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GIANT OUIJA BOARD posted:I think it goes way beyond "likely". It really is fascinating, but it's also utter bullshit and pretty much the definition of reaching too far. I'd say that each section of the analysis is well-argued and stands well enough on its own. The problem is that the author seems to think that the whole thing is a cohesive argument, which it is not. You can say Jack has molested Danny, and you can say Jack is a stand-in for Kubrick, but you can't put those together very well into the same argument. Of course, the guy who wrote the analysis may have just been trying to create a progression toward insanity like that in the film itself; the various leaps of logic and jumps from moving furniture to genocide are almost like the hedge maze, too. Modern Times was the first Chaplin film to feature any recorded dialogue, even though it was released in 1936 (nine years after the first talkies). There are still intertitles for most conversations throughout the film, but two specific instances of recorded dialogue really show Chaplin's issues with sound films (spoilers for a 77 year-old film): In the first factory scenes, we hear recorded dialogue only coming from the owner of the factory, and all he does is order around the workers. Of course, there is a clear class message here, since the wealthy factory owner has a voice and the workers remain silent, but that is not the subtlety here. I'd argue that the factory owner's dialogue is also an expression of how Chaplin feels about dialogue in film: just as the factory owner orders the workers around, the writer orders you how to feel and how to respond, because you don't get to fill in the details of a film based off of some intertitles and flailing arms. Near the end of the film, the Little Tramp sings a song with lyrics composed of Italian and French-sounding gibberish. The song is language stripped of meaning; it is Chaplin saying that, when you have recorded dialogue in a film, you don't get any added meaning or significance, you just get to hear some words. That last bit gets picked up again in The Great Dictator: Adenoid Hynkel, a parody of Hitler, gets confused with an identical Jewish barber, and the latter ends up in his place at the podium where he is to give a victory speech after the invasion of Osterlich (Austria). The barber instead gives a speech denouncing fascism, and the gathered crowd cheers wildly. The thing is, they would have cheered wildly if he had given the expected Hitler-esque speech, too. It is as if they cheer for the sound of the speech, not its content.
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Jun 19, 2013 11:03
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Xander77 posted:That appears to be a novelette length discussion. Could you at least summarize the basic thesis? "Kubrick is the Sperglord to end all Sperglords that encodes a message in just about every frame" is about what I got when reading a little of Robs write ups and just about what he says about Kubricks movies.
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Jun 19, 2013 11:07
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I was of the understanding that Chaplin was opposed to "talkies" because he felt film was a truly international thing and knew that talkies would put up artificial barriers between different languages - films would go from being able to be played anywhere in the world to being limited to English speaking countries, people with "funny" accents wouldn't be able to get work etc. So in Modern Times when Chaplin finally speaks (or rather, sings) for the first time, he quite deliberately makes it nonsense, but nonsense that anybody can pick up the general meaning of thanks to all the visual cues. Regardless of anything else, the song/performance is loving hilarious. If you haven't watched it, you owe it to yourself to do so.
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Jun 19, 2013 11:47
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Goofus Giraffe posted:I'd say that each section of the analysis is well-argued and stands well enough on its own. The problem is that the author seems to think that the whole thing is a cohesive argument, which it is not. You can say Jack has molested Danny, and you can say Jack is a stand-in for Kubrick, but you can't put those together very well into the same argument. Of course, the guy who wrote the analysis may have just been trying to create a progression toward insanity like that in the film itself; the various leaps of logic and jumps from moving furniture to genocide are almost like the hedge maze, too. Even on a section by section basis he makes a lot of pretty glaring errors. The photo of Ullman pointing at the magazine is actually a very carefully cropped photo of Ullman standing there with his hands at his side, the reason the hedge maze doesn't show up in long shots is because it's around the back and the long shots are all from the front, the man in the bear costume can't be sucking the guy's cock because the bear mask has no mouth hole (which is another one of my favorite little things about The Shining, it just adds to the sense of wrongness about the scene), etc. Edit: reading that analysis made me think of the dog costume from the book, not the bear costume in the movie. GIANT OUIJA BOARD has a new favorite as of 21:55 on Jun 19, 2013 |
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Jun 19, 2013 21:45
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RyuujinBlueZ posted:The problem is, Kubrick is well known for being more or less that exact level of batshit insane. So while some of it might be reaching too far or seeing things that really aren't there, there's a legitimate chance that the majority of it is true. Even the tiny, stupid poo poo that literally no sane individual would ever notice. Nah. It's not a matter of whether the interpretation is "true" or not (do you think there's a secret film can moldering in someone's basement with "The Real Shining" inside?), that's some TV Tropes poo poo, but rather of whether it's interesting, whether it's consistent, whether it has a point. But the other thing is, you can do that sort of analysis with literally any movie. There'll always be weird stuff around the edges, blurring of symbolism with reality, possible implications that can never be followed up on, confusion of cause and effect etc because it's loving fiction. It bears the hallmarks of having been constructed according to some weird unseen but hinted-at logic because it was.
