Topic: The Shining

Brian was mid-beard for this. So it's kind of pretentious but not really.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: The Shining

(it's a bit exciting)

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Re: The Shining

It was a roque mallet in the novel. Just a nitpick. When we did our stage version of The Shining last year, the character of Steven King was narrating and complained that any idiot can pick up an axe, and he was a genius for researching roque. Haha.

We did the whole show for laughs. In addition to playing the bartender, they slipped a giant foam costume over my head so I could stand behind the woman playing Danny and play Tony the giant finger. Imagine that.

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Yeah, doing the show made me want to re-read the novel and I felt like an asshole when I got there and realized I'd misremembered.

The hedge animals, by the way, could totally work cinematically and be terrifying if they were done like in the novel, where they don't move when you're looking and the camera keeps cutting back to them in different, ever approaching positions. Unfortunately, as I recall, the miniseries went the route of "They don't move when the characters are looking, but the camera doesn't count," so you get shots of CG hedge lions stalking around when the characters' backs are turned.

(As I recall. We've just established that I fuck that up sometimes, so I guess check it out for yourself if you can find it.)

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Re: The Shining

Anyone have any thoughts on color temperature in this movie?  We're on the boarder of Cause Kubrick is a Genius film school reading, but there are numerous shots where he moves us through incandescent, fluorescent and daylight.  I'm almost 100% sure that they're different temps and not gels.

There are shots that, specifically for scenes moving in and out of the Colorado room, make me feel ill.  Intentional or not would you say?

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Re: The Shining

Dorkman wrote:

The hedge animals, by the way, could totally work cinematically and be terrifying if they were done like in the novel, where they don't move when you're looking and the camera keeps cutting back to them in different, ever approaching positions. Unfortunately, as I recall, the miniseries went the route of "They don't move when the characters are looking, but the camera doesn't count," so you get shots of CG hedge lions stalking around when the characters' backs are turned.

I don't remember if someone said it in the episode, but Doctor Who gets that right with the Weeping Angels. Very creepy, very effective.

Even creepier, part of the mythology is that the Angels are like Boggarts. No one's ever seen them as they really are, so no one knows what they really look like. It lets the imagination run wild.

Except when they did that episode where you saw them moving, enhanced with CGI. But we can just forget that bit.

iJim wrote:

There are shots that, specifically for scenes moving in and out of the Colorado room, make me feel ill. Intentional or not would you say?

I'm never one to jump to, "It's totally because the director was a genius!" but I do think that Kubrick put thought into that sort of thing. Especially if it made you feel ill.

Last edited by Doctor Submarine (2011-10-18 22:36:36)

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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Re: The Shining

I'm more inclined to think that he did that because if they were in a real location, the hotel lights would be tungsten and the light coming in from the windows would be daylight, so he had the lights in the hotel area be tungsten and the lights coming in from the windows be daylight so that it felt like moving through a real location and not a set.

I'll go so far as to grant that this could very well have been a deliberate choice to make the movie more creepy in the sense that making the hotel feel like a real place in the real world makes the horror more relatable and more effective. But I'm not willing to go so far as to think there's some "using the subliminal discomfort of non-complementary color palattes" senior thesis type justification behind it. That tastes like Kool-Aid to me.

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I'm assuming you guys were watching the same full frame version I was. If so, the helicopter shadow in the opening would have been matted out for the wide screen theatrical version so was most likely a "fuck TV" error more then anything else.
Also... no Hong Kong Phooey references? There's no way Scatman Crothers should have gone down that easily with his mad fighting skills!

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

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Re: The Shining

I have to say, the best Stephen King adaptations (Carrie, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Misery) are the ones King himself was not involved with. The made-for-TV adaptations by Mick Garris and King bores me to tears. The Stand is the worst... six hours of my life that I'll never get back. The best made-for-TV adaptation is Salem's Lot, well directed by Tobe Hooper who made cinema for television in this case. Oh yeah, and "It" is pretty decent.

Kubrick did horror pretty well. I read that Kubrick was offered to direct The Exorcist. Boy, I wonder how that would have played out...

Re: The Shining

King understands his own work, but his problem is that he never bothers to make tweaks to it for cinematic purposes. Just look at The Stand, which is very slow and very boring. King is too attached to his material to make those important cuts.

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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WTF, I wrote a long post in tihs thread and it's gone? sad

/Z

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No, you wrote a long post in the entirely wrong thread.

wink

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: The Shining

so the Forum is turning into the Overlook, posts are getting lost.
with a discontinuity of a thread...

wink   

smile

Last edited by Snail (2011-10-28 03:32:54)

"Life is about movies; anything else is a bonus!"- Me   cool

Re: The Shining

Holden's a genius.

Re: The Shining

http://www.downinfront.net/images/genius.jpg

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: The Shining

Oh that HAS to be an icon.

Eddie Doty

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The two parallel lines on the left side wall being indicated as at a right angle to each other breaks my brain.

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Re: The Shining

RIGHT?

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: The Shining

Eddie wrote:

Oh that HAS to be an icon.

YES!

LOVE IT!
big_smile

"Life is about movies; anything else is a bonus!"- Me   cool

Re: The Shining

Gentlemen, I believe we've found the Director's trademark. Genius.
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c91/FixedR6/genius.jpg

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Re: The Shining

But what if it was a Rom Com?

Extended Edition - 146 - The Rise Of Skywalker
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Re: The Shining

Re: The Shining

Can I make a confession that I've never read a Stephen King novel? I confess.

I also just watched this film for the first time last year (for Kubrick not King) and really liked it, but I don't really need to see it again. I'm only doing that now (bit of a break as I type) for this commentary, which is great btw.

They should make a rum called "murdeR" :P

And really I'm posting now to point out the Doctor Who Weeping Angels thing, but someone beat me to it. :)

David Lynch (not a huge fan), to be somewhat fair, directed The Straight t Story. He doesn't always have to be weird. And Twin Peaks, though weird, was pretty fucking cool.

Oh and loved the conspiracy rants, death to post-modernism :)

Last edited by Mr. Pointy (2011-10-31 07:53:24)

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Re: The Shining

Mr. Pointy wrote:

Can I make a confession that I've never read a Stephen King novel? I confess.


You're not alone, I've never read a King novel either, I have read a couple of his short stories but none of his novels.

Last edited by Jimmy B (2011-11-01 12:10:37)

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Re: The Shining

I came to King late, partly thanks to picking bad examples for my first exposure. I tried the novel Tommyknockers, and bailed after one or two hundred pages. Next I got some audio versions of both King and Lovecraft short stories. Unfortunately, after a great reading of The Rats in the Walls I tried the King story which turned out to be a remake of that tale. So much for King smile

It wasn't until The Drawing of the Three came out that I gave him another chance. There was a great review of The Gunslinger in a magazine, so I picked up the audio version read by King to listen to on a trip. Ended up finishing it before I even left, so went out and bought the tapes of him reading the second book and I've been a fan ever since. Not everything is good, but when he's on, he's on. Bag of Bones is excellent, especially read by King.

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

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