Alison CastleReviews
Author of The Stanley Kubrick Archives
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Reviews
The Stanley Kubrick Archives (Bibliotheca Universalis) by Alison Castle
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camharlow2 | 1 other review | Jul 17, 2020 | This carefully collated compilation of writings, interviews, essays, photographs, and artifacts on Stanley Kubrick's illustrious career is the perfect reference for any fan. Each movie is thoroughly covered, including behind-the-scenes information and plenty of supplemental visuals that give more context about the making of each film. The interviews (with Kubrick) that often accommodate each movie/chapter provide the most value and give the reader a glimpse into the mind of this movie genius. A highly recommended read for all movie fans.
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rsplenda477 | 1 other review | Apr 15, 2019 | I kind of cheated with this book, by which I mean I mostly just looked at the pictures. But that's the point of something like this, right?
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gossamerchild88 | Mar 30, 2018 | A monster of a book (4,5 kg!), even though I only own the popular not the limited edition. Whether Kubrick's Napoleon would have become a great movie is debatable. Its script reads like a cross of Eyes Wide Shut (Napoleon - Josephine) and Barry Lyndon (my least favorite Kubrick movie if I ignore the violence of A Clockwork Orange which makes it almost unwatchable for me). Kubrick has amassed an incredible amount of data (not knowledge!) about the Napoleonic era. The chaotic organization made this data almost unusable. Taschen has put the 17.000 illustrations Kubrick's researchers have amassed on-line (in a very inconvenient and restrictive way). The pictures are badly annotated and often lack attribution. Finding an illustration again must have been a nightmare as would have been finding any kind of information in this pre-computer era. What Taschen didn't put on-line were the thousands of location and uniform shots - a missed chance!
The materiel is, even in the basic edition, gorgeously presented. The written texts, however, are disappointing and the analysis stops at a very, very basic level. The author's knowledge about the Napoleonic era is, Jean Tulard excepted, also not very deep. Tulard handed in an article which will not have cost him much effort or research to write. Overall, the effort by Taschen stops short of fully presenting and digesting the masses of materiel Kubrick has assembled.
The materiel is, even in the basic edition, gorgeously presented. The written texts, however, are disappointing and the analysis stops at a very, very basic level. The author's knowledge about the Napoleonic era is, Jean Tulard excepted, also not very deep. Tulard handed in an article which will not have cost him much effort or research to write. Overall, the effort by Taschen stops short of fully presenting and digesting the masses of materiel Kubrick has assembled.
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