Literary Review – March 1, 2024: The latest issue features ‘Gaughin’s Midlife Crisis’; Geology vs Genesis; Japan’s War Trials; Saddam’s Blunderers and Barbara Comyns in Full…

Comedian Who Got Serious

“The Showman: The Inside Story of the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky” By Simon Shuster

As someone who has to consume quite a lot of Russian media, I can tell you that if there is one common denominator, it’s that whether we’re talking about a shouty TV news programme (less Newsnight, more a kind of geopolitical Jeremy Kyle Show), a stodgy government newspaper of record or a racy tabloid, no one has a good word for Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Kubrick: An Odyssey By Robert P Kolker

There are, I have long suspected, two types of cinephiles: those who think Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a masterpiece and those who think it’s a relentless bore. Early in their new biography of the film director, Kubrick: An Odyssey, Robert P Kolker and Nathan Abrams make clear which camp they belong to, describing the scene in which the astronaut Frank Poole jogs around (and around and around and around) the spaceship Discovery as ‘one of the most lyrical passages in film history’.

From a New York Times online review:

“Envisioning 2001” shows Kubrick as a director in command of all aspects of filmmaking, and it suggests that he and Clarke were no small obsessives when it came to understanding their subject matter. One of the first items in the exhibit is a request form from 1964, with Clarke’s name and address, sent to the United States Air Force. He sought information on a sighting — which turned out to be a satellite — that he and Kubrick, then developing the story for the movie, had seen in the sky over New York.

Some of the first visitors to see the exhibition Envisioning 2001 Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey. Photo by Thanassi Karageorgiou Nas Karas Studios Jan 16, 2020 at Museum of the Moving Image — Some of the first visitors to see the exhibition Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey. Photo by Thanassi Karageorgiou Nas Karas Studios Jan 16, 2020 at Museum of the Moving Image

As it approaches its 52nd birthday, “2001: A Space Odyssey” remains one of the most inventive and enduring of all movies. But from the vantage point of 2020, it can be difficult to appreciate the sheer breadth of imagination involved in its making.

Enter “Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey,” a new exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, that runs through July 19. The show brings together original correspondence, sketches, storyboards, props, video clips and much more to illustrate how Kubrick, the film’s director, and Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction author who collaborated with him on the screenplay, set about bringing the future to the screen.

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