I enjoyed Melania Trump's disquieting 2019 Christmas video, featuring her pacing alone around the symmetrical expanses of the executive mansion, inspecting its coldly festive ornaments. But it needed a certain je ne sais quoi; which is to say Jocelyn Pook's soundtrack to Eyes Wide Shut. Read the rest
“I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Douglas Rain, the actor who performed the voice of the computer Hal 9000 in Stanley Kubrick's film '2001: A Space Odyssey,' has died. He was 90 years old. Read the rest
When preparing the screen adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining, director Stanley Kubrick highlighted, crossed out and wrote marginalia throughout his personal copy of the hardback novel, available online. Read the rest
Eyes on Cinema posted a newly discovered 1980 interview with Stanley Kubrick in which he explains the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Here's what he told journalist Junichi Yaoi:
The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film.
They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but wasn’t quite sure. Just as we’re not quite sure what do in zoos with animals to try to give them what they think is their natural environment.
Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made some kind of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.
From Open Culture:
Read the restThe mysterious nature of the interview clip itself, a piece of the footage gathered in 1980 for a never-released Japanese documentary, suits the nature of the revelation.
It's Nice That surveyed an eclectic group of artists, designers, and thinkers on the outsize impact of 2001 since its premiere 50 years ago this month. Read the rest
"Jimmy was having a rather beautiful day until he bumped into Jack and things got weird." Directed by Adrien Dezalay, Emmanuel Delabaere, and Simon Philippe. (Vimeo)
"I know I'm not the first person to put a laugh track on The Shining," writes youtoobmember, "but I couldn't resist doing my own version of it." The result is funny for a minute or so, then increasingly unsettling: it seems to remove the safe pop-culture patina that The Shining has picked up over the years. The Shining - The Sitcom (Seinfeld Style) [YouTube] Read the rest
