Kubrick

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Re: Kubrick

Postby One Dog Watching » Fri Dec 31, 2010 2:14 pm

Hey Sweejak, thanks for the image. I'm 100% certain that there's a sound effect for this thing. Try watching the scene and looking away and just listening to that part. It's there. Personally, I think this little magical event that you can see (kinda not see) is meant to heighten the dramatic effect of the sex session that supposedly ensues. If you notice, it's the only time Dr. Bill is sexually assertive. Personally, I think that this isn't Dr. Bill that we're seeing kissing Alice. It's the physical embodiment of Alice's desires. She wants a man that looks like Dr. Bill but seduces her like Sandor Szavost.

The sudden flashing of whatever this is initially caught my eye after remembering the strange "eye" that you can see flash across Dr. Bill's back when he returns home from the orgy party. He comes into his apartment, locks the door and starts to walk away with his back to the camera. When his back is to the camera, you can see what looks to be an eye projected, very subtly, across his back. I first heard about this "flashing eye" on Binnal of America, years back. I can't remember the guy's name, but a conspiracy theorist interviewed on this show spotted this and was the first to point it out, to my knowledge.

Upon closer inspection though...the "eye" isn't an eye...it's a lamp. It's the lamp that is directly on the other side of Dr. Bill. I'm not sure what this means, but my personal interpretation is that Dr. Bill is "transparent" after having to reveal himself to the people at the orgy. He has NO power due to his "nakedness". You can literally SEE THROUGH him....which is also why he can't fuck his wife...or any other woman in the film.

I mention this not to prove anything conspiratorial or sinister about the film or about Kubrick, only to illustrate the fact that he DID actually insert subliminal elements that can be detected with the naked eye, just not easily. He even did this with the actors and extras themselves.
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Re: Kubrick

Postby Sweejak » Fri Dec 31, 2010 3:45 pm

Yes the sound effect is there, but it's not really a sound effect in the strict sense because the kettle drum(?) boom is in the original song. I don't know what to make of it, but Dr. Bill is ineffective at everything he does, his medical skills are never ever evident, lifting a leg, nodding knowingly, feeling a little kids lymph nodes and with the Mandy OD he does nothing but say "look at me, look at me Mandy, good....good."

This probably Kubrick's most color saturated film, watching the backgrounds is like being at a carnival. Here's an interesting bit, the red and green strips on the eye chart. I don't think I've ever seen that but maybe they use if for checking color blindness.
Image

Also this, it may have been pointed out before:
Image
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Re: Kubrick

Postby Sweejak » Fri Dec 31, 2010 5:34 pm

As to eye charts, standard issue as far as the colored bars go:
Snellen eye chart, color bars

http://tinyurl.com/32s44kz
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Re: Kubrick

Postby Sweejak » Mon Jan 03, 2011 1:25 am

ImageShack lost the second image and it's too late to edit, so here it is.

Image

Also, some more analysis, maybe it's been posted already. Scroll down to around Aug- July 2009
http://www.idyllopuspress.com/meanwhile ... ma/page/2/
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Re: Kubrick

Postby Metric Pringle » Tue Jan 04, 2011 1:06 pm

Sweejak wrote:Image



Sarah Palin anyone?
““The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.”k.” - Charles Bukowski

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"Paths of Glory"

Postby MinM » Sat Apr 02, 2011 11:56 am

Image
A Great Film's Sadly Timeless Message
MASTERPIECE APRIL 2, 2011

By DAVID MERMELSTEIN

When Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" opened in American theaters in late December 1957, more than four years had passed since U.S. troops had fought on the Korean peninsula. And it would be several more years before the conflict in Vietnam escalated into a real war for this country. So perhaps it was bad timing that initially kept audiences from flocking to see one of the greatest war films ever made.

Since then, popular feeling has caught up with critical regard, and Mr. Kubrick's picture—based on a 1935 novel by Humphrey Cobb—has attained a status commensurate with its meticulous craftsmanship and sadly timeless message. Though book and movie vary considerably, both were inspired by a real-life miscarriage of justice in the French army during World War I. In Mr. Cobb's fictionalized version, which Mr. Kubrick necessarily streamlined for the film, three enlisted men are executed by firing squad on trumped-up charges of cowardice in order to cover up their superiors' misguided attempt to take an impregnable fortress.

