linkmachinego.com

2 August 2022
[ai] The Kubrick Times 🚨📰 … Using an AI to generate newspaper articles from NYT Headlines used by Kubrick’s 2001. ‘World Population Passes 6 Billion Mark – The world’s population has officially reached 6 billion people, according to the United Nations. This milestone has been both celebrated and met with trepidation, as it highlights the enormous pressure that our planet is under. The population is now evenly split between the northern and southern hemispheres, with 3 billion people living north of the equator and 3 billion living south of it.’
23 December 2020
[xmas] Eyes Wide Shut is an anti-consumerist holiday classic … Is Eyes Wide Shut a Christmas Movie? ‘The film is bookended by two extravagant Christmas scenes: first, the luxurious holiday party thrown by Bill’s wealthy patient Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack); and finally, the Harfords following their daughter Helena (Madison Eginton) around an enormous toy store while she points out gifts she’d like Santa to bring her. All the while, the manufactured lustre of Christmas permeates every scene – except, that is, within the cult, where the only decorative flourishes are the claret hues of the carpeting and the cult leader’s cloak. The outside world is already swathed in the drapery of one form of zealous, ritualistic worship – what need is there to bring it in another?’
11 December 2020
[movies] Full Metal Jacket to Rocky IV: the least festive Christmas movies ever‘At one point Gunnery Sergeant Hartman tells his troops: “Today is Christmas. There will be a magic show at zero nine thirty. Chaplain Charlie will tell you about how the free world will conquer communism with the aid of God and a few marines. God has a hard-on for marines, because we kill everything we see.” Is this the only reference to Christmas in an otherwise bleak and dread-soaked war movie? Yes.’
21 September 2020
[kubrick] Stanley Kubrick Zoom Call

1 June 2020
[movies] The Rolling Stone Interview: Stanley Kubrick in 1987 … Interviewed by Tim Cahill – a two-hour recording of the interview is on YouTube.

Cahill: People always look at directors, and you in particular, in the context of a body of work. I couldn’t help but notice some resonance with Paths of Glory at the end of Full Metal Jacket: a woman surrounded by enemy soldiers, the odd, ambiguous gesture that ties these people together…

Kubrick: That resonance is an accident. The scene comes straight out of Gustav Hasford’s book.

Cahill: So your purpose wasn’t to poke the viewer in the ribs, point out certain similarities…

Kubrick: Oh, God, no. I’m trying to be true to the material. You know, there’s another extraordinary accident. Cowboy is dying, and in the background there’s something that looks very much like the monolith in 2001. And it just happened to be there.

2 October 2019
[kubrick] ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’: Kubrick’s Pioneering Achievement As One of the Most Significant Films Ever Made… Huge page of digital artifacts from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. ‘Dear Mr Clarke: It’s a very interesting coincidence that our mutual friend Caras mentioned you in a conversation we were having about a Questar telescope. I had been a great admirer of your books for quite a time and had always wanted to discuss with you the possibility of doing the proverbial “really good” science-fiction movie…’

Kubrick filming on the set of 2001

6 September 2019
[kubrick] How Stanley Kubrick Staged the Moon Landing … Analysing the classic conspiracy theory that Kubrick left cryptic messages about staging the Apollo 11 Moon Landing in the Shining. ‘The clincher comes when the Danny gets up from his tricycle and walks down the corridor, following a mysterious call, the sort that a government might make to a filmmaker in a time of crisis. The caretaker’s son is wearing an Apollo 11 sweater-weird, huh? It shows a rocket over the words Apollo 11. When he stands, it seems as if the rocket is blasting off, whereas of course it isn’t because it isn’t real. Danny walks, thus the rocket flies, until he finds himself outside Room 237. Danny, who stands for the child in Kubrick, the artist, has traveled to 237, that is, all the way to the moon. Only he hasn’t. Is any of this real? Of course not. It’s a face in the clouds.’
28 June 2019
[shining] Screenwriter Todd Alcott’s Analysis of the Shining Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

…this is why, I think, Jack is shown writing when he really should be murdering – because Kubrick had an idea for a great scene, one of the greatest in horror-movie history, where Wendy finds Jack’s “work” and discovers that it’s complete gibberish. Actually, it’s worse than complete gibberish, because complete gibberish could still be published. Rather, it’s the work of an obsessive-compulsive maniac. (Nicholson, who had just won an Oscar for playing crazy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, would later go on to play an OCD guy in As Good As It Gets.) This is brilliant stuff, and, again, dramatizes the essentially psychological nature of the horror in The Shining – the really scary stuff is going on in Jack’s mind, not in the corridors of the Overlook.

