Stanley Kubrick: Classic or Dud?

sigh

arendt was fascinated by satellites - she thought it was funny that we'd send up this thing INTO SPACE and we were all so excited that it was IN SPACE and we'd make such a big deal about SPACE, yet the whole time the thing was just staring back at the earth. y'know how 99% of space shuttle photographs show the earth, either in the background or as the subject.

so for her the space programs and science fiction are funny because they're not about outer space, they just reinforce or explain our relations to the earth and ourselves. heidegger wrote extensively in the same vein, though about technology and nature.

the heidegger/arendt part = we send man INTO SPACE to confront a GIANT ALIEN MONOLITH and he basically he ends up confronting texas instruments. in the meantime, there's not really anything to do but stare at photos from earth, eat packaged earth food, confront yourself in the form of endless mental and physical exercise. sort of deflates romantic sci-fi.

again, not entirely vacuous but not so great as to decisively redeem the hour-and-a-half space sequence.

Um, I have to disagree. Kubrick took his films rather seriously, the black humour is just one aspect of them. I'd say only Lolita, Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange were "driven" by Kubrick's humour, though some of the others have comedic moments as well, obviously. Still, it's hard to imagine someone calling Paths of Glory, or Barry Lyndon, or even Eyes Wide Shut "comedies".

(Incidentally, i'm aware it's based on Thackeray's 19th c. novel)

this seems to me to be a pretty subjective reaction, because i dont find any part of the film "still and lifeless"--sometimes the characters themselves are, but the film itself never is. the docking sequence is beautiful, and the strauss is perfect because the machines are dancing.

eg the day she, sistrah becky, me and becky's boyf aplyed DESERT ISLAND DVDS and i sighed audibly when 2001 was mentioned and wz quite korrektly taken to task

psi have now seen clockwork o. (as in "o dear")

Accusations of "no sense of humor" several years xpost: fucked. "A clod with dialogue"? Strangelove is one of the most quoted films ever, and when his characters say banal things, it's quite purposeful.
(except in Spartacus, in which he had no script input)

Barry Lyndon is a smarter, subtler film about desire and violence than A Clockwork Orange.

by sense of humour i meant the actually funny kind

I used to love Kubrick in my revering great artists phase but right now the only films i can imagine sitting down to watch again are Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut (which really is a comedy i think in the classical sense, much like Fight Club, another film often taken too seriously.)

it doesn't QUITE rescue ews for me but if a film can cause a book that good, well done film

does anyone know where the jg ballard line about kubrick quoted here is pulled from?

"A clod with dialogue"? Strangelove is one of the most quoted films ever, and when his characters say banal things, it's quite purposeful.

Dialogue being quoted != good dialogue (cf. KEVIN SMITH) (tho I like the dialogue in Strangelove tons more than any KS hoohah) (plz don't get all Alex-in-NYC about KS now, folx).

Also, utilitarian, "purposeful" dialogue != good dialogue, either! By "clod", I was thinking in terms of Eyes Wide Shut mostly, which is just some 3-hour-long dry philosophical exposition about booty (as I recall) where folks talk like they're having SK shove an etiquette book up their prostate. Might've been the point, to make these characters act naturalistically but sound unnatural (& I don't even think they ACTED naturalistically, either!), but that doesn't make the dialogue enjoyable or interesting to experience.

Of course, leave it to the SK skeptic to be a pain in the ass about the last film SK did.

Kubrick's a fanboy's dream: obsessive, nerdy, reclusive, capable of constructing self-contained worlds from which neither light nor sound (nor occasionally any sense at all) can escape - but he puts you there, inside this impossible place.

I didn't mean being quoted by skateboarders.

Isn't this true of nearly every Hollywood director though?

It surely encapsulates the majority of losers I went to film school with who left behind their podunk hometowns & trekked off to Hollywood in search of fame and acceptance.

i watched Clockwork on a tiny tv with a weird magnifying screen put in front of it to make it look all grainy and big, it was spooky and unpleasant but i was pretty stoned at the time