The 50th Anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" 206
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the original release of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," a seminal film in motion picture history and one that has awed millions over the years. Kubrick's title has often been credited with paving the way for science-fiction films that took a realistic approach to depicting the future. Even as "2001" has grown to become one of the most iconic movies of all time, the reception it received when it originally premiered wasn't good. An excerpt: The film's previews were an unmitigated disaster. Its story line encompassed an exceptional temporal sweep, starting with the initial contact between pre-human ape-men and an omnipotent alien civilization and then vaulting forward to later encounters between Homo sapiens and the elusive aliens, represented throughout by the film's iconic metallic-black monolith. Although featuring visual effects of unprecedented realism and power, Kubrick's panoramic journey into space and time made few concessions to viewer understanding. The film was essentially a nonverbal experience. Its first words came only a good half-hour in.
Audience walkouts numbered well over 200 at the New York premiere on April 3, 1968, and the next day's reviews were almost uniformly negative. Writing in the Village Voice, Andrew Sarris called the movie "a thoroughly uninteresting failure and the most damning demonstration yet of Stanley Kubrick's inability to tell a story coherently and with a consistent point of view." And yet that afternoon, a long line -- comprised predominantly of younger people -- extended down Broadway, awaiting the first matinee. The Cannes Film Festival will celebrate the 50th anniversary of "2001: A Space Odyssey" with the world premiere of an unrestored 70mm print, introduced by Christopher Nolan. The event is set for May 12 as part of the Cannes Classics program. The screening will also be attended by members of Kubrick's family, including his daughter Katharina Kubrick and his longtime producing partner and brother-in-law Jan Harlan.
Further reading: Why 2001: A Space Odyssey's mystery endures, 50 years on (CNET); 50 years of 2001: A Space Odyssey -- how Kubrick's sci-fi 'changed the very form of cinema' (The Guardian); The story of a voice: HAL in '2001' wasn't always so eerily calm (The New York Times); and The most intriguing theories about "2001: A Space Odyssey" (io9); and Behind the scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the strangest blockbuster in Hollywood history (Vanity Fair).
Audience walkouts numbered well over 200 at the New York premiere on April 3, 1968, and the next day's reviews were almost uniformly negative. Writing in the Village Voice, Andrew Sarris called the movie "a thoroughly uninteresting failure and the most damning demonstration yet of Stanley Kubrick's inability to tell a story coherently and with a consistent point of view." And yet that afternoon, a long line -- comprised predominantly of younger people -- extended down Broadway, awaiting the first matinee. The Cannes Film Festival will celebrate the 50th anniversary of "2001: A Space Odyssey" with the world premiere of an unrestored 70mm print, introduced by Christopher Nolan. The event is set for May 12 as part of the Cannes Classics program. The screening will also be attended by members of Kubrick's family, including his daughter Katharina Kubrick and his longtime producing partner and brother-in-law Jan Harlan.
Further reading: Why 2001: A Space Odyssey's mystery endures, 50 years on (CNET); 50 years of 2001: A Space Odyssey -- how Kubrick's sci-fi 'changed the very form of cinema' (The Guardian); The story of a voice: HAL in '2001' wasn't always so eerily calm (The New York Times); and The most intriguing theories about "2001: A Space Odyssey" (io9); and Behind the scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the strangest blockbuster in Hollywood history (Vanity Fair).
Paywalled (Score:4, Informative)
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Why is this marked as Troll? How about link aggregators stop pushing traffic to sites hostile towards their readers.
Sorry Dave (Score:2)
I can't do that. Would you like to play a game of Chess?
It's an incredible movie, but not a great story. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's one of the most beautiful, elegant movies ever made. The visuals are just astounding, especially if you see it in glorious 70mm. I can somewhat see the original reactions though. If you're somehow able to ignore the amazing job Kubrick did presenting the majesty and elegance of Space, you're left with just an OK story.
Combine that with the older straight-laced audiences of the 60s who want everything to fit within some narrow confines, they're going to be disappointing by the ending. Not that the
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The story is really amazing when you see it from HALs perspective. What you have there is a computer trying to solve a classic double bind situation.
And finding a solution for it.
