Fascinating article posted on both Ain’t It Cool News and /Film concerning one of my all time favorite director Stanley Kubrick’s aborted Napoleon project perhaps being made after all, with Steven Spielberg working behind the scenes on the project:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/61262
While normally I’d rejoice at the news, I’m only cautiously optimistic.
As far as I know, there were two major projects left unfinished by Stanley Kubrick when he passed away. Of the two, the one that intrigued me the most was eventually made by director Steven Spielberg in 2001, A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
As a fan of the works of both Mr. Kubrick and Mr. Spielberg, I figured A.I. would be a “can’t miss.” I was excited by the early word of what the film was about and, as the movie’s release date approached, I was breathless with anticipation.
Then the movie came out.
The reviews were -incredibly to my mind- generally negative. The movie was too long. The movie was too obvious. The movie was tedious.
It wasn’t until A.I. was finally released to home video (even back then I found it hard to carve out time to go to a theater!) that I finally got to see it and all that anticipation, all that hope…it simply dissolved.
A.I. is an ambitious film, there is no denying that. But it was also everything the critics said it was. It was way too long and the subject matter was simply not interesting enough (to me) to sustain itself. A.I. was essentially an “adult”/sci-fi version of Pinocchio. Not all that much more, truthfully.
So here I am, cautiously optimistic that, should Mr. Spielberg make Napoleon, it will prove to be a good film/mini-series.
Hopefully, it won’t be as big a disappointment as A.I.