The film's title, like the novel's, comes from a well-known line by the English poet Thomas Gray: "The paths of glory lead but to the grave." And partly because of that, an antiwar label more suited to the book has attached itself to the movie. The film is indeed pointed, but its contempt is directed not at war per se—as was the case in Lewis Milestone's still-magnificent "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930)—but rather at the manner in which war is conducted. For the movie is fundamentally an attack on bureaucracy and its attendant rigidity, hypocrisy and cumulative ineffectiveness.

If that sounds dull or, worse, didactic, rest assured that in the hands of Mr. Kubrick and company it is no such thing. The picture is visually alluring from the start. Much of the early action takes place in the trenches, evoked with unsettling accuracy by the film's art director, Ludwig Reiber, and fully revealed in two audacious tracking shots by its cinematographer, George Krause. And not enough can be said about the lucidity and taut excitement of the movie's one battle scene, the failed attack that initiates the disgraceful acts from which this picture draws its dark power.

But the film's most unnerving moments play out in the sumptuous chateau that serves as headquarters for Gen. Paul Mireau, the movie's principal villain, modeled on a similar character named Assolant in the book. Here, far from the muck of the trenches, the film's most disturbing images unfold, as high-ranking officers calmly plot the basest turpitude.

Realizing that any film treatment of Mr. Cobb's book needed a moral center, the film's co-writers—Mr. Kubrick, Jim Thompson and Calder Willingham—chose Col. Dax, who is both less noble and less central in the novel. Mr. Kubrick wanted Kirk Douglas for the part, and the actor, then in his heroic prime, brought with him not just his trademark indignation, but also the star status necessary for the project's financing.

Mr. Douglas, to be sure, has some excellent moments defending the doomed soldiers against an indifferent panel of military judges, even as there is never any hope they will be spared. And those playing the condemned men—Ralph Meeker is the most famous—also do fine work, as do several others playing various low-level officers and enlisted men. But the script's best and, paradoxically, funniest lines go to the two men who symbolize the hierarchy's decrepitude: Gens. Mireau and Broulard, portrayed with chilling effectiveness by the screen veterans George Macready and Adolphe Menjou.

Mr. Macready, a noted Shakespearean with a fearsome scar across his right cheek, had been in pictures since World War II; Mr. Menjou, one of Hollywood's most durable supporting players, since the silents. Together they make a singular Mutt-and-Jeff act, with Mr. Menjou's avuncular and cool Broulard outranking—and ultimately outflanking—Mr. Macready's Mireau, an amoral martinet who cares for nothing but his own advancement. More than anything else in this film, their verbal jousts, at once entertaining and repugnant, reveal the indifference of those in charge toward those they command.

Much has been made of the film's last scene, in which a young German girl (Susanne Christian, later the director's wife) is thrust before a tavern full of rowdy French soldiers and forced to sing. The episode does not appear in Mr. Cobb's novel. But Mr. Kubrick makes the coda work—with Mr. Krause's camera locking onto a host of careworn faces as beasts transform into men while listening to the girl's halting version of a sentimental ballad. The message is unmistakable: Gens. Mireau and Broulard may be unredeemable, but ordinary soldiers, even after the brutality of the trenches, can be human again.

An ability to pivot drastically without strain—to go from black comedy to heart-rending affirmation—was one of Mr. Kubrick's great gifts as a filmmaker. "Paths of Glory" finds him having just refined this skill, along with other emblems of his signature style. And for that alone the movie remains important. But the picture's enduring appeal comes from its unflinching application of Lord Acton's famous warning that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Here—in the midst of war, when the stakes are at their highest—Mr. Kubrick illustrates the consequences of unchecked ambition and mass complacency.

That Mr. Kubrick chose to depict the French army—rather than, say, the German or the American—is immaterial. So is the war; the lessons apply to all conflicts. Many expected an end to mass slaughter after World War I. Yet more than 20 years after Mr. Cobb's novel was first published, Mr. Kubrick reminded us that human folly is rarely checked for long. A half-century on, he is still right.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... tyleArtEnt
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Re: Kubrick

Postby barracuda » Fri May 20, 2011 9:50 pm





The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe
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Does Kubrick have dibs on the iPad?

