The Shining

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?

That and San Francisco Chronicle

xpost to self: I mean, much as I love this film, I'm intrigued as to what anyone who hadn't read the book would make of the narrative because there are a lot of gaps there. That's no bad thing (indeed: the novel is probably too long by half) but there are aspects of the story that arguably become clearer if you've read King's original.

That and San Francisco Chronicle

Ha! Interesting piece. Thanks for the link.

Yeah, okay, that SFC articule IS where it came from. I read it waaaaay back when, though (I think?) reprinted elsewhere.

Been a long time since I read the novel. Don't remember any political subtext tho...

Actually, I'm starting to doubt myself now. Is the burial-ground thing really in the novel, or am I just assuming it is because of some kind of false-memory thing? Gah, I don't know if I've got a copy here or not ...

(By which I mean: I've obviously read enough about the subtext elsewhere to assume that's where it came from. And it might not be at all. FUCKING DAMN, this is going to annoy me now!)

This movie gets a bad rap, tho. Sure, it kinda disintegrates in the final act, but the lead-up is just riveting. And while Nicholson is way OTT, the film's emotional distance from his scenery-chewing keeps it more interesting than oppressive. It doesn't work consistently as a horror flick, but when it's on, it's ON (mostly in the 1st half). Hell, maybe it doesn't even work as a film. But it's hypnotic, great looking, and lots of fun to puzzle over. Hadn't read the novel when I first saw it, and didn't feel as though I was missing anything. It felt like a complete story: family moves to creepy hotel, dad is haunted and goes crazy (or vice-versa), bad shit ensues. Everything else is really just filigree anyway.

Oh, yeh: I wouldn't disagree that the film works perfectly on its own (and I'd far rather watch it than read the book again). But there are elements -- eg Tony -- that are explained at length (oh, and what length) in the book and merely exist on their own terms in the film.

I've had a quick look for my copy of the book and can't find it. I've also had a quick Google about and still can't work out if I'm talking shit or not. Anyone care to enlighten me: is the burial ground even mentioned in the book? (If not: wow, that's some serious conflation.)

As far as I can remember, Grim, the Indian ghosts thing isn't in the novel. In the novel, the spirit that possesses the hotel is an instance of a specific kind of "ancient evil" that feeds on/generates human misery (Garmonbozia!) and attaches itself to a place. Vaguely recall that it is said to have existed since before the time of white settlement. Not sure about that. Deal is that Scatman and the kid belong to an equally ancient guild of gifted beings that exists to combat this sort of evil presence.

But, judging from yr last post, I guess you no all that...

Hah, yes, but there's a big difference between what one knows and what one recalls, as I'm proving here. Thanks, dude: sorry for being so wildly off-the-mark above!

i actually really like that this movie is mildly incoherent....over-explaining diminishes the horror. besides i never really took it for any sort of allegory but a quite literal depiction of a jackass chafing against the demands of his wife and kid!

ie, the "artist" needing to cut all ethical and moral ties to those around them.

and vice-versa?

that works!

you know, if it weren't for A Clockwork Orange, you could say kubrick was on some kind of anti-exposition warpath. except for the pool table scene in EWS, which almost plays as a parody of exposition.

Certainly true of The Shining, Barry Lyndon, 2001.

The Indian Burial Ground thing isn't in the novel. I remember because I watched the movie before I was in the book, & I was on the lookout for it. But there is one in Pet Sematary (the book); it's suggested that some kind of Indian-ish burial ground thing is responsible for the patch of groud behind the Pet Sematary being able to bring bodies back to life (I think there's, like, a Wendigo that hangs out there)? So maybe that's where the idea came from. There might be lots of King novels with "Indian burial ground" motif; in fact there probably are.

I had some thoughts on why it's a good addition to the film, but I'm not feeling eloquent enough to articulate them. Maybe tomorrow...

How is Barry Lyndon anti-exposition? Between the narrator and the title cards, he literally tells you in writing of nearly every single thing that is going to happen in the film.

One of them, actually stole a pack of match-ES, and tried to
burn it down. But I corrrrrected them.

How is Barry Lyndon anti-exposition? Between the narrator and the title cards, he literally tells you in writing of nearly every single thing that is going to happen in the film.

― Pancakes Hackman

Eeks. With regard to Barry Lyndon, I meant thematic exposition. Not only are we told what's happening, we're walked though the quotidian minutia for several hours. But, for me, the film's big quesion is: "Why does any of this matter? Why Barry Lyndon?" And on that subject, the film keeps resolutely mum. But that's just my take, and in describing Barry Lyndon as "anti-exposition", I suppose I'm using the phrase in a non-standard sense.

yeah BL is almost a opaque as 2001 for me...been a long time since i've seen it tho!

Ah, OK, I see where you're coming from on BL. Makes sense!

Got the blu-ray of this today and am, frankly, amazed by the quality of the transfer and how it looks in HD. Watching Vivian Kubrick's making of documentary also opened my eyes about just how much was put into getting the look of it right; I knew that the interiors were all on set in Elstree, but it's so easy to forget that when watching the film and it looks utterly like a real hotel. I certainly hadn't realised that the colossal exterior of the Overlook used in the early outdoor scenes and during the snowbound climax was all a set as well.

There's a nice bit of interview too where Nicholson is talking about the actorly obsession with methods of different kinds and the quest for "realness" and when he discussed this with Kubrick his response was "real isn't necessarily very interesting".

http://www.jayweidner.com/ShiningSecrets.html

Here's an interesting article which proves that The Shining is actually a coded message from Kubrick, where he confesses he faked the Apollo moon landing.

Must watch this movie today!

http://www.jayweidner.com/images/IMG_0057.jpg
omg

Seven Apollo missions went to the moon, but only six landed. Six crates of 7-up.