Sight and Sound 2022 Top 20

It should be noted that 2001 came out in 1968 and huffing about "hmm, unsophisticated portrayal of dystopia" is kind of laughable considering the multiplex films it existed next to and the fact that dystopia is hardly the first thing on its mind.

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I saw JD as mechanically powering through the responsibilities of a good housewife (and taking the same determined More Work For Mother attitude to...servicing her johns). Then something--perhaps the letter from her sister in Canada, perhaps the conversation with her son about his early ideas about sex and his ensuing Oedipus Complex phase--throws her out of gear.

xposts: plenty of published 60s (and before) SF is already grappling with what I am talking about in a more sophisticated way than what Arthur C Clarke is doing. Maybe Kurbrick could've absorbed some of it and not been so lazy.

All of that, plus per Akerman she has her first orgasm with the second john — indicated only by the mussed hair — which makes her late and throws after her routine. Then it happens again with the third John, which represents a level of threat to her whole careful order and emotional repression that she can’t process.

Throws OFF her routine I mean

it's true, Kubrick famously hated reading and researching. xxp

About the only film I haven't seen on the hundred, Daisies, will get a viewing tonight. Can't wait.

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Useful information. I assume JD has been studied as a retort to Belle de Jour's fantasy of a proper bourgeoise housewife/part-time whore?

Kubrick was a compulsive collector and hoarder, since when is that researching?

lol oh ok.

theres plenty of sophisticated politics to be found in 2001 imho, especially (but not exclusively) if you can put yourself in the headspace & concerns of a 1968 viewer, beyond simplistic dystopian allegories. but per ryan upthread if you truly get no pleasure out of the images & music & editing theres not much else to be said.

best parts of JD for me are those moments she seems lost in thought, those moments she's not working. waiting for the store to open, the cafe, arguably even the closing shot--she withdraws into herself, seems alive in a new way. it's possible the ending removes any ambiguity from what's going on these moments, but not necessarily and I prefer to think not.

one cool thing about 2001 is Kubrick's sensibility clashing with Clarke's way more optimistic technological humanism.

BdJ surely needs no such retort, predicated as it is upon being just that fantasy, that impossibility

in the absence of Bunuel, Tarkovsky, a few others, will go for 2001 over Jeu cos wheeee space wheeeeee

"Kubrick was lazy and didn't do research;" an amazing starchild of a take is born this day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aGnuLXCruc

in the absence of Bunuel, Tarkovsky, a few others, will go for 2001 over Jeu cos wheeee space wheeeeee

― imago, Tuesday, 10 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Space isn't fun at all in 2001 or in Solaris.

Space, where no one can hear you snore

(I like 2001)

me too, but I did fall asleep during a screening of it once

Where no one can hear you meme, iirc

It's okay to fall asleep during movies -- I have watching Tsai or even Jeanne Dielman (sorry, Morbs, wherever you are).

Heh. I have fallen asleep in many movies. At first I felt guilty but eventually I started to liken to the old days of "walking in in the middle" and enjoyed the challenge of filling in the blanks when I woke back up. I also witnessed my erstwhile friend the big shot director fall asleep on several occasions so there's that too.

Once during Vengeance Is Mine iirc.

Technology -- whether it's a book or a computer -- has always been with us and it's always breaking and sorta dysfunctional when it's mass produced.

hal's madness isn't about a hippie distaste for technology. (also he is not mass-produced but bespoke, but maybe this is part of yr complaint.) it's about taking the nsc-68 values of the conference room scene, where everyone is reminded of the necessity of lying to their families, to their logical terminus. same as dr strangelove.

There's an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show where his alibi for some situation depends on him having fallen asleep during a film. Every time he tells another person- Buddy, Sally, eventually Laura, I guess- they inevitably say "You fell asleep during The Guns of Navarone?!"

(and like, indeed the thing in hal has always been with us, hence the monkey part, xps)

I'm sure you-know-who would have remembered that one.

i nodded off a few times during inland empire in the theater last year

waking up at any point in that movie is a horrible experience

falling deeply asleep in the theater and waking up without having any sense of where you are in the runtime is really fun, i highly recommend it. downside is you might get robbed, but thats the magic of cinema for you.

Back in my drinking days, I fell asleep in the theater and missed most of Inglorious Basterds. I have yet to re-watch it.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's films always seem like an invitation to sleep - "I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours"

Carpenter's Dark Star in particular comes across like a working stiff riposte to the sleekness and sterility of Kubrickian space travel. 2001 elides questions of ownership - who's funding all this? - although you'd think Kubrick, if not Clarke, might have better anticipated the rise of the despotic billionaire spaceship owner/controller. No need for Hal (at a narrative level) when someone like Musk is far more unpredictably petty and vengeful.

It should be noted that 2001 came out in 1968 and huffing about "hmm, unsophisticated portrayal of dystopia" is kind of laughable considering the multiplex films it existed next to and the fact that dystopia is hardly the first thing on its mind.

although you'd think Kubrick, if not Clarke, might have better anticipated the rise of the despotic billionaire spaceship owner/controller

true, but i think Kubrick for one was focused on the Operation Paperclip of it all.

a few years back, I went to a double feature of Tarkovsky's The Mirror and Nostalghia with three high school friends and we all conked out within the first 20 minutes of The Mirror. After being awoken during intermission, we did all stay awake for and generally enjoy Nostalghia though.

B-b-but were there a lot of multiplexes in existence in 1968?
(xp)

Morbs’ take that 2001 is an optimistic film because it looks forward to something beyond humanity is a characteristic and correct take
― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.),

Yes, the attitude is, "There's gotta be something better than this."

I was bored by 2001 when I watched it as a teenager but I no longer believe in boredom so I should really watch it again someday

^silby otm!

it's a good movie is my opinion

i will never turn away sleep when it comes to me but i can only really zonk out if it's one of those theaters with the reclining chairs...but in theory i am very pro falling asleep to movies...especially since a lot of my favorite movies have a kind of time-dilation effect that is familiar to what you get from daytime napping.

If I go to a movie after 10, I have to drink a mega soda to stay up.

But then that means pissing during the movie

i am very much of the opinion that there are films that not only are improved by the half-sleep state, but that have been designed to lull you into rest and put you in that state so that you are cycling the right brainwaves to step into the experience. weeraseethakul, harvard sensory ethnography lab, kurosawa, sometimes kubrick... il buco did a great job of that.
crucially, this really only works right on the big screen.

I have to watch Scorpio Rising (28 minutes) over three night at home--I can't get through any film without falling asleep if I'm in my chair. (Better in a theatre.)

Maybe, but I regret the day I had too much wine at brunch and fell asleep during the restored version of Forbidden Paradise.
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oh I cannot drink before watching a film in the theatre: instant nap even if it's one glass of wine or beer. I can drink during it, though.

back in my wine-drinking days, a friend and I would go to the local winery, then see a movie, and just about every time, instant Zzzzs.

fell asleep on Simpsons movie and Walk Hard that way

At home I've no problem watching a fillum with a cocktail.

just a public service reminder that sleep apnoea is a thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWH7oPBnD9s

lol, the snorers at moma are legendary