The Shining

I can only imagine!

Seeing 2001 in 70mm was like one of the greatest things that's ever happened to me. Awe-inspiring in the most literal sense of the phrase.

So is WB going to pull ALL celluloid prints of Kubrick's films from theaters now? The Film Forum here in NY is showing Digital Cinema Package editions of 2001, Strangelove and The Shining this week as a way to ease Film Catholics into the New Era.

http://i.imgur.com/IhOqq.jpg

haha

i saw the shining in 35mm i guess a dozen years ago. it was a fantastic experience.

still keep meaning to make it to toronto to see 2001 in 70mm whenever the lightbox shows it next.

http://www.themarysue.com/toy-story-the-shining-mashup/

http://static03.mediaite.com/themarysue/uploads/2012/03/toy_shining_car-ride-580x435.jpg

http://static03.mediaite.com/themarysue/uploads/2012/03/toy_shining_twins-580x435.jpg

http://static03.mediaite.com/themarysue/uploads/2012/03/toy_shining_blood-monkeys-580x435.jpg

monkeys and the typewriter got me.

this movie is such a total goddamn masterpiece. for some unfathomable reason my parents let me see it when i was like 11, when yes i was wimpy enough to be seriously creeped out by the weird little girls but more importantly 11 enough to be bone-level shaken by STOP SWINGING THE BAT. GIVE ME THE BAT, WENDY. and by all the abusive-father fear in general (nb my father was upstanding but sometimes there were years my parents fought a lot and probably any kid who's ever seen his dad yell at his mom can queasily jive w/ this angle of the shining).

when i loved it as a kid/teenager it was for the situation, right, the ISOLATION and wendy's POWERLESSNESS and UNCERTAINTY -- it's neat how, even though wendy is an audience surrogate in the sense that she's the one who's probably subjected to the most terror throughout (the kid is big too sure but wendy has a whole layer of maternal fear for him as well as for herself, and plus she gets satanically yelled at by jack nicholson, reads his book, etc.) she's the only one in this haunted house movie who doesn't see any ghosts until the last ten minutes. i remember scoffing at the school that claims native-american-genocide overtones, but those are really there, honestly. and not just in secret-code clues in the pantry (lolest thing i noticed re: the pantry on this viewing was the little stack of snacks jack puts together after he's been locked in there, yelled GO CHECK IT OUT! HEHEHEHEEHEHEHEHE, etc.,: packet of oreos and some peanut butter. they should have put him in the meat locker scatman crothers demonstrates at the beginning and had him just tear into a raw ham.) jack's a blue-collar white guy with cultured aspirations who's feeling humiliated economically (SHOVELING OUT DRIVEWAYS, WORK IN A CAR WASH -- ANY OF THAT APPEAL TO YOU? -- this important+telling line comes right after probably the pinnacle of the OTT Jack LOLs, which is when he says IT IS JUST SO TYPICAL OF YOU TO START THIS UP NOW... JUST WHEN I AM REALLY IN TO MY WORK), and furthermore resents that what he at least hopes was an accident with his son's arm a few years ago has made it necessary for him to stop drinking and be really contrite and feel further unmanned, and is seduced on one level by an Evil Supernatural Power, in the form of a bunch of well-dressed whites having a perpetual power-drenched cocktail party in a luxury hotel built on a conquered graveyard (nice touch: "i believe they actually had to fend off a few indian attacks while they were building it!"); and on another level just by the ability, up there in the snow, to really show his family who's boss. he gets drunk on this nasty fantasy of privilege that's built on bones, and when the hotel needs to spur him on it suggests to him that he's not Man enough to do his job and that his son feels safer around an n-word than around his father. all that stuff's there even tho it's secondary; it's good reinforcement around the domestic psychodrama.

<3 the performances across the board, too. duvall is a total martyr; she spends the entire second half of the movie working in discrete, successive shades of panic. (she turns out to be super competent and nervy, but how sad is the part where she's had the presence of mind to bring the baseball bat downstairs but is so scared she can't remember what she wants to talk to her husband about?) jack reverts to his roger corman days, but without restraint; it's hilarious. (although morbz otm upthread singling out for warmth/depth the scene where he wakes from his nightmare, the last time in the movie he's halfway lucid.) finally, scatman crothers gets "larry, just between you and me, we got a very serious problem with the people taking care of the place. they turned out to be completely unreliable assholes."

anyway, rank this wherever you like amongst kubrick as long as it's above a clockwork orange.

