Stanley Kubrick is a god...

[Paradoxical]

[Tripper11]

1. Truly! A man with a unique vision.

2001 is on one of the movie channels and I have been watching it every now and then.
Never ceases to amaze me.
Beautiful, thought provoking, stunning, visionary.

[Paradoxical]

2. I just started reading the novel by Clarke.

I heard it's a really good compliment to the movie.

[bif]

10. The novel was actually written after the movie came out

To help explain the movie, which was based on a Clarke short story.

[JCMach1]

3. Don't Forget -

http://wolfandfox.tumblr.com/photo/1280/3075079294/1/tumblr_lg0gap3YHp1qa4quy

[MilesColtrane]

9. Maybe I need to give "Eyes Wide Shut" another chance.

I was baffled as to why it was even made, especially when you compare it to his other movies.

[edbermac]

17. Check my post #6, has an analysis of EWS.

[RandomThoughts]

26. Once you join a certain group.

You have to wear a mask.

In metaphor, once he cheated on his wife, he had to wear a mask when sleeping with her.

It is also true of some groups that have knowledge of some powers. They have to hide it from people.


I see no reason to hide.



Then again, I am due beer and travel money and many experiences. I did not take those things or cheat.

[Ahpook]

31. Ever seen it.. on weed? :)

No really, that film is grossly overlooked. I half suspect Kubrick cast those two because of the marital trouble at the time?

That simple story along with multiple windings of chaos makes a perfect film. You can watch Eyes Wide Shut in numerous frames of mind and get another feeling :)

[JCMach1]

4. I love Kubrick, what can I say!

Even AI which still has a bit of Kubrick in it...

[gratuitous]

7. Whatever AI has of Kubrick

The lousy story surely extinguished. Unfilmable, unwatchable dreck. Horrible. Utterly without any redeeming social or artistic value whatsoever. Took bad to new levels of badness. Did not/Do not like.

[peekaloo]

5. Paths of Glory

great ant-war film.

[edbermac]

6. Check this site out

Film analysis of many SK films.

www.collativelearning.com

[Tuesday Afternoon]

12. cool, thanks for the link

:)

[LeftinOH]

8. The sets are pretty impressive. n/t

[amyrose2712]

11. I'm guessing you watched it this weekend too?nt

[kentauros]

13. As was Douglas Trumball in creating the effects

Although I need an actual demonstration of the effects for the "stargate" sequence, where they used a slit-scan camera over panels of artwork. I can visualize the effect only up to the point of setting the system up. After that, the descriptions read like they are by someone that understands the process implicitly but has never had to teach something complicated to anyone other than their peers ;)

So, all of you that understand it, how about some diagrams and a video of the process in action? Because the descriptions on Wikipedia and fan-pages just aren't cutting it!

[edbermac]

25. A basic setup here

http://www.underview.com/howscan.html

[kentauros]

27. Thank you!

Finally! Someone that understands how to describe a complex process in a way most people can understand. The site-owner says at the top "He has put together this guide for the more technically- challenged among us." I would add that I'm not technically-challenged, just challenged by those that can't make detailed and easy to understand descriptions ;)

Even that cameraman is baffled by some of the sequences Trumbull did, so I'm not alone in being unable to figure some of them out...

[LynneSin]

14. I think he lost that title after "Eyes Wide Shut"

That movie was absolutely wretched.

[joeybee12]

16. Yeah, but look he had to work with...Tom cruise and his beard...nt

[jobycom]

20. Watch it again.

There was a lot more to it than people seemed to see the first time. Everyone was expecting some over-the-top sexually provocative film, and they were disappointed (aside from the Kidman lingerie scene, maybe). Instead it's more about power, control, and perception, like many Kubrick films. The husband keeps confusing reality for fantasy, from his wife's sexual fantasies to the secret cabal chasing him, and has his own sexual fantasies destroyed by realities. His own life is different than he sees it, since he has no control over the wife he thought he understood, since she has a mind and desires of her own. That's the point of the masks and the balls--all the husband has ever seen are the masks, and seeing what's beneath them sends him into a crisis. It's a complex story screwed up by expectations created by marketers.

[LynneSin]

21. I just did a few weeks back and found it as wretched as ever

Perfect example of what was so terribly wrong with that movie was the over-the-top acting by Cruise. He'd flash is doctor's license to people like it was some sort of detective badge therefore you should trust them. No doctor does that.

Cruise was just beyond bad and he never had any chemistry whatsoever with Kidman. That was the third movie the pair of them ruined although 'Days of Thunder' and 'Far and Away' weren't exactly high expectations in the movie world.

Perhaps if there were different actors involved, at least with the Cruise role and definately music - that orgy scene music was just annoying as all hell, the movie might have been saved.