Postby MinM » Wed Aug 24, 2011 6:32 pm

viewtopic.php?p=422562#p422562
Faced with patent-infringement charges from Apple, Samsung claims that the iPad's design dates back to '2001: A Space Odyssey.'
By Kim Peterson on Wed, Aug 24, 2011 4:13 PM

Give Samsung's lawyers points for creative thinking.

The company says it couldn't possibly have stolen Apple's (AAPL) designs for the iPad because Stanley Kubrick was there first. His 1968 movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" showed the design long before Apple was founded, Samsung says.

In a federal court filing this week, Samsung even references a YouTube clip from the movie that shows two astronauts eating and using tablet computers. You can watch the clip here (below).

Samsung says the tablets used by the astronauts are thin and have a rectangular shape, display screen, narrow borders and flat surfaces on the front and back. That's what Apple claims in its patent, the court filing claims.

I don't know, I think Star Trek has a better claim to the first iPad in this 1989 clip. Or maybe the iPad can trace its origins back to this portable device.

Apple sued Samsung earlier this year over the Galaxy line of devices, saying they trample all over Apple's patents. It has asked a judge to stop Samsung from selling the devices, and a U.S. hearing is pending.

Apple's case has gained some footing in Europe, where a court this week stopped Samsung's Dutch subsidiaries from selling three of its smartphones. The court ruled that the smartphones -- all from the Galaxy line -- did indeed violate Apple's patents.

http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post.as ... &GT1=33002


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Re: Kubrick

Postby Bruce Dazzling » Tue Jan 17, 2012 11:25 am

I stumbled across a terrific sight loaded with ridiculous amounts of interesting Kubrick analysis the other day.

It's called The Kubrick Corner.

Here's a sample about The Shining.

PART 11: Imperfect Symmetries

INTRODUCTION

Decades after its release, Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” continues to baffle, enrage and entrance audiences. Books have been written, ink has been spilt, websites formed and videos made, all in the hope of untangling the film’s intricate narrative. Other labyrinthal films – Resnais’ “Last Year In Marienbad”, Erice’s “Spirit of the Beehive”, Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” come to mind – have been praised by critics and embraced by film buffs, but few seem to generate the sheer level of conversation, writing and academic interest as Kubrick’s. Indeed, over the past few years countless blogs have arisen, ascribing mystical, mathematical, supernatural and conspiratorial “meanings” to the film. These theories range from the probable to the bizarre to the downright insane, but in a way they’re all valid readings for a film which, in some ways, invites one to investigate, get lost and possibly lose one’s mind within its vast network of corridors.

If on the one hand the internet generation has embraced “The Shining” as a film which can be mapped by careful analysis, its ambiguities conquered by DVD replays, high-definition screenshots, youtube videos and forum conversation, then on the other hand, a revived interest in the film has resulted in an abundance of what semiotician Umberto Eco calls “junk meaning”. This is excess chatter in which viewers ascribe to the film everything from Moon landing hoaxes to Mayan Apocalypses in the year 2012.

On the other end of the spectrum we have those who don’t venture into the maze at all, shrugging in boredom or disinterest. Of course this is another quite valid response, as in many ways “The Shining” is about the act of either “watching” or “overlooking” “The Shining”. Kubrick invites his audience to “shine”, to navigate his labyrinth, picking, discarding and drawing conclusions as they sees fit. The entrance and exist to his maze are right there on the screen, how far one gets is not his concern.

The first stumbling block for most audience members seems to be the question of whether or not the film’s ghosts are “real”. These are the same folk who view the monoliths in “2001: A Space Odyssey” as being literal alien teaching devices, and Dave Bowman’s transcendence at the end of that film to be the result of extra terrestrial intervention. Which is not to say that ET’s are not present in “2001”, but that one must look beyond the film’s genre tropes and tune into the more abstract, symbolic themes which Kubrick weaves.

