2001: A Space Odyssey

MOMI postscreening panel with Dullea, Richter, Michael benson, and neuroscientist Heather Berlin (74 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_fxroII9GI&feature=youtu.be

I finally found a copy of the Soderbergh cut! Need to watch though.

just finished the Benson book — really great stuff. there should be a similar book for every Kubrick film. Or at least Barry Lyndon.

Thank god - the new 4K UHD is NOT the Christopher Nolan urine print:

It’s very important to note here that this is most assuredly not the Christopher Nolan “unrestored” presentation of the film. It has, in fact, been properly restored using state-of-the-art digital tools and properly color-timed as well, a process supervised by Vitali. While I certainly admire Nolan’s reverence for the all-analog photochemical process, his recent IMAX reissue of the unrestored version of 2001 in no way represented the film as Kubrick would have wanted it to look. While the clarity was impressive, the image was rife with unwanted analog flaws and the coloring was yellowed and unpleasant. I didn’t see this version, and I’m glad of it because every film-knowledgeable person I know who did was put off by its unrestored appearance.

not sure how much to rely on that guy's POV, as the Nolan print I saw was in no way IMAX.

I didn't see this version

oh

If you read the review it includes technical details at the end, but it's moderately confusing:

The new 2018 video masters were achieved by scanning the 65mm original negative in 8K-resolution and utilizing top-of-the-line color correction software, allowing technicians to follow natural color and luminance curves (characteristics) of film print stock. Color reference in the DI suite was provided by the 1999 70mm answer print from the original camera negative and a 70mm check print from a new dupe negative. Vince Roth (now the Lab Technical director at Fotokem) completed the dupe and check print for the 2018 color grade.

Christopher Nolan and Hoyte van Hoytema (who both worked extensively with large film formats) oversaw the new 70mm film prints and were brought in to consult on the creation of new video masters to match the 70mm reference prints. These 2018 video masters were completed under the direction of Leon Vitali and Ned Price. Color grading of the master was completed by Janet Wilson of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging – who previously worked with Leon on HD mastering of Barry Lyndon, Full Metal Jacket and Lolita.

the 2018 release contains correct picture aspect ratio as it was scanned directly from the 65mm original negative which is spherical (flat) versus anamorphic (scope). The 35mm anamorphic (scope) reduction that was scanned for the 2000 and 2007 releases contained a little more information on the left and right of the frame then (sic) was intended for 2.2 70mm projection aspect ratio. Also, the optical scope reduction added a slight amount of linear image distortion, which is not present in the 65mm spherical camera negative.

This is why a number of Internet comments have complained that the new release is 'cropped' (and why it's not, cropped.)

It's from the included booklet but I copied it from this review - https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/2001-A-Space-Odyssey-Blu-ray/208266/#Review

Also I think Kubrick would have been delighted with the post-credits easter egg of Starchild doing the Ally McBeal baby dance!

i didn't think anyone besides Jeffrey Wells called additional image "information"

God save us

The quote is from the studio's technical notes which are reproduced at the end of the Digital Bits review as well.

Appreciate this film more and more as I get older. Could watch the Blue Danube sequence pretty much forever ...

Oh man, farewell Douglas Rain.

https://consequenceofsound.net/2018/11/r-i-p-douglas-rain-2001-a-space-odyssey/

anyone try this in SF?

If I were in town this weekend I’d make time to try the @Castro_Theatre’s head-to-head competition between 4K digital and 70mm showings of 2001: A Space Odyssey. That’s a movie I can easily imagine watching twice in a row. https://t.co/GbeobNQh6w

— Brian Darr (@HellOnFriscoBay) December 28, 2018

missed this blog series

https://dcairns.wordpress.com/tag/2001-an-odyssey-in-bits/

If you want reasonably compelling proof that Kubrick didn’t fake the moon landings — and I’m only speaking to those of you who want it, I can’t be bothered with anyone who NEEDS it — consider how everyone on the moon walks about as if the gravity were earth-normal. No galumphing sideways meerkat loping for Heywood R. Floyd, thank you very much. And nobody’s wearing grip shoes. We might guess that Kubrick is supposing some kind of goofy artificial gravity in the Clavius briefing room, but Arthur Clarke would surely have nixed such unscientific nonsense. And when we see the astronauts outside at the excavation site, they’re STILL walking perfectly normally, as if strolling around Borehamwood on a May morning. It seems nobody concerned with the production predicted the effects of the low lunar gravity, or else they dismissed it as too finicky to deal with (subtle slow motion might have been an option, reverting to normal speed when Floyd and his colleagues talk, keeping them stationary for dialogue or looping in normal-speed lines…)

i used to read a lot about how keir dullea was some unknown that kubrick plucked from obscurity to star in his gazillion dollar movie, but he starred in one of the most talked-about and widely-seen American indie films of the 1960s, david and lisa. that film seems mostly forgotten now (in part b/c i think some rights issues kept it from widely circulating on home video until recently), which is probably how the myth of dullea's obscurity took hold. i finally watched it a few years ago and it is incredibly dated. there are certain scenes where dullea's character looks almost catatonic and i wonder if that's what stuck in kubrick's mind. (aside from his striking features.)