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In 2001, Hal was distorted by the monolith. In 2010 suddenly he wasn't. No, thanks.
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Where did you get that from?
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I can't imagine, save perhaps for the very first generation of film goers, any cinema audience who would have, on its first screening, really understood what the hell they were seeing. Certainly film audiences these days, used to be bashed over the head with CGI, noise, and average shot lengths measured in seconds, with endless streams of dialogue whose only function is to push the plot line forward for audiences who might as well just shut down their cerebral cortexes for 90-120 minutes.
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I was one of that very first generation of film goers. I didn't understand it.
The extreme slowness in much of the movie shut down my cerebral cortex fairly effectively. Remember the discussions on staying alert in self-driving cars? I couldn't stay alert when things took so long. The space flight visuals were great for the time, and Kubrick lingered on them too long.
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Entirely possible. I've never gotten into drug use.
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The visuals are just astounding, especially if you see it in glorious 70mm. I can somewhat see the original reactions though. If you're somehow able to ignore the amazing job Kubrick did presenting the majesty and elegance of Space, you're left with just an OK story.
I agree with this but the critics all seemed to expect to compare it to "That Darned Cat" or something. Seriously was it the first movie anyone ever saw that was supported by a book?
As a pre-teen in the late '60s I saw the original at the Cooper Theater (now torn down sadly) in Denver. There were not that many theaters that could show 70mm and that was one of them. In those days it was not unusual for people to put on better clothes to go to a place like that.
The impact of the visuals and the quality
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Cell Phones? (Score:2)
Star Trek did only a year or two after 2001. The "flip phone" style that was dominant before smartphones was often compared to the communicator device.
I also recall in the novel "Space Cadet" by Heinlein almost 20 years earlier had a fairly accurate description of a cell phone. Not only in the concept of using local cell relay stations but also the social situation of one kid telling another "hey is that your phone (in your bag) going off? Oh, yeah."
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And smartphones are really tricorders. It is odd that in the 23rd Century Apple abandoned almost three centuries of its C-suite directed industrial design focusing on thinness and decided to go with a bulky approach for the ST:TOS.
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I'd put it in the top 5. It really is one of the great achievements of the cinema.
It was a failure of a date movie (Score:2)
I took a date to it in the 80's (campus showing). She fell asleep and had no energy later either.
Re:It was a failure of a date movie (Score:5, Funny)
it wasn't the movie, it was you.
I think it was the choice of movie genre (Score:2)
Didn't you ever go to Psych 101 in which they TOLD you that if you wanted your date to find you exciting, take her to a horror movie?
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On okcupid.com they actually tell you that "horror movies", more precisely if you like them and your mate likes them are very good indication if a relationship will work. E.g. if one likes horror movies and the other one not, it is unlikely that the relationship will work out.
But meanwhile okcupid.com got sold several times, the web site now is an utter mess.
It's all about the adrenalin (Score:2)
If you took Psych 101, you'd know that the horror movie would get the adrenalin flowing in your date and that would be associated with you - you're perceived as an exciting guy and all it took was $13.50, a coke and popcorn.
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A) I did not take psych 101
B) I don't watch horror movies (I barely can stand a vampire (old scchool) or zombie movie)
C) in my country we don't have a 'dating culture'
Adrenalin my ass ... people who get an adrenalin flash in a _movie_ imho have a serious problem, but well, most people have serious problems.
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It is interesting that this was not discussed when I was in College Psyc. The first I can recall coming across this was in the book "before you know it" by John Bragh, PhD. It was published in 2017. However, when I checked just now I say that the mention (on page 99) references papers published in the mid 1970's. So it was known; however, it was probably waiting for the next generation of text books.
Inaccessible, Inexplicable and Brilliant (Score:2)
2001 is not a film/story that you can just watch once and walk away.
I see an AC claiming that it doesn't have a beginning, middle and end (it most definitely does).
Arthur C. Clarke wrote quite a bit about the concepts behind the story, the film, the process of writing and filming it as well as people's reactions.
Watch it, read about it, talk to other people about it. You'll be amazed at what you discover.
Re:Inaccessible, Inexplicable and Brilliant (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. And that's the problem.
