KUBRICK NEWS IN BRIEF ~ FEB 3, 2018

Sometimes you'll find tidbits of Kubrick-related ephemera in the strangest places. For instance, in Daniel Raim's documentary Harold and Lillian, A Hollywood Love Story! This doc "tells the story of husband-and-wife team Harold and Lillian Michelson, who brought their talents as storyboard artist and film researcher, respectively, to numerous Hollywood classics including The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and The Graduate, and working with such master filmmakers as Hitchcock, Spielberg, and Kubrick." How does Kubrick fit into this one? Well, a quick look at the poster, above, provides a pretty good clue!

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I full realize that "unboxing" videos are, in many ways, symptomatic of what's gone wrong with the Internet, social media, and late-Capitalist decline in recent years, but just try and keep from drooling when the lucky so-and-so's in the video below "unbox" Taschen's limited edition (and sold-out) 'Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Film Never Made'...

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Den of Geek has an extended examination of the great Clockwork Orange Ban myth... the real facts of the case, how the myth surrounding it began, and how that myth evolved into a big part of what solidified Clockwork Orange's 'street cred' as a legendary "dangerous movie".

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Criterion's latest version of The Killing gets top marks in this Christopher Aguiar review. I particularly liked this insight into the film:

The Killing often operates as a film about making movies. Johnny Clay is Kubrick in this reading. Both assemble teams, both decide on an end-goal and both craft a plan to get from point A to point B. Much like filmmaking, Clay needs his counterparts to pull their own weight. His wrestler friend has to instigate the bar brawl, Cook Jr. has to ensure that every door remains open. Without their collaboration, Clay cannot carry out his heist. Without the collaboration of his actors and writers, Kubrick cannot assemble his story. As aforementioned, it is the small unconsidered details that can derail a heist. The same can be said about filmmaking. You consider all the variables, but then it may rain on set – at that point, your period of filmmaking for the day is, effectively, over.

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Someone over at the Ultimate Guitar website's forum decided to do the sort of thing I've been doing at Kubrick U for a while now, and assembled a collection of music videos that reference the films of Stanley Kubrick. Their list features such diverse artists as Kanye West and Lady Gaga to Blur and Guns and Roses. One that was new to me was this one for "Time is Running Out" by neo-prog band Muse. Enjoy!

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In this article for the Daily Trojan, British directorial phenomenon Edgar Wright cites "his parents’ favorite filmmakers as vital to his creative upbringing, specifically choreographer Busby Berkeley and directors Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick." It's enough to make this would-be filmmaker feel really, really old and past my due date.

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In a recent article for The Drive, entitled 'Autonomous Cars and the Great Failure to Communicate', Eric Adams explores how "Aviation can help carmakers learn to talk to drivers, but they'd be better off asking Stanley Kubrick." After going over some of the mistakes that current industry leaders are making in this area, Adams explains how his own...

...gold-standard reference has actually become—in all seriousness—Stanley Kubrick. Go watch 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968 and look at the control panels of the separate spacecraft used to reach orbit, fly to the Moon, translate across the lunar surface, and, later in the film, operate the extravehicular activity pods. Those aren’t the whimsical riffs of a 60s set designer; they’re thought-out projections of what human-machine interfaces would be like in a more advanced technological society, envisioned by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the screenplay. Some are more complicated than others, but the gist is the same: The system does the thinking and tells the operator what he or she needs to know. Take that left-hand screen (below) with the automatic landing guides and replace it with a big green arrow, and it could be the next semi-autonomous Cadillac.

 

I’m guessing, by the way, that it’s likely that when Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos unveil the control panels for their own spacecraft at SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively, they’ll look more like a Kubrick creation than, say, the overwhelmingly complex Space Shuttle of yore—simple, clean, with necessary data, sure, but not incomprehensible boatloads of it.

It's a thought provoking article that should appeal to techies of every stripe, Kubrick fan or no. 

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As part of his brisk review of the 1972 giallo Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, critic Matthew Lickona goes off on an extended Kubrick-related tangent:

A bit of serendipity: last week, I happened upon Jon Ronson’s short documentary Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes, about the years he spent sifting through the director’s dizzying, even terrifying collection of research material, fan letters, memos, etc. Kubrick was famous for being incredibly exacting, for maintaining a level of precision and care that made every frame matter. But it cost him: Waterloo came out and flopped while he was still in pre-production on his Napoleon epic, and the spooked studios killed the project. (The reams of research material for that one were eventually transformed into a book, subtitled The Greatest Movie Never Made*.) The same thing happened with his planned Holocaust movie — Spielberg made Schindler’s List in the time it took Kubrick to do his research. And Full Metal Jacket famously got beaten to the punch by Platoon. There’s much to admire in The Shining. But there’s also much to enjoy in this brisk, brusque, bloody, bawdy Italian cheapie.

