Cool As A Kubrick

Co-sponsored by the Phoenix Picturehouse in Walton Street, Oxford, the festival is screening six of the acclaimed director’s finest films – The Shining, Dr Strangelove, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Paths of Glory, A Clockwork Orange and Lolita.

Oxford Mail entertainments editor Jeremy Smith said: “Kubrick is probably cinema’s most revered and influential film director.

“Almost uniquely, his films were both commercially and critically successful and several are undeniably iconic in status – 2001, Clockwork Orange and Dr Strangelove went so far as to reinvent what cinema could achieve.

“Yet despite their brilliance, these films are also enormous crowd pleasers, and none more so perhaps than The Shining, which is considered by many cinemagoers to be their favourite horror film of all time.

“So I’m delighted that, together with the Phoenix cinema, we are able to stage this festival and show these extraordinary films in their natural habitat.

“Because while wide-screen TVs and home entertainments systems are all very well, nothing compares to seeing a great movie as it is meant to be seen – on the big screen, in the company of other film goers.”

Suzy Sheriff, manager of the Phoenix, agrees.

She said: “This is our most ambitious festival so far, and we have gone to great lengths to secure the screening rights to each of these films.

“So for anyone who loves cinema and film, this really is a MUST.”

Each of the films will be screened twice a day, at 1pm and 8.30pm, and anyone with a copy of that day’s Oxford’s Mail will be admitted for half-price.

For more details, call the Phoenix on 01865 316570.

* The Shining (18) Sunday, May 9, at 1pm and 8.30pm ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ Stephen King’s seminal novel married to Kubrick’s clinical eye. A hotel, a maze, a snow storm, and a little boy who can ‘shine’.

Typically, Kubrick refrained from falling into all the usual cliches of the horror film genre, to direct a movie that, according to a recent Channel 4 poll of viewers Top 100 Scariest Films, came out on top.

After all, who can forget Danny’s tricycle ride around the Overlook Hotel, or Jack Torrance’s type written new novel, or the two little girls at the end of the corridor?

The emptiness and menace of Kubrick’s vision, released in 1980, is the stuff of real nightmares.

WATCH OUT for Room 237, Jack’s conversation with Lloyd the bartender, and ‘RedRum’.

* Dr Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb (PG) Monday, May 10, at 1pm and 8.30pm ‘Precious bodily fluids’ A brilliant satire on war, power, and nuclear obliteration.

Hysterically funny and brilliantly shot, the film was released only two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Kubrick had initially wanted to make a thriller based around the nuclear threat, but as he started writing the screenplay, he confessed that he began to see the lunacy in the idea of mutual assured destruction and so decided to make the film a black comedy instead.

The story concerns a deranged American general who orders a first strike against the Soviet Union, and then follows the efforts of the American President as he attempts to prevent the inevitable apocalypse.

The film contains one of cinema’s most famous comedic one-liners as President Merkin Muffley orders his military chiefs at the Pentagon: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room...”

WATCH OUT for Peter Sellers as Dr Strangelove, the American President and RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake.

* 2001: A Space Odyssey (12) Tuesday, May 11, at 1pm and 8.30pm ‘Daisy, Daisy, give your answer do’ Probably the definitive Kubrick film, based on Arthur C Clarke’s science fiction story The Sentinel.

Breathtaking, astonishing, perplexing and unforgettable.

Released in 1968, it ranks among almost all critics’ polls as one of the top ten films of all time.

Divided into four separate ‘chapters’ – The Dawn of Man, TMA-1, Jupiter Mission and Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite – the film travels from Man’s first tentative steps on the plains of Africa to an encounter with extra terrestrial intelligence above the moons of Jupiter.

When first released, the movie became an immediate hit with students who ‘turned on, tuned in, and dropped out’ according to the mantra of the Sixties and started smoking spliffs during the last 30 minutes, when astronaut Dave Bowman enters the Star Gate.

Consequently, the film’s tag line became ‘The Ultimate Trip’.

But for the film goer who simply wants two hours of escape and wonder, just sit back and enjoy...

WATCH OUT for HAL, the ‘greatest cinema cut in history’ and the monolith.

* Paths of Glory (PG) Wednesday, May 12, at 1pm and 8.30pm ‘There are times that I’m ashamed to be a member of the human race’ Set during World War I, and based on Humphrey Cobb’s 1935 antiwar novel of the same name, Steven Spielberg has called it one of his favourite Kubrick films.

And not surprising either - this 1957 film literally scorches the screen with its devastating depiction of life in the trenches.

The film was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Film but lost to ‘Bridge on The River Kwai’.

Kirk Douglas gives one of his finest screen performances as Colonel Dax, the idealistic First World War soldier appalled by the arbitrary court-marshal meted out to three of his men.

Because of the subject matter, the film was not shown in France until 1975, and Spain until 1986.

WATCH OUT for its stark black and white imagery and unsentimental combat scenes.

* A Clockwork Orange (18) Thursday, May 13, at 1pm and 8.30pm ‘A bit of the old ultra-violence’ Shockingly violent and explicit, Kubrick’s 1971 exploration of violence in society is based on the Anthony Burgess’ novel.

And yes, it includes Singing in The Rain.

The film revolves around Alex (Malcolm McDowell), a ‘charismatic psychopathic delinquent’ whose great delights in life are Beethoven, rape and ‘ultra violence’.

He and his gang of Droogs, dressed in bowler hats, braces and fuelled by mescaline-spiked milk, engage in a horrific crime spree, after which Alex is caught and apparently rehabilitated.

Withdrawn in this country by Kubrick on police advice after threats against his family, the film only became commonly available again at the beginning of this millennium following Kubrick’s death in 1999.

WATCH OUT for Alex, the Droogs and milk.

* Lolita (15) Friday, May 14, at 1pm and 8.30pm ‘You just touch me and I...I... go as limp as a noodle’ Based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov, this was Kubrick’s first film to generate major controversy, and was teased in its tagline: ‘How did they ever make a film of Lolita?’ Indeed, Kubrick later admitted that had he known how severe the censorship would prove, he would never have made the film.

The film stars James Mason, Peter Sellers, Shelley Winters and Sue Lyon, the ‘nymphet’ who is the focus of Humbert’s (Mason’s) passion.

WATCH OUT for Sue Lyon’s award-winning performance.