Ten Statements About....THE SHINING (1980)

"I'm not going to be a movie star?  NOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

I think we should discuss Danny. I think we should discuss what should be done with him."

1) I know this is a bizarre way to start this 10 Statements...but the soundtrack that Kurbrick puts together piecemeal from various sources is one of the most disturbing soundtracks I've ever heard. The weird atonal pieces from classical performer Bela Bartok are particularly upsetting.

2) One of the reasons I suspect Kubrick cast this film the way he did is because he wanted to tell as much of this film with the character's faces. So much of this movie is moved forward by the reaction shots of these people--hell, a major plot point rests on watching Scatman Crothers' eyes widen and mouth drop open--that he needed these particular actors, even if some of them are much older than the characters are portrayed in the book.

3) That being said, one of the weakest links (not the weakest link, as we'll get to later) is Shelly Duvall's Wendy. She seems to spend the entire film whining, crying and screaming to the extent that it rejiggers the relationship in the book into something much more overtly abusive and parasitic than it was in the book. While that's a definite choice, and one that was successful in the context of this film (people still talk about this version while the Garris telemovie remains mostly forgotten), it also blunts Wendy's 'resourcefulness' to the point where I wondered where Jack's talk of her being so came from in Act Three.

4) I have to assume, given how Kubrick always approached everything with a extreme attention to detail, that the weird fairy tale echoes were intentional, especially in regards to the hedge maze. I realize it was created because special effects at the time made recreating the hedge animals of the book impossible, but having this maze be 'the dark woods' Danny has to enter to avoid the monster his father becomes is actually more appropriate in the context of the movie.

wait a minute...those are real girls...THOSE AREN'T
MIDGETS!!!!!

5) Of course, the sad thing is that Danny Lloyd is not an actor. Yes, there are moments where he works--the whole sequence where he retreats and leaves Tony in charge is pretty good--but the bulk of his performance is lackluster and obviously artificial. We're not even going to talk about the ludicrousness of his facial expressions whenever he starts to 'shine.'

6) I respect what Kurbrick is doing with the whole sequence where Scatman Crothers' Hallorann comes to Danny's rescue only to have said rescue dashed almost immediately (although ironically, said 'rescue' ends up successful). However, I do think that all the time we spend watching him realize the danger, fly out to Colorado, arrange for the Snocat, etc. ends up building up the expectations to the point where his sudden dispatch is a disappointment rather than a shock.

7) Everyone mentions Joe Turkel's Lloyd, probably because his exchanges with Jack are quotable...but to me the scariest character overall is Philip Stone's Delbert Grady. Part of it is the subtle way Kubrick introduces him, allowing us to slowly realize who he is, but mainly it's because in this film full of quiet horror Grady is the most quietly monstrous--telling Jack the most horrific things in the most reasonable of ways.

With Kubrick, it's not this point that's scary...it's what happens
getting up to this point.

8) You know, at first I thought some of those shots of Jack Nicholson sitting there looking like a comedy goof were ludicrous...until I noticed how Kubrick changes the color palette whenever Jack 'enters' the world of the Overlook. When he's in the 'real' world, the palette is stark and harsh, but when he's lost in the Overlook, the colors become warm and comfortable. Of course, the world where he's the most at home is the world he should never, ever be in....

9) I find it riveting how, the deeper we get into Jack's psychosis, the more the camera begins to 'identify' with him, to the point where it follows the line of his axe whenever he swings it. This is how you use a moving camera--to emphasize the fact that Jack's no longer stable, but is absolutely unstable.

Furries...this is what you look like to us.

10) To me, the effectiveness of the scare scenes is because they're so sparse on the ground and rely on us to put together what's going on. If a lesser director (like, Jan de Bont or you know...oh, Mick Garris) had handled this, we would have gotten an avalanche of special effects full of goopy, gooey ghosts instead of a couple of carefully placed apparitions with only minimal grotesqueness. Hell, the most disturbing stuff isn't the decaying old lady but the two girls--who I swore were adult actors made up until I saw them in the documentary short on the DVD being introduced to Nicholson--or the strange tableau with the figure in the animal costume. Kubrick trusts us to make stronger scenarios in our head than he can provide himself.

Overall...a truly amazing horror film notable for how deliberate and subtle it is...so subtle that all the overtly hammy elements serve as the breathers, and not the moments of silence in between.

Ten Statements About....HEAD (1968)

"Hey, Hey, we are The Monkees...and we've had Enough Of
Your Shit."

"Nobody lends money to a man with a sense of humor."

1) Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this film is that at its core it's four people trying to break down their public identity and reconstruct it in a way that's not disrespectful to that first version but much more adult. I think it works, even if said attempt happened long after the damage was already done.

2) That being said...as much as I love this movie, and it is one of my all-time favorites, there are moments when the quartet tries to hard. I think the inclusion of actual Vietnam footage jars the viewer out of the anarchistic comedic sketches and disrupts the flow of the film itself.

(However, the incorporation of Rockettes footage during the 'Long Song Title (Do I Have To Do This All Over Again?)' is amazing, especially given how the editing lines up the dancing to go along with the beats of the song itself.)