A highly intelligent person who had read, say, Childhood's End (also by Clarke) could go into the movie and not understand what was going on. If a movie needs a large amount of written material to get a clue about, it's something of a failure.
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Some people consider Joyce the greatest Irish author...are you calling his work a failure?
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Some people consider Joyce the greatest Irish author...are you calling his work a failure?
3 of his 4 books are (mostly) intelligible.
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I don't know. What movies did he make? Books are things that can need a large amount of written matter to get a clue about.
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If a movie needs a large amount of written material to get a clue about, it's something of a failure.
Good that you used "if". I saw the movie in the theater when I was 11 years old. I had not yet read the Clarke novel. I had no difficulty with appreciating and understanding the film.
Original cut was (even) longer (Score:3)
Masterpiece (Score:2)
I had the pleasure of seeing an un-restored 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey, possibly this one, as it had never been through a projector when I saw it in the 90's. That it was unused was one of the selling point. I think there was about 5 people in the cinema - which was better for me. I'd read the book several times and was a big fan of the story.
There is something special about the 70mm format that is very pleasing to the eye, like watching a moving painting the way it draws you in, there is so mu
People leaving the theater (Score:2)
I'm sure there are a couple reasons people left the theater for reasons other than it was a "unmitigated disaster". When it was released in 1968, the opening scenes with apes, and them essentially turning into humans through evolution, would be sacrilege to many religious people. I'm sure that was the reason the majority of people walked out.
A second reason is the impatient individuals expecting a sci-fi space flick and they just couldn't be bothered to wait until the movie got to that point. They probabl
Evolution [Re:People leaving the theater] (Score:3)
That aspect has not changed much. If anything, skepticism of the findings of science have spread to climate and pollution research. The USA is "devolving" in that aspect.
Hey it encouraged me to read the book (Score:2)
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Mostly because it was so slow I barely got through the monkey scene.
I saw it when it came out. At college, they showed it at a "Films on the Quad" thing, outdoors, and one of my friends was there who had never seen it. He was complaining about the "monkeys" part. I think I recall he enjoyed most of the rest of it, up until the light show part where he was going "WTF?"
Then, when Bowman walked into the room and there's someone sitting at a table with his back to him, all you can see is the top of that guy's head, he said "If that's another monkey, I'm out of here." (That
my 2001 story (Score:2)
Yep, I'm old enough to remember watching it when it premiered. Saw it at the Century theaters next to Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. These had the big panoramic screen, stereophonic sound, snazzafrazzic seats (yes, they were good), and poppaphonic popcorn (not really, borrowed the terms from Mad Magazine). It all made sense as we were going to the Moon, technology was racing ahead, etc. The Pan Am spaceplane, Hilton Hotel and Bell System on the space station was perfectly logical. I figured once I be
Meh. And WOW! (Score:2)
I saw 2001 a couple times on TV. Never did anything for me. But a bunch of friends were going to a showing of a 70mm print in a theater and I tagged along.
WOW! It's a completely different experience in the dark, on the big screen, with a good sound system. On TV I was only paying partial attention. In the theater the movie demands your full attention. It has one of the most disquieting scenes in movies -- Frank is outside fixing the antenna. We only hear him breathing in his suit. The pod approaches...
Re:And it's still basically unwatchable. (Score:5, Interesting)
I loved those scenes. For me, it was the best cinema I had ever seen as a kid and it still holds up now. It is not simply mindless entertainment as much of Hollywood films are (which I can also enjoy depending on mood). The other film I truly love is Lawrence of Arabia, but I bet you find that boring as well. I just saw it in 70mm and it was truly magnificent. I hope to see 2001 in 70mm soon too. I've seen both films dozens of times and have yet to become bored with either.
Different strokes.
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I've never seen Lawrence of Arabia so don't have an opinion on that. The issue in particular for the scene I mentioned is that it adds nothing at all to the movie. It doesn't progress the plot, it doesn't reveal anything related to the story, and it doesn't entertain.
It's only purpose I could imagine would be to try and entertain but it fails there because the entire scene is a model of a space ship gradually lowering to a landing, and a few blinking lights. There is music that constantly sounds like it is
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Nothing happens? Heywood Floyd is on that ship, it lands on the landing pad and then is lowered into some kind of internal bay on the moonbase. Did you take a trip to the bathroom or something.
