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Quint thinks The Shining Doc ROOM 237 is high on crazy and short on substance!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Every year at Sundance there’s one movie that hides from me. Sometimes this movie just didn’t jump out on the schedule and sometimes I just plain overlook it for reasons unknown. The hider this year was Room 237 and thanks to Fantastic Fest I’ve finally caught up with the film.
A documentary comprised almost solely of footage from Kubrick films as conspiracy theorists float their crazy thoughts about hidden messages in The Shining should have been a home run for me, but I found myself bored out of my skull about 20 minutes into the movie.
Unfortunately the movie feels like an assembly of Youtube crazies stitched together when I was hoping for some nuttiness, but also some real subtextual ponderings to chew on after the movie. Half of the theories were being explained by people who have no idea how movies are made… I mean, I’m sure Kubrick paid closer attention to continuity than most directors, but some of these theories depended on deep background things not matching from scene to scene.
The doc touches upon something very interesting and that’s Kubrick’s meeting with marketing agencies to discuss subliminal techniques, but nobody could validate anything that’s actually in the movie and the filmmakers either didn’t care to follow up with Kubrick’s estate or were denied access to his files, so there’s no deep illumination, just a bunch of people with theories based on nothing but obsessive rewatches of The Shining.
If they had been able to get the advertising or one of Kubrick’s collaborators people to comment or some notes of his showing that any of these crackpot theories were even close to being on the right track then THAT would have made a fascinating documentary, but as it stands it’s just an hour and a half of inane babble by mostly articulate people with some bugnuts crazy ideas.
Wish I could have dug this one as it’s very fertile ground to mine. Maybe in the next few years someone else will be able to do something more illuminating. But hey, at least it inspired this amazing Mondo poster:
Make sure to follow me on Twitter to get my live reactions as I dive headfirst into Fantastic Fest!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
Readers Talkback
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Or not.
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Will cause terrible angst for all involved. Unless they've been monarch mind-controlled!
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You usually aren't bad with the grammar but Jesus, it looks like Harry wrote that.
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Is it intentional? What does it really mean?
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K, got it, thanks
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Sept. 24, 2012, 12:04 a.m. CST
My theory is the moon landing was real, but the PHOTOS are fake.
by 3D-Man
Why? The photos are just too darned perfect. These weren't professional photographers, these were astronauts taking these pictures, and yet we have shot after shot of perfectly composed stills that looked too staged to be real. Perhaps the REAL photos/video were too grainy and not spectacular enough to share with the world. And since the images they got didn't do justice to such a monumental accomplishment for mankind, they went with fakes.
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Sept. 24, 2012, 3:21 a.m. CST
Jay Werdners first Kubrick documentary that picks up from the origional 'joke-theory-concept' put out there way back was fantastic
by alexander
It was very illuminating, even if only for what Kubrick himself believed, or was trying to say, if that's as far as your willing to take certain ideas. And it was released a year or two back. Secrets Hidden in the Films of Stanley Kubrick, PT1. Harry gave it some very brief coverage in his DVD reviews. That is all.
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People actually believe the moon landing was faked? Jesus wept.
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Sept. 24, 2012, 6:50 a.m. CST
If the moon landings were real, why don't they point a telescope to the landing area for pictures of the moon lander?
by JMoe
So they can take pictures of galaxies millions of miles away, but can't get pics of the moon landers? Hmmmmmm . . . .
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....the flags are much too small to be viewed from any telescope available at this time. Sorry, but sometimes science sucks.
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Sept. 24, 2012, 8:11 a.m. CST
Sorry to demolish the whole concept but the room no. was changed from #217 just because the hotel used really did have a room #217 and didn't want it to become linked to the film's horrifying events
by Splicer
The changed it to #237 as the hotel does not have a room #237 in real life.
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Only the good photos were released, you didn't see all the failed or uninteresting ones... And there are pictures taken by lunar orbiters where you can see the landing sites, plus the reflectors left behind by the Apollo crews which you can detect with earth-based lasers. Lots of evidence out there!
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Hheheheheheheheheheheh.
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Sept. 24, 2012, 8:56 a.m. CST
I would rather see a movie about the hidden messages left for us in Eyes Wide Shut
by ajit maholtra
About secret societies, human sacrifice, and Carl Jung.
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Sept. 24, 2012, 9:05 a.m. CST
There's no real evidence than men walked on the Moon
by performingmonkey
Yes, there have been several Moon landers, but to have a manned crew there and back again safety is nigh on impossible now, let alone in 1969-72. The footage was faked, with the help of Kubrick, in a military hanger. The astronauts swore oaths never to reveal the truth. Maybe...
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Sept. 24, 2012, 9:19 a.m. CST
So with modern tech, they can't take pictures of the actual moon landing equipment left on the moon, that's a fact . . . .
by JMoe
So where is the evidence any of it is on the moon?
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Check out this guy's site: http://www.collativelearning.com/the%20shining.html I thought THE SHINING was a decent enough film, though a bit slow. I recognized the "America built on the mass murder of the Indians" thing (how hard could that one be?), but the "other" stuff like: (1) the context of the film (much like THE EXORCIST) is child abuse.. and I'm not just talking "physical" abuse. You know the "bear blowing the old man" scene? Shelly Duvall is not so much seeing an episode of the hotel's past as she is seeing what she repressed inside herself: the fear that "the old man" (Jack) was forcing himself on "the teddy bear" (Danny). Earlier in the movie, Danny has a teddy bear that has a similar basic appearance (similar colored fur, etc). Just watch the youtube videos (his user name is Robag) and read the analysis, as well as his other Kubrick critiques. Really cool stuff.
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They did a show just on the moon landing conspiracy theories. None of them panned out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz7cUP4o-ZQ
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Sept. 24, 2012, 9:57 a.m. CST
The astronauts installed a laser reflector on the Moon...
by FluffyUnbound
...to allow for precise measurement of variation in the Moon's distance from Earth. Anybody with the right equipment can bounce a laser off the reflector. And yeah, I knew that even BEFORE there was a Big Bang Theory episode about it.
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http://www.collect space.com/news/news-090711b.html
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Sept. 24, 2012, 1:22 p.m. CST
The movie may be a sucky mess, but I like the posters.
by openthepodbaydoorshal
Sp the first one. Always loved that floor pattern.
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I know about the room thing. Seems pretty stupid to me. I would think people would WANT to stay in the actual room number from the book. Hell, there would probably be a year long waiting list.
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Sept. 26, 2012, 2:15 a.m. CST
People would be happy with not taking the room number, but the actual hotel it's shot in.
by alexander
I don't buy it, plus what splicer said. I also hope Werdners thirds documentary on Kubrick covers Eyes Wide Shut. You do have to take what he says with a pinch of salt though.
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