The Shining

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.

You know, to make them actually funny.

we gotta get our Sunshine Boys revival on the boards!

More like the menopause episode of All in the Family.

First half of Barry Lyndon is kind of triumphant for Redmond Barry, in that he's at his peak, but he got there by being a delusional nut with no self-awareness. He'd really have been most triumphant if he'd never gone to war and was just back home screwing his cousin.

How is there even a question of 'most-quoted' when you have the film that gave us "Heeere's Johnny!"

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

The narrator does note that Barry has finally found himself "at the pitch of prosperity"...

because all the other quotes are also part of the culture in similar ways xpost

this one always seemed pretty big too:

Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. You didn't let me finish my sentence. I said, I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in.

also this line has a lot of resonance with dlh's reading above: "Do you have the slightest idea what a moral and ethical principle is? Do you?"

Um...

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbn7vkqJSU1rv24bmo1_400.jpg

haha this entire rant is great:

"Have you ever had a SINGLE MOMENT'S THOUGHT about my responsibilities? Have you ever thought, for a single solitary moment about my responsibilities to my employers? Has it ever occurred to you that I have agreed to look after the OVERLOOK Hotel until May the FIRST. Does it MATTER TO YOU AT ALL that the OWNERS have placed their COMPLETE CONFIDENCE and TRUST in me, and that I have signed a letter of agreement, a CONTRACT, in which I have accepted that RESPONSIBILITY? Do you have the SLIGHTEST IDEA, what a MORAL AND ETHICAL PRINCIPLE IS, DO YOU? Has it ever occurred to you what would happen to my future, if I were to fail to live up to my responsibilities? Has it ever occurred to you? HAS IT?"

A CON-TRACT!

psychosis of salaryman

How is there even a question of 'most-quoted' when you have the film that gave us "Heeere's Johnny!"

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, November 1, 2012 11:09 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kind of think "Heeeere's Johnny!" existed before The Shining, can't put my finger on it

im actually curious though, was it a "thing" to use it as a joke like that before The Shining?

heh but does anybody say it since the shining who is not being jack nicholson xp

yeah if "singing in the rain" was cited for ACW that one pretty clearly belongs to nicholson.

ACO i mean.

"a CON-tract!" was one of the lines i could not resist saying along w the movie last night (along w "when i am really IN to my work!!!" and the head-slap on "you're disTRACting me"). fortunately for everyone else they were asleep by then. i'm gonna have to rethink my social circle.

still never been sure if i like this movie. it sort of flips between ridiculous and alienating without ever being cathartic, which is a fine thing to aim for, i guess, but i don't know if i like the ways it got there

similar dynamic to lovecraft maybe

May a homicidal husband hack a hole in your home with a hatchet.

hmm i find it a bit cathartic because (and this may be idiosyncratic) I think we are meant to empathize (not necessarily sympathize) with Jack's situation; his anxieties, what dlh called "his capacity for violence" and grappling with guilt. I mean, he's evil (or possessed by evil) but i dont think that's actually intended to distance or de-humanize him. I think that's why people kinda get a kick out of his toying with poor Wendy, that power and bullying. and then of course he's utterly inept (as an artist and even a murdered) and incapable of really following thru on his most dastardly plans. there's some pathos there, especially in that final shot of him (a sort of literal repeat of the end of BL).

though may that doesn't speak well of me if i dont find it alienating! what's that questionable chris rock bit? "I don't agree, but i understand."

How is there even a question of 'most-quoted' when you have the film that gave us "Heeere's Johnny!"

Hans & Franz from mid-period boring SNL were widely quoted too

pales before several dozen Strangelove lines

Kubrick shoulda left Duvall alone and blamed himself for the casting. Between her personal style/iconography and the way the character's written, Wendy comes off as kind of an idiot.

well um yeah! jack's smarter than her by just enough to hate her for it. but she swings the bat true when it counts.

Morbius: I'm sure you've expanded on this elsewhere, but I gather your beef is principally with the casting?

+ he hates horror

and yeah like i said upthread i find jack super relatable, especially when he's trying to write and wendy keeps asking kind but infuriating questions. actually think one of the themes of the movie, kind of, is the danger/self-deception of not finding jack relatable.