Eyes Wide Shut: a summer blockbuster

 I read yesterday this article from digitaltrends, about Eyes Wide Shut,which has been released 25 years ago. The article made me discover one thing I had kind of forgotten about it: it was technically a summer blockbuster. I know it had been released during summertime of 1999, but since I discovered months later and I have always associated it with Christmastime due to its setting (not unlike another summer blockbuster, come to think of it), I never thought about it this way. I didn't know it was so successful at the box office. It's kind of a posthumous sweet revenge for Stanley Kubrick, given that the initial reviews were mixed at best when it was released. I personally consider it a masterpiece and I think it is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Anyway, I found some of the interpretations of the article questionable, but overall interesting, so I recommend you read it. Otherwise, I would generally find watching Eyes Wide Shut this time of year kind of out of season, but I might give it a shot. I might see the film in a new light.

Masks for Christmastime?

I took this picture last year, right before Christmas (I believe it was literally the 24) in a nearby garden centre, right in the Christmas section. Masks. I have to say, they intrigued me, because one would not expect party masks, these kinds of party masks, for Christmastime. Then again, I thought, maybe you could. It reminded me of the scene in Eyes Wide Shut showing a, ahem, secret ceremony. I looked at them and wondered if there was such... special events, on invitation only, where masks and anonimity were de rigueur. Especially since the garden centre was very near the hotel where my brother PJ and parents stayed during their time here. A hotel which reminded PJ of EWS. Since I saw these masks, and as I associate the film with Christmas (see my post here), I can't help wondering how people with lots of money do to celebrate Yuletide...

Traumnovelle for Christmas

'Tis the season to be reading and tonight's suggestion is only indirectly related to Christmas and even then, via its movie adaptation.So anyway, I read last year Traumnovelle (or Dream Story as it is often translated) by Arthur Schnitzler. The novella that inspired Eyes Wide Shut. I consider the film a seriously underrated masterpiece, not Kubrick's best, but a worthy swansong. The movie is surprisingly very close to the novel, with one noticeable difference: it is not set during Christmastime but during Mardi Gras. All the same, as Eyes Wide Shut is a Christmas movie, it makes sense to use its source material as literary reference while you enjoy it during Yuletide. As for why the film itself is a movie for the season, read my post from 2015. There is more on the Wikipedia entry. Anyway, tell me in the comments what you think about either book or movie as Christmas stories.