*See above for the unboxing of the book in question.

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Witness 23 minutes of gameplay demo from Lust for Darkness, a videogame that's being called "Eyes Wide Shut meets HP Lovecraft" by some reviewers.

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In the context of an interview about his most recent turn as the Devil in American Satan, Malcolm McDowell continues to use his public appearances as a chance to explore his evolving feelings re: his relationship with Kubrick, particularly about how things went down after they finished working on Clockwork Orange together:

McDowell is aware he still gets recognized for his most iconic character, that of Alex, a sadistic gang leader in 1971’s “A Clockwork Orange”. Still, nearly 50 years later, McDowell is grateful for the chance to take on one of Hollywood’s most recognizable bad boys. 

“… I have to say I’m more than thrilled that I did it all those years ago with a great director who was an amazing co-conspirator if you like,” he explained. “It was great fun working with [director] Stanley [Kubrick], and I really loved him. We produced an incredible piece of work that’s there for all time… It defines my career... which is fine! And listen, I’m very happy to have an iconic movie. It’s a great piece of work. And I’m very proud of it. And it opened many doors for me.” 

While McDowell considered Kubrick to be a wonderful collaborator, their friendship would ultimately dissolve. McDowell wouldn't give specific details on what caused the relationship to crumble, but he admitted they never stayed in touch after an incident tore them apart. Kubrick died in 1999 at age 70. 

“We fell out and I think this is something I regret,” admitted McDowell. “My pride prevented me from picking up the phone and just saying, ‘Hi Stan, how are you doing?’ It was silly, really… I was really pissed with him, I thought what he did to me was really an injustice… I felt very injured by him and I was really annoyed for many, many years. But you know what? I made a mistake… And I had my wife begging me to call him, but I went, ‘Nope, he can call me! Why can’t he call? Why should it always be me?’ But you know, that’s so stupid. That kind of pig-headed… I admit it. I was wrong.” 

When Kubrick died in his home in England, McDowell didn’t know how to cope with the news. 

“The family then reached out,” he said. “And I was very glad to go see them. 

“Christiane, his widow, took me to where he’s buried in the back garden basically. And I burst into tears. And I realized, it all came out. The thing that I buried and stuffed inside me. And I realized what an idiot I’ve been… Unfortunately, I can’t change it now, but at least I realized how stupid I was.”

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AV Club discusses Ridley Scott discussing Bladerunner's debt(s) to Stanley Kubrick, in specific re: the "eye shine" exhibited by Replicants, and in a major casting decision... but it's all in the WiReD video, above, so you don't really need to click through to learn more.

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The winner of the 2017 Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award was... Matt Damon. Now, I've got nothing against Matt Damon. I think he's a pretty good actor and I'm sure he's nice, as far as big time Hollywood actors go. But, well, the award is supposed to be given to individuals “upon whose work is stamped the indelible mark of authorship and commitment, and who has lifted the craft to new heights.” Is Matt Damon really the individual who best represents these qualities in 2017? Oh well... considering the fact that past recipients include Robert Downey Jr., George Clooney, Warren Beatty, Tom Cruise, and Tom Hanks... maybe being a nice, handsome guy with the right political opinions and whose filmic output is occasionally slightly thought-provoking and rarely if ever prurient garbage is all it takes.

This, however, brings up a potential avenue for speculation. If YOU had to nominate someone for a Kubrick-related award, who would it be, and why? Answers in the comments section, please!

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 NEWS I NEVER GOT AROUND TO PASSING ALONG!

Check out (and be inspired by) Stanley Kubrick's work as a brilliant "boy genius" photographer, thanks to the fine folks at Konbibi! There are some really cool photographs in this collection, some of which I'd never seen before. Fans of Kubrick's early photography really shouldn't miss out on this link!

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Over at MoviePilot.com, James Dunlap presents his "Fan Theory" about Eyes Wide Shut, asking... was it all a dream? By the time you're done reading his exhaustive and entertaining exegesis, you just might end up convinced.

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In this Vulture story about the all the influences on the TV series Legion, we get the following paragraph, sub-titled "Stanley Kubrick":

According to Abraham Riesman’s behind-the-scenes feature, Stanley Kubrick haunted the development of Legion, and Hawley was somewhat obsessed with the the late, great filmmaker. You can see Kubrick’s touches all over Legion — and not just because the facility that’s treating David (Dan Stevens) happens to be named Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital. The “normalization” of David feels similar to the treatment of Alex (Malcolm McDowell) in the second half of A Clockwork Orange, and the orange jumpsuits definitely look like a product of the era. There’s also a sense in Legion that the design is meant to reflect the confused mental state of the protagonist — production designer Michael Wylie told the Daily Beast, “We’re not supposed to know where we are or what year it is” — and using design to reflect a character’s psychology is a very Kubrickian device utilized across several of his films. Hawley has even referred to Legion as existing in a “hybrid A Clockwork Orange/Quadrophenia world.”

