February 9, 1960

Dear Mr. Bergman,

You have most certainly received enough acclaim and success throughout the world to make this note quite unnecessary. But for whatever it’s worth, I should like to add my praise and gratitude as a fellow director for the unearthly and brilliant contribution you have made to the world by your films (I have never been in Sweden and have therefore never had the pleasure of seeing your theater work). Your vision of life has moved me deeply, much more deeply than I have ever been moved by any films. I believe you are the greatest film-maker at work today. Beyond that, allow me to say you are unsurpassed by anyone in the creation of mood and atmosphere, the subtlety of performance, the avoidance of the obvious, the truthfulness and completeness of characterization. To this one must also add everything else that goes into the making of a film. I believe you are blessed with wonderful actors. Max von Sydow and Ingrid Thulin live vividly in my memory, and there are many others in your acting company whose names escape me. I wish you and all of them the very best of luck, and I shall look forward with eagerness to each of your films.

Best Regards,
Stanley Kubrick
 
Via Letters Of Note

 
February 9, 1960

Dear Mr. Bergman,

You have most certainly received enough acclaim and success throughout the world to make this note quite unnecessary. But for whatever it’s worth, I should like to add my praise and gratitude as a fellow director for the unearthly and brilliant contribution you have made to the world by your films (I have never been in Sweden and have therefore never had the pleasure of seeing your theater work). Your vision of life has moved me deeply, much more deeply than I have ever been moved by any films. I believe you are the greatest film-maker at work today. Beyond that, allow me to say you are unsurpassed by anyone in the creation of mood and atmosphere, the subtlety of performance, the avoidance of the obvious, the truthfulness and completeness of characterization. To this one must also add everything else that goes into the making of a film. I believe you are blessed with wonderful actors. Max von Sydow and Ingrid Thulin live vividly in my memory, and there are many others in your acting company whose names escape me. I wish you and all of them the very best of luck, and I shall look forward with eagerness to each of your films.

Best Regards,
Stanley Kubrick
 
Via Open Culture

 
I guess in an effort to get people to read more, New Zealand online bookseller Whitcoulls came up with this interesting ad campaign which incorporates every word from Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel “A Clockwork Orange” on posters. I wouldn’t mind owning one of these. 

Ad agency: DraftFCB, Auckland
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Alex from ‘A Clockwork Orange’ stuffed doll

(via Copyranter)

 
This genius redubbing of Darth Vader’s voice with that of camp British comic actor Kenneth Williams is “fantabulosa”!

Williams, for readers who have never heard of him, was best known for his roles in the “Carry On” films, the radio series Round the Horn and for being one of the first actors to play pretty obviously gay characters in UK popular culture. He was also known for his razor-sharp wit and was a popular talkshow guest of 70s/80s UK TV. You could, I suppose, consider him to be the British “Paul Lynde” in many respects.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Tears of a Clown: The Wit and Wisdom of Kenneth Williams

(via HYST)

 
This video from Tim Baker and The Kleptones combines music by Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Planets, Ian Dury and Rush with clips from El Topo, Zabriskie Point, Walkabout, Enter The Void and more to create something beautiful, mysterious and evocative—a mystical desert noir.
 

Painting by Eunice San Miguel of Los Angeles
 
Here’s a blog post ode to one of my most beloved films Harold and Maude. I guess I’m not the only one totally gaga over this movie—I put together a collection of artists’ creations in a shared celebration of their affection for Harold and Maude too.

By Julian Callos of Los Angeles
 

Harold-n-Maude by leodhas
 
More after the jump…

 
Yes this is a real thing and it is spectacularly sad amusing. Rent-A-Friend was released in 1986 for lonely peeps with VCRs who, well… needed a pal. Sam (your new rent-a-friend) has long converstions with you about life and shit. He’ll even hang up the phone just to listen to you!

If you’re super lonely or just need a shoulder to cry on, you can buy Sam for $16.00 here.

 
(via IHC)

 
Glasgow-based artist Angela Tiara makes these incredible custom order plushies. Here’s her stuffed rendition of Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange. I checked Angela’s Etsy account, and it looks like she’s no longer selling her work there. However, it does appear you can still contact her on Etsy and she’ll make one for you. Her dolls sell for around $50.

Makes the perfect gift for that troubled child in your life. (Now I know what to get for my troubled child’s husband’s birthday.)

(via Cherrybombed )

 
It’s Ken Russell’s birthday, and to wish the great genius of British cinema many happy returns, here is his classic 1962 film on Edward Elgar.

Originally made for the prestigious BBC arts series Monitor to celebrate the series 100th episode. Commissioned by Arts Editor, Huw Wheldon, Russell’s film was TV’s first dramatized-documentary, “a major milestone in the history of the television documentary, whose impact was such that it was quickly repeated after its initial broadcast on 11 November 1962, an almost unprecedented honor at the time,” as Michael Brooke at Screen Online explains:

Elgar was made under a series of Wheldon-imposed restrictions, notably a ban on dramatisations of the lives of real people. Russell agreed a compromise: although Elgar and his contemporaries would be portrayed by actors, they would never speak and would mostly be filmed in long shot. Russell exploited these limitations brilliantly, the absence of dialogue letting him fill the soundtrack with almost wall-to-wall Elgar, including pieces that had rarely been heard since their composition. Wheldon himself contributed the relatively sparse narration, but the film’s true eloquence comes from the fusion of Elgar’s music and Russell’s images.

Given the film’s lowly origins, its visual fluidity is remarkable: this couldn’t be further removed from a dry historical lecture. When Russell’s camera isn’t swooping and gliding over Elgar’s beloved Malvern Hills, it’s fixating on strangely arresting shots: the sequence covering Lady Elgar’s death begins with tendrils of mist snaking through a silver birch wood, continues with a dark room full of mysteriously shrouded furniture and ends with the bereaved Elgar’s new and obsessive interest in microscopic natural phenomena. Most television dates rapidly, but over forty years on, Elgar is still startlingly fresh and inventive. Even the black-and-white photography looks like a deliberate artistic choice as opposed to a then-universal convention.

 
On Sunday as part of the grand experiment in entertainment excess that is the five-day long Everything Is Festival! held at Cinefamily here in Los Angeles, there will be a Firesign Theatre mini-film festival starting at 4:30p.m. (just after Neil Hamburger’s Dora Hall tribute, which starts at 2:30).

The event will feature two Firesign Theatre shorts that have not been shown theatrically in many, many years (probably not since the mid-70s, in fact) and that are not currently available on home video (yet), plus other previously unseen goodies and rarities.

First up will be the only cinematic documentation of their legendary free-form radio shows, Martian Space Party. The “Martian Space Party” show was the final program in the “Let’s Eat” radio series of 1972 and was staged for cameras and a small audience.

Everything You Know is Wrong, which is a lip-sync’d visual interpretation of their 1975 album of the same name, will be premiering in a new 5.1 surround sound presentation, prepared from a digital dupe of the film supervised by famed cinematographer Allen Daviau (E.T. Bugsy, The Color Purple).

Plus some other SUPER SECRET Firesign Theatre films and videos and a live Q&A with Peter Bergman and Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theatre, EYKIW director Allen Daviau and Firesign Theatre archivist Taylor Jessen, author of the new book and DVD-ROM Duke of Madness Motors. Yours truly will be asking the questions.

Below, the trailer, which is already in progress…