Kubrick news

[Johann]

Incredible news for fans of Stanley Kubrick:
Criterion is releasing The Killing in August.
Added will be new interview with James B. Harris, clips w/ Sterling Hayden from archives and Kubrick's 1955 film Killer's Kiss.
Worth the money I'd say.

And in case you've been living under a rock lately, A limited edition box set of 9 Kubrick features has just been released on Blu-Ray.
($99 here in Canada). There's also a regular DVD box (not limited) for $69.99. The Blu-Ray set has a small hardcover book included.

Leon Vitali, Kubrick's trusted estate manager/Red Cloak/Bullingdon, spent years working on the Blu-Ray transfers.
Stanley would be proud, Leon!
Bless you Sir!
I laminated the 2-page spread of the news of the Blu-Ray release from the Ottawa Sun. Malcolm McDowell says:
There was nobody better than Kubrick. No one has a list of Masterpieces like him.
I agree 1000%.

There are scores of great directors, and film buffs can debate until the end of time which one was the best or the greatest.
For me Stanley Kubrick is unmatched.
The bottom line is that Kubrick's talent was simply impeccable. He knew what he was doing at every turn.
He was so far ahead of everybody else it's astonishing.
the Coens, P.T. Anderson and Christopher Nolan are the only current directors who seem to be aiming for immortality like Kubrick did.
You'd think Kubrick would have inspired more people!
No students?
Only admirers?
Shame.
Steven Spielberg should dust off Kubrick's 1968 script for Napoleon.
Shoot it as is. No changes.
Just get the locations, costumes, cast and sets underway.
Build that movie!
What a gift it would be to the world and to cinema history!

[Chris Knipp]

What about Werner Herzog? Oh I forgot, he's just the greatest living. Kubrick's dead!

[Johann]

When you take into account what makes a director great or "better" than others, you have to look at his work.
The style, the craft, the intent, the daring, the boldness, the originality, and a command of the medium are all required in order to be considered "better" than other directors or filmmakers.

And I think PASSION must be dripping from your film. If not in the content, then most definitely in the craft.
Kubrick always came from a place of awesome style and awesome content. He said it himself: when you marry content and style then you have the best of all possible films.
Most great directors know and understand this.

Scorsese.
Herzog.
Greenaway.
Lynch.
Brakhage.
Kurosawa.
Fassbinder.
Tarantino.

The list is endless for directors whose passion for filmmaking is beyond obvious.
Those are the ones who are to be admired and followed and re-visited time and time again.
Stanley Kubrick has even more going for him then the others: he was a photographer since he was a teen and he had the intelligence to make his films so potent they reveal more and more depth to the subject matter and even larger themes dealing with Man with each viewing.
How many directors have the foresight and intellect to have meaning behind meaning?
And how hard is that to accomplish in the noisy, uncomfortable arena of a movie set?
Juggling a giant production?
Kubrick made MAXIMUM use of his time on earth.
It's all there, like a quixotic map.
Stand back in Awe.

Herzog's still alive (as of this writing) and who can say that he's not using every second of his life to give us and the cinematic medium great gifts?
No one.

[Johann]

If you like Stanley Kubrick then you should also like:

Nietzsche
Arthur C. Clarke
Kafka
The Golden Bough
Reitz' Heimat series
Fritz Lang
Chaplin
Eisenstein
The Godfather/Apocalypse Now
Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night
Fellini
Pulp Fiction
Boogie Nights
Scorsese
Woody Allen
Carlos Saura
Kieslowski's Dekalog
Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest
ERASERHEAD
PLATOON
van Gogh
Klimt
Beethoven
The Beatles
short wave radios
chess
Citizen Kane
Nabokov
David Lean
Max Ophuls


because The Grand Master himself liked all of those things and Many Many Many More. The man had an EXPANSIVE intelligence.

[Johann]

I bought the Blu-Ray Limited Edition Kubrick 10-disc box.
It's got a hardcover book with it but there isn't tons of writing in it. (small book).
There's a big problem with this set: you have to be very careful when removing the DVD's.
They are in cardboard sleeves, and they are wedged so damn tight in there that you run a very high risk of scratching or damaging the disc you are trying to remove. I don't know whose idea it was to go with hard cardboard sleeves over trays but it annoys me.
The sleeves make the set more like a book/brick, but hey, I already got a scratch on my Spartacus disc just from pulling it out of the sleeve!
That's not cool.
And watch your fingerprints...I use latex gloves to remove these DVD's. They're that valuable to me.

I'll post reviews of each movie when I can. Some titles have amazing special features too.
Damn happy to have the limited edition set.

[Chris Knipp]

Congratulations on your set. Kubrick is a director whose work is well worth such an investment. I have trouble a lot with DVD's. When they are scratched they may not play through. Isn't it true that there were fewer problems with videotapes? At least they didn't stop, unless they were broken, which was very rare. Of course laser disks disintegrated, so it was said (mine haven't), as tapes do, so they say (mine haven't). They all do eventually. Our words are writ in water.

The newest technologies are the most fragile. Vinyl records. Now there's a good format. And books on good paper. Any book from the 18th century or before. I remember a librarian from a rare book room lecturing and saying that he was happy to report that most of the books of the last hundred years would not survive.

I could see his point.

What is the advantage of Blu-Ray, if you know, other than introducing another format they can charge more money for?

[oscar jubis]

No doubt whatsoever in my mind that digital discs are a huge improvement over tapes as far as product durability is concerned. And clearly, Blu-Ray produces a better picture than DVD. Right now, it makes sense to buy films you love re-watching in the Blu-Ray format also because their price has come down. Of course, you need to have a set that takes full advantage of the new format. Enjoy your Kubrick box Johann.