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British film website Filmoria polled their employees to find out their favorite directors (and the reasons why), and I was glad to see that one of their female employees chose Stanley!

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This FilmMaker Magazine article by Jim Hemphill points out some intriguing parallels between 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Raquel Welch jiggle-fest One Million Years B.C., declaring, of the latter: “It’s a surprisingly experimental movie in some ways, telling its story of prehistoric man with virtually no dialogue (what dialogue does exist consists of mostly grunts and made up words) and a reliance on a deliberately paced series of impressionistic images that had a clear influence on Stanley Kubrick.” The same column goes on to point out another Kubrick connection, this time to the Frederic Raphael scripted Two For The Road (directed by Stanley Donen). Raphael, notoriously, helped script Eyes Wide Shut.

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Did you know there was a Kubrick connection with The Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night? And it's not that Hobbit thing, either! Check it out for yourself!

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This Alex Sayf Cummings essay for MoviePilot.com asks a very good, salient question: “What is it about Stanley Kubrick that drives some people crazy?” It is a question to which I, myself, will be returning in future blog posts, but in the meantime, I wanted to post this link to Alex's excellent summary of the conspiracy community's latching on to Kubrick and his oeuvre--which has led to such serious projects as the documentary Room 237, as well as to silly fluff like this Oral History of the Faked Moonlanding--to help KubrickU readers get up to date about the current state of affairs in that particular speculative arena.

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Here's a Guardian review of a homosexuality-themed stage production of A Clockwork Orange, which differs significantly from both the Burgess novel and the Kubrick film, and includes at least one Pink Floyd selection to help get the message over.

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I never ran this in February, but on the occasion of Anthony Burgess' 100th birthday, Trainspotting novelist Irvine Welch wrote this beautiful think-piece on the influence A Clockwork Orange had on him and his writing. It begins:

Few writers, whatever the claims made for them by literary critics, ever manage to spawn big cultural moments. One who genuinely did so was Anthony Burgess, with his novel A Clockwork Orange. And, as novelists are often contrary by nature, he was highly ambivalent about this state of affairs. Burgess would disparagingly refer to the book, published in 1962, as a “novella”, regarding it as an inconsequential sliver of his Brobdingnagian canon. He blamed (and there’s really no other term for it) the book’s resonance on the Stanley Kubrick film adaptation, which appeared nine years later. 

My generation was obsessed with this stylistic, inventive affair, a movie that spurned both mainstream Hollywood concerns and European art house affectations to stake out a unique terrain for British independent cinema. Kubrick’s movie was an influence on the Ziggy-era David Bowie, and it was those cool credentials that made me backtrack to the film, which I first saw at a late-night screening several years after its release. As is generally the way of those things, far fewer of us had enjoyed any exposure to the novel. As a writer who has had many of his own books adapted for screen, I’m a little uncomfortable at conceding that I was in this camp.

It's a really good piece. You should read it. Cheers for now!

KUBRICK NEWS IN BRIEF ~ FEB 25, 2017

How awesome do NASA's new tailored Starliner astronaut suits look, right?! Designed by Boeing, to be worn by astronauts going to and from the International Space Station on their new Starliner transport ship beginning in 2018, i09 wasn't kidding around when they said the suits were "straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey"! And they're not just stylish... they'll keep you alive! New features include an upgraded helmet, which is incorporated into the spacesuit, touchscreen-sensitive gloves, and built-in ventilation. Think they'll come in a size XXXXXXL?

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Feast your eyes on this custom drum kit based on the carpet patterns in The Shining!

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If any of you Kubrick fanatics out there have some spare change burning a hole in your pockets, the man's French vacation house in the Dordogne valley, about five hours south of Paris, has been put up for sale at an eminently reasonable $1.6 million. Photos and other details are available at the link. If you're reading this and you do end up buying it, kindly invite me over, as I speak the language and am a pretty decent cook, and I've been told I'm not too bad of a conversationalist, to boot!

