Team Kubrick

It’s the only film adaptation of his books that wasn’t awful. The Shining still freaks me out and when I see twin girls in frilly dresses, I’m instinctively ready to run away shrieking.

The IT mini series with Dr Frankenfurter aka Tim Curry wasn’t bad but constrained due to the fact it was on TV so it had to be more on PG horror.

Footnote: We didn’t truly appreciate Kubrick’s genius until reading The Shining after seeing the movie. Stephen King’s famous resentment of the adaptation is that of Salieri towards Mozart.

And that is a true statement, although I read the book first. Among other things, I’m glad Kubrick replaced rampaging topiary with a maze.

@ManchuCandidate: Yeah. They’re the last things you want to see in front of your Big Wheel.

TJ/ Someone was banging on my door at 5:45 this morning. Fortunately for them, they left before I got my clothes on to beat the shit out of them. Now I’m off to work. Surly.

I’m calling out and going back to bed. Fucking morons.

alt text win

RIP Lou Reed

Again, that movie needs to be seen on a big screen. It’s operatic in its manner which can look merely overblown on a small screen. It seemed a masterstroke to make a supernatural movie with nothing in it supernatural. Unless…

Salieri v Mozart. Vienna of the time had its money on Salieri who knew how to work the system. Also, most people don’t like new stuff (unless it’s shiny) and so the familiar will always find an audience grateful to be told it’s still relevant. When M. Amadée (he detested the name Amadeus) was in Prague for the premiere of Don Giovani his librettist, da Ponte, left him to return to Vienna to work with Salieri on some now forgotten rigadoon commissioned by the court. Full disclosure: Mozart is one of the very few geniuses that one imagines as being utterly charming, lovable, kind, generous, profligate with his talent, professional to his fingertips, with an absolute sense of his place in the world of music and very little seeming vanity or narcissism.

@SanFranLefty: Ditto. I think he cruised me once outside Max’s Kansas City.

@JNOV: Where is it you’re living again?

@Benedick: Did you say, “doot deh-doot deh-doot deh-deh-deh doot-deh-doot-deh-doot deh-deh-deh?”

I live halfway between Seattle and Tacoma (east side) in a town originally named, “Slaughter.”

Hey, Bene — I know you (ahem) eat fishes, so this might not be an issue for you. /smug I’m trying to figure out how much B12 I need and where I’m gonna get it. I went lacto-ovo last week. I’m not sure soy and cheeeeeese are enough, but I’d rather not take any supplements. Oh, and I rarely eat eggs, so there’s that.

@JNOV: The junior-high girls always teased me with that one.

@Benedick: The other benefit of a big screen is a big auditorium, the better to be freaked out by the sound of a Big Wheel rolling across rugs and hardwood floors.

Between the scale, the Steadicam, and the sound, that was almost an Oz-level experience to see it in 1980. If you’re not overwhelmed, you’re watching it wrong.

@nojo: Yep. And it has spawned a rash of people trying to find the underlying meaning of Kubrick’s cinematography from product placement to maps of the hotel. Some are kinda plausible, maybe. Some are outright nuts: Kubrick shot the moon landing. The landing actually happened, but the video was shot in a studio. Evidence: the key in the lock of the sex room spells “moon,” kinda. The number of one of the rooms is the studio number where Kubrick filmed the fake landing, etc. He felt guilty being part of the hoax, and so on.

@nojo: Heh. I’ve seen picture (how come just one, huh?) of Young nojo. I doubt they teased you. It was an invitation. When did you hit your growth spurt? IOW, the tall girls in middle school always paid attention to the boys’ growth spurts. Can’t slow dance with no shorties.

@JNOV: That new Shining Conspiracy Theory documentary is now on Netflix, but I’ve heard such bad things about it — a boring bunch of cranks yammering on — I’m putting it off until I have nothing better to watch.

Kubrick shot the moon landing.

I don’t have the link handy, but a few months back somebody posted the definitive refutation of Fake Moon Landing theories, based on the video technology available in 1969. They couldn’t do it if they wanted to.

@nojo: That movie is only mildly entertaining because of plugged in creepy shots that divert your attention from the yammering.

@JNOV: I was always The Tall One.

Few photos of me exist post-high school. I don’t have any Issues as such, but Mom always shot the shit out of family holidays to the point of intrusiveness, and I began to associate “saving the moment” with “ruining the moment”.

Also, the family photos are all slides, and hell like I’m going to bother scanning them.

@nojo: Ah, but we have nojo and Puyi…

A creative mind can fill in the rest.

ETA: Yeah — I don’t think any girl outgrew me. Awk-ward. All the tiny girls got the guys.

Oh, dude. Slides. The person who invented slides needs to be whipped. Same goes for that PowerPoint nonsense. Every. Single. Training I have involves PP AND paper copies of the slides.

Your tax dollars at work…

@JNOV: @nojo: Excsqueeze me. Can we get a room?

And the colored girls go doot de doot de doot de doot de doot de doot…

What one wonders, as the actress said to the bishop, is who did the arrangement. Who created that echoing sound of the colored girls. Who created the entirety of that disc. That is the artist.

