Color Me Kubrick (2005/DVD-Video)
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: C+ Film: B
During
his reign as the most important filmmaker alive, Stanley Kubrick stayed out of
the public eye in ways that only fueled his legend. Not many people even knew enough about his
films, let alone what he looked like. As
each film was waited on with great anticipation, the slowly increasing appetite
for Kubrick just added to and hyped up him and his work. For ten years, a conman named Alan Conway
decided to impersonate Kubrick and got away with it longer than anyone could
have imagined.
He hardly
knew about Kubrick or his films, but took advantage of the buzz (especially
among artists) and Brian Cook’s Color Me
Kubrick (2005) shows us how with John Malkovich giving one of the best
performances he has given in a long time as Conway. Things start with two Punk teens in the U.K.
going to what they think is Kubrick’s home, but when they get there, they find
an old man who is clueless as to who they are looking for and what they are
talking about. They wonder if he is a
butler, but he is just an old married man.
Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore in Goldfinger
and Ms. Catherine Gale from The Avengers)
plays his wife in a clever bit of casting.
The film
could have settled for those referential moments, but Anthony Frewin’s
screenplay is more interesting, charting Conway and those he hoodwinks as they
all want to be a piece of something big and exciting as big as the biggest
movie screen; a feeling the increasing fanbase and imitators of Kubrick feel
now more than ever today. So good is
this that you do not even need to know or like Kubrick, because as the title
suggests, the cache and respectability of an unprecedented combination of
critical and commercial success that only a fool would pass up is
irresistible. As funny as it is clever, Color Me Kubrick deserves a big
audience and the more people see it, the more they will talk about it.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image can have a dullness to it, yet tries
often to imitate the look of Kubrick films in amusing ways. Howard Atherton, B.S.C., deserves credit for
trying and outdoing most of the Kubrick imitators. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is just fine with
good dialogue and decent surrounds, which include the many Classical pieces
Kubrick used in his career. Some actual
original Kubrick music was also used.
The combination is decent.
There is
only one extra (unless you are as amused by the main menu as we were) and that
is a long behind-the-scenes documentary Being Alan Conway running about 50
minutes and loaded with great footage and stories of the actual Kubrick. All in all, this is a great disc of a very
interesting film, belonging on the same shelf as Kubrick’s films and the great A Life In Pictures documentary.
- Nicholas Sheffo
