Burbank, Calif., September 23, 2014 — The late director Stanley Kubrick had a special relationship with Warner Bros. Because of this relationship, Christiane Kubrick invited and provided the studio full access to Kubrick’s home, film props, personal cameras, film equipment, production facilities and personal insight to this great director.
To mark this momentous occasion, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) will release Stanley Kubrick: The Masterpiece Collection on December 2. The 10-disc Blu-ray™ set ($199.99 SRP) includes eight Kubrick classics as well as the newly-produced documentary: Kubrick Remembered which captures intimate moments in Stanley Kubrick’s very personal life, two new-to-Blu-ray documentaries: Stanley Kubrick In Focus and Once Upon a Time…’A Clockwork Orange’ plus three additional documentaries: Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, and O’ Lucky Malcolm! Also included will be a new 78-page hardcover photo book using film archive photographs.
Films in the collection will be Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Kubrick Remembered offers a new look into the Kubrick archives, with special appearances by the director’s wife, Christiane Kubrick, as well as never-seen footage of Stanley’s works, his house and his film production facilities. Stanley Kubrick In Focus presents such directors as Steven Spielberg, Steven Soderbergh, Oliver Stone, William Friedkin and Martin Scorsese relating how Kubrick’s directorial style influenced them.
About Stanley Kubrick
Recognized as one of the most accomplished, innovative, and influential directors in film history, Stanley Kubrick was a perfectionist who maintained complete artistic control and privacy during the shooting, and even the subsequent marketing of his movies. Many of Kubrick’s acclaimed works were received as controversial and provocative, yet still regarded as brilliant and visionary. Kubrick’s films earned 19 Oscar® nominations including three for Best Picture (Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon) and four for Directing (Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon). In 1960, Kubrick’s Spartacus won four Oscars® (Actor in a Supporting Role, Art Direction, Cinematography and Costume Design). In 1968 Kubrick won the Oscar® for Special Visual Effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Kubrick was born in 1928 in New York City and grew up in the Bronx where his father was a physician. At 13, Kubrick became interested in photography and began to teach himself the craft. In 1945, prior to his high school graduation, Kubrick did a photo essay of a news vendor with his papers heralding the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Look selected one of the photographs for the closing of their series on the death of the president. Shortly thereafter, Look hired him as an apprentice, and within six months, at age 17, Kubrick became one of the magazine’s youngest-ever staff photographers.
After creating a photo essay on boxer Walter Cartier, Kubrick directed an impressive, gritty short documentary, Day of the Fight (1950), based on his pictorial for the magazine. Kubrick then made two more documentaries and a short feature about a fictitious war (Fear and Desire). Two low-budget crime thrillers followed — Killer’s Kiss and The Killing – then Kubrick cemented his reputation with his first major studio film, the powerful antiwar movie Paths of Glory.
Kubrick immigrated to England in 1961, where he found more autonomy and greater control as a filmmaker. Kubrick died peacefully at his home in England on March 7, 1999. He is survived by his wife, Christiane, and three daughters and has left the cinema with an enduring legacy.
About the Films in the Collection
Lolita (1962)
Humbert (James Mason), a divorced British professor of French literature, travels to small-town America for a teaching position. He allows himself to be swept into a relationship with Charlotte Haze, his widowed and sexually famished landlady, whom he marries in order that he might pursue the woman’s 14-year-old flirtatious daughter, Lolita, with whom he has fallen hopelessly in love, but whose affections shall be thwarted by a devious trickster named Clare Quilty.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb(1964)
Released by Columbia Pictures, the cold war satire is a chilling dark comedy about a psychotic Air Force General unleashing an ingenious, foolproof and irrevocable scheme sending bombers to attack Russia, as the U.S. President works with the Soviet premier in a desperate effort to save the world. The film stars Peter Sellers, in multiple roles, as well as George C. Scott and Sterling Hayden.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Kubrick’s dazzling Academy Award®-winning achievement (Special Visual Effects) is an allegorical puzzle on the evolution of man and a compelling drama of man vs. machine. Featuring a stunning meld of music and motion, the film was also Oscar®-nominated for Best Director, Art Direction and Writing. The director (who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke) first visits the prehistoric age-ancestry past, then leaps millennia (via one of the most mind-blowing jump cuts ever) into colonized space, and ultimately whisks astronaut Bowman (Keir Dullea) into uncharted space, perhaps even into immortality.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Causing major controversy when first released, the film garnered four Academy Award® nominations – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Screenplay. The film also introduced into popular culture the concept of “ultra-violence,” as singing, tap-dancing, derby-topped hooligan Alex (Malcolm McDowell) has a “good time” – at the tragic expense of others. His journey from amoral punk to brainwashed proper citizen and back again forms the dynamic arc of Kubrick’s future-shock vision of Anthony Burgess’ novel.
