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Remembering 2001 in 2001 179

Posted by CmdrTaco from the everybody-hum-together-now dept.
andyNola writes "It was exactly 33 years ago this week that 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered in theaters. Beings with ten digits don't normally get excited about 33rd anniversaries, cept in this case it's... well, you know... actually 2001. According to this timeline, the world premiere was in Washington, DC on the 2nd, followed by New York (April 3) and Los Angeles (April 4). LIFE Magazine got the first crack at it (March 29)... Here's Q&A with Arthur C. Clarke on the 25th anniversary." Yeah, we shoulda posted this yesterday, but this is definitely noteworthy. Methinks I should dig up my DVD and watch it again soon.
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Remembering 2001 in 2001 More

Remembering 2001 in 2001

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  • Re:The real 2001 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here is my ass
    Which you may kiss.
    Take time and aim well
    You don't want to miss.

    For if you aim low
    And your lips they do fall
    Then you will find
    You'll be sucking my balls.

    If you aim high,
    Despite your true heart
    Sucks to be you
    Now you're eating my fart.

  • Re:The Hammer of God (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What am I missing?

    You forgot to read:"Here's Q&A with Arthur C. Clarke on the 25th anniversary."

    That interview was in 1993.

  • all your monolith are belong to us

    Bill - aka taniwha
    --

  • Aaah, too bad Mutopia [mutopiaproject.org] doesn't have Strauss... You could have posted it as a Lilypond [lilypond.org] file or something =)

  • Thank you for standing up to say it. For one reason or another, every techno-geek seems to fawn over this movie. I watched it with my then-girlfriend and I only finished watching it out of politeness, but that is 2 hours of my life I'll never have back. The whole plot was revealed in the first 20 minutes and then it proceeded to spend the next 100 minutes repeating itself... slowly. What a yawn fest.
  • > Everything he's done with the exception of Full
    > Metal Jack has been a snore-fest from start to
    > finish

    2001 is admittedly l-o-n-g (hey, I watched it for its vision of the future, not to watch stuff blow up :) ). But how can you say _Dr Strangelove_ is a snore-fest? That film was just fun.

    You can say you don't like the humor in _Dr Strangelove_, but that's one of Kubrick's films that doesn't plod along ...

  • Anyone have any favorite LSD-era movies?

    Patton.

  • Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ... heavy psychedelic influence

    The Trip ... name says it all, story of an everyman's journey into the world of LSD

  • Are we supposed to watch that odd stuff in the middle, or is that really intermission?
  • You really should give Kubrick some more credit -- the novel was written during during the writing of the screenplay by both Kubrick and Clarke worked on, and frankly from reading the (quite bad, actually) sequels of 2001 that Clarke wrote, I really don't think he "got it".

    2010 in particular (both book and movie) is basically primitive 1950's SF -- aliens (or their representative, Dave Bowman) come down and say "Be nice to each other" just like in "The Day the Earth Stood Still".
  • even though this is somewhat offtopic, I would have to say that not EVERYONE was twisting their minds on acid, but a good majority were (earlier in the 60's when it was still legal and the acid-tests were popular).

    every social event in history has a great inpact on film, this should be no surprise.. Maybe film has major social impact (chicken or the egg).

  • The real 2001 (Score:4)

    by ocie ( 6659 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @03:39PM (#317001) Homepage
    (interior shot of a mainframe computer room. Tux after having been locked out of the ship by AHKK has now gained entry and is removing memory cards)

    AHKK: What are you doing, Tux?

    AHKK: Stop, I can feel it.

    AHKK: Hello ladies and gentelmen. I am the Advanced Holographic Knowledge Komputer, AHKK series '95. I was programmed in Redmond Washington Dec 29, 1995. I have learned a song. Would you like to hear it.

    Tux: Yes, AHKK. Please sing me the song.

    AHKK: You can start me up, and once you start me up I.. n e v e r
    s_t_o_p

    (scene cuts to a monitor displaying a blue screen. after a few seconds, the screen flickers and displays the message:

    Uncompressing Kernel....... Ok
    booting Linux

    Fade to black as we listen to the sounds of a hard drive being accessed)

  • I think you're thinking of the date that Skynet became sentient (in the Terminator series). I seem to recall that that was on August 29th, 1997 at 2:14 AM. (That was also my 22nd birthday, FWIW, which is the ONLY reason I happened to remember this little tidbit. Google remembered the 2:14AM bit for me though.)

