STANLEY AND WES ~ A COMPARATIVE MONTAGE

KUBRICK NEWS IN BRIEF ~ SEPTEMBER 3, 2016

Playing catch-up here at Kubrick U, here's a London Guardian article from July featuring an interview with artist Philip Castle about his awesome airbrush illustrations that featured so prominently in the Clockwork Orange posters and promotional campaign. Castle also painted the Full Metal Jacket poster, and did a bunch more illustrations for that film, but most of it went unused (see above). Not to worry, though... most of it appears in Taschen's absolutely essential Stanley Kubrick Archives, which was recently re-released in a smaller, ridiculously affordable edition! Buy it from this link if you're in Canada, or this link if you're in the USA, and I'll get a few shekels in my beggin' cup!

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Speaking of ACO, the New York Post reports that a galley proof copy of the book Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange featuring hand-written marginalia by Kubrick himself has come up for auction, and lawyers for Kubrick's estate are warning any potential buyers that publishing such an artifact for mass consumption would probably be a very bad idea, lawsuit-wise. The Belfast Telegraph had a more thorough (and timely) report, but I haven't been able to find any news about the auction results. If anybody out there knows anything, clue me in!

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In the inaugural entry of a recent Washington Post series on "all the ways America could come to an end", writer Sonny Bunch examines all the ways that Dr Strangelove scrambled the brains of audiences and more serious-minded critics, alike. It's a short, punchy piece, and my favorite bits are definitely when Bunch quotes clearly upset entertainment industry (key word there) trade columnists, like Bosley Crowther, who said of the film: "Somehow, to me, it isn’t funny. It is malefic and sick." Somebody ought to come up with a word describing when someone simultaneously gets the point, and yet also thoroughly fails to realize that they have gotten it. Leave suggestions for such a word in the comments section, please!

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I don't watch the show, myself, but according to Slate, the final episode of the most recent season of the "autismsploitation" TV series Mr Robot featured an extended "homage" to Stanley Kubrick's films, including Eyes Wide Shut, The Shining, and Dr. Strangelove. This should come as little surprise to the show's fans, as creator Sam Esmail, who claims he used to hold Kubrick movie marathons at his suburban home when he was a teen, declared in an interview with Vulture that “one of the biggest influences on the show is Stanley Kubrick in general.”

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Last but not least comes word that incredibly ballsy Canadian wunderkind Matt Johnson's circuitous moon landing mockumentary-cum-satire Operation Avalanche - filmed under highly illegal circumstances on location at NASA for fuck's sake - is just about ready to invade the hearts and minds of Kubrickophiles, parapolitical paranoids, prank fans and lovers of good, old fashioned conspiracy thrillers the world over. No Moonwalkers, here, folks! You've got to shake that shambling waste of celluloid right out of your ganglia by, first, taking a look at Operation Avalanche's great new trailer...

...and then, viddy this joint Sundance interview with Johnson, his editor and producer, wherein they detail the ridiculous lengths to which they went in order to achieve absolute versimilitude... and maximum cinematic legend status. Much as I hate to admit it about one so young, but this Johnson kid is the real deal, in yer old pal Jerky's opinion. Check out his Kevin Smith-enabled The Dirties for a taste of his raging early potential.

STIG OF THE DUMP - KUBRICK (MUSIC VIDEO WITH SOME DEEEEP RIFFS)

Stig Of The Dump - KUBRICK (Music Video) from Joker's Pack Productions on Vimeo.

"KURT DOUGLAS, IN A STANLEY KUBRIK FILM!"

Who the fuck is Caitlin Busch, and how many fucking drugs was she on when she wrote this abomination of a click-bait article? I gave up reading it about two paragraphs - or roughly seventeen typos - deep. See how far YOU get before throwing your hands up in disgust!

KUBRICK NOTES IN BRIEF ~ JULY 25, 2016

Let's run through a few of the most recent Kubrick-related news items to hit the wire over the last week or so, shall we?

First, and most amusingly, it seems that Stanley has joined Twitter. Check him out, if you're into this sort of stunt.

Next up, it was kind of great to see Vivian Kubrick come out of semi-hiding to diss all those goofy moon-hoax idiots. Not quite so amusing was main Kubrick Moon Theory Nutter Jay Weidner's vile, butt-hurt, low-blow of a "rebuttal", titled How Vivian Kubrick Broke Stanley's Heart.

Two interesting think pieces on Kubrick have popped up on the web recently.

The best is Alexander Patrick Langer's 2014 essay Dr No and Dr Strangelove - Anxiety in the Cold War Film. It's a touch dry and academic, but if you like that sort of thing, it's pure manna from heaven. Personally, as a Kubrick nut and a lifelong Bond fan, of course I dug it. And it doesn't hurt that Langer throws in a bit on Frankenheimer's Manchurian Candidate into the mix.

