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Warner Bros. has put out a new Kubrick box set, with 3 titles left out.
Barry Lyndon, Strangelove and Lolita have been dropped (criminal!) and the main reason to buy this new set is for the first time ever North American release of the uncut Eyes Wide Shut.
They've marketed it darker (no more white packaging) and it's got a good price up here in Canada: $69
I don't know that this is the definitive Kubrick box. It's good enough and important enough to place among my favorite dvds of the year. And the price is right! But there will be a box in the future that includes all the films. I am convinced. It's great that North Americans can finally watch Eyes Wide Shut free of censorship BUT I am upset about the aspect ratio of the EWS disc which is cropped at top and bottom resulting in loss of visual info compared to the PAL discs available: Comparison
What do you think?
Excellent extra on the new US release: a featurette about Kubrick's unfinished projects.
It's definitely not a definitive set.
It bothers me that the marketing team or whoever is responsible for packaging these things doesn't put more effort into it.
Criterion practically has artists designing the releases.
Just about every single Criterion release has a bold or stylish or purely beautiful design to it.
These Kubrick discs are pretty basic even if they changed the imagery on the slipcases. (The 2001 cover is very nice but still, they can do better than that).
I didn't know about the cropping. What the hell is going on?
Do they think people won't notice?
I don't see Criterion doing any Kubrick titles because his film releases (on vhs at least) were already director approved and the final cuts. There aren't too many "featurette" or "bonus material" things floating around.
Part of Kubrick's power as a filmmaker was holding his cards really close to his chest. He never wanted anything explained about his films- he trusted the viewer. I suppose you could have film critics or scholars doing some essays for a DVD release but that's about it.
And in a way I like it that way.
Like Scorsese said, those films were enough.
There is so much to fucking mine in Kubrick that asking for all kinds of DVD extras seems stupid.
The films give you more than you'll ever need.
There was no filmmaker who did what he did, no director who forged such great mysterious cinematic art. Some come close, but Kubrick had that extra something, that extra pull on a viewer that is very rare indeed. I miss him terribly and I never knew the man.
He loved his cats, who layed around his editing suite while he edited his films. He felt he had make up lost time with them after a long shoot. His favorite film composer was Ennio Morricone, whose music he would often blare between takes on his films to "set a mood".
Stanley Kubrick was the Master.
Every shot counted, every scene counted, every moment counted. Not only did they count, but the reasoning behind each shot scene and moment had mountains of thought behind it.
He was like a true battlefield commander- filmmaking is war, and we gotta win this war, goddammit.
I love this mantra he had:
NEVER DEPRIVE THE AUDIENCE OF AN INTENSE EXPERIENCE
Martin Scorsese said in the introduction to THE DEFINITIVE KUBRICK that Kubrick was an Artist with a mind expansive enough to see the world in motion (paraphrase), and that EYES WIDE SHUT was a dream movie that didn't announce itself as such. I love that insight.
Brilliant. Marty got it in two sentences.
We never know at which point the dream begins, when we entered it.
Kubrick showed what the possibilities for cinema were: Infinite. Limitless.
The Shining apparently revealed a lot more about Stanley's mind than he may have realized.
I read that from someone close to Kubrick who said that, that The Shining was more about Kubrick than ghosts or Stephen King's story.
Stanley was definitely not working in the same vein as other directors. no Sir.
He had way more going on in the frame than one thinks or assumes.
Nazi Germany references that you may not see or even be conscious of the first time you see a Kubrick, not so much in his earlier pictures, but certainly LATER.
He believed his films were History. And they are. He was slow to develop as a major motion picture director, but when he left us he was at the peak, and really going for it.
His grave at his home in England is beautiful. Photos of it are online. He was buried under his favorite tree on the afternoon of March 12, 1999