It’s both perfectly fitting and a darkly wry punchline that the last word in Stanley Kubrick’s last film is “fuck,” utilized in its most literal definition. The word is spoken, in both direct and slightly imploring fashion, by Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman) to her husband Bill (Tom Cruise) at the end of the still slightly …
As we spend a month looking at the great Stanley Kubrick, we can also look at the filmmakers who were clearly influenced by Kubrick. “Kubrickian” films tend to exercise incredible control of the camera, are extremely ambitious, tend to deal with much weightier themes, and always maintain a sense of mystery, like a there’s an …
There are few unrealized projects in the history of cinema more tantalizingly fascinating than Stanley Kubrick’s planned feature about Napoleon
Stanley Kubrick’s voice as a director and writer was so singular, so fitfully honest. Every project seemed so richly influenced by him and the worlds he created. That world often floated somewhere between a cold brutal honesty and some kind of hyper reality that’s uniquely his own.
Films have been made, thousands of hours have been spent pouring over every detail, and lives have been changed by the pursuit of a holy grail within the subtext of Kubrick’s horror masterpiece. In short there is clearly ‘something’ going on within The Shining…
There’s a wonderfully maddening moment early on in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining where Danny Torrance is perusing the corridors of the Overlook hotel on his tricycle. He swings round corners, the camera obsessively following him in a locked in third person perspective angle. The skin crawling score by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind swells up …
The Last of Robin Hood depicts the last romance of Errol Flynn’s life from the not-so-tender age of 48 until his death. Who was the lucky girl? Beverly Aadland. One person’s definition of luck is most people’s definition of statutory rape—something that Flynn had some trouble with before—as Miss Aadland was under 18 at the time. This is the crux of the conundrum behind this story and what would regularly confound a filmmaker in bringing it to the screen—even Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita screenplay was rejected and reworked by Stanley Kubrick. Fortunately for the audience, Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland are no regular filmmakers (see Grief, The Fluffer, Quinceanera). They have written and directed a film about three protagonists (Beverly Aadland, her mother Florence, and Errol Flynn) with a vague outward antagonist—society, perhaps? And somehow, through the grace of such strong characters and writing, it works.
In almost everything, there is subtext, intentional or not. In the ‘not’ category is the significant black cloud coming with the silver lining of three massive developments in movieland this year. Firstly, after months of feverish speculation, J.J. Abrams was chosen as the man to helm the return of Star Wars to the big screen; he confirmed his worthiness for the role with the release of Star Trek Into Darkness, a mega-hit blockbuster action adventure putting the highly rated Star Trek 2009 into the shadows; almost in an attempt to draw attention away from Disney and Spielberg’s protégé, James Cameron announced that the most successful film of all time, his film Avatar, would indeed have the three sequels he had long discussed, thankfully with different screen writers covering the wordy bits. Cue much jubilation from fandom; the silver lining. The malignant black cloud, the subtext, was the continued throes of the science-fiction genre as it is starved to death.
It’s quite reassuring that despite living in such a fast paced, busy and prioritized world that seems to have waved a thin
When it comes to film interpretation and finding madness in the method, it’s only a matter of time before an overly philosophical troll decides to take an almighty stab at the man whose portfolio is stuffed with the mystery, symbolism and deeper meaning usually reserved for Michele de Nostradame and biblical verse. But while Stanley …
There’s something inherently lonely and tortured about being a director. Yes, you’re the tyrant of the set and dictator of the vision, but you’re also the man (or woman) behind the curtain, the puppet master who never appears on stage….unless you’re Clint Eastwood or Quentin Tarantino. Or Alfred Hitchcock….or Roman Polanski…ANYWAY, the point is that …
Room 237 Directed by Rodney Ascher USA, 2012 A blessing and curse of being human is that we grasp for meaning in all things. If something is not spelled out for us directly, we have to get to the bottom of it, our curiosity unable to be sated until we’ve gotten to the bottom of …
Jurassic Park, like many of Spielberg’s best films, allows us to be children again, even if this is, ironically, a film most kids would be scared to death by. It’s a movie that indulges in horror-movie tropes while making them feel fresh, layering a patina of intelligence over the intense, earth-rattling action. Though the human-dinosaur face-offs are the stuff of movie legend, the early sections where Drs. Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm, and Ellie Sattler debate the ethics of a theme park full of the living, breathing extinct are strangely fascinating and entertaining, at least to 28-year old me.
We’ve promoted some of Jeff Victor’s fabulous artwork before on our site. Here are some other great pieces showing the evolution of some of his favorite actors and directors. Jeff has set up an online store, so check out his site if you want to purchase some of his great artwork. Enjoy!
The Shining Written by Diane Johnson and Stanley Kubrick based on the novel The Shining by Stephen King Directed by Stanley Kubrick USA 1980 imdb Quebec’s only documentary film festival, Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal – RIDM, starts Wednesday, November 7th. One of the most highly anticipated docs is Room 237, a film about …
Fantastic Fest is over but that doesn’t mean we should stop promoting the incredible line-up of movies programmed. It has become a Sound on Sight tradition that once the event has finished, we post a festival wrap-up highlighting our favourite films. Here are the top three picks from four of our writers. You can check …
Room 237 Directed by Rodney Ascher USA, 2012 Room 237 is a potent, one-of-a-kind exploration into obsession and fanaticism that calls into question the underlying value of art and those who seek to unearth it. Whether or not you’re a fan of Kubrick and his films is moot. Rodney Ascher’s documentary serves up mind-boggling theory after another, absorbing the …
With TIFF over and done with, a huge number of noteworthy films have to be parsed, and first up is the “subjective documentary” Room 237, in which a host of obsessives muse over their pet theories on what Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is really about. Ricky D and Simon Howel are joined by special guest …
With the notion of film canonization once again at issue, we thought it might be an appropriate occasion to check in on our staff’s collective opinion of the greatest films of all time. We had no idea what to expect; our contributors come from all over the world and come from vastly different backgrounds and …
Killer’s Kiss Directed by Stanley Kubrick Written by Stanley Kubrick and Howard Sackler U.S.A, 1955 Just as last week’s column entry took a look at one of Stanley Kubrick’s earliest works, The Killing, this week yet an earlier piece of cinema from the director is explored. One year prior to making his real breakout film …
The Killing Directed by Stanley Kubrick Written by Stanley Kubrick and Jim Thompson U.S.A., 1956 Stanley Kubrick, now there is a name evocative of so many immediate thoughts and emotions for movie buffs everywhere. Infuriating, coldly mechanical in his depiction of people, difficult to comprehend. He was also an intelligent screenwriter, deeply profound in the …
Rudie Obias of the AuteurCast was nice enough to invite me on to participate in a review of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing. I highly recommend our readers to take a listen. Here is the info. In 1956, Stanley Kubrick joined with longtime producing partner, James B. Harris to make a film noir for the ages. …
Somehow we’d fallen into calling her “Luce the Moose.” No one even remembers why. After that, I used to buy her some kind of moose – a stuffed doll, a carving, anything – every Christmas. Her given name was Lucy Sylvia Mesce. Lucia, actually, but other than her immigrant parents, I don’t think anybody ever …