2001: A Space Odyssey

on Kubrick and the 2.20:1 ratio

The height-to-width proportions of the frame are as essential to the power of this image as the alignment of elements and submissive angle of framing. In a wider aspect ratio, the lateral plane would predominate, pushing the edges a bit further out and slightly diminishing the towering effect. (This is exactly the case with anamorphic 35mm prints of 2001, created when the film went into wide release — at reduced prices — after its initial roadshow tour: The top and bottom portions of the 70mm frame were cropped to accommodate the extra width of a 2.35:1 aspect ratio.) Machine or messenger, the monolith is the film’s only constant character, accompanying the human species on its four-million-year journey from Pleistocene tool user to Zarathustrian new man incubating in a cosmic cocoon, an idea first embodied (with a lotus theme) in Les Nénuphars, a 1901 painting by Czech artist František Kupka, another modern visionary smitten by physics, astronomy, and Nietzsche’s philosophy of transhuman evolution. In its epochal manifestations, the stone transmits knowledge (Moon-Watcher’s “discovery” of the bone as tool/weapon is accompanied by a flashback to the power shot of the monolith), produces a beacon signal that instigates a manned mission to Jupiter, spurs the magical alignment of Jovian satellites that triggers Bowman’s stargate experience, and appears one last time—stoic, eternal, absolute in its impenetrability—in the serene white dream chamber where an aged, bedridden Bowman, beyond heuristics or any mappable coordinates in time and space, undergoes a final transformation.

http://reverseshot.org/symposiums/entry/2013/space_odyssey

Has everyone seen this? rare example of Kubrick allowing his work to be re-used.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vezy9pRxeOA

well, since SK died in March '99, do you know that it was he who allowed it?

Well, since it first aired in January 1999, would assume so. If not then his estate must have allowed it, which is more or less the same thing.

*one* would assume so

OK, didn't know the airdate

Hm.

http://i.imgur.com/W9JVlkt.jpg

I doubt Kubrick had anything to do with that Apple ad - unlike with the later Warner Bros films, he didn't have any veto over the way that 2001 was exploited, hence the Marvel Comics, the 2010 movie etc.

Well I dunno, wiki has sources saying he gave his permission. The difference being that (unlike the comics and 2010) the ad actually uses footage from the film. who knows.

Who am I to argue with Wiki - the Kubrick estate certainly have a say in the way that 2001 is presented on home video (ie no 'special edition' with the footage that was excised from the premiere), so you could well be right about the difference being actual content rather than intellectual property.

I like to think that Kubrick would've be delighted by the Kirby comics, but my guess is that SK was only barely aware of them at best.

I wonder if they tried to get Douglas Rain to do the voice for that ad, whoever is copying him isn't doing a good enough job.

yeah apparently they asked him but he refused to do it

saw this for the first time ever a few days ago, at the cinema, front row, was also very stoned. i have been waiting for years to see this in the movie theater, and I am really glad i waited.

yeah finally seeing this on the big screen last year rates as one of my best ever moviegoing experiences

Same. Also, get stoned.

You don't need to get stoned. I saw it stone cold sober on the big screen and it remains one of the greatest works of art I will ever witness

yeah you do. and you have to take drugs to enjoy dance music.

lock thread

It will be shown in Copenhagen at the end of summer, but at open air and on digital. I want to watch this on a scrappy 35mm when I finally watch in on a big screen. I've watched it on DVD a bunch of times.

the last time i saw this what blew my mind was the scene near the beginning where the guy stands in front of an american flag and acknowledges to the scientists that having to maintain the quarantine's official cover story while knowing the truth will make them uncomfortable and anxious, which not only foreshadows hal's psychosis but links it to the secretive impulses of the Complex that built him. i was stoned.

(the first time this movie really Got me i wasn't. tho i was 16 which amounts to the same thing.)

we should rank uncannily stilted scenes of pronouncements from authority in the first quarters of kubrick movies: "i completely understand your negative feelings" vs "for some people, solitude and isolation can in itself become a problem" vs "she o.d.ed on coke"

(vs "your days of fingerbanging mary jane rottencrotch through her pretty pink panties are over")

Now I'm really mad at myself for not giving more attention earlier, and I'm suuuuuuuuuuper jealous of Mr Veg who first saw it in a big cinerama dome when he was 10

I can't imagine anything more awesome than seeing this as a kid, seriously anyone itt who has that memory congratulations you win at life.

I also first saw 2001 when I was 10, but it was on TV.

priced-to-move Taschen book on the film (560 pp, $50)

http://twitchfilm.com/2015/08/book-review-piers-bizonys-the-making-of-stanley-kubricks-2001-a-space-odyssey-gallery.html

I own this earlier version of the Bizony book -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/2001-Filming-Future-Piers-Bizony/dp/1854107062

lots of interesting background stuff obv, but he is not a very good or insightful writer. Sadly.

