a ballot-style poll, fwiw. The only sig change would probably be Strangelove moving up a spot or two

Agree on Paths of Glory; it seems to have fallen away over the years. But I think The Killing would finish ahead of Full Metal Jacket, and possibly even ahead of Strangelove in a weighted poll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8_tJ6rVPyM