(One of my favorite factoids regarding the movie is that Kubrick didn’t just have a ream of “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” typed up, no – he had reams and reams typed up, in different languages, one for every major territory the movie would play in – Spanish, Italian, French, German, etc., all with a regional phrase specific to the territory. Production Assistant on a Kubrick movie must have been the worst job available in show business.)

31 July 2018
[comics] Go Look: Stanley Kubrick by Katsuhiro Otomo.

13 July 2018
[movies] The meaning of the ending of 2001 according to Stanley Kubrick … Two Kubrick interviews where he explains 2001: A Space Odyssey collected together.

The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film.

They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but wasn’t quite sure. Just as we’re not quite sure what do in zoos with animals to try to give them what we think is their natural environment.

Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman.

31 May 2018
[movies] Toy Shining… A Mashup between Toy Story and The Shining by Kyle Lambert.

Toy Shining Mashup

12 April 2018
[shining] What if The Shining was an 8-bit Video Game?

5 April 2018
[2001] 2001: The aliens that almost were … A look at the work Kubrick and his team put into creating alien special effects for 2001 that were eventually never used. ‘From the very outset of work on the film we all discussed means of photographically depicting extraterrestrial creatures in a manner that would be as mind-boggling as the being itself. And it soon became apparent that you can not imagine the unimaginable. All you can do is try to represent it in an artistic manner that will convey something of its quality. That’s why we settled on the black monolith – which is, of course, in itself something of a Jungian archetype, and also a pretty fair example of “minimal art.”‘
15 March 2018
[movies] Dr. Strangelove in Color‘Do I look all rancid and clotted? You look at me, Jack. Eh? Look, eh? And I drink a lot of water, you know. I’m what you might call a water man, Jack – that’s what I am. And I can swear to you, my boy, swear to you, that there’s nothing wrong with my bodily fluids. Not a thing, Jackie.’

13 March 2018
[movies] How we made 2001: A Space Odyssey … Keir Dullea and Douglas Trumbull discuss the making of 2001 … ‘Some of the crew wanted the miniatures and sets to be part of a travelling show, but Kubrick didn’t want the mystery of how it was produced revealed. A schoolteacher was tutoring his daughter and he gave him the Aries 1B spacecraft as payment. The guy’s family recently discovered it and sold it to the Academy. The orbiting space station ended up in a dump in Stevenage. I have no idea why.’
2 November 2017
[kubrick] Danny Lloyd – the kid in The Shining: ‘I was promised that tricycle after filming but it never came’ … Whatever happened to the child who played Danny Torrance in the The Shining?

Kubrick and his team protected him from the scary stuff, Lloyd says. In one scene, where Wendy runs screaming through the hotel with Danny in her arms, Duvall carried a lifesize doll. “I specifically remember I was banned from the set for the entire time Scatman Crothers was being axed,” he says laughing. There is something nice and Tom Hanks-y about his measured tone and efforts not to say anything mean or controversial.

I read that he accidentally walked in on Jack Nicholson filming “Here’s Johnny!” (voted the scariest scene movie history a few years ago). Is that true? “Yes, but not the actual ‘Here’s Johnny’ bit. Jack was out in the hallway with the axe. He was having fun and goofing off. I think it was a plastic axe he had. Both my parents were there and we were laughing. That wasn’t scary.”

2 May 2017
[kubrick] Forever and Ever and Ever: Uncanny Doubles in ‘The Shining’ … A look at how Kubrick heightened a sense of the Uncanny in the Shining … ‘Robert Kolker writes that the film also features many instances of symmetrical framing. He notes that each side of the frame is doubled and perfectly composed, and therefore any horrific event happening within the frame seems even more out of place and strange. The symmetrical shots are almost too perfect, which can be uncanny and off-putting in itself. Kolker cites the red bathroom as an example of a symmetrically framed scene, with its rows of white urinals and sinks lining either side of the wall and the long mirrors running along the wall. The bathroom is symmetrical, yet Jack and Grady discuss violent, murderous plans in the middle of the room, throwing the symmetry off balance and into uncanny space.’
3 February 2017
[kubrick] The Shining: Who is the Man in the Bear Costume?

