TRAPPED BY KUBRICK'S FRAME

I lost count of the number of times I've seen The Shining a long time ago, and yet I still occasionally find myself discovering new things and/or encountering new insights about it. One case in point is from this Pink Smoke article about Rodney Ascher's Room 237, which contains the following paragraph:

I should also mention that the reason I asked Adam to join Marcus and myself for this panel is that, other than knowing he's a huge Shining and Kubrick fan, he once proposed the most compelling insight I've ever heard about the movie: the fact that none of the characters exit the frame under their own power until the very end, when Wendy and Danny escape in the Snow Cat. The characters are trapped, not just geographically in the snowbound hotel, but inside Kubrick's unrelenting lens. I've never sat and paid attention to the film closely enough to see how consistently Adam's theory sticks, but every time I happen to catch part of the film on TV it seems close enough, and makes for a much more palpable origin for the film's inescapable tension that undoubtedly compelled the Room 237 talking heads to over-analyze it in the first place.

Now, I also have yet to personally verify this theory, but I can't think of any exceptions off the top of my head, and you can bet I'll have a note pad and pencil with me the next time I watch The Shining, which shouldn't be too long from now.

AN ELECTRICIAN REMEMBERS WORKING ON THE SHINING

Here's a great piece in The Guardian, penned by Bob Tanswell, who landed a gig as an electrician on the set of The Shining back in 1979. That's him up there, top left. Some of his recollections are pretty funny. Great trivia. Quick read.

JOE TURKEL ON HIS ROLE IN THE SHINING

Okay, so this is a weird one. Some feller by the name of Media Mike--whose first language obviously isn't English--got a chance to chat with actor Joe Turkel at one of those "meet a celebrity" autograph conventions. Turkel is most famous for playing Lloyd the bartender in The Shining and Eldon Tyrell in Bladerunner, but he also had roles in two earlier films by Kubrick: The Killing and Paths of Glory. In The Killing, Turkel was little more than a glorified extra, but in Paths of Glory, he played Private Arnaud, a philosophically inclined chatterbox who is one of three French soldiers chosen to be executed for cowardice after a failed attempt to overtake a position held by the Germans. In any case, regardless of the site's broken English, it's nice to know that Turkel is still alive and mentally sharp at 88.

BARRY LYNDON: KUBRICK'S OVERLOOKED MASTERPIECE

Barry Lyndon Film Analysis - The Forgotten Masterpiece from MUST SEE FILMS on Vimeo.

From the "Must See Films" series comes this wonderful 19-minute analysis of Kubrick's beautiful adaptation of Thackeray's picaresque novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Some people may think Kubrick made Barry Lyndon as some kind of personal consolation project after Napoleon fell through at MGM--I mean, why let all those years of research go to waste, right?--but simply watching the film is enough to dispel that ridiculous notion.

AESOP ROCK REMAKES THE SHINING

I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't bring you hip hop artist Aesop Rock's 48-minute remake of The Shining, all done in miniature, to accompany the release of his latest album, The Impossible Kid. This IndieWire article has all the particulars

AWESOME NEW CLOCKWORK ORANGE POSTER

UPDATE!!!

Seeing as the image link below is broken, and seeing as the people who were selling it as both a print and a t-shirt no longer have it up for sale at their site, and seeing as I can't even find a link anywhere online for it, I'm going to go ahead and assume that Warner Bros sent them a cease and desist, and they complied, post-haste. I'm going to leave this broken link up here as a kind of tribute to the fragile impermanence of digital culture. If I ever find out what went down, I'll obviously be filling you guys in. - Yer Old Pal Jerky

The only change I would have made is to have the nipples bleeding milk instead of blood. Otherwise, this is gorgeous. You can purchase this beautiful piece of art (and a variant) at Cult Classic Prints.

KUBRICK ESTATE NAME-CHECKED IN PANAMA PAPERS DOCS-DUMP

This Newsweek report on Stanley Kubrick's estate's offshore financial holdings (in this case, via the British Virgin Islands) set up by Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, as recently revealed by Münich-based newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, has some interesting information, and a whole lot of factual errors. 