Plus: Little Joe who never gave it away has got a son here who does my plumbing. He looks like his dad. And is proud of his dad.

@Benedick: I used to think that the sax solo was by Zoot Simms. But it’s not.

@Benedick: This is news to me, but the recording was produced by Bowie. Presumably he decided how to treat the background vocals by the — yes — Thunderthighs.

@nojo: Man, there were not enough Tall Ones when I was the Tall Girl in 8th grade. I grew half a foot in 7th grade, and towered over all the boys except the ones held back a few years so they would be stars on the high school football team. (yes red-shirting in Texas dates back to at least the ’70s or ’80s).

@Benedick: Yeah. Whatever. B12. Thanks.

@SanFranLefty: Yeah — you’re taller than me, aren’t you? I grew a half foot between 7th-8th. I’m not tall by any means (remember the WNBA player in my class?), but still.

@Benedick: Oh. You meant you, nojo and me. The English doesn’t translate well.

Since Mr Reed couldn’t make more than one chord at a a time I guess some arranger/producer created the sound of that track.

@nojo: Bowie could score vocal tracks? I doubt it. He could maybe work sliders on the master board. Then the professionals would make it be right.

Listen to the dood de dood de dood de dood de dood. And then then the horns coming in before the vocals. That’s not accidental. That’s a pro arranger/producer making magic from a melody line plus vocals.

You dear sweet funny people have no idea of the staggering incompetence of your rock idols.

@Benedick: My friends who care about such things consider Wild Side to be a novelty, contrasted with the more Lou-authentic White Light White Heat and live performances, so no argument there.

But surely the composer of Ziggy Stardust knew something about chords and progressions, even if you prefer to credit Ken Scott with the lavish production. Some Rock Gods know their shit.

@Dodgerblue: Ronnie Ross, Bowie’s sax teacher. (Bowie played sax?) Also soloed on Savoy Truffle.

@nojo: Who knows who did what. It’s a sensational track. I never listened to anything else he did. He couldn’t sing. He was all about attitude.

Why would Mr Bowie know dick about music? We must understand that most rock idols are entirely incompetent. They can’t sing, dance, or do anything. They prance about relying on their tech staff to make it sound like they know what they’re doing.

Dood de dood de dood de dood de dood de dood de dood…

@Benedick: Bear in mind that Steve Jobs knew squat about actual coding or design.

@Benedick: @Benedick: You never heard Perfect Day? It’s about heroin addiction, and it’s absolutely chilling.

My life is boring hell

kottke is kinda cool

I have no idea how you pronounce that work. Kaht-key?

Whatevs … all I know is I spent cash American to get The Shining bluray, and I will watch it whenever I want to … that is one of the most perfect movies every made.

@blogenfreude: “Most” is apt, because I’ve never liked the ending. We see Jack frozen — thus harmless — sooner than we need to. Hitchcock would never have carelessly thrown away the suspense.

@nojo: not sure how to write the end of it otherwise … please advise.

@blogenfreude: Just move the scene where we first see Jack out of commission (and thus, no longer a danger) to a later moment.

I’d have to double-check, but I think we see Jack running out of steam, then we see Danny running out of the maze and the snowplow driving away. There’s no tension — Will Jack leap out at them? — because we know he’s done for the night.

Maybe we don’t need that scene at all. Maybe we don’t know Jack’s fate until we see the Jacksicle the next morning.

That’s all. Nothing major.

@nojo: I think it sets up the punchline of the film, which is the slow creep-in on the vintage photograph starring the elder Mr. Torrance. He’s got to be solidly, irrrefutably dead for that to work, and to be irrefutable you need more than one shot of him dead. If there are two shots of him dead, which I think there are. If memory serves…

I think you all are too hard on Stephen King, by the way. I agree he’s mostly a writer of dreck (yiddish word, right? I’m on a roll), but there are a few novels- Needful Things or the novella Apt Pupil , for example- which approach genius. Cujo is a more layered novel than one might expect given the subject matter. The genre pieces, like The Stand or Salem’s Lot may not equal the work of a Poe or a Lovecraft, but it’s worth noting that even those writers have their limitations

His real genius is in character. His grotesques rival those of Dickens, in my opinion, and his depiction of both small-town life and the strength of the human spirit in the face of impossible odds have always made him one of my favorites.

I wrote a paper in graduate school on the bias of “genre”. In a nutshell, genre is the way that the hedgemony successfully silences voices of dissent or critisism by pejorativizing the subject matter of the fictional work. Yet when one looks at the history of fiction – as opposed to the history of literature- it is the voices of “genre” that speak loudest, and have the most effect on culture. Don’t beieve me? Tell it to Jules Verne, Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, or Issiac Asimov. Stephen King novels tend to be about the irrelvance of race and gender, the triumph of intellect over group ideation, and the power of individual action over even the most monolithic of structures. This puts him in the company of some very brilliant writers, most of whom have been discounted as “genre” authors.

At the end of the day, who had the most effect? Stephen King, or Brett Easton Ellis? Dave Eggers or HP Lovecraft? John Updike or Edgar Allen Poe?