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Jun 20, 2013 00:20
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The Collative Learning site is a little timecubey but it's worth reading if you're interested in the movies in question. He digs up details and connections in Kubrick movies that probably were intentionally made and are easy to miss. It's just that most of his actual conclusions are really far-fetched. He's interested in debating his ideas, too--send him an email and he'll probably reply. He did reply to me and sounded sane in the emails.
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Jun 20, 2013 00:28
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Just rewatched The Royal Tenenbaums today: At the very end, Royal has his tombstone read "Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Remains Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship", which I thought was his attempt to out-do the tombstone from earlier in the film that read of a father of nine, drowned at sea". Afterwards I thought about it some more, and realized that Royal himself was the sinking ship, and at the end of his life he attempted to make up for the mistakes he'd made as a husband and father. His character was just written as such an rear end in a top hat that I didn't think any deeper, and the idea of him lying on his tombstone was just hilarious.
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Jun 20, 2013 00:31
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swamp waste posted:Nah. It's not a matter of whether the interpretation is "true" or not (do you think there's a secret film can moldering in someone's basement with "The Real Shining" inside?), that's some TV Tropes poo poo, but rather of whether it's interesting, whether it's consistent, whether it has a point. Yeah, that's more what I meant by "true". That because Kubrick was a known crazy person, there's a fair-to-good chance that at least some of the results of that in-depth analysis is intentional rather than TV Tropes-style reading-too-much-into-it bullshit. That said other people are totally right too, the guy jumps to some weird conclusions of his own. He's good at pointing out the little details and the like that were probably put there, maybe even with some grander scheme at play on Kubrick's part, but some of his connections are weird. To put it nicely. Still, it's an interesting read and I've probably put more time into actually reading what he's written about The Shining than I have actually watching the movie.
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Jun 20, 2013 00:38
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Mescal posted:The Collative Learning site is a little timecubey but it's worth reading if you're interested in the movies in question. He digs up details and connections in Kubrick movies that probably were intentionally made and are easy to miss. It's just that most of his actual conclusions are really far-fetched. Yeah, this is pretty much my opinion of it. It's a fascinating analysis, and he points out lots of easy to miss details, but then he mixes them with things taken entirely out of context and draws absurd conclusions from them.
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Jun 20, 2013 05:54
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RyuujinBlueZ posted:Yeah, that's more what I meant by "true". That because Kubrick was a known crazy person I don't think that's fair. Kubrick's rep as a crazy person is mostly undeserved. If he were an equally quirky and painstaking architect, for example, people would say "he was weird but he was an Artist!" The second reason people thought he was crazy is because they considered him a recluse. Okay, he was a recluse by Hollywood standards. But all he did was opt out of the Moving Picture Fame Machine in order to spend time with his family rather than doing interviews. He was not normal. He was hardworking, detail-oriented, picky, demanding, and sane.
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Jun 20, 2013 06:40
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GIANT OUIJA BOARD posted:Yeah, this is pretty much my opinion of it. It's a fascinating analysis, and he points out lots of easy to miss details, but then he mixes them with things taken entirely out of context and draws absurd conclusions from them. I was really digging that site, some of the poo poo is pretty cool like the Tony the Tiger boxes, the moving furniture, the layout of the bears. But then he starts saying everyone in the movie is a bear and they have big bear like hair and it's just like "What the christ?"
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Jun 20, 2013 06:40
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Read his analysis of 2001, every single incidence of a rectangle is a "monolith shaped object". Also the Tycho excavation scene apparently only has three people and their parallel universe selves there, not 6 people. Oh and he says the reason everyone simultaneously grips their heads feeling pain is their realisation that the truth is out, nothing to do with the radio signal the monolith sends to Europa.