Take this single paragraph:

The reason Kubrick took such pains to keep the house in his family is not hard to fathom: He chose to be buried on the grounds of Childwickbury Manor, under his favorite tree. One of his two daughters with Christiane, Anya, who died later in 2009, is also buried on the 1,100-acre estate. Christiane now lives at the manor with her other daughter by Kubrick, Vivian, and a third daughter she’d had prior to their marriage, Katharina, as well as her grandchildren. After shooting scenes there for the end of Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining, which featured some of the grounds, Jack Nicholson once observed that Childwickbury Manor was, more or less, a family compound, and that Kubrick was “very much a family man.”

Let's play a game, shall we? Can YOU list all the errors contained in the above paragraph? Submit your answers in the comments section below!

Meanwhile, perhaps the most important non-erroneous factoids to take away from this article include a) the fact that tax avoidance does not always mean tax evasion, b) that Kubrick, his companies and his estates paid out large sums of taxes to both American and UK authorities over the years, and c) that our man Stanley isn't accused of doing anything illegal. And even if he were... that still wouldn't alter the fact that his movies are genius.

Now start picking apart that paragraph!

CRAZY MAGAZINE'S COMIC PARODY OF THE SHINING (1980)

The fine folks over at The Overlook Hotel website have scanned and made available this 1980 comic parody of The Shining, which ran in MAD Magazine's ugly, red-headed, Peeping Tom kleptomaniac neighbor kid, CRAZY! In fact, it was that issue's cover feature, and you know what? It wasn't half bad!

JEFF DELGADO'S AMAZING "THE SHINING" ILLUSTRATIONS

Jeff Delgado's awesome illustrations are a deft blend of realism with stylized cartoons. The results are a distinctive style, which he employed to create a series of pieces based on The Shining. Check them out at the link above, and find out more on the artist’s DeviantArt and Facebook.

HOW A COMPUTER LEARNED TO KILL, BY ALAN KELLEY

Reader Alan Kelley has put together a handsome video featuring a very well reasoned argument about how we may all have missed some important clues regarding both the potential reasons why, and the potential ways in which, HAL so suddenly turns into a homicidal maniac in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  He generously sent it to me to share with you all, and you may either watch it here, or on Youtube (for more viewing options). Just a word of warning: there are two minutes of clips before Alan begins making his argument, and his voice-over is mixed kind of low, but it's still very much worth our time.

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!

LEGENDARY PRODUCTION DESIGNER KEN ADAM PASSES AWAY AT 95

Trade journal Variety brings us sad tidings:

Five-time Oscar nominee and two-time winner Ken Adam, a production designer best known for his work on the James Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s and on “Dr. Strangelove,” died Thursday in London, according to the BBC. He was 95. 

Adam created the sprawling, futuristic lairs of the supervillains who populated the Bond films starting with Dr. No’s secret island complex in the first 007 film in 1962. He worked on all the Bond films that starred Sean Connery through 1972’s “Diamonds Are Forever,” as well as on “The Spy Who Loved Me” (for which he received an Oscar nomination) and “Moonraker,” both starring Roger Moore. 

For Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” he designed the famous war room. He was offered the production designer gig on Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” but turned it down. 

Adam worked on other thrillers, including “The Ipcress File” and sequel “Funeral in Berlin,” but he also designed the eccentric automobile of the title for “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” and he worked with Kubrick again on “Barry Lyndon,” for which he earned his first Oscar.

Read more at the link.

"EXISTENTIAL", A KUBRICK MEMORIAL BY SULAIMAN

I received a wonderful surprise this morning from a regular reader of this blog. He writes:

"Hey Jerky,

I hope you’re well.

First off - thanks for always keeping me posted with the latest and creative Kubrick news. It’s a bookmark I always find myself re-visiting! In the meantime, I wanted to share with you my visual interpretation of Stanley Kubrick’s answer, when asked ‘If life is so purposeless, do you feel it’s worth living’ in an interview for Playboy (of all the publications) back in 1968.

The short piece is made using archive footage from the Pre-linger Archive, going through over 10GBs of footage to tell Stanley’s fascinating answer.

As it’s the anniversary of his death, I thought you guys might want to share it in commemoration of the great Stanley!

All the best,
Sulaiman

Here's the video, which I think is wonderful. Thank you, Sulaiman!

existential. from Sulaiman Sibai on Vimeo.

NEW HIGH-RISE POSTER... LOOK FAMILIAR?

KANYE WEST'S KUBRICK OBSESSION ON BLAST

This HitFlix article delves into some interesting details about neo-hip-hop artist (and all around jackass) Kanye West's long-standing obsession with Stanley Kubrick, which came to a strange, pointy head this past weekend during West's performance on Saturday Night Live.