Category Archives: Movies

Moving pictures for snappers

Kubrick at the CJM

Movies

A master’s work explained.

Stanley Kubrick made but twelve commercial movies and each is rated at the top of its genre.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum has a splendid show documenting the background to each, showing the man’s working method, deep research and painstaking attention to detail.


Winston at the entrance.


I touch the fabulous Zeiss f/0.7 lens used in ‘Barry Lyndon’ for the candlelight scenes.


Rescued from thrift shops, Kubrick used two of these Mitchell ciné cameras in ‘Lyndon’. The camera is beautifully engineered.


The wide lens mount throat of the Mitchell allowed adaptation of the Zeiss lens for full aperture use.


The exhibition is beautifully staged, with just enough detail to maintain curiosity.


Jack Nicholson’s Adler typewriter from ‘The Shining’


The chilling text.


Winston with the HAL9000 from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’


A selection of Kubrick’s lenses, mostly Zeiss.

You can read more about the ‘Barry Lyndon’ Zeiss lens here.

A highly recommended review of the master’s working methods. My son Winston, at the tender age of 14, knows all twelve of Kubrick’s masterpieces well, with the lush ‘Barry Lyndon’ his favorite, along with ‘Dr. Strangelove’. Indeed, his prep school application essay, which he wrote a year ago, addressed ‘Kubrick as a rôle model’, focusing on the master’s perseverance and what it teaches us about success in life.

All snaps using an iPhone 6.

Steve Jobs – the movie

Movies

Oscar night.

Steve Jobs, the movie, is recommended viewing. While Michael Fassbender in the starring rôle may resemble Jobs solely in his emaciated build, you can disregard all the carping directed at this beautifully scripted Aaron Sorkin piece of cinema. Fassbender does an excellent job of showing the dysfunctional nature of the man, best illustrated toward the end when his ever complaining daughter Lisa asks why he is the way he is, to which he replies “I am not well made”. As regards parenting skills that may have been true but when it came to bringing a singular focus to making outstanding products Steve Jobs was very well made indeed.

After a second plea from Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen in a perfect characterization as the bearded engineer) to recognize the Apple ][ team during his iMac rollout Jobs replies that he will not do so, for that team of has-beens are B players. Just like the people running Apple today, who prefer to waste executive time on legal wrangling with the government in some sort of amoral marketing thrust, rather than crafting innovative products.

Fassbender is unlikely to get the Best Actor Oscar. He should.

Peter Sellers

Movies, Photographers

Amateur snapper, famous name.

Those who grew up with Peter Sellers’s comedy saw the early surreal radio work with Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan (‘The Goons’) for the BBC gestate into the dark comedy of Kubrick’s ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and later into the slapstick money maker that was the Inspector Clouseau series of movies made by Blake Edwards.

His performance in Kubrick’s masterpiece (Kubrick only made masterpieces) is notable for the fact that Sellers acted three rôles – the US President, the RAF officer and, most memorably, the crazy German scientist, Dr. Strangelove, modeled on the no less crazy real life clone, Edward Teller, the proponent of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union. Sellers was also set to play the bomber pilot charged with nuking Moscow, but evaded the part claiming injury to an ankle. There are many versions of this story, but that seems to be the most credible, for you could not possibly have two personalities more different than those of Sellers and Kubrick. The one spontaneous, with a quicksilver wit which dictated that one take was all his short attention span could tolerate. The other cerebral, plodding, intense, leaving nothing to chance and thinking a dozen takes par for the course. Sellers simply wanted out, so feigned the injury. Quite how these two collaborated to craft the greatest black comedy made is a mystery, but we should all be grateful they did. At the conclusion Kubrick remarked that “Sellers is the only actor you pay for four parts and get three”.


Sellers as Strangelove.

Strangelove’s prescription for surviving the coming holocaust, in the obligatory heavy German accent:

The last few minutes of Strangelove contain some of the greatest tragicomedy ever put on the screen in a movie with great performances all round. The closing line “Mein Führer, I can walk!” constitutes a perfect ending to a perfect movie.

Sellers, like many of his ilk, suffered the curse of the comedian, forever insecure and worried that his fame might fade along with his wit. He really should not have worried, having a genius for self reinvention. Once as a kid I recall him on a BBC consumer show where he called in for a job interview affecting an Indian accent – he was roundly turned down – then seconds later called again, this time in perfect BBC English (like they used to speak until populism reared its ugly head), and got the interview. This debunking of bigotry has stayed with me all these years. No-one has equalled Sellers’s genius for mimicry.

There’s an excellent documentary on Sellers’s interest in photography where much of the content was provided by his burgeoning archives, for Sellers was a committed snapper and movie maker from the earliest days of his success. He invariably had the latest in gear and such was the man’s character that he gave generous gifts of hardware to many friends. Now a UK web magazine named Creative Review has published an interesting piece on his photography and you can see more by clicking the image below.


Click the image for the article.