Saturday, May 12, 2018

AMAZING UNEARTHED 1987 AUDIO INTERVIEW W/KUBRICK BY TIM CAHILL!

This is pretty much the Holy Grail of Kubrick interviews. Definitely the latest in-depth audio interview we have from Stanley. The interview was run in the print version of Rolling Stone Magazine in the run-up to the release of Full Metal Jacket. THANKS, to TheKubrickSeries.com!


Friday, May 11, 2018

MUSIC INSPIRED BY A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Loudwire has put together a list of 12 killer tunes that were inspired by the Stanley Kubrick classic film of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange. So if you've got Spotify, you can use this playlist right here...


If you DON'T have that app, no worries. You can find all of the above songs at the link... with the added bonus that most of them have videos with visual elements that are also taken directly from the film! Some of the selections will be a surprise, while some will be obvious. But, as the website notes:
Be it the novel or the cine, countless musicians have been inspired by A Clockwork Orange. From lyrics to costumes to artwork, these artists have found a way to take a timeless masterpiece and turn it into their own work of art. Below, you can find ten rock songs that have been influenced by A Clockwork Orange, as well as tons of spoilers for those who have not yet viddied or read it, so proceed with caution!
Here's my favorite of the bunch (and it's a late addition, making the playlist but not the article):


KUBRICK NEWS IN BRIEF ~ MAY 11, 2018


Oh dear God, this work of art, in which a movie camera is shown in cutaway with the interior full of movie scenes (including multiple Kubrick films), is beautiful. And what makes it even better is the fact that the camera in question is an Arriflex 35 IIC, one of Kubrick's favorite cameras, and the one he used extensively, hand-held, for Clockwork Orange. If I had walls worthy of this masterpiece, I'd scarf it up in a heartbeat.

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Music and art act Tom and Hebron have put together a tribute song/video to celebrate the half century anniversary of the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's gorgeous. Enjoy!

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Horror News Network reprinted excerpts from a discussion in which David Fincher talks about the notion of a cinematic auteur. One stand out bit:
Steven Spielberg once told an incredible anecdote about visiting Stanley Kubrick in post production. They way Spielberg told it, he once asked Kubrick why he was looking at the same shot on eight different monitors. Kubrick explained that they were actually eight very slightly different takes and proceeded to explain the minor differences between each take. As a viewer, Spielberg- a clear master of profession as well- simply wasn’t looking for the same thing out of the image as Kubrick, who was attempting to perfect his vision, so the subtleties were lost on Spielberg as a viewer because all of the shots were likely near-perfect.
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Click HERE if you'd like to know what Christopher Nolan would ask Stanley Kubrick if he had the chance to ask him only one question. Actually... never mind, I'll just tell you. Actually... never mind. I'll just let HIM tell you. Check out the video beneath to find out.


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Should I even bother mentioning that a director has been chosen for the "sequel" to The Shining, called Doctor Sleep? I mean, it's going to be a sequel to the novel (and, one assumes, the absolutely dire Stephen King TV miniseries), and NOT to Kubrick's masterpiece distillation/re-imagining of King's novel. So this will probably be the last time I mention it, unless director Mike Flanagan (who admittedly did a very good job with King's Gerald's Game for Netflix last year) says something stupid about Kubrick's film.
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People are calling this ad for a doubled-up Christmas sweater "Kubrick-esque". Aside from the Shining Twins (and Kubrick's obsession with doubling in general), and the slow zoom and the perfect symmetry of the shots and the willful breaking of the 180% rule... can't say's I see it!


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Noel Vera has cooked up one of the more intriguing critical appraisals of Kubrick (and Nabokov)'s Lolita that I've ever read. It's well worth your time. And then, when you're done reading that, why not move on to this Conversation article by Margaret Leclere, in which she argues that it's time for Nabokov's legendarily huge and "unfilmable" screenplay got its due. Personally, I'd love to see it come out in book version, at least, and have always said so. Filming it, I imagine, would be an incredibly difficult proposition. But it sure would be interesting!

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J.M. Tyree's appreciation of one of Kubrick's finest transition moments - maybe even his second best after the bone-into-satellite transition from 2001 - is a fun and insightful read that has enhanced my own appreciation for said moment. Can you guess which transition it might be? Click through for a pleasant surprise, and a damn fine piece of writing!

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Say hello to the newly-discovered Dendropsophus kubricki, aka Kubrick's Tree Frog! Why Kubrick, you ask? Well, it's probably got something to do with the distinct coloration of the markings on its body, and also with Anthony Burgess once explaining the title of his novel A Clockwork Orange by saying: "I've implied the junction of the organic, the lively, the sweet - in other words, life, the orange - and the mechanical, the cold, the disciplined." You can find out more, HERE.

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As a former member of my own alma mater's college paper, it's always a nice for me to run across some quality, punchy writing in a current student newspaper. And this delight is only compounded when that writing is about a subject so dear to my own heart as the works of Stanley Kubrick. So check out Ryan Suppe's funny love letter to his cinematic crush (weren't we all there at some point), titled Kubrick: Criticizing the Greedy, Rich and Powerful Through Art.

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The great Jordan Peele explains how he snuck a Kubrick reference into his excellent, Oscar-nominated film, Get Out.

ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL PRESENTS "NEURAL KUBRICK" PROJECT


Well, this is an interesting project. The Bartlett School of Architecture's Interactive Architecture lab has put together a multifaceted project called Neural Kubrick, which kind of like... well... here, I'll let them explain it:

Stanley Kubrick in 1968 speculated on the arrival of human-level Artificial Intelligence in “2001 A Space Odyssey”. Some 16 years past his prediction, our project “Neural Kubrick” examines the state of the art in Machine Learning, using the latest in “Deep Neural Network” techniques to reinterpret and redirect Kubrick’s own films. Three machine learning algorithms take respective roles in our AI film crew; Art Director, Film Editor and Director of Photography. 
The outlook of the project is an artist-machine collaboration. The limitations of the machine are achieved by the artist and the limitations of the artist are achieved by the algorithm. In the context of the project, what the machine interprets is limited to either numbers, classification of features or generation of abstract images. This output is curated by us into a coherent narrative, translated back into human perception. 
The project is based on Stanley Kubrick’s movies as input for three machine learning models, namely The Shining, A Clockwork Orange and 2001 A Space Odyssey. The generated videos display a machinic interpretation of the three movies, through a collaborative effort between the artist and the algorithm.
Simple enough, right? No? Okay, maybe this "introduction video" will clear things up.