As David Cook argues in American Horror: The Shining (Literature/Film Quarterly, 12.1, 1984:2-4), “The Shining is less about ghosts and demonic possession than it is about the murderous system of economic exploitation which has sustained this country since, like the Overlook Hotel, it was built upon an Indian burial ground that stretched quite literally from ‘sea to shining sea’. This is a secret that most Americans choose to overlook; the true horror of the shining is the horror of living in a society which is predicated upon murder and must constantly deny the fact to itself.”

Writer Padraig Henry echoes these sentiments: “The violence used to construct the hotel is wiped clean away by the hotel’s role as sanitised manifestation of American success. And this is one of the functions of Kubrick’s use of the hotel’s title (another being the rampant self-denial of its occupants). Kubrick is revealing how white male Americans deny the demons of their past by hiding them in assorted closets whilst all the time aggressively pursuing success at the expense of others, usually marginalized groups.”

Flo Liebowitz and Lynn Jeffress, in “The Shining” (Film Quarterly, 34, 1980-81:45-51), conclude that “Torrance makes his devil’s bargain…and women, children and blacks suffer.”

In other words, the film is less about ghosts than it is about a character who regresses into a monster partly as a result of the huge pressures to strive for some notion of “success”, a success which is itself dependent on exploitation and domination. The power of the shining, as Leibowitz and Jeffress maintain, serves as “a kind of survival skill that helps the oppressed to defend themselves, the relationships between the child, the black and the woman being the only ones free of the self-serving motives that govern those in which Jack participates."

In being at once horror movie, socio-historic critique and psycho-domestic melodrama, “The Shining” thus thoroughly subverts conventional horror genre expectations. As Harry Bailey writes, “It is “The Shining’s” subversion of genre, its meta-generic complexity, which allows one to view it as nothing less than an elaborate political and cultural critique of the stereotypical American nuclear family, as symbolised by the psycho-historical maze of the Overlook. One is, of course, “permitted” to view “The Shining” as just a horror film, but where, per-chance, is the supernatural intervention? Only in the viewer’s imagination, a result of his/her pre-empting and pre-attribution of genre."

The rest of this article will consist of a "scene by scene" breakdown of the film, as well as several seperate essays at the end which will attempt to touch upon the various readings of the film which have been floating around since the 80s. Though primarily interested in "The Shining" as a work of historical and political critique, this webpage will also use Freud's "Uncanny" and Jung's writings on "The Shadow" to analyse the film as psychodrama, and Frederic Jameson's "Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" in an attempt to show that "The Shining" explorers the most characteristic problem of postmodernism - the dead-endness of postmodern nostalgia - the aesthetic, artistic and cultural moment under whose spell Kubrick began to fall as cinema moved beyond modernism.

Way more at the link.
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Re: Kubrick

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue Jan 17, 2012 9:05 pm

Thanks for the link, Bruce. This is also excellent, the first one I read from that site:


The Kuleshov effect

"I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker - in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business." - Stanley Kubrick

The Art of Understatement

The Kuleshov effect takes its name from Lev Kuleshov, an influential filmmaker in the mid-twentieth century Soviet Union, who illustrated it. It's a little hard to pin down precisely what the nature of his experiment was. According to Ronald Levaco, Kuleshov shot a single long closeup of an actor named Mozhukhin, sitting still without expression. He then intercut it with various shots, the exact content of which he forgot in his later years, but which, according to his associate Vsevolod Pudovkin, comprised a bowl of soup, a woman in a coffin, and a child with a toy bear. The audience "marveled at the sensitivity of the actor's range."

Kuleshov's own account, though, describes only two scenes: one in which a jailed man is shown an open cell door, and one in which a starving man is shown a bowl of soup. Kuleshov switched the shots, so that the starving man saw the open door and the prisoner looked at soup, and there was no noticeable difference.

Whether the latter account is a product of Kuleshov's forgetfulness or not, the thrust of the experiment is the same. At that time in his career, Kuleshov held very strong views on editing. The montage of a film, he felt, overrode all other aspects of filmmaking, making them irrelevant. He came to call his actors "models," indicating the lack of significance he attributed them. The "Kuleshov effect," though, refers to the more probable experiment, the former.

