Stanley Kubrick: Classic or Dud?

The first time i watched BL was months ago , I am currently replacing having no social life with relentless movie watching in these dying days!

I can rewatch every few years, but there is a saturation point. More of a problem with music sometimes.

Commentary tracks not a problem, actually prefer to rewatch almost immediately after the first viewing if I can, with or without commentary, to see what I missed.

when you get to that saturation point with a film you've loved, it can be really sad

which is one reason i often avoid watching my favorite films too many times

xpost

when you get to that saturation point with a film you've loved, it can be really sad

RIP Lawrence of Arabia

Wondering when it will be safe for me to watch Alphaville again, for example.

My DVD collection is small for someone who watches six movies a week.

When I get from Netflix or check out of the library a film I've seen before with a commentary track, I'll play it and treat the movie like a radio play. I did it recently for Angela Lansbury's commentary for The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Interesting.

With music I find I can listen to individual tracks, even on repeat, even after the album thrill is gone. I guess the equivalent for film is to watch a scene or two and say "oh, I see how this works" and then move on.

Classic just for his use of title cards

Rewatching too soon is kind of like reading the lyrics whilst listening to the recordings.

Bigger problem for me with songs than with movies. Songs are three minutes, movies are two hours, radio plays "Black Dog" every...I'm not up to the math right now.

btw i bought the Criterion Paths of Glory for myself last Christmas and haven't watched it yet. Hence I lean on the library.

(I will only watch 2001 in a theater. Did so last in 2001.)

Not the first, won't be the last:

http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-Kubrick-Masterpiece-Collection-Exclusive/dp/B00M7F47F0

(Maybe someone's already posted this.)

Ooh, released within a few days of my birthday. I have one of those on DVD and zero on Blu, so it may happen.

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/mar/27/features.weekend

http://morbidanatomymuseum.org/event/back-by-popular-demand-stanley-kubricks-boxes-screening-and-discussion-with-jon-ronson/

(sorry, I have no idea if this has been discussed here in the last ten years)

http://i.imgur.com/fDbDqJ2.jpg

If you are near London you can make an appointment and go and look through the boxes/archive.

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

https://twitter.com/ViKu1111/status/529096689554976768/photo/1

haha!

having rewatched ACO after quite some time i've got to say, that was some funny shit. really don't understand how someone could find kubrick humorless.

In Brooklyn there's a retro for James B Harris, which will include the films he produced for SK (The Killing, Paths, Lolita) as well as his directorial efforts, most notoriously the divisive '73 art film Some Call It Loving (hailed below by Rosenbaum, rated BOMB by Leonard Maltin) -- its cast features Mia Farrow's sister Tisa and Richard Pryor. Harris will do several Q&As.

http://www.bam.org/film/2015/overdue-james-b-harris

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/1975/10/some-call-it-loving/

(also, take a look at the Tim Carey pic for Fast-Walking)

Never seen Some Call it Loving, but Cop, based on a James Ellroy novel, is definitely a hidden gem - really taut and intense crime/police thriller

yeah, i'm gonna try to get to it.

Oh yeah, Cop rocks.

Technical stuff about the lenses Kubrick used here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_PIqg449is#t=486

and here:

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/sk/ac/len/page1.htm

awesome, thanks ward

James Harris on the Kubrick partnership and after:

Do you know the story about how I fired Tim Carey on the set of Paths of Glory?

I don’t!

Well, I got a call at six in the morning from the Munich police, saying Tim had been found abandoned on the highway, bound hand and foot, claiming he’d been kidnapped. They thought production was responsible, looking for publicity, that it was a staged act. I said I knew nothing about it, but we needed him to work—they were holding him down at the police station. I told them that Tim was making up this story because he wanted the publicity, not us. So they said they would accommodate us by bringing him to the film studio—they were gonna interview him there. But Jim wouldn’t agree to the statement he was supposed to sign, he kept changing things about it. So I went up to Jim and said: “We’re all waiting for you. Sign the paper and get to work.” And he wouldn’t sign the paper, so I fired him right there. You’ll notice in the battle scene, you never see the three men put on trial for cowardice. That’s because the battle was the last thing we filmed, and we couldn’t show the two other actors without showing Tim, too.

http://www.filmcomment.com/entry/interview-james-b-harris

That feels untrue. Or maybe too cinematic to be true.

That story is more holes than story!

Tim? Jim?

I caught Some Call it Loving over xmas, its kind of like Emmanuelle meets Borges (?) Possibly Pryor at his best (like the film bothers to use his energy).

Ian Penman wrote something about this on S&S about a year ago.

welcome back kenan!

SCIL def wd make a strange if semi-punishing double bill with Eyes Wide Shut.

Tim? Jim?
There was some confusion related to Jim Thompson as well.

Baseball-focused right now, so apologies if this has been posted. Haven't watched it, looks interesting, could have gone on a Hitchcock thread too:

https://vimeo.com/142100873

nice

cool

Have seen that a lot on Facebook etc - and can always see it again - but it's led me to wonder if Hitchcock and Kurbrick ever met

I bet they would have talked about brutalising actors if they did meet.

re-watched Paths of Glory again last night, it gets better every time I see it.

i saw clockwork orange last night at the prince charles. surprised me as the first time i saw it as a teenager i thought it was amazing. now i think it looks a little facile. its definitely got its bracing, shocking moments, it has terrific set design, some great cinematography, and is visually highly memorable (though i expect all that, its kubrick). but its also pretty superficial.

kubrick is def good at highlighting the crazed, nihilistic delirium, but generally terrible at ever really presenting the violence as anything other than that. the rape/home invasion scene is brilliantly staged, imagined and performed, and perhaps the aim is just to shock, but the film takes rather too much delight in these violent set pieces. im not sure we see alex as more than a loveable goon, hes nasty for sure, but i dont think the film ever suggests that, thats entirely on the viewer. i guess its consistent for trying to present the film from alexs viewpoint but i think something must be missing from kubrick's general emotional intelligence to consider this so vital (or wilfully absented from the films POV in order to make it as 'consistent' as possible - i think this is why kubricks films can be cold and stiff; he thinks too much about consistency of tone/perspective/theme, so much so that it flattens the emotional range of his films, all in the service of emphasising directorial power/control, and the 'art' of his films - i think this might be why i think something like fear and desire approaches some of the similar themes, but handles it better).

its def of its time. made me think of 70s rock excess, groupies being humiliated, casual/nasty sexism, etc etc. kubrick def loves shots of naked women (which hey, hes a hetero man, so why not), but theres something to HOW he looks that seems a bit sinister (i dont know much about him beyond the films so...). i thought something similar about eyes wide shut. the camera's stare (its not a male gaze, its more a male glare) at nicole kidmans naked body feels voyeuristic and hard rather than merely admiring.

Stanley's wife Christiane welcomes you to the official home of ‪#‎StanleyKubrick‬ online.

https://www.facebook.com/StanleyKubrick/

https://twitter.com/stanleykubrick

This is happening in SF:

http://www.thecjm.org/on-view/currently/stanley-kubrick-the-exhibition/about

Howard Hampton finds "certain endearing and disconcerting affinities" between Strangelove and the cuddly Robert Montgomery comedy (also recently released on CC) Here Comes Mr. Jordan.

http://www.artforum.com/film/id=61920

Might actually get to see Barry Lyndon

BFI are doing a weekend of screenings in their big screen, or might see it at the ICA next week.

I think Barry Lyndon is probably my 2nd fave Kubrick next to Paths Of Glory.

Paths of Glory is the only Kubrick I've seen and like

kirk douglas would have made for an interestingly pissed off dave bowman