I said on some other thread that I think Duvall's amazing in the second half. She's even more impressive when I try to imagine what it must have been like to work with Kubrick on one side and Nicholson on the other--not a lot of oxygen in the room.

booming post, dlh

and is seduced on one level by an Evil Supernatural Power, in the form of a bunch of well-dressed whites having a perpetual power-drenched cocktail party in a luxury hotel built on a conquered graveyard

oh yes this is a great observation. and actually jibes pretty neatly with something I've been pondering about Eyes Wide Shut lately...there's this almost Pynchonian "them" at work in Kubrick's movies...

and is seduced on one level by an Evil Supernatural Power, in the form of a bunch of well-dressed whites having a perpetual power-drenched cocktail party in a luxury hotel built on a conquered graveyard

yeah, this is reinforced when grady-the-waiter, in the washroom, drops the n bomb in front of jack and nicholson repeats it immediately w/out pause or distaste

also, looking at imdb quotes from the movie, this kinda leaps out in light of dlh's great post:

[Past guests at the Overlook Hotel]
Stuart Ullman: Four presidents, movie stars...
Wendy Torrance: Royalty?
Stuart Ullman: All the best people.

haha yeah. roommate i was watching with this time (who like me had seen it a million times) said he doesn't trust stuart ullman: "he has to know what's up, right?" (also, as danny escaped from the hedge maze, a well-timed "this kid's gonna be fucked UP".)

Playgirl signifier?

http://www.theoverlookhotel.com/post/21997760134/on-closing-day-in-the-shining-when-jack-is

when grady-the-waiter, in the washroom, drops the n bomb in front of jack and nicholson repeats it immediately w/out pause or distaste

You're mad. He repeats it with a sort of confusion and/or astonishment.

iirc the confusion is over the event/person mentioned by grady, rather than by the use of a racial slur (i mean, if jack is really astonished that someone would use the word, why would he repeat it?)

thinking on this a little more, the whole visual strategy of the shining is based around symmetry and doubling, and grady-waiter and jack-torrance are similarly twinned, so it makes sense for them to be alike' - they are both the caretaker, after all. in his brilliant bfi book on eyes wide shut, michel chion pays a lot of attention to the way that the characters mirror each others' gestures, glances, actions, words etc, and some of that is also obv in play in this scene, too.

My memory is that Jack says "A n****r?" as a QUESTION, is that accurate? In a 'who/what am I dealing with here' sense.

yes, it's phrased as a question. i guess the ambiguity lies in whether he's questioning who exactly that n***** is and what they're up to and how they can be 'removed' from the game (tho, i admit, he has met the scatman already), or whether he's questioning and expressing distaste at grady's use of the word itself: i don't think we can really resolve it beyond that (lol ambiguous text). In that scene, I'm sure that nicholson is playing someone eager to please grady, to be on the 'same side' as the ghosts and madmen (and, by implication, creative freedom/inspiration), rather than on the side of scatman crowthers and his own family (who of course represent conformity, and the stullifying restrictions of domesticated life).

fyi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vulNlhUI6m0

is that a youtube link to the scene in question, pisces (unfortunately youtube is blocked here at work)?

http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/55443/stephen-kings-doctor-sleep-now-available-pre-order-full-synopsis-revealed

xpost aye

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Scatman!

is there a blog devoted to scatman's record collection in this scene? i bet there is.

There is a brief interview of the woman who posed for the pairings on the web somewhere. Probably theoverlookhotel.com

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9c3zhMfqg1qzj6szo1_500.jpg

is that someone famous?

whoever he is I hope someone stopped to ask him where he got his tshirt

Set design in those Scatman photos reminds me of Royal Tenanbaums. I think the Shining was super influential on that movie. 70s carpet and all.

Crazy old lady in the bathtub still freaks me the fuck out.

In his entry on The Shining in his book 'Have You Seen...?', David Thomson writes:

"There is a magnificent opening where the hotel manager (Barry Nelson} tells Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) how the place needs a caretaker in winter. It's a case of one bullshitter shitting another, and it's so cozy it gives you the creeps. And there you are listening to this guff about the magnificent, comprehensively appointed hotel which is useless, alas, in winter. Why? Because it snows! DID NO ONE EVER TELL THEM ABOUT SKIING?"

