Word: kubrick
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...More important, Close Encounters offers proof, if any were needed, that Spielberg's reputation is no accident. His new movie is richer and more ambitious than Jaws, and it reaches the viewer at a far more profound level than Star Wars. The film is not perfect, but, like Stanley Kubrick's similar (if far chillier) 2001: A Space Odyssey, it uses science fiction thrills to seduce the audience into looking at the cosmos metaphysically. Close Encounters is, moreover, its creator's highly personal statement about mankind's next leap forward...
Serendip does not go behind-the-scenes on 2001, despite advertising promises to the contrary. The Clarke-Kubrick collaboration was fully described in Lost Worlds of 2001. As a result, the only attention paid to the landmark film comes in the form of Clarke's slightly defensive explanation of how astronaut David Bowman managed to survive in a vacuum for several seconds while re-entering his space ship. Clarke cites experiments on animals in vacuum chambers in an effort to disprove the old sci-fi truism that an astronaut would explode instantly in the vacuum of space. The book scintillates...
...bishop capturing a knight, a little dinosaur jumps a small, ectoplasmic BEM (as sci-fi fans call bug-eyed monsters) and proceeds to devour him. (Losing makes wookies so dyspeptic that Artoo is sagely counseled to let Chewjbacca win.) All science fiction movies these days are measured against Stanley Kubrick's monumental 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). But even by that standard, Star Wars is tops. To work out the photographic special effects, Lucas hired John Dykstra, an expert in the field. For his space scenes, Kubrick had used what is called composite opticals: he would put one -part...
...Dykstra had the advantage over 2001 of another decade of com puter technology. They were able to link the camera to a sophisticated calculator, which recorded and memorized every shot. By consulting it they could add new elements to their scenes in far less time than it took Kubrick. The result is a breathtaking series of space shots unlike anything seen before in a science fiction film. Says Dykstra: "We have spaceships crossing over planets all the time, and Kubrick never did. His ships are almost invariably linear and can be seen only from one angle. Ours are seen...
...shown "one film which could be considered bad," since he has "to watch them too." But he added, "People aren't willing to experiment, to broaden their horizons. They come to see Clockwork Orange or Dr. Strangelove, but they won't come to see an earlier Kubrick...