brainwagon

Well, to avoid pigging out on tons of candy that we bought “for the kids”, we decided to spend Halloween doing something else (apologies to the kiddies). It turns out that Pixar had a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the classic Steven King story starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. I hadn’t seen this film since it first came out back in 1980, and didn’t remember as liking it a whole bunch when I did. But I must say, as forty-something adult, I can easily recognize that it’s one of the great horror films of all time. Jack is simply electric onscreen, and while Shelley Duvall plays one of those annoyingly weak sobbing females, her facial expressions are great as well. A few more impressions:

1. 25 year old color film stock goes very red, but it retains detail.
2. Oh, and it has lots of scratches, dust, and general nastiness.
3. The sound design for the Shining is brilliant. Quiet and understated, it emphasizes the remote and loneliness of the lodge.
4. Did I mention that Jack is really, really creepy?

A great movie for Halloween.