***
From the ridiculous to the sublime: Matthew Woodson's new painted poster for 2001: A Space Odyssey is a real beauty.
***
Jamie Stangroom interviews Louise and Lisa Burns, better known as The Shining Twins, and they're just as charming today as they were creepy 40 years ago!
***
Anybody know where we can find a copy of the new documentary short that accompanied the UK theatrical re-release of The Shining late last year? I've looked around but so far have had no luck. If any of you run across it, please send it my way!
***
Check out this whining, repetitive idiocy about how that mean old baddy Stanley Kubrick tortured Shelly Duvall on the set of The Shining and how nobody would stand for that sort of treatment nowadays. Yes, well, considering the state of film today...
***
So Tony Zierra, the director of Filmworker, the documentary about Leon Vitali, has decided that his next documentary is going to be about Eyes Wide Shut. Titled “SK13,” it will offer an inside look at the making of the film. Zierra says the appeal is that it is the one film of Kubrick’s that people are still divided on: “The one movie that I feel is the wrinkle in Kubrick’s filmography is Eyes Wide Shut. The people that love him always say, ‘He’s a genius, but I’m not sure what the hell that movie was about.'” No release date for the documentary has been announced as yet.
***
If you're a fan of Mr. Robot, you're probably already aware that this is a show where the Kubrick references fly fast and thick. This Hollywood Reporter article does a great job of breaking down all the many, many homages and references to Kubrick films found in the third episode of the third season of the show.
***
Any fellow font fanatics out there? I've always loved fonts and typefaces, and Kubrick's films have always been a source of beautiful treatments of text, so I love this short history of Futura, the first font to land on the Moon! It also, not so coincidentally, was a font featured prominently in the early promotional materials for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
***
The Guardian catches up with Danny Lloyd and helps him dispel a few rumors that have sprung up due to his absence from the movie biz after what should have been a star-making role in The Shining. This is a really comprehensive interview and is well worth the time and attention of any and all fans of The Shining or Kubrick in general. Lots of great tidbits to be had here. Too bad they weren't able to get into the recently developed theory that Danny is actually the villain in both the film and the novel! To learn more about this surprisingly convincing theory (or, if you're so inclined, to poke holes in it), then check out this essay.
***
Now here's an interesting project! The Shining 237 is Susan Kruglinska's podcast wherein she and a number of guests dissect The Shining in discrete two minute, thirty-seven second chunks. And guess what? Turns out there's a shocking amount of material to explore, including a bunch of stuff that was new to me, despite watching this movie well over a hundred times over the years. A wealth of material for Kubrick scholars. Definitely this is one to bookmark and return to with regularity.
***
In a KNIB full of Shining related links, this last one, from The Stranger, may be the most interesting: experimental musician Corey Brewer discusses creating a soundtrack to go along with everybody's favorite weirdo pomo film experiment, The Shining Forward and Backward, Simultaneously, Superimposed (about which more here). You can actually listen to this score at Brewer's bandcamp page, sans imagery of course. It's actually pretty impressive and makes for great nightmare fuel, if you're into that sort of thing.
***
***
And speaking of university courses, how about this Rollins College class, as described in their independent school paper, The Sandspur?
For those with darker tastes, 'The Madness of Stanley Kubrick' may satisfy. The Psychology Department’s Dr. Paul Harris has been fascinated with the films of Stanley Kubrick ever since watching the original release of 2001: A Space Odyssey as a boy.
“Every Kubrick film is unpredictable,” said Harris. “[A]nd every Kubrick film contains some element of madness as well.” This intersession will explore five Kubrick films, looking at “mentally ill characters in a mentally ill society—where’s the madness? Is it in the characters, or the context the society is in?”
Harris, however, makes clear the distinction between madness and real mental illness. “Madness is fictitious,” he noted. “[The class] will be looking at Kubrick and how he uses madness as a dramatic tool.” In drawing the line between true mental illness and literary madness, this class serves well the purposes of those interested in psychology, film, sociology, and so on.Definitely a course I would have loved to take, if I was still a student! Although I figure if I took it now, I'd probably ace it, considering I've spent most of my adult life steeping in Kubrick's films, as well as scholarship about his films.
***
John Mollo, who won an Oscar for his costuming work on Star Wars (the man created Darth Vader's iconic "look") and was one of the men whom Kubrick relied on to make sure the costumes in Barry Lyndon were perfectly appropriate to the era, down to every last ribbon of lace or ivory button, passed away near the end of last year. May he rest in peace.
