I’m having extremely high expectations for Dr. Strangelove now

The Shining

When I heard of Kubrick’s name for the first time during the anticipation of the release of A.I., I have already watched three of his movies: Lolita, Spartacus and Eyes Wide Shut. It took awhile to see his others, but ignoring his early obscure works, I only have Dr. Strangelove to watch. Since 6451 also recommended it to me, I can only hope that it won’t be a disappointment. (After all, I probably won’t exactly like “Lolita” if I watched it now.)
Yesterday, I had a short peek at what else he stuffed his HD with – his selection is awfully German, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff there.

“The Shining” is a masterpiece. At the same time, it’s so much of a cult movie that I was walking around telling people that I watched the film – and everyone had some comment to give to it, be it a reference to the Simpsons or an opinion on Kubrick’s films in general. I like when I can use the movies I watch as a smalltalk topic. It makes me feel more mainstream, but at the same time it makes me feel relieved that I don’t only watch obscure stuff, heh.

I’m pretty sure that I had nightmares after seeing this movie, which usually never happens to me. Maybe that is the reason why I like this movie so much: The atmosphere. After all, “The Shining” has nothing – the story is nothing special, there are barely any interesting plot twists, and that makes it really difficult to write about the film itself. But the atmosphere! I love the scenes where the loli twins appear and although I thought it looked like cranberry sauce, the blood-shedding door is just too stylish for its own good. I can see how the style of modern Asian horror movies is inspired from this film, and just show how influential Kubrick is yet again.

I’m completely addicted to “The Recluse” by Cursive now, but unfortunately it keeps me up from writing anything more on this movie. I mean, the song is about the exact opposite to the movie. There is nothing atmospherical about indie music (or most of it), but it’s addicting sometimes. “The Shining” makes me want to ignore it, but it just shows how impressive the film was.

Today, I spoke to Loris who mentioned how important the content of a film is to him. That is so weird, because I used to be like that too: The story and especially the dialogue were the most important. For him I know that it partially stems from his affiliation to the theater stage, and I understand that very well because I used to love theater plays too. But ultimately, that is not all for me now – films work differently than theater plays, and mise en scène for a film means so much more than “setting characters into place”. After seeing quite a few films now, I have become quite a visual person too now, and the reasons why I like “The Shining” or “The Limits of Control” so much mostly comes from the visuals: It’s about how the looks and the pace of the film create an intense atmosphere.

I completely failed at finding out what other films he has seen lately, but it seems at least he saw “Crimes and Misdemeanors”, “Husbands and Wives” and some Coen films like “The Big Lebowski”, their new “A Serious Man” and “Burn After Reading” (which he disliked because he found it too cynical – and oh my, that must mean it’s really cynical).

PS. Today, I also found out that there is a sex scene with Claudia Cardinale in “C’era una volta il West”. That makes me want to see the movie even more now. XD