The Shining

Oh man I'd love to see early 80s Keaton in that part

right? i think he would have been perfect

iirc king was angry about the nicholson casting as it made the transition from all work to no play sorta meaningless; you knew he was apeshit immediately

yeah exactly

Yeah I think that’s one criticism where you can really see where he’s coming from

I’m not at all a stan of the film but in general tho I think the changes are improvements, or at least make for a better movie - hedge maze better than topiary, ending way better (lol I think it’s in danse macabre where king is like “I had a cool explosion at the end but in the film he just freezes to death, how lame is that” which is like ok sure Steve), axe probably a bit better than roque mallet but they’re about the same really (but I do like to think Reiner was trolling king’s whininess years later when king actually did write a scary axe attack and Reiner changed it… to a mallet)

& just the weird little touches like the different names for Grady give it such this uncanny vibe

That 90s version is truly fucking dogshit, maybe king’s worst screenplay which is saying something, if he & garris were trying to make a case for a faithful adaptation… case dismissed

king was angry about the nicholson casting as it made the transition from all work to no play sorta meaningless

this must be why they want hard in the other direction for the TV miniseries by casting the funny guy from Wings

it was supposed to be Tim Daly but he couldn’t do it so he suggested Weber

Good post, VG. I always ranked The Shining as my favorite King novel and so much of my appreciation of it stemmed from how richly drawn and heartbreaking Jack’s journey is.

Movie rules too, it’s just a different thing entirely. And as stated, I always kinda got why King didn’t like it. All that shading (and a lot of it possibly personal for King) almost entirely excised.

https://i.imgur.com/JKv1jF9.png

*vomits*

One of the worst movie posters of all time

What a rich film and story…and this is what they go with. I guess the 2001 baby connection is a thing? W/e

you're crazy, that poster is great.

I love both the novel (for many of the reasons that VG elucidated above) and the film, but that's because the novel showcases King's strengths and the film showcases Kubrick's. Obvious, yes, but that's what it is.

http://polishpostershop.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/z/e/zebrowski-poster02861.jpg

jesus

also i think i realized the guy getting blown by the man in the bear suit is maybe supposed to be Horace Derwent & the bear suit guy is the dog suit guy from the book?

is how i break it down to an extent

You have to assume (another good adaptation if so)

also i fucking love the scrapbook device in the novel as a way of exploring the hotel’s backstory, & the means by which the hotel entity really can get its hooks into him

https://i.imgur.com/9fnTPaE.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/TE3pExD.jpg

I thought Alex Garland's Men had a Shining feel to it at times.

Jesus, just when I thought the Rough Trade compendium (which I got for Xmas and love) would be the last word on spendy, over-reaching art books exploring this movie, along comes Taschen with a $1,500 three-volume slab:

https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/film/all/66983/facts.stanley_kubricks_the_shining.htm

Yeah. Fuck off with that, Taschen.

A book shouldn't cost more than a couch, really

A coffee table book shouldn't cost a month's rent, people will buy it though.

It's plausible that they release a regular-edition that's only the cost of two bottles of Dom, as they did with the Tati set

Da fuq
Will torrent the shit out of that

I guess I can get behind Taschen fleecing moneyed dorks and douchebags to fund their high quality/low cost line, but yeah, hope some reasonable soul PDF’s it.

Also I love The Shining, but the kinda white glove treatment it’s gotten in recent years is still somewhat lol to me.

same tbh. it's a good film! why it's everybody's accessible HIGH CINEMA puzzlebox seems more a function of nostalgia than anything else.

this comes with a "box of ephemera" at least, which is difficult to torrent.

The bar for high cinema ain't too high of late (not a dig at The Shining; very much a dig at low cinema c. 2023)

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/stanley-kubrick-shining-taschen-book-lee-unkrich-1235556874/

Only $1500

Saw some other article that confirmed there will be a cheap version produced sometime in the future. Because what my bookshelf needs is a fifth book devoted to the film.

(And no versions of the novel.)

any chapters about the phooey moon landing conspiracy I wonder - the truth is out there

Pretty cool and fairly persuasive thread here

[Thread] I’ve noticed something odd happening in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. True, there’s plenty of odd things going on in The Shining, but this is really weird.

🧵 1/50 pic.twitter.com/TWcgiDruaP

— Filippo Ulivieri (@nessuno2001) May 31, 2023

1/50

I can't

lol I know but you kind of have to see all the instances of the thing he's talking about to think it's more than a couple of odd moments.

I think I had kind of noticed that before, I’m not sure if it’s Kubrick’s request or Nicholson’s schtick, but for me it acts like a subliminal “amirite?” or “well what do you think we’re gonna do now?”

I can see it I guess but who cares, this is not a big deal

The only one I remember noticing as being out of the ordinary (i.e. he's not looking at Lloyd in the Gold Room) is the one when he's storming out of the room after telling Wendy he's not letting her fuck up his life anymore

god what an insufferable dork

Interesting; I think it works as a particularly filmic subliminal indicator that the character is weird, estranged from his surroundings, and does things both the other characters in the film and "normal" characters from other films don't do.

I appreciate the discussions above re: the casting of Nicholson and the difficulty of accepting him as "normal" at the outset. Even in the scene in the car on the way up, he radiates menace. Michael Keaton would have been good for that part, but probably equally unbelievable as descending into madness. It's hard to think of anyone who would have filled this role perfectly.

I still think this was one of Nicholson's best performances, if not the best.

That thread could've been 20 posts. Please post less content.

otm. that's the insufferable part. it's fine to notice details or to want to talk about movies on the internet

That thread could've been 20 posts. Please post less content.

It's hard to think of anyone who would have filled this role perfectly.

the answer to this in most contexts is michael shannon

-1

Interesting; I think it works as a particularly filmic subliminal indicator that the character is weird, estranged from his surroundings, and does things both the other characters in the film and "normal" characters from other films don't do.

― Halfway there but for you, Thursday, 1 June 2023 21:42

Could this be Rob Ager? His ‘subliminal’ analyses of both The Shining and Full Metal Jacket dig up a lot of hidden meaning in Kubrick’s work, well beyond the typical Room 237 speculation.

He’s “Collative Learning” on YouTube. Sadly he’s taken the majority of his most thorough analysis videos to his private website but there’s quite a bit of incidental work left in public. He deals a lot with the other disconcerting aspects of this film such as the impossible set design:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sUIxXCCFWw