Rob Ager, analyst of movies.. or so he says.

Has anyone of you come across this guy before?

He goes by the name of Rob Ager, and seems to be a rather popular "movie analyst" on the internet. He has a site and a YouTube channel, on wich he conducts "In-depth analyses" of films of all kinds. He seems to be rather obsessed with Kubrick.

Here's the link to his site:

http://www.collativelearning.com


For you to get a sample of his analyses, here's chapter 11 of his analysis of 2001 - A Space Odyssey

http://www.collativelearning.com/2001 chapter 11.html



Okay, my thoughts.
He seems paranoid. It's like he's a conspiracist of movies.

His whole site seems woo-ish.

If you skim through ch. 11 you will see numerous mentions of the back side of the great seal of the US, and, you guessed it, he references it with mentions of the Illuminati and Freemasons...


I'd like to know your opinions on his stuff.

It'd be especially interesting to hear the opinion of someone in the movie business, or someone with more knowledge than I have.

Well, I once worked for WB in distribution, if that counts, and my girlfriend in 1971 dumped me for that nice fella who directed Taxi Driver and Raging Bull (and some other stuff, I think). But my credentials are merely as a film freak of many years.

As I was alluding to in the The Shining thread, I think he's a conspiradroid with much too much time on his hands. The home page of his site doesn't work over here, but from his articles that I've read and his duller 'n dirt youtubes, he's a conspiradroid, first class. In general, I hate deconstructivist critics. I don't mind knowing esoterica and background... I can think of many such interesting tidbits - how Altman got the great realistic feeling to McCabe & Mrs. Miller, what Marty Sniffs did that great spinning camera bit in Mean Streets, the new film that Kubrick used in Barry Lyndon, how they got that famous (to film freaks) long unbroken single shot in Peeping Tom* with 1960 technology, or who edited the 8mm wedding film sequence in the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz(okay, that's a stretch - it was a drinking buddy of mine from Montreal). That kind of thing just makes watching the film more interesting, to me.

Cinephiles for years have been taking apart films frame-by-frame, and unless it's something that feature revolutionary technique, and there are a lot of those out there, I generally stop reading the article after a page or two. While I might find it fascinating to know what sort of stabilizer they used to get the camera shots of the chariot wheels in Ben Hur, I don't need to see the entire sequence, frame by frame, analyzed for the lighting angles.

More important, though, when talking about Ager, you'd be taking those same lighting angles and frame analyses and have to follow his tedious linkage and go looking for signs of hidden messages in support of a Satan Worshipping Jello Wrestling Cult, or whatever it is he's on about. I started down the page of his 2001 analysis and got to the image of the pyramid/eye on the dollar bill and just zoned out, frankly.

As with his analysis of spatial relationships in The Shining, I keep asking, "What's the point?" His tone about his discovery is that he's proving that Kubrick is intentionally misleading us about how the hotel was constructed, and you know, for the life of me, I cannot find anything in the promotional material about the film saying, "Come see Stanley Kubrick's 100% Accurate Architectural Rendering of a Fictitious Hotel". The hotel is, essentially, the lead character in the story, but a director's tricks or devices to make us feel that it's more labyrinthine just doesn't seem like any sort of conspiracy to me. He made a suspense film about a big ol' scary haunted hotel and whether the exterior shots agreed with the carpeting of the interior shots (or whatever point he was making) is just totally insignificant.


*See biographical note in first paragraph. Guess who turned me onto Peeping Tom?

ETA: left out part of a sentence, above.

Foolmewunz said:

Well, I once worked for WB in distribution, if that counts,and my girlfriend in 1971 dumped me for that nice fella who directed Taxi Driver and Raging Bull (and some other stuff, I think)...

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You've got to be kidding.