@SanFranLefty: I know you’re busy, but we miss you, darling! Also: A new iPad is easily written off as a business expense if you do any work at all remotely, as I know you do.

@JNOV: Bu-ka-ke. They don’t speak the bu part because in most uses it is silent. You should use that spelling when you write about it, though.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: I liked Insomnia. He stole from a myth, I think. People have invisible threads growing out of the tops of their heads, and one of the, um, things(?) snips them and you die. But there was something beautiful about that book. I can’t explain it. Maybe I’m just easily amused, but when I read Firestarter when I was 13, I decided to start reading Rolling Stone. Then I went through all of his books until the Dark Towers — I think this is around the time he was hit by that van.

Some I didn’t care for, like Christine. I loved his short stories. Hated It. Loved The Stand. He was the only writer since I read Nancy Drew where I could happily spend a weekend reading his book.

This is all before college, and I guess I’m not supposed to like him now. Gerald’s Game was kinda creepy and okay. The one where writer dude has a twin inside him or something? Meh.

Needful Things!

I’m about to find out how well FIND MY EFFIN PHONE works.

It works Big Time.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: xoxo Hi there! Sorry, it’s been a mad mad mad past few months at work. I’m going to be in El Ay for a long weekend over Veteran’s Day for a get together with some friends. Would love to steal away for a Stinque up with you and Mr. Catt and Dodger and Ms. Dodger in Santa Monica or WeHo.

Oh, and w/r/t the iPad – Mr. SFL has been on my ass about getting a new iPhone. I have the original version and he is horrified by how slow it is when he tries to look up traffic on Google Maps. I tell him that it’s fast enough to play my music and to play Words With Friends. (And in terms of updates: Homofascist and Mellbell are currently kicking my ass, Dodger and I are neck and neck, Ms. Dodger is slaughtering me. And playing the game always makes me miss our sweet kooky baked more than words can express.)

@JNOV & @SanFranLefty: I was thinking about baked tonight, too. I miss her, or at least knowing that she’s out there somewhere loving her dog and giving hell to Rat Bastard and Jon Lovitz.

@JNOV: My boss lost his iPhone in SF last year, and thought I was a genius when I located it (in the taxi lost & found) using Find My Phone.

@Mistress Cynica: Of all the genius things you do, that is the thing that moved the needle?

Bosses are weird.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: Yes! The man actually hugged me in the middle of the San Francisco Book Fair. It was like I had magical powers or something.

@Mistress Cynica: That thing is incredible loud. I hope you used the sound feature to find it. ;-)

@SanFranLefty: Steve and I are coming down 1/2-1/7. Come to Magic Mountain with us!

@¡Andrew!: Yeah.

@SanFranLefty: BTW, I played some of her Scramble words for her. ;-)

@Benedick: I think that young Lewis grew up enamored with doo-whop (doo-wap? Wop?), so the chorus always struck me as perfectly him. But the artificially hetero chromatic Bowie really drove the bus on “Transformer”.

@peggynooner: Peggy! XD

@SanFranLefty: I do work for Tim Cook, in a roundabout way, so I can speak with authority and make recommendations on all things iOS.

THESE ARE THE BIGGEST AND NASTIEST WORMS I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!

I think I saw Ted Cruz climb out my kitten’s ass.

@JNOV: Peg is fine, if you are gentle “_”

@peggynooner: Yes.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing:
I don’t mind King (at least his earlier work) and as a (failed) writer myself I get why he’d be upset at Kubrick changing his work.

However, The Shining/Shining (Simpsons) is a great creepy standalone horror movie and I think the only Steven King movie worth watching. Most of his other faithful adaptations of his work have been shit (Salem’s Lot was okay.) For example look at the Stephen King directed horrid mess that is Maximum Overdrive if you dare. I personally think that it’s more King’s bruised sore ass ego here as he imagined himself a great horror everything and not just writer but he should really stick to writing. Kubrick’s a master of cinema and visual storytelling (even if he was a perfectionist git at times but give him credit he did not imagine himself a true renaissance man.)

Crackhead Rob is real. Gawker is right and all those Crackhead Rob supporters can go suck a crack pipe.

@ManchuCandidate: As I recall what bothered Stephen King was Nicholson’s performance. One of his goals in the book was to be sure that Jack Torrance seemed safe and mentally stable at the beginning of the book- Kind felt that the movie tipped its hand too early.

@JNOV: Lovely image.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: Puhlease. Like you’ve never had Cruz crawl out your ass.

@JNOV: a gentleman never tells.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: :-)

Sorry, but, yeah. I didn’t realize how sick these kittens were. Today, they purr. And one is wrapped in my shirt so I can type. Boob ledge can come in handy.

TJ/ Off FB. Time sink. etc. Didn’t block you. Have two kittens sleeping on arm. One finger typing. etc.

@JNOV: You missed out on a good Sybil, then.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: I’m still on Team Sybil! I just don’t want to deal with FakeBook anymore.

As Wittgenstein once said when his boyfriend dumped him in Parma for the hot waiter in the tight pants: If you’re relying on the supernatural to provide the story you don’t got a story.