Kubrick was so heavily influenced by Grimm tales and fantasy novels.. this can be seen in The Shining. The story of Little Red Riding Hood is evoked by the red worn by Wendy in the maze and the way Jack is made to look like the wolf... (An Introduction to Film Analysis, Ryan and Lenos, pg 3)


Also... an awesome archive!!
http://cinearchive.org/search/kubrick

http://www.empireonline.com/features/lee-unkrich-the-shining/p1

This speaks wonders of the legacy and influence of Kubrick's work. Lee Unkrich, the ultimate Shining fan, presents so many small yet detailed references to The Shining... Very interesting to see in mainstream animation movie targeted at children...
 Page 2 of this Empire article shows pictures of all references

Scene from Eyes Wide Shut - Bill is being followed and he walks past the Verona Restaurant we can see the number on the glass at the top of the door way reading 237... another symbol to frame Bill and Jack together

VISUAL

MIRRORS:
   2001 - Bowman looks in the mirror to see he is old in the 18th Century bathroom
   Clockwork Orange - Frank Alexander's house has a hallway of mirrors; mirror in the bathroom; mirror in Alex's bedroom
   The Shining - opening shot of the water is like a mirror; Danny is looking in the mirror when he has a vision; Jack is framed in mirror in bedroom; same mirror shows REDRUM; Jack sees ugly ghost in mirror
   Full Metal Jacket - soldier is holding a small mirror at the scene of Joker and Cowboy's reunion
   Eyes Wide Shut - Bill and Alice always look in mirrors and are framed in mirrors (mirrored relationship)

CORRIDORS:
   2001 - going through the star gate; corridors in the space craft
   Clockwork Orange - tunnels in the city where the old people are
   The Shining - loads of corridors in the hotel and the maze
   Eyes Wide Shut - in the house and in Nathanson's house

SYMMETRY:
   2001 - constant throughout, both vertical and horizontal
   Clockwork Orange - opening shot in the moloko bar; beating the drunk
   The Shining - due to the layout of the hotel and mise en scene almost every frame is symmetrical        Full Metal Jacket - the barracks; room of beds on the training island
   Eyes Wide Shut - the streets; framing in the mansion

FILM NOIR/EXPRESSIONISM:
   2001 - stills of Bowman's contorted face in the star gate
   Clockwork Orange - beating up the drunk; Alex being beaten by old people
   The Shining - when Jack leaves room 237 it is backlit like film noir
   Eyes Wide Shut - lighting used to illuminate Bill's follower in the street

HAND-HELD:
   2001 - when astronauts walking down to monolith pit on moon; when Bowman goes to kill HAL
   Clockwork Orange - when Alex and his droogs break into the writer's house; Alex's attack on the cat woman
   The Shining - majority of filming is hand-held but there are no jerky movements due to steadicam
   Full Metal Jacket - use of steadicam which is unfortunate as documentary style in footage is lost

CIRCLES:
   2001 - planets; moon, space station is shaped like a wheel; shuttle to the moon; pods on Discovery
   Clockwork Orange - light in Alex's room; prisoners walking in circles; layout of the music shop
   The Shining - chandeliers
   Full Metal Jacket - circular doors in Vietnam; squad stand in a circle around dead bodies
   Eyes Wide Shut - circle of naked women; game in toy shop called "The Magic Circle"

SINGLE LIGHT SOURCE: Kubrick worked more with single light sources in his old productions such as Paths of Glory.
   2001 - light comes from the floor of the 18th Century suit at the end of the film
   Clockwork Orange - the light from the moon
   The Shining - during the day, the light appears to reflect off the snow giving every shot a crisp white glare

REVERSE TRACKING:
   2001 - when Bowman is running around the main deck of Discovery 1
   Clockwork Orange - walking through the music shop; Alex and his droogs walking past the river; Alex, Georgie, and Dim walking through the forest.
   The Shining - whenever danger lurks there is reverse tracking; Jack chasing Danny and Danny running away in the maze
   Full Metal Jacket - Hartman walking; the platoon running and on parade; advancing on the road and on patrol
   Eyes Wide Shut - toy shop, corridors, Bill walking through the streets and mansion

OTHERS:
Colours are particularly prominent in 2001 and Eyes Wide Shut; specifically the colour red. In 2001, red represents death, anger, and birth; it is seen at the sunrise of the dawn of man; red meat; red cockpits on the spaceships; HAL's red eye; red suit Bowman wears. In Eyes Wide Shut, red represents sex, temptation, and the Devil; it is seen at the Sonata Cafe; the cab driver is wearing a red shirt; Bill is taken to the mansion in a red car; house is decorated in red; orgy leader is dressed in red; red flowers in hotel; Milich's daughter leaves a blood-red room; Domino's front doors are red; Zeigler's pool table is red. Blue presents ideas such as danger and fear; when Bill imagines Alice and the Naval Officer there is a blue filter.

A Clockwork Orange shows techniques including, zooming out, sped up footage, slow motion, and POV. The opening shot of Alex zooms out to reveal the moloko bar. When Alex takes home two girls from the music shop, the film is sped up. Walking past the river, Alex hits Georgie and Dim; this is in slow mo, as well as when Dim hits Alex with a bottle of moloko outside the health farm. We always see things from Alex's POV which is aided by voice over, but there is also a POV when he jumps out of the window, the camera falls with him,

In The Shining, there is also patterns and power framing. Patterns include the Native American designs on rugs and carpets; the design looks much like a maze (in the shot were Danny is sitting on the carpet playing with his trains, he is framed in the maze-like design foreshadowing the end of the film. Power framing can be seen when Jack and Grady are in the bathroom; we can't see Grady's face, only Jack's which gives him more power, then we see Grady's face and he begins to dominate.

