Kubrick's Best?

Tools    





I'm confused. Are you saying that Kubrick is intellectual? The people who greenlight Hollywood movies know nothing of cinema history. They're too busy counting their money from Third-World sweatshops and donut shops.
They're intellectual compared to the CGI, all action, minimum dialogue/gross-out comedies that are the majority of most summers blockbusters. And, while they may or may not know anything about movie history, they'd know it if it made oodles of money and, today, it won't.



Of course the majority love him, that's why Hollywood's making so many intelligent, dare I say it, intellectual films these days. Oh, the money they make.
My interpretation of mark f's comment is that amongst those who actually watch his films, the majority love him. If you interpret it as "the majority of people in general", then there's no discussion to be had. Hollywood makes the bulk of their cash from people who don't know Stanley Kubrick from Deuce Bigalow. I can't imagine anyone arguing that Kubrick's films (or overtly intellectual films in general) actually appeal to a raw majority of the populace.

If I've misunderstood either of your guys' comments, let me know; I'm just sorta jumping into the conversation here.
__________________
the angel stayed until something died, one more murder suicide



I believe that the Powers That Be had already beaten down the gang in The Killing before the movie even started,
whether it's Criminal Justice or your wife.
Oh. An unseen Powers that Be prequel.

Are you saying that General Ripper is responsible for the Doomsday Device detonation . . .
Responsible for the Doomsdy Device? No. Responsible for its ultimate detonation? Definitely!

It was Ripper--one crazed, individual--who got the ball rolling. He wasn't responsible for the Doomsday gimmick; he didn't build it or even know about it. But it was his individual, private decision that led to its detonation. The Powers that Be built it but didn't want to use it. But they failed to realize that it only took one crazed squadron commander to set it off. A failure of the power of the Powers to Be; the Pyrrhic success of the individual.

By your way of thinking, the ingenious bomber crew is just as much responsible for the End of the World.
That's right--that one crew of individuals working together and succeeding despite everything the Powers that Be threw against them. The Powers that Be in Washington gave The Powers that Be in Moscow all the information they should have needed to find and destroy that single bomber and its crew. And they missed. That small group of individuals aboard that aircraft used their own minds, their individual wills, their individual talents to plot a new course to an alternative target and hit it. The shot of Pickens riding that bomb down is the celebration of the individual over all the Powers that Be.

In the Big Picture of Full Metal Jacket, Gunnery Sgt. Hartman is a small fry compared to the entire American Military Complex, but he did his best for many years to turn his men into killers and he succeede all too well.
Having been trained to kill as an Army rifleman in basic, I suspect I have a more realistic view of the individual recruit confronted by a particular individual sergeant. I never had any trouble with the Army, just a few SOBs in it. I also know from military experience that the duty of the cadre in basic training is not merely to teach the recruit ways to kill. Another aspect is to toughen one's body, strengthen one's mind, spirit, determination, whatever you want to call it to enable the recruit to stand up to pressure, and also to develop his confidence that he can and will succeed. The ultimate duty of the traing sergeants is to send out those new soldiers prepared to engage the enemy. The gunny completly failed his assigned mission by not developing Gomer's body, mind, and confidence and did not send him out as a properly trained soldier. Instead Gomer as a crazed individual operating on his own "sent out" the gunny, your symbol of the Powers that Be.

Of course there are other directors who hold up that mirror. It's just that few seem to divide audiences so much with the majority loving him and watching his films repeatedly while a vocal minority hates him and is almost repelled by his flicks.
Never ran a poll to see how many like this or any other director, so I haven't a clue whether "the majority love him" or not. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of those who regularly read, research, and talk about directors actually do love him, but there is a world of folks out there who pay little or no attention to who directed a particular film. I myself find it hard to "love" anyone in the movies. I admire a lot of Welles' work but I think he often was a complete ass in private life. I'm not "repelled" by any of his films, but I also would never mistake any of them for the Holy Grail--not even The Killing with its great cast of individuals :-) I don't waste much time any more hating anyone, especially a dead man I never met.



some customers may get their dicks ripped off
gotta give it up to the full metal jacket. but they're all pretty amazing



KUBRICK: A TOUCH OF THE INEFFABLE

Stanley Kubrick(1928-1999) began directing films the year my family first had its contact with the Baha’i Faith, 1953. I was nine at the time. Kubrick died one week after the release of his last film on March 1st 1999. I was, at the time, in the last month of my life as a full-time teacher before my retirement at the age of 55.