Foolmewunz said:

As I was alluding to in the The Shining thread, I think he's a conspiradroid with much too much time on his hands. The home page of his site doesn't work over here, but from his articles that I've read and his duller 'n dirt youtubes, he's In general, I hate deconstructivist critics. I don't mind knowing esoterica and background... I can think of many such interesting tidbits - how Altman got the great realistic feeling to McCabe & Mrs. Miller, what Marty Sniffs did that great spinning camera bit in Mean Streets, the new film that Kubrick used in Barry Lyndon, how they got that famous (to film freaks) long unbroken single shot in Peeping Tom* with 1960 technology, or who edited the 8mm wedding film sequence in the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz(okay, that's a stretch - it was a drinking buddy of mine from Montreal). That kind of thing just makes watching the film more interesting, to me.
....
More important, though, when talking about Ager, you'd be taking those same lighting angles and frame analyses and have to follow his tedious linkage and go looking for signs of hidden messages in support of a Satan Worshipping Jello Wrestling Cult, or whatever it is he's on about. I started down the page of his 2001 analysis and got to the image of the pyramid/eye on the dollar bill and just zoned out, frankly.

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Yes, I agree. Ager seems absolutely paranoid. Read his analysis of A Clockwork Orange

Foolmewunz said:

As with his analysis of spatial relationships in The Shining, I keep asking, "What's the point?" His tone about his discovery is that he's proving that Kubrick is intentionally misleading us about how the hotel was constructed, and you know, for the life of me, I cannot find anything in the promotional material about the film saying, "Come see Stanley Kubrick's 100% Accurate Architectural Rendering of a Fictitious Hotel". The hotel is, essentially, the lead character in the story, but a director's tricks or devices to make us feel that it's more labyrinthine just doesn't seem like any sort of conspiracy to me. He made a suspense film about a big ol' scary haunted hotel and whether the exterior shots agreed with the carpeting of the interior shots (or whatever point he was making) is just totally insignificant.

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These people that sit down and take a movie apart like that inevitably overanalyse. It seems Ager is a bit of a pseudo-analyst. It seems (and this applies to several other analyses I've read) that the analyser didn't do a lot of research. What I mean is that with a little reading, you will find very much contradicting evidence. I read through about 118 pages of Kubrick interviews, after that, things made a lot more sense.

As far as The Shining goes, I think it's obvious Kubrick (and Diane Johnson during writing) used Freud's essay as a basis of making us feel uncanny. He used almost every theme from The Uncanny.
Be it the theme of the double or the reoccuring numbers. But that's about as far as it goes, IMHO.

*See biographical note in first paragraph. Guess who turned me onto Peeping Tom?

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Now I'm all the way confused.

Greedo said:

You've got to be kidding.

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There are what 10,000+ members of this forum?

Stands to reason, one of two them might be famous, or may have been dumped for famous people.

Greedo said:

You've got to be kidding.

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No. Her daddy got me my job at WB - he was on the board of directors. She took a hiatus from me to "find herself" and went out to Beverly Hills to live with dad. He got her a production assistant job on Boxcar Bertha, and the next time I saw her was when she came back to get her stuff. She moved in with Martin for four or five years. (I still claim that the opening of Taxi Driver was from an idea of my own and that he executed it brilliantly - and differently - but the taxi headlights through the steam from the manhole covers was a shot I'd envisioned, myself.)

<snip>

Now I'm all the way confused.

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I stayed friends with the young lady in question and we still spoke of films - she was real big on Peeping Tom and later I discovered that Scorsese was a big reason for the film's repatriation and popularity. So, indirectly, it was Scorsese who turned me onto it. (He's since written on the film. I don't know if she discovered it first or he did - I'm betting on him as he was an avid student of B Movie thrillers and eccentric film makers.)


As to Ager - I think I'll check out his Clockwork Orange review/analysis. Should be funny. I know a great deal about that film and its history and the Burgess novel. I actually rank it a lot higher in the Kubrick pantheon than most people. But, I think of it as a narrative. It's pretty hard to find any hidden meaning in it - it's rather "in your face" if you were a fan of the novel, also.

Foolmewunz said:

No. Her daddy got me my job at WB - he was on the board of directors. She took a hiatus from me to "find herself" and went out to Beverly Hills to live with dad. He got her a production assistant job on Boxcar Bertha, and the next time I saw her was when she came back to get her stuff. She moved in with Martin for four or five years. (I still claim that the opening of Taxi Driver was from an idea of my own and that he executed it brilliantly - and differently - but the taxi headlights through the steam from the manhole covers was a shot I'd envisioned, myself.)