What happens next is the Moonbase meeting scene. After that Heywood gets on that suborbital moon bus, which probably inspired Space 1999's Eagles, heading to TMA1
have you filled in your form 27B-6? (Score:3)
Re:And it's still basically unwatchable. (Score:4, Insightful)
As opposed to the latest Star Wars where the ships land and explode perfectly? Or the version where Lucas made the Death Star explode better? Maybe if the Obelisk turned out to be a Decepticon?
There's a lot of examples of contemporary, "unwatchable" films. This one is still considered a classic even with all of it's flaws.
It was unwatchable even back then (Score:2, Interesting)
I saw the movie in it's theatrical release, and it was unwatchable even back then.
Unless you read the book, much of the movie simply doesn't seem connected - more like a random series of events. It wasn't obvious that the monolith *caused* the monkeys to become smart, it wasn't obvious what the connection with the moon monolith was, and it was completely non-obvious what was going on with a psychedelic light show cutting back-and-forth to a human iris. (David Bowman's apotheosis.)
What remained was a few sce
Re:It was unwatchable even back then (Score:4, Interesting)
It left room for interpretation.
You can't blame Kubrick for seeing the reactions to Joyce and deciding: 'Incoherence is the key to staying power.' The audience will find what it wants.
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It was the late 60's, and movies became like LSD trips. Sequence, logic, and coherency were out of style, kind of like the current White House ;-)
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It's hardly the only one of Kubrick's films that leaves people scratching their heads. There's probably more debate about whether there was anyone other than Jack in the Overlook Hotel, for instance, than about what 2001 is about. Really, it's not that hard a movie to interpret, it's just that it doesn't have a conventional plot, or rather it does, but the plot is in some ways incidental to the point of the movie.
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Agreed. I've noticed that songs, for instance, that don't make a lot of "sense", can long out live its generation due to following generations being able to interpret it in their own manner.
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I saw the movie in it's theatrical release, and it was unwatchable even back then.
It's quite watchable, as long as you turn the movie off and go to bed after Dave Bowman unplugs HAL.
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I read the book before the movie, and was really glad I did. I normally don't do that because, after reading a book and filling in all the bits with my imagination, it's rare that the movie of the book can surpass what I imagined.
But, in the case of 2001, it was like having the little booklet people get at an opera that explains what the bellowing on stage is all about.
Still, even without that guide, you'll find people that love the opera regardless; the staging, the lights, the beautiful warbles. And you'l
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We've got videophones, though... (Score:2)
Hackaday did a recent article [hackaday.com] about a clock prop that was cut from the movie.
Also, we've basically got video phones now, although it's clunky and more difficult to use than a phone call was back then.
(Back in the 50's and 60's, you could dial a number and be connected to the other phone in about 2 seconds. It would ring and they'd pick up, or not if they weren't home, and the audio was clear and crisp, you could make out other people talking in the background, and hear sounds from their environment. Fast fo
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Video phones were not science fiction in 1968. The first prototypes of videotelephony date to the late 1920s, Bell Labs was demonstrating intercontinental video phone calls at the 1964 NY World's Fair, and that technology was commercially available by 1970, only 2 years after "2001". There are many reasons why it failed in the marketplace, but the main one is that virtually no one w
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Older movies are unwatchable unless you have watched enough older movies to be used to how they can dwell on scenes and give actors time to more fully project the characters. Current movies are made for viewers that have the attention span of a fruit fly on drugs. I expect that the young consider most of an even older great movie, Ben Hur, to be unwatchable.
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I expect that the young consider most of an even older great movie, Ben Hur, to be unwatchable.
Or any Kurosawa movie like 'The seven Samurai'.
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The people who saw it when it came out were used to the movies of its era, and many of them considered it unwatchable. It's one thing to give actors time to project a character, it's another thing to spend five minutes where one would do while not developing a character. There's a lot of lingering over the special effects and the tech, which didn't really add anything to the movie.
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Cinematography is a dying art, sadly. Even a poor film can be saved by good visuals, and when good cinematography is matched with good direction, acting and scripts, well then you have magic.
