February Break

Well, this break was definitely much needed. Unfortunately however, I spent the majority of it getting sick and knocked unconscious. I started the break off strong by watching The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957). They were two of Kubrick's earlier attempts and they both are notable movies. They both struggled with creating memorable or lasting characters I felt. But I recommend them to any cinema buff or Kubrick fanatic. Their influence, especially The Killing's can definitely be seen in modern cinema today. I was picking out so many things in The Killing that clearly influenced Tarantino's earliest works (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown).  The use of a broken narrative was one that stood out the most, but I could even see similarities between some actual plot points from this film and Tarantino's early projects. I had the pleasure of watching Paths of Glory with Josh Wahl while he recorded me and Connor Tremblay watch the movie for his 20% Percent project.

But, for as strong I started the week off, I ended it just as poorly. I came down with a stomach bug late Tuesday night that put me out of commission for two more days, I was in no condition to actively watch a movie. Then when I was pretty much better on Saturday, I ended up getting a nasty head cold that I still have right now. Which is why I'm not in school. But anyways, yesterday while me and my Dad were both trying to rest off our sicknesses I watched two more movies. I watched Kubrick's legendary 18th century time piece Barry Lyndon (1975) and Quentin Tarantino's take on a blaxploitation film Jackie Brown (1997). While both tell the respective stories of their titular characters, that's where the similarities end. Barry Lyndon tells the story of Barry Redmond, a poor English farm boy, and how he rises to English nobility and then back into the life of a commoner. It's a moving and beautiful film and I recommend it to everyone. I can't decide if this or The Shining is my favorite Kubrick movie now. Jackie Brown is about a flight attendant that gets caught up in a drugs and weapons smuggling scheme that lands her in trouble with the law. It's a fun, exciting watch and Samuel L. Jackson's performance as Ordell Robbie is what makes the movie for me. I've already seen Jackie Brown, but actively watching it was an eye opening experience. I started to really pick up on Tarantino's directing and writing style in the movie and it's really cool to be able to make these connections that I would have never made without taking note of it.

There's no existing image of Samuel L. Jackson's Ordell Robbie and Ryan O'Neal's Barry Lyndon together on the internet so I whipped up a quick photoshop of them.

Scheduling Concerns

I've really been trying to grasp just how many directors I can realistically complete in the time that we have for this project. My original goal was 6 but I don't know if that is entirely plausible at this point. I estimated that if I spend around three weeks on each director then I'll probably only be able to complete five directors until the deadline. And that's if I rush the fifth director. However, I didn't account for all of our breaks and long weekends so there's still hope. Also, I am so familiar with Tarantino's filmography already; I might be able to blast through it faster than any of other the other directors. My goal this break is to finish the rest of Kubrick's movies. I have 6 more to watch and then I need to compile all of my findings into some essay type thingy. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to organize my notes in a cohesive manner, or what I'm really going to create but I'm sure it'll come to me soon.

A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey

This weekend I continued my studies on Stanley Kubrick by watching his two most famous movies: A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey. After watching these two, I can conclude that Kubrick is one strange dude. These two movies were two of the strangest I've ever seen in my life. Alex's transformation from sociopathic punk to brainwashed government servant back to menace of society again in A Clockwork Orange was easily one of the most radical character developments I've ever seen. And the pure scope of Kubrick's vision in 2001 was massive and epic, but not least bit underwhelming.

Kubrick did a fantastic job of portraying Alex as this extremely unlikeable character in the first half of  Clockwork, but by the halfway mark when the government was sticking things in his eyes and he got violently sick at the thought of sex you just couldn't help but feel bad for this guy.This movie has been ranked by many critics as the most controversial movie of all time and that's rightfully so. There's rape scenes, extremely violent action sequences, and it even spawned some copycat crimes in the UK. Its stated in the movie that Alex is a victim of his dystopic, modern, society and I wholeheartedly agree. But not in the sense that he was used as his government's guinea pig for an extremely controversial "cureall" for criminality, instead he is a victim of his society's sex and violence obsession.

