2001: A Space Odyssey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdi5PqMm4jQ

2001 Space Odyssey. Dave turn off HAL

In a nice coincidence, my wife gave me a copy of the Taschen SK Archives for Father's Day this morning.

wait, is father's day on a saturday this year or something??

No, they gave me presents and fixed breakfast and all that a day early because my daughter has to work tomorrow morning.

I didn't see it as a kid, but I did see it (as I've probably already mentioned upthread and am too lazy to check) several years ago in an AMAZING 70mm print at the AFI Silver Theater in Maryland. It was absolutely mind-blowing.

Ha. I caught a 70mm screening at that AFI a few years ago too.

An unfortunate thing about 2001 is that it seems to devalue with each viewing. Realized this a few years ago when I saw it maybe four times in a span of a few months. It just doesn't have the return value as other favorites.

Seeing this as a teenager was monumental though. I could probably credit that moment as what really got me interested in film.

Yeah, I've only watched 2001 maybe 2 or 3 times ever. It's not a movie that you want to go back to on an annual basis.

My favourite thing about this movie (along with the soundtrack, the ending, the moon sequence... pretty much everything except the monkeys, and even the monkey are great) my favourite thing is the unique style of editing, super rhythmic. It feels like every shot is too long or too short, the editing is obtrusive, like its own character. It never feels zany like a Godard film, it just feels weirdly musical or something.

otm

re: re-watchability, I agree. but it's certainly not a fault of the film. there's something like a conscious lack of depth or nuance (in a very good way). it's like the Iliad or something mythological.

?? do you mean everyone's lack of affect and frank's stepford parents?

The thing I like best about 2001 is the way it sounds, there's a softness and cushioned timbre in the dialogue tracks especially in the way HAL's voice is treated, that I love. It sounds more complicated than just a slightly reduced bandwidth/high end but I can't describe what it is, the sound of Douglas Rain's voice is one of my favourite things.

I realized I could make a bunch of money if I developed an app for iPhone users that would make Siri sound like HAL. And no matter what your name is, it would call you Dave.

yes, all of the 21st-century ppl are banal; talk about prophecy.

i go back to this on an annual basis more or less and it gets better all the time so

that's OK, Eric goes back to Showgirls on a monthly basis.

one thing i noticed is that dave seems to have more personality than the other humans -- he sketches, gets pissed off at HAL, gets emotional when he has to shut off HAL, etc. it's pretty subtle, but i think it's there.

I watch nothing on a monthly basis.

Except episodes of The Golden Girls, which I watch on a nightly basis.

movie is so much weirder than the book

well novel is just Clarke, adapting the script he and Kubrick wrote from Clarke's little short story. He was gonna streamline it and make it less opaque.

p much agree w/ tarantino that digital cinema is 'watching tv in public', but still interested in seeing the new warner bros digital print mentioned here (no mention, of course, of a restoration of the missing footage)

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/announcements/bfi-rerelease-stanley-kubricks-2001

peter kramer's 2001 bfi monograph is pretty good, btw, esp on the film's nuclear paranoia.

thing i can never get over abt 2001's production history is that until v. late in the day, the film came with a voiceover that explained a lot of what was going on

You're gonna kill me if you say it was Peter Sellers doing the v/o.

Michael Bentine in fully 'Potty Time' mode?

there is no missing footage, as SK didn't want it in the film. (It's true that the fact that it premiered w/ 20 mins that he cut immediately makes that stuff a bit of a Grail, but I really am not curious to ever see it, and it looks like he definitively disposed of it.)

Acc to wikipedia:

In December 2010, Douglas Trumbull announced that Warner Brothers had located seventeen minutes of lost footage, "perfectly preserved", in a Kansas salt mine vault. A Warner Brothers press release asserts definitively that this material is from the postpremiere cuts, which Kubrick has stated totaled nineteen minutes. No immediate plans have been announced for the footage.

I wld be very curious to see it, ditto the lost ending of The Shining

i've stumbled across the claim a few places that the beatles used some outtakes from 2001 for a sequence in the film version of magical mystery tour, but it's never really explained how on earth the beatles would have gotten their hands on outtakes from 2001.

kubrick gave them the footage after he pulled out of filming their version of lord of the rings, having shot prepremiere 'missing footage' of the fabs in full hobbit costume that allegedly now resides in landfill under the M8

ditto the lost ending of The Shining

That would be the "lost" penultimate scene. I saw it 34 years ago, you're not missing much.

where would the blue powdered food scene fit in if he's eating full room service fare by the end?

> the lost ending of The Shining

didn't they tack a bit of this onto the end of bladerunner?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/smart-news/ridley-scott-reused-footage-from-the-shining-at-the-end-of-blade-runner-2005687/

oh, that was outtakes of the initial sequence of the shining, not the end.

you can read the script pages of the 'lost' shining scene here. i think SK was right to take it out, doesn't add much at all.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/lost-ending-to-stanley-kubricks-the-shining-revealed-20130124

Briefly misinterpreted that "SK" as "Stephen King" and just realized that King and Kubrick have the same initials. Paging the Room 237 guys?

the tommyknockers is all about how sk faked the challenger disaster

originally called the sammy knockers

New trailer for BFI festival screenings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfF0vxKZRhc#t=12

Amazing how many indelible images there are in this movie.

see at what point you lose hope for this 3001 adap

http://thedissolve.com/news/3822-ridley-scott-to-executive-produce-a-2001-a-space-o/

I'm holding out for 2002.

On the big screen.

yep, i'll be going on sunday. psyched as i only ever saw it once, quite recently on a crap TV.

was shown not even all of it in music class at school on a tiny telly

front row, big screen

there is nothing to add

seeing it on 70mm tonight. quite excited.

Just saw it on the big screen at last, third time in total, can't recommend the experience enough.

dont see it on 70mm. it just looks old. which usually is what i crave, but for this, esp after a lecture at the bfi on its set design/rendering of the future/space travel etc, it felt wrong - this film should look new. (also dont see it after a long day at work).

Was surprised to see this is on at a local cinema next week. Wasn't aware it had been rereleased.
Not sure what the deal is since I only looked at timetable for Monday.
I don't remember seeing rereleased films listed for normal runs there though they have had things like Twilight marathons so you coukd see all the films in order.
This was the same cinema that showed the Nick Cave 20000 Days On Earth link up. I haven't seen if the other multiplex has it.

This is a new digital print of 2001 produced by the BFI as the lead film in their current SF season. These BFI prints tend to 'tour' cinemas around Britain, primarily arthouses but also certain multiplexes for one-off screenings.

There is an interval of a couple of minutes of darkness and music when HAL turns.

the intermission and music that leads up to the start of the film and at the end was actually one of my favourite parts lol. i wish all cinemas presented films like that, as a real presentation.

I kind of feel like I need to read something about 2001 before I rewatch it this weekend. Like, I wasn't quite sure what to expect the first time round and afterwards I wasn't sure what I had seen. It feels like the majority of the 'plot' takes place right slap in the middle of the feature, which is bookended with a very long intro and a very long outro. I'd like to know more about what to look out for, what Kubrick is going for, small details, bigger pictures... Is there something I can read that would be a good place to start?

http://www.goldenageofscifi.info/pdf/TheSentinel.pdf

In the words of Arthur C Clarke, "I am continually annoyed by careless references to 'The Sentinel' as 'the story on which 2001 is based'; it bears about as much relation to the movie as an acorn to the resultant full-grown oak."