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"2001 is a prime example of a movie that doesn't age well.... I'll never forget the spaceship landing scene where a model of a space ship descends at a glacial pace towards a moon base or something while music builds and build and builds... until nothing happens and we cut to the next scene."
The point of that scene was to show how banal space travel had become by 2001. Looks like it does still hold up.
Re:And it's still basically unwatchable. (Score:4, Insightful)
I beg to differ. To me, 2001 is an example of movie that aged awesomely well. Still one of the most re-watcheable movies of all time.
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2001 is a prime example of a movie that doesn't age well.
Your complaints about 2001 have nothing to do with how the movie aged. Those same complaints existed from the beginning and that hasn't changed. The movie itself has aged exceptionally well. It still has the same impact now as it did when it was released. And it is equally polarizing.
I agree with you by the way. It bored me to tears and I only finished watching it because I was sick and had nothing better to do. But that has nothing to do with how it aged.
Re:Structure (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the use of pieces like Thus Spake Zarathustra came about somewhat by accident. There was an actual conventional film score written for 2001, but Kubrick used the classical music just sort of as filler while he was editing the film, and decided that those pieces worked so much better. As Roger Ebert once noted, unlike the use of classical music in some films, 2001 managed to enhance those magnificent works.
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The movie was not structured around plot, but around music.
Not true, Anonymous Coward. The classical music was just meant to be 'placeholder' music, for use in the 'silent' scenes while Alex North worked on the score he had been commissioned to write. In the end, Kubrick decided he liked the classical pieces more, and that's what he went with.
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That's interesting!!
Was any of the original score recorded?
Was it all written?
I'd really be interested in hearing what the score for the movie would have been!!!
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Eisenstein shot "The Battleship Potemkin" in the early 20s, but it was not shown with the intended score (at least in the West) until something like the 80s. The score had been considered too revolutionary.
From/for (Score:2)
which were borrowed heavily from for the famous Alien soundtrack.
* Alien - Release Date May 25, 1979 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film))
* 2001: A Space Odyssey - Release Date April 3, 1968 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film))
Yes, it is clear that 2001: A Space Odyssey borrowed music/soundtrack from Alien. After all, S. Kubrick had already perfected time travel (it is shown in the end of the movie).
The OP wrote "borrowed from for...", meaning that musical constructs were borrowed from 2001 for the Alien soundtrack.
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which were borrowed heavily from for the famous Alien soundtrack.
...The OP wrote "borrowed from for...", meaning that musical constructs were borrowed from 2001 for the Alien soundtrack.
Avoiding phrases like "from for" is exactly why you should avoid using passive voice construction.
Active voice: "The famous Alien soundtrack borrowed heavily from the 2001 soundtrack." Clear, concise, and doesn't contain "from for".
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That isn't something to brag about.
Don't you trolled contrarians need to get back to 4chan or something?
Re:The moon landings were better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The moon landings were better (Score:4)
Okay, then, forget Nixon. How could anybody create this conspiracy when it could be exposed by, forget the Soviet Union, anybody with a decent ham radio setup or a hobbyist telescope?
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NASA can do it. That's what they were built to do. NASA can intercept a laser shot from anywhere on earth at the moon with its satellites and then return it at the precise time to the same location to simulate the retro-reflectors [wikipedia.org] that the lying liars claim to have left on the moon. /s
When you understand how many were dropped there, and see one of the laser ranging experiments in action, it becomes really, really difficult to explain that away. When you've got pictures of them on earth, pictures on them bei
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The section for the nutjobs is a few comments up where the religious nut started it.
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If you liked 2001, you'll definitely love the "moon landings". The production values were much higher (some say impossible, but nothing is impossible for the world's greatest director).
There is much truth to this, if you throw out the fake irony and conspiracy underpinnings. The real moon landings were wonderfully suspenseful, and great drama, though they were also - like 2001 - very slow most of the time, and featured people who were highly trained professionals, and did not emote excessively.
To this very day 2001 still has the most realistic portrayal of space travel ever show in a film, with people acting like real astronauts, space craft acting physically like space craft, and no soun
Re:Oh, God, not again! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that you were looking for a typical movie storyline, and instead got a meditation on humanity's place in the Universe. It's like complaining that Beethoven didn't put a guitar solo in the Fifth Symphony.
