The Shining

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

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2ej2bAgWj1qb86b1o1_1280.jpg
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2ej10C1uu1qb86b1o1_1280.jpg

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.

Oh man I really want to see this but I'm not going to travel up to NY for a showing. Maybe they'll bring it to Philly?

IFC Films is releasing (next year?), I'm sure it will play all the big cities.

So, not Cleveland.

Here's hoping for a future Netflix availability, unless one of y'all wants to cameraphone it for me.

I expect this to win plurality of crix awards' doc citations this year.

i still can't understand why they don't rush broad release of small films like this. i get something like Avatar, which benefits from being scene in 3D in an IMAX screen and is expected to make a fortune on screens, you don't want to rush to release on DVD/online. but a tiny doc w/ very limited niche appeal like this they should just sell on their website ASAP. not 2 years later.

Usually 'social significance' trumps cinemania, so I have my doubts. And the IFC page sez 2013. xp

Guessing they're avoiding the awards-bait crush and you'll see this around March.

Maybe not a good idea to sell what is basically a re-edited version of The Shining with narration on top of it. I imagine web critics get lots of copyright notices for things like 1-second long Back to the Future clips, let alone 30-45 full minutes of movie footage.

The superimposed image part was probably my favorite now that I think about it.

Usually 'social significance' trumps cinemania, so I have my doubts. And the IFC page sez 2013. xp

Don't NY crix use NYFF showings for eligibility? A lot of other groups just follow in lockstep after that.

Nope. Has to have a run of a week, I think. The NY Times doesn't even run actual reviews of NYFF films anymore til they open commercially.

R237 opens in the UK this Friday, apparently.