Salon.com > Stanley Kubrick

Must Do’s: What we like this week

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

BOOKS

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For anyone interested in epic adventure tales, Laura Miller recommends “Between Man and Beast: An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure That Took the Victorian World by Storm,” a study of Paul du Chaillu, an explorer whose remarkable journey is part Charles Darwin, part Indiana Jones:

"This elusive, gallant and endearing man was born on a date and in a place unknown, to a mother who has never been identified. His story, as told by Reel, is both a tale of plucky self-invention and an ironic reflection on the sometimes ugly inner workings of the scientific world."

Pick of the week: Lost in Stanley Kubrick’s labyrinth

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It’s entirely possible that no movie in the history of the medium has attracted the same combination of film-school erudition, amateur scholarship and fanboy and/or fangirl intensity as Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.” At first glance that might seem baffling: Although Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel was an eagerly anticipated film starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, with a big-name director attached, it got middling reviews (or worse) on its 1980 release, and wasn’t a major hit. But give the Kubrick cultists and conspiracy-theory decoders full credit; over the years they have transformed “The Shining” from flop to classic, and it’s now widely understood as an enigmatic and literally labyrinthine masterwork that contains multitudes.

Kirk Douglas’ revisionist history

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 23:24:00 +0000

MOST HOLLYWOOD MEMOIRS, barely worth writing about or discussing, sell simply because a celebrity (ostensibly) wrote them. The stars are players in their personal narratives both public and fictional. These books are usually tossed aside and forgotten. So it may not be a big deal if the stories within are BS. But the blacklist created its own nuclear winter from which the fallout has not completely cleared and heads still spin when it comes to explaining or understanding what happened in the entertainment industry during the McCarthy era. Real or accused dead Commies of Beverly Hills must be rolling over in their collective grave as, under the muddy banner of memoir, I Am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist by Kirk Douglas paints a fictional and self-aggrandizing presentation of his actions during the making of that celebrated movie. Many producers, directors and stars of the fifties would not work with blacklisted talent and movie studios forced all employees to sign loyalty oaths throughout the period. The moral high ground of that time was a lofty and perilous place and idealists courageously carved a difficult path. The most talented blacklisted screenwriters, like Dalton Trumbo, were able to work under the table using fronts. Some survived the McCarthy era but not without bankruptcies, divorces, suicides, or any number of other long-time heartaches. Hollywood does that to people even on a good day, but the children of the children of those who named names, or of those who went to jail because they would not, continue to suffer from losses their families incurred.