12 May 2016
[kubrick] Stanley Kubrick’s personal copy of Stephen King’s novel, The Shining … with hand written marginalia from Kubrick … ‘Any problems with the kitchen – you phone me.’
26 April 2016
[movies] An electrician remembers: I worked with Jack Nicholson and Stanley Kubrick‘It was a small crew and he used us for bit parts. Because they rarely shoot leading artists when you can’t see their face, he said to me: “You look like Jack – put on the jeans and boots.” In the film, when a semi-conscious Jack is dragged into the food store, those are my legs on screen. He asked me to be the guy in a bear suit with his arse hanging out and his head in a man’s lap at the end. But I said: “No, mate, I ain’t having that.” Could you imagine? Everyone at home saying: “That’s Bobby Tanswell.” Nope, sorry.’
21 March 2016
[kubrick] There’s Something About Stanley: Kubrick’s Strange Science Of Obsession … the search for meaning in Stanley Kubrick’s films… ‘What if the most meaningful clue is not in anything that the Kubraphiles are proposing, but in the fact that they are looking, and what if Kubrick intended this to happen? Allowing that it was more than just the deluded bid for immortality of a cosmically inflated ego, what might the end game be here? As I suspect every good Zen master will tell you, the nature of such a many-layered puzzle is that it’s not the answer but the experience of finding it that leads to understanding.’
29 July 2015
[life] Stanley Kubrick: ‘The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death – however mutable man may be able to make them – our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.’ [via Letters of Note]
28 July 2015
[movies] 2001 A Space Odyssey: Unwrapping the Slit Scan sequences‘While watching Kubrick’s “2001 A Space Odyssey”, I thought it would be fun to write some software to unravel the slit scan artwork in the psychedelic sequences of 2001, to see what they were.The technique used to unravel the sequences involved using an SGI’s real time video hardware, with a hacked version of ‘videoin.c’ (from the SGI example programs) to accumulate scanlines from the DVD and concatenate them back into the original artwork. So as the film played, the program ran, unrolling the scanlines in realtime…’

Artwork for 2001's Slit-Screen Sequences

21 July 2015
[movies] League of Gentlemen Vs. 2001‘Hello Dave!’

28 June 2015
[kubrick] Rejected ‘The Shining’ Poster Designs From Saul Bass, With Stanley Kubrick’s Notes … fascintaing look at Kubrick’s process … ‘While the final result is the iconic, yellow one-sheet, there were a number of iterations, and we can now see the rejected ones. Drawing from different aspects of the film, including the maze, the hotel, and the family unit, there’s some striking imagery, but we can see why Kubrick went with the one he did.’
28 May 2015
[kubrick] The 10 Most Outrageous Theories About What The Shining Really Means‘Stuart Ullman’s Paper Tray is Trying to Have Sex with the Audience – Top-notch conspiracy hunter Jay Weidner has many, many theories about the work of Kubrick (and other things) but some of the more eye-popping are his thoughts about how the director used the subliminal messaging of advertisers in his films. To wit: In the scene where Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) meets Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson) in his office and, Weidner says in 237, his hips line-up perfectly with his paper try making it look like an erection.’
25 May 2015
[kubrick] Stanley Kubrick’s Keys To The Shining … going far too deep on Kubrick’s The Shining and a conspiracy / cover-up by NASA‘Stanley Kubrick embedded the Narrative of a Murder in this Film. I believe it was His wish that it be found – by his Audience. I’m motivated to share this Narrative here, because ultimately it contains information that is profoundly pertinent – to All of Us.’

Kubrick - Ear, No Ear.

