Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

When we show up, we win.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Books are my comfort food!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Stanley Kubrick was a Photojournalist

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41Comments

  1. 1.

    biff diggerence

    Yes. And the precision required for still photography shows up in his film work. Think of the hotel scene in The Shining, the shot of the lobby, or the table scene in Clockwork. Geometrically flawless.

  4. 4.

    Amir_Khalid

    I bookmarked Paul Krugman’s blog quite a while back. After this new New York Times paywall came down, I notice that, when I go there from my bookmark, I don’t get the bit of cruft obscuring the page — which I do with other NYT content once I hit the 20 article/month limit. I dunno, is it supposed to work this way? Or is it just the half-arsedness of the paywall in action?

  5. 5.

    Montysano

    Nice work, but not great. The photos are ultra-contrasty, with not much gray, and have some focus/sharpness issues. I’m more of a fan of Salgado, whose expression of light and use of grain are pure genius.

    As someone who still shoots film and thrashes about in a dark room, I’m a lover of (properly used) grain, which is something that digital can’t approach. And you kids get off my damn lawn, etc. etc.

  6. 6.

    Legalize

    Looking at anything created by Kubrick’s eye always makes me say “ahhhhh.” He is the master.

  7. 7.

    Amir_Khalid

    about the photo. It seems to me like Kubrick (or his camera) was standing on the train track when he shot that. Please tell me I’m wrong.

  9. 9.

    cleek

    the perspective in that pic (the roof lights, especially) makes me think the whole thing needs to be rotated about 3deg CCW – even though the two people in the center are perfectly vertical as-is. disorienting.

  10. 10.

    jibeaux

    One thing I like about this blog is that the ads are for some incomprehensible right wing thing, “gold delivered to my door”, yarn, and TOMS.

    Targeted marketing — ur doin it halfassed.

    Anyone ever gotten the TOMS wedges, though? Mine are in the mail. I got the linen flats last year and I can’t say they held up terribly well to the elements — definitely an indoor shoe — but they were very, very comfy. Like slipper comfy.

  11. 11.

    Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther

    It’s been so long since I spent any real time in the comments…. But time, it makes the heart grow fonder, non?

    Also too: That photograph is wicked. I would put that above my desk in a heartbeat.

  13. 13.

    Roger Moore

    Yah, Kubrick clearly cared a lot about the photographic/cinematographic side of his moviemaking. Another one that fanboys like to trot out is his use of an exotic Zeiss lens (50mm f/0.7!) originally developed for NASA’s moon program to shoot the candlelit scenes in Barry Lyndon without need for supplemental light. Those scenes really did turn out nicely, even if I’m not 100% sold on the movie as a whole.

  16. 16.

    Poopyman

    @Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: Haven’t found his blog yet, and I’d bet my employer would block it. The actual answer, of course, is “everybody”. But of course danimal was referring to the Brit–with–Irish–name–who–is–the–obsession–of–BJ–frontpagers.

  21. 21.

    Punchy

    JAPAN WITH ANOTHER 7.4 SHAKER….Tsunami warning already issued.

    Damn, when it rains, it pours.

  22. 22.

    Poopyman

    @4tehlulz: It was reported last week that the biggie last month put extra pressure on faults nearer Tokyo, so this should have been somewhat expected.

  24. 24.

    Mnemosyne

    @cleek:

    G was a production major in film school and apparently Kubrick does just about everything “wrong” in his films when it comes to the classical rules of how you compose a shot. But because Kubrick made up his own rules and stuck to them, the films work anyway.

  26. 26.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Roger Moore: Not only that, he apparently had to pretty extensively rebuild that lens because it was designed as a still, not cine lens originally.

    And it looks like I’m not the only one to associate “2001” with acid. Or so I’ve heard.

  28. 28.

    Roger Moore

    @4tehlulz:
    It’s called an aftershock. You get them with earthquakes. It’s just that the earlier 9.0 was so damn big that even the aftershocks are big enough to qualify as serious quakes.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @Gin & Tonic:
    IIRC, the lens didn’t require that much work; it just needed a focusing mechanism that would let it focus close enough for nearby subjects instead of something that was effectively at infinity. The bigger work was on the camera, which had to be rebuilt because the lens had a radically shorter backfocus than a typical cinematographic lens. IIRC, a typical Panavision camera has a backfocus of something like 55mm to accommodate a reflex viewer while the Zeiss was around 7mm. Given the paper thin DOF of a lens that fast, he must have had a very good focus puller to get anything in focus without being able to see what he was shooting. He also had somebody build him a converter for the lens so he could use it for wider angle shots without losing any speed.

  33. 33.

    Roger Moore

    @4tehlulz:
    Sorry, that came out wrong. I was responding to the “WTF” part, saying that aftershocks are a normal and reasonably predictable part of any earthquake. It didn’t mean to suggest that a 7.4 aftershock was something we should just laugh off.

  40. 40.

    debbie

    @biff diggerence:

    Yes. And the precision required for still photography shows up in his film work.

    I’m with you on that, but what some call precision, others would call chilly.

    With the exception of Eyes Wide Shut, every frame Kubrick shot was, I think, flawless. Someone should have noticed what he was doing with Cruise and Kidman and figured out he was ailing.

  41. 41.

    Xenos

    If you follow the link, there is a five frame sequence of wrestling which is quite astonishing for photjournalism. The composition and narrative flow of the pictures is quite an accomplishment for something worked out on the fly in the course of a wrestling match.

    I am not a huge fan of contact prints as finished work – I think there is a lot of tone depth that could have been brought out with proper darkroom work. But it sure makes me nostalgic for the smell of developer and stop solution.

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