We appreciate Stanley Kubrick's film quite a bit ourselves — enough to be disappointed that Aguilera is missing not only the codpiece in her Droog costume, but also the point. Failing a browse through Anthony Burgess's source novel — strung through with autobiographical references such as the gang rape of his wife during World War II and his own suffering during a home-invasion robbery — we thought at least the characters' beating and bludgeoning might be more geared to a Halloween get-together. If you really want to impress your friends, try a masked orgy a la Eyes Wide Shut or, better yet, a Dr. Strangelove party at which Chace Crawford arrives 90 minutes late on a nuclear bomb.

• Christina Aguilera has a birthday party [The Superficial]

It might be self-serving of us to suggest they publicize their films, and in a way, we empathize with their reclusion; Larry Wachowski has been the subject of sex-change and dominatrix-dating speculation since a feminized version of himself — earrings, plucked eyebrows, manicure — showed up on the Matrix Revolutions red carpet in Cannes five years ago with mistress Ilsa Strix (née Karen Winslow) on his arm. The siblings later sneaked into the New York premiere of V For Vendetta (which they wrote and co-produced), and last week in Los Angeles they went positively presidential with subterfuge at the debut of Speed Racer. "They did not do the red-carpet press line at the Nokia Theatre on Saturday, and were well-camouflaged during the after-party," wrote Borys Kit in The Hollywood Reporter. "Photographers were sworn to secrecy as to their whereabouts, and Warner Bros. assigned handlers the mission of keeping journalists off the scent."

Like it matters; the Wachowskis haven't granted an interview in the decade since The Matrix, deferring to mega-producer and de facto representative Joel Silver and their casts to flog their work publicly. Their crews sign non-disclosure agreements. The duo's contracts entitle them to a luxury rarer than final cut — an opt-out provision shielding them from the promotion of their films. It's Stanley Kubrick/Terrence Malick/Eric Rohmer stuff, but with one crucial exception: Their films aren't that good.

Or at least they haven't been in nearly 10 years; Speed Racer is no different. But what is good about it are the things to which only they can speak — the practice of reinventing the source cartoon, the relationship of vision to execution, the extraordinary scene transitions eschewing cuts for something closer to a scrolling-head montage (like "bullet-time," you just have to see it), or, on the most basic of levels, directing a standout cast (and even a goddamned monkey) against one green-screen backdrop after another. Unlike Iron Man or Warners' even more anticipated summer offering The Dark Knight, the brands work in concert with personalities to acquire traction. Emile Hirsch's abstract praises are not enough.

Warner Bros. faced the similar scenario with Kubrick for nearly three decades, covering the director's final five films from A Clockwork Orange through Eyes Wide Shut. Obviously, his death in March 1999 put a pretty irrevocable kibosh on promoting the latter film, but he did speak out from time to time about the intervening work; his daughter Vivian's behind-the-scenes documentary about The Shining was a broadcast TV event in 1980, and he did a few select interviews in 1987 on behalf of Full Metal Jacket. Moreover, he was always involved with people — actors, writers, other filmmakers — and his 15 years of work prior to his British exile in the late '60s had installed him permanently among the world cinema vanguard.

Not so for the Wachowskis, a couple of ex-carpenters from Chicago whose one-two dynamos Bound and The Matrix boosted expectations from 1996 to 1999. Their work since has lapsed into the type of indulgence that further evokes itself in those clauses guaranteeing their immunity to press, and by extension, their audience. That audience has had nothing to latch onto for too long now; no taut narratives, no singular parallel universes and certainly no visual benchmarks that can and/or should speak for themselves. Their self-containment borders on alienating, their aloofness sharing breath with its conjoined twin, arrogance.

As the most public recluses working today (and at the highest budgets), their godfather Silver can only buy the Wachowskis their privacy for so long — especially as another of their putatively visionary summer efforts meets diminishing returns in a culture craving voices with faces and faces with names. If the Viral Era has taught us anything, it's that every mystery needs a payoff, and you have to earn your mystique if you expect to exploit it.

[Photo Credits: Wireimage, Getty]

Planet of the Apes? It was so below what we were doing! Also, I'll tell you something else: We had stuff stolen. I can't say it was Planet of the Apes, but they were the only other movie shooting at the same time and same place we were. Stanley and I even had someone steal a mask and some ape hands right out from under our noses on the backlot, where someone had hid in a drainage ditch. We were in lockdown all the time.