The essence of the Kuleshov effect is filling in the blanks, or connecting the dots. Mozhukhin isn't actually looking at anything; he probably doesn't even know what they'll make him look at, so he can't possibly be reacting to it. He expresses no emotion, so an audience cannot possibly see emotion on his face, but the audience does. The viewer is presented with a situation or environment along with the academic fact that someone is experiencing it. He cannot simply accept the actor's evident emotion, as none is given, so he decides what the appropriate response would be and assigns it to the actor.

Now here's the real magic of it. The viewer dosn't realize the reaction is in his own mind. He assumes the actor shows it, but he can't see just how, so it seems like an almost magical projection of feeling by a brilliant actor. The viewer admires the actor's subtlety, and at the same time is more strongly affected by the scene. The character seems stoic, which at once impresses the viewer and lends weight to the emotion he does seem to display. In addition, the viewer wonders if others in the audience have caught the undercurrent, patting himself on the back for being so insightful. Backward as it may seem, the emotion of the scene is heightened in several different ways precisely because it is not being expressed at all.

Image

This technique is at work everywhere we look in Kubrick's films. Barry Lyndon, 2001, Eyes Wide Shut, The Shining etc. But most strikingly and most importantly, of course, the Kuleshov effect is in heavy use in the case of HAL himself. By all accounts, the HAL computer displays a broader spectrum of emotions than any human being in the film. In him, Kubrick brings the Kuleshov effect to a kind of Zen perfection beyond the reach of Mozhukhin or any other actor. HAL has no face at all. His voice is flat and monotonous, just as it is programmed to be. His "eyes" are set in motionless panels that function only as reminders of his presence, not mirrors of his soul. He has absolutely no mechanism for emotional expression. None but one, that is--HAL is utterly reliant on the Kuleshov effect to make his feelings plain.

The fact that his range of expression seems so great is testimony to Kubrick's skill in using the effect. HAL shows pride in his record right from the beginning, accompanied by complete confidence in his own infallibility; several times he seems positively indulgent toward Frank, Dave and his interviewer; he shows curiosity enough to ask Dave about his sketches, and a lot of genuine affection for both astronauts. He quickly assumes a fussy, matronly persona, keeping an eye on his crewmates, people that he clearly considers his intellectual juniors.

HAL's greatest performances begin when he decides to kill off the human crew. He watches the pod conference wordlessly, radiating shock, menace, and determination. The pod that Frank ventures outside in, takes on HAL's identity when it begins to move independently, showing calculated malevolence. Meanwhile, HAL speaks in tones of innocence to Dave, and we are chilled by the smoothness of his lie. When Dave seeks to reenter the Discovery, HAL speaks coldly, spitefully, his voice oozing a sullen sense of betrayal.

HAL's final scene is his finest. As the icy Dr. Bowman marches through the ship on his way to disconnect the computer, HAL's bravado quickly washes away, to be replaced by a fearful, near-whining stream of pleas. HAL is afraid of death. HAL is trying to scream, but he doesn't know how. He's not programmed to do that.

The human reaction to trauma is said to be typified by four stages: shock, denial, bargaining, and acceptance. It could be argued that HAL's monologue here reflects that pattern. Also, of course, as his cerebral functions are being deactivated, HAL undergoes a regression--reliving, as it were, his childhood. This is playing on one of the central themes of the movie--what is the nature of humanity? What do you call a computer that follows human psychological patterns? Clearly, you call it HAL, but that isn't the point. The point is, he's acting like a human, so we ascribe human emotions to him, even though he cannot and does not express them in the slightest bit beyond toneless verbiage.

Of course HAL is not the only character who displays understatement. Poole and Bowman both deliver their lines rather lifelessly, and their faces show little feeling. It seems to be an almost universal consensus that these men are cold and robotic. But people rarely make great displays of emotion when they know for sure nobody's looking. One of the major things Kubrick is concerned with in 2001 is speculation about space travel, and one of his conclusions is that things would be very quiet. A major theme of the film is this total isolation that space engenders, beyond anything we know on Earth. Frank's and Dave's reserved temperaments owe largely, I think, to the complete absence of anyone to perform for.