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Last month, Michael Moorcock--another man whose work I greatly admire--wrote an intriguing essay about Kubrick's relationship with Arthur C. Clark for the New Statesman. Entitled "The Odd Couple of Science Fiction", the piece gained some notoriety on social media over a passing mention about Clark being "brought to tears" at the film's premiere over some of the changes Kubrick had made to the story without telling him. Of course, in context, this betrayal comes across as a lot less dramatic than the online click-hunters would have us believe. Anyway, it's a great remembrance that every fan of both Clark and Kubrick owes it to themselves to read. It's full of great insights and interesting moments, and Moorcock even addresses the sordid rumors about Clark's sexual proclivities in as decisive and definitive a manner possible at this late (i.e. posthumous) date. There is one moment that Moorcock relates that I'd like to share with you all, and it comes from the essay's conclusion:

I have one other memory of that visit to the 2001 set. After being given a tour of the studio by the MGM publicist, I was led towards Kubrick's office just as the director entered the main building. I prepared to meet the man who had contacted me a year or so earlier. I had many questions. Perhaps he would confirm some of my guesses.
Kubrick's eyes went straight to me and did not leave me as he spoke brusquely to the publicist.
"Get these people off the set," he said.
We were never face to face again.

Not very flattering to Stanley, for sure, but the authenticity of this account gives credence to everything that comes before.

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A short film, entitled Kubrick by Candlelight, aims to recreate the filming of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon in Ireland. Here's the film's Kickstarter, where you can learn more about the project. In this interview with the Irish Film and Television Network, director David O'Reilly--whose day job involves location scouting for such A-list projects as Star Wars: Rogue One--discusses all of the complexities and challenges of filming the project in the Irish midlands, as well as the lengths he and his crew went in order to be as true as possible to the source material. Finally, though there isn't much here of interest to Kubrick fans, here's a video of cast member Al Foran having fun impersonating various celebrities while in full costume and makeup:

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In this interview with the UK Independent, UNKLE's James Lavelle reminisces about his acclaimed project from last year, Daydreaming with... Stanley Kubrick, which saw more than 60 artists participate in a celebration of Kubrick's work, held at Somerset House. He also discusses his latest venture, Daydreaming with UNKLE presents... THE ROAD: SOHO. It looks pretty interesting. All my UK peeps, go check it out!

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Okay, so I've finally seen Passengers, Morten Tyldum's morally problematic deep space romance flick, and I have to say, I kinda dug it. And not because of the much ballyhoo'd Kubrick references, which, to be honest, pretty much boiled down to just the somewhat ghostly robot bartender in the vast ship's Shining-like ballroom bar. In this interview with Deadline Hollywood, however, Passengers sound editor Will Files explains how Kubrick inspired both he and the director:

I’m a big fan of Stanley Kubrick, and as it turns out, Morten is also a big fan. I’ve always liked the way Kubrick uses sound, as well as the image. He tends to have a sparse soundtrack—they tend to not be very cluttered— so we really wanted to try to use that, not maybe as a point of reference for how the actual sounds would sound, but in terms of the approach to the sound, keeping it elegant in its simplicity. We wanted everything to sound effortless, and like it was really there. A real sense of reality. As opposed to a film like Star Wars, which is all about being stylized for the point of having fun, this movie was all about being stylized for the point of giving the audience a certain feeling about this ship. We wanted this ship to really have a character.

So there you go. Personally, I thought Passengers was a somewhat intriguing story surrounded by an absolutely fantastic sensory spectacle, making it a very fitting second half of a double feature movie night alongside Prometheus. You can use the former to come down from the grisly exhaustion brought on by the latter, and also pretend that they take place in the same fictional universe!

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Here's a great video of Kubrick nut Peter Jackson telling the story about how fellow Kubrick fanatic Adam Savage helped him to understand just exactly how awesome his HAL-9000 prop from 2001 really was. This Nerdist article goes into a bit more detail.

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Guess which films take the Number One and Number Two spots on this Cheat Sheet list of authors who hated the movies made from their books? I'll give you two hints: One didn't like the fact that the last chapter was left out of the movie, and the other has been whining about it to whoever will listen for the better part of

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In this Telegraph UK account, Andrew Birkin describes going from being Stanley Kubrick's teaboy to being one his most trusted assistants. 

Kubrick had a horror of flying, so 2001 was made at MGM studios in Borehamwood. I was 19 when I started work as a runner. I was soon barred from the set because I got so distracted: the production office would send me to get 20 boxes of envelopes from the store and I would pass the set and be totally mesmerised and not come back for hours.

One night, Kubrick was having a meeting about the Dawn of Man sequence and I was on hand to supply cups of tea. Kubrick said, ‘Gee, fellas, I can’t believe there isn’t a desert in England.’ The art department said there wasn’t, but I said, ‘I know where there’s one.’
And Kubrick said, ‘Who are you?’ ‘I’m the tea boy; here’s your cup of tea, sir.’ I vaguely remembered seeing a picture of Formby Sands in an old geography book. The next day they sent me off to photograph it with a Polaroid. 

Unfortunately the picture in the book had been taken 40 years earlier when it was all sand and no trees – but if you ducked down low enough and avoided the nuclear reactor in one direction and the high-rise flats in another, it could still arguably look like a desert. 

