That Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining features a wealth of subtle references is not in doubt, not least the inconsistent geography of the Overlook Hotel, which seems unremarkable at first viewing but becomes a brain-worm of weirdness when you think about it. Trying to map it out was a fetish of the early 2010s web, but I recalled those efforts ending as inconclusively as the location of the Gold Room. With the sequel coming soon, I decided to check in, and can happily report that the Overlook mappers have taken it to the next level.
Check out this beaut:
The Overlook is not exceptional amongst Kubrick's films for its disequilibrium.
The interior of The Overlook doesn't at all begin to fit with either the exterior on the studio set or the real life exterior of the Timberline in Oregon. At first glance it seems he might have had it constructed to fit with the set exterior, but he didn't. Eventually one realizes that there is likely only one window in the whole of the film that works with the interior, and only one entry/exit likewise. Nor do the different parts of the hotel's interior connect together in the way Kubrick visually leads one to believe. His manner of editing establishes assumptions, but those assumptions are wrong. One finds that the only possible room in the second floor section around which Danny cycles, is room 237.
I think that Kubrick's obsessive, idiosyncratic approach to cinematic composition is the only true reason for the hotel's impossible geography. Read the rest
There are times in life when you're presented with something that you never knew you wanted but, once its in your head, you're certain you can no longer live without it.
That this isn't a real film has gnawed out a sizeable chunk of my soul. Read the rest
When preparing the screen adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining, director Stanley Kubrick highlighted, crossed out and wrote marginalia throughout his personal copy of the hardback novel, available online. Read the rest
Claire Hentschker's virtual reality trip through The Shining is even more unsettling than it sounds: thirty minutes of scenes from the movie extruded into 3D, so you can look around in all directions as the camera slowly takes you along. Yet the models are all incomplete, taken as they are from Kubrick's footage, leaving the impression of looking into the Overlook and its surrounds from a timeless, warped, supernatural viewpoint. Which is to say: it's perfect.
Shining360 is a 30-minute audio-visual experiment for VR derived from the physical space within Stanley Kubrick’s film ‘The Shining.' Using photogrammetry, 3D elements are extracted and extruded from the original film stills, and the subsequent fragments are stitched together and viewed along the original camera path.
Many thanks to the Studio for Creative Inquiry. All content derived from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining
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Here's behind-the-scenes footage of Jack Nicholson muttering, running in place, and taking practice chops in preparation for the famous "Here's Johnny!" scene in The Shining.
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The Chickening, directed by Nick DenBoer and Davy Force:
It is a theatrical trailer for a fictional film in which Stanley Kubrick’s classic film The Shininghas been artfully transformed into a new, poultryinfused comedy adventure by digitally altering the film to create a new narrative. This new style of filmmaking is a hilarious collision of classic films with modern day visual effects; “Cinegraffiti” — the ultimate neonostalgic visual feast for this digital age.
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Adam Savage has been having a lot of fun making models lately (like this cosmonaut model). In this video, we get to see the large scale model of the Overlook Hotel's maze that he built. Read the rest
When the Overlook Hotel swallowed Jack Torrance's soul in The Shining, sucking him into their haunted history, did you ever wonder if Stanley Kubrick actually got a whole bunch of people to pose for that last vintage-looking photo of happy partygoers, with Jack Nicholson front and center? Or did you consider that it was an existing photo taken at a whole other party from another time? You might want to ask the gentleman pictured here, because he was actually at such a party, in that very real photograph.
The Overlook Hotel, which has its own Tumblr account, stumbled upon the pre-Photoshop retouching process for the memorable photo, which was originally taken in 1923. Used as an example for the magic of airbrushing, the process was detailed in The Complete Airbrush and Photo-Retouching Manual. In a nutshell, this unidentified man had his head replaced with that of Jack Nicholson, which sounds like the logline for a rejected psychological comedy called "Being Jack Nicholson." Visit the site to see the before-and-after shots.
Photo credit: The Overlook Hotel
(via Lee Unkrich on Twitter) Read the rest
"I know I'm not the first person to put a laugh track on The Shining," writes youtoobmember, "but I couldn't resist doing my own version of it." The result is funny for a minute or so, then increasingly unsettling: it seems to remove the safe pop-culture patina that The Shining has picked up over the years. The Shining - The Sitcom (Seinfeld Style) [YouTube] Read the rest
