Kubrick

"Stanley Kubrick: A Biography," by Vincent LoBrutto. Donald L. Fine Books.640 pages. $29.95.The world's appetite for American sportswear, records and films is growing. Each year it seems whole forests are sacrificed to print books about the stars at the center of our expanding entertainment universe. Yet few if any of these works provide an understanding of why today's American popular culture is as influential as the automobile or the electric light. Unfortunately, with "Stanley Kubrick: A Biography," Vincent LoBrutto, the author of a number of books on film and a professional film editor, has forfeited an excellent opportunity to break the trend.

At 7 p.m. Saturday in MICA's Brown Center, David Simon, the creator of "The Wire," will host Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory," and explain why it's just as pertinent and powerful today as it was in 1957. That's when this movie first appeared — and was promptly banned in France for 18 years because of its savage debunking of the conduct of the French Army in the First World War. Kubrick uses a suicide mission to expose civilized European savagery. He gives us military stupidity in microcosm with this tale of autocratic leaders ( Adolphe Menjou, George Macready)

There were two Stanley Kubricks. First came the Bronx-bred wunderkind with a chip on his soldier the size of the Triborough Bridge, ready to take on veteran Hollywood craftsmen and even producer-actors such as Kirk Douglas. This fellow came up with a parade of smart, groundbreaking features from The Killing to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Wrestling with dominating stars or maneuvering with money-men helped imbue Kubrick's films with uncanny connections to life as it is lived, even when his scenarios went back in time or out of this world.

David Simon has repaid a long-held literary debt — with interest. On Tuesday, Penguin Classics reissues "Paths of Glory," Humphrey Cobb's surgically sharp novel of the First World War. To Simon, Cobb's 1935 rendering of a doomed French assault and its calamitous aftermath has repercussions that go beyond its immediate anti-war themes. He hears Cobb's characters every time he listens to BP executives trying to explain destructive actions taken for short-term gains. And when bureaucrats assess Hurricane Katrina with "we all did our best" cliches, they remind him of French generals rationalizing the debacles of Verdun.

Stanley Kubrick, whose dark vision of human nature seemed to suffuse each of his movies, died yesterday at his home outside London. He was 70. The cause of death was not released.Kubrick was that rare director who left an imprint on every work, regardless of the genre. "The Killing" (1956), a taut crime drama starring Sterling Hayden, was a classic, gritty film noir; "Paths of Glory" (1957) was an elegantly filmed indictment of the hypocrisy of the military in World War I; "Lolita" (1962)

"Everybody pretty much acknowledges he's the man," Jack Nicholson says of director Stanley Kubrick, "and I still feel that underrates him." That's pretty much the tenor of "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures," a 2 1/2 -hour documentary on the legendarily spotlight-shunning filmmaker, made with the cooperation of his family and premiering at 7:30 tonight on Cinemax. Produced and directed by Kubrick's longtime assistant Jan Harlan (who was also his brother-in-law), the film includes interviews with family members, co-workers and a host of actors from his films, including Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Matthew Modine, Malcolm McDowell, Keir Dullea, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise (who also narrates)

Near the start of "Shadow of the Vampire," the producer of the 1922 vampire classic "Nosferatu" tells reporters that his 34-year-old director, F. W. Murnau, is Germany's greatest filmmaker. In 1964, when Stanley Kubrick began 4 1/2 years' work on "2001: A Space Odyssey," one could argue that he, at age 36, was America's greatest young director. By 1974, the mantle had passed to Francis Ford Coppola, 35, who had already done the first two "Godfather" films and "The Conversation." All these filmmakers came to mind in the past few weeks.

At 7 p.m. Saturday in MICA's Brown Center, David Simon, the creator of "The Wire," will host Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory," and explain why it's just as pertinent and powerful today as it was in 1957. That's when this movie first appeared — and was promptly banned in France for 18 years because of its savage debunking of the conduct of the French Army in the First World War. Kubrick uses a suicide mission to expose civilized European savagery. He gives us military stupidity in microcosm with this tale of autocratic leaders ( Adolphe Menjou, George Macready)

"Eyes Wide Shut," the final film of director Stanley Kubrick, presents the late filmmaker's admirers with a tantalizing but ultimately confounding coda to one of the most formidable bodies of work in the cinema.The psychological portrait of a marriage at a pivotal moment, "Eyes Wide Shut" raises some fascinating questions about commitment, intimacy, sexuality and the power of imagination in relationships. And Kubrick's last gasp, which was bound to be a haunting final statement, will surely leave filmgoers with a lingering sense of the mysteries that abound in every emotional transaction.

In a summer when all pictures have a moment that makes an audience gasp and ask whether a landscape, a stunt or even a character is "real," Steven Spielberg has centered an entire movie on that question. Set in the suburban Northeast in the mid-21st century, "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" tells the story of a prototype android little boy - a pallid tyke named David (Haley Joel Osment). He is the first android to generate dreams and spontaneous emotions. He's the first one capable of love.