Somebody told me to bump up the photos with production ideas, so I stayed up all night in a Liverpool hotel, then caught the milk train back to the studio, put the lot on Kubrick’s desk – and then dashed back up to Liverpool because I wanted it to look like a miracle.

And indeed at 11am I got a phone call: ‘Come back to the studio – we’re getting you a union ticket [almost impossible to get at that time], and Stanley has doubled your pay.’ I arrived back and was summoned into the conference room. 

There were the art department, looking sheepish, and Kubrick, who was really enjoying himself. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Andrew? Is that your name?’ Then he asked the art department why they’d spent £40,000 and many months looking for a desert when the tea boy had come up with one in 24 hours at a total cost of £10, six shillings and eight pence.

Birkin went on to a very successful, Kubrick-influenced career as a producer, writer and sometime director. Among his films, the most Kubrickean are The Burning Secret and Cement Garden, both of which he directed, and Perfume, which he co-wrote.  Kubrick had expressed interest in filming both The Burning Secret, based on a story by Stefan Zweig, and Perfume, based on the novel by Patrick Suskind.

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Speaking of long lost Kubrick stuff, Cinephilia And Beyond brings us an interview with Kubrick from 1980, conducted by Vincente Molina Foix, and reprinted for the first time ever in that must-have Taschen tome, The Kubrick Archives. Purchase from the link!

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Goddamnit, here's yet another book I'm going to have to pick up, read, and write a review for: Kubrick's Game, which the linked i09.com review compares favorably to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Ernie Cline's Ready Player One. Compounding my misery over this is the fact that I, myself, have long wanted to tackle such a project. Thanks, procrastination--and also, most likely, a lack of the necessary talent and know-how--for ruining yet another life goal.

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In this Cumberland Pennsylvania Sentinel "Senior Moment" op-ed piece, William Parkinson describes the time he and his navy shipmates watched Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb for the first time, the year it was released:

The audience was aghast. Moviegoers packing the theater at the U.S. Naval Facilities in Yokosuka, Japan, were literally stunned as Peter Sellers, playing the mentally deranged and physically crippled Dr. Strangelove, rose from his wheelchair to proclaim the benefits of global destruction — to the president of the United States — and shouting, “Mein Führer! I can walk!” There followed a cascade of nuclear explosions that blew the world to bits. 

That evening in 1964, the crowd that slowly left the theater was strangely silent; obviously disturbed by what they had witnessed on the screen. They had expected a comedy, of sorts, but coming less than a year after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the growing concern — and involvement — in the war in Vietnam and increasing sabre rattling by the Soviet Union, the sailors, Marines and their families wandering into that night more than half a century ago had been shaken. 

Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” played differently with a military and naval audience than it did with the critics back in the states or with the hometown movie house crowd. Those of us then in uniform had lived for years with the harshest of realities — that things could vanish in a nuclear instant. Such were the facts of the Cold War.

The rest of it is really great, too, comparing Kubrick's terrifyingly educational satiric take on the the technocratic Powers That Be to today's far more (apparently) chaotic situation, in the hope of finding either some answers, or a direction in which to look for them. The search goes on.

 

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And finally for today's edition of the KNIB's, I present 2001's HAL-9000 and Her's Samantha, having an interesting chat about love, consciousness, and human nature. Enjoy!

Reflections of HAL and Samantha - 2 channel video installation from Tillmann Ohm on Vimeo.

KUBRICK NEWS IN BRIEF - DEC 26, 2016

H. Perry Horton's Film School Rejects article, I Am a Camera: The Photos of Stanley Kubrick in the Films of Stanley Kubrick, pretty much serves only as an introduction to Candice Drouet's short but fascinating video, entitled "Kubrick: Photos and Films", in which she juxtaposes old photographs from Kubrick's LOOK Magazine days with scenes from his films, and which you can watch here and now...

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Kubrick fans might do well to keep an eye out for Connor Provenzano's upcoming documentary, Focused Life, in which he examines the yogic concept of kundalini as it pertains to the fine art of paying attention, something which has become vitally important in recent years, thanks to the unchecked evolution and spread of psycho/cybernetic mechanisms of control, both online and off, in recent years. In an interview with SLUG Magazine, Provenzano, when asked about his major film influences, replied: "Stanley Kubrick is one that has a big influence on a lot of filmmakers, but he’s also had a huge influence on me. The risks that he was taking with his stylistic elements were really beautiful and intense. What I realized later was that a lot of filmmakers who were influenced by Kubrick were those that I was naturally drawn to. It’s almost like there’s this lineage of influence that I feel like I’m a part of." I'll know I'll be keeping my eyes peeled!

