Posted on 03/10/2019 6:30:46 AM PDT by Twotone
What did the picture editor of Look see in the Bronx teenager's photograph? A weeping city news vendor surrounded by front pages announcing the death of President Roosevelt — and the small, tenderly caught moment that humanizes great events. It got its sixteen-year-old snapper, Stanley Kubrick, a staff job at the magazine, and he never did anything like it again — unless you count the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in which the computer HAL, the picture's only really human character, gets dismantled in what's easily the most moving death scene in the director's oeuvre.
Stanley Kubrick died two decades ago - March 7th 1999 - with near perfect timing, six days after screening the final cut of Eyes Wide Shut to its stars and his family. Kubrick is an important film maker because he helped establish the definition of the job. In 1950, when he quit Look to sell his first documentary to RKO, a good movie director made as many movies as a bad movie director, it's just that some were better: in 1951 and 1952, for example, Raoul Walsh made eight pictures, which is as many as Kubrick made in his last 37 years. But in those days moviegoing was still a habit: we went to the pictures with little more thought than we now go to the supermarket; if you liked westerns, you saw not just the great ones but the crummy ones, and, if there was no western that week, you saw a thriller. When TV put an end to the routine of weekly flickers, the theory was that the audience would be pickier, choosier, more discriminating. And few directors were better at anticipating the kind of films that a discriminating audience would discriminate in favor of than Stanley Kubrick.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
I saw Reservoir Dogs, and heard that music. I was nearly ready to beg someone to cut my ears off by the end of it.
Hmmm, no mention of the superb Paths of Glory. I wonder why.
Wasn’t the ‘stuck in the middle with you’ by one hit wonder ‘Stealers Wheel’
I don’t hate it. It has a good hook. Kind of like ‘my sharona’ by The knack or ‘Spirit in the Sky’ by Norman Greenbaum. All decent one hit wonder hits.
Word for the day
oeuvre
Good job
Freaky deaky geometry: 2001: A Space Odyssey is about a rectangular monolith but the film consists of 360 edits (cuts) ie a perfect circle.
PS - I didn’t see Barry Lyndon until recently and think it is fantastic.
“the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in which the computer HAL, the picture’s only really human character . . .” - vintage Steyn.
“I saw Reservoir Dogs, and heard that music. I was nearly ready to beg someone to cut my ears off by the end of it.”
When Michael Madsen (Mr. Blonde/Vic Vega)poured gasoline on Kirk Baltz (captured cop Marvin Nash) and was about to light him on fire I actually shut my eyes ... first and only time watching a movie ...
The music is “Stuck in the Middle with You” by Stealers Wheels, one of the all time great pieces of music from the early ‘70s ...
Tarantino,
Kubrick,,,
Giants in their Profession.
Peter Sellers had more than a “cameo” in Lolita.
I loved Full Metal Jacket, well..... at least the first part. The Vietnam part I thought was just another trite superfluous war story that I’ve seen in many other movies. If he would have just made the movie about boot camp during the Vietnam era and stuck to that, the ending would have been perfect. I won’t tell the boot camp ending here just in case there is someone who has not seen the movie, but I felt it was shocking and ending on that note it would have been the ultimate tribute to nihilism. The ending credits song could have been ‘War’ by Edwin Starr....
War, huh what is it good for?
Absolutely nothing,
say it again...
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