[Chris Knipp]

I would say DVD excels with the sound quality over laser discs. But I don't see that DVDs are more durable than videotape, in the short run. DVDs being smaller and having concentrated surface area that as you comment can easily get scratched is quite vulnerable to damage and reduced image quality. Also some functions of a VCR such as slowmo backward and forward are not as accessible on DVD. As Oscar says and as Tarentino has said of movies "the final cut belongs to the projectionist," the final cut of the DVD belongs to the projection system you use at home, which may not be that great. CD's and DVDs do gain over vinyl and tapes in compactness. But sound on vinyl is unmistakeably superior to digitalized sound.

[Johann]

In the Kubrick set, his wife/artist widow Christiane says that Stanley would have embraced the Blu-Ray format.
There is no doubt about the sound and picture quality- it is superb.
Chris you're right that VHS was a great format.
Less stoppages, they lasted for years (with fairly minimal loss of picture quality), and like you say, very rarely did they break.
Unless you winged a copy of Days of Thunder at a wall. LOL
Super VHS was particularly durable and had a great picture. Industrial quality VCR's back in the day.

I hesitated for the longest time to embrace the regular DVD format let alone Blu-Ray. I had a nice collection of vhs tapes in the 90's that I had spent a small fortune on. I didn't enjoy the idea of the whole works being obsolete just because of a plastic disc.
It also took me forever to embrace Blu-Ray. I finally had to admit defeat when I saw a friend's home theatre system with a Blu-Ray player.
It was all over but the cryin'.
Now I'm *slowly* building my own home theatre. I'm not loyal to any particular brands, either. On base, capitalism offends me but it isn't all THAT weird. Especially when it comes to cinema. :)

DVD's will last a long time as long as you don't bang them up.
If you can keep them cool and dry and free from people's greasy mitts, they should last a long time.
Don't leave 'em in the back window of your car on a hot summer day and don't spill shit on 'em, unless you don't give a damn.

I've started my collection of Blu-Ray titles. Even if this format vanishes in the future like all the others I look at it like evolution. You can have a tangible DVD library you can be proud of, even when the format goes bye-bye.
They're the new film cans.
I like it because you are getting studio/estate approved editions.

Someone who would only want a ripped copy or a burned copy or a pirated copy or ANY copy of Kubrick's films is a fucking idiot.
You buy the REAL DEAL or go to hell Son.
You can't call yourself a fan with ripoffs and imitations.

[Johann]

The letter "K" figures prominently on this box, which leads me to believe that the designers of the packaging were indeed actually making a K-Brick.
A K-Brick Kubrick box set.
It certainly feels like a brick- if you hit someone with it it might hurt- this set weighs a couple pounds. It's made of hard-cardboard stock!

[Chris Knipp]

The French call these boxed sets coffrets. Coffret Stanley Kubrick - La Collection - Blu-Ray - Edition.



Yes, I had a Super VHS player and that format was good. I still have a large collection of videotapes, though I don't use it much. It will last as long as I do.

The jump from vinyl records to CDs was one I held out against for some time. Then when I consulted an audiophile shop the man told me the sound on vinyl was better. I was incredulous, but now I know that to be absolutely true. Even a metal cassette tape (another format they want to kill) recorded off a vinyl record sounds way better than a CD. If you're really listening. Most people aren't, or they would not go around listening to MP3. Even musicians, they say, like that format. They maybe don't care because they know too well that all recording is so far from live music.

And in this context I'll say that film is still preferable to digital, though digital has some great advantages. David Lynch said after Inland Empire that it would never be possible to go back to film because digital is so fast light and free and film is so cumbersome. But the look of it is still better. Warmer and smoother like vinyl. The same thing is true in still photography. Digital is hugely convenient, but for true beauty it's still got to be film, or almost.

I think my computer plays blu ray but I have no idea of the advantage. Few people I know have big home screens. Mostly people who don't get out much. I've become like an MP3 listener with movies. I watch them on my laptop.

[Johann]

I kinda like that foreign Kubrick box design better than the domestic one I just bought.
Look at the DVD's! The DVD's I have are terrible compared to the ones in your post Chris.
Mine are labelled with half-color/half-photo/still from the movie in question.
That's a "box set" too. Mine is like a book/brick.

[Johann]

Vinyl is ideal for several reasons.

1. Sound
2. Packaging (a good album has interesting artwork to look at)
3. Sides (when side 1 is over, you have to physically get up and flip the record over. Then, hopefully, another mood takes over. The last song on side one should have been so damn good that you HAVE to get up off your ass and listen to Side 2.


Good headphones.. and yeah. That's the experience you're aiming for.
CD's sound great and so do some tapes, like the Metal ones you mentioned.
Tapes can break, tho. Can be a bummer if you don't have a back-up copy.
Some people make amazing mixtapes.
iPod's sound pretty good too. Just get some good earbuds.

[Chris Knipp]

You're more open hearted than I am. I don't go for earphones, though the sound filters out all else and can bring up tiny details. But it doesn't have the sense of sound in space. A concert hall.

True, cassette tapes do break especially if the player is defective. But VCR tapes don't break very often. It is not certain how long DVDs or CDs will last. It depends on the shelf life of the materials. Who knows? Vinyl and its predecessors have stood up. The techies are not thinking of durability. They live in a world of constant updates. And those updates and changes of format come more and more often. I personally could live without Blu-ray. Meanwhile the quality of theater projection has gone down. Is anybody noticing? Remember Tarantino: "The projectionist always gets the final cut."

Good points on vinyl. The covers were great art. Now they're too tiny on CDs to matter. The flipping and changing the mood I never though of. But on jazz especially the "liner notes" which then could be easily read, were quite important and often brilliantly written. Nat Hentoff. Glenn Gould wrote some for his own albums.

If the French Kubrick coffret looks cooler it's because the French are cool, and love film.