2001:
Did you know that the score in 2001 was originally just temp music? Kubrick liked the classical pieces so much (he used them to create rhythm during editing) that he dumped the completed theatrical soundtrack that had been composed specifically for the film in favor of the classical pieces.
I'm surprised you're surprised that the movie's reception was mixed...look at how little dialogue there is. Look at how slow it moves (and this is a sci-fi film! Where are the laser guns, the space aliens, the explosions, the cigar-shaped rocket ships?). It's so utterly unlike everything that came before it. Serious sci-fi before 2001 was stuff like Forbidden Planet and This Island Earth.
Yeah, but this was the late 60s, when art films were really starting to get mainstream steam and attention. I figured that 2001 was much more approachable than the stuff Janus was bringing over back then.
Clockwork Orange:
I don't think the film's message is superior to the book. Just different.
I think the way the movie ends is the most effective cap to the satire on Skinner conditioning. The book's ending, I guess, is a bit more ambiguous while still being negative about the treatment, but I like the definitive, conclusive ending of the movie better. Alex was rotten and he was rewarded for it. It's awesome.
I also loathe the Wendy Carlos soundtrack. It takes all those beautiful pieces of Beethoven music and makes them completely sterile and alien, which I don't doubt was Kubrick's intent.
I love synthesizers, especially the early stuff, and I think they fit in perfectly with the whole retrofuture motif. I mean, I wouldn't listen to that soundtrack in any way but the ironic, or as a reference to the movie, but I do think it fits the movie perfectly. Wendy Carlos is also a hot cheeseburger.
The Shining:
You should have wasted time writing King's opinion on the movie, because it is hilarious. I remember reading Danse Macabre and being shocked that Kubrick had ruined King's story (I hadn't seen The Shining at that point and had only King's words to go on!). I remember his criticism of the scene where Shelley Duvall finds the typewritten pages Jack Nicholson has written ("All work and no play make Jack a dull boy", written over and over) being that he disliked that you could see Jack approaching over her shoulder as she looked through the pages. King wanted that scene filmed as a cheap shock-type thing with Jack appearing out of nowhere and startling the viewer as well as Shelley Duvall.
I was discussing King's opinion with drinky the other day. It really is ridiculous. I know King doesn't write high literature, but it's funny that his opinion is so distinguished mentally-challenged and off the mark. I've seen it said that his opinion is so dumb because we know today that King was an alcoholic for a long ass time, so that book was probably very close to him, maybe even partially autobiographical, and to see it drastically changed was probably something of a personal affront or insult to him or something.
But King also said things that were very irrational. he hated the casting of Jack because he thought it was too much of a giveaway casting Nicholson. The audience would know he was crazy because he was just in Cuckoo's Nest. Helllllllo, Stephen? They are different movies! Just because Jack is in both movies doesn't mean he is playing the same character. This is especially slly when you consider that Cucko and Shining are both like, opposite ends of the crazy spectrum.