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I could have gone for a coherent meditation on humanity's place in the Universe. I've studied meditation, philosophy, and to some extent mysticism. I got nothing out of the end. I don't need a guitar solo, but finishing the symphony with random atonal music rather ruined the fourth movement.
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Your entitled to your opinion. I thought the closing sequence was magnificent, the Star Child being the completion of the circle that the alien civilization had started with the Australopithecines at the beginning of the film.
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Sure. I'm not saying my opinion is the only reasonable one (although I will insist that it is a reasonable one). I'm saying that it was possible to be open to a meditation on the future of humans and still dislike the movie. So far, I haven't seen anyone come up with any reason why people liked or did not like it.
The symbolism of the Star Child was obvious, but it didn't give me anything beyond that.
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I am guessing by guitar solo, you are expecting a highly distorted electric guitar. Being that instrument wasn't available. the equivalent sound is actually made by the bowed strings sections playing playing together. Which the Fifth does have a lot of, so yes it did have that Guitar Solo in it. As there have been many Rock versions of it done on Electric Guitar where such piece sparks much the same feeling as the orchestral version.
Guitar solo is found in the Moonlight Sonata (Score:2)
The guitar solo is not in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Instead, it is in the 3rd Presto Agitato movement of Beethoven's Sonata #14 in C# minor ("The Moonlight Sonata").
https://www.bing.com/videos/se... [bing.com]
Geez, I thought this was common knowledge?
Re:Oh, God, not again! (Score:5, Interesting)
I still find the space scenes some of the best every filmed. Like the original Star Wars films, there's just something about models as opposed to CGI which gives the visual heft and weight. There's something tangible and real moving through an actual three dimensional space. And because Kubrick and Clarke were obsessed with realism for those shots, there's no sound save whatever the astronauts can hear, and indeed Kubrick was willing to allow for stretches of silence. In fact, considering most of the dialogue is pretty much incidental to the story, much of the film might as well be considered a silent film. And the brilliance of that is that when we do get some heavy meaningful dialogue, it's when Bowman is killing HAL. That's what I love about the movie Kubrick, he saves any emotion-bearing dialogue for a goddamned AI. The humans barely show emotion at all through the film, save for Bowman when he's order HAL to open the pod bay doors, or when he's falling through the Star Gate. HAL 9000 is the most human character in the whole film.
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I find it hard to believe, as much as the Beatles denying that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds had no reference at all to LSD....?
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That was one of the biggest complaints about the film, how coldly kier dullea played bowman
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But none of the people really showed anything but superficial emotion. Not Heywood Floyd, not any of the people at the moon base. The only real emotions were by the proto-humans at the beginning. I can't believe that was anything but intentional acting direction that Kubrick was giving to Dullea. The emotion-bearing dialogue was saved strictly for HAL.
my theory about brotonsaurs by Anne Elk (Score:3)
First with the ape-Men inventing tools and and in short order murder, and ending with a desperate struggle to the Death between Man and his AI progeny that ends with Man triumphantly murdering his creation in its crib in order to arrive at the black monolith first, gaining Ascension.
pretty obvious, ackchyually
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Re:Oh, God, not again! (Score:4, Insightful)
The DIscovery depended on HAL though for the mission to succeed. It ran the spacecraft. Wanting to immediately shut down the entire system, tantamount to aborting the entire mission, and endangering the sleeping crew, without even discussing it with the only other active crew member means that you should not be a crew member on such a mission.
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What I mostly remember about 2010 was the guy leaning on the console to position a pencil in mid-air. Microgravity fail!
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However 2010 made 2001 make sense. I can appreciate 2001 after seeing 2010. 2010 filled the gaps that 2001 had, that made it difficult to understand and difficult to watch.
There were too many times where 2001 was directed for us to try to guess what the motive was, without any sort of direction on where to see it. After HAL malfunctioned, and it played the classified message, why would I think HAL was suffering from a paradox in commands?
2001 went a bit too much on the minimalist side in the story.
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Not something to brag about.
