Ready Player One

[Ben]

Funny enough, we’re running The Shining tonight in our theater for a friend who - gasp! - has never seen it (not as bad as not having seen Jaws, though, wink-wink, Rand!). When he asked to see it, I did think "oh, good, that’ll prime him for when we get the RPO 4K in a couple of months!"

[EricJ]

Funny enough, we’re running The Shining tonight in our theater for a friend who - gasp! - has never seen it (not as bad as not having seen Jaws, though, wink-wink, Rand!). When he asked to see it, I did think "oh, good, that’ll prime him for when we get the RPO 4K in a couple of months!"

Millennials' ideas of Great 80's Movies have atrophied to a certain set number of seven or eight (hence the "Fast Times was not a John Hughes movie" reference), and The Three Scenes Anyone Ever Remembers From The Shining seem to have joined the list next to Back to the Future and The Princess Bride.
(Now, as to whether they remember any other line from "Say Anything" besides the holding up of a boom box...)

Still, as someone who actually was alive to have been in a theater in the 80's to recognize all the references (unlike your average ABC-TV rerun of "The Goldbergs" ), I did give a smug smirk that everyone in the theater recognized the Shining refs, but not one person noticed that the Orb spell was Merlin's dragon-spell from "Excalibur".
Looks like that movie didn't make the Millennial-memory cut--I remember having to tell kids to go rent that movie instead of the new King Arthur one. But I'll be hopeful and assume I wasn't the only one to notice Sho ninja-throwing the Glaive from "Krull" in the climax.

[Randall]

Funny enough, we’re running The Shining tonight in our theater for a friend who - gasp! - has never seen it (not as bad as not having seen Jaws, though, wink-wink, Rand!). When he asked to see it, I did think "oh, good, that’ll prime him for when we get the RPO 4K in a couple of months!"

So, do you recommend I see The Shining too, then? My HD-DVD is still in shrink-wrap.

[EricJ]

So, do you recommend I see The Shining too, then? My HD-DVD is still in shrink-wrap.

If you haven't yet,
A), it's good to add to your Stanley Kubrick IQ, and
B ) it's good to see the Three Scenes Everyone Remembers now in their original creepy form, before they're spoiled by being turned into goofy pop-ref SFX videogame-friendly action sequences. (Warning: We get the line "But there weren't any zombies in The Shining!" in RP1.)
Better yet, go out and rent the Blu-ray, and throw the HDDVD out while it's still in its shrink-wrap.

Apart from that, it's not absolutely your best Kubrick, Nicholson, or King movie of the litter, but if it's been absorbed into 80's Pop-Cult Lore now, better to do your film-class homework than be spoilered by hipster goofballs.
(As with the otherwise funny Academy Museum ad from this year's Oscar ceremony: )

Sort of like watching Citizen Kane and Empire Strikes Back now, before some idiot makes "Rosebud" and "Father" jokes.

[Ben]

Um...I’ve a feeling it may creep the crap out of you Rand!

[ShyViolet]

Just some extra thoughts on the film:


The live action scenes were actually the more surreal ones, seeing “real people” only about 20% of the time and in the midst of all the (extremely well done) CGI was like looking into another world. Which it IS: both in the fictional 2045 as well as in our own 2018. With so many people checking their smartphones every five minutes nowadays, (especially me! ) the idea of a time when everyone will constantly be retreating into an “OASIS” to escape the drab and empty environment around them doesn’t, unfortunately, seem all that far-fetched. .

As I said in my earlier post, I very much got a WALL-E vibe from this film many times, particularly in its ultimate message that “reality is the only thing that’s real.”

Even in WALL-E the live-action humans in the old movies had a surreal feel to them, like they came from a dream. Like RPO, WALL-E has an optimistic ending: that humans will stop looking at an insular fantasy for fulfillment and actually notice the natural wonders of the world around them.

(BTW I still can’t believe that technically Crystal Skull has a higher RT rating than this film. (77% vs. 74%).




*************************************************


Also, really good essay on the nuanced themes woven into the film:

https://www.dailyo.in/arts/ready-player ... 23536.html

[ShyViolet]

Is James Halliday really Willy Wonka?


https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2 ... eneration/

[EricJ]

Is James Halliday really Willy Wonka?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2 ... eneration/

Spielberg DID reportedly want to cast Gene Wilder as old Halliday, for the very obvious reasons, but fate sadly intervened.

[Ben]

That writer is very slow on the uptake! Various reviews that I saw all made the obvious connection to Wonka...I think even Cline pointed out that the way the clues were left were like the Wonka tickets...it’s surprising that he’s only just worked that out when it was acknowledged and very clearly indicated that Halliday was a modern Wonka!