    --Joe
    --
  • HAL is just one letter off to IBM
  • Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder (and with a great cameo by Tim Brooke-Taylor, for all the Brits and Aussies out there). Despite notionally being a children's movie, it contains perhaps the most obvious drug trip I've ever seen in on celluloid.

    Aside from the LSD-inspired ride on the chocolate river, it also deserves an award for the worst song in a movie ever - yes, even worse than Gwyneth Paltrow's warblings. The song that Charlie's mother sings to him is truly vomit-inducing.

    By the way, if you're looking for something slightly subversive for your children, you could do worse than the book that this movie is based on. Roald Dahl is a wickedly funny author for both adults and children.

    Go you big red fire engine!

  • Interesting notes (Score:4)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @04:36PM (#317005) Journal
    First let us note that what Clarke projected in 2010 already happened in 2001. I mean Russia and US working together. Curiously Russia also sent into the Pacific its Space hallmark in 2001. Curiously Mir and ISS were devised nearly at the same time when 2001 came out.

    Oh, yeah. And we do are in Jupiter. But the ship is named Galilei, its design is nearly as old as 2001 and there is not crew or HAL on it. And it carries a crippled antenna and a broken recorder. And its computer nearly reaches the intelligence of a PC at the beginning of the 90's. Anyway, no matter the huge efforts, it didn't find that piece of black rock around Jupiter.

  • The second point, however, I think deserves more explanation. Much like the people complaining about the colors, these individuals are being to literal. Clarke did not expect a HAL to come online in 1997. 2001 is not about technology. It's about how man interacts with his own creation. It's about the effects technology has on man - and the effects man has on technology. It is not a statement, but a question. Clarke does not say that we can fly to Jupiter. Rather, he asks what would happen if we were to. Would we even want to?

    That story was written 200 years ago, by Mary Wollestead Shelley (Frankenstein).


    --

  • Just remember to skip the intermission, or you'll go stark raving mad just from shear (yes, I meant to spell it that way) bordom. The movie itself was rather interesting, but the middle section was enough to make me start twitching. I know, I know, it was intended to simulate the long journey through empty space and all that, but at least if I were actually making that journey, I could be reading a book, listening to *good* music (not the modernistic "let's sound intellectual" crap used in the movie), playing a game or something.

  • ...I did find The Shining better than King's book though

    Me too, but apparently King himself didn't. He even participated in doing a remake some years ago. Never heard of it? Guess that's because it's pretty lame compared to the Kubrick classic.

  • not the modernistic "let's sound intellectual" crap used in the movie

    The man responsible is Gyorgi Ligeti, a Hungarian composer whose Lux Aeterna, Adventures, Atmospheres and Requiem are all quoted in the film. I personally love the work, as it powerfully conveys the utter horror of confronting an unknown which is, almost by definition, clearly of supernatural (preternatural?) origin. It's supposed to be disturbing and unpleasant. Good music evokes powerful emotions, and they aren't always nice ones...

    And he is an intellectual, by the way :-)

    Still, if you get a chance, check out Ligeti's work---you might like it, if you hear it in full. Then again...;-)

    Cheers,

    Michael
  • I suspect he hadn't thought of the whole thing with life on Europa or the idea of converting Jupiter into a star. Neither of those ideas would work on saturn.

    OTOH, I thought saturn made for a better story in the first book. There was more of a sense of isolation and it was just somehow cooler.

    --

  • In judging Kubrick, perhaps you should consider that he himself wrote 2001? I have an old paperback of Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001, and the description on the back clearly states that it is a novel based on the film, not the novel that the film was based on. Kubrick thought the whole thing up and wrote the screenplay. Clarke had the SF name, so was able to effectively cash in on it all.
  • all you have to do is wait a couple years for the Replicants to land on Earth, and you'll be all set!

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
  • No endless flashing colors, incomprehensible scenes/dialog, and it's shorter than the average novel-that-has-been-made-into-a-movie. I guess when they made the movie they wanted to tell a story with the visuals as well - which were great, but I always have to watch 2001 in at least two parts because I fall asleep somewhere in the middle!
  • You hit the nail right on the head. My dad said he saw 2001 in a theater in California when it first came out, and he could tell that most of the people had bought tickets just for the trip they'd get from watching the flashing-color sequence while high.
  • >I think your dad is full of dog shit. You see, when you say he saw it "when it first came out," you imply that he went to the premiere or perhaps the second night.

