Stanley Kubrick
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Criterion: The Killing
It’s extremely difficult to type the words “my favorite Kubrick film” because I honestly feel I could put that down while writing about any of them. But what I can say about Stanley Kubrick’s Hollywood calling card The Killing is it’s the one film of his that I’m most nostalgic about. Film noir. Jim Thompson’s words. Sterling Hayden’s “when men were men” bravado. The contract studio picture was on the way out and the New Hollywood of Bogdanovich, Ashby and Nichols were breaking down the doors. But before that (and likely escalating the emergence of New Hollywood) there was Kubrick. […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Aug 16, 2011 -
The Madness Of Full Metal Jacket
“Matthew, don’t allow yourself to ask “Why is he doing this to me?” Wonder why is he doing this to himself.” The blown-to-hell chaos of productions like Apocalypse Now, Fitzcarraldo and Jaws are often evoked as legendary examples of disasters turned into classic motion pictures, but after reading Matthew Modine’s Full Metal Jacket Diary, I get the feeling that was par for Stanley Kubrick. It’s one thing to hear stray anecdotes about life on his films, but it’s something quite different to swim through a first-person account of an entire project — an account that isn’t even a memoir but […]
by Jamie Stuart on May 5, 2011 -
The Perfect Swan
(Editor’s Note: This essay contains spoilers.) In literature or in oratory, where rhetoric arose from, it’s somewhat difficult to separate the argument’s mode of persuasion from its substance. In order to make an entirely skilled rhetorical point, the writer or speaker will have to present a series of assumptions and assertions, facts and hypotheses, in such a way that makes the argument’s substance apparent. That’s why literature lends itself to the intellectual: it’s founded upon a progression of ideas. Cinema is often referred to as a different kind of linguistic medium (the “language of film”), but a linguistic one nevertheless, […]
by Zachary Wigon on Dec 10, 2010 -
Brian Cook, Color Me Kubrick
JOHN MALKOVICH AS IMPOSTER ALAN CONWAY IN BRIAN COOK’S COLOR ME KUBRICK. COURTESY MAGNOLIA PICTURES. Color Me Kubrick: A True…ish Story is the fascinating story of English conman Alan Conway (flamboyantly portrayed by John Malkovich) who made his career out of impersonating Stanley Kubrick. Conway found out that hardly anyone actually knew what Kubrick looked like, a discovery which led him to take his deception to extravagant, and often ridiculous, extremes. He used his borrowed identity to obtain huge amounts of money and seduce the young and impressionable, and got so immersed in the activities of his affluent alter ego […]
by Nick Dawson on Mar 23, 2007
