Kurosawasan

Yeah I don't know Japanese, but I feel if I were to talk to Akira Kurosawa right now I'd probably call him that. Akira was a masterful film maker, able to control seemingly every aspect of his craft. I really enjoyed that we got to watch a movie from a plethora of periods of his career. His later films, Yojimbo and Ran really captured my attention, whereas Stray Dog, made me want to quit school and get a GED. I think I enjoyed them because they combined both comedy and action into a sweet samurai flick. One of Kurosawa's more admirable traits is how he was able to tie in the weather in his movies. He didn't shoot them on a back lot of a studio, so he used the weather to his advantage to really put more emotion in the film.

Danny Isn't Here, Mrs. Torrance

The Shining (1980) directed by none other than Stanley Kubrick is potentially the most awesomely weird movie I've ever seen. More reminiscent of his 2001: A Space Odyssey or A Clockwork Orange. The Shining is a monumental sci-fi/horror film which takes place almost exclusively in the very empty and very "haunted" Overlook Hotel. Jack Torrance and his family, wife Wendy and son Danny, move into the resort after getting a job as the off-season caretaker.

During the movie everyone noticed how many tracking shots are used. Practically 80% of the film is composed of tracking shots. Kubrick was actually one of the first directors to use a steadicam as it was invented just 4 years before the making of this movie. This movie has had such an impact on the rest of the history of movies, as apparently Spielberg and Scorsese both were hugely influenced by the frequent low tracking shot seen in the flick.

While watching The Shining I kept thinking to myself what the hell, this is so weird. The first hour of the movie we are introduced to psychics and a strangely possessed child, and then it get progressively more out there as time goes on. Spoiler Warning! At the end of the movie Jack goes insane and tries to kill his family, just as the previous care taker Charles Grady. I've been thinking about this for the last like two hours, and I feel there is no logical explanation for what I've just seen. I've come to the conclusion that the hotel is a connection to the past, which people who are untrained with their gift of the shining are able to open up this connection and fuse both the present and past. With Danny there, the past is able to open into the future, and the ghosts of those killed are thus reincarnated into real people. I feel there are too many "loopholes" for anyone explanation to work, which is what intrigues me about this movie.