Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze

Rating:
Summary: Only if you are a true Kubrick fan
Review: I was so so offended by the slackness and cheekiness of this book that I absolutely had to write a review... The writing style is so bad it will make your head spin like a top. The sentences run on forever, and Professor Nelson can't seem to keep to a point at all. He spends most of his time impressing himself instead of trying to communicate with readers. Don't bother with this one unless you are a true Kubrick diehard.

Rating:
Summary: Only if you are a true Kubrick fan
Review: I was so so offended by the slackness and cheekiness of this book that I absolutely had to write a review... The writing style is so bad it will make your head spin like a top. The sentences run on forever, and Professor Nelson can't seem to keep to a point at all. He spends most of his time impressing himself instead of trying to communicate with readers. Don't bother with this one unless you are a true Kubrick diehard.

Rating:
Summary: Good scholarship, occasionally overwhelming
Review: Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze by Thomas Allen Nelson ...is one of the best Kubrick books available. Nelson discusses all of the films, and devotes a chapter to each one beginning with Lolita. There are photographs, too, but the printing is so lousy for these that they are easily ignored. The text is the most important material here. Nelson is an astute critic, and his text is informed by a comprehensive knowledge of film history and the realist and formalist schools. Although he uses the term mise en scène more times that I would care to tell you, his prose is immediate, conversational, and engaging. Here's one example from his 30-page essay on The Shining:
Early in the film, for instance, they learn how to negotiate the corridors of the hotel ("to leave a trail of breadcrumbs," to quote Wendy), and in once scene Danny moves in a circle around the Colorado Lounge on his Big Wheel tricycle, while Jack tends to remain stationary within its center. Wendy and Danny explore the hedge maze and complete a circular journey that travels into and out of its diabolical design. Jack, on the other hand, imitates what Borges characterizes as the death-in-life of the "North" (that is, northern European intellectualism)-that yearning for a totally rationalized world without those crevices of unreason that arouse despair in some and imagination in others-rather than the "South's" desire to traverse the maze and engage its multiplicity, to confront fate and choice, and to outface oblivion in an act of creation.
Whew.

Rating:
Summary: Pompous Pedantry -- PASS!
Review: People need to swallow a valium and take an honest look...I also (unfortunately) had Nelson as a teacher at SDSU and found him (like his writing) to be easily the most contrived, dreary, plotting dogmatist that ever existed. His theories on screenwriting are pedantic beyond belief. No wonder he's never sold anything. His ideas on film and film-makers will bore you to tears with heights of banal pseudo-intellectualism. You want imagination? You want passion? You want non-stilted, non-BS laden writing? You want something that makes sense? Then go somewhere else and definitely do NOT ever take one of his classes! But if all you want to do is throw away your money than...

Rating:
Summary: Best Film Study on Kubrick that I've seen so far, honestly
Review: Probably the best study on Kubrick that is out right now. (And, yes, I have talked to Nelson. He is expanding the book to include FMJ and EWS. And I simply cannot wait until it comes out! Probably some time next spring). I've read the Walker book. And that comes close. But this book is certainly the most exhaustive and insightful piece of work you'll read on Kubrick. It will literally change the way you see movies period. You'll never look upon 'The Shining' the same way. Indeed, upon any of his films in the same way. I must say, it's like I felt my jaw dropping to the floor when I was reading this. This book will tell you EXACTLY why Kubrick is the film genius eveyone says he is. Only after reading Nelson's book will you find just how much can be said in a film. I was absolutely enthralled by every analysis. A must-read for any aspiring Kubrick fans. Or for any film buff anywhere.... who wants to learn something....

Rating:
Summary: Best Film Study on Kubrick that I've seen so far, honestly
Review: Probably the best study on Kubrick that is out right now. (And, yes, I have talked to Nelson. He is expanding the book to include FMJ and EWS. And I simply cannot wait until it comes out! Probably some time next spring). I've read the Walker book. And that comes close. But this book is certainly the most exhaustive and insightful piece of work you'll read on Kubrick. It will literally change the way you see movies period. You'll never look upon 'The Shining' the same way. Indeed, upon any of his films in the same way. I must say, it's like I felt my jaw dropping to the floor when I was reading this. This book will tell you EXACTLY why Kubrick is the film genius eveyone says he is. Only after reading Nelson's book will you find just how much can be said in a film. I was absolutely enthralled by every analysis. A must-read for any aspiring Kubrick fans. Or for any film buff anywhere.... who wants to learn something....

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful view
Review: There can be no greater praise for a book about Kubrick than to say that it is worthy of its subject. This one is. The opening chapter gives the bare biographical facts, and attempts to dispel a few of the myths about Kubrick's personality - not least the idea that, for example, a man's real or journalistically endowed flying phobia should have the least relevance for a viewer or a critic of his films. The next chapter analyses the early films up to the first masterpiece, Paths of Glory; and each subsequent film (except for the compromised Spartacus) has a chapter to itself. Nelson's critiques are detailed, comprehensive, thoroughly readable and constructive - which is to say, favourable. He appreciates the films and wishes others to appreciate them too. This revised and expanded edition contains, in the first chapter, a charming tribute to the director and, in two new chapters, analyses of Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut which show that, in the intervening years between The Shining and the present, Nelson's abilities have diminished as little as Kubrick's. All the essays in the book can be read and enjoyed for their own sake - I was especially fond of the one on A Clockwork Orange, long before I was able to see the film itself - but they will also make you long to be back there in the dark, sharing the artist's vision with the eyes Nelson has widened for you.

Rating:
Summary: Good, could be better
Review: This book about Kubrick is by far the most probing of his work. Nelson goes into so much detail about each film--nicely excluding the early films and Spartacus, which don't fit into Kubrick's signature style--that its exhausting. But most of his info is psychological, and this can be very confusing to people like me who aren't educated in such metaphysics. He goes off on lots of tangents that I, being a literate and knowledgeable person, sometimes just don't understand. He makes some good points though and the book is good. I admit I'll probably look for the new edition with Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut added on.

Rating:
Summary: Indispensable book on Stanley Kubrick
Review: This volume stands alone as a model of film criticism on the works of Stanley Kubrick. The book contains individual chapters on `Lolita' through `The Shining'. One of the things that I find so fascinating about this book is not only Nelson's ability to assess the individual films to such an analytical degree, but also to evaluate them as a progressive whole. It astounds me how much insight Nelson brings to Kubrick's films. Will there ever be an expanded version containing chapters on `Full Metal Jacket' and `Eyes Wide Shut'? One can only hope.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting, if plodding, analysis of Kubrick's films.
Review: Though Thomas Allen Nelson's book on the films of Stanley Kubrick is not for everyone, fans of the famed auteur will have much to enjoy and think about while reading. Nelson is an obviously intelligent person with much to say, but I think maybe a little TOO much to say, his book is at times plodding, and only very perceptive Kubrickians will be able to understand his meaning. All the same, I enjoyed the book excellent well, and Thomas Allen Nelson's insights are fascinating. The important thing is, I had a deeper understanding of Kubrick's film afterwards