EMPIRE ONLINE


Review
As an epilogue to the career of Stanley Kubrick, who died aged 70, within days of delivering the finished film, Eyes Wide Shut is just about perfect in that it is unmistakably, definitely Kubrickian. Some will take that 'correctly' to mean it is intellectually intent, fastidiously crafted, directorially commanding and endlessly intriguing. Others, just as correctly, can read that as maddeningly portentous, laborious and remote.

Be aware that the film has been poorly served by advance speculation (most of the widely reported plot titbits prove wrong) and the overexposure of the juicy Tom and Nicole snog clip, an outrageous bit of trailer foreplay unconsummated in the event and giving the entirely erroneous impression that this film is a non-stop bonkfest. Naturally audiences obligingly stampeded first showings in the USA. Just as naturally, the box office tailed off noticeably as soon as word got round that Cruise doesn't actually get his kit off (although Kidman does, often), in what is not so much an erotic drama as a psychological probing of marriage, desire, jealousy and sexual paranoia. Adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's heavy Dream Story, this is about the reality of sexual love versus its illusions.

William Harford (Cruise), is a successful Manhattan doctor with a swank apartment, wealthy, demanding patients (including Sydney Pollack), and a lovely wife and child. Wife Alice (Kidman) ran an art gallery that went broke, leaving her too much time to get tipsy at parties, high on recreational pot and petulantly confrontational about a marriage that looks pretty enviable to mortal couples.

Aggrieved at being taken for granted, she picks a fight with her confident, comfortable husband, dropping a bombshell that rattles his security and sends him off into the night. In his subsequent dreamlike odyssey, he encounters a patient's daughter with a sad fixation to confide, a jazz musician with a bizarre story to tell, a costume hire shop where absurd nastiness goes on behind the racks, a streetwalker with whom he is at a loss... All these things persuade Harford that everyone is having it off except him, while he's haunted by graphic images of his wife in flagrante.

The central set piece in his dissociative wanderings through this sinister world of secrets and sexual tension - where every location is ironically set off by a garish Christmas tree - is a mysterious, ritualistic gathering of masked swingers. The orgying (childishly 'digitally amended' in the USA to obscure close encounters of the pelvic kind) is explicit, but more theatrical than kinky, and in keeping with Schnitzler's perception of sexual adventure as a melancholy, hollow experience. The 'party' is both pretentiously bizarre and the single most striking sequence in the entire film, simultaneously evoking dream, pretence and illusion as remarkably vivid.

Cruise, as usual, has been grossly underestimated in the early American reviews, with honours going to Kidman, whose character's disaffection gives her the opportunity for some showy rants. But it is Cruise, who is in virtually every scene, who lends the film an essential humanity. His palpably wounded male pride, pain and vulnerable bewilderment keep you connected to what is otherwise, a cold, humourless, despairingly cynical (and thus typically Kubrickian) observation of human relationships.

Verdict
While this is obviously a must-see for Kubrick acolytes, those with less lofty expectations should be prepared for an overblown effort, imbued with Kubrick's uncomfortable personal vision conveyed with distinctive and stunning style.


Reviewed by Angie Errigo






Errigo begins his review relatively positively but, as he continues,  I think he changes his mind half way through, concluding that Kubrick's style is fantastic as always (which I have to agree with), and that Kidman takes credit and spotlight that belongs to Cruise (not sure I agree with that... neither of them deserve it; their faces ruined it), and Kubrick has a "cold, humourless, despairingly cynical observation of human relationships".....
In my opinion, that's a load of rubbish, Lolita was an extremely close studying of human relationships, and I don't think Spartacus' love triangle could be any more slushy... so, I highly disagree.

Communicating with his fans...

As stated, Kubrick's fans are able to establish their own perspective on the director through his unique style, His themes, visuals, and techniques that run throughout, and as I am researching, all the ways in which his films interlock, are ways he reaches out to his fans.

I believe that the real reason he presents so many ways in which his films share similar visuals, themes, and quite clear intertextuality, was because he was communicating with the audience; specifically his fans.  Seeing as the press didn't portray Kubrick realistically, he had to portray himself through his pictures.

"Each film was a way of exploring... each film enabled him to extend his own investigation of himself by exhausting the area of research it opened up to his artistic and scientific imagination... he was incapable of repeating a subject: it would mean repeating himself."

For example, he loved boxing, hense the hand-to-hand action; he loved chess, and thus had strategical methods and games are heavily involved in his features... at no point I feel he was trying to show off he skills, apart from maybe Eyes Wide Shut when publicity went to his head a little.

Certification.

Following the idea that Kubrick was never particularly fussed about publicity, I question the sense that he completely switched this when it came to Eyes Wide Shut.

Kubrick was called a recluse by press due to his lack of cooperation in the media game. He did not communicate with the press, so how were his audiences ever to truly know him? They didn't. They simply had to love or hate his films, then his fans would discover the true Kubrick through his messages, themes, visual styles, and subliminal techniques.

My study films (including 2001, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut) are all certificated an age 18 restriction, apart from 2001. 2001 was his largest film to market, and was rated U (probably because MGM had hands in on production and distribution...), but this became his hardest film to analyse. Eyes Wide Shut was an 18, and this is what grabbed my attention. The likes of film production companies and money driven directors will try their hardest to complete a film that can be viewed by the largest audience possible. For example, they cut a scene from Harry Potter just to lower the age restriction so more younger viewers could attend the opening in the cinemas, and consequently, provide more money. However, Kubrick never seemed to attempt this, and instead perused his mission to make the audience feel and think. So, the confusion lies in all the elements pointing in two different directions; publicity, and tradition.

I hope that he did not want to reach the millions just to prove a point with his last movie.