Stanley Kubrick Is Suddenly Everywhere: Watch Two New Video Tributes
Stanley Kubrick died more than 15 years ago, but if you’re like most movie fans, you still think about him approximately 2,001 times a day: After all, this is the guy who created some of the most joy-inducing moments in film history, from the trippy cosmos jaunt of 2001: A Space Odyssey to the giddy bomb drop of Dr. Strangelove to the end credits sequence of Barry Lyndon. His work has been studied and spoofed so many times, you’d think there’d be nothing new to add. Yet two new clips have come along that each find ways to celebrate the director’s genius and reaffirm his influence.
The first up is a newly created 2001 trailer, produced for the film’s U.K. re-release in November (not long after the arrival of Christopher Nolan’s 2001-indebted Interstellar). Even if you’ve seen 2001 countless times, the new trailer — which plays up the majesty and menace of space itself — will make you want to open the Blu-ray doors and watch it again:
Next up is a Singapore-produced Ikea ad that satirizes the infamous hallway-bike sequences from The Shining, Kubrick’s 1980 hotel-set thriller that, depending on whom you ask, is either a cinematic metaphor for the Americans slaughtering of Native Americans, or Kubrick’s attempt to explain his involvement with the faking of the Apollo 11 moon-landing. Only time will tell what conspiracy theorists will make of this cheerful ad, which replaces the chilly confines of the Overlook Hotel with a cramped Ikea store. We look forward to the next Ikea-Kubrick pairing, in which several masked, nude partygoers attempt to decipher Swedish-language instruction manuals as the piano-plink score from Eyes Wide Shut plays in the background.
