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.

KUBRICK IN THE NEWS

There has been a flurry of reports either about or referencing Stanley Kubrick and/or his films in recent weeks. Among them are included:

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Not-so-hot on the heels of the dubious but intriguing "experimental artistic installation" The Shining Backwards and Forwards comes Jason Shulman's series Photographs of Film, in which, WiReD declares: "the narrative fades away" and the movie "is, instead, one scratchy, hazy frame." The results for the single frame version of 2001: A Space Odyssey are described thusly: "It's mostly black and gray, but you can make out the three screens of the council room, the tiled floor of the Louis XVI bedroom, and HAL 9000’s camera eye, glowing like an ember." See it above, and go to Shulman's page to ogle all the other frames, including The Shining's. My personal favorite is Voyage de la Lune, which takes on the aspect of an H.R. Giger hellscape.

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VICE.com was one of the many media to run a story about Emilio D'Alessandro's 30 year career as Stanley Kubrick's trusted driver, assistant, and family friend. At one point in, VICE points out that

D'Alessandro worked with Kubrick from then until the director's death in 1999, serving as his personal driver, on-set assistant, and lifelong right-hand man on films from A Clockwork Orange to Eyes Wide Shut. Gradually, their relationship shifted from the merely professional to the personal. "I would always call him Mr. Kubrick," D'Alessandro recalls, "and one day he said, 'Emilio, pack that in, and just call me Stanley.'

Endearing as that story is, even better is the photo that accompanies the article, which is definitely one for the Kubrick-o-phile's archives. We've been seeing a lot of Kubrick and Emilio stories in the news lately - including this Movie Pilot article about how Emilio tried to convince Stanley not to hire Jack Nicholson for The Shining - because Emilio's book, Stanley Kubrick and Me: Thirty Years at His Side, has been translated into English and is currently on sale. BUY IT NOW! And use this link so I get a coupe sheckles in my begin' cup.

And then, of course, there's this Guardian article covering Kubrick's long-serving personal assistant Emilio's revelation that in 1999, while wrapping up Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick was beginning to plan work on not one but two films: a World War II film about the bloody Axis/Allied conflict in Monte Cassino, and a kids-friendly version of the oft-filmed classic, Pinocchio. And no, Emilio is adamant that this would have been a separate project from A.I., which has frequently been described as having much in common with that classic tale.

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Over at STV.tv, an autistic gentleman by the name of Mark McDonald watches The Shining for the first time in his life as part of that website's Classic Film Club, where "each week we invite a famous face to watch a classic film they have never seen and tell us if it lived up to the hype or left them throwing their popcorn away in disgust." Click through to read Mark's post-viewing interview/review. You won't be disappointed.

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Another Kubrick story to generate lots of column inches recently, like this story at The Hollywood Reporter, was the revelation that "True Detective Emmy winner" Cary Fukunaga "is in talks to direct" an HBO miniseries based on Kubrick's unfinished Napoleon project. The miniseries, "based on Stanley Kubrick's research for a film dubbed his 'greatest never-made film' — a planned story on French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's 19th century struggle to bring Europe under his total control."

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And, finally for today, here's a review of the dark period comedy Moonwalkers, in which the Stanley Kubrick plays a role not unlike that played by Jesus Christ in those mid-century sword-and-sandal epics like Ben-Hur and The Robe, and which begins:

When I read the premise of this film, I expected a light-hearted conspiracy romp around swinging 60s London. What I did not expect was an exploitation schlock-fest of drugs, tits, and exploding heads. I’m not saying this is a bad thing necessarily, I’m just saying that maybe the press release could do with a tweak.

8 INCREDIBLE THINGS YOU (PROBABLY) DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE SHINING

At this point, you've got to work really hard to dig up something new to me regarding the films of Stanley Kubrick... especially when it comes to The Shining. And yet somehow, this MoviePilot article by Manny Serano manages to do so, more than once. 

Yes, some of the points raised here are familiar, such as the pretty obvious mirror motif that Kubrick uses to powerful effect throughout the film. Some are also specious, as in the elaborate theories woven from the infinitely flimsy fabric of minor discrepancies in set continuity (although from the image below, there's no denying Kubrick was incredibly attentive to "the little things"). But there's more than enough fresh information here to make wading through the shallow, lazy bits worthwhile. 

A particularly entertaining example is the list of things that Kubrick "flipped" from King's novel for his adaptation of it, which itself is just a severely foreshortened version of the huge list of "flips" found at this link. 

Another great bit concerns the notorious "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy" scene. By now, most of us are familiar with the story. Instead of using simple computer code, or even a photocopier, to lighten the load, Kubrick had some poor schmuck type out dozens of pages covered with that single sentence, over and over again; a task which must have seemed like the dictionary definition of monotony. But no matter how crazy you think this anecdote is, it's actually five time crazier, because rather than just have the phrase translated into subtitles for the international market, like 99.999% of filmmakers would have done, Kubrick made the typist repeat his Herculean feat in French, German, Italian and Spanish!

On a personal level, Serano's elaboration on how Kubrick directed his actors actually cleared up a few things for me, added to my critical lexicon, and opened up potentially exciting new avenues of inquiry.  For instance, both here and at my sister-site, Useless Eater Blog, I'll definitely be looking into how "Semantic Satiation" and "Dichotic Verbal Transformation" might figure into various esoteric art and acting techniques. 

Beyond the novelty of a few fresh observations, Serano's piece has many other attributes that make it worthy of your time. It's well researched, richly illustrated, packed full of videos and external links that are both entertaining and informative, and it's presented in an easily digestible format. That makes it great for sharing with any friends or acquaintances who may first be coming across Kubrick's films and are interested to find out more. 

Bottom line: This is the best general interest Kubrick article that I've come across in months, and that's saying something!