3) it's almost too lame to point out, and im sure it's noted many times before, but it finaly hit me that "dull boy" vs. shining and danny's "talent" play off of Jack's own artistic insecurities.
ha see this had never occurred to me but yup
the dumb obvious thing that i appreciated last time (after reading about it, too) was how it's never dark in this horror movie. even at the end in the maze at night it's floodlights-on-snow which just looks like evil daylight. i think "redrum"'s the only scene where the lights are off.
― difficult listening hour, Sunday, 2 December 2012 14:13 (eleven years ago) link
I recently re-read the novel in anticipation of King's upcoming sequel, and the conventional wisdom about "novel Jack" vs. "movie Jack" is way off. Even on the page, King's Jack Torrance is a dude so on the edge and full of rage that he mocked a debate team student to his face about stuttering, then beat him half to death in the parking lot when he caught the kid slashing his tires. And that's *after* breaking Danny's arm and sobering up.
― super perv powder (Phil D.), Sunday, 2 December 2012 14:42 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah, movie Jack is for at least a few scenes shown trying to hold it together. I don't remember novel Jack making that much an effort.
― Bobby Ken Doll (Eric H.), Sunday, 2 December 2012 16:38 (eleven years ago) link
Here's a few of Saul Bass's rough sketches for The Shining poster design. More here
http://www.thefoxisblack.com/blogimages//saul-bass-the-shining-film-poster-2.jpghttp://www.thefoxisblack.com/blogimages//saul-bass-the-shining-film-poster-5.jpg
― Darin, Sunday, 16 December 2012 17:08 (eleven years ago) link
Are they Kubrick's notes on them?
― Alba, Monday, 17 December 2012 00:09 (eleven years ago) link
"Make the logo bigger"
― ledge, Monday, 17 December 2012 00:12 (eleven years ago) link
I think they're Bass's notes. xp
― Darin, Monday, 17 December 2012 02:41 (eleven years ago) link
The Shining is a classic. I wasn't really unnerved by it until after several viewings. Somehow the humor distracted me from the horror. But recently the plain fact that it's about a man going nuts and trying kill his own family - with an axe - hit me hard and I realized that the humor is necessary because without it the horror would be too complete.
I admire Kubrick's decision to go completely against stereotype and cast a (conventionally) unattractive actress in the part of Wendy. In the book Wendy is basically the sexy blonde we'd expect to be terrorized in a horror film. Preferably with plenty of gratuitous cleavage along the way. Not here. I admire Shelley Duvall's performance, I think it's awesome. The look on her face the first time Jack gets angry with her...
― Doctor Flange, Monday, 17 December 2012 04:57 (eleven years ago) link
In a few parts she looks almost exactly like Munch's iconic "The Scream" painting.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Monday, 17 December 2012 05:05 (eleven years ago) link
about that original penultimate scene:
http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/01/shining-time.html
btw I think I went to the same theater Glenn Kenny did on 5/23/80, about 7 hours later.
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Monday, 28 January 2013 18:01 (eleven years ago) link
you really need to see this
http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/room237/
― zero dark (s1ocki), Friday, 8 February 2013 20:44 (eleven years ago) link
This is nice! Though they should have added some miniature furniture floating around...
I really hope this will be available at the German itunes in March as well.
― the europan nikon is here (grauschleier), Tuesday, 12 February 2013 13:35 (eleven years ago) link
per promo email for Room 237
Opens in New York on March 29 at IFC Center and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
National Expansion Begins April 5 in Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Seattle and Miami
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 13 February 2013 19:56 (eleven years ago) link
i saw room 237 tnite. it's very compelling to watch - i was never bored and at times it was as frightening as watching the shining itself. both bc it is scored and edited so well and the scenes are gripping even when slowed down and decontextualized. also bc some of the theories are so outlandish and still so compelling (failing on an intellectual level while eliciting such a kind of interpretative ecstasy) that there's a real sense of insanity + untetheredness.
one thing that a lot of the theories of the film share is that they're about elisions of trauma. i don't remember how much the movie goes into this, but the book is pretty clearly dramatizing the abuse of danny by his father - in this kinda freudian analysis everything emerges from the broken arm incident (or sexual abuse i've heard argued) and the horrific phenomena are a manifestation of this sublimated wound. but other theories make a similar move. the film is about the holocaust, but kubrick can't look it head-on (room 237 notes that he abandoned his own holocaust film after struggling unsuccessfully w/ it), or the film is about the genocide of the native americans that slowly slips back into consciousness (the blood oozing from the sides of the elevator) - but can never be acknowledged directly.
