Stanley Kubrick: Classic or Dud?

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 and it'd be pretty out of date by now, i think.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.

It's Possible

Check internet--why didn't I think of that? Just ordered a new copy for under $15.

they're doing a Kubrick retrospective here in Dublin for the next few months. Fear & Desire (+ Day Of The Fight, Flying Padre, and The Seafarers) showing next week

i watched 'fear and desire' on youtube a few years back (one of the few times i've ever done that with a movie). definitely for committed fans only, but it's not nearly as bad as kubrick thought it was.

Those shorts will be playing before one of the two Killer's Kiss screenings here. I liked Killer's Kiss the one time I saw it--I may just see the standalone screening of that.

Enjoyed the Killing a lot (and similarly skipped Kiss Me Deadly for... Les Amants, I think it was?), but beyond the structural invention I don't care about, I don't see what's so special about it beyond its service as a prototype for the various I-think-greater best-laid-plans films that followed. I suppose those that feel differently may be actively rooting for the SNAFU? I'll take Soderbergh, TYVM.

Toronto is getting the museum show next, right

One of the highlights of The Killing for me is Timothy Carey's character with the fabulously guttural accent, but his overwrought shift in Paths Of Glory was quite jarring - he seems like a hit and miss type of actor.

Carey's a highlight for me too. I've always thought he's doing a bit of a Kirk Douglas parody in The Killing, or at least borrowed his clenched-teeth delivery from Douglas. I like him a lot in Paths of Glory, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bPAUI-WsLc

(Movieclips is so annoying.)

don't find him overwrought at all in PoG -- he plays kooky guys.

Probably a harsh comment on reflection, but I really didn't want his character to go out blubbing!

it's a bit much, but that's the point

that whole film is pretty strident though, i have a hard time w/ it

As a fan of genuine regional accents Carey's is up there with the best. Also I like actors in crime movies who look like they have taken kickings from the cops IRL.

PoG is fantastic

I can't think of a reason to watch it often -- it's too dogmatic to fully enjoy -- but as anti-war agitprop it's the best of its kind when it's not giving Kirk Douglas and Adolphe Menjou space.

and it's a more riveting goon show than Dr Strangelove.

oh, dogma, heavens can't have that

lord knows you produce enough of it

took me years to realize the unctuous priest is the crooked cop in Sweet Smell of Success.

Emile Meyer. He's pure slime in Sweet Smell of Success, so that threw me when I made the connection.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QT8r1VTBz6s/TaSwx6FJXEI/AAAAAAAAGK4/MCPA9DGkzIQ/s1600/EmileMeyer-SweetSmell.jpg

Haven't seen either Killing or PoG, which to watch first?

That's not a clearcut choice.

That'd be a tough one for me. They're very similar in at least one respect--the feeling of time inexorably closing in--but worlds apart in so many other ways. The Killing is the weirder movie, I'd say, but I think they're both close to perfect.

Life is too short, just watch both of them and then watch Barry Lyndon on the same night!