The other Kubrick film I watched recently was 2001: A Space Odyssey and this was  a strange one as well. This was the first time I saw this movie and I can definitely see the impact it's had on the film industry. Its this film that pioneered the association of waltz-like classical music with the journey of a space ship. The music all throughout is so iconic, I feel I've seen it parodied and referenced by hundreds of other films. Even people who have never heard of 2001 know that recognizable theme. The overall plot of the movie is fairly convoluted and a bit confusing. After I watched the movie I did some research on the ending because I really had no clue what was going on, and after looking into it, I just got even more confused. I'm not going to pretend that I understood the plot of the film, but one things for sure, it was a damn pretty movie.

I'm going to continue powering through the rest Kubrick's filmography. I just bought Paths of Glory, Lolita, Barry Lyndon, Spartacus, and The Killing to finish out my collection of his films. For some reason they were not included in my Kubrick box collection that I bought a while back. My goal is to be finished with all of Kubrick's films by the end of February and I think I'll be able to achieve that because of this upcoming February break we have.

Auteur Theory

Recently during one our conversations, Dr. Morris brought up something called auteur theory. I can describe it best as the belief that the director is the author of his film, and they hold complete creative control over it. In auteur theory the director is the original copyright holder and receives almost all credit for the film. A film by an auteur director is easily distinguishable as the auteur's film. Films by the same auteurs usually have similar themes, scripts, camerawork, and characters. Some famous auteurs are Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson. I've decided that this will be the unifying factor for all of the directors that I'm studying. It feels good to have something as a sort of base, rather than just picking directors that I personally enjoyed.

Snowball, Superbowl, and Snowday

To say this was a busy weekend would be an understatement. Between the Snowball and Super Bowl, I didn't have much time to marathon through as many movies as I would have liked to. Luckily though, mother nature pulled through last night and we got a snow day! I took this as a sign to watch some more movies. Over the course of these three days off, I was able to watch and take notes on three movies. Saboteur (1942) by Alfred Hitchcock, Natural Born Killers (1994) by Oliver Stone, and The Shining (1980) by Stanley Kubrick.

All three were great movies I thought, but my favorite of this bunch is Natural Born Killers. I didn't originally have Oliver Stone down as one the directors I wanted to study, but after watching this film I think I might need to make some room for him. Stone's extremely controversial film follows two star crossed lovers and their month long murder spree across the American southwest. The film is highly critical of the American media and how they tend to portray villainous criminals as "cult" heroes. The movie is a psychotic, bloody mess and is very reminiscent of a Tarantino flick. That's probably due to the fact that Tarantino is credited with writing the original script before selling it to Stone. The movie is edited schizophrenically, e.g. scenes switching from color to black and white randomly, shots transitioning from one to another through a short (1-10 second) animated action segment, and frequent frame long flashes to Satan and other demonic figures. The highly stylized action and strange editing techniques has landed this movie on my favorites list. 

The Shining was my second favorite in this trio of movies. This popular horror film has been called one of the greatest horror movies of all time by many critics. Unfortunately for me, I'm not a huge fan of the genre. Jack Nicholoson's performance as Jack Everett is what made this movie for me. He perfectly portrayed his character's transition from troubled family man to psychopathic madman. Jack's slow descent into madness is one of the best character evolutions I've seen in a movie. Paired with Kubrick's masterful camera work, this movie has quickly become my favorite horror movie to date.

That makes Saboteur by Hitchcock my least favorite of these movies. But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. It was still a great film just not as powerful as these other two. This was one of Hitchcock's earliest American movies and it's definitely not his greatest. It follows the story of a airplane manufacturer that is wrongly accused of sabotage. The film contains many of Hitchcock's trademarks such as his classic "right under your nose" scheme and dark humor all around. The characters weren't the most memorable, but it was still an interesting take on a spy movie.

I think from here on out if I really want to succeed in my studies I need to pick a director and finish their filmography before I start a new one. I'm going to be continuing my study of Kubrick before I dig any further through Hitchcock's collection or any other director.