2001: A Space Odyssey

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

i couldn't believe what the dawn of man actors had to go through

honestly i've never loved 2001 but i think i need to see it in a theater

i saw in 70mm at least 15 years ago now and it was incredible

Yeah I got to see it in 70mm a while back and it was like seeing it for the first time, a completely new experience.

After a failed project recently I was just consoling myself by rereading the chapter in that new book about the disastrous premiere & Kubrick’s self-doubting depression afterward.

Just watched the movie for the first time in a while. In the book, does Bowman communicate w/Earth after deactivating HAL? (I haven’t read it since high school.) In this viewing, I wondered why mission control didn’t instruct him to abort the mission and turn around, rather than go on his own to Jupiter with no crew, etc. I assume the novel has more context about why he continues on with the mission (to Saturn in the book).

One other technical detail I’m not quite clear on is why the sunlight doesn’t hit TMA-1 until Heywood Floyd visits — which is some time after the team on the moon found it and had time to excavate it, etc. How often does sunlight fall on that part of the moon(?)

(Sunlight is the “trigger” for the radio signal, yes? — because it indicates that humans have evolved to the point that they reached the moon, discovered the monolith, etc.?)

A lunar “day” is 28 days long because it completes 1 spin on its axis per orbit (same side always faces Earth). So they might have dug it up during the 14 days of darkness, or maybe it needed the sun directly overhead as suggested by the camera angle, giving them e.g. 3-4 weeks between middays.

or it took a while to charge up the big radio blast

On Bowman contacting Earth.

The original AE-35 unit was lost when HAL killed the other dude Poole, and HAL had claimed that the replacement that had been installed had failed. So the antenna was out of action at least? Presumably / understandably Bowman didn't fancy going EVA again to fix it even if that was possible!

Also was the Discovery already quite near to Jupiter at that point? Not to mention curiosity to say the least given the message Bowman had discovered.

In the book I think I recall Clarke describing Bowman getting a lock on the Earth signal pretty easily once HAL was disconnected and no longer deliberately throwing off the alignment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPaNSK9jIrc

Thx all. They were only weeks (I forget the number) into the mission when all that stuff went down — at least according to the interview with themselves that Bowman & Poole watch at the beginning of the Discovery One segment. Seemed like they were still a lot closer to Earth than Jupiter.

Tbh I don't see Bowman's journey as just being at the level of individual human motivation or decision, or even driven ultimately by 'alien' intervention. It's destiny / telos. Bowman was always going to become the starchild.

Or at least innevitable from the moment the apes encounter the first monolith, if you prefer. I don't know what Clarke would say but that's my feeling from the film.

I wonder if it's possible that Clarke took inspiration from Canticle For Leibowitz. The structure of the two books seems similar, albeit dark mirrors of each other-- Clarke chooses "aliens" as human's salvation, and Miller chooses "God":

Dawn Of Man, the creation of tools = Age of Faith, uncovering ancient civilizations
Monolith On The Moon = the (re-)discovery of the bulb
Bowman achieves godhood = Humanity euthanizes itself and/or departs Earth

idk. Re-reading Canticle, too, made me wonder if Miller in turn read Paul Bowles, seeing as Miller loves having his protagonists be murdered by "harsh reality"

The older I get, the more funny/delightful I find the Heywood Floyd segment. All the small talk and bureaucratic BS; his “pep talk” in the conference room; the business with the space toilet and sandwiches... it’s all so great.

and his little diplomatic dance with the Russians on the space station

Yeah, I love it... I don’t think anyone in that section of the movie says what they’re “really thinking.”

Floyd is pretty much a figure of fun, in a covert sense - arriving importantly to exert the illusion of control. I think only for Kubrick though, Clarke seems to write him as a capable fixer.

Seemed like they were still a lot closer to Earth than Jupiter.

Interesting!

Strange metal monolith found in Utah desert

I saw that! At first I thought it was a prank. I also saw that it's apparently been there and been noted for a few years, iirc.

I don’t think it’s been noted before; it’s just that they couldn’t tell how long it’s been there (could be decades).

"It is illegal to install structures or art without authorization on federally managed public lands, no matter what planet you're from," the department said.

Yes. It is. And damned egotistical, too.

...the department said in an extremely measured, unnervingly calm, vaguely Canadian-sounding voice.

that would be a neat twist if it was just some arty farty piece, but installed by ALIENS!

Instellar vandalism

aliens who were Kubrick fans

they couldn’t tell how long it’s been there

The location has been pinpointed from either image metadata or reverse image search, and it's only present in satellite passes since late 2015. So it's definitely not by John McCracken (d. 2011).

Other pictures show it's sheet metal held together with pop-rivets, not a solid block.

(Although I guess aliens could've also developed pop-rivets)

It's the next evolutionary stage of a Toynbee tile.

Conspiracy dingbats already co-opted the story ffs.

https://www.disclose.tv/t/what-is-this-thing-why-is-it-being-covered-up/8896?fbclid=IwAR0zC7KBNvdHubOZ0DnFJ0YsI1pkRp-e1zbYyv97W4COXH5InQxqk1zJ6Cc

ARG game for the next Boards Of Canada album.

I thought exactly the same thing