11 December 2014
[shining] All Play And No Work… By Mike Handy‘Keep Pedaling’

All Play And No Work

7 October 2014
[movies] The League of Gentlemen Vs. 2001‘Dave, my wife tells me there is a block in your toilet!’
12 April 2014
[2001] 2001: A Space Odyssey (2012 Trailer Recut) … a trailer for Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as a modern summer blockbuster. [via Kevin Church]
31 January 2014
[comics] In The Comic-Book Pages Of 2001, Two Sorts Of Genius Collided … comparing and contrasting Stanley Kubrick and Jack Kirby’s versions of 2001: A Space Odyssey … ‘The 2001 comic also caught Kirby at a low creative ebb. He’d poured a lot of himself into his Fourth World saga for DC, without much to show for it, and by the time he returned to Marvel, Kirby was back to thinking of himself as a hired gun, sweating to fill as many pages as his bosses required, governed by the mentality of a boy who grew up in a ghetto during the Depression. Where Kubrick was a meticulous planner, taking years to develop a project and fussing over every detail, Kirby was a disorganized workaholic, who according to his wife Roz would accidentally throw away about half the good ideas he scrawled onto notepaper and napkins, and who felt like he was on the verge of destitution if he didn’t generate at least 20 pages a week.’
2 December 2013
[lego] How to build a Lego Monolith Anomaly … a brief guide to building the Monolith from 2001‘A scaled down Lego Monolith Anomaly (LMA) would be 7 1/2 units high but there are no 1/2 height pieces. Flat Lego pieces are 1/3 height. I find coupling 7 standard 1×4 bricks with 2 flat 1×4 pieces to be the most geometrically sound.’
8 October 2013
[movies] What Stanley Kubrick got wrong about “The Shining” … a look at Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick’s different approaches The Shining‘The two men represent diametrically opposed approaches to creating narrative art. One is an aesthete and the other is a humanist. Kubrick was a consummate and famously meticulous stylist; King’s prose is workmanly and his novels can have a shambolic bagginess. The great theme of King’s fiction is the capacity of the average person – especially working-class or similarly humble men and women – both for evil and for heroism. Although there’s almost always a battle against a supernatural antagonist in King’s books, the best of his novels hinge on the protagonists’ struggles with themselves. In “Doctor Sleep,” it is just as valiant for Danny Torrance – the psychic child character in “The Shining,” now grown up – to stay sober as it is for him to challenge the novel’s Big Bad.’
22 February 2013
[chess] Playing Chess With Kubrick… Jeremy Bernstein reminisces about meeting and playing chess with Stanley Kubrick … ‘The next day Clarke called to say that I was expected that afternoon at Kubrick’s apartment on Central Park West. I had never met a movie mogul and had no idea what to expect. But as soon as Kubrick opened the door I felt an immediate kindred spirit. He looked and acted like every obsessive theoretical physicist I have ever known. His obsession at that moment was whether or not anything could go faster than the speed of light. I explained to him that according to the theory of relativity no information bearing signal could go faster. We conversed like that for about an hour when I looked at my watch and realized I had to go. “Why?” he asked, seeing no reason why a conversation that he was finding interesting should stop.’
16 November 2012
[movies] Shooting 2001 … some amazing behind-the-scenes photos of the shooting of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
7 November 2012
[movies] Go Look: The original, unaltered period photo into which actor Jack Nicholson was composited to create the iconic photograph seen in the final shots of The Shining.
5 September 2012
[comics] Diesel Sweeties On 2001: A Space Odyssey

Diesel Sweeties On 2001

20 July 2012
[shining] 11 Things You Might Not Have Noticed In The Shining‘Have you noticed there is no toilet paper in Room 237?’
17 May 2012
[shining] This is Uncanny: Number-play in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’‘If one needs further proof of Kubrick’s fascination with number play, the title page of his copy of Stephen King’s novel of The Shining is filled with Kubrick’s own handwriting as he works out creative ways to use the number 217. Room 217 was the number of the dead woman’s room in the novel, which Kubrick changed at the request of the Timberline Hotel management. His selection of 237 was not without forethought.’
26 March 2012
[kubrick] The Overlook Hotel … brilliantly well-done Tumblr dedicated to… ‘Ephemera related to Stanley Kubrick's Masterpiece of Modern Horror, 'The Shining'’
27 January 2012
[shining] The Top 5 Wacky Theories About ‘The Shining’ in New Frontiers Doc ‘Room 237’ … some perfectly reasonable theories about The Shining from a new documentary about Kubrick’s movie … ‘One of the more spectacular theories in the movie: That Kubrick was hired by the American government to fake the Apollo moon landing, and “The Shining” is his way of explaining himself. An interviewee says that owning “The Shining” on Blu-ray allows one to see enough detail to reach this conclusion. Jack Torrance’s constant bickering with his wife about his job responsibilities voice Kubrick’s own justification for why he had to comply with government orders.’
14 December 2011
[movies] Killian Fox’s favourite film: 2001: A Space Odyssey‘Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey is, for me, primarily about the experience of total awe.’
5 December 2011
[movies] Kubrick speaks in regard to ‘The Shining’ … from The Kubrick Site

Q: You are a person who uses his rationality, who enjoys understanding things, but in 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining you demonstrate the limits of intellectual knowledge. Is this an acknowledgement of what William James called the unexplained residues of human experience?