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Jun 20, 2013 07:09
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Mescal posted:I don't think that's fair. Kubrick's rep as a crazy person is mostly undeserved. If he were an equally quirky and painstaking architect, for example, people would say "he was weird but he was an Artist!" The second reason people thought he was crazy is because they considered him a recluse. Okay, he was a recluse by Hollywood standards. But all he did was opt out of the Moving Picture Fame Machine in order to spend time with his family rather than doing interviews. He was not normal. He was hardworking, detail-oriented, picky, demanding, and sane. He harassed and assaulted a grown woman to the point of a nervous breakdown in the name of his art, that's fairly hosed up by just about any standard. If anything people are too lenient on him, I hear the Shelley Duvall breakdown factoid dragged out to praise his perfectionism and devotion to the craft way more than I hear people bring it up in a "holy poo poo dude, this guy is loving bonkers" way.
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Jun 20, 2013 07:14
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...of SCIENCE! posted:He harassed and assaulted a grown woman to the point of a nervous breakdown in the name of his art, that's fairly hosed up by just about any standard. If anything people are too lenient on him, I hear the Shelley Duvall breakdown factoid dragged out to praise his perfectionism and devotion to the craft way more than I hear people bring it up in a "holy poo poo dude, this guy is loving bonkers" way. This is pretty much exactly what I was going to note. There's a very fine line between "demanding artist" and "loving insane" and Kubrick was at best dragging his sack right along it for the bulk of his career. There's no denying he was talented as hell, but he also gave zero fucks about the well being of anyone he worked with and people like that are generally not considered to be sane. I'm not sure what the currently accepted psychological term is, but I believe the classic is "motherfucking psychopath".
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Jun 20, 2013 07:24
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RyuujinBlueZ posted:This is pretty much exactly what I was going to note. There's a very fine line between "demanding artist" and "loving insane" and Kubrick was at best dragging his sack right along it for the bulk of his career. There's no denying he was talented as hell, but he also gave zero fucks about the well being of anyone he worked with and people like that are generally not considered to be sane. I'm not sure what the currently accepted psychological term is, but I believe the classic is "motherfucking psychopath". *so·ci·o·path /ˈsōsēōˌpaTH/ Noun A person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.
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Jun 20, 2013 07:30
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Are there any other film analysis sites like Collative Learning you guys could recommend? I like reading about people's in-depth theories on movies, even if they're kind of out there. And before you ask, yes, I've googled for it, but all the sites that come up are for reviews, not analysis. I'm not looking for some dude's critical opinion on a film, but for some dude's analysis and break-down of the symbolism and hidden meanings in it. (for example, I googled "interesting film analysis" and the first result was "funny movie reviews." that is like the opposite of what I want, google!!)
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Jun 20, 2013 07:55
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I've heard that story though I don't know the details of it. Duvall is generous in her descriptions of him in the interview I saw. I think it was in Kubrick: a life in pictures. All of the actors in that movie praise him, so that might have made me biased. McDowell speaks well of him too there even though he had earlier held a grudge. That doc was probably edited in a way to make Kubrick look good now that I think about it.
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Jun 20, 2013 08:01
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Mescal posted:I don't think that's fair. Kubrick's rep as a crazy person is mostly undeserved. Kubrick refused to travel more than 30 miles from his home to film Full Metal Jacket. That's beyond "wanting to spend time with your family" and into full blown neurosis.
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Jun 20, 2013 15:29
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Mescal posted:He was hardworking, detail-oriented, picky, demanding, and sane. The phrase 'detail-oriented' vastly undersells the monumental attention to detail he put into each of his films. If you haven't seen the documentary Stanley Kubrick's Boxes I can really recommend it - it's the story of how doco maker Jon Ronson got access to Kubrick's files after his death and finds himself suddenly trying to deal with the equivalent of several freightcars worth of boxes full of photos, clippings, outtakes, old memos, letters, etc etc etc.. Here's a snippet where they ponder a memo Kubrick sent asking someone to research the barometric pressure on Friday 11 October 1968. Why? We'll never know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_0exwQEZBo Here's a trailer for the documentary. Snowglobe of Doom has a new favorite as of 16:01 on Jun 20, 2013 |
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Jun 20, 2013 15:33
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While a lot of the conclusions on that Collectivelearning sire are pretty  , as many have commented the little details are very interesting. I particularly liked things like the (supposedly intentional) impossible geometry of the hotel and hedge maze since stuff like that simply can't be a mistake from a perfectionist like Kubrick. Dude was a sociopath though.
