Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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46 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
CUT DOWN FULL SCREEN VERSION -- you really want it?, 28 Jun 2008
Most people who want a copy of "The Shining" will find that the previous DVD release, released in 2001 (which comes in a white cover rather than this black one), is the one to get. There is very little reason to want to buy this version -- and no reason at all to upgrade. Arguably, this is an INFERIOR release, and you'd be foolish to buy it. Let me explain why.
Kubrick shot "The Shining" in "full frame", which means that the material shot would fit a standard 4.3 TV screen. This footage was NOT masked down to cinemascope by Kubrick but was distributed to cinemas as full frame. It was up to the cinema to mask it down in the projector. This was actually a pretty standard practice, and many movies, particularly before the 1960s, were released as full frame. Many DVDs of these movies have been released with the full frame, too. You get the full width of the cinemascope picture, but you also get the extra footage above and below it that was not masked off.
Having the "full frame" version does have advantages -- it fills your screen if you've got a standard 4.3 TV, and of course you're getting extra footage. What's more, if you have a widescreen TV, you can just use your zoom controls to make the picture fill your screen without distortion, cropping off the top and bottom, hence getting an approximation of the cinemascope version.
The previous white cover DVD of "The Shining" presented the entire, full frame version of the movie EXACTLY AS IT WAS SHOT. This new version gives you ONLY a masked-down version. You're not getting the true cinemascope version of the movie, however, you're getting one masked-down so that it fills a typical widescreen TV screen without letterboxing. It's neither one thing nor the other -- not the full screen movie as it was shot, and not a true cinema version either.
This would be fine if the picture quality was improved over the white cover version. But it's not. Nor is the sound any different. Having studied both, my feeling is that this is exactly the same version that was used in the white cover DVD release, but cropped down to "widescreen". It actually looks like it's more fiercely compressed, losing a little definition over what you see if you zoom up the previous full screen version to fill your widescreen TV. (If you want better definition, of course, you should get the Blueray version.) What's more, this version is plumped up to a 2DVD set by a superfluous commentary and some new featurettes, but the only extra you need is the "making of" which was also in the previous version.
The bottom line is, in this black cover version you get exactly the same movie as in the previous white cover DVD, running the same length, but with LESS actual footage! That makes it a no-brainer for most purchasers -- if you've got a widescreen TV, get the PREVIOUS white cover version, and you can zoom in to see the "widescreen" version EXACTLY as you get it on the black cover release, but also zoom out and see the WHOLE movie as it was shot. Buy this masked-down version, and you don't get the choice. (If you've only got a standard 4.3 TV, get the previous version, of course.) For that reason, this has got to be a one-star don't buy. Grab the previous version while you can.
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19 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Iconic, influential and continually intriguing psychological ghost story from director Stanley Kubrick., 1 Mar 2008
The music, the hedge maze, the empty ballroom, the elevator doors opening to a tidal wave of blood, Nicholson's celebrated hook; in terms of cinematic iconography, The Shining is unrivalled. However, to applaud the film simply because it has cultural appeal would be a great discredit to director Stanley Kubrick's subtle use of subtext and skilful creation of a sustained atmosphere that is tense and genuinely creepy. This is one of those supposedly scary films that does chill - even if it never quite makes you jump out of your seat in terror - with Kubrick blending elements of intense, psychological horror with an almost soap-opera-like melodrama to give us a film that really goes beyond the limitations of the horror genre to create something much more substantial.
From the outset, Kubrick makes no explicit allusions to this being a horror-film in the traditional sense, since there are no creatures in the shadows, or jolts and jumps; with the shocks coming from the juxtaposition between the film's created-reality and the more outlandish spiritual elements from Stephen King's original novel. Instead of generic scare tactics, the director creates disturbing images out of the most mundane of situations, with the most lingering images including skeletons dressed for a ball, children and their toys and wounded guests that refuse to leave the party. The images come from this idea of marital collapse and the guilt of the adult protagonists filtered through everything from 20th century war atrocities, 18th century literature, Scandinavian art-films, crime scene photography and the images of Diane Arbus.
For an excellent example of this idea in full effect take a look at the scene between Jack Torrance and the women in the bathroom; which not only seems surreal on a purely superficial level, but also taps into the guilt of infidelity, crushed masculinity, death, decay and old age. Later in the film, Wendy's fear of her own husband is interpreted via implied homoeroticism, when she stumbles across a man receiving oral sex from a spectre in a dog-costume. However, the figure in the dog-costume could easily be a woman, so perhaps this is a signifier of Wendy's own infidelity to Jack. This scene - like the rest of the film - is open to interpretation.
The ending of the film hints at spiritual-transcendence, the playing off historical coincidences and internal-mirroring. Here, the ending offers us a number of plausible narrative explanations. The most common explanation being that Jack has been driven mad by isolation, and, having heard about the previous caretaker who went mad and butchered his family, has psychosomatically descended to that exact same mental state. This leaves the final image - and the enigmatic questions that are raised - completely unanswerable. A second interpretation would be that the 'story' we believe to be real - the one taking place in the late 1970's - is actually the story being written by Jack. That he never really suffers from writers block, but instead, rather like King in reality, uses the writers block, coupled with his isolation and the pain of his inner-demons, to write the story we see unfold (The Shining).
A final possible ending, and one that proves to be the most complex and complicated, deals with the mirroring of past and present, the reoccurrence of different characters within different timelines, such as the two incarnations of Grady and the two incarnations of Jack; who, in the words of one character, has "always been here". This ending is the most unsatisfying in terms of overall dénouement, but is the most fun when it comes to re-evaluating Kubrick's subtle use of imagery, dialog and subtext. To me however, regardless of what interpretation you choose to apply to it, The Shining is simply a great film; one that rewards with an interesting, continually fascinating plot rife with possible interpretations and Kubrick's always interesting use of cinematic composition, editing, music and performance.
On a final note; it would seem that once again the UK has drawn the short straw with this supposed "special edition" release, which - as per every other release of the film in this country - is in a substantially shorter form than the original American version. Although the film as it is still stands as a great piece of entertainment, it lacks the slow, gradual build and overriding feeling of paranoia that is so skilfully created in the original US release; which runs at 144 minutes compared to our 115. It seems even more absurd when you question the potential of a double-disk DVD, which could have quite easily featured both versions of the film and at much better value for money.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant - but why can't we have a full, unedited version?, 10 April 2008
The US version of The Shining is about 25 minutes longer than this edited version which is the only one ever seen in the UK. It's still a brilliant film, one of the best of it's kind, but why can't we see the full-length version if it's available in America? This gripe aside, this is the best release of The Shining so far, it looks immaculate and has a few decent extras. Stephen King still hates it, though.
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