There were two Stanley Kubricks. First came the Bronx-bred wunderkind with a chip on his soldier the size of the Triborough Bridge, ready to take on veteran Hollywood craftsmen and even producer-actors such as Kirk Douglas. This fellow came up with a parade of smart, groundbreaking features from The Killing to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Wrestling with dominating stars or maneuvering with money-men helped imbue Kubrick's films with uncanny connections to life as it is lived, even when his scenarios went back in time or out of this world.

A selection of modern African films will be screening in Baltimore this weekend, as part of the Baltimore Museum of Art's 16th annual "African Spirit Series," a celebration of African culture. Tomorrow, the offerings from the African Film Traveling Series include South Africa's Dumisani Phakathi's Don't F*** With Me I Have 51 Brothers and Sisters (noon), chronicling the director's search for his extended family; You, Waguih (1:50 p.m.), French director Namir Abdel Messeeh's look at his Egyptian father's abuse at the hands of Egyptian authorities; A Child's Love Story (2:30 p.m.)

Maryland Film Festival chief Jed Dietz reports from the Sundance Film Festival that a recent recipient of the Producers Club of Maryland Fellowship - an annual award given to a project emerging from the Sundance Lab - is up for this year's Grand Jury Prize: Michael Burke's The Mudge Boy, the story of an isolated rural teen-ager (Emile Hirsch, of The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys) who mourns for his mother by mimicking her voice and donning her fur coat. Dietz credits executive producer Stanley Tucci with catalyzing the production and Burke with building on the slim experience of his one acclaimed short, Fish Belly White, and turning out a debut feature that has made its backers proud.

In a summer when all pictures have a moment that makes an audience gasp and ask whether a landscape, a stunt or even a character is "real," Steven Spielberg has centered an entire movie on that question. Set in the suburban Northeast in the mid-21st century, "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" tells the story of a prototype android little boy - a pallid tyke named David (Haley Joel Osment). He is the first android to generate dreams and spontaneous emotions. He's the first one capable of love.

"Everybody pretty much acknowledges he's the man," Jack Nicholson says of director Stanley Kubrick, "and I still feel that underrates him." That's pretty much the tenor of "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures," a 2 1/2 -hour documentary on the legendarily spotlight-shunning filmmaker, made with the cooperation of his family and premiering at 7:30 tonight on Cinemax. Produced and directed by Kubrick's longtime assistant Jan Harlan (who was also his brother-in-law), the film includes interviews with family members, co-workers and a host of actors from his films, including Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Matthew Modine, Malcolm McDowell, Keir Dullea, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise (who also narrates)

This weekend, satire does not close on Saturday night: It stays open through Sunday at the Maryland Film Festival. On Sunday, at 1 p.m., National Public Radio's Scott Simon is guest host at a screening of Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." It should be a jolly freak-out to hear Simon introduce the film in his resonant NPR tones right before Kubrick's NPR-style narrator announces, "For more than a year, ominous rumors had been privately circulating among high-level Western leaders that the Soviet Union had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the ultimate weapon: a doomsday device."

Private Joker, the grimly iconoclastic Marine who wisecracks his way through boot camp and Vietnam in the memorable Stanley Kubrick film "Full Metal Jacket," is based on a real person: his creator Gustav Hasford, the Alabama-born novelist who died Jan. 29 on an island off the coast of Greece.Gus Hasford's death at age 45 came as no surprise to those who knew him well. Mr. Hasford, long an emotionally troubled man, began suffering from diabetes two years ago. The official cause of his death was heart failure.

Perhaps no director has combined genius with coldness to quite the same degree as Stanley Kubrick. His epic head trip "2001: A Space Odyssey" is as beautiful as a diamond tiara but as warm and feeling as an anthrax germ.The movie, as stunning now (particularly on the Senator's big screen, where it opens today as part of that theater's 70mm film festival) as it was in 1968 when it redefined the concept of special effects, offers a view of the universe's significance and homo sapiens' insignificance.

Near the start of "Shadow of the Vampire," the producer of the 1922 vampire classic "Nosferatu" tells reporters that his 34-year-old director, F. W. Murnau, is Germany's greatest filmmaker. In 1964, when Stanley Kubrick began 4 1/2 years' work on "2001: A Space Odyssey," one could argue that he, at age 36, was America's greatest young director. By 1974, the mantle had passed to Francis Ford Coppola, 35, who had already done the first two "Godfather" films and "The Conversation." All these filmmakers came to mind in the past few weeks.

When the call came in March 1995, Sara Maitland thought it was a prank. The voice on the other end of the line introduced himself as film director Stanley Kubrick, and asked, "Would you like to write a film script for me?""He rang me, no warning," the British author recalls. "I called up my agent and said, 'What do you mean giving up my private phone?' "But the call and offer were both genuine. The next day a contract arrived, beginning Maitland's yearlong adventure as the screenwriter for "A.I."