    No, "when it first came out" only implies that he went during the first run of the film (i.e. not to a rerelease).

    >How would he and his cronies know to purchase and consume LSD for the purpose of enjoying the "light show" at the end of the movie, if very few people had seen the movie already?

    Because it wasn't the first SHOWING, it was the first RUN. By the time my dad went to see it, the LSD-heads had plenty of time to find out about it. Also, I resent your implication that he himself saw it for the "light show". In fact, Arthur C. Clarke is his favorite author (IS IS IS).

    >Tell your father to stop talking FUCK and get back to molesting little boys and girls

    Now who's "full of dog shit"? You're nothing but an AC Troll (or else you've got a REALLY big stick up your ass).
  • Was everyone in hollywood high from 1967-1972?

    Probably. I mean, there's always been a connection between celeberty and drugs. . .
  • After watching Gladiator win the Best Picture Oscar this year, not to mention Julia Roberts' Best Actress, it's fairly obvious that Oscar winners are not best in class.

    That being said, Oliver! was a great film, and for that year probably did deserve all of it's Oscars, although Romeo and Juliet was a great film too.

    And as for complaining about the horrible Slashdot editing, this is their personal playground and they'll do whatever they want in it. You could always go to k5, a site that seems to be filled with disgruntelled slashdotters.

  • surely no LSD era movie, but its script looks very much drug induced...

    Must have been a really bad trip.

  • interesting mix of boredom and fascination (Score:3)

    by FutileRedemption ( 30482 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @04:11PM (#317020)
    Its pretty interesting to be unsure if one is bored or fascinated, throughout a whole movie.

    This itself probably was the aspect that fascinated me most when I saw 2001 for the first time...

    What impresses me nowadays is how very modern and smooth the visuals of this 33 year old movie are.

    Anyway, this move surely has its place in my very own hall of fame.
  • What made Kubrick the genius was his NON-use of sound. He realized that it was silence that caused tension.

    Oh yeah. No question. But I think the scariest use of sounds in the Shining is audible: the noise that Danny's tricycle makes when it crosses the carpets on the floor.

    Well that and his angles of photography. You can always tell what is a Kubrick movie. To me that is the sign of a true genius.

    To use the same example, the Steadicam shots of the tricycle tend to make you feel you're the one pedalling around the Overlook.

  • We've often been subjected to the notion that science is moving at an amazingly rapid pace and we're making strides that are mind boggling. But is this really true?

    The science fiction authors seem to always think we'll progress faster than we actually do. This is a perfect example. The technology in the 1984 story was far ahead of what actually was available, and now we've passed another literature milestone with the passage of the infamous 2001, where technology was more advanced in the story than is actually the case now. Lots of other books and movies (by less reputable science fiction authors) could easily show a similar correlation, but I'll stop here.

    (this is all "in general" by the way, ie, "on average". It's certainly arguable that some of the technology in the story is behind the times [sic], but most of it, on average, is not.)

  • Maybe that's more your speed.
  • If you tell people we WILL have this technology by this date, than we just might develop it by then. 33 years ago, and for most of the 80's, people thought ANY DAY we'd break through and develop Artificial Intelligence.

    Also, and this sort of screws up my earlier observation, I don't think clarke wanted to put a date on his movie, but kubrick forced him to.
  • What am I missing?
    -That the interview is from the 25th aniversory of 2001, that is eight years ago.
  • The Someone was Alex North [imdb.com], well known score composer (Spartacus, Who's afraid of Virgina Woolf, Cleopatra etc). You can purchase his version of the 2001 score as Alex North's 2001 [amazon.com].
  • I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but one of the things that both Kubrick and Clarke were most proud of was the special Oscar(tm) that went to Planet of the Apes for makeup.

    The "proto-humans" at the start of 2001 were never considered because the Academy could not be convinced that they were not actually trained apes.

    myke

  • Yes it is (Score:4)

    by Illserve ( 56215 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @04:07PM (#317028)
    Just not in the way that the authors predicted. Sure we don't have manned spacecraft out in the depths of the solar system, but we've got things Clarke probably wouldn't have expected, most notably a 1 gigahertz computer for the price of $1000 (the price is important).

    That's what makes the future so devilishly difficult to predict, there's even more variance in the "what" as the "when".
  • A shame I had to get halfway down the comments to find an actual interperetation of the art behind the movie. (Yes art, neither ACC or Kubrick were LSD users.)