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal) is a young, roguish Irishman who’s determined, in any way, to make a life for himself as a wealthy nobleman. Enlisting in the British Army and fighting in Europe’s Seven Years War, Barry deserts, then joins the Prussian army, gets promoted to the rank of a spy, and becomes a pupil to a Chevalier and con artist/gambler. Barry then lies, dupes, duels and seduces his way up the social ladder, entering into a lustful but loveless marriage to a wealthy countess named Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson). He takes the name of Barry Lyndon, settles in England with wealth and power beyond his wildest dreams, before eventually falling into ruin.
The Shining (1980)
From a script he co-adapted from the Stephen King novel, Kubrick melds vivid performances, menacing settings, dreamlike tracking shots and shock after shock into a milestone of the macabre. The Shining is the director’s epic tale of a man in a snowbound hotel descending into murderous delusions. In a signature role, Jack Nicholson (“Heeeere’s Johnny!”) stars as Jack Torrance, who’s come to the elegant, isolated Overlook Hotel as off-season caretaker with his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son (Danny Lloyd).
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
A superb ensemble falls in for Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant saga about the Vietnam War and the dehumanizing process that turns people into trained killers. The scathing indictment of a film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. ‘Joker’ (Matthew Modine), ‘Animal Mother’ (Adam Baldwin), ‘Gomer’ (Vincent D’Onofrio), ‘Eightball’ (Dorian Harewood) and ‘Cowboy’ (Arliss Howard) are some of the Marine recruits experiencing boot-camp hell under the punishing command of the foul-mouthed Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermy). The action is savage, the story unsparing, and the dialogue is spiked with scathing humor.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Kubrick’s daring and controversial last film is a bracing psychosexual journey through a haunting dreamscape, a riveting suspense tale and a career milestone for stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Cruise plays a doctor who plunges into an erotic foray that threatens his marriage – and may ensnare him in a murder mystery – after his wife’s (Kidman) admission of sexual longings. As the story sweeps from doubt and fear to self-discovery and reconciliation, Kubrick orchestrates it with masterful flourishes. His graceful tracking shots, rich colors and startling images are some of the bravura traits that show Kubrick as a filmmaker for the ages.
About the Documentaries:
- Kubrick Remembered – NEW
A new look into the Kubrick archives, with special appearances by Christiane Kubrick. Featuring never-seen footage of Stanley’s works, his house and his film production facilities. - Stanley Kubrick In Focus – NEW to Blu-ray
Spielberg, Soderbergh, Stone, Friedkin, Scorsese and others tell how Kubrick’s directorial style influenced them and how his unique style was developed - Once Upon a Time…A Clockwork Orange – NEW to the U.S.
Co-written by critic Michel Ciment and featuring interviews with a psychologist and a sociologist, Once Upon a Time…‘A Clockwork Orange’ is a wonderfully unusual cine-documentary that focuses more on the titular movie’s historical context and philosophy than on its production and reception. The documentary benefits from archival audio commentary by the late Stanley Kubrick, who offers his rationale for making the controversial, devilishly prescient proto-punk cult classic: “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”
- Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures
Kubrick’s career comes into sharp focus in this compelling documentary narrated by Tom Cruise. Fascinating footage glimpses Kubrick in his early years, at work on film sets and at home, augmented by candid commentary from collaborators, colleagues and family. Produced and directed by Jan Harlan, the brother of Christiane Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick’s widow.
- O’Lucky Malcolm!
A documentary about the life and career of actor Malcolm McDowell, produced and directed by Jan Harlan and edited by Katia de Vidas.
