Best Stanley Kubrick movie

I actually spent a quarter-hour with my ACO dvd a coupla weeks ago, zooming and scanning all around that record store for album sleeves I recognized...I believe the only ones I could identify were John Fahey and Mungo Jerry. (And the 2001 soundtrack, of course.)

Magical Mystery Tour is in there too.

Yeah the intro is fantastic, the effect of which doesn't quite hit you watching it at home. You need to see it on a huge screen, just completely covered in punkish red with that oscillating synth sound blasting bizarre noise at you. It's also interesting that Alex & co. are all drinking hallucinogenic drugs the entire time and you don't see any fantastical drug sequences or anything because his real life is surreal enough. Maybe the milk bar is really just a boring looking regular bar but the Knivey Moloko makes you think it's a black room with nude white ladies in colorful wigs for tables.

I think you've hit on a big part of K's presentation of interiors in his films

the first 45 minutes is pretty relentless

Maybe already posted, but here's a full analysis of the ACO record store scene with all the sleeves identified.

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2006/04/13/alex-in-the-chelsea-drug-store/

I love Alex's maniacally gleeful expressions. The terrifying glint in his eye and the mischevious grin. Like when he's driving the stolen car.

you don't see any fantastical drug sequences or anything because his real life is surreal enough

I kinda wonder whether that bogus rear-projection shot during that driving scene isn't meant to look vaguely psychedelic - would Stanley have used such an unrealistic effect if it wasn't intended?

I think of it more like cartoon-like than psychedelic, even if I would like the latter.

from one of the stars of Room 237

http://www.realitysandwich.com/kubrick_apollo

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2013/02/stanley-kubrick-favorite-films-list-white-men-cant-jump

In the end, it looks like Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landings in return for two things. The first was a virtually unlimited budget to make his ultimate science fiction film: 2001: A Space Odyssey; and the second was that he would be able to make any film he wanted, with no oversight from anyone, for the rest of his life.

LOL at the notion of Federally mandated final cut. Even the US government couldn't guarantee that.

Watching The Shining for the first time in, god, twenty years, I wondered what the hell Jack Nicholson is playing. In the first interview with the Overview manager he puts unexpected quotation marks around his words. Several scenes dribble on too long (Duvall with the doctor). Stunning use of deep focus: loved one shot of Torrance in his room with Danny way in the background.

if you believe Jack's account of Kubrick's wishes, he's playing "interesting" as opposed to "real"

The doctor scene with Anne Jackson always seemed clumsy and unnecessary to me.

Barry Lyndon is my favourite Kubrick, followed by Dr Strangelove and The Killing. Probably reactionary because I just watched Barry Lyndon yesterday evening, but fuck me what a fucking perfect movie and with so much chamber music and perfect narrative/performances. In my opinion this is his finest moment.

The extent to which the accepted wisdom on Lyndon has come around (2nd place Kubrick in both the '02 and '12 S&S polls iirc) gives me hope the same will happen for Eyes Wide Shut eventually.

Paths of Glory, Barry Lyndon, Lolita and bits of Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove and FMJ are the only Kubricks I can watch again.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 13, 2013 3:59 PM (1 year ago)

Wrong again, Maude!

http://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2012/11/07/Photos/MG/MW-AW102_aitf_m_20121107174619_MG.jpg?uuid=fcba08b6-292c-11e2-825a-002128040cf6

btw I wasn't ranking them. I don't care enough about Kubrick to watch his movies over and over so

http://static.tumblr.com/y8hwp0k/ampm28hbt/sophiareaction002.gif

I'm going to give both of you the Ludovico treatment someday, and the footage will be comedy/brawl scenes from John Ford movies.

choreographed by Gregory La Cava

*cut to Eric waving Little Edie's flag around in a bubble bath with 2 naked Dave Francos*

I was cured alright.

Yeah, the climax of Barry Lyndon might be the highpoint of his filmography. A masterclass in sustained suspense.

"A blaster ass in butt-stained piss-sense," I weirdly found myself typing out.

about Dave Franco?

anyone read/ heard this? looks amazing

http://www.fullmetaljacketdiary.com

http://36.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb4pl5QLoL1rovfcgo4_1280.jpg

Tried rewatching FMJ the other night and, man, it felt tedious. :(

I thought this revive was going to be about Paths of Glory today. No offence but this looks like some standard hagiography type shit where the narrator weaves their own mediocre, uninteresting arses into the mix.