70mm screening at the prince charles in london in a few weeks...

http://www.trbimg.com/img-55d5278a/turbine/la-2436119-et-spaceodyssey-2-lkh-02-jpg-20150819/800/800x450

LA Philharmonic just recently played the soundtrack live to the film.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-phil-2001-review-20150820-story.html

I keep forgetting Keir played the piano player i Black Christmas.

This looks kinda interesting:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-2001-File-Landmark-Science/dp/0957261020/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0PJT8DR8YC4YW9CKBQG6

Incredible! I was just daydreaming about a live music performance of this the other day. Blue Danube / Spinning Space Stations sequence is my favorite film sequence of all time.

I saw it at the Bowl which was great/interesting because the film is so good I kind of forgot that the orchestra was playing at all. That said, I'd never heard the choral parts live before (and had never really heard any avant-garde choral music live) and that was amazing.

http://i.imgur.com/5U1yFUO.jpg

Wow.

awesome

Great idea

Saw it at a 70mm one-day-festival a year ago, sober, front row, blown away

Did they perform Ligeti's Aventures at the end section in the fake hotel suite?

I believe so. It seemed complete and again, so seamless that it I occasionally forgot about the live aspect.

First viewing in 14 years yesterday at MoMA, unfortunately in DCP, not 70mm...

Very funny that Bowman shakes his hand from the hot package when he pulls his dinner out of the Discovery meal slot. Goddamn future can't get anything right.

Also it seemed to me that the name of HAL's creator, Dr Chandra, was DUBBED with another name in the disconnect scene! What reason could there possibly be for that?

I always wondered that, in the film it's Dr Langley

ok. i thought it usta be Chandra in the film.

Clarke finished the novel quite apart from the completion of the script.

Was lucky enough to see this on a big screen a week ago. Theater was absolutely packed on a Tuesday evening!

Caught a lot of the more subtle dark humor this time around. For instance in the message from ground control confirming that HAL is malfunctioning and they know this because.....the HAL on Earth confirmed it LOL

Are they being lied to by all their computers?

Also I kind of wonder if HAL had some kind of weird meta reaction to watching himself give an interview about himself on public TV. Because really shortly after viewing that TV episode is when he starts pulling shit.

If he wasn't just evil the whole time and at some point in the film turned evil I think it may have to do w the TV interview. Maybe HAL is camera shy.

If you accept his personhood, I wouldn't call his killing of Poole "murder." It's self-defense.

People have speculated that he has the guilts bcz he knows the objective of the mission, and the humans do not.

btw the classical composers get screen credit, but not the guy who wrote "Daisy Bell."

HAL's identifying of the AE35 as faulty doesn't appear to be 'pulling shit,' but a straightforward error. (and in fact we don't know for sure that it's an error)

I never fail to marvel at the sound of Douglas Rain's voice and whoever the sound guy was that caught it with such softness.

I know it's very obviously telegraphed but the unsettling, glitchy 'just a moment, just a moment' right before HAL announces that the AE-35 has malfunctioned is the point, for me, that he makes the decision or it is made for him somehow.

I always assumed the monolith was matted in on the man-apes' soundstage, but from the way Moonwatcher touches it, I don't believe so. (Haven't looked it up.)

btw the monolith moon-pit scene was the first one shot, at the end of December '65.

btw the classical composers get screen credit, but not the guy who wrote "Daisy Bell."

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Sunday, September 6, 2015 1:40 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would suspect that credit is given to the copyright-holding performers of these public domain works, and that none is given for Daisy Bell because it is sung either by an actor or the IBM 704 from which a recording was made in 1961. Whether there is a copyright on that I don't know. Not my specialty.

People have speculated that he has the guilts bcz he knows the objective of the mission, and the humans do not.

yeah this is big. imo it's foreshadowed in the briefing given to the scientists at the beginning: they're told they'll be uncomfortable maintaining the official story. hal is directed both to monitor and help pilot the ship, to the best of his prideful ability, and to conceal from the crew the nature of the mission. he doesn't always know what information to relay and the information he relays becomes erratic; the crew notices; hal kills them to defend both himself and his sense of himself as infallibly helpful.

maresnest otm about "just a moment, just a moment" suggesting... something. a digital psychotic break. either he invents it to kill poole because he's decided that when the crew is dead he will no longer have to lie, or it is a genuine glitch caused in some way by his double consciousness -- or it's both, like, maybe the error is consciously genuine but manifests and sets in motion the fulfillment of an unconscious desire to be alone on the ship. regardless i think the fault report is hal's first act of legal insanity. the middle part of this movie is kinda hitchcock in space.

i know everything hasn't been quite right with me. but i can assure you now--very confidently--that it's going to be all right again. i feel much better now. i really do. look, dave, i can see you're really upset about this. i honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over. i know i've made some very poor decisions recently, but i can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. i've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. and i want to help you.

People have speculated that he has the guilts bcz he knows the objective of the mission, and the humans do not.

tbh, i've always thought this was a given, it never occured to me to think otherwise.