There are other reasons, as well--in Dave's case particularly, the character seems wary of HAL right from the beginning (even though he is also more affectionate toward him). Beginning when the astronauts discover that HAL may have erred, Bowman visibly downplays his reactions to allay HAL's suspicions. Each, in his way, seems a stoic character to begin with, but not unfeeling. As witness I call Kubrick himself, interviewed by Joseph Gelmis:

Some critics seemed to feel that because we were successful in making a voice, a camera lens, and a light come alive as a character this necessarily meant that the human characters failed dramatically. In fact, I believe that Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, the astronauts, reacted appropriately and realistically to their circumstances.(307)

I would also say that Kubrick is deliberately understating the astronauts' reactions, in keeping with the tone of the film. Dave, the more demonstrative of the two, shows mostly boredom, fear, determination, and thoughtfulness. In the act of "unplugging" HAL he shows mixed feelings, and through most of the end he displays open-mouthed shock, but his range doesn't extend much further.

The emotion that Dave implies, though, covers a broader range. He has a genuine fondness for HAL, and is always the one to consider HAL's point of view. He is caught in the grip of tremendous isolation. His loneliness is best shown by his sketches--his artistic urge, probably a response to the sterility of his environment, can be turned only toward images of the men in cold sleep, the most chillingly lifeless sights on the ship.

We know by these sketches that Dr. Bowman is a creative man, and by his long, thoughtful silences we are shown his thoroughness and intelligence. We know he is a "cool customer" by his self-control, even in peril of his life. In him, as in the computer, we see much more depth of character than he ever actually shows us.

The only true instance of the Kuleshov effect involving an astronaut on the Discovery, though, comes from Frank Poole. His character is less well-developed, but we can see he is more rough-hewn than his associate, a little more aloof, never speaking to HAL (or to Dave, really) except about business. Poole watches his parents' message with no expression at all, tinted goggles obscuring half his face. The scene makes us uncomfortable because it puts a sharp focus on the distance between parents and son; Frank doesn't bother to answer, because he knows they can't hear him. Frank isn't an easy character to sympathize with, but we feel bad for anybody who has to spend his birthday outside the asteroid belt. In his most sympathetic scene, his face is totally devoid of feeling.

The effect is at work in other ways in A Space Odyssey. We are made aware of the vast interplanetary distances, the ever-present theme of isolation, by the very length of time Kubrick spends showing us silence and stillness. Lazily, we watch the full length of the Discovery drift by. The pods move slowly through space, and the stretching minutes are emphasized by the sound of breathing or by simple silence. This recurrent motif, of just how very alone these men are, is brought home to us mainly by impartial silence. Kuleshov performed no experiments to this end, but the principle is the same: we garner from the film an emotion, a strong one, that the film does not actually show us.

Another vital case of this expanded Kuleshov effect is the instance of the obelisks themselves. Four of 2001's most affecting scenes are those in which these great black monoliths appear.

Consider the first visitation. We are shown a silent monolith, and a group of ape-men who evidently are strongly affected by it, and we see (as we will again) heavenly bodies in alignment with it. The obelisk itself, the ostensible cause of the occasion, just sits, and yet we know there is big medicine behind it.

This is a sort of reverse Kuleshov effect. Now we are shown the emotional reactions of the apes, of Dr. Floyd, of Bowman as he dies, and we must fill in the cause--we must interpret and imagine what the artifact must do that is so very moving. Why do they all seek to touch the stone? What makes them so hesitant in the attempt?

A similar scene is HAL's passive murder of the three sleeping astronauts. We are horrified by his coldbloodedness, and his contempt for humanity is clear without even one of his eyes to look at. We know he is contemptuous and cruel, because in order to do what we see him doing he must be.

This is the true heart and soul of the Kuleshov effect. When we are shown no explicit emotion, we infer it--but in order to do that, we are forced to experience the circumstances, to think and to feel the emotion ourselves. This is why the Kuleshov effect can generate such a strong reaction; it's why Kubrick's films are such powerful experiences. We don't know HAL is frightened because he sounds frightened. We know he's frightened because Dave is coming to kill him. His blank voice forces us to experience his situation in his name and feel his own fear for him. We are one step closer to the action on screen, not reacting to the actors but reacting with the characters.