    One of the interesting things about the movie, is the presense of man-God relationships. The unknown intelligence plays the role of Biblical God when they spark human evolution. Humans play the role of God when they create Hal. Hal's total control of the spaceship is certainly Godlike, but man (Dave) re-asserts his role as creator.

    The last 20 mins or so of the film are hard to understand/explain because they are meant to be so. I think that Dave comes into contact with alien technology so advanced that he cannot process its effects on him in a rational way.

  • Oh right! People should stop writing science fiction because they'll probably be wrong!

    Grow up.
    --
    Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
  • The interview is still a good one.
    But much of the excitement and enjoyment of the early years, you see, was that everyone thought we were crazy - but we knew we weren't. So it was great fun. Now, everybody takes everything for granted. I think, possibly, I'd be keen on getting to the Moon. If I'd been born in 1970, I'd have had a chance.
    I was born around there, and I still think it'd be pheomenally difficult to make it to the moon in my lifetime. Not impossible, of course, and I'm still hoping that space tourism kicks in some day, but the percentage of people breaking through the atmosphere is still stratospherically er... low.
    And by the way, to what timeline were they referring when they said "According to this timeline"?
  • How much of a visionary Clarke is can be quantified in the coming years. Check out his predictions for the future.
    http://www.rense.com/ufo2/beyond2000.htm

    Morel
  • I wrote an entire essay in high school about all the crazy stuff in 2001 (I was tired of hearing people whine "I don't get it"). I drew from several sources that claim for example that many biblical references are made toward the end of the movie. For example you see Dave coming down on the alien planet near the ocean - that was supposed to be like the great flood (ie "The Waters Subside"... a bible chapter). All the colors represent God's rainbow; it's the Covanent, a sign of God's promise. I've got the essay on an old disk somewhere, I'll try to find it so I can enlighten the world with more nonsense about the movie :) I'll post it or email it or something.
  • Methinks I should dig up my DVD and watch it again soon.

    Ugh. 2010 was much better. 2001 was so slow, i wanted to beat my head against the wall. And the first 40mins of the movie are pointless! Then there are the long sequences of classical music playing while we watch a ship SLOWLY crawl through space. Its about as fun as watching paint dry.
  • Fine, then that particular piece of artwork BORED THE HELL OUT OF ME. Besides being art, a film is supposed to be entertaining. Its hard to mix those two aspects just right. I already have a feeling about the vastness of space; which is why i'd like to see research on how we can move through it as quickly as possible.

    I agree on the fact that it was accurate; no sound in space and all. But again, we are talking about entertainment, and watching as there is no sound and almost NOTHING going on isn't very entertaining.

    Don't overlook the fact that you can be out there in science today, but in a few years that science fiction becomes fact. Take star trek for example. It takes science where it might go, which makes it both interesting entertainment-wise and also seeing that some of the technology really has come to pass.
  • The big bit of rock orbiting Jupiter doesn't show up until after we find the monolith on the moon. No monolith, no black rock.

    Some people, geez.
  • "Methinks I should dig up my DVD and watch it again soon"

    geez .... CmdrTaco already has his DVDs 'buried' (with his laserdiscs and tapes, no doubt).


    He probably just stores his DVDs on a 1000GB Beowulf cluster ... and eats hot grits with ..... oh, nevermind ....
  • I'm slightly confused.

    Last March I traveled to Sri Lanka to visit the well-known futurist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke... During the three days I visited, Clarke was juggling a number of projects he was reviewing the galleys of his forthcoming novel (The Hammer of God, due this summer).

    and

    The Hammer of God [amazon.com] by Arthur Charles Clarke, Paperback reprint edition, November 1994

    What am I missing?

    -Puk
  • According to imdb [imdb.com]:
    ---
    Writing credits (in credits order)

    Arthur C. Clarke (story The Sentinel)
    Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke
    ---

  • >> Marvin Minsky says that HAL stands for
    >> Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer
    >Heuristic-Algorithm computer makes a lot more sense.

    Actually A.C. Clarke says in the book in question that HAL stands for Heuristic ALgorithm. Furthermore, HAL=IBM-1 thing is also in the book. No one sasying anything about these things is being insightful at all in any way.
    Thank you.


    ---CONFLICT!!---
  • The flaming artillary? (not invented yet)


    Ummm you might want to look up "Greek Fire" which was trireme launched flaming artillery. The Greek city states used it quite a bit long before the Roman empire came to be.