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Did you know that the Minnesota Opera Company put on a musical stage production of The Shining this year, composed by Paul Moravec with libretto by Mark Campbell, and that it got really good reviews? You used to be able to hear the whole thing online for free, but unfortunately that was a time-sensitive offer that has already run out. At this link, however, you will find a photo-filled, scene-by-scene breakdown of the entire opera. As soon as the audio becomes available again, I will be posting it here.

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Vivian Kubrick made a surprise appearance at a screening of The Shining organized by the Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington, North Carolina last month, alongside two of the people responsible for helping Kubrick achieve the now iconic "look" of the film, Steadicam originator Garrett Brown and camera wizard (and Wilmington native) Joe Dunton. As part of her appearance, Vivian showed 10 minutes of previously never seen footage from the shooting of her BBC documentary "The Making of The Shining", in which she gives a tour of part of the film's set to visiting Japanese businessmen. Again, should that footage ever appear online, you can be sure that I will be linking to it here at Kubrick U!

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Is that a monolith on your planet? Or are you just happy to see me? The indefatigable conspiracy and alien-hunter "Tyler", of SecureTeam10, claims to have discovered a massive, miles-high "monolith" on the surface of the planet Murcury. Follow the link to read more, and to see a 20 minute video detailing why this anomaly isn't a "doorway", as first thought by those who stumbled across it, but indeed, is a monolith, as made famous in Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. We report, YOU decide!

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Noted Kubrick fan Bilge Ebiri over at VULTURE (and it's nice to see that he's still doing these think pieces despite having scored a new gig as lead film critic for The Village Voice) asks a question with particular relevance to the object of our obsessive affections: What Happens When Filmmakers Raid Dead Directors' Unmade Projects? The impetus for asking this question is True Detective helmer Carey Fukunaga taking up Kubrick's unmade passion project Napoleon as a multi-episode series for HBO, but Ebiri clues the reader in to a number of other interesting projects, both past and future. Well worth the read.

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After Moonwalkers and Operation Avalanche -- never mind Room 237, Dark Side of the Moon, and a host of "documentaries" by Youtube auteurs -- does the world need yet another movie exploring the idiot notion that we never went to the moon and that Stanley Kubrick secretly filmed the hoaxed footage on a soundstage in London? I guess we're about to find out.

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Britney Spears' new video, "Slumber Party", features sequences at a party that Britney, herself, asked the director to make "like a younger version of Eyes Wide Shut". Forgive me for sharing it here with you all, but hey, it falls under my "collecting Kubrick related ephemera" mandate...

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I have yet to read Kubrick's erstwhile manservant Emilio D'Allesandro's memoir, Stanley and Me: Thirty Years by His Side, but this Los Angeles Review of Books critique by Zack Sigel really makes me want to, even though it manages to tease out a far less than flattering image of Kubrick from D'Allesandro's fawning tribute. After a perhaps somewhat overly psychoanalytic parsing of D'Allesadro's account, Sigel does manage to point out an anecdote that managed to draw a smile through the fog of cynicism:

In Rome, D’Alessandro visits a museum exhibition of Kubrick’s personal effects and finds that every item signifies a fleeting moment shared with the late master: handwriting he had recopied, a string he had tied to Kubrick’s Eyemo camera. It’s as much Stanley’s gallery as Emilio’s. He can’t resist reaching out to grasp the past, his past, these artifacts from a distant age. A museum attendant stops him. “Come on,” he tells the attendant. “I must have already touched it millions of times! If you had any idea how much cat’s pee I’ve cleaned away from under there, you wouldn’t stand so close!”

KUBRICK NEWS IN BRIEF ~ NOV 6, 2016

A blurb from Kubrick (as well as one from Martin Scorsese) appears near the start of this absolutely stunning trailer for the digitally remastered version of Abel Gance's silent masterpiece, Napoleon. Now, I realize that Kubrick also famously declared the film to be "really terrible" and "a crude motion picture" as far as story goes, but I suspect that might have had more to do with his own pet obsession, still a distinct possibility at the time of his being quoted, of bringing the Great Corsican's life to the screen. I can't imagine any fan of cinema finding the above trailer anything less than astonishingly good. That bit when "La Marseillaise" begins to play... shivers.

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If a review of Kubrick's version of The Shining begins: "Everyone remembers their first Stephen King experience. Mine was hunkering down in a corner of the basement of an empty house, feverishly turning the pages of The Shining", you can be pretty sure that review is going to have a title not unlike "The Shining Has Lost Its Shine - Kubrick Was Slumming in a Genre He Despised". And you can also pretty much guarantee it's going to be utter shit, just like this Guardian retro review by Anne Billson.

