2001: A Space Odyssey

The story of Douglas Rain, who was hired to voice HAL four months before the film was released and has reportedly never seen the film.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/movies/hal-2001-a-space-odyssey-voice-douglas-rain.html

huh, that's great - thanks for posting

i don't think i knew martin balsam was supposed to be hal!

I did know that! lol at Kubrick casting a fellow Bronxite

i wonder if balsam's performance survives anywhere? or for that matter if the script for douglas rain's narration is still around, if indeed it was ever written...

if not destroyed, presumably in the SK archives, not going public anytime soon

The casual viewer of any Christopher Nolan film can rest assured that they're taking in the whole of the text and subtext minute-by-minute, such that all that remains when it's over is an empty celluloid husk with nothing further to offer.

― Arthur Pizzarelli AKA The Peetz (Old Lunch), Tuesday, April 3, 2018 5:15 AM (twelve hours ago)

Is that such a bad thing? When you think about it, films are kind of like pudding cups. The casual eater of any Christopher Nolan pudding cup can rest assured that they're taking in the whole of the pudding and subpudding inch-by-inch, such that all that remains when it's gone is an empty polypropylene husk with nothing further to offer. That's kind of an ideal situation vis-à-vis pudding cups. Probably movies, too. I mean, it's not like anyone's ever gonna watch Dunkirk twice.

kubrick understood how people work and nolan just... doesn't

― someone’s burgling my miscellanea (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, April 3, 2018 3:48 AM (thirteen hours ago)

I don't know that Kubrick's work displays great insight into the subtler aspects of human experience (deeper feelings, experiences and relationships). Technical mastery aside, I value Kubrick primarily for his sharp and fascinating turn of mind. He was interested in interesting things, and he expressed his interests in interesting ways. Nolan, meanwhile, is quite keen on graph paper.

I've looked in vain for the Soderbergh edit. Anyone seen it floating around the internet?

Kubrick made my favourite movie ever (2001) and Nolan's third Batman movie is up-there in my worst-ever list

I don't see much similarity between them, Nolan plays with plot convolution and formal Gordianisms, Kubrick sought transcendence in restraint and broad strokes

I don't think of Kubrick as particularly sensitive to "human emotions", he's has the distance of a Greek chorus, an emissary from the uncaring heavens, who documents human interaction without actually caring about the humans themselves

Nolan isn't interested in human emotions either aside from "how can I elicit enough pathos in the audience to keep their attention until the extent of my clever plotting is on full display"

I guess I should say something nice in this post. Dunkirk is a good movie and the score is a good score

Is The Prestige a good movie? All I can remember about it right now is that I don't like actors and I don't like the way they act

it's pretty good, iirc. Kind of odd and ... Gothic?

the prestige is great

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/03/alternative_2001_space_odyssey/

Tucked in a downstairs corner of the maze that is the London College of Communication is the Stanley Kubrick Archives. It's open to the public for pre-booked visits and on a recent nose-around, though initially distracted by the first-edition Robert Crumb comics, I managed to get to grips (touch gently with gloved fingers) with one of the first draft scripts of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Bound in black and looking very much like the monolith from the film, I was surprised by the extent to which this script differs from what we see and hear in the finished film. One of the most striking divergences is the presence of a benevolent second HAL, determined to thwart his evil twin.

well, i'm glad that was fixed!

After listening to this half-hour feature on the making of 2001, I'm convinced the ape scene is the most impressive achievement in the history of bloody difficult film-making. It also mentions the English actor who temporarily got the HAL job in between Balsam and Rain:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0635dz7

Anyone see operation avalanche? Cool movie set at nasa when Kubrick “faked the moon landing”. Mockumentary with a dope recreation of Kubrick himself in one scene!

i still remember the first time seeing 2001 and it being a crappy VHS copy on a tiny CRT it still shaking me to the core so many times. sometimes you see a movie or hear an album that leaves you charged, maybe jittery, wanting to do something, wanting to tell the world about this experience you just had. 2001 is like that concentrated in the most potent form.

good for Nolan the celebrating films he likes. i don't see any reason to compare his work to Kubrick's. people be inspired by art and then make art in response to that inspiration which can be entirely different.

imo Kubrick's humanist side is vastly underrated. there is so much humor and pathos throughout his filmography, so many strange interpersonal conflicts nobody else touches upon in that way. i think it's an easy leap to go "Well his films are pretty, they must not have much to offer" when movies like A Clockwork Orange or Barry Lyndon are knee deep in the question of what it means to be human.

Looks like the UHD disc release has been pushed to the fall.

imo Kubrick's humanist side is vastly underrated. there is so much humor and pathos throughout his filmography, so many strange interpersonal conflicts nobody else touches upon in that way. i think it's an easy leap to go "Well his films are pretty, they must not have much to offer" when movies like A Clockwork Orange or Barry Lyndon are knee deep in the question of what it means to be human.

― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 4 April 2018 22:48 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Looks like the UHD disc release has been pushed to the fall.

