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Hey Kubrick! Are you ever gonna get around to writing the second half of Full Metal Jacket?

People tend to rate sex highly, until they try heroine.

Sapolsky's book from last year, Behave, has a lot of material on how our dopaminic system rescales itself to available stimulus. The book is 800 pages long, and every page so far is dense with neuroanatomy. Unbelievably good, but I'm guessing it's not sexconker's preferred Flaming Doctor Pepper bomb shot.

For the record, the first time I read Lord of the Rings (all three volumes, one weekend, age 13) I experienced intense annoyance whenever Tolkien abandoned one narrative line to rejoin some other fellowship splinter group.

By the time I got to Full Metal Jacket I had mostly outgrown this, though it still annoyed me for ten full minutes. Basically, "not now Helga, can't you see I'm still banging your sister?"

Bad, Kubrick, bad.

———

Kubrick rarely hesitates to bend time in the other direction, either.

The litmus test for true Kubrick lovers is Barry Lyndon.

John Hofsess: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love 'Barry Lyndon' — 1976

Like many other critics and filmgoers, I have grown so accustomed to films based on literary conventions and familiar structures, that to see a film which stretches one's awareness of what can be achieved in the medium seems prickly and puzzling.

Kubrick's films have a way—at least with some people—of working on in the mind, of passing through all the stages from irritation to exhilaration.

And curiously enough—for critics are supposed to be the most progressive an perceptive of filmgoers—it is the general public in this case, unencumbered by literary prejudices, that has done most of the leading in making 2001 and A Clockwork Orange not just films of immense popularity but of steadily growing stature.

An interview with Michel Ciment — 1982

In the scene that you're referring to, the voice-over works as an ironic counterpoint to what you see portrayed by the actors on the screen. This is only a minor sequence in the story and has to be presented with economy. Barry is tender and romantic with the girl but all he really wants is to get her into bed. The girl is lonely and Barry is attractive and attentive.

If you think about it, it isn't likely that he is the only soldier she has brought home while her husband has been away to the wars. You could have had Barry give signals to the audience, through his performance, indicating that he is really insincere and opportunistic, but this would be unreal. When we try to deceive we are as convincing as we can be, aren't we?

No wink. Blink and you miss it.

———

At this point, I also want to give a shout out to another very long film, La Belle Noiseuse (1991), with the 237-minute run time.

The film holds an approval rating of 100% on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

How does such a stupidly long movie earn a 100% approval rating? Not a single Michael Bay fan attended this movie by accident. French title, and not a single showing with a start time after 18:30.

Roger Ebert

She understands, puts it on, disrobes in front of him, and will be entirely nude for at least at hour in this film. Yes, at first we observe Emmanuelle Beart as a woman. Then we see her as a model. Slowly we come to see her as Frenhofer wants to: The woman inside, the essence, the being

2001 is slow and methodical, and the whole is greater than the sum of the scenes. I believe this explains the philosophy pretty well. Basically, that movie is about man's evolution from ape to become space-fairing men (metaphorically killing God in the process) and become ubermen (the star child). Heady stuff...

And so all the youngsters can get in on the fun...

Ripper:

You know when fluoridation first began?

Mandrake:

No. No, I don't, Jack. No.

Ripper:

Nineteen hundred and forty six. Nineteen fortysix, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your postwar commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard core commie works.

Mandrake:

Jack... Jack, listen, tell me, ah... when did you first become, well, develop this theory.

Ripper:

Well, I ah, I I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.

Mandrake:

sighs fearfully

Ripper:

Yes a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly: loss of essence.

Mandrake:

Yes...

Ripper:

I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women... women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence.

A Dr. Strangelove quote.

• As the black monolith vanishes into a strangely symmetrical alignment of Jupiter and its moons, the camera pans up and the "Stargate" engulfs the screen. For this infinite corridor of lights, shapes, and enormous speed and scale, I designed what I called the Slit-Scan machine. Using a technique of image scanning as used in scientific and industrial photography, this device could produce two seemingly infinite planes of exposure while holding depth-of-field from a distance of fifteen feet to one and one-half inches from the lens at an aperture of F/1.8 with exposures of approximately one minute per frame using a standard 65mm Mitchell camera.

It seems to have been Kubrick's preference for his films to be shown in the 4:3 or "full frame" aspect ratio, because, according to his long-standing personal assistant Leon Vitali, that was the way he composed them through the camera viewfinder and if it were technically still possible to do so, he would have liked them to be shown full frame in cinemas as well. As Vitali said in a recent interview (2): "The thing about Stanley, he was a photographer that's how he started. He had a still photographer's eye. So when he composed a picture through the camera, he was setting up for what he saw through the camera - the full picture. That was very important to him. It really was. It was an instinct that never ever left him. [...] He did not like 1.85:1. You lose 27% of the picture, Stanley was a purist. This was one of the ways it was manifested."

I heard a story that the space ship, Discovery, in the movie 2001 was originally concepted to have an Orion-type nuclear propulsion system. Trouble was that Stanley Kubrick had just made a big splash with Dr. Strangelove. He decided that it was just too many nukes.

