The stewardess who retrieved a sleeping passenger's floating pen. The man in the ape suit who howled at the monolith. Arthur C. Clarke, recalling how he thought Stanley Kubrick was wrong, back in the day, about HAL being able to read lips, but later, aware that computers were developing such ability, admitting that he had been wrong. This and much more in
The Making of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Meanwhile, from Douglas Trumbull, here's
Creating Special Effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey. And here, full to bursting with interesting info, is the IMDb trivia page for
2001: A Space Odyssey. Why all this? Well, it's in honor of the 45th anniversary of the film's world premiere. Thank you for the
masterpiece, Mr. Kubrick.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Apr 3, 2013 -
30 comments
"
James Cameron narrates this documentary on the classic film 2001. It includes archival footage of the late Arthur C. Clarke in the 1960s touring spacecraft manufacturing facilities, footage of designers putting together models, snippets of archival footage of Kubrick, interviews with various luminaries, and various other amazing stuff I’ve never seen. It also features interviews with Doug Trumbull and others who did special effects for the film. If you’re a 2001 fan, this is 43 minutes of candy.
Skip to 7:00 to find out how they did the floating-pen trick — including an interview with the actress who played the “Space Hostess” who grabbed the pen seemingly from midair. Skip to around 11:00 to meet the guys who played the apes ... . Around 13:45, Clarke explains how the monolith originally was to have a movie screen on it ... ."
posted by SpacemanStix
on Aug 4, 2012 -
34 comments
From one of Stanley Kubrick's notebooks comes a list of potential titles for the 1964 movie that was eventually named, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Interestingly, that particular title doesn't feature on this page.
posted by jadayne
on Apr 6, 2012 -
25 comments
"
How to make sense of Conspiracy Theories" [Part 1 of 9 from YouTube] Rob Ager is best known for his very thoughtful analyses of films such as
The Shining [see also this analysis of the
Overlook's geometry,
previously],
A Clockwork Orange [and
supplement],
Psycho,
Pulp Fiction,
Aliens,
Taxi Driver and
others. He has recently completed an analysis of the subject of
conspiracy theories. "All of us, from time to time, will believe that two or more people in a particular context have conspired to achieve a mutual aim – be it cheating in a card game or engineering an international war. It isn’t by definition a lapse in logic to believe that a conspiracy has or is going to occur in a given situation. Conspiracies do happen and it is a natural facet of healthy thinking and self-preservation to seek out awareness of conspiracies that may affect our lives." [
Text version, Ager's
Collative Learning site]
posted by McLir
on Jan 18, 2012 -
53 comments
Christiane Kubrick, widow of film director Stanley Kubrick,
talks with the Guardian about her marriage to the film director, his lost project about the Holocaust, and his love of the waltz [
via | Flash req'd].
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Aug 11, 2010 -
4 comments
How accurate was Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" about the future? "Part of the reason that Dr Floyd has been sent to Clavius Base is to deliver a morale-boosting speech to a crew bemused by what they have unearthed on the moon. [...] Frankly, there is no way that this would have been done in the real 2001 without the judicious use of PowerPoint featuring Excel charts and inspiring pictures of puppies, and probably some free branded goodies to take away and cheer everybody up."
posted by feelinglistless
on Sep 28, 2009 -
62 comments
"Shown backwards it is a heroic film about human experience: A man trapped in the logic of ghosts, trapped in a grayscale 2-D flat world, a photograph inside history, frozen in spectral finity: is unfrozen, and is lured outside of a maze where both his wife and son proceed to ‘undouble’ him and assist him in his war with his self and is finally able to drive away from the Overlook, from the lunarscape of this unreal summit and into a perfect mirror, earthmade."
An excerpt of a large-scale guide to the inner workings of The Shining. [more inside]
posted by jchgf
on Apr 4, 2009 -
63 comments
"Dear Mr Clarke... I had been a great admirer of your books for quite a time and had always wanted to discuss with you the possibility of doing the proverbial really good science-fiction movie." Excerpts from the letters of Stanley Kubrick.
[more inside]
posted by kirkaracha
on Jul 15, 2008 -
19 comments
The Hidden Stanley Kubrick. In the nine years following Stanley Kubrick's death on March 7, 1999, several of his collaborators have written and spoken about their experiences working with this notoriously reclusive filmmaker. Their reminiscences shed light on aspects of Kubrick’s family life, private thoughts and work habits, and make for fascinating reading and viewing. Those who've shared their reflections include
Michael Herr (co-screenwriter, "Full Metal Jacket");
Leon Vitali (actor, "Barry Lyndon" and Kubrick's personal assistant for nearly 25 years);
Ian Watson (credited with the "screen story" for "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence"); and
Brian Aldiss (who helped to develop the story for "A.I."). Peter Bogdanovich gathered together the impressions of
others who worked with Kubrick on various projects over the legendary director's career.
[more inside]
posted by New Frontier
on Mar 8, 2008 -
21 comments
Anything you do as many times as a successful actor, you can't have one set of theories, you know. You can go for years saying “I'm gonna get this thing real”, because they really haven't seen it real, do you know? They just keep seeing one fashion of unreal after the other that passes as real and you, you know, you go mad with realism and then you come up against someone like Stanley who says, “Yeah, it’s real
but it’s not interesting.”
posted by acro
on Jun 6, 2007 -
21 comments
