Because of their dark coloured fur, moose are hard to see when they are crossing roads at night. They are sometimes hit by cars. In some countries like Canada, Finland and Sweden there are moose warning signs on roads and motorways are fenced.
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (July 26, 1928 - March 7, 1999) was an American movie director. Kubrick is thought to have been one of the great directors of the 20th century.
He was born in New York City but lived most of his life in England. His movies are respected for their great amount of detail and symbolism. Some of his movies were controversial when they were first shown. For example, the sex and violence in his movie "A Clockwork Orange" was very disturbing to many people who saw it when it was released in 1971. The reaction to the movie in the United Kingdom became so great that Stanley Kubrick stopped showing the movie there for over 25 years. Other famous movies that Kubrick made include "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb", "" and "The Shining". Stanley Kubrick died from a heart attack on March 7, 1999.
Kubrick was born in the Bronx, New York City and lived there during his youth. Stanley was a poor student in school but his father, who was a doctor, taught Stanley how to play chess and gave him a camera. Kubrick finished high school in 1946 and could not get into a college. This was because of his poor grades in school and because colleges were full with many American soldier's who returned from World War II that same year. During this time, Kubrick played games of chess with people for money. He was a good chess player and won many games. He used the money he won from playing chess to buy food and photography equipment. Kubrick got a job at a magazine in New York City that was called Look Magazine. Kubrick also enjoyed watching movies and thought that he could make better movies than the movies that were being made at the time. He first made two small documentaries. One of them was about a boxer and was called "Day of the Fight". The other documentary was about a religious man and was called "Flying Padre". He then made two full-length movies (called feature films) that made other people interested in his work. The first feature film was called "Fear and Desire" and the other was called "Killer's Kiss." His third feature film, called "The Killing", was a success. The success of "The Killing" allowed Stanley to work on a bigger movie, called "Paths of Glory", that was about World War I and was made with the famous actor Kirk Douglas. At this time Kubrick became well known in the movie industry and had started to create his own style.
After Stanley Kubrick completed "Paths of Glory", he worked on a big Hollywood movie named "Spartacus" in 1960. The movie is about a gladiator who fights Rome. It made a lot of money and was a success but Kubrick did not enjoy working on it. He did not enjoy working on it because of problems he had with the other people working on the movie who controlled it. Kubrick desired to have a lot of control in making his movies, and after making "Spartacus" he only worked on movies that he had full control over.
Kubrick moved to the United Kingdom in 1962, to make his next movie, "Lolita". He liked the United Kingdom very much and decided to live there for the rest of his life. The movie "Lolita" was the first movie that Kubrick made that created a lot of controversy. The movie was based upon a book by the Russian author Vladimir Nabokov that was also very controversial at the time. The movie shows the relationship between a very young woman and an older man. This is a forbidden topic in the United States and most of the world.
For the movie "Lolita", Kubrick hired the talented and famous actor Peter Sellers. Kubrick respected Peter's acting and asked him to act as three different characters in Kubrick's next movie, "", which was released in 1963. "Dr. Strangelove" was a comedy but it was about very serious topics. These are called black comedies. The movie was about the Cold War and was very controversial but also very successful. The movie had a large cultural influence and created some images that became very famous in the years to follow. The most famous image from the movie was of an American pilot sitting on a nuclear bomb as it fell to earth from an airplane.
Kubrick's success with "Dr Strangelove" convinced the movie studios that he was talented and that he could be trusted to make good, popular movies. Kubrick entered into a positive relationship with the movie studio, Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers gave him almost full artistic control on all of the movies he was to make in the future. A director being given so much control is rare. Such directors are called "auteurs".
Kubrick took five years to develop and plan his next movie. It was a science fiction movie called "" and it was released in 1968. Kubrick based the movie on a short story called "The Sentinel" that was written by the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Kubrick worked with Arthur C. Clarke to make the movie. The movie used many new ideas and techniques and had special effects that no other movie at the time had. The great special effects used in the movie won Kubrick his first and only Oscar award. "2001" was made during the end of the 1960s and was very popular with members of the Hippie Counterculture. This was because of the movies strange and dream-like visuals. When the movie was released it was both loved and hated by many movie critics. Many of the movie critics who did not like the movie when they saw it in 1968 have changed their opinions. Some of them have written a second, positive review of the movie many years later.
His next movie was one of his most famous and also his most controversial. The movie was titled "A Clockwork Orange" and was released in 1971. The movie was darker than "2001" and was originally released with an "X" motion picture rating in the US. The movie was based on a novel of the same title by the author Anthony Burgess. The novel and movie are about a criminal who is given a new and experimental 'cure' for his violent nature. The story asks questions about how society defines morality. The movie had an amount of sex and violence that was not often seen in big Hollywood movies at the time. The controversy of the movie increased when other people copied some of the acts that were committed by the characters in the movie. Kubrick and his family received violent threats from people, called death threats. These threats were serious enough that Kubrick took the movie out of theaters in Britain. The movie was not shown again in Britain until the year 2000, after Kubrick's death.
Kubrick's next movie was to going to be about Napoleon but he canceled it after another similar movie was released before his own. Kubrick worked very hard researching and learning about Napoleon and about the world at that time. Kubrick chose to make another movie set in that time that was titled "Barry Lyndon". The movie was based a book by William Makepeace Thackeray and was about an 18th-century gambler named Barry Lyndon. The movie was not as well liked as his previous movies but, like "2001: A Space Odyssey", it convinced people over time.
After "Barry Lyndon", Kubrick made movies at a much slower rate than before. He only made three more movies in the next twenty-five years. He was still very popular and respected. Each of the movies he released became an event that many people waited for and celebrated.