Most whispers over the years have suspected Planet star Charlton Heston himself, whose kleptomaniacal drive for monkey superiority was one of Hollywood's best-kept secrets of the last four decades. Closure is within reach since the star's passing, however, when an autopsy revealed that the period rifle pried from his cold, dead hands was in fact lifted from the set of Kubrick's 1975 epic Barry Lyndon. We knew it! A face-to-face afterlife apology is surely forthcoming.

• Dan Richter on Playing the Ape in '2001' [Vulture]

1998: Eight years into their marriage, Nicole and Tom sign up to co-star in Stanley Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut. At an early meeting with Kubrick, Cruise and Kidman held hands and Kubrick told his screenwriter, "It was sweet. . . . They're a truly married couple. It was kinda touching."
1999: Nicole and Tom reportedly tense on the set of Stanley Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut. London's Daily Mail paper quotes Nicole as yelling at Tom, "This isn't worth it! You have two very unhappy people, who spend too much time apart and have hurt each other too much." Months later, she begins filming Moulin Rouge.
March 2000: Nicole admits to having "a crush" on Ewan while filming; the international press jumps on the story, filing reports of an on-set fling almost weekly.
May 2000: Rouge wraps production in Sydney; Nicole fails to attend the Surry Hills restaurant wrap party. Later that month, she shows upat the Sydney premiere of Tom's Mission Impossible 2, but the pair walks the red carpet separately.
February 2001: Kidman and Cruise officially split, after Nicole receives a letter from Tom's lawyer. Tom is repeatedly quoted as saying, "Ask Nicole. She knows," when asked why.
March 2001: Five weeks later, reports surface that Kidman suffers a miscarriage. According to The Mirror, she was three months pregnant. The Herald Sun claims Nicole "was really shocked to learn she was pregnant. Finally, she manages [to conceive], just as the marriage is coming to an end."
April 2001: Ewan tells The Detroit Free Press, "I didn't have an affair with Nicole Kidman. It was nothing to do with me. I had no idea anything was wrong with the marriage. No idea. And I haven't spoken to her since, so I don't know anything about it."
May 2001: Moulin Rouge premieres at Cannes. The Daily Mail spots Nicole and Ewan sharing cigarettes at a press conference, and later holding hands on he Croisette. High on positive buzz during the festival, Ewan tells the paper, "I call Nicole skanky pants. Don't ask me why. She is so beautiful and gorgeous that I just associate it with her - Nicole, knickers, skanky pants!"
July 2001: Cruise's publicist confirms to the press that he is involved in a relationship with "girlfriend" Penelope Cruz, with whom he was filming Vanilla Sky during their divorce.
June 2003: Ewan tells The Daily Star, "She was one of thoes actresses I was nervous about meeting. After the initial nerves, we got on great. The rumors of a relationship were crazy. We were good mates, nothing more."

[West Hollywood, August 7. Image via >Splash]

• Good Day, Mr. Kubrick 2006 [YouTube]
• Previously: Please, Stanley Kubrick Has Cast Weirder [Defamer]

• Good Day, Mr. Kubrick... [YouTube]
• Previously: Stanley Kubrick May Have Seriously Considered Recasting Tom Cruise In 'Eyes Wide Shut 2' [Defamer]

Did you and Kubrick become close while shooting Full Metal Jacket? Very close. Stanley called me up all the time. He'd call at three o'clock in the morning and say, "Oh, it's 10 o'clock over here." [Laughs] "Yeah, well, it's three o-fucking-clock in the morning here, Stanley. Oh well." He called me about two weeks before he died, as a matter of fact. We had a long conversation about Eyes Wide Shut. He told me it was a piece of shit and that he was disgusted with it and that the critics were going to have him for lunch. He said Cruise and Kidman had their way with him—exactly the words he used.

What did he mean?
He was kind of a shy little timid guy. He wasn't real forceful. That's why he didn't appreciate working with big, high-powered actors. They would have their way with him, he would lose control, and his movie would turn to shit.

This story makes Kubrick's death before the movie's release even more tragic for his fans. Had he lived through to the DVD release, not only might he have pushed to have those digital, penetration-blocking orgy-goers the studio inserted to get an R rating removed in an alternate cut of the film, we might also have been treated to a commentary track where the notoriously controlling director rants about how Tom Cruise's inability to realistically portray being stoned, even after four hundred takes, turned his movie to shit.

• Trigger Happy [Radar]