when i first watched lolita i was struck first by how formal it was compared to the other - far more stylized - kubrick films i had seen (at the time the shining, full metal jacket, eyes wide shut). also (and i haven't read the original nabokov so i can't speak to how it compares) that kubrick so intentionally elides the central crime of the film - the 'murder' of charlotte and the ongoing rape of her daughter. instead the most explicit narrative of the film for me was this kind of doubled paranoia. like in the shining these supernatural events emerge from an internal psychological neurosis - in humbert's case the repressed guilt over his actions manifests as his being tracked and stalked throughout their trip together. it's a kind of interesting freudian procedure bc humbert's internal state is so overwhelming, so total and crushing that it eliminates dolores's narrative almost entirely (she becomes this subject/nymphet lolita character) and then actually redraws the contours of reality as well so that everything is humbert and his sado-paranoid psychosis (the strange phone calls, the inspector, etc).
(this is room 237's dominant mode of interpretation i think - this obliteration of subjectivity along the shape of the readers' own psychological topography. these interpretative fantasies are so potent that the shining seems to bend to accommodate them.)
also i don't know if kubrick faked the moon landing and i very much doubt that he did but i am also convinced that the shining is a film about him faking the moon landing. however you can tie those two assertions together idk.
― Mordy, Thursday, 14 February 2013 03:35 (eleven years ago) link
room 237 notes that he abandoned his own holocaust film after struggling unsuccessfully w/ it
This was afterward, I think, The Aryan Papers (Julia Roberts)?
kubrick so intentionally elides the central crime of the film - the 'murder' of charlotte and the ongoing rape of her daughter.
well, 1962 censorship.
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 14 February 2013 03:40 (eleven years ago) link
Johanna ter Steege was cast as the lead ultimately. The installation of her screen tests is one of the highlights of the LACMA exhibit.
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Thursday, 14 February 2013 03:55 (eleven years ago) link
nice post, mordy. I am intensely excited for Room 237.
Regarding "elision of trauma": I've been thinking about that a lot lately and I've been wondering if the rather obtrusive music in the movie isn't in some sense motivated along those line. It's funny how often the most seemingly banal things are imbued by Kubrick with such intense inchoate horror by the score and camera staging.
― ryan, Thursday, 14 February 2013 03:57 (eleven years ago) link
oh yeah i also wanted to mention re doubled paranoia that humbert humbert's name reflects this - this reflected projection of self + doubling, the self in subjective experience and the self silkscreened onto the supposed objective reality. and of course he's a literary scholar.
― Mordy, Thursday, 14 February 2013 04:03 (eleven years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/ZpN6Lda.jpg
― 乒乓, Thursday, 14 February 2013 04:11 (eleven years ago) link
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, February 13, 2013 10:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
not really... that is pretty faithful to the book's aims
― zero dark (s1ocki), Thursday, 14 February 2013 14:50 (eleven years ago) link
http://static.squarespace.com/static/50271a61c4aab6c54f9af5ee/t/51107bb1e4b060f86e759b5f/1360034738849/DSCF4948.jpg?format=1500w
From this blog entry of exhibit photos: Kubrick at LACMA.
― Øystein, Saturday, 16 February 2013 19:10 (eleven years ago) link
but s1ocki, SK subsequently said a filmed Lolita doesnt work w/out eros, which would surely make eliding rape harder, yeah?
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 16 February 2013 20:26 (eleven years ago) link
I don't know if its filmable at all tbh considering how unreliable HH is...
― zero dark (s1ocki), Monday, 18 February 2013 07:44 (eleven years ago) link
http://newkidsonmycock11.tumblr.com/post/43512771318
― andrew m., Saturday, 23 February 2013 04:32 (eleven years ago) link
just realized the link may scare. it's a lolgif.
― andrew m., Saturday, 23 February 2013 05:25 (eleven years ago) link
Just realized that tumblr has a goddamned swastika at the top of it.
― how's life, Saturday, 23 February 2013 11:27 (eleven years ago) link
I just saw the US cut for the first time. The UK version - which is always on tv - cuts out the bit with the doctor at the start which means you have no idea about the abuse incident from a few months earlier. Strangely tho Jack makes a reference to it later in the film which is kept in. Also much of Halloran's journey back to the Overlook is cut so you dont really know he came from Florida.
