A HELL OF A WAY TO SELL ICE CREAM

To find out more about exactly what the Hell is going on in this Kubrickean dystopic nightmare of an advertisement (for the very real Halo Top brand of low cal ice cream), check out this CNET article.

KUBRICK NEWS IN BRIEF ~ NOV 17, 2017

Bloody Disgusting reports on a new line of vinyl collectibles being put out by Funko featuring four figurines based on characters from The Shining. My favorite? Frozen Jack! Find out more at the link!

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This summer, in advance of a concert given in Ottawa featuring some of the most iconic pieces of music used in Kubrick's films, the Ottawa Citizen newspaper interviewed our ubiquitous friend and Kubrick estate spokesman Jan Harlan, and even though the concert is long done with, the interview is well worth revisiting. It begins:

Q: What was Stanley Kubrick’s taste in music like? What enthusiasm did he have for music outside of the role that it played in his films?
A: As a young man he was a drummer in a band. He certainly knew how to distinguish — music as a possible pillar to support the structure of a film is one thing, music for pure enjoyment is another. Two great works he loved very much were never considered for one of his films: The Brahms Requiem and the Schubert Quintet in C.

If that's the kind of behind the scenes Kubrickeana that you just can't get enough of, then by all means keep on reading.

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In this article about the BBC's 100 Best Comedies of All Time (in which Kubrick's Strangelove comes in 2nd after Wilder's Some Like It Hot), Toronto Star movie critic Peter Howell discusses the ways in which movie critics frequently (and unfairly, in his opinion) get a bad rap when it comes to their capacity to appreciate comedy. It's worth checking out for Howell's brief insights into the nature of the laughs generated by Kubrick's jet black satire.

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The title of this Gizmodo article says it all: These Original Artworks From the Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey Are Spectacular.

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With the successful release in recent months of IT in theaters and Gerald's Game on Netflix, certain media have taken to discussing what it takes to make a truly great cinematic adaptation of Stephen King's writing, with Kubrick's The Shining frequently popping up as an example of said greatness (and, occasionally, as a failure, but that's mostly from King himself). Scott Tobias' piece for the Hamilton Spectator, titled The Secrets to Making a Great Stephen King Adaptation is a pretty good example of the genre.

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So apparently someone made an incredibly cool game not-so-loosely based on Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and apparently, according to this stellar review at least, it's fucking amazing. It's called 2000:1 (Two Thousand to One): A Space Felony, or: How I Came to Value My Life and MURDER Mercilessly. Can you beat that for a Kubrickean title!? Nope. You can't. Check out this video preview, then visit the links above for more information about gameplay, etc. This thing looks good enough to drag me back into gaming, which is something I haven't indulged in for almost a decade now.

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Those of you who are fascinated by Kubrick's early work as a "boy wonder" photographer for LOOK Magazine are definitely going to want to check out Philippe D. Mather’s recent book Stanley Kubrick at LOOK Magazine: Authorship and Genre in Photojournalism and Film. It features recently uncovered images from 1946, when Kubrick was only 16, which portray his beloved New York as a paradoxical place of beauty and ugliness, darkness and light.

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Were you aware that, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, during the scene where Dave Bowman and the HAL 9000 computer play a friendly game of chess... HAL appears to cheat? Of course, if you're reading this blog, it's more than likely that you ARE aware of this fact. Furthermore, it's probably more than likely that you're also aware of the myriad theories as to why Kubrick included this little tidbit in his film. Just in case you're not already fully aware of the speculation surrounding this brief moment in 2001, SyFy.com lays it all out for you. They also provide a link to this delightful, new-to-me New York Review of Books article by Jeremy Bernstein--the guy who produced one of the best Kubrick interviews ever, and was smart enough to record it and KEEP his recording--about precisely how clever Kubrick could get when it came to chess.

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And, finally for this edition of KNIB, we say goodbye to character actor Barry Dennen, who played Bill Watson in Kubrick's version of The Shining, but who will most likely be better remembered for his passionate and iconic portrayal of Pontius Pilate, both on Broadway and in the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar. He was 79 years old.