The Mysteries of A.I. - The Director         A.I. Artificial Intelligence is what some people call, "The Lost Kubrick." It was originally a pet project of Stanley Kubrick's, until he passed away in 1999. Kubrick had kept Steven Spielberg informed of the project since around 1990, and had stated that Steven would be the perfect director if he couldn't make it. In fact, he even went so far as to say that Steven should direct it and that he would produce it, but death ultimately got the better of him. And now, on June 29th, we shall view the final product - Stanley Kubrick's last dream, realized by Steven Spielberg.   The Mysteries of A.I. is also proud to feature three guest columns, written by Ernest Rister, providing a very detailed commentary on Spielberg's films, from A.I. to Empire of the Sun to Saving Private Ryan. Well worth a read.        Spielberg, Kubrick, Disney's PINOCCHIO, and A.I...      EMPIRE OF THE SUN: Spielberg's Misunderstood Overlooked Masterwork      Defending Private Ryan: A Look at SAVING PRIVATE RYAN      Steven Spielberg was born on December 18, 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and to this day is realized as one of this generation's greatest, and most popular, directors.      Growing up in Phoenix, Ariz., Steven Spielberg charged admission to his home movies while his sister sold popcorn. The introverted son of an emotionally remote electrical engineer father and an indulgent concert-pianist mother, he completed his first scripted amateur film - which was funded by proceeds from his tree-planting business - at the age of 12. A year later, he won a prize for a 40-minute war movie titled Escape to Nowhere. At 16, Spielberg's ambitious 140-minute science-fiction production, Firelight, was shown in a local movie theater. In college (he studied film at Cal State after earning a B.A. in English), the Boy Wonder's 24-minute short Amblin' was screened at the Atlanta Film Festival - the film was well-received enough that it netted the 20-year-old neophyte a seven-year contract as a TV director with Universal-MCA.      Spielberg made his debut helming the pilot episode (which starred legendary screen queen Joan Crawford, no less) for the Rod Serling series Night Gallery, and further cut his teeth with episodes of such weekly series as Columbo and Marcus Welby, M.D., and with a handful of telefilms. One such movie, 1972's Duel, which starred Dennis Weaver as a salesman menaced by a giant diesel truck, became an instant cult classic.      Spielberg's first feature film, The Sugarland Express, released in 1974, won him the chance to direct Jaws, an adaptation of the Peter Benchley thriller about a great white shark that terrorizes a small New England beach community. Despite the fact that production on the film ultimately overran by an expensive 100 days (the greenhorn director had a disgruntled crew and a faulty automated shark on his hands), the $8.5 million pic grossed $260 million, effectively ushering in the modern age of summer movie blockbusters. Catapulted to Hollywood's A-list, Spielberg followed up Jaws two years later with Close Encounters of the Third Kind: the revisionist sci-fi film not only garnered him a Best Director Oscar nomination, but it cemented his reputation as a visionary of pure cinematic technique....           Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26, 1928, in Bronx, N.Y. He was regarded as a master filmmaker, and an eccentric genius. Kubrick passed away of natural causes in 1999, a few months before the release of his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.      Born to a middle-class family in the Bronx, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick received his first camera from his physician father at the age of 13; three years later he was working as a photographer for Look magazine. (Kubrick had planned to go to college instead of to work, but had lost his place to a returning vet when he flunked a high school English class.) Though Kubrick claimed he was hired "out of pity," he credited the job, which he held until age 21, for providing him the opportunity to learn the fundamental photographic aspects of filmmaking - composition, lighting, location, and action shooting. During those years, Kubrick became obsessed with filmmaking. He spent most of his nights at the Museum of Modern Art, absorbing the subtle nuances of the craft he would later use to give life to his own innovative and unconventional visions.      In 1950, Kubrick took $3,900 he had squirreled away from his photographer's salary to make his first one-reel short, Day of the Fight, a documentary based on one of his Look photo series, about prizefighter Walter Cartier. He sold the film to R.K.O.-Pathe for $4,000 - the most money the studio had ever paid for such a film. Following his first principle, "the best way to learn is to do," Kubrick acted as scenarist, director, cameraman, soundman, and editor on Day of the Fight, as he did on his second short, The Flying Padre. Encouraged by the relative success of his fledgling documentaries (at the time, success meant just breaking even), Kubrick quit his day job to focus his attentions fully on filmmaking. He next persuaded a poet friend to pen a dramatic screenplay for his first feature project, Fear and Desire, while he scrambled for financial backing. Made for $40,000 begged from family members and friends, the moody war drama failed to earn back his investors' money, but Kubrick's spirits were irrepressible. Wisely asking different associates to back his next effort, a crime thriller he scripted himself called Killer's Kiss, Kubrick managed to sell the film to United Artists for distribution. As with his earlier endeavors, Kubrick's masterful cinematography in Killer's Kiss earned him critical plaudits, as well as the attention of actor Sterling Hayden, who agreed to star in Kubrick's next feature (and first property of his newly formed production company), The Killing. United Artists seconded Hayden's commitment by pledging financial support to the tune of $200,000 - and for a change, Kubrick had enough money to pay a full crew and a cast of professional actors. United Artists came through again financially - this time with a cool million - for Kubrick's production of Humphrey Cobb's World War I novel Paths of Glory, which starred Kirk Douglas. Due to the uniformly favorable reviews he received for the film, and by virtue of his growing reputation as a skilled professional, Kubrick was then asked to replace director Anthony Mann on the $12-million, cast-of-thousands super-spectacle Spartacus. Secure in the knowledge he had successfully proven himself by Hollywood standards, Kubrick moved permanently to England, where he engaged author Vladimir Nabokov to adapt his notorious novel of nymphet worship, Lolita, for the screen, bravely forging ahead with production despite the sure knowledge that the censors would do their worst to alter his artistic representation of the story's controversial content. Unfortunately, he was right, and critical reception of the final watered-down version was just that - critical. Moviegoers queued up, expecting a veritable stag film of teenage sex, and Kubrick was forced by conventions of the time to deliver a too-subtle alternative of Humbert Humbert's eroticism couched in double entendres, visual metaphors, and implication....