3) While I know some people point to the recently departed Davey Jones as the 'face' of the Monkees, my nominee is Mickey Dolenz. The other member of the group chosen for his acting experience (Jones was a regular on the British soap Coronation Street, while Dolenz was the star of the drama Circus Boy), he is a master not only of comic timing but of excellent facial expression. Hell, one of my favorite moments is when we get a demented reaction from Dolenz during the desert sketch when the voice in his head does, in fact, leave him alone.

4) That being said, Jones does provide the best song sequence in this film, the absolutely gorgeous Harry Nilsson ballad 'Daddy's Song.' Very simply shot with a very elegant concept, this song allows Jones to display his true talent for dancing, as he engages in a clever little number with film choreographer Toni Basil.

Davey Jones is hanging out with Frank Zappa and his pet
cow.  Your argument is no longer valid.

5) I really have to wonder if Tim Carrey, who played Lord High N' Mighty, wasn't exactly acting during his handful of rants at the quartet.

6) You'll notice I don't talk much about a plot here. That's because this isn't so much a narrative film but a string of gags and sketches and musical numbers held together by this dubious through line. The film is so plotless, in fact, that I have to wonder if writers Bob Rafaelson and Jack Nicholson (along with the Monkees themselves) didn't look upon this as an unofficial remake of the infamous Olsen and Johnson 'comedy' Hellzapoppin', which also made a plot point out of the main characters being unpopular hacks.

7) I know there are lots of people who look upon the Monkees' early compositions as their masterpieces, but I am absolutely confident in declaring the songs on this soundtrack as being the best collection of songs this band ever put together, a grouping of numbers that manage to reflect the personalities of each member individually and as part of the band. In addition to the previously cited 'Daddy's Song,' I love 'Circle Sky,' 'Long Title (Do I Have To Do This All Over Again?)' and 'The Porpoise Song.'

"And then I thought about starting a hippie death cult...but I
decided to stare into space and join a rock band instead..."

8) While Mickey Dolenz is the best all-around actor...there are moments where Mike Nesmith cracks me up. The rant he goes off on about surprise parties that ends with '....the same goes for Christmas' gives me the giggles something fierce.

9) There are some details to this movie that still make me wonder, and details I discover every time I watch it...like, this time around, the handful of backwards credits. I don't think they're supposed to have significance, but then....

10) ....there is the idea that this is all a fantasy in the mind of someone--I can never decide if it's Victor Mature or Mickey Dolenz whose head we're riding in, but the circular nature of the film itself gives me that impression.

Overall...I love this movie (I've watched it way too many times for it to be healthy for me), and I've only scratched the surface of this flick with my Ten Statements. Eminently rewatchable, it's one of the better examples of psychedelic cinema. And it makes me sad we never got the sequel the band had planned in the 80's, which would have seen them trapped by the denizens of Pleasant Valley....

Ten Statements About....THE WILD RIDE (1960)

"That's right...I'm manly."

"You used to be Top Stud. You never went shallow."

1) It's incredibly hard to take Jack Nicholson--who, quite frankly, looks like some sort of turtle monster who's too old to be in this kind of film--as a juvenile delinquent madman when he's dressed in an oversized sweat shirt. It's even harder to take him, period, when he's stripped to the waist in all his hairless glory.

2) Good f'ing lord, is the 'hip' dialogue in this movie inpenetrable. What does all this talk about 'going shallow' mean?

3) You know, when you're trying to do your own low-rent version of a movie, you shouldn't reference that same movie...because then you'll realize how awful your version is. I'm sorry, but Marlon Brando would beat the stuffings out of this iteration of Nicholson...

"I'll show you..I'll grow up, earn an Oscar, and fuck a whole
lotta chicks younger than me...and Angelica Huston."

4) The big conflict between Nicholson's Johnny Barron and Robert Bean's Dave revolves around Georgianna Carter's Nancy. Johnny insists that Nancy is a 'chick' that'll never fit with the gang...but after watching Carter's too wide eyes and joker-like grin, I have to wonder if she'd fit anywhere.

5) There's no real focus in this film...is Johnny a bad guy because he fatally injures a cop in a game of chicken? Because he cheats at the race track he's driving at? Because he won't pay for all the liquor he purchases for the rather limp 'beach party' we see about twenty minutes in? There's so much that this script wants to include that you feel there's no direct message it can offer....

6) The cops in this film are awfully lackadasical...they supposedly have a big file of evidence on Johnny, and yet don't arrest him until the end--even after the cop in the opening sequence dies off panel.

7) Given how these days gang members tend to kill each other over the slightest insult, these gang members that just throw charges of 'chicken' at each other and fistfight in the surf seem....quaint.

8) Man, that's the goofiest looking malt shop ever....

Ladies and Gentlemen, Stalker-in-training Georgianna Carter...

9) So this married woman Johnny was involved with gets introduced with nary a mention of her relation to the story until near the end; up until that moment, we just think she's some maiden aunt Johnny borrows ten dollars from at roughly the thirty-five minute mark.

10) There's this whole beatnik-manque soundtrack that just Won't. Shut. Up. Of the fifty eight minutes of this film's running time, about fifty or so is just bongo riff after bongo riff....and when Johnny demands all his gang members turn their transistor radio to a certain station, it's overpowering in its crapitude...

Overall...a really silly, sad teenagers-in-revolt film that is redeemed only by the novelty of seeing an Oscar-winning actor playing a prototypical Fonzie wannabe.