This pops into my head every time:
‘One thing I could never stand was to see a filthy, dirty old drunkie, howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blurp blurp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking, rotten guts. I could never stand to see anyone like that, whatever his age might be, but more especially when he was real old like this one was.’
I never found The Shining (1980) scary on any level. Instead, it remains after about 20 viewings an endless fascination. It’s the meticulousness of it, the banality, the … pointlessness of the whole affair. It isn’t about anything except pure aesthetics, a director exerting his OCD over every painterly composition. There isn’t even a single character in it and perhaps that’s the point.
Doctor Sleep (2019) does things the right way: it barely has anything to do with Kubrick’s number yet makes subtle allusions to the picture, knowing the audience will understand the references. It also has three-dimensional characters, which I never expected to ever find associated with the Overlook Hotel. A decent movie with nothing specifically annoying going on is a rarity these days. Well done.
More shock: I did not know until this week that the Stanley Hotel in Colorado (location of the Overlook) is also the plush dwelling where the demented Harry and Lloyd stay in Dumb and Dumber (1994), blowing their noses with Mary Swanson’s cash.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-shining-1980
Edinburgh does have its wee accidental allusions.
Gioachino Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie enters my noggin every time I slo-mo stride along ‘Fountainbridge Marina’, a singular image of Alex DeLarge and his droogs syncing to another Kubrickian vignette. Kubrick infects everything, cinema’s supreme stylist.
‘As we walked along the flatblock marina, I was calm on the outside, but thinking all the time. So now it was to be Georgie the general, saying what we should do and what not to do, and Dim as his mindless greeding bulldog. But suddenly I viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones and that the oomny ones use, like, inspiration and what Bog sends. For now it was lovely music that came to my aid. There was a window open with the stereo on and I viddied right at once what to do.’
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 