So, will we be buying it and who is it aimed at?
Well, no, we won’t be buying it. We may not be able to in the UK, or we could import it at even more cost. If it’s USA only then the content should play on UK players, because 4K is usually region free, but it’s a gamble.
We have all the 4K discs for the films we like, and blurays or even straight dvds for the rest. All the big releases have their own special 4K sets. In this box, so many of the bigger names are just the original stand-alone 4K versions already out there unchanged for this box. It’s an awful lot of money to be spending on things you already have. We guess big Kubrick fans will be in the same position. The items new to 4K are not a compelling buy.
What about the extras?
Over 25 hours of extras. We haven’t done the Maths, but that must be similar in length to the total running times of the films.
Pretty much anything that has been seen before is included here, even the making of The Shining and Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures. Maybe it’s been cleaned up a bit.
Criterion are listing new interviews and rarely seen material. This may be interesting, but how often do you watch it? We do look at the 4K of 2001: A Space Odyssey quite a lot and we looked at the extras. Once. Some of them we watched right through. Very little was new and much had even been on tv before.
We’re not interested in people who are just regurgitating material from elsewhere or who have no personal experiences of making the films.
Sure there will be plenty of people who buy it, and good luck to them, dedicated fans or academics perhaps, or film book authors.
If we had more time and energy, we’d go though the contents and work out just exactly how much would be new for us, but we won’t. We’ll just sit back and enjoy the films themselves.
In the meantime, which is your favourite Kubrick film?
Here is some one else’s take on it all: https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/the-complete-kubrick-4k-uhd-blu-ray-review/