Sony G90 manual Special Editions Kubrick and The Space Monsters

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Special Editions:

Kubrick and The Space Monsters

he fanatics among you will know, by the time you

read this, that the long-awaited Stanley Kubrick

boxed set of seven films, released through Warner

Home Video, is a great big disappointment.

I am, at the time of this writing, just experiencing that

first wave of anger and incredulity. The DVD set was

released, officially, on the very day this article had to be

turned in, and I only managed by wit and ingenuity – hardy-

har – to scrounge the Kubrick package a few days earlier,

no thanks to Warner’s folks.

And small wonder.

The set consists of Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A

Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The

Shining, and Full Metal Jacket. MGM issued three other and

designed the package and approved its contents. In which

case, double the mystery and double my doubts about cer-

tain of Kubrick’s judgments. None of the discs are “anamor-

phically” enhanced, which is a crying shame. And most of

the transfers have been done at relatively low bit rates,

which results, in too many cases, in soft pictures – even on

a standard monitor.

Lolita, Strangelove, and Barry Lyndon fare best in

terms of picture quality (read: definition), even though the

film stock used in shooting Lolita (as seen in the theater)

wasn’t of consistent quality: Exteriors are sometimes soft in

focus, while the interiors are just jim-dandy. Exactly the

same may be said for Strangelove, which also has more

speckles than you’d ever expect from an element that ought

earlier Kubrick films separately: Killer’s Kiss, The Killing,

and Paths of Glory. Kubrick’s director-for-hire flick, the epic

Spartacus, evidently had been disowned by the man.

I have no idea why the three earlier films weren’t

included in the “official” Stanley-approved set. Maybe, as in

the case of Spartacus, he didn’t consider them equal to his

best. What we were told, by Warner, was that Kubrick

to be in better shape. (But, then, so does The Shining in

places.) Lyndon looks spectacular, better than I’ve seen it

on any transfer. Note particularly the available-light scenes,

shot with only candles for illumination, which are now

sharply defined with much less color saturation and much

more natural skin tones.

2001 is regrettably exactly the same transfer (unen-