Thomson didn't listen to the guff hard enough, because in fact the manager does offer an explanation about the lack of winter sports - something to do with the location of the hotel, and the impossibility of clearing the snow from the approach road (although, as we see in the film, a number of people are able to reach the hotel in the depths of winter.)

But - in the same scene, the manager says that the Grady murders happened in 1970. Now assuming that this meeting is happening 'now' (eg round about 1978 or so), what happened in the intervening years - were there other caretakers, and why did they not go mad, too?

Also - the manager tells Torrance that his main duties will be heating different parts of the hotel and carrying out minor repairs (we never see Jack doing any of the latter, in the film.} So - why hire a former teacher to do this - surely there are more suitable handymen/caretakers out there? The manager makes vague reference to a prior meeting between Torrance and "our people in Denver" - are they recruiters, the corporate owners? And would they not check up on Jack at some point, see how he's performing, holding up?

Or - is this whole meeting a dream, a hallucination? A rationalisation of Jack's disordered mind after the fact?

although, as we see in the film, a number of people are able to reach the hotel in the depths of winter.)

One person, and he has to abandon the roads and get a Sno-Cat to get there.

were there other caretakers, and why did they not go mad, too?

Because neither they nor their family members Shined.

So - why hire a former teacher to do this - surely there are more suitable handymen/caretakers out there?

Because they aren't paying them much at all and they don't need anyone to actually do much other than make sure the place doesn't fall over?

did thomson ever write anything longer on this movie?

were there other caretakers, and why did they not go mad, too?

maybe they did, who knows? the film, wisely, doesn't give us much information about the larger context in which jack's employment occurs.

tbh, i get annoyed by readings that attribute seemingly actual narrative events, on thin evidence, to the perceptions (or rationalizations) of a disordered mind. like there always has to be a secret story behind what we see on the surface. the shining certainly invites those sorts of questions, but it doesn't seem to reward them.

J.D. afaik the 'Have You Seen...' entry is his longest pass on it - it's the one Kubrick he seems to like (and he LIKES IT A LOT). I've been dipping into the book recently, and really enjoying it - I think a former ilxor with a marked antipathy towards Thomson put me off in the past, but many of the entries are entertaining and provocative (i like the one on Close Up, where he suggests that the film has been made by a Kiarostami imposter, or the Stalker entry, where he writes "It may be that the Room - if you ever get there - is an infinte, if dank, enclosure in which an uncertain number of strangers are watching the works of Andrei Tarkovsky.")

Thanks for the correction, Phil - I thought possibly the cops got there in the end, too, and discover Jack's frozen body, but obviously not.

i've gone back and forth a lot on DT. i love his style but find his critical reasoning flawed a lot of the time -- the biographical dictionary in particular includes several entries (chaplin, capra, satyajit ray) that are as appallingly badly argued as any film writing i've ever read. but he's never boring and, as far as i can tell, almost never repeats himself -- which is astonishing considering how much he writes.

linked to from a klosterman article about 'Room 237' doc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMEq6IjgR04&feature=player_embedded

holy shit i believe

going to see this doc on saturday!

i think i really want to see it now plz tell me how it is

Aww...faked Apollo moon landing? GTFO. Wish I'd read the actual description before I wasted several minutes on that.

But the real doc sounds intersting! I just finished reading the book for the first time and I was struck by how vastly different it was from the film.

no way faked apollo moon landing makes it so much better. the scene w/ danny + the sweater is amazing

speaking srsly, whatever it really "means," the scene where danny stands up with the rocket on his sweater is really tremendous and the narrator is clearly a very clever reader + watcher of films (even if he also lol believes the moon landing was faked)

i dont really know why, but The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut really seem closely linked to me. perhaps the claustrophobia, "all the best people" (such an amazing and evocative phrase used to such chilling effect), the hallways and doors and people just saying banal things loaded with such import--"this is totally meaningful and important and you need to pay attention but nah it's just what it's pretending to be..."

Two of my favorite movies.

totally cosign re "all the best people"

Room 237 showing in Brooklyn Friday night.

http://www.bam.org/film/2012/room-237

Oh! Did I forget to say that I saw this? I saw this. It was entertaining. Footage was fun, interviews were enlightening, will never look at baking soda the same way.