Stanley Kubrick

You know Stanley Kubrick was a famously meticulous director. But did you know that he once made Shelley Duvall do a single shot 127 times in The Shining? In the scene, Duvall was being menaced by Jack Nicholson, and he felt the best way to get a convincing performance was to make her repeat it over and over until she was legitimately exhausted and frazzled. That’s just one of the Kubrickian facts featured in the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

Given how much space physical media takes up, it’s hard for movie buffs to say no to the great promise of “cloud storage,” and the idea that we could summon anything we want to watch with just a couple of clicks. But so far, reality hasn’t matched the hype. Streaming services have been focused on exclusives and original programming, to the extent that the only way to have access to everything available is to spend hundreds of dollars a month on subscription fees. Meanwhile, older films keep disappearing from the digital archives; and even items that cinephiles “own” sometimes become inaccessible whenever software updates or a site shutters.

Today The Shining is hailed as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. But did you know Stephen King, the man who wrote the novel The Shining is based on, is not a fan of the movie? He told Playboy he was “deeply disappointed in the end result” in 1983. That’s just one of The Shining facts featured in the newest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

Horror has never been an unpopular genre, and some would even argue that arthouse horror is greater than it ever has been. But none even come close to the terror conjured by Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s chilling The Shining, a film so meticulous and mysterious in its composition it has its own conspiracy theory documentary. If you’re a fan of The Shining and you also happen to live across the pond, or will be vacationing there within the next month, good news: the BFI is planning a theatrical re-release of the film for one night only this Halloween, and they just posted the new trailer.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories about the 1969 Moon landing; one of the wackiest is that the footage “from the Moon” was actually recorded on a soundstage with help from film director Stanley Kubrick, who was, as the theory goes, uniquely suited to faking images from outer space because of his role directing the great science-fiction picture 2001: A Space Odyssey. (As the theory also goes, 2001’s great special effects were merely the research and development phase of the moon landing chicanery.)

Rumors have been swiriling for weeks, but at last, it appears official that True Detective helmer Cary Fukunaga may be making his HBO return. Talks for Fukunaga to helm a miniseries adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s lost Napoleon movie have begun, with an eye toward a miniseries.

The Chickening played the festival circuit over the past year, totally blowing the minds of audiences at Sundance, Fantastic Fest and more with its completely bonkers and inventive “remix” of footage from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Integrating chicken costumes, silly hats and faces, and the best possible manipulation of Shelley Duvall’s eyeballs you’re likely to see in your lifetime, The Chickening is an ode to insanity that you need to watch immediately.

Everyone remembers the famous scene in A Clockwork Orange where Malcolm McDowell is straightjacketed and his eyes are pried open while he’s forced to watch violent movies. But did you know that the doctor in the scene was an actual physician who was there to keep McDowell’s eyes from drying out...

Over a decade ago, Steven Spielberg directed A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a bleak science fiction epic that had been the brainchild of the late master filmmaker Stanley Kubrick for decades. And while film fans continue to debate the quality of the film (psst, it’s a masterpiece), everyone pretty much agreed that Spielberg, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, was one of the few people worthy enough to step into Kubrick’s boots. You won’t find such universal agreement with the news that Marc Forster is adapting one of Kubrick’s old un-produced screenplays. Actually, the news that The Downslope will be the first in a trilogy may be a enough to get the real film snobs to riot.

There’s a whole lot going on in Brad Bird and Damon Lindelof’s Tomorrowland, which pays tribute to Disney’s imagineering and the forward-thinking mindset of Walt Disney himself. Eagle-eyed fans will likely notice some easter eggs from both Disney past and present, but there’s one little cameo surprise that Bird and Lindelof weren’t able to squeeze in: Stanley Kubrick.