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Jun 20, 2013 15:57
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:The phrase 'detail-oriented' vastly undersells the monumental attention to detail he put into each of his films. If you haven't seen the documentary Stanley Kubrick's Boxes I can really recommend it - it's the story of how doco maker Jon Ronson got access to Kubrick's files after his death and finds himself suddenly trying to deal with the equivalent of several freightcars worth of boxes full of photos, clippings, outtakes, old memos, letters, etc etc etc.. It's like a real-life version of House of Leaves 
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Jun 20, 2013 18:58
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RyuujinBlueZ posted:This is pretty much exactly what I was going to note. There's a very fine line between "demanding artist" and "loving insane" and Kubrick was at best dragging his sack right along it for the bulk of his career. There's no denying he was talented as hell, but he also gave zero fucks about the well being of anyone he worked with and people like that are generally not considered to be sane. I'm not sure what the currently accepted psychological term is, but I believe the classic is "motherfucking psychopath". I've heard the same arguments applied to Robert Altman as well. I just re-watched M*A*S*H* and Short Cuts for the first time in a long time, and those movies are filled with "little things". The latter is just crazy with little crossover details that wind up having meaning as the stories develop. I actually see a lot of similarities in style between Altman, Kubrick and, to lesser extent, Anderson. There's a visceral realness in the way that they film things that seems to set in and sort of gel over time and after repeated viewings. Usually, I don't enjoy their films during the first watch but find myself viewing them over and over again anyway to the point where I wind up liking them. Full Metal Jacket comes to mind as the best example.
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Jun 20, 2013 19:38
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BiggerBoat posted:Usually, I don't enjoy their films during the first watch but find myself viewing them over and over again anyway to the point where I wind up liking them. Full Metal Jacket comes to mind as the best example. The first time I watched that movie one of the friends I was with was just so loving tickled with Pyle's suicide scene he spent the rest of the night rewinding the tape over and over, to the point it started to wear out. Didn't get to finish it that night because the rest of us decided to do something less crazy. That's my story.
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Jun 20, 2013 19:58
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Chard posted:The first time I watched that movie one of the friends I was with was just so loving tickled with Pyle's suicide scene he spent the rest of the night rewinding the tape over and over, to the point it started to wear out. Didn't get to finish it that night because the rest of us decided to do something less crazy. Let me guess, this story ended with "They later found his storage unit full of hooker torsos" 
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Jun 20, 2013 20:11
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Professor Shark posted:Just rewatched The Royal Tenenbaums today: At the very end, Royal has his tombstone read "Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Remains Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship", which I thought was his attempt to out-do the tombstone from earlier in the film that read of a father of nine, drowned at sea". Afterwards I thought about it some more, and realized that Royal himself was the sinking ship, and at the end of his life he attempted to make up for the mistakes he'd made as a husband and father. It's great, because he gets to be factually accurate in a subtle way about saving his family, but also appeal to his ego at the same time. He's never a good person, he's never not-flawed, but he does try to make things better. As always, he also overemphasizes his own role in things improving and downplays his role in making it bad in the first place. He also managed to get exactly what he wanted (outdoing the earlier tombstone), rather than what his family may have wanted (honesty).
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Jun 20, 2013 20:49
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Coconut Indian posted:I really really wish that in Cabin in the woods the reveal of the mermaid had been creepier, like I've seen creepier versions on Adventure Time and Flapjack. I get that it was going for humor and irony, but the rest of the monster designs in that movie were great. That's the whole point, though. The reveal of the merman parallels the disappointment that we inevitably feel once a horror movie monster is finally revealed. The guy spends the whole movie building up how awesome the mermen would be if one of the cabin-goers would just select them, and then when he finally sees one, it looks like some dude crawling across the floor in a cheap rubber suit. Just like how so many horror movies completely blow it once all that tension and suspense leads up to some silly-looking creature which, as it turns out, just isn't all that scary.
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Jun 20, 2013 21:49
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I like how the reason the other guy was not fond of the Merman because they were such a pain to clean up after, demonstrated by the blood spraying out the blowhole in a fine mist 
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Jun 20, 2013 21:51
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The nature of hermeneutics and the hermeneutic cycle inherently implies that any coded message or sequence of signifiers can be interpreted to mean practically anything, bearing in mind the context of the specific analysis. The Death of the Author and all that. In uni I had to write an essay on a dissertation analyzing The Shining as representing the Jews during the Holocaust, and there are various other similar dissertations relating The Shining to many other things. I kind of enjoyed the Collative Learning posts, but all they're really doing is throwing another set of two cents in, nothing to take too seriously as some sort of official academic report on the film.
