STREEP ACCEPTS KUBRICK HONOUR AT BRITANNIA AWARDS

One of this generation's finest actors, Meryl Streep, was chosen to receive this year's Stanley Kubrick Award for Excellence in Film at the Britannia Awards ceremony.

The actress in turn praised the “irascibly brilliant Stephen Frears” and said he follows the tradition of people like Kubrick, who was a transformative artist. She said the previous Kubrick recipients were notable and she was “honored to join this distinguished group of men and … (pause) men.”

Heheh... cheeky.

MATT BERRY DOES KUBRICK IN TOAST OF LONDON'S LATEST EPISODE

Stanley Kubrick is all over the latest episode of Matt Berry's hilarious low-budget "theatre folk" comedy Toast of London. Check out the entire episode, below.

BEAUTIFUL NEW SHINING ANIMATED GIF

KUBRICK AT THE BACK - PETER WEBBER BUYS STANLEY'S BELOVED MERCEDES

CinephiliaBeyond.org brings us this interview with director Peter Webber in which he discusses his past work, including Girl With Pearl Earring, his upcoming work, including the documentary 10 Billion, and his habit of collecting cinematic memorabilia, including his recent purchase of Stanley Kubrick's 1984 Mercedes 500 SEL. The story of how this legendary vehicle came into Webber's possession may sound eerily familiar to readers of the KubrickU blog...

So, you bought Stanley Kubrick’s Mercedes. As far as film memorabilia is concerned, that’s more or less the Holy Grail. How did you get your hands on it? Who’s been its owner since Kubrick died?
WEBBER: It’s actually a kind of a Twitter story. You know how you can have various searches saved on Twitter? Well, one of the searches I saved was Kubrick. Every now and again when I’m bored I go up to see what Kubrick tweets have come up. I’m a big fan and I did this one day, and a tweet came up saying Stanley Kubrick’s car was for sale. I looked into it and, sure enough, it was someone who claimed to be selling Kubrick’s last car, this Mercedes, and I thought this must have been over since the ad had been up for a while. Especially when I looked at the price, which, for a second hand car in London, wasn’t expensive. So I got in touch with the guy because it looked as if it was still available, and he said someone else was interested in it. But because I lived in London, I was able to get up there straight away. It was as simple as that—the Internet led me to the car. I met the guy, who used to be an agent himself, and was a friend of the person who had bought it from Kubrick, he showed me all this documentation, and I scanned some of this stuff—especially the letter from the dealership to Stanley Kubrick. I made an offer then and there, which he accepted, I gave him a deposit, I had to go off to France that weekend, I came back from France, paid the rest and drove the car away. There we go. Very simple story.

Hey! That's exactly how I write this blog! Only I use Google News alerts instead of Twitter ones.

THE RED DRUM GETAWAY - A FANTASTIC KUBRICK/HITCHCOCK MASHUP

The Red Drum Getaway from Gump on Vimeo.

EYES WIDE SOCK

Please enjoy this hand puppets only parody short film of Eyes Wide Shut for a 30 second bumper contest for the upcoming Fantastic Fest! Check it out and if you dig it, give it a LIKE above the video in the following link!

Writer/Director - Christopher Baker Director of Photography - John J. Miller IV Edited by - Christopher Baker John J. Miller IV Gaffer - Jim Cote Set Design/Construction - Jeff Hamrick and Jordan Kent of Big Bad Props Puppets by - Christopher Baker Puppet performers - Juli Emmons Patrick Keenan Eric Ho Morgan Walston Chad Schwartzkopf Doug Fisher A Baker's Dozen Films Production

MOON LANDING CONSPIRITARDS TAKEN TO THE TOOL SHED

During the course of this epic take-down of the (literally) lunatic fringe conspiritard proponents who claim that the moon landing was hoaxed, Youtuber Steve Shives asserts the following gem:

"The theory asserts that NASA hired Kubrick to direct the (fake moon landing) project in 1968, when he was still in post-production on 2001. And if you believe that he would have allowed NASA to distract him from finishing his movie... then you don't know dick about Stanley Kubrick."

The ensuing footage of Buzz Aldrin punching a conspiritard moonie in the face is just icing on the cake, if you ask me. Enjoy!

ONE HELL OF AN ANIMATED GIF!

