I'm watching 2001 A Space Odyssey

for the first time in over ten years.

One forgets what a magnificent epic that film is.

Because that movie is best appreciated stoned. :smoke: ;-)

:evilgrin:

To grow the amount of BC Bud needed to put the levels of THC into the system of one person needed for the last bit of the film to be understood.

Does that make me :crazy: ?

Understanding the end of 2001 is a major diagnostic criteria for many mental disorders, according to the DSM-IV-TR.

thereby ensuring the reader acquires the ability to explain the ending to siblings and cousins on the way out of the movie theater...?

This was waaaaayyyyy before I discovered, um, *enhancements*. :P

Do I get a pass, or am I insane?

End of Line.

I just watched this last night, and now feel I should read the book, but if you can just tell me what the book says about the ending, that would really save me some time! Thanks

Many young people these days think it's boring, because they grew up on films that have a joke, sex scene or death every 5 minutes. When faced with a slow, ponderous film like "2001" they get bored and can't sit through it. For them it's a lesson in film as literature and philosophy, not fast, cheap, disposable entertainment.

Here is some interesting trivia about "2001:"

Douglas Rain (the voice of HAL the computer) never visited the set of "2001." It is believed that Rain and Keir Dullea (Bowman) have never met in person.

In order to get the relaxed tone for HAL's voice, Douglas Rain spoke his lines barefoot with his feet resting on a pillow.

According to Douglas Trumbull (special effects supervisor), the total footage shot was some 200 times the final length of the film.

There is no dialogue in the first 25 minutes of the movie, nor in the last 23 minutes. With these two lengthy sections and other shorter ones, there are around 88 dialogue-free minutes in the movie.

Evidence of Stanley Kubrick's attention to detail: there are visible replacement instructions for the explosive bolts in the ejection apparatus of the pods.

The girl shown in the video phone call was Kubrick's own daughter, Vivian, who was 4 at the time of the filming.

The phrase "See you next Wednesday" is heard for the first time during the scene in which Poole receives birthday greetings from his parents. The phrase would become a trademark of director John Landis who would use it in many of his movies.

The actual "Space Station 5" model, which was about 7 feet across, was found a few years after 2001 was made, discarded in an English field with wild grass growing over its rapidly decaying surface. The model was destroyed by vandals a few days later.

Alex North was hired to write an original musical score from the film, and completed it, but Kubrick discarded it in favor of classical music. Kubrick failed to tell North this, and to his great dismay, North did not discover this until he saw the movie at the premiere.

Almost every company mentioned or shown in the film is either no longer in business or has merged with another company and relinquished the name shown in the film. Only IBM, Hilton and Aeroflot are still in buisness under those names. A scene was filmed a bushbaby being purchased at Macy's, but the scene was cut from the film - to the dismay of Macy's.

Before settling on "2001: A Space Odyssey" as the title of the film, other possible titles considered by Kubrick included "Journey Beyond the Stars," "Universe," "Tunnel to the Stars," "How The Solar System Was Won," and "Planetfall."

I currently work at...I still hear about what a great person he was ( on and off the stage ).

Kubrick would listen to Mozart and Beethoven on set. One day he was watching the dailies with the music playing in the background and decided he liked the way it fit, so it stuck.

OPEN THE POD BAY DOOR, PLEASE, HAL!!

Hmmm, I can't seem to remember the next line. . . :evilgrin:

It was a front end for 1-2-3 back in the '80s, which let you give plain language commands to the spreadsheet. A very nice bit of programming. An early version of it would do that question and answer for you, one of the first easter eggs. I saw it in action myself.

I had the privilege of seeing it on the parabolic screen as first released in 1968.
You're not down with Science Fiction unless you've seen this one.

Art Clarke rules!

IMO Clarke wastes far too much time discussing the internal workings of the early hominids' minds, and the sequence of interaction between them and the Monolith is spelled out so explicitly as to be a boring disservice to the portrayal on screen.

Absent the film, I'm not sure that the novel would be regarded among Clarke's finest works.


And, um, Saturn?!?

But SFX dude Douglas Trumbull couldn't get the effects to work right. The planet looked cartoony and stupid.

Trumbull eventually got the "look" he wanted for Saturn and he displayed his handiwork in his own movie "Silent Running".

Absent the film, I'm not sure that the novel would be regarded among Clarke's finest works.

Well, that would make sense as the novel was based on the screenplay and those seldom turn out well.

Now the short story, The Sentinel on which the film was based, was quite good.

As far as not understanding the ending, one of Clarke's three laws is that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I think, like Childhood's End, it's about an alien intelligence helping us evolve to some kind of higher being.

Of course with 2010. 2061 and 3001, Clarke tries to explain everything and it didn't quite work for me. On the plus side, Frank Poole survives!

:thumbsup:

great music

The Hal vignette was of middlin' Twilight Zone quality. The rest stank.

What IS your movie genre of choice?

I guess I like things that are more like filmed stage plays - Twelve Angry Men comes to mind.
I also like Woody Allen movies - Annie Hall is probably my favorite film.

Just this morning I saw a poster for it- John Boy and Norm (Richard Thomas and George Wendt) are doing a stage version of it. I'd be interested in watching it and seeing how close to the original Fonda flick it will be- a movie I watched again just a month ago. It is still a very engaging story.

Haven't seen it in years, but i remember the scene where the astronaut shot himself into an open airlock, and lived while closing it. He didn't have his helmet on or some such. I know Kubrick takes great care in his films, but would that even be possible? :D

Love all of Kubrick's films, by the way. Probably a silly question in view of the films total scope. The whole thing blew me away when i first saw it.

You will get a bit of freezer burn, especially on the eyeballs and any exposed parts, but you can stay conscious for quite a while and survive total vacuum. The real trick is to exhale, completely emptying your lungs, BEFORE you open the door. Otherwise your lungs may burst.

is wonderful to me:)

It is a shame that it's viewed as "boring" to quite a few.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atGQRI5Khh4

Very nice clip? :)

testing a spacesuit in a vacuum chamber. The guy wearing the suit was exposed to a substantial vacuum for about 15 seconds, fainted, but recovered with no ill effects. Kubrick and Clarke thought explosive decompression was cool and so they threw it into the story.

You can evidently survive several seconds of exposure to a complete vacuum.

That really is one of the things I love most about 2001. There was exhaustive attention to scientific detail (at least, as they knew it at the time), which made all the trippy space stuff more real and all the more compelling.

I saw it in the theater when I was about five. I remembered the monolith and the apes, and the "disconnecting Hal" scene, and not much else, until I saw it again some 10 years later. These days it doesn't quite live up to my preferred sci-fi action adventure type of movie, but if you're in the right mood for it, it's still wonderful.