I'd need to re-(or first-)screen to do a proper list, but here's an attempt anyway:
1. Eyes Wide Shut
2. Dr. Strangelove
3. Full Metal Jacket
4. 2001
5. Paths of Glory
6. Barry Lyndon
7. The Killing
8. The Shining
(8.5 A.I.)
9. A Clockwork Orange

I haven't paid sufficient attention to Lolita, and haven't seen the first two.

I may be overconsidering production values, or overobjecting to British accents.

Xp: why would the revive be about Paths of Glory?

Over here it was remembrance Sunday and there has been lots of WW1 related stuff on TV recently I thought maybe it was broadcast, saying that it is probably on a BBC blacklist for portraying futility.

I have the most trouble with the middle of that list - BL and PoG (among others?) could easily be reversed.

A brief list.

Interesting to neglect the major players, but absolutely love Lolita/Barry Lyndon. Good list

George Macready in Paths Of Glory + Patrick Magee in BL, are such powerhouse performances. And Sterling Hayden's straight-faced "precious bodily fluids" spiel is still piss funny, even though I wore out a VHS recording of Strangelove in the 80's.

Kubrick admitted Lolita needed to be more explicit.

lolita the book is not really all that explicit, tbh

1/ Full Metal Jacket
2/ Dr Strangelove
3/ 2001: A Space Odyssey
4/ Barry Lyndon
5/ Eyes Wide Shut

it's clear, JD

Lyne's was just as ambiguous on that point

Love Alfred's challopsy lists. I never agree with them but they make for great reading and dissecting

Largely agree with this one and the point about concision. Bar 2001 I think it hits the essential work.

as it happens, a student told me this morning that his Euro history professor showed POG last week and the class was devastasted when it ended.

i'm pretty sure i've said this before here but kirk douglas' slow burn in paths of glory is my platonic model of how these things can be done. i would love to know the conversations he had with kubrick about it, how much they collaborated on the emotional structure of his part (if at all), and how tricky it must have been to correctly modulate given that they were probably shooting a lot of stuff out of sequence

I don't know if Douglas' autobio has much on the playing of Dax, but it has Kirk's infamous anger w/ SK

http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/forums/index.php?topic=8851.0;wap2

the way Kubrick keeps the audience's righteous anger at a rising boil is pretty masterful.

Stanley Kubrick and his partner, James Harris, the man who put up money to develop the script, went ahead to Germany to prepare PATHS OF GLORY. When I arrived at the Hotel Vierjahrzeiten in Munich, I was greeted by Stanley and a completely rewritten script. He had revised it on his own, with Jim Thompson. It was a catastrophe, a cheapened version of what I thought had been a beautiful script. The dialogue was atrocious. My character said things like: "You've got a big head. You're so sure the sun rises and sets up there in your noggin you don't even bother to carry matches,"And "And you've got the only brain in the world. They made yours and threw the pattern away? The rest of us have a skullful of Cornflakes." Speeches like this went on for pages, right up to the happy ending, when the general's car arrives screeching to halt the firing squad and he changes the men's death sentence to thirty days in the guardhouse. Then my character, Colonel Dax, goes off with the bad guy he has been fighting all through the movie, General Rousseau, to have a drink, as the general puts his arm around my shoulder.

I callled Kubrick and Harris to my room. "Stanley, did you write this?"

"Yes." Kubrick always had a calm way about him. I never heard him raise his voice, never saw him get excited or reveal anything. He just looked at you though those big, wide eyes.

I said, "Stanley, why would you do that?"
He very calmly said, "To make it commercial. I want to make money."

I hit the ceiling. I called him every four-letter word I could think of. "You come to me with a script written by other people. It was based on a book. I love THAT script. I told you I didn't think this would be commercial, but I want to make it. You left it in my hands to put the picture together. I got the money, based on THAT script. Not this shit!" I threw the script across the room. "We're going back to the original script, or we're not making the picture."

Stanley never blinked an eye. We shot the original script. I think the movie is a classic, one of the most important pictures--possibly the MOST important picture--Stanley Kubrick has ever made.

from Morbs' link

Interesting tidbit about a director who has written or co-written, with an exception, every film he's made:

Stanley is not a writer. He has always functioned better if he got a good writer and worked with him on a concept.

makes sense if you think of Jim Thompson, Terry Southern, Arthur Clarke, Frederic Raphael, but afaik SK did the adap of Lyndon himself.

apparently he also tossed the Nabokov script in the ashcan; it was very long and unfilmable.

Yeah, I knew that. For BL and ACO (also a solo credit) I think I read that he followed the Huston method for The Maltese Falcon: ask a secretary to re-type the novel in script format, then he'd edit it.