A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is one of the most biting and hard-hitting commentaries about the U.S.-Soviet arms race, overdependence on technology, the can-do philosophy of the Air Force, and the sheer lunacy of MAD, the apt acronym for the term Mutual Assured Destruction, the Cold War diplo-speak that meant "you nuke our country, we'll nuke yours." Normally one wouldn't think the possibility of nuclear annihilation would be the wellspring for a comedy, just as most people today wouldn't think the Holocaust is fodder for satire. Yet when Stanley Kubrick set out to do a straightforward dramatic film based on novelist Peter George's Red Alert, a novel about an "accidental" nuclear attack on the Soviet Union by the United States, the more research and contemplation the director and co-screenwriter did on the subject of nuclear deterrence and all the nitty gritty of nuclear warfare, the more insane t...

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) (AKA A.I. ) Written and Directed by: Steven Spielberg, based on Brian Aldiss’ short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long and a story treatment by Ian Wilson) Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Frances O’Connor, Sam Robards, William Hurt, Jude Law, Jake Thomas, Jack Angel, Robin Williams, Meryl Streep, Ben Kingsley On June 29, 2001, Warner Bros. Pictures released A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg’s 20 th feature film as a director. Originally conceived as a project for and by Stanley Kubrick ( 2001: A Space Odyssey, Full Metal Jacket ) in the early 1970s but handed over to Spielberg after spending years in what Hollywood calls “Development Hell,” A.I. is a bittersweet meditation about our relationship with technology, the nature of love, and the perplexing question – can a programmed artificial intelligence become self-aware and experience emotion? Narrator: [narrating, with ocean waves crashing together] Th...

Pros:  2010's  cast, including Roy Scheider and Helen Mirren. Good script. Great visuals. Cons:  Real life rendered its Cold War political undertones obsolete. In the years after the 1968 release of Stanley Kubrick's landmark science-fiction film  2001: A Space Odyssey,  he and collaborator Arthur C. Clarke were asked many questions about how it was conceived, how the realistic special effects had been done, why did Kubrick decide to use classical music pieces in the soundtrack, and if HAL was a punny jab at IBM's corporate name. Another question that followed both the director and the writer for years was  Will you ever do a follow-up to  2001 ? Kubrick, of course, wasn't interested in doing a sequel and generally stayed away from science fiction; the only other set-in-the-future projects he ever envisioned after  2001  were  A Clockwork Orange  and penning the basic story idea for ...

Pros: Good, if sometimes flawed, visuals; nice mix of sound and image; not kid stuff Cons: Slow-paced; no stereotypical space battles; no easily-interpreted ending It's hard to believe that 50 years have passed since Metro Goldwyn Mayer released director Stanley Kubrick's enigmatic-yet-somehow-captivating science fiction classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, a serious (if not very prophetic) look at a future that could have been but wasn't. Conceived by Kubrick and the renowned science fiction author (and inventor) Arthur C. Clarke as the "proverbial good science fiction movie" in 1964 and involving a long production process that lasted nearly three years, 2001 tackles several Big Topics, including the notion that human evolution may have been given a boost by extraterrestrial intelligence, the dangers of mixing national security interests with scientific exploration, and the strange double-edged sword of humanity's dependence on technology (a them...