[edbermac]

30. Thematic analysis of EWS.

This guy Rob Ager is a excellent film analyst. He had some YouTube videos of EWS but he pulled them to sell on a DVD.
I managed to save 3 of them on my mac, but don't know how to load them on the net. Is there a site like Photobucket that takes videos?

Anyway his comments are here:

http://www.collativelearning.com/EYES%20WIDE%20SHUT%20analysis.html#introduction

[TuxedoKat]

41. Thanks for posting that

I always assumed there was alot more going on in EWS than met the eye and figured I would have to watch it a few more times to make note of all the symbolic details Ager points out. I love deconstructing books and films. Actually, with EWS, instinctively I got a large part of the message without knowing some of these details but it is interesting to know his interpretation. I'd like to rewatch the movie to find other symbolism hidden in plain site as well.

[Ahpook]

33. He flashed credentials for a different reason?

He thought he was something bigger than he actually was? He was put in his sorry place very quickly. After that, a downward madness :)

[JCMach1]

22. It is also about truth and the fictive process itself

and how that plays out with relationships of all things.

I liked the dream-like quality too it. It wasn't reality.

There are any number of Kubrick film that play around surrealism and frak with our sense of narrative.

[fishwax]

39. I agree with you, except that I think the expectations by marketers were part of it

The marketing campaign invited the audience to participate in the same kind of process (fantasization, heightened anticipation, frustration about lack of control, etc.) as the husband does. Personally, the marketing was part of what made the film so great. :)

[nolabear]

15. Amen and Amen. He changed my life.

For a small town Mississippi girl, 2001 was literally awe inspiring. Then I discovered the rest of him, Strangelove, Paths of Glory, The Killing, Lolita, and later everything that came after. I don't much like Eyes Wide Shut but it has its moments of wonder, still. Kubrik can convey a visual image like no one else.

[Richardo]

18. The lunar scenes are even more remarkable than you think, because they were shot in 1964

At that point, we had only had manned spaceflight for three years, and Apollo 11 was five years in the future. :wow:

[jobycom]

19. You overestimate him.

God, I mean. He wishes he was Stanley Kubrick.

[JCMach1]

23. Kubrick's cinematographer discussing the lighting of the candlelit scenes in Barry Lyndon

WHEN I READ THIS YEARS BACK, IT BLEW MY MIND WHAT WENT INTO THOSE SCENES TO CREATE A 'REAL' WORLD LOOK... AND NOT JUST REALISM, TO TURN IT INTO SOMETHING FANTASTICALLY BEAUTIFUL-


---------------------------------------------------------------

...QUESTION: Now we come to the scenes which have caused more comment than anything else in this overall beautiful film - namely the candlelight scenes. Can you tell me about these and how they were executed?

ALCOTT: The objective was to shoot these scenes exclusively by candlelight - that is, without a boost from any artificial light whatsoever. As I mentioned earlier, Stanley Kubrick and I had been discussing this possibility for years, but had not been able to find sufficiently fast lenses to do it. Stanley finally discovered three 50mm f/0.7 Zeiss still-camera lenses which were left over from a batch made for use by NASA in their Apollo moon-landing program. We had a non-reflexed Mitchell BNC which was sent over to Ed DiGiulio to be reconstructed to accept this ultra-fast lens. He had to mill out the existing lens mounts, because the rear element of this f/0.7 lens was virtually something like 4mm from the film plane. It took quite a while, and when we got the camera back we made quite extensive tests on it. This Zeiss lens was like no other lens in a way, because when you look through any normal type of lens, like the Panavision T/1.1 or the Angenieux f/0.95, you are looking through the optical system and by just altering the focus you can tell whether it's in or out of focus. But when you looked through this lens it appeared to have a fantastic range of focus, quite unbelievable. However, when you did a photographic test you discovered that it had no depth of field at all - which one expected anyway. So we literally had to scale this lens by doing hand tests from about 200 feet down to about 4 feet, marking every distance that would lead up to the 10-foot range. We had to literally get it down to inches on the actual scaling.

QUESTION: You say that the focal length was 50mm?

ALCOTT: It was 50mm, but then we acquired a projection lens of the reduction type, which Ed DiGiulio fitted over another 50mm lens to give us a 36.5mm lens for wider-angle coverage. The original 50mm lens was used for virtually all the medium shots and close shots.

QUESTION: And those scenes were illuminated entirely by candlelight?

ALCOTT: Entirely by the candles. In the sequence where Lord Ludd and Barry are in the gaming room and he loses a large amount of money, the set was lit entirely by the candles, but I had metal reflectors made to mount above the two chandeliers, the main purpose being to keep the heat of the candles from damaging the ceiling. However, it also acted as a light reflector to provide an overall illumination of toplight.