I write this poem because of Kubrick’s qualities as a film maker in the second half of the first century of the history of film: 1895-1995. He was a man obsessed by film. He pushed himself and those he worked with to the limit. He had a passion, an intensity, which turned his perceptions of the world and what was wrong with it into art. His films and my life followed each other in my adolescence and my adulthood. With this television, this documentary, series on Kubrick, I caught a new appreciation of the man and his work. -Ron Price with thanks to SBS TV, “Masterpiece: Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures-Part 3,” 10:00-10:55 pm, June 22, 2004.

What was that force within you, Stanley?
An impressionability?
An obedience to inspiration?
a force majeure?
A conversation with eternal wisdom?

What produced the heart, the core
of your experience with cinema?
What gave it its existence
As you created yourself
like a high-tension wire
discharging images
for half a century?(1)

You created the world anew,
Stanley, from silence, memory
& some menacing external vacuity,
some otherness, some temporality
gushing onto the screen
with everything you touched
relieving your overburdened mind(2)
giving everything a touch of the ineffable.

(1) Novalis in The Bow and the Lyre, Octavio Paz, University of Texas, Austin, 1956, p.154.
(2) Howard Nemerov in The Seamless Web, Stanley Burnshaw, Penguin Press, 1970, p.179.

Ron Price
June 24, 2004
__________________
married for 48 years, a teacher for 32, a student for 18, a writer and editor for 16, and a Baha'i for 56(in 2015)



He seems to like talking about television channels on a number of boards, mostly ABC and never comes back to reply.

A Clockwork Orange for me.



RIP www.moviejustice.com 2002-2010
agreed.

2001 is close though, but if there is one Kubrick film that I say "Man, I kind of want to watch that again" and then get so involved I watch it all, it's this movie. Barry Lyndon
__________________
"A candy colored clown!"
Member since Fall 2002
Top 100 Films, clicky below

http://www.movieforums.com/community...ad.php?t=26201



RIP www.moviejustice.com 2002-2010
I can't figure out who Ron Price is.

I remember back in the day at moviejustice.com he would post/spam there. He was always a mystery because you never knew if he was some crazy old guy or some kid pretending to be a crazy old guy.



When someone asks you if you're a God, you say YES!!
I think Dr. Strangelove is the best. Peter Sellers makes anything better and he's just amazing in this.
__________________
Check out the Bobcast, movie/tv podcast on iTunes
or entertainment news & reviews on
The Danger Blog




I consider him the greatest director who ever lived. His films are intellectually challenging, visually pleasing, (as Spielberg once admitted, "No body could shoot a movie better than Stanley Kubrick, in history."), as well as entertaining. My ratings:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey A+
2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb A+
3. Barry Lyndon A+
4. A Clockwork Orange A+
5. Paths of Glory A+
6. The Shining A
7. Full Metal Jacket A
8. The Killing A
9. Eyes Wide Shut A-
10. Lolita B+
11. Killer's Kiss B
12. Spartacus B
__________________
Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?

-Stan Brakhage



Chappie doesn't like the real world
Mine is probably A Clockwork Orange followed by The Shining. I really need to watch Dr. Strangelove.... I've been meaning to for years now.



Good whiskey make jackrabbit slap de bear.
1. A Clockwork Orange A+
2. Paths Of Glory A+
3. Full Metal Jacket A
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey A
5. Spartacus A-
6. Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb B
7. The Shining C+
__________________
"George, this is a little too much for me. Escaped convicts, fugitive sex... I've got a cockfight to focus on."