Book came after the movie (Score:5, Informative)
Often times there is a book and then a movie is based on the book. Owing to difference in narrative style, even a wordy movie script is much shorter in length than most novels, the movie script writers and director have to find a different way to express the book. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail (cough, Dune, cough).
With 2001, the movie came first and the book was either co-written or came shortly later. It is also my understanding that the movie storyline was really Stanley Kubrick's creative product with the Clarke collaborating or advising, and Kubrick did not want to explain everything. He wanted the aliens to be a confounding mystery rather than being the cheesy guy-in-a-rubber-suit from Lost in Space or even from Star Trek.
Physicist Freeman Dyson explains this in one of his popular books. Dyson was interviewed as a "scientific authority on the possibility of contact with aliens and what that could be like and how this could differ from the typical science fiction movie." He told about how they filmed him using the IBM computer in the studio's accounting department as a movie prop, which they had to power down because its cooling system was making too much noise for the audio technicians to get a clean recording of the Dyson interview, which was a big hassle to the business office of the studio trying to get their payroll checks printed on time. Dyson also explained that his "part" in 2001 ended up on the cutting room floor, Dyson explained that Kubrick wanted the aliens to be a mystery and decided to do without a "scientific authority on the possibility of contact with aliens . . . and how this could differ from the typical science fiction movie" and let the visual imagery tell the tale. Dyson also writes that he agreed with Kubrick even if that meant that he Dyson couldn't be in the movie; Dyson argues that not explaining the aliens made 2001 a better movie because Dyson believes that our first contact with aliens will be bizarre beyond any sci-fi imagining of it.
Whereas Kubrick had a reputation for relying on the visuals to move his story forward, Clarke had a reputation in his novels for explaining everything beyond recognition. So yes, the book differs from the movie, famously having Discovery 1's continue to Saturn rather than stop at Jupiter, where famous special effects expert Douglas Trumbull didn't feel confident he could "do" Saturn's rings until later when he worked on Silent Running. So the movie only guesses at HAL's breakdown whereas the book explains that HAL never properly learned how to lie in protection of the secret regarding the Monolith and the nature of the Discovery 1 mission, which is a Star Trek trope that a computer can be messed up when Kirk reasons with it and catches it in a logical contradiction. Kubrick just shows the Star Child gazing over the Earth, playing Thus Spoke Zarathustra that is supposed to build on Nietzsche's notions of a Super Man as a next step in human evolution. Clarke goes into details regarding what the Star Child is and how the Star Child willed a premature detonation of the orbiting atomic weapons that gave the people of Earth quite a fright regarding the manner in which they were delivered from a potential world-ending war. Clarke needed the Star Child to have a purpose whereas Kubrick wanted to appeal to the viewers' imaginations.
Whether 2001 is a good movie or not, it certainly sparks a lot of geek discussion, and there hasn't been anything like it since despite attempts to imitate -- consider Mission to Mars being rendered a silly movie by having the aliens explain themselves to tie up all the loose ends rather than leaving loose ends as in 2001. .
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I saw the movie as a very young boy, my Dad took us to see it when Mom needed us out of the house for a bit.
I followed it mostly I r
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How could you miss the opportunity to make a Uranus joke here?
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I guess:
a) most people know how to pronounce Uranus correctly
b) those who don't, are adult enough to find 'jokes' about an anus very funny
Your milage may vary, though.
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Sorry, I was using the maturity level of the original post as the general gauge.
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Wait until you try and watch Stalker http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... [imdb.com]
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According to Allah you're worshiping a false god and will rot in hell for it. Jesus can't save you from that. You will spend eternity in the hell of my religion.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Hey, let's get serious...
God knows what he's doin'
He wrote this book here
An' the book says:
He made us all to be just like him,
So...
If we're dumb...
Then God is dumb...
(an' maybe even a little ugly on the side)
Frank Zappa - "Dumb All Over"
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Made a standard internet-review template for you, to simplify your life:
_____ was pretentious crap, made as an excuse to have _____ , thus a harbinger of all the crap _____ of today. The only good thing about _____ was the _____ . Other than that was unmitigated garbage. Better to celbrate the 50th anniversary of Joe Schmoe.