The Shining

Yeah that is the best. Totally amazing scene.

The "this conversation can serve no purpose anymore" is probably one of the most chilling lines ever for me because it's like he retreats into this realm of pure logic--beyond the reach of any emotional appeal or suffering.

for awhile i was convinced voice of HAL was also voice of KITT.

xp yeah and then as soon as he's existentially threatened the disconnected unconcern is replaced w bargaining like a psychopath: "i know i've made some very poor decisions recently. but i can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal."

Yeah it's a brilliant reversal--these beseechings and denials of communication.

people complain about stiff performance from human actors in 2001, but keir dullea really brought it in the confrontation scene.

Amazing Kubrick could pull all this together while faking the moon landing!

the advent of CG set moon landing-faking technology back 50 jar-jars.

Ppl complaining about stiff acting in 2001 are engaging in epic point-missing.

the scene where hal kills the scientists is p hard to watch too. just the timing of the cuts to his eye. and the way the "central nerv. system" graph starts to freak out in the last few seconds, once everything else has flatlined.

I totally didn't believe those apes hated those other apes

xp

Personal preference, but wooden acting almost always makes a difference for me--horror film, art film, 2001. Which is not a knock on Dullea; I think he's fine. I do find William Sylvester a little wooden.

was he heywood floyd? my problem with heywood was he just comported himself in such a way that screamed 1960s. he'd be great on madmen.

also gary lockwood's parents were like out of some betty crocker commercial.

Yeah, Heywood Floyd. Did you mean 1950s? He seems about 10 years out of date to me. Anyway, HAL more than makes up for merely adequate performances elsewhere.

But the acting is supposed to be wooden! Like, it's almost as if the people are supposed to be robotic, and the computer is supposed to be human!

That's a reasonable argument. Sometimes even when I know the filmmaker achieved exactly what he/she set out to do, it still doesn't work for me on a personal level.

yeah the way heywood talks is very 50s, but his mannerisms are like james bond managing the beatles.

re: wooden -- the acting's not very wooden at all! they're just not overacting. but you can tell dave is majorly pissed and frightened at the end.

wooden acting is more like liam neeson absolutely not giving a shit all through phantom menace.

i like when hal says GOOD MORNING, GENTLEMEN and dave who's been in this state of totally anxious horror while committing the second and actually more gruesome act of human violence in the movie snaps his eyes up like WTF

yeah that's a great bit of misdirection

kubrick definitely knew how to get what he wanted out of actors -- he just wanted such weird things. the languid underacting in 2001 makes for a bizarre contrast with ACO, where everyone's running around making gargoyle faces.

Maybe "wooden"'s the wrong word for why I don't like Sylvester; it's that he just seems like an actor reading lines, putting little inflections here and there that are supposed to sound casual but just sound fussy to me. With Dullea, no--I don't feel like I'm watching an actor, but rather exactly the character he's supposed to be.

It's one performance. I could name many great ones in other Kubrick films: Hayden in The Killing, a few in Paths of Glory, Mason in Lolita, etc.

everyone in strangelove's amazing -- weird to think that for a while kubrick wanted sellers to play everyone, including slim pickens.

scott in strangelove is like once-in-a-century good.

had to keep being pushed further over the top, apparently. like nicholson.

What's the best female performance in a Kubrick film? It comes down to Lyon, Winters, Duvall, Kidman...and maybe Berenson. Winters for laughs, otherwise I'd split on Duvall (love her when she's terrified) and Kidman.

Actually, Marie Winsor's great in The Killing.

duvall should get some kind of special endurance award.

i feel like it's her and not jack who makes things like the bat scene insanely upsetting and scary instead of just loljack.

lyon is actually really great in lolita -- it cracks me up when she smirks at her mom with humbert and goes 'ha-cha-cha!'

The staircase scene is Duvall's greatest, I think--just about the best portrayal of complete helplessness and disorientation I can think of in a horror film.

i'm VERY confused!

Do you all think Kubrick cast Cruise and Kidman for the leads in EWS because of their total lack of (ahem) chemistry?

It's Kidman but you guys making a great case for Duval

He was a big fan of Risky Business; Kidman, I don't know, just part of the package.

The Shining is on BBC America right now, btw. With loads of commercials, but still.

Push -> shove, I'm saying Kidman. But George C. "quicker than you can say ... BLAST OFF" Scott, Peter Sellers (Lolita), and the Shelleys Winters and Duvall are also way up there.

You're not supposed to like Heywood Floyd. He's the villan.

I;m off the webs for 36 hrs and look what I come back to.

Calling the first half of Barry Lyndon "triumphant" is just weird.

the dumbest, most laffable theorist in room 237 thinks barry lyndon was boring.

His more central point is that he thinks SK was bored, which I can't imagine.

I don't remember anything about the Kubrick Archives book, sd!

http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/film/all/00301/facts.the_stanley_kubrick_archives.htm

man did i identify w jack this time ( :/ ), what w all those dumb questions wendy keeps asking him about his writing. "any ideas yet?" FUCK OFF

YOU'RE DISTRACTING ME

watched the vivian kubrick doc afterwards for the first time in years. "this is how i saw boris karloff mark his lines, and i've copied it ever since. then when i read it I BECOME A FUCKING MONSTER!"

and then all the duvall/kubrick stuff is so uncomfortable. "you've got to look desperate, shelly. you're just wasting everybody's time."

Calling the first half of Barry Lyndon "triumphant" is just weird.

how so? i mean, barry has escaped the army and is a free man, and is about to seduce himself into the aristocracy - it's certainly all downhill for him from there

I take Barry Lyndon as a comedy. I mean the first line is 'There's no doubt that he would've made an eminent figure in his profession...' *gun goes off / one guy falls down '... had he not been killed in a duel.'

The narrator is just throwing out zingers. When Barry sleeps with the farm girl, the narrator refers to her as a castle that has been stormed many times before.

Or like, after intermission, the title card reads something like 'The fall and undoing of Barry Lyndon' *smash cut to wedding*

It's my favourite Kubrick film.

I read the first 50 pages of Thackeray once, the tone is more broadly comic, almost like Tom Jones.

There's never any doubt that Barry is fortune's fool in the long run.

Duvall's isn't even the best performance by a Shelley in a Kubrick film.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8yzgnSQC21r2aoj8o2_1280.jpg

Now THOSE two woulda been a great Jack & Wendy.

Sure ... if you wanted to sabotage everything from the get-go.

well, there are those of us who think that's what the film as is does.

It sabotages Stephen King's The Shining. What you're proposing would sabotage Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

ok with me

My point entirely. In the meantime, I'm going to retroactively recast Edith Massey in every screwball comedy ever made.