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Showing posts with the label paths of glory

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 5: Spartacus (1960)

Longer, wider and more colourful than anything Stanley Kubrick had done up to this point, Spartacus saw The Kube go EPIC. 198 minutes long! A four-minute rousing Alex North overture! A Saul Bass title sequence! An intermission and entr'acte, whatever that is! A $12 million budget! Super 70mm 2.2:1 Technirama! Between 10,000 and 50,000 extras depending on who you ask! If bigger means better,

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 1: Fear And Desire (1953)

Every generation has a legend. Every journey has a first step. Every saga has a beginning. So goes the tagline for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, a film so bad that Stanley Kubrick literally died just a few months before its release in order to avoid watching it. Stan's first step on his own journey to becoming a legend for many generations was almost as fraught with bad decisions and