The Stanley Kubrick Archives [Hardcover]

I have two favourite publishers at the moment because they have realised that a book is more than just glued together sheets of paper with words/images on them. Both Viz-Media and Taschen understand that a book is an experience and an artwork in its own right. That being the case I eagerly purchased a copy of this book expecting high standards and I was not disappointed.
The book looks wonderful and is bound using the best materials. It's built to last. It is supplied in a dedicated cardboard box which owners should retain and includes an interview with Mr Kubrick on an audio CD. The inside front cover retains the CD and the strip of 70mm frames from 2001 that first edition copies include. Like the reviewer below I have doubts about the film strip and would prefer to have kept the reel intact. My frames are of Frank Poole exercising in the carousel.
Each of Kubrick's films has a section and they are written up in detail and style. The accompanying images are generally excellent and well presented.
This book is more than just an entertaining and informative tome about Stanley Kubrick's directorial output because it looks and feels so lavish: an event!

I was very, very lucky to have recently acquired this monumental book from another seller in France, and to top it all it was a copy from the first print run. Thus it included both the CD and the strip of the 70 mm print from '2001: A Space Odyssey' - this one's from the sequence of the round space shuttle being brought down on the moving platform into an inner trench in the Moon base! Those two items alone would be worth the cost of this pricy volume, and they certainly add to its extraordinary overall quality, for this book is all around printed with the finest of materials.
I still haven't had the time to start reading the text sections, but visually this is indeed a sensational piece of work! One can see that the author, Alison Castle, and Taschen, the publishing house, treated it as a labour of love and with heartfelt respect towards the legendary Stanley Kubrick, his work and life. Copious samples of screenplay pages, letters, props, production drawings, and a veritable humongous amount of never before seen photographs of Kubrick at work on the sets of his films and at home are reproduced in pristine condition.
One of the elements which I found so fantastic about the material displayed here is that not only do we get to see the director at his most serious and focused mode working behind the cameras and surveying the proceedings on the movie sets, but there's also a lighter side of him on display as well. There's Kubrick pretending to be tossing a rubgy ball on the set of 'Lolita', throwing a custard pie onto a technician's face with amusement on 'Dr. Strangelove' - Christiane, his wife, can also be seen throwing another one on another part of the War Room set -, we can see Kubrick fondly embracing his young daughter Vivian at his garden, or self portrait photographs taken by Kubrick himself staring at his own stills camera in the midst of filming and relaxing, and even a full page photo of him up close showing a big and bright smile on the set of 'A Clockwork Orange'. And there is much, much more to enjoy!
As a whole, this is a lavish, gorgeous and extremely well designed and researched book, with everyone involved deserving kudos for putting it together, including the Kubrick Estate for allowing the late director's archives to be disclosed and shown in such excellent taste. It is a brave purchase, yet it's really worth every cent spent on it, and of course an essential buy for the Kubrick aficionados like myself and for every serious film buff.

When I first saw the larger edition of this in a bookshop, I was sorely tempted to buy it, but then decided against it, because I thought it was too expensive and basically, I would be better off investing the money into completing my DVD/BluRay collection of SK's films. Well, now that you can get this smaller, less expensive edition, there really is no reason to hesitate any more. First of all, yes, it is smallER, but the first edition was an insanely large format, and this is still more than impressive, so don't think you'll get a cheap treat, because this is a very beautiful book indeed. Secondly, yes, the first section, the one with the stills, is sort of pointless, because if I want to see SK's images, I want to see them in motion. But the second section is just brilliant. You see the sets and members of the crew, you see costumes and props, production notes, screenplays, and storyboards with SK's comments scribbled all over them. Just one thing: somewhat like the documentary "A Life in Pictures", this isn't really a good work to learn a lot about the actual production process of the films. There are interviews and tons of very helpful notes in the second part of this book, but most of these add up to a rather touristy sense of what it must have been like to be there, with SK, working on these films. Even a biography that I picked up more or less at random in a library gave me more information about the really technical aspects of SK's films than this book did. Here, you get a feel, not an account. So if you are a fan, fascinated with this man's devotion to his art, then you'll find many nice things and maybe a few real surprises in this volume. If you are looking for more differentiated insights into what makes his films what they are, then perhaps you should look for more academic literature.