A: Obviously, science-fiction and the supernatural bring you very quickly to the limits of knowledge and rational explanation. But from a dramatic point of view, you must ask yourself: ‘If all of this were unquestionably true, how would it really happen?’ You can’t go much further than that. I like the regions of fantasy where reason is used primarily to undermine incredulity. Reason can take you to the border of these areas, but from there on you can be guided only by your imagination. I think we strain at the limits of reason and enjoy the temporary sense of freedom which we gain by such exercises of our imagination.

8 September 2011
[comics] Bargain Bin #6: Alex & Droogs … What If Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange was a comic book?

Alex & Droogs

2 August 2011
[movies] Ask Metafilter On The Shining‘In my opinion the thing that really makes the movie is the payoff of the scene where Shelly Duvall is backing up on the stairs while Jack Nicholson terrorizes her, and she slowly, bravely and desperately crosses over from trying to keep the reality of the situation at uncomfortable arm’s length (by appeasing him when he gets scary and/or distant), to finally giving in to it and accepting it, fighting back as best as she can, even if she might not win. While the book is a heartbreaking story of a family falling apart, that scene in the film portrays one person’s descent into madness and evil, and another person’s defeated but brave decision to slowly but steadily escape from it so brilliantly. It’s painful and captivating to watch.’
13 May 2011
[movies] 2001 VHS Tape Monolith … an 8ft tall sculpture by David Herbert

2001 VHS Tape Monolith

10 March 2011
[kubrick] Stanley Kubrick Interviewed In Rolling Stone … On dressing the set of Full Metal Jacket: ‘To make that kind of three-dimensional rubble, you’d have to have everything done by plasterers, modeled, and you couldn’t build that if you spent $80 million and had five years to do it. You couldn’t duplicate, oh, all those twisted bits of reinforcement. And to make rubble, you’d have to go find some real rubble and copy it. It’s the only way. If you’re going to make a tree, for instance, you have to copy a real tree. No one can “make up” a tree, because every tree has an inherent logic in the way it branches. And I’ve discovered that no one can make up a rock. I found that out in Paths of Glory. We had to copy rocks, but every rock also has an inherent logic you’re not aware of until you see a fake rock. Every detail looks right, but something’s wrong. So we had real rubble. We brought in palm trees from Spain and a hundred thousand plastic tropical plants from Hong Kong. We did little things, details people don’t notice right away, that add to the illusion. All in all, a tremendous set dressing and rubble job.’ [via Daring Fireball]
14 January 2011
[people] ‘I would’ve broken Kubrick’ … an interview with Keanu Reeves.

What a shame, I remark, that he never got to work with Stanley Kubrick, the king of the neverending takes. And with that, Reeves is off and running.

“I would’ve been his wet dream!” he enthuses. “After take 400, Kubrick would’ve been, [adopts grizzled Brooklyn accent] ‘All right, cut!’ and I’d be, like, ‘Stanley, can I do one more?’ ‘Whaaat?’ ‘Look, I know I’m just drinking this glass of water, but I think I can find another side to this. Let’s just do one more, OK?’ ‘Arrrgh, OK, Reeves.’ You know what? I would’ve broken Kubrick. ‘Please, sir, can I have some more?’ ‘Take 600. All you gotta do is walk across the road.’ ‘Come on, Stanley, one more!'”

2 December 2010
[kubrick] An Interview with Stanley Kubrick in 1969

From the very outset of work on the film we all discussed means of photographically depicting an extraterrestrial creature in a manner that would be as mind-boggling as the being itself. And it soon became apparent that you cannot imagine the unimaginable. All you can do is try to represent it in an artistic manner that will convey something of its quality. That’s why we settled on the black monolith — which is, of course, in itself something of a Jungian archetype, and also a pretty fair example of “minimal art.”

25 August 2010
[movies] Kubrick … long, must-read profile of Stanley Kubrick by Michael Herr

‘He went to the computer that he was using to write the script. He typed, marked, cut, pasted, while I faked interest. When he was finished with the routine, Christiane phoned to say that dinner was ready. As we left, I reminded him that he hadn’t turned the computers off.

“They like to be left on,” he said ironically, factually, tenderly.