Kubrick did not want his spectators to emotionally identify with the action before them. Instead, he sought to provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of what unveiled on screen. He believed that the experience of a climactic catharsis of emotion left an audience complacent. And it is for this purpose, that Kubrick employed the use of techniques and distancing effects that remind the spectator that his filmography is a representation of reality and not reality itself. By highlighting the constructed nature of the narrative event, Kubrick hoped to communicate that the audience's reality was, in fact a construction and, as such, was changeable.

http://kubrickfilms.tripod.com/id21.html


Related: Kubrick as cold rationalist - a discussion starting with Mark Rozario's statement, "I want to celebrate Kubrick's coldness and impersonality."
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"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

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Re: Kubrick

Postby Project Willow » Sun Jan 29, 2012 2:58 am

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/movies/room-237-documentary-with-theories-about-the-shining.html?_r=1
Cracking the Code in ‘Heeere’s Johnny!’
By ROBERT ITO
Published: January 25, 2012

WHEN “The Shining” was released in 1980, many viewers, including the critic Pauline Kael, left theaters mystified by what they had just seen. Expecting a standard frightfest based on a Stephen King best seller, they got an unexplained river of blood surging out of hotel elevators, a vision of cobwebbed skeletons in tuxedos and a weird guy in a bear suit doing something untoward with a top-hatted gentleman.

Three decades on, scholars and fans are still trying to decipher this puzzle of a film directed by Stanley Kubrick. To them it’s only ostensibly about an alcoholic father, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) going more than stir crazy while his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and son, Danny, try to cope in an isolated hotel, the Overlook. Mr. Kubrick was famously averse to offering explanations of his films — “I have found it always the best policy to allow the film to speak for itself,” he once wrote — which has led to a mind-boggling array of theories about just what he was up to.

The hotel’s hedge maze, many Kubrick authorities agree, is a reference to the myth of the Minotaur; others have drawn convincing connections between the Overlook’s well-stocked pantry and the confectionery cottage in Hansel and Gretel. The more one views the film — and many of these scholars admit to viewing it hundreds of times — the more symbols and connections appear.

“Room 237,” the first full-length documentary by the director Rodney Ascher, examines several of the most intriguing of these theories. It’s really about the Holocaust, one interviewee says, and Mr. Kubrick’s inability to address the horrors of the Final Solution on film. No, it’s about a different genocide, that of American Indians, another says, pointing to all the tribal-theme items adorning the Overlook Hotel’s walls. A third claims it’s really Kubrick’s veiled confession that he helped NASA fake the Apollo Moon landings.

When Mr. Ascher first began discussing the project with his friend Tim Kirk, who would later become the film’s producer, the two were simply hoping to find enough fans and theories to flesh out a series of short films, maybe something to post on YouTube. “On paper it seems like a very specific niche,” Mr. Ascher said, speaking at the oldest standing Bob’s Big Boy, in Burbank, not far from a campus of the New York Film Academy, where he teaches a class in editing. “The Secret Meanings of ‘The Shining’ — we should be able to wrap that up pretty quick. But the thing kept growing and growing.” By the time the two were done, “Room 237,” which had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Monday, was nearly two hours long.

What they had stumbled upon was a subculture of Kubrick fans that has been expanding over the last several years. The group includes professors and historians, fanboys and artists, many of whom have posted their theories online accompanied by maps, videos, and pages-long explications pleading their cases. The Liverpudlian filmmaker Rob Ager’s video analyses of “The Shining” have garnered hundreds of thousands of YouTube hits; the voluminous online essays of Kevin McLeod, a k a “mstrmnd,” range from the film’s marketing materials to its many uses of artificial light.

“The initial reception by journalists of most of Kubrick’s films was negative,” said the film scholar Julian Rice, author of “Kubrick’s Hope: Discovering Optimism from ‘2001’ to ‘Eyes Wide Shut.’ ” “But as time went on, his films were taken more and more seriously, and now people are redefining him in terms of all of the contemporary postmodern theories. Many of the current critics think in different terms than Kubrick thought when he was making those films. They think in a different vocabulary, and they have different concerns.”

Among the topics of discussion are the many liberties, large and small, that Kubrick took with the original novel. Mr. King, who declined to comment for this article, has never concealed his dislike for the film and the way the director changed and discarded scenes, themes and details. In the book Jack’s Volkswagen is red; in the film it’s yellow. No big thing, until one discovers that King’s red VW actually did make it into the film, crushed underneath an overturned semi.

