Still, anyone with a shred of interest into the mechanics of 2001 will find the behind-the-scenes travails and breakthroughs...
Here’s the story behind “The Dawn of Man” sequence that opens Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, told by the alpha ape himself, Moonwatcher, a.k.a. mime/choreographer Richter.
The movie’s reputation for cinematic innovation precedes it, but it is nonetheless startling to learn of the effort that went into just the opening 18 minutes, where man-apes do battle and a bone is tossed into the future. Richter was a 28-year-old starving mime artist when he got the call from Kubrick to come suggest how the scene might be done, and he spent the next year working with Kubrick’s staff of inspired madmen to get it right. He uses a diary format—jumpy, fraught, present-tense—to capture that period, to explain the workings of mime (Kubrick very much wanted to avoid the man-in-a-monkey-suit look, turning to mime because often “actors can’t move. Dancers and stuntmen can’t act. Mimes can do both”), the conventions he developed to mimic ape movement, the difficulties and pleasures of leading a group of actors as the choreographer, the creative efforts of the make-up artists, and not least the effort of trying to keep it from Kubrick that he was a heroin addict working to detoxify, but nowhere near close. Both the diary form and the film industry proceed by repetition, but one could wish Richter had trimmed back the references to mimes’ preoccupation with movement, and there can be more detail than even a 2001 zealot wants: “Last week I was given a dressing room suite that has its own bathtub and sitting room. It’s really big with furniture and curtains on the windows.” Nor is Richter’s fawning over Kubrick appealing, however much a genius he was: “Stanley gathered us around him as he, like Merwin, conjured up this wonderful majestic film.”
Still, anyone with a shred of interest into the mechanics of 2001 will find the behind-the-scenes travails and breakthroughs worth the windy iterations. (Illustrated)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7867-1073-X
Page Count: 176
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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