KUBRICK, THE BEATLES, AND THE ROLLING STONES

The Beatles almost starred in Lord of The Rings and the Rolling Stones almost made A Clockwork Orange. Stanley Kubrick was tapped by both.

Interesting new article covering Stanley Kubrick's almost-but-not-quite partnership(s) with rock's two biggest acts, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones (with a brief mention of his almost-but-not-quite partnership with, arguably, rock's third biggest act, Pink Floyd). The circuitous tale of juggled movie rights to two hot literary properties - The Lord of the Rings and A Clockwork Orange - really helps illustrate the huge role that chance plays in cinematic history. It reads, in part:

Like their albums, The Beatles wanted each of their films to be different from the one before. A Hard Day's Night was a mock-documentary. Help! was a James Bond spoof written by Marc Behm and Charles Wood. The Beatles again played versions of The Beatles. Their films’ producer Walter Shenson said the band wanted to play something other than themselves. Before J. R. R. Tolkien sold the film rights for The Lord of the Rings to United Artists, who produced A Hard Day’s Night, in 1969, The Beatles thought it might fulfill their contract nicely. Lennon, one of the best songwriters in music contacted Stanley Kubrick, one of the best directors in the movies, to make it. Lennon reportedly wanted to play Gollum. He cast Paul as Frodo, Ringo as Sam, and George as Gandalf.

J.R.R. Tolkien, who was an English professor at Oxford at the time, was initially in favor of the idea. ... Stanley Kubrick had not yet screwed Pink Floyd out of doing the music for his masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ever the perfectionist filmmaker, Kubrick told Lennon that he suspected the novel Lord of The Rings was too big to be filmed.

And then, coming in second as always, came The Rolling Stones, and their - or more specifically Mick Jagger's - attempts to bring Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange to the silver screen. The article continues:

(Stones associate Andrew) Oldham discovered the novel while he lived with Jagger and Richards in London in 1964. He wanted to make the anti-A Hard Day’s Night. 

“I couldn’t get the rights to make A Clockwork Orange because Anthony Burgess thought that he had cancer and just wrote furiously and took money in from others,” Oldham told contactmusic.com in 2007. 

In 1967, while the Rolling Stones were making Their Satanic Majesties Request, they reportedly started a collaboration with photographer Michael Cooper to produce a film adaptation A Clockwork Orange with Terry Southern. Southern wrote the novel Candy, which would be made into a soft porn movie with Ringo Starr. The Stones wanted Richard Lester to direct and wanted David Hemmings, the star of Blow Up and Barbarella, to play Alex. 

Terry Southern was the man who introduced Stanley Kubrick to A Clockwork Orange. He’d given a copy to the director when Kubrick was adapting his Dr. Strangelove.

More at the link. Not much... but more.

SOLARIS AS RESPONSE TO 2001

COLEEN GRAY (1922-2015)

The beautiful and lovable Coleen Gray, the actress who played Johnny's "good girl" gal pal Fay in Kubrick's nouveau noir classic The Killing, has passed away at the age of 92. Here at Chateau LeBoeuf, I'll be watching The Killing in her honor this week.

SCHOLARLY ANALYSIS OF BARRY LYNDON

Having recently seen Barry Lyndon with a jam-packed audience in the plush opulence of the premiere screening room at Toronto's glorious TIFF/Bell Lightbox theater, I can definitely say that its reputation is on the rise. This analysis touches on a few of the reasons why that is.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STANLEY KUBRICK!

Yes, I know, I'm a day late... but why not join me in celebrating the 87th anniversry of Stanley Kubrick's birth by spending some time oggling this amazing collection of Kubrick-related artwork being showcased at the Birth/Movies/Death website, regardless?

Here's one of my favorites, but rest assured, there are literally dozens more images at the link, so I'm not really stealing their thunder too badly.

And another! Can you figure out what the image represents? It took me a couple seconds before I "got" it...

Hopefully, in the very near future, I'll have some Kubrick-related artwork of my own to post in this space. Until then... 

THE SHINING: A SHORT VIDEO ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE NOVEL AND THE MOVIE

35TH ANNIVERSARY SHINING CAST AND CREW REUNION PARTY

This story about the 35th anniversary party for the cast and crew of The Shining is well worth reading.