<snip>



I stayed friends with the young lady in question and we still spoke of films - she was real big on Peeping Tom and later I discovered that Scorsese was a big reason for the film's repatriation and popularity. So, indirectly, it was Scorsese who turned me onto it. (He's since written on the film. I don't know if she discovered it first or he did - I'm betting on him as he was an avid student of B Movie thrillers and eccentric film makers.)


As to Ager - I think I'll check out his Clockwork Orange review/analysis. Should be funny. I know a great deal about that film and its history and the Burgess novel. I actually rank it a lot higher in the Kubrick pantheon than most people. But, I think of it as a narrative. It's pretty hard to find any hidden meaning in it - it's rather "in your face" if you were a fan of the novel, also.

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ETA: As to the double/recurring numbers, we're going to have to agree to disagree. See other thread.

Foolmewunz said:

ETA: As to the double/recurring numbers, we're going to have to agree to disagree. See other thread.

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Hmm well, I agree that the timing is in all likelyhood coincidence. But the theme of doubles applies not only in the numbers. The numbers are just one thing that Freud mentioned. For instance, two elevator doors rather than one in King's original. (the elevators are stuck on the first and second floor, btw )
The two ghost girls, and there are other instances.


Ugh, I was just googling something about The Big Lebowski and all I got was some "**** the New world order" crap and telling me how the whole movie is Illuminati. I mean, come on. Where did this crap start?

So err, FMW, as you worked at WB, you must also be some grand Illuminatus, right? Or at least affiliated with project monarch, right?

Oh, fer shure! At a hundred bucks a week I took my vast earnings and bought myself a couple of archipelagos, and have converted one of the dormant volcanoes on one of the islands, to remane unnamed of course, into a sooper secret missile base (or submarine base - I have trouble keeping my plots for world domination in order).

Greedo said:

...Ugh, I was just googling something about The Big Lebowski and all I got was some "**** the New world order" crap and telling me how the whole movie is Illuminati. I mean, come on. Where did this crap start?

So err, FMW, as you worked at WB, you must also be some grand Illuminatus, right? Or at least affiliated with project monarch, right?

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There's Illuminati and pyramids and more of that in his analysis of A Clockwork Orange, too. His criticism of the Ludovici treatment has some basis, but then he spoils it with Neurolinguistic Programming nonsense.
He's a looney.

Jeff Corey said:

There's Illuminati and pyramids and more of that in his analysis of A Clockwork Orange, too. His criticism of the Ludovici treatment has some basis, but then he spoils it with Neurolinguistic Programming nonsense.
He's a looney.

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Yeah... Well, at least he doesn't follow the whole "Kubrick was an Illuminati" -meme.
However he analyses that Kubrick believed in the Illuminati, and in a secret Elite.

I read an article on him some months ago.

http://ukinvestigator.hubpages.com/hub/Rob-Ager-is-WRONG

He seems to be fairly popular. Unfortunately. Why can't people think critically?


It seems he doesn't do a lot of research, and therefore makes mistakes. When pointed out, he either ignores you or
responds in an uncivil way.

Greedo said:

Ugh, I was just googling something about The Big Lebowski and all I got was some "**** the New world order" crap and telling me how the whole movie is Illuminati.rolleyes:

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The Illuminati want to turn us all into bowls-playing slackers?

If we're discussing over-analysing, Roger Ebert reminds us of an interview with Hitchcock (it's his birthday):

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19691214/PEOPLE/912140301/1023

Talking about The Trouble with Harry:

"...a French intellectual asked me why I shot it in the autumn. His theory was that I was using the season of decay as a counterpoint to poor Harry's own decay."

Hitchcock snuffled to show how ridiculous that was. "The only message in the picture," he said, "was that you should never mess about with a dead body - you may be one yourself someday."

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It seems like the conspiracy version of Danny Peary's "King Kong" Review, where he examines the movie as a Freudian allegory.

http://thefilmist.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/danny-peary-on-king-kong/

As a lover of film, I want to believe alot of what Ager says is true. But that wouldn't be very skeptical of me, would it?