― you're going home in a crispy ambulance (cajunsunday), Friday, 1 March 2013 12:55 (eleven years ago) link
heh ITV in the UK showed the US version a few times when they screened The Shining on TV in the 1980s
i seem to remember reading, somewhere on the web, that kubrick preferred the European cut - think the best edit wld prob be the Euro version WITH the scene w/ the doctor reinserted (Halloran's journey really slows the movie down in the US cut, think it works fine much shorter in the Euro version)
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 1 March 2013 17:06 (eleven years ago) link
can't imagine the movie without the doctor scene but yeah i guess you could cut halloran's journey, altho it would diminish the sadistic ratio of time spent watching him travel to the hotel : time he survives once at the hotel, and i still think that's a good joke
― a permanent mental health break (difficult listening hour), Friday, 1 March 2013 17:21 (eleven years ago) link
Somewhere on some "Shining" ephemera website I saw a thing with Kubrick's meticulously detailed handwritten timeline of Halloran's travels vs. what was happening at the hotel at the same time, to make sure the timing made logical sense with the travel times and time zone changes. It was hilarious.
― ARE YOU HIRING A NANNY OR A SHAMAN (Phil D.), Friday, 1 March 2013 17:34 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.stephenking.com/images/books/doctor_sleep/doctor_sleep_full.jpg
On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.
Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”
Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.
― ARE YOU HIRING A NANNY OR A SHAMAN (Phil D.), Saturday, 2 March 2013 17:08 (eleven years ago) link
The pic didn't embed, but you can see the cover here: http://www.stephenking.com/promo/doctor_sleep/
thank god because i had so many unanswered questions
― the 'dirty sprite' is implied (forksclovetofu), Saturday, 2 March 2013 19:20 (eleven years ago) link
The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
― the 'dirty sprite' is implied (forksclovetofu), Saturday, 2 March 2013 19:21 (eleven years ago) link
quote marks killing me
― poll that whitey music pfunkboy (darraghmac), Saturday, 2 March 2013 19:29 (eleven years ago) link
he's been on a pretty good run lately so i'm not writing it off just yet. room 237 lived up to the hype btw, total trip.
― balls, Saturday, 2 March 2013 19:38 (eleven years ago) link
"Aided by a prescient cat" has me side-eyeing this whole deal just a little bit.
― ARE YOU HIRING A NANNY OR A SHAMAN (Phil D.), Saturday, 2 March 2013 20:34 (eleven years ago) link
They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester
― the 'dirty sprite' is implied (forksclovetofu), Saturday, 2 March 2013 20:42 (eleven years ago) link
The prescient cat?
― tokyo rosemary, Monday, 4 March 2013 15:02 (eleven years ago) link
― ARE YOU HIRING A NANNY OR A SHAMAN (Phil D.), Saturday, March 2, 2013 3:34 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
that was the thing that excited me the most!
― zero dark (s1ocki), Tuesday, 5 March 2013 01:19 (eleven years ago) link
Room 237 is a terrific watch. It reminded me, in a funny way, of the Rotten Apple youtube series "demonstrating" the Pal McCan'tBe conspiracy. It's an insight into a tangled thought process that makes some kind of internal sense but is utterly improbable.
― give me back my 200 dollars (NotEnough), Friday, 8 March 2013 09:13 (eleven years ago) link
nice Atkinson piece (R237 opens in NY Friday, LA too?):
http://blog.sundancenow.com/new-releases/viva-mabuse-30-bash-your-head-right-fucking-in
― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 March 2013 03:10 (eleven years ago) link
opens in LA on the 5th
― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Monday, 25 March 2013 06:35 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/128033/kubricks-lost-holocaust-filmhttp://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/127899/kubrick-room-237
― Mordy, Friday, 29 March 2013 04:11 (eleven years ago) link
i wanna go see room 237 sometime.
― i guess i'd just rather listen to canned heat? (ian), Friday, 29 March 2013 04:19 (eleven years ago) link
Seeing it today
― Look, Brian, about the afro wig... (forksclovetofu), Friday, 29 March 2013 15:17 (eleven years ago) link
Just saw Cuckoo's Nest today and was happy to see Scatman Crothers
― calstars, Saturday, 30 March 2013 22:10 (eleven years ago) link
lol, 237 is hystericalsuch a good call not to show the conspiracy theorists
― Look, Brian, about the afro wig... (forksclovetofu), Saturday, 30 March 2013 23:01 (eleven years ago) link
predictably, I loved Room 237. Just a lot of fun. I could have watched it forever.
Loved how moments of really penetrating insight are juxtaposed to the most extravagant reaching. Thought the guy who talked about the "pastness" and escaping from the horrors of history was really persuasive and even makes the film kind of moving. It's jives with what I've felt about it, anyway.
Loved the bit about the carpet. Never noticed it before and totally captivated by that idea. Also buy that many of the continuity errors are so obvious that they seem deliberate. I mean, a whole chair missing? Pants changing?
The main point against the Apollo guy isn't so much anything he says but his own paranoia and just how improbable and crazy what he's saying sounds.
― ryan, Sunday, 31 March 2013 02:52 (eleven years ago) link