Stanley Kubrick: Classic or Dud?

It's among his most profound statements on the human condition. also O'Neal is perfect for it.

Also, it's funny.

my fav Kubrick. h8ers to the left.

there were funny moments but i mean

The Shining
Eyes Wide Shut
Barry Lyndon

Those are my 3 Kubricks.

It doesn't have the tempo we normally associate with comedy but it's pretty hilarious. The opening is classic gag... 'and there's no doubt his father would have become' *gunshot* 'had he not been killed in a duel'. The intermission title card is something like 'The downfall of Barry Lyndon' and it cuts to his wedding. Then there's the Irish guy's idea of nobility, which basically consists of wearing an eye patch and looking haughty. Or the Christopher Guest-eque joke of a hapless Lyndon looking at art and saying 'I like the use of the colour blue'. Or when he beds the farm girl and you see him riding off with a satisfied grin on his face and the narrator wryly observes she's been 'stormed many times before'.

Also that great line at the end, "good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor they are all equal now." Also when he gets robbed on the road in the most gentlemanly way possible.

Barry Lyndon is awesome!

sarabande is up there with yakkety sax for me as musical cues portending laughs.

http://kubrickist.tumblr.com/post/53767113675

cool.

85th birthday. Bro-in-law/producer Jan Harlan on Woody Allen as a projected lead for EWS, and SK's viewing habits:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/interviews/right-hand-man-jan-harlan-stanley-kubrick

cool interview. I always love imagining what the Martin or Allen versions of EWS would be like.

also, a compiled list of films he liked

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/polls-surveys/stanley-kubrick-cinephile

awesome piece, thanks for sharing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLSWR2EnHEs

Thanks for those. Friend of mine who is also a friend of Alex in NYC raved about that LA exhibit. Interesting about the Spanish movies he mentions. Should be noted that the producer of both Cría Cuervos and The Spirit of the Beehive along with many other films, Elías Querejeta, passed away earlier this month at aged 78. Also didn't know anyone else has seen, let alone liked, The Red Squirrel but me.

teehee:

Gelmis: 2001 took about three years to make - six months of preparation, four and a half months of working with the actors, and a year and a half of shooting special effects. How much time will Napoleon take out of your life?

Kubrick: Considerably less. We hope to begin the actual production work by the winter of 1969, and the exterior shooting - battles, location shots, etc. -- should be completed within two or three months. After that, the studio work shouldn't take more than another three or four months.

(from a 1969 interview with Kubrick)

that's good to hear!

can't wait.
the book from whence that interview came -- the director as superstar -- is a great glimpse of the state of cinema in the late 60s.

this is a neat book! out of print, too: http://www.scribd.com/doc/143395393/The-Making-of-Kubricks-2001

J.Ro and James Naremore on the first 4 features:

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=34118

http://paulnahm.blogspot.com/2010/06/playboy-interview-wstanley-kubrick-in.html

Killer's Kiss actress Irene Kane aka Chris Chase RIP

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/irene-kane-kubrick-actress-chris-chase-652790

http://vimeo.com/78314194

is there a good biography of this guy?

Let me Amazon that for you

Stanley Kubrick: A Biography by Vincent LoBrutto gets an average 3½ stars in reader reviews
Stanley Kubrick: A Biography by John Baxter gets an average 4 stars in reader reviews

Therefore you should read John Baxter's biography

lol

if anyone has an interest in kubrick and can answer my question, i'd appreciate that

i read the LoBrutto one a long time ago and didn't think it was very good. and it'd be pretty out of date by now, i think.

Baxter does some of the commentary for The Shining DVD; not especially illuminating chat, tbh.

The LoBrutto is good on 'the facts', but leans a bit too heavily on a few, relatively tangential sources. He obviously didn't have access to Kubrick or any of Kubrick's family.

AFAIK, the Alexander Walker book, 'Stanley Kubrick Directs', is the only book that Kubrick had some input on.

can we expand this question to books in general?

michel chion's book on EWS is pretty good but I can't think of too many others.

thanks guys! ryan, sure, take it away from here

The BFI classic on 2001 is also pretty good - takes some interesting routes into the film, most especially its anti-nuke message. The Shining volume isn't as good, but that may just be that, post-Room 237, a straightforward run down of the film seems a little redundant.
The Piers Bizony '2001: Filming the Future' is a good production history that doesn't pretend to offer a single critical opinion.

both those biogs pretty bore

at some point i think i'm gonna get a copy of the interviews book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1578062977/

has anybody ever bought or leafed through the Napoleon book?

ja

it's worth leafing through

I wish there was a big quasi-academic study a la tom cohen's books on hitchcock. maybe there is and I don't know about it.

I have a friend who recently went with his boss to spend some time at the Kubrick archive at the University Of The Arts in Elephant & Castle. He had a pretty mind blowing experience, it's all there there for the public to peruse, who knew?

http://www.arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/library-services/collections-and-archives/archives-and-special-collections-centre/stanley-kubrick-archive/

deleuze on kubrick is interesting, jameson on the shining too although its a decade since i read it

i've been to the archive. it's cool.

ever since that tom scharpling aimee mann video i have a hard time not pronouncing his name as "klubrick"

Jon Ronson's documentary 'Stanley Kubrick's Boxes' is online and worth watching if you haven't seen it: http://vimeo.com/78314194

you know, The Killing is such a dazzler!

The internet seems to disagree about whether SK was forced to add the narration. Well?

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1968-three-reasons-the-killing

did you see this out last night?

yep, and I couldn't stay for Kiss Me Deadly cuz I wound up seeing a new dull Mexican arty queer semi-porn film at Lincoln Center. :/

Editing Barry Lyndon: http://m.imgur.com/a/dHY9q

Kubrick's films play all the time, so this isn't that noteworthy, but:

http://www.tiff.net/cinematheque/stanley-kubrick-a-cinematic-odyssey

No Fear and Desire--not sure if it's even possible to see that.