Director Week: Stanley Kubrick

Howdy folks. Well I was going through my archives and believe me, combing through more than 1000 entries from my work at epinions.com to writing RottenReelz, there is quite a few write-ups to contend with. One thing that did surprise me that I have not done a Stanley Kubrick Week. One of the most bizarre and abstract films with fish eye lens, to dolly work and wide pan zooms to the scale model works. Our director's humble beginnings starts with leaving the Bronx (No Tolberone??) and moving to Pasadena California where his grades did not pick up or improved. Our young genius is bored until introduced to chess. A game he excels at and gives him a parable to life, film and actors later in his life.

THIS IS SPARTA!!!!  Oh wait, that's not right!

Becoming a staff photographer for Look Magazine at age 17, he discovers his true love, documentaries, the ability to capture life brings him to make the film Fear and Desire. With the mixed reviews, Kubrick is not detoured from film and moves to making The Killing that gives Hollywood a view at his work and decrees he will direct Paths of Glory. With his own sense of style, motif and reasoning the films he chose to do would always hit certain censorship and taboos that made the world uncomfortable with his vision.

Many people including Stephen King did not care for the take that Kubrick had for The Shining. Nearly all of his movies have a narration at some point but unlike some directors (UWE BOLL, I AM TALKING TO YOU!!!) the narrative does not dominate the film. Every one of his movies have all been made from a novel and always have some sort of dark side of humanity and in fact dehumanizes the characters with humor, violence or verbal comments. So grab your bowler hats and prepare yourselves for the Ultra, Ultra Violence!!!

Pleas begin docking procedures... the HAL 9000 awaits to probe you.