A quick google netted this web site that supports the story.

Humming "Ligeti?"

BTW: Did you ever notice that HAL has one eye - like the cyclops in Homer's Odyssey?

The only case that I know about is Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

Full Metal Jacket is like this as well.

From http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/faq/:

"It seems to have been Kubrick's preference for his films to be shown in the 4:3 or "full frame" aspect ratio, because, according to his long-standing personal assistant Leon Vitali, that was the way he composed them through the camera viewfinder and if it were technically still possible to do so, he would have liked them to be shown full frame in cinemas as well."

I found a Kubrick FAQ from a site maintained by the alt.movies.kubrick newsgroup that attempts to explain the "full frame" question. You're pretty close to what the FAQ thinks.

Some facts from the FAQs:

• Kubrick started as a photographer and had a "photographer's eye" according to this longtime personal assistant Leon Vitali. This might explain a preference for 4:3 aspect ratios.
• Kubrick never publicly voiced his aspect ratio preferences for the "home video" releases of his films. Therefore, the decision to release them in "full frame" is very controversial.

I found a Kubrick FAQ from a site maintained by the alt.movies.kubrick newsgroup that attempts to explain the "full frame" question. You're pretty close to what the FAQ thinks.

Some facts from the FAQs:

• Kubrick started as a photographer and had a "photographer's eye" according to this longtime personal assistant Leon Vitali. This might explain a preference for 4:3 aspect ratios.
• Kubrick never publicly voiced his aspect ratio preferences for the "home video" releases of his films. Therefore, the decision to release them in "full frame" is very controversial.

for the uninformed, this is a Dr. Strangelove reference.

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0055.html

Oh boy, I thought that was one of those "*Every* Kubrick fan knows *that*" facts.

You can even buy the Alex North soundtrack that was going to be used for "2001" on CD now, so it's not exactly obscure.

Anyway, here is a link and here is another one.

...Columbia was the only shuttle in the fleet that did NOT have a docking port that was compatible with the ISS. So ... I guess there was truly no reason to check. They can't fix the tile and have no way to transfer to the ISS. So it truly didn't matter.

That is what HAL thought

I call bullshit!

I'll see your bullshit and raise you a moron. Special Lenses for Barry Lyndon.

Yup - The evidence is overwhelming that Hart doesn't pay attention. I believe he thinks there's a way to write a story that *doesn't* include these mythological elements. I don't remember the source, but I remember Lucas describing the writing process at some point (I'm not sure if it was before Ep4 or after) as being very difficult when he was consciously trying to work everything in. Once he gave up and just wrote a story that sounded good, he looked back and everything he wanted was there.

BTW, I went to the SW/Myth exhibit when it hit Toledo last Thanksgiving - IT R0CKED! The coolest part (other than the 8ft. Imperial Destroyer from Ep.IV) were the Campbell plaquards positioned around the exhibit describing the mythological elements of the story.

BONUS: According to the preface from my paperback copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Campbell also influenced Kubrik and Clarke! EAT THAT, HART - YOU WEENIE!!

when the m-16 was first introduced, there was some controversy over the design. a bullet, when fired from an m-16, would tend to wobble as it flew, making it more messy when it hit a target.
... early in vietnam, but i don't recall the outcome. they might have redesigned the ballistics, but i don't recall.

Here you go, an article talking about FMJ and the M-16

Snippets from the above:
The landwar convention from The Hague doesn't allow fragmenting bullets for purposes of war, so every army in the world uses FMJ bullets. Usually a hit from a conventional FMJ doesn't kill, but leaves a clean hole. No hunter will use FMJ, since they want to kill, not to wound.
[snip]
This, in theory is better for two reasons -- one, it creates a situation where instead of creating a dead enemy soldier it creates a wounded one, which must be cared for by his buddy, thus taking two men out of action with each hit. The second reason behind the idea is that it is more humane to wound than to kill. This type of ammunition was agreed upon by the Geneva convention, and both sides of the vietnam war agreed to it's use.
[snip]

So I think the difference is between temporary wounding (the above) and permanent scaring (say from blinding lasers, mustard gas, biological agents, dirty nukes). The Geneva Convention is for the former and against the latter.

You could say that the directors cut of "Eyes Wide Shut" was censored in the US, but it wasn't by the government, it was edited because there is a conspiracty among newspapers and theatre chains to keep nc-17 films out of theatres. Public outcry was near zero over this in the US. Same thing happened to the film "American Psycho".

That's what I at first thought, too. But according to this part of the Kubrick FAQ, the ending is pretty much what Kubrick wanted ... (SPOILERS AHEAD):

Kubrick, however, wanted a coda in which the new race of robots, because of a technological limitation, cannot keep the mother alive after reviving her. The movie would end with David in his mother's bedroom, watching her slowly disappear.

So if you don't like the ending, blame Kubrick, not Spielberg.

(alongside the original Dr. Strangelove himself, the truly sinister Edward Teller).

More on this subject here.