Not quite as good but still interesting is Sean Hutchinson's think-piece How Dr Strangelove Predicted the Emptiness of Twitter and Facebook, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Getting down to the dregs (comparatively speaking of course), we have "a non-Kubrick fan" explaining what it is that she finds compelling about The Shining. It's eloquent and insightful, if short and to the point.

And, finally, we have an extended whine from Simon Booker writing in The Guardian, who claims that "Stanley Kubrick Ruined My Childhood". Turns out that title is almost pure clickbait, however, as Kubrick is mentioned exactly three times, including the title. Turns out his mum worked as a film publicist on 2001: A Space Odyssey during that film's 3-year shoot. the Marianne Faithful stories are a titch juicier, of course.

Tune in next time for more Kubrick Notes In Brief!

VIDEO ESSAY CONTRASTING KUBRICK WITH TARKOVSKY

THE SHINING... THE BOARD GAME!

BARRY LYNDON GETS A SEXY NEW TRAILER FOR ITS THEATRICAL RE-RELEASE

KUBRICK NOTES IN BRIEF ~ JULY 11, 2016

I have never in my life so badly wanted to be able to visit England as I was when I started reading about the Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick exhibit, at Somerset House, featuring works, both old and new, by a great many fantastic artistic talents, all either inspired by or directly referencing Stanley the man and/or his works. If you're able to attend, and don't, you're mad.

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Well, THIS sucks.

"A YouTube user who creates video essays has been hit with a punishing lawsuit after selecting Stanley Kubrick as a subject matter and uploading his work to YouTube. UK-based Lewis Bond from Channel Criswell is being targeted by the music publishers behind the 1971 classic A Clockwork Orange who want huge damages for willful infringement."

Here's some more information on the sad hypocrisy of this bullshit lawsuit. Check out Bond's Twitter to keep track of this ongoing travesty.

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It's really cool to see special effects guru Douglas Trumball still out there mixing it up with his inimitably gorgeous (and soon to be lost to history) practical methods of bringing screen magic to life before our very eyes. And it's doubly cool to see him doing so for a bunch of young'uns on a low budget indie film like Approaching the Unknown. Check out the mini-doc by The Creators Project at the bottom of the linked page to find out more (I originally had it embedded here, but it started up automatically, really loud, whether you wanted it to or not, so I removed it).

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Adam K. Johnson's new book, 2001: The Lost Science, is about all the work that scientific consultant Frederick Ordway did on Stanley Kubrick's film. It's actually the second in a series of limited run, prestige format books, with the subtitle: "The Scientists, Influences, and Designs from the Frederick I. Ordway Estate". For a heavily illustrated book of this quality, the price is actually quite reasonable. And if you purchase it via the link above, you will be tossing a couple shekels into yours truly's rusty old beggin' cup.

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I dunno about you guys, but the images in this computer-created "Kubrick goes Picasso" video don't look very much like the work of Picasso to me. You be the judge, I suppose...

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The San Francisco Chronicle invites you to read all about five times that Stanley Kubrick courted controversy. Think you can guess them all ahead of time? Go ahead and test your Kubrick IQ!

A 3-D EXPLORATION OF THE OVERLOOK HOTEL

Well, this one is kind of odd. "YouTube user Claire Sophie brings us a bizarre 360-degree look at The Shining that pans through a distorted vision of the Overlook hotel and its grounds, including the famous maze." 

According to this CNet article, the effect was achieved thusly: "Using photogrammetry, 3D elements are extracted and extruded from the original film stills, and the subsequent fragments are stitched together and viewed along the original camera path."

Personally, I find the effect kind of off-putting. Your mileage may vary. Don't forget to drag the scenes around for maximum effect!

2001: CLUBBING THE LOWER ANIMAL

If you're up for some heavy-duty hypothesizing regarding Kubrick's most alchemical/head-trippy/psychedelic/archetype-riddle film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, then you could do a lot worse than Mike Daringer's extended essay, 2001: Clubbing the Lower Animal. It begins:

Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, is a fictional transcendence of classic Greek mythos through the ubiquity of the motion picture camera. As the film’s title suggests, this is Greek philosopher Homer’s The Odyssey told on the grandest of scales and sparing no expense that 20th Century cinema had to offer. According to philosopher Carl Jung, myths are the “culturally elaborated representations of the contents of the deepest recess of the human psyche: the world of the archetypes.” 