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Jun 20, 2013 23:40
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bunnyofdoom posted:Let me guess, this story ended with "They later found his storage unit full of hooker torsos" Jelly donuts actually.
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Jun 20, 2013 23:41
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RyuujinBlueZ posted:This is pretty much exactly what I was going to note. There's a very fine line between "demanding artist" and "loving insane" and Kubrick was at best dragging his sack right along it for the bulk of his career. There's no denying he was talented as hell, but he also gave zero fucks about the well being of anyone he worked with and people like that are generally not considered to be sane. I'm not sure what the currently accepted psychological term is, but I believe the classic is "motherfucking psychopath". Can anybody point me to further reading about SK's crazy moments? What I know about him is mostly from on A Life in Pictures, Kubrick's Boxes, and wiki.
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Jun 21, 2013 02:50
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bunnyofdoom posted:Let me guess, this story ended with "They later found his storage unit full of hooker torsos" He's actually the sweetest bear of a guy, which is part of why it was so weird that he kept rewatching those two-odd minutes. kenny powerzzz posted:Jelly donuts actually. 
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Jun 21, 2013 05:12
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Mescal posted:Can anybody point me to further reading about SK's crazy moments? What I know about him is mostly from on A Life in Pictures, Kubrick's Boxes, and wiki. My favorite crazy Kubrick story - one night Stephen King gets a phone-call at something like 3 in the morning. Kubrick: Hello Stephen. King: ...Stanley, is that you? Kubrick: Stephen. Do you believe in God? King: I... what? Uhh... yeah. Yeah, I believe in God. long pause Kubrick: No. No there's no God. Kubrick hangs up.
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Jun 21, 2013 05:18
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SatansBestBuddy posted:I've never seen Community but I think I need to go do that, if the show keeps this level of intelligence and wit to it's writing. It's got a lot of really neat things like that and is definitely worth watching. My favorite subtle thing is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19FMU3M7Jtk (those are the only three times they say the word over the entire series and check out the background after the third one)
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Jun 21, 2013 05:19
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flatluigi posted:It's got a lot of really neat things like that and is definitely worth watching. My favorite subtle thing is this: Holy poo poo, I never noticed that before! I love community so much.
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Jun 21, 2013 09:44
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In filming the Shining, wasn't Kubrick really careful not to let the kid who played Danny know it was supposed to be scary? I remember hearing that he would tell the actor to act happy, act sad, and act scared, then just use the take where he was scared. Is this confirmed in a documentary or anything?
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Jun 21, 2013 15:02
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bettsta posted:In filming the Shining, wasn't Kubrick really careful not to let the kid who played Danny know it was supposed to be scary? I remember hearing that he would tell the actor to act happy, act sad, and act scared, then just use the take where he was scared. Is this confirmed in a documentary or anything? That's generally how you do anything with a kid actor where they have to deal with age inappropriate stuff. They basically do everything completely out of context.
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Jun 21, 2013 15:22
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Aw. I was kind of hoping Kubrick was secretly a big softie.
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Jun 21, 2013 16:23
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Mescal posted:I've heard that story though I don't know the details of it. Duvall is generous in her descriptions of him in the interview I saw. I think it was in Kubrick: a life in pictures. All of the actors in that movie praise him, so that might have made me biased. McDowell speaks well of him too there even though he had earlier held a grudge. That doc was probably edited in a way to make Kubrick look good now that I think about it.
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Jun 21, 2013 20:17
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Jerusalem posted:My favorite crazy Kubrick story - one night Stephen King gets a phone-call at something like 3 in the morning. I hope this is true. I really want to believe Kubrick was up to go to the bathroom and decided to mess with King, but that King was like super creeped out by it. One of the only times someone out-creeped Stephen King, but he only did it out of boredom as a joke.
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Jun 21, 2013 20:17
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Atmus posted:I hope this is true. I really want to believe Kubrick was up to go to the bathroom and decided to mess with King, but that King was like super creeped out by it. I read once that during the filming of The Shining, Kubrick routinely called up King in the early hours of the morning to ask him questions like that. smell the witch posted:Death Of The Author But just because there is no one "correct" interpretation, that doesn't mean that all interpretations are equally valid. Sure you can argue that Disney's Snow White is about the horrors of WWI, but without some drat good supporting evidence, it's just kind of crazy. GIANT OUIJA BOARD has a new favorite as of 20:27 on Jun 21, 2013 |
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Jun 21, 2013 20:20
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