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Showing posts with the label 2001: a space odyssey

Kubism, Part 10: Barry Lyndon (1975)

Having spent years fruitlessly dicking around with his doomed film about Napoleon, Stanley Kubrick found himself perched atop an impressive - but frustratingly useless - mountain of research relating to 18th century Europe. Scrabbling around for a chance to utilise all this material, Stan landed upon an 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray which, conveniently, would also allow him to

Kubism, Part 9: A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Stanley Kubrick didn't have much time for heroes. You can probably count the number of traditionally heroic characters in his films on the fingers of one hand, and still have two fingers left to stick up to the world. Davey Gordon in Killer's Kiss goes out of his way to save his neighbour from a B-movie crime lord, Paths Of Glory's Colonel Dax moves heaven and earth to bring some semblance of

Kubism, Part 8: 2OO1: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Dr. Strangelove had failed to successfully treat Stanley Kubrick's nuclear itch. The ointment of satire clearly wasn't strong enough to clear up Stan's rash of pessimism regarding the human race's inevitable freefall into self-destruction; stronger medication was required. Perhaps drawing on his abandoned idea of a framing device for Strangelove in which aliens passed pitiful judgement on

The Incredible Suit is 10 years old, so here are its 100 best films obviously!

Unbelievably (despite time being a constant), it's one-tenth of a century today since this ridiculous excuse for a website winked into existence. 1,168 blog posts later, somebody at The Incredible Suit HQ thought it would be a good idea to celebrate by collating the entire team's 100 favourite films and ranking them for you to ignore at your leisure. So we took all the votes, assigned points,

Kubism, Part 7: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964)

We're roughly half way through our nursery school-level investigation of the films of Stanley Kubrick, and it's been a bumpy ride so far. We've seen the good (The Killing, Paths Of Glory, Lolita), the bad (Fear And Desire, Spartacus, oh God The Seafarers) and the middling (Killer's Kiss), and so it seems appropriate that this time round we're faced with The Kube's most divisive film. Which is

Kubism, Part 4: Paths Of Glory (1957)

Act I of Stanley Kubrick's career is complete: over the course of three shorts and three features we've seen him grow from pretentious faux-intellectual with a keen eye into an accomplished storyteller with an even keener eye. It hasn't always been easy viewing (I refer you, once again, to The Seafarers), but the upward trajectory in quality has at least formed the kind of narrative arc every

Kubism, Kubrintermission: Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition

I realise I'm only 26.66 recurring percent through my game-changing overview of the films of Stanley Kubrick, but I thought it was time for an intermission so you could either go for a poo or read some waffle about the Design Museum's Stanley Kubrick exhibition. You could always do both I suppose, the toilet is the ideal reading location for this blog. Anyway last week I was at the press

Kubism, Part 2: Killer's Kiss (1955)

It's been an underwhelming start for a so-called visionary genius, but in the hope of digging up something watchable I hereby present the third instalment of my shallow dive into the career of tonsorially unconcerned director Stanley Kubrick. Under the Fisher Price microscope this time is Kubo's second feature film, Killer's Kiss. Is he any good yet? Let's find out! (short answer: almost)