As such, 2001 makes tremendous leaps forward in longstanding narrative traditions that have been passed down from the epitome of Western culture. This was Kubrick, after all, and he wasn’t going to give the viewer an easy time or spoon feed answers to the cryptic symbolism. The film is ostensibly draped in ambiguity, and it leads down a path that rejects materialism in favor of spiritual enlightenment. The final act is overly concerned with the impact that light has on the body; how illumination can take a lifetime to understand and transform decaying flesh into the Übermensch.

Having heard people say that there isn’t much going on in 2001 or simply not “getting it,” what follows is a small breakdown of the big thematic material that makes up the masterpiece.

This essay is well worth your time. And you just might learn a few things along the way!

MICHAEL HERR (1940 - 2016)

Michael Herr, the author of Dispatches and co-writer of Full Metal Jacket, is dead at 76.

KUBRICK IN BRIEF(S)

Remember around the time of Full Metal Jacket, when Stanley started giving interviews, and he went around telling people like Gene Siskel how much he enjoyed the storytelling finesse on display in a series of Michelob commercials? He told the New York Times, in 1987:

"They’re just boy-girl, night-fun,” Kubrick praised, “leading up to pouring the beer, all in 30 seconds, beautifully edited and photographed. Economy of statement is not something that films are noted for.”

Well, according to this lengthy SlashFilm oral history: "That piece published on a Sunday. The following day—after interested parties tracked down who was responsible for these spots—the phone of fashion photographer turned commercial director Jeremiah Chechik started rining off the hook."

Thanks to Kubrick's comments, Chechik would go on to direct such successful feature films as Christmas Vacation and Benny and Joon before being handed the great gift of directing the can't miss, sure-fire, $60 million budget, star-studded family action smash hit: 1998's The Avengers, starring Ralph Feines and Uma Thurman! The rest, as they say, is his story.

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Nerdist reports on the existence of the perfect, purchasable tchotchke to transform your work station from drab and dreary to flashy and fashy: Clockwise Alex, the unofficial Droog 1/6 size figurine with interchangeable hands, face and other parts! Currently available for pre-order from the fine folks at Craftone, so you know it's ultra-quality!

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We've all heard about how not too many people "got" The Shining when it first came out, but to actually experience the true depths of the critics's collective derangement and willful blindness at that time, one need look no further than Ernest Leogrande's review for the New York Daily News, which originally ran in late May 1987.  Yeesh!

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#kubrick - The Simpsons - Candice Drouet from Really Dim on Vimeo.

This is a fun little video, to be sure, but its creator missed the absolute best Simpsons/Kubrick reference! Remember when Lisa experiments on Bart with electrified cupcakes, leading to a scene that is a perfect re-creation of the post-Ludovico technique staged sequence where Alex can't bring himself to reach up to the model's bare naked tits? Doubly entertaining because it's so damn naughty!

THE WEIRDEST KUBRICK HONOR YET?

With his unique "King Cuts" series, artist Mike Leavitt has created an entire menagerie of sculptures featuring some of Hollywood's most successful directors, most (but not all) represented by elements from a broad selection of their films (with the lone exception to the "multiple film" rule being Alfred Hitchcock). Each director's page features a painfully pun-filled explanation as to the nature of the imagery used. For instance, here's what his version of Stanley looks like, and beneath, the explanation:

The Shining transgenders Kubrick. His entire identity, even his humanity is relinquished. Hal's all seeing eye welds itself to his chest. He is a female robot. He's the ancient ape predating 2001. He grips to reality with an AK-47 and jelly donut stolen from a Full Metal Jacket. Clockwork Orange costuming veils him from the world in vain. Nothing can stop Stanley from drifting off into the surreal void.

KUBRICK "VERSUS" SCORSESE (BUT NOT REALLY)

Roughly six years ago, a European video editor by the name of Leandro Copperfield created a seven-and-a-half minute mash-up montage featuring iconic images and moments from the films of Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, and uploaded it to Vimeo. In 2015 he cleaned up the video and re-rendered it in lush 1080 dpi. Here is that beautiful, "remastered" version, now...

Kubrick vs Scorsese from Leandro Copperfield on Vimeo.

Six years after Copperfield's initial upload, and very shortly after its upgrade, Copperfield's video was watched by none other than Martin Scorsese, himself, who appears genuinely chuffed to have his work juxtaposed with that of the man he at one point calls "the Master". So chuffed was Marty, in fact, that he graciously shot a video reaction of himself experiencing the  video, first-hand! You'd better watch out, Marty! Those Fine Brothers just might decide to sue you for infringing on their copyright!

You can watch Scorsese's reaction video right here, if you so fancy...

Message from Martin Scorsese from Leandro Copperfield on Vimeo.