Leave the computer screen behind and venture into the theaters of the Bay Area this week with film-related recommendations from Michael Fox.
The Life and Legend of Stanley Kubrick
Thurs., June 30, 6:30 – 8pm
Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco
Tickets FREE with museum admission ($8 after 5pm)
In 2004, the Deutsches Filmmuseum and Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt mounted a massive exhibit of documents, stills, film clips, props, costumes, cameras and lenses attesting to the innovation and brilliance of a particular Bronx iconoclast. Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition has toured the globe ever since, with its closest stop at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) just over three years ago. It’s finally our turn, with the Contemporary Jewish Museum hosting the eye- and mind-opening show from June 30 through Oct. 30. Various events scheduled during the exhibition’s run feature scholars and authors who strove to pierce the mask, the myth and the maniacal control that Kubrick exerted over his art, his career and his personal life. The aptly titled opening-night panel discussion, “The Life and Legend of Stanley Kubrick,” sets the scene with the late filmmaker’s executive producer (and brother-in-law and documentarian) Jan Harlan and art director (and stepdaughter) Katharina Kubrick sharing the mic with German curators Hans-Peter Reichmann and Tim Heptner.
Also…
There are those who consider Richard Kelly a latter-day Kubrick, or Welles. There’s not enough evidence to make the case, although Kelly (like those maverick geniuses) is talented, independent, uncompromising and skeptical/suspicious of Hollywood backing/meddling. The writer-director of Donnie Darko (can it be 15 years since it came out?) made a strategic error by debuting his much-anticipated follow-up, Southland Tales, at Cannes in 2006 before it was finished, and the mostly nasty response doomed the film to commercial failure and cult status. The film’s reputation, along with its creator’s, are still in flux. Kelly makes a rare personal appearance July 2 at the Roxie to screen a 35mm print of his two-and-a-half-hour sci-fi satire and field questions.