As Eric says, Spielberg did ask Wilder to play the role as a last hurrah, but it wasn’t his death that prevented it — he’d already declined due to his Alzheimer’s long before he died (and eloquently explained why, even if he was complimentary about Spielberg while admitting to not liking these kinds of modern movies), and I believe Rylance had even already shot his role by the time he passed. Would have been epic though, and I had so hoped he’d have said yes. I’m still waiting for RPO to hit 4K disc, but from what I’ve heard, Rylance plays it with more than a hint of what Wilder might have been like.

[EricJ]

As Eric says, Spielberg did ask Wilder to play the role as a last hurrah, but it wasn’t his death that prevented it — he’d already declined due to his Alzheimer’s long before he died (and eloquently explained why, even if he was complimentary about Spielberg while admitting to not liking these kinds of modern movies), and I believe Rylance had even already shot his role by the time he passed. Would have been epic though, and I had so hoped he’d have said yes. I’m still waiting for RPO to hit 4K disc, but from what I’ve heard, Rylance plays it with more than a hint of what Wilder might have been like.

Rylance plays old and young Halliday as the script (not as much in the book?)'s withdrawn quasi-autistic "Computer geek" stereotype who sat in his room playing Atari when he was young and still can't relate to human beings. The Shining plot point about his "Archiving every movie he ever saw and when" does rather suggest the reason we're supposed to think.
And Rylance uses that to play old Halliday--with the same frizzy hair--very, very, very much with his own imitation of WIlder's mad-lobotomized Willy Wonka delivery, but with a touch of Cosmo Kramer, because he's, y'know, nerdy and withdrawn.

[ShyViolet]

Spielberg interview from BBC1:


https://youtu.be/SMv1iTHUTtc


Just...wow.


He is...the MAN!!!!!!!!

(Apparently he named RP1 as one of the hardest films he’s directed so far. I could definitely see how unbelievably challenging a film like that would be to direct, not just for technical reasons but also the for the task of getting the “tone” right. The film is a warm love-letter to cultural nostalgia while at the same time “mocking” it, although not in an overly arch way. The balance is just perfect. The movie is funny and sad, optimistic as well as wary. Only someone like El Stevo could have pulled this off!! )

[ShyViolet]

Also, don’t mean to keep gushing like this but just wanted to say that I truly, truly believe that in maybe 100 years’ time people will look on Spielberg and his work as the equivalent of Shakespeare and Dickens. I’m totally serious.

The truth that is often forgotten is that both of those singular geniuses weren’t terribly appreciated as much more than extremely entertaining artists in their respective eras either. Both were considered entertainers of the masses when they were alive, just as Spielberg was for so long. (And basically still is by the majority of academia. Even though Schindler’s List finally propelled him to the upper reaches of Academy recognition, the basic majority of academics/film scholars as well as critics still see him as only a couple of steps above P.T. Barnum.) But there has actually been quite a lot written by now on the darker/extremely complex psychological themes in Spielberg’s work (not just from the last 15 years or so) but stretching back to his beginnings with Duel and Jaws.


I know it might be a bit hard to see now since the issue of how he’ll be remembered hasn’t really been discussed, but the way these man’s films have grabbed people’s emotions so strongly and so universally WILL NOT BE OVERLOOKED. And it’s sooooooo much more than just having amazing SFX/CGI. Or “pandering to the masses.” I mean supposing someone else had directed the first Jurassic Park in 1993. It certainly would have been a gigantic success, but would it have left the mark on our culture (sort of like a dino’s footprint lol) that Spielberg’s JP 1 did? I know there’s no way to know, but every instinct in me says no, no, no. (Because I really doubt that the “water ripples in plastic cup” scene before the T-Rex attacks would still, after 25 years, be a constant anecdote for so many on how terrified they were, or for that matter referenced so much in our culture, had someone other than Spielberg directed. I really do.)


As The Ringer said last fall when the HBO doc Spielberg came out: “There can never be another Steven Spielberg.”

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2017/1 ... susan-lacy

Some great work on this subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Darkness-Bliss-O ... 1441146040


https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Dreams-Sc ... 074255578X

Um, “interesting” essay. I guess. (Some language.)

http://www.spectacle.org/0801/ai.html

(BTW, I totally respect the opinions of those who don’t care for his films. I understand they’re not everyone’s cup of tea.)

[EricJ]

I don't know who you're angry at, but I'll settle for people finally going back and taking interested looks at "Adventures of Tintin", "Minority Report", "Bridge of Spies" and "The BFG".

[ShyViolet]

I agree that the first two are vastly underrated (especially Minority Report) but still haven’t seen Spies or BFG.


Oh here’s a clip of the “water ripples” scene from JP.


https://youtu.be/1koa2xAxCAw

[Randall]

Minority Report is really a great sci-fi film, and it stands as one of his best works. Tintin was pretty good.

BFG.... not so much.