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Our next offering is entitled 2001: A Hate Odyssey, but don't worry; unlike the previous entry, above, this one doesn't feature the blinkered opinions of a cinematic philistine cracking her swinish teeth upon the pearls cast before her (Anne Billson can fuck right off). Instead, this essay by author and computational biologist John C. Wathey - written in early September of this year - mixes up a heady cocktail of social observation, historical analysis, religious criticism, and cinematic appreciation. It begins:

On this fifteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we remember the innocents murdered that day, the courage of police and firefighters, the deliberately shocking brutality of the act, and the wounded lives left in its wake. Osama bin Laden is dead, but Islamist terrorism lives on, the Middle East has descended into seemingly unending war and chaos, and a toxic mix of religion and tribalism fans the flames. We feel the heat even in America, where religious and racial xenophobia fuel the candidacy of an authoritarian demagogue. 

We have plenty to mourn, but this eulogy is for something else that died on 9/11. It may seem trivial at first, especially against the backdrop of the lives lost on that day, but this is a different kind of loss. It was an alternate version of the year 2001, and a piece of our American spirit, of our genius and hope, died with it on 9/11. For me it lives on in a memory of another fifteenth anniversary. 

I was fifteen years old when I first saw Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968... 

I realize it's a lot to ask from some of you to read something that was published in The Huffington Post, but why not go ahead and make an exception this one time? It's a really good essay!

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The Cinematheque series entitled This is Going to Hurt - A Cinema of Cruelty has come and gone already, closing its doors at the end of September, but the commercial they put together for it is so beautiful, and features images from so many of my favorite movies - both Kubrick and non - that I wanted to share it here with all of y'all. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

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In an OuterPlaces.com article covering a recent Reddit "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) session by special effects legend Colin Cantwell, the following response is quoted:

I had great relationships with everyone. But Stanley kubrick and I became friends. I used to go to his house at midnight and discuss events related to the film over turkey sandwiches. This evolved into a discussion after he had fired his fourth composer. At that time I suggested that he use many of the pieces of music that became part of the movie 2001 Space Odyssey. This includes the now well known theme song.

Is Cantwell really taking credit for Kubrick's decision to abandon Alex North's completed score and go with the temporary tracks instead? If he really is the one who came up with this idea, this is the first I've heard of it.

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Australian psychedelic rock band Tame Impala's new video is visually stunning, thanks to an assist from our man Stan in the form of tons of footage from his most iconic film. Watch it here and see for yourself how it all works out.

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And finally for this update, this Kubrick mini-biography for the Daily Star Weekend website is pretty skimpy and slapdash, but it does have one thing to recommend it... this nifty sketch of our man Stan by artist Yafiz Siddiqui. It was new to me, and I'll wager it was new to you, too!

KUBRICK NEWS IN BRIEF ~ OCT 28, 2016

Julienne Davis, the actress who played doomed model and cult ritual participant Mandy Curran in Eyes Wide Shut, has penned an interesting essay about the perils and pitfalls of instant infamy for Heat Street. It begins:

At the height of my so-called “fame” I remember a conversation I had at a party I had with one of London’s top paparazzi photographers. He and others had taken many pictures of me which had featured in leading British publications and whatever foreign publication they could tout pictures to increase their cash flow via syndication.I said to him, “Thank you for not following me to my flat or camping outside my door – that scenario must be awful for some celebs.” His response? “Well you haven’t done anything bad yet…”

It's an interesting, somewhat eye-opening read, blessedly free of pathetic confessional or pity mongering emotional manipulation. Davis roped a whirlwind and enjoyed the ride. Bravo!

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To be honest, I have no idea who Kieran Leonard is, but this "neo-folk" musician apparently had a weird-ass couple of months writing, recording and producing his latest album... a couple of months that included him spending some time with Kubrick's grandson, Jack Hobbs, laying down some tracks with him at the Kubrick estate, Childwickbury Manor. So I guess he merits a mention here.

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Contemporary artists who claim Kubrick as an influence pretty much only seem to be interested in 2001, Clockwork Orange, and The Shining (and to a lesser extent Dr. Strangelove), so it's great to see Albuquerque artist Christian Michael Gallegos' recent canvas, which was inspired by Kubrick's early short documentary film, Day of the Fight.

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On the science fiction blog io9, these images by artist Orlando Arocena are meant to show what the posters for the upcoming Star Wars: Rogue One flick might look like "if the movie was directed by Stanley Kubrick." I disagree. To me, these images show what the posters for that movie would look like if they were created by frequent Kubrick collaborator Philip Castle. Nothing more, nothing less. If Kubrick had directed them, they would NOT have been parodies of Full Metal Jacket's poster. I mean, come on. These are pretty sweet, though.