Are these idiots worth addressing?

Love it when directors use "non-actors", acting is for theatre, if you must

kubrick sometimes used professional actors as if they were non-actors.

Yeah iq was generalising around that and I agree

like in a purely kuleshovian (sp?) way.

Pro/non-pro is kind of nonsense anyway

A director is looking for a particular effect, usually, which is as much about choice of take/performance as it is about the training or ability of the performer

well, whether or not an actor has experience on a film set or in front of a camera is important. or can be important. i don't think it's "nonsense." but one can make too much of the distinction, certainly. isabelle huppert has talked about this a lot, and willem dafoe.

yeah again i'm still generalising. i enjoy the illusion of not feeling that i'm watching somebody act.

for most actors that illusion is the point of all their training and experience!

i disagree, seriously. and i think even if you reduced acting to The Method and adjacent ideas it has very few good exemplars. i'm not actually saying i hate acting, of course it has a place and it has its own pleasures, i just find it peripheral or distracting to a lot of film that i love.

"Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow" was Noel Coward's famously cutting remark about one of the hottest young actors of the 1960s. The comment, uttered on the set of 1965's Bunny Lake is Missing, proved to be not only inaccurate but also especially ill-timed: The film that earned screen immortality for Dullea -- 2001: A Space Odyssey -- was still three years in the future.

https://www.npr.org/sections/monk2011/01/19/04/its_well_past_tomorrow_and_kei.html?t=1550867185882

Bunny Lake was a highly visible, major production, and Dullea said his happiest day working on it was getting the 2001 role, bcz Otto Preminger treated him like shit.

Also one of those Cairns pieces notes that the cool inexpressiveness of Lockwood and Dullea was certainly a conscious choice.

famously cutting

love noel coward but that is a 3rd rate quip esp. by his standards

noel coward is wonderfully gross and decadent in bunny lake, IIRC his face is dripping grease

It's a cute one-liner, but if only he knew who'd be more famous in 2019. Or 1985.

https://i.imgur.com/KVjrQ11.jpg

ppl who google are ignorant in the first place

I had to assemble some furniture today so figured I would put something on while I worked. And I remembered I spent days scouring the internet for a copy of Soderbergh's 110 minute cut/edit of "2001" but hadn't watched it yet. It'd been years since I saw the original so I figured, sure, why not. And it's really good! Shorter, obviously (by some 30 minutes), but subtly tweaked and resequenced with a greater emphasis on HAL and less on man/dawn of man. Made me see the movie with fresh eyes, not just because the "print was great, or because I was paying attention to this novel variation, but because the way Soderbergh recut it def. accents some themes more dramatically, esp. man's creation of AI as a parallel to the early creation of man (and subsequent reinvention/evolution of man). Good stuff.

i don't know if anyone heard Kurt Andersen's 2-part radio show on the film but Tom Hanks was toxically annoying.

"'Houston! We have a problem!' LOL, that's what I woulda said!"

deliberately buried?

https://www.newsweek.com/moon-mystery-mass-discovered-far-side-1443304

18 years late but I’ll take it

https://i.imgur.com/OKwc8FO.jpg

"I dunno, Dave. HAL's probably right. Maybe I should beam out there and fix that unit. Where's my red shirt?"

Saw it on 70 mm last night at The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. I hadn't read the talk on this thread about Chris Nolan's urine-colored print, and did not notice anything wrong with the color.

What struck me as very unsettling were the several stretches of absolute silence in the scene when poor Gary Lockwood loses his oxygen and goes spinning off into space. In a big theater full of people this kind of silence is eerie. I was afraid someone in the audience would make some dumb noise and break the spell, but no one made a sound. So good job, audience. (It helps that this venue doesn't allow food).

Imagining the alternate universe where Isiah Whitlock was in yr audience and just couldn't help himself.

Seeing this on a very big screen back in the day was a very intense experience.

the crowd at this screening seemed very young and I couldn't help but wondering what a 20-25 yr old would make of this film, having grown up with a completely different style of sci fi pic

I realize there are some clues to that in this thread

My son watched it and liked it

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. A visionary epic about man’s eternal quest to have a decent meal. pic.twitter.com/ZgRJzhQC10

— Bilge Ebiri (@BilgeEbiri) January 19, 2020

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35297381-space-odyssey

highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the making of the movie. it's very detailed and well-researched. lots of info about how the practical effects were accomplished, tons of harrowing stories about the shit that the actors and stuntmen were put through to make those effects work

yeah, we talked about it a bit upthread, it rules

otm, great book