Getting the week started correctly, here is another scary cinema post in this last week before we’ll all celebrate the season with treats or tricks. I might argue that 2001: A Space Odyssey is Stanley Kubrick’s most innovative, ambitious, and visionary film. But The Shining is my favorite Kubrick flick, and it’s one of the best horror films of all time.

Here’s a great examination of two of the film’s creepiest elements by one of my favorite film analysts, Rob Ager. Ager’s done lots of great breakdowns on Kubrick’s films and here he looks at the terrorizing of little Danny Torrance as well as the mystery of the bear-suited man. Fair warning: Ager’s analysis brings up themes of child abuse.

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Every now and then I try to make my list of the ten best films of all time, but the best I’ve been able to do is to come up with my favorite films by my favorite directors. Stanley Kubrick has lots of great movies, and they’re all worth watching over and over again. That said, my favorite Kubrick movie is The Shining. As you might imagine I was immediately intrigued when I stumbled across an Open Culture tweet about digital artist Claire Hentschker’s virtual reality deconstruction of Kubrick’s masterpiece. Here are some of their words…

In other words, the project allows viewers to move around, using 360-degree Youtube video, in a digitally fragmented space built out of the first 30 minutes of the film. Be aware that there are browser restrictions, but if you open the video in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera, you’ll be able to navigate through the space using your mouse or the WASD keys.

It’s a very weird experience. The Overlook’s interior exists in contiguous 3D photographic blobs suspended in black nothingness—giving one the feeling of reaching the edge of some previously-believable video game world and finding out there’s nothing beyond it. And it’s made all the creepier by the near-exclusion of the very few people the hotel does contain—with the exception of a kind of residue of partial bodies—and by a droning, one-note ambient synthesizer score.

Last one to the Overlook freezes in the maze…

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Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black satire, Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb), is one of the Kubrick movies I hear Kubrick fans claim as their favorite Kubrick movie. 2001 gets a lot of votes and I love The Shining, and Strangelove is an example of the director at his visionary best.

I found this nugget when I was reading some articles for my Flipboard. Here’s a fun featurette that captures the making of Strangelove…

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Earlier this year, Indiewire posted a five-part, three hour documentary covering the career of the late, great Stanley Kubrick. Here’s their introduction to this fantastic project…

For the past little while, the folks at The Directors Series have been putting together an extensive, detailed look Kubrick’s career in a series of video essays, which is now complete. Running nearly three hours long (!!) and spread across five parts, these are some great, deep looks at Kubrick’s work, the evolution of his techniques, and much more. It’s perhaps fitting that the longest essay spans “2001: A Space Odyssey” to “The Shining,” a particularly incredible run for the filmmaker.

You can watch the whole doc at the Indiewire post, but in keeping with my spooky Halloween-inspired October posts, here’s the “The Masterworks” chapter of the doc which includes Kubrick’s scariest and goriest visions: A Clockwork Orange and The Shining…

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Continuing our celebration of 35 years of The Shining here’s another of Rob Ager’s insightful video examinations of the film. As I’ve mentioned, Ager is my favorite alternative critic of The Shining, and in this video he looks at the mystery and meaning of the ghostly twin girls in the Overlook Hotel.

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This spring my favorite Stanley Kubrick film is celebrating its 35th birthday. The Shining was beat up pretty badly when it debuted in 1980 — Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall’s performances were panned and Kubrick was held responsible. Of course, years later, the film is considered to be a classic by the master.

In celebration, here’s a great little video game that allows you to follow the ill-fated Torrance family to the Overlook hotel. It’s a great celebration of the film that recalls many of its most famous scenes and tropes: steer the car though the mountain pass that opens the film, help Jack type his novel, navigate the hedge maze and progress through the game as each level is designated with a day of the week title card just like the chapters in the film.

Let’s Play: The Shining Video Game here…

In addition, here’s Rob Ager’s analysis of spatial anomalies in the layout of the Overlook Hotel, one of the best documentary videos uncovering secrets in Kubrick’s masterpiece. It’s a particularly apt video for this post as the secret spatial anomalies were first revealed when a video game designer tried to recreate the setting and found it to be impossible to reconcile with itself…

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For this spooky October post I found a little gem on YouTube. It claims to be the first ever television interview with Stephen King and since I couldn’t find an earlier one on the site, I’m gonna take their word for it.

The interview takes place one decade into King’s career after he’s written horror classics like Carrie, The Shining and The Stand. It’s filmed nearly ten years after King’s graduation from the University of Maine Orono and is produced by the school’s public access channel.

I’m not a big fan of King’s books, but I’m a big fan of King and his spectral success story and his crazy work ethic. However, the scariest thing here might be the ancient computer he was producing those early bestsellers on…shudder…

(2017 Addition) The original, first Stephen King video, was taken down by YouTube. It’s been replaced here by a King interview on the Charlie Rose show from 19993…

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