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One of the great things about putting together this blog is the fact that, every once in a while, despite having read every book and article in existence on the topic, I still manage to learn something new about my favorite director. Things like the fact that Gerald Fried - Kubrick's Bronx high school classmate, and the talented composer who created terse, modernist scores for Day of the Fight, Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss, The Killing, and Paths of Glory - may have earned his way into Kubrick's early collaborative circle by securing a spot for him on a local baseball team for which Fried played (that this team was called the Barracudas only adds to my delight). The rest of this wonderful interview with Fried, who is still kicking and making music at 88, is also worth reading.

KUBRICK NEWS IN BRIEF ~ SEPTEMBER 12

First things first, let's all watch Eureka! Entertainment's gorgeous new trailer for their Blu-Ray release of Kubrick's unmitigated masterpiece, Paths of Glory,  as part of their Masters of Cinema collection. This new release also includes an audio commentary from film scholar Adrian Martin and video interviews with Kubrick scholar Peter Kramer and filmmaker/comic actor Richard Ayoade for some reason (I mean, I love the guy's work, but what the Hell does he have to do with Paths of Glory?). This edition will be available in stores on September 19... a great excuse to see it again, of for the first time ever.

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Well now, this MoviePilot.com list of 10 Villainous Quotes From Stanley Kubrick Movies You Need for Everyday Life certainly is an article on the Internet.

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There's been some pretty intense buzz and hype surrounding the upcoming release of the intellectually ambitious science fiction film Arrival recently, including a lot of insinuation that our man Stanley would definitely have approved of its relatively low-key tone (explosions, if they occur, will not be the film's raison d'etre) and apparent university-level exploration of the potential outer limits of xenolinguistic possibilities. The trailer certainly seems promising, and this article on FilmSchoolRejects.com definitely makes me want to see it. I just hope this doesn't turn out to be another Interstellar or Midnight Special, which were also touted as heirs to the Kubrickean mantle of "serious sci-fi", because if it does... aw, who am I kidding. I'll just wait around for the next pile of cinematic disappointment, I suppose. Good luck, folks!

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Here's a Salt Lake City public radio documentary about Anthony Burgess, his novella A Clockwork Orange, and what Burgess really thought about Kubrick's film version of his work. If you've got 50 minutes to spare, you could definitely do a lot worse. And if you're a high-school student looking for something to rip off for your next English class essay, look no further! Lots of great, stealable insights for you here. Caveat Emptor! Don't do this if you're a first year University student, because you might get expelled for academic fraud! This, friends, is pretty much the only substantive difference between your senior year of high-school and your freshman year in college: accountability.

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In keeping with the "academic" and "Clockwork" themes set up by our previous entry, here's an essay from BirthDeathMovies.com that explores the thorny issue of "maternal unconcern" in Kubrick's Clockwork Orange. Author Mustafa Yasar II's entry in the website's week-long series of essays about Bad Moms is short, punchy, and is a pretty darn convincing take on a largely unexplored aspect of the Kubrick/Burgess classic. Recommended!

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Did you ever here the story about that one time Stanley Kubrick liked Albert Brooks' painfully funny dramedy Modern Romance so much that he called him up out of the blue in order to offer up his compliments? Actually, come to think of it, my description pretty much sums up the entirety of the ridiculous little article linked above. So why not instead read this Esquire interview with Brooks, in which he explains how Stanley Kubrick, in his words, saved his life?

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A band called Biffy Clyro have released a music video for their new song, called "Howl". This DIY Mag article claims that it aims to be "Stanley Kubrick meets David Lynch", and while there are obvious echoes of The Shining, I personally find the music mediocre and feel that the references are more Kubrick-via-American Horror Story than anything, but why not judge for yourself? Here it is.

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Winning this edition of KNIB's "Worst Kubrick Article EVER" Award is this Metro.co.UK listicle which lays out "Nine Things That Wouldn't Exist Without Stanley Kubrick", and ends up including heart-shaped sunglasses (huh?), Heath Ledger's Joker (wha?!), Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (groan...), and a goddamn fucking 30 SECONDS TO MARS video (?!?!?!?). I shit you not, my friends; the fine folks at Metro.co.UK shiver at the possibility of living in a world bereft of Jared Leto's band's Shining-inspired video for their song "The Kill (Bury Me)", even bringing up the possibility that "Jared’s pretty cut up he’ll never be able to work with cinema’s big daddy Kubrick himself." God help us all.

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For the first time ever, this edition of KNIB's "Most Inconsequential Kubrick Article EVER" Award has ended in a tie between this Independent IE article about how "celebrity gardener" Diarmuid Gavin has been selected to design a northern English "Royal Gardens" site in "a Stanley Kubrick Theme", and this Vogue article urging readers to "Revamp Your Summer Look With 15 Sunglasses Inspired By Iconic Kubrick Films"! Eyeglasses Wide Shut, anyone?