Spike ,'Help'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
My favourite Kubrick is Paths of Glory. I liked Lolita and Spartacus as well. After that, I found I didn't have too much time for the guy.
Signed, Also couldn't get into Terrence Malick or Sam Peckinpah, and if that makes me an ignorant film fan, hey, I'm OK with that.
I love A Clockwork Orange. Definitely a top 20 movie of mine. Strangelove and Lolita were good enough, I guess. And 2001 warrants no further thought.
On the flip side, there are some movies that should only be seen on the TV. My strongest memory of Gladiator was not lush scenery or Oscar-winning costume design or actor Russell Crowe, it was being traumatized by Oliver Reed's zombie-like postmortem CGI face stretching across the screen in extreme close-up until it was like a dumptruck-sized ventriloquist dummy parroting his prerecorded dialogue down at me.
Ah, yes. Home widescreen is revealing some things that were previously held quite secret between a patient and their dermatologist.
I think a sign of a great movie is if it works well at both a theatre and at home. Because today's audiences are often not in the theatre when they watch things. By choice.
Not said in the movie.
And yet, referenced in 2010 as if it had been. Which makes me think Clarke put it in the book after the 2001 screenplay was already in the can.
though there are bits where I go "Okay, Stan, you built a rotating set, you're very impressed with yourself, we get it, can we move on from the fucking stewardess and get to the spooky omnipotent aliens, please? Stan? Please?"
Pfft. That's practically my favorite part. Pan Am In Space! Plus the dissertation on zero gravity toilet flushing.
"Open the pod bay door, Hal."
Hey, you know what's 21st century?
I always wanted to see the notorious Flaming Creatures by Jack Smith (important early 60s avant garde film that inspired lots of people including John Waters).
It's not out on tape, but Ubuweb's huge library of experimental film has it so I can just go and watch it. While I'm sitting in this cafe.
Was this yonks ago? 'Cause I saw it there when they had the reissue.
Yup. That was it. But so memorable, it could have been last week.
I couldn't finish Dr. Strangelove.
Those may almost be fighting words. Almost. Luckily, this is the war room.