― Spencer Chow, Thursday, 5 April 2018 00:25 (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kubrick street team report:

Hallmark ornament coming in October

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--qp9AdUf_--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/h3alsc3jvzzmrc79oj4g.jpg

https://io9.gizmodo.com/hallmark-has-a-talking-glowing-hal-9000-ornament-heade-1824995676?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

I had an opportunity to see the original HAL, Discovery 1 and starchild model props (plus a Bowman lithograph) at a big Kubrick retrospective.

https://scontent-sjc3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/d932425303b99f34b96ea9a57937f006/5B697174/t51.2885-15/e35/14719159_1237523612971450_5037676212172881920_n.jpg
https://scontent-sjc3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/0904b0aed83b9ba13111684af202376d/5B6BFD1A/t51.2885-15/e35/14540580_187259038396489_2470394673886134272_n.jpg
https://scontent-sjc3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/df6a4dbf17262a4e3cb379cc01d35100/5B7002EA/t51.2885-15/e35/14726477_1114684005268120_4923423742727553024_n.jpg
https://scontent-sjc3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/6e9038c8b443ecb4fbc4a851e1092cf1/5B747F72/t51.2885-15/e35/14714456_724506451040115_2110870189967933440_n.jpg

so cool!

the filming of that starchild in those brief shots at the end is so masterful, it's almost shocking to see that it's just a static plastic doll!

Excerpt from the book

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-unspeakably-disgusting-way-stanley-kubrick-created-1824112455

Returning from the factory in the early hours of the morning with red eyes and swollen from the fumes, he ignored the foul reek for weeks on end, scrupulously writing down what percentages, temperatures, and densities of which liquids required what heights to drop from to create a given effect.

it's ponderous but tbf there's a lot to ponder

and no Jedi blather befouling your ears!

If you're in the DC area this April and May you can hang out in a replica of the room from the end of the film.
https://airandspace.si.edu/events/2001-space-odyssey-immersive-art-exhibit

(for a whole two minutes)

Haa...

https://i.imgur.com/JOocJGh.jpg

why isnt that fucking Kubrick exhibit ever coming to NYC

Got to attend this tonight. I asked Benson if there were any great mysteries/questions left - really the only thing he couldn't get were some of the more (presumably) volatile letters from MGM HQ to Kubrick. Also, apparently an original Aries IV model was recently discovered?

Dan Richter says he can easily play Moonwatcher shopping for groceries at Whole Foods.

http://www.indiewire.com/2018/04/james-cameron-2001-a-space-odyssey-lacks-emotional-balls-1201958421/

https://imgur.com/a/Uz2qLaf

i bet Cameron thinks i remember 5% of what happened in Avatar

"emotional balls"

One does have to admit that Titanic really brings the emotional sack

Aliens has quite a nut.

Sorry, quite a Newt.

Avatar has balls of a different color

About 3/4 done with the new Michael Benson book, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece, and man is it full of some great anecdotes I hadn't heard before:

- Clarke was apparently really concerned about Kubrick finding out he was gay, so one day he simply said, "Stanley, I want you to know I'm a very well-adjusted homosexual." Kubrick blithely replied, "Yeah, I know" and kept working.
- Gary Lockwood came up with the scene where Bowman and Poole get into the pod to secretly discuss disconnecting HAL, because he thought the existing scene where they received instructions from Earth was too corny.
- David Birkin (brother of Jane), who started as a tea boy before working his way to location scout and second-unit aerial photographer, was asked by Kubrick to move some protected trees from one location to another while shooting plates in South West Africa. He led a nighttime raid with a bunch of hired goons, cut through the fence, sawed down the trees then nearly lost them all trying to ford a surprise river.
- A crew member fell from a very high set and broke his back during an effects shot. When Kubrick was told, he responded, "Gee, that's terrible. Did he ruin the take?"
- Both the stuntman doing the wire work for the zero-g shots of Bowman and Poole, and the actors in the ape-man costumes, regularly suffered from oxygen deprivation/CO2 buildup and passed out.

Definitely a recommended read. Gives a much less worshipful, much more inside-baseball look at the entire production from conception to screen.

lol at the concept of 'surprise river'

def wanna read this though, there's so much mystique around kubrick and this movie in particular that a nuts-and-bolts 'here's how we did it' sounds fascinating

I saw it last night on the big screen for the second time. each time I see it, a little bit more of it clicks into place but I never understand the ending. I'd love to read this book

dog latin, there's plenty written and recorded about the ending (not to mention the Clarke novel-ization)

yeah I figured I should finally read up more on it

SPOILERSSSSS!!!!!!!11

The final scenes of the film seemed more metaphorical than realistic. Will you discuss them -- or would that be part of the "road map" you're trying to avoid?

No, I don't mind discussing it, on the lowest level, that is, straightforward explanation of the plot. You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man's first baby steps into the universe -- a kind of cosmic burglar alarm. And finally there's a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system.

When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he's placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny.

That is what happens on the film's simplest level. Since an encounter with an advanced interstellar intelligence would be incomprehensible within our present earthbound frames of reference, reactions to it will have elements of philosophy and metaphysics that have nothing to do with the bare plot outline itself.

An Interview with Stanley Kubrick (1969)
by Joseph Gelmis
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0069.html

beat me to it

This literal explanation doesn't really do the film any favours though, it somehow just turns it into the banal sci-fi flick it's patently not trying to be. I don't think the ending needs an "explanation" as such, the imagery is powerful enough on its own.

SK says the same

but as far as plot goes, that's it

love that they don't show the interstellar intelligence. this is the most important decision in the film imo. certainly having an alien looking creature explain "We made this hotel room for you" would take away all the mystery (as well as nail down the ending from a more symbolic/archetypal exploration to a linear narrative plot). by not personifying it, the film allows your mind to work on a more abstract, subtle, even spiritual level.

dog latin, did the new print look noticeably different? i'm taking it this screening was part of the official 'unrestored' presentations?

the new Nolan-approved print looks like it has more of the original 60s warmth in this comparison..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1JIkK7-fUI