QUESTION: How many foot-candles (no pun intended) would you say you were using in that case?

ALCOTT: Roughly, three foot-candles was the key. We were forcing the whole picture one stop in development. Incidentally, I found a great advantage in using the Gossen Panalux electronic meter for these sequences, because it goes down to half foot-candle measurements. It's a very good meter for those extreme low-light situations. We were using 70-candle chandeliers, and most of the time I could also use either five-candle or three-candle table candelabra, as well. We actually went for a burnt-out effect, a very high key on the faces themselves.

QUESTION: What were some of the other problems attendant to using this ultra-fast lens to shoot entirely by candlelight?

ALCOTT: There was, first of all, the problem of finding a side viewfinder that would transmit enough light to show us where we were framed. The conventional viewfinder would not do at all, because it involves prisms which cause such a high degree of light loss that very little image is visible at such low light levels. Instead, we had to adapt to the BNC a viewfinder from one of the old Technicolor three-strip cameras. It works on a principle of mirrors and simply reflects what it "sees", resulting in a much brighter image. There is very little parallax with that viewfinder, since it mounts so close to the lens.

QUESTION: What about the depth of field problem?

ALCOTT: As I suggested before, that was indeed a problem. The point of focus was so critical and there was hardly any depth of field with that f/0.7 lens. My focus operator, Doug Milsome, used a closed-circuit video camera as the only way to keep track of the distances with any degree of accuracy. The video camera was placed at a 90-degree angle to the film camera position and was monitored by means of a TV screen mounted above the camera lens scale. A grid was placed over the TV screen and by taping the various artists' positions, the distances could be transferred to the TV grid to allow the artists a certain flexibility of movement, while keeping them in focus.

It was a very tricky operation, but according to all reports, it worked out quite satisfactorily.

... http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/sk/2001a/bl/page1.htm

[Fire Walk With Me]

24. Goosebumps. What a master of the art.

[pink-o]

28. I saw Clockwork Orange in 1971. I was only 16, but at 6'1" looked older.

My BF was an inch taller and a year younger, so we sneaked into every R and X rated movie we could--but gawd, a little too young to sit through that one! Anyway, I managed to avoid therapy, and saw it again @ 23, after living in England. I was spellbound. The great themes: who was more evil, a sociopathic little pillock, or the British Government for beating it out of him? Even the gumby Yorkshire accents which belonged in a Michael Palin skit worked perfectly in that film. Yeah, the rape scene was horrible, but it was meant to be so, there was no gratuitous sexual thrill in the subtext. And there could have been. But as you say, Kubrick is an effin' genius!!!

I also loved Dr Strangelove, but had no idea it was really modeled after Kissinger until years later. Peter Sellars and Stanley Kubrick: a match made in heaven!

[provis99]

29. I always got the impression Kubrick hated humanity.

Every one of his movies seem to be anti-human: Hal was the most lifelike person in 2001; the generals in Paths of Glory are souless and hypocritical, the soldiers are listless and defeatist; Spartacus implies rebellion is fruitless because the system always wins; Full Metal Jacket makes humans look feral; Lolita reduced love to a clinical pathology; Clockwork Orange made normal people look vengeful and warped next to the monstrous Alex; Barry Lyndon's hero was an amoral asshole, surrounded by people even worse than him; The Shining says too much time with your family turns you into a homicidal maniac; and so on.

[Paradoxical]

32. Those are grossly oversimplified analyses.

[Orrex]

36. I agree with you but Malcolm MacDowell once noted...

that Kubrick was a great director but "not a particularly good human being." While filming the strapped-to-a-chair scenes for Clockwork, one of MacDowell's eyes suffered an inflammation (or some equivalent). When he complained about this to Kubrick, the director said something along the lines of "okay, we'll shoot from the other side."

:rofl:

[provis99]

37. yeah, well, I'm a grossly oversimplified type of guy.

[sakabatou]

34. The Stargate sequence is the hardest to understand, if anybody could

[bikebloke]

35. Did they ever remaster the Barry Lyndon DVD?

I saw it when it was first released in theatres, and thought it was a treat for the eyes. About 12 years ago, I tried watching it again on VHS. A much rented VHS. Very grainy. It was ruining it for me, so I stopped when he met Hardy Kruger. I don't want to risk it again if the DVD is grainy, too.

[JCMach1]

38. YES, I own a copy...

:)

[Blue_Tires]

40. He's #2 on my list behind Hitchcock, but this quote IS going on my tombstone:

So let's get going, there's no other choice. God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all!

[tigereye]

42. the man was brilliant- we saw a wonderful documentary

about his early life and skill with the camera.

[RagAss]

43. Yes...a god from the Bronx !