I’m told everyone is waiting for the last minute to scramble for Xmas gifts.  Well consider these handsome DVD releases:  either collections or special editions, with lovely packaging, good supplements, and shelf-worthy subject matter.  The reviews are supplied by your editor and some of his gallant writers.

WARNER DIRECTOR SERIES
STANLEY KUBRICK

This set includes:
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter, Douglas Rain, Leonard Rossiter, Margaret Tyzack

Credits: Directed & Produced by Stanley Kubrick. Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark. Special photographic effects designed and directed by Stanley Kubrick, Special effects supervisors: Wally Veevers, Douglas Trumbull, Con Pederson, and Tom Howard. Production designed by Tony Masters, Harry Lange, and Ernest Archer. Photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth. Music by Aram Khatchaturian, Gyorgy Ligeti, Johann Strauss, and Richard Strauss.

MGM 1968 148 minutes color 2:35 aspect ratio enhanced for widescreen English 5.1 stereo French 5.1 stereo 2 discs.

Extras: Commentary by Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood; 2001: The making of a myth; Standing on the shoulders of Kubrick: The legacy of 2001; Vision of a future passed: The Prophecy of 2001; 2001: A space odyssey - A look behind the future; What is out there?; 2001: FX and early conceptual artwork; Look: Stanley Kubrick!; 11/27/66 Interview with Stanley Kubrick by Jeremy Bernstein; Theatrical trailer.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Andrienne Corri, Miriam Karlin, Warren Clarke, James Marcus, Anthony Sharp.

Credits: Directed & Produced by Stanley Kubrick. Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick. Based on the novel by Anthony Burgess. Electronic music by Walter (Wendy) Carlos. Photographed by John Alcott. Production designed by John Barry. Edited by Bill Butler. Costumes designed by Milena Canonero.
Warners 1971 137 minutes color 1:85 aspect ratio enhanced English 5.1 stereo French 5.1 stereo 2 discs.

Extras: Commentary by Malcolm McDowell and historian Nick Redman; Still Tickin’: The Return of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE; Great Bolshy Yarblockos! Making A CLOCKWORK ORANGE; O lucky Malcolm!

THE SHINING

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Danny Lloyd, Barry Nelson, Philip Stone, Anne Jackson.

Credits: Directed & Produced by Stanley Kubrick. Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson. Based on the novel by Steven King. Photographed by John Alcott. Production design by Roy Walker, Edited by Ray Lovejoy.
Warners 1980 144 minutes color 1:85 aspect ratio enhanced English 5.1 stereo French 5.1 stereo 2 discs.

Extras: Commentary by Steadicam inventor/operator Garrett Brown and historian John Baxter; View from the Overlook: Crafting THE SHINING; The visions of Stanley Kubrick; The making of THE SHINING by Vivian Kubrick; Wendy Carlos, Composer.

FULL METAL JACKET

Cast: Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D’Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, Dorian Harewood, Arliss Howard, Ed O’Ross.

Credits: Directed & Produced by Stanley Kubrick. Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford.. Based on the novel by Gustav Hasford. Photographed by Douglas Milsome. Production design by Anton Furst, Edited by Martin Hunter.
Warners 1987 117 minutes color 1:85 aspect ratio enhanced English 5.1 stereo French 5.1 stereo Spanish 5.1 stereo 1 disc.

Extras: Commentary by Adam Baldwin, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lee Ermey and Jay Cocks; FULL METAL JACKET: Between Good and Evil; Theatrical Trailer.

EYES WIDE SHUT

Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Marie Richardson, Sydney Pollack, Rade Sherbedgia, Todd Field, Vinessa Shaw, Alan Cumming.

Credits: Directed & Produced by Stanley Kubrick. Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Frederic Raphael. Inspired by "Traumnovelle" by Arthur Schnitzler. Photographed by Larry Smith. Production design by Les Tomkins, Roy Walker. Edited by Nigel Galt. Music by Jocelyn Pook.
Warners 1999 159 minutes color 1:85 aspect ratio enhanced English 5.1 stereo French 5.1 stereo 2 discs.