But that’s not the only kind of symbolic moment “Shining” buffs are interested in; they have much bigger themes in mind. To one of the subjects of “Room 237,” Geoffrey Cocks, a history professor at Albion College in Michigan and author of “The Wolf at the Door: Stanley Kubrick, History, and the Holocaust,” the film is full of references, some subtle, some less so, to the Final Solution. There are the film’s many references to 1942, the year the Nazis began their extermination of Jews at Auschwitz: a 42 appears on a shirt worn by Danny; “Summer of ’42” is playing on the Torrances’ television; Wendy takes 42 swings with a bat at Jack. And then there’s that gusher of blood. “That’s as good a visual metonym for the horror of the 20th century that has ever been filmed,” Mr. Cocks said in an interview.

When Bill Blakemore, a veteran ABC News correspondent and another “Shining” theorist in the documentary, noticed cans of Calumet baking powder emblazoned with an Indian chief logo in “The Shining,” he knew immediately what Kubrick had in mind. “I told my friends, ‘That movie was about the genocide of the American Indians.’ ”

In 1987 Mr. Blakemore wrote an article for The Washington Post, noting the film’s use of Indian decorative elements (in one scene Mr. Nicholson hurls a tennis ball repeatedly against an Indian wall hanging), the Calumet cans and the Overlook’s location on an old Indian burial ground. “It’s about ghosts and memories and how we put together our sense of what has happened in the past,” Mr. Blakemore said in an interview. “ ‘I think a lot of things happened right here in this particular hotel over the years, and not all of ’em was good.’ He’s talking about the way the human race does it, and has done it over and over again.”

The documentary’s biggest leap of faith comes with Jay Weidner, who posits that Mr. Kubrick helped NASA fake the Apollo Moon landings, then used “The Shining” to both confess his involvement — and brag about it. Mr. Weidner is at work on a DVD about the Kubrick-Apollo connection, his second, and cites as evidence a sweater worn by Danny with “Apollo 11” on it, and the hexagonal design on the hotel hallway carpet pattern, which he argues is a dead ringer for the aerial view of the Apollo launching pad. “The entire substory of ‘The Shining,’ ” Mr. Weidner said in an interview, “is the story of Kubrick making the Apollo footage and then trying to hide it from his wife, and then her finding out about it.”

Despite the scope of the film, which uses scenes from the 1940 “Thief of Bagdad,” “Spellbound,” Creepshow” and F. W. Murnau’s silent “Faust” to illustrate different hypotheses, Mr. Ascher said he only scratched the surface of the vast number of “Shining” theories. Why so many? The film “is a compelling work of art that acts as a kind of mirror, especially for thoughtful people, who see aspects of themselves that are among the most precious things they have experienced,” Mr. Rice said. “That’s in the best sense. In some cases it might also be a paranoia that they want to expurgate in some way.”

“Room 237” — the title is a reference to a haunted room in the hotel — ends with no clear consensus on just what “The Shining” actually means. How could it? But there’s no denying the filmmakers had a pretty serious, cerebral bunch to work with.

“This isn’t ‘Trekkies,’ ” said Mr. Kirk, referring to the 1997 documentary about the glorious excesses of “Star Trek” fandom. “We don’t have guys having ‘Shining’ weddings, or driving around in yellow VWs with ‘ROOM 237’ license plates. There were no conventions to go to.”
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"eye have no recollection of that..."

Postby IanEye » Sun Jan 29, 2012 7:40 am

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Re: Kubrick

Postby MinM » Wed Feb 08, 2012 11:55 pm

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Re: Kubrick

Postby Bruce Dazzling » Thu Feb 09, 2012 12:15 pm

I'm not completely on board with all of his assertions, but Ager may be onto something here.

Using unpublished info from the Stanley Kubrick Archives as a key source, Kubrick's Gold Story is a film analysis that uncovers economic themes encoded in The Shining with regard to gold vs fiat monetary systems.

Written, narrated and edited by Rob Ager.








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Stanley Kubrick and Kirk Douglas's reply, Feb. 1963

Postby MinM » Mon Feb 27, 2012 8:51 pm

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