Here's an interesting blog by screenwriter John August about Ager's deconstruction of spatial anomalies in The Shining

http://johnaugust.com/2011/cinematic-geography-and-problem-of-genius

I remember hearing once that Picaso loved to go to gallery showings of his own work just to listen to the way the tour guides would interpret his paintings. Apparently he found it quite hilarious.

Weak Kitten said:

I remember hearing once that Picaso loved to go to gallery showings of his own work just to listen to the way the tour guides would interpret his paintings. Apparently he found it quite hilarious.

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Haha, yes I know that. I occasionally do some drawing, and people always try to interpret my most random drawings, yet absolutely fail when I actually had a meaning in it.

Round Robin said:

As a lover of film, I want to believe alot of what Ager says is true. But that wouldn't be very skeptical of me, would it?

Here's an interesting blog by screenwriter John August about Ager's deconstruction of spatial anomalies in The Shining

http://johnaugust.com/2011/cinematic-geography-and-problem-of-genius

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Ager is almost entirely full of baloney. Over the last few nights, inspired (and linked) by this thread and the Kubrick thread, I've been reading Ager's in-depth but far overreaching analysis of The Shining, and watching his Shining-related videos. Today, I've been re-watching the 1980 film (for at least the babillionth time) and, this time, watching for Ager's "spatial impossibilities", examining the backgrounds and architecture, and keeping Ager's various theories in mind.

It's almost complete bollocks, IMO. The supposedly superfluous, "disorientating" window in Ullman's office is perfectly logical if you consider that there is a portico behind the office, the right wall of which is parallel with Ullman's office wall at screen-right. The "elevator of blood" which is around the corner shares that same wall, which runs along the line parallel with Ullman's office wall.

Similarly, the two extras who walk into the corridor behind Ullman and the Torrences as he's giving them the tour do not "appear out of nowhere"; they're coming in from a door that leads to the portico seen through the windows of the previously-seen room (where Jack later does his typing). Ager is imagining that these sets don't match up, but in my estimation he's not using his imagination to explain what he incorrectly perceives as spatial flaws.

His theory of Native American genocide metaphor similarly collapses under scrutiny. The hotel is rife with Amerindian iconography because it's a hotel in Colorado. Anyone who's spent any amount of time in that state and/or, especially, its many hotels can aver that the entire culture there is aswim in Native American design, craft and artwork. Kubrick is not making some point about American wealth predicated on the slaughter of Natives; he's being accurate to the setting: a hotel in CO.

I could go on, but the linked article (see quote above) nails several of my key points:


That about sums up my thoughts as well.

Discussions like this remind me of the old Benny Hill sketch where he plays a movie director being interviewed about his latest work, and the interviewer sings praise about the pivotal point in the film where the movie switches from color to black and white, to which Benny Hill replies that the reason for the switch was they ran out of money, and black and white film was cheaper than color.

Vortigern99 said:

His theory of Native American genocide metaphor similarly collapses under scrutiny. The hotel is rife with Amerindian iconography because it's a hotel in Colorado. Anyone who's spent any amount of time in that state and/or, especially, its many hotels can aver that the entire culture there is aswim in Native American design, craft and artwork. Kubrick is not making some point about American wealth predicated on the slaughter of Natives; he's being accurate to the setting: a hotel in CO.

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That's a good point.

Upon reflection, Ager's deconstructions have a scent of anomaly hunting, with a bit of confirmation bias thrown in:

Premise: Kubrick was a Genius
Premise: Kubrick was a perfectionist
Conclusion: Any anomaly in The Shining must have been intentional
Reinforced Premise: Kubrick was a Genius
Reinforced Premise: Kubrick was a perfectionist

I imagine if Ager considered Kubrick sloppy, his entire spacial anomaly vid could have been spun to reinforce that view with a minimum of voice-over changes.

Foolmewunz said:

Oh, fer shure! At a hundred bucks a week I took my vast earnings and bought myself a couple of archipelagos, and have converted one of the dormant volcanoes on one of the islands, to remane unnamed of course, into a sooper secret missile base (or submarine base - I have trouble keeping my plots for world domination in order).

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Thought they'd given the game name away in "The Incredibles"