Extras: The Last Movie: Stanley Kubrick and EYES WIDE SHUT; Lost Kubrick: The Unfinished films of Stanley Kubrick; DGA D.W. Griffith Award Acceptance Speech, 1998; Interviews with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Steven Spielberg; Theatrical Trailer and TV Spots.

STANLEY KUBRICK: A LIFE IN PICTURES

Produced & Directed by Jan Harlan.
Warners. 2001 142 minutes. color and B&W. 1:85 aspect ratio, matted. English mono.
1 disc.

         I once knew a therapist, my ex-wife’s therapist, to be specific, who said he went to high school with Stanley Kubrick. "It was in the Bathgate section of the Bronx.," he said. "Stanley was always playing hooky and going to the movies. I used to tell him if he kept going to the movies he’d never amount to anything." Then my ex-wife’s therapist sighed. "I guess Stanley had the right idea after all."
         As for me, I find myself in a somewhat paradoxical position recommending this set as a Xmas gift. To be honest, I don’t necessarily like most of Stanley Kubrick’s films. It’s possible I may be kvetching a little, for I must confess I love this new Kubrick set, both for the glorious transfers and terrific new extras. This includes three documentaries of extraordinary depth and subtle artistry (on 2001, CLOCKWORK ORANGE and EYES WIDE SHUT, respectively) commissioned by the BBC, not to mention some great commentary tracks, which makes seeing these films again fairly revelatory.
         This set contains the original widescreen theatrical presentations of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, THE SHINING, FULL METAL JACKET and EYES WIDE SHUT (in its unrated version) for the first time on home video. Although Kubrick apparently insisted on 1:33 as the preferred aspect ratio of these films except 2001 (which was shot in 70mm Super Panavision), the previous standard releases had way too much floor and ceiling so, for instance, in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Alex and his droogs seem to be floating in this amniotic fluid of hazy reddish grain. The hellish color is because the source material appears to be taken from badly faded television prints.
         All this has now been corrected. The widescreen compositions are much sharper and also more involving without that empty space around the actors. (According to Garrett Brown, Kubrick’s operator, he always shot in 1:66, which means slightly cutting off the frame if one goes to 1:85, although these new transfers look perfectly centered to me).Warners’ immaculate transfers, combined with Kubrick’s impeccable technique and quest for perfection, have combined to create images that are hypnotic in their ability to dazzle the eye, with nary a trace of edge enhancement or any defects whatsoever.
         I’ve been looking at Kubrick’s films all my adult life, feeling simultaneously frustrated and elated. Unlike many of the directors I admire, such as Sam Fuller or Jean-Marie Straub, Kubrick did not toil in obscurity. He worked in many genres, from horror to the historical epic, yet continually made the same film – a supremely elegant, ironic meditation on power and individual meaning, with a gliding camera simultaneously detached yet drawing us into the depths of the unknown, transforming space with a sardonic yet terrifying beauty, the tone poised somewhere between Kierkegaard and Mad Magazine.
         In many of these films, the camera isn’t telling a story so much as creating a series of almost abstract images that runs parallel to the narrative. This method works best in 2001, but in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and THE SHINING, which deal with a character in crisis, it’s more problematic. There’s an aspect of Kubrick’s style that’s overly fastidious, not to mention self-consciously cartoonish, especially the way he takes complex literary works and pares the characters down to stereotypes, with broad acting and almost banana-peel like humor. Kubrick’s tendency to use symmetrical narratives of opposing yet complementary scenes reinforces for me this feeling of two-dimensionality, as the characters seem trapped in a circle from which they cannot escape, a trap not of their own devising but rather due to the director’s imperious vision. (In CLOCKWORK, for instance, the circular structure implies that Alex’s spontaneous violence is just as machine-like as the totalitarian state that oppresses him, which is the exact opposite meaning of Burgess’ novel.) Another problem is Kubrick’s sense of time. It may be sublime (as in the extended takes of 2001) but it’s also inherently static, similar to someone looking at a painting. (Compare the long takes in Welles’ MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, for instance, where you can almost hear the performers hearts beat, to those in THE SHINING, where the camera seems to be moving through a terrain that is inaccessible to us, unchanged and inviolate.)