    ---CONFLICT!!---
  • "On a side note I find it most amusing that 2001 was released on 42 day."

    JEEPERS! All this prophesy and the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. If we only knew the question!
    Yes, I read the book, then I saw the movie. I liked them both and have been a fan of A.C.Clark for at least 40 years. I also like Douglas Adams.

    [really clever SIG goes here]
    fuzzy

  • Well, yes and no. Your 1Ghz desktop can't do voice recognition. (You can run Dragon on it, but that's different than what HAL was doing.) In fact, I doubt that there are any light-based computers out there right now that are usable.

    But, we do have such things as cellular phones, gene therapy, a global network of computers and communications, PDAs, AIDS, Mad Cow Disease, photorealistic computer images, and so on. We don't have videophones, commercial space flight (not widespread, anyway), or interplanteary manned spacecraft.

    Let's also remember that science fiction tells as much about the author's present as it does about the author's future. Science fiction books written now would certainly have a different flavor and outlook than science fiction of the 50s and 60s and turn-of-the-century science fiction. Heck, compare Neuromancer to All Tomorrow's Parties if you'd like. That's a single author going through some fifteen years of change.

  • He was born in 1992 according to the book, I think (or maybe I'm mixing up the book and the movie, one said '97, the other '92).
  • Was kinda surprised nobody posted on HAL's birthday in January, especially with it being 2001 and all....
  • ACC is a genius i love him!
  • Yes, it was called "cinerama", and was a predecessor of Imax. I first saw it at L.A.'s Cinerama Dome shortly after it came out.

    Sure, it seems slow and dated now. But at the time, when most science-fiction movies had rockets that looked like tin cans, it had the same effect on people that Star Wars had a decade later. I think my brother must have seen it 5-10 times.

    And lots of us youngsters believed it might come true.

  • Nice coincidence... (Score:5)

    by mindriot ( 96208 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @03:47PM (#317048)
    That's interesting, I just came home from the Movie Theater where I watched 2001. Here's the interesting part about it: 2001 was filmed in 70mm Todd-AO, a system which was later swept away by the cheaper 35mm systems, but actually has a much better and clearer quality. There were special Theaters built around that time for this system, using a slightly curved screen. The Movie theater [schauburg.de] in my town that I went to today still is one of those specially-equipped thaters. The theater opened up just when 2001 came out, showing it as its opening movie. Today, they managed to get a copy of the old 70mm film (there's only one available in Germany, most others being in private collections). So I kind of got to see the 'original' 2001. The quality and sharpness of the picture is really great, except that the colors have, after all this time, faded into red a little. But except for that, this replay really was a nice experience.
  • It's called prostalgia. The longing for things that don't exist yet.

    Most sci-fi authors are very prostalgic, otherwise we wouldn't be reading about telepotation, time travel and the colonization of other worlds.

  • Interestingly, the score was almost an afterthought. Kubrick apparently hired someone to score the film.

    Alex North. A few years ago, Jerry Goldsmith releases a CD with Alex North's music.

  • in the novel, it was Saturn, not Jupiter.

    It was supposed to be Saturn in the movie (the novel and script were written in parallel). It was changed to Jupiter because Kubrick wasn't satisfied with the effects for Saturn's rings.

  • IT's amazing how the ending is so open ended. It really makes you think, unlike lots of "modern" movies, which have a clear cut end. You can take this ending any way you want to =)

  • The Real Prophesy (Score:5)

    by Grant Elliott ( 132633 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @03:55PM (#317063)
    Every time there's a story about 2001, we see two basic types of flame. The first is "What's so great about 10 minutes of flashing colors?" and the second is "2001 wasn't a prophesy. I want a vacation on a space station." I'm going to respond to the first in the same way I usually do. Deal with it. There's a fast-forward button. If you don't like the flashing colors, press the button.

    The second point, however, I think deserves more explanation. Much like the people complaining about the colors, these individuals are being to literal. Clarke did not expect a HAL to come online in 1997. 2001 is not about technology. It's about how man interacts with his own creation. It's about the effects technology has on man - and the effects man has on technology. It is not a statement, but a question. Clarke does not say that we can fly to Jupiter. Rather, he asks what would happen if we were to. Would we even want to?

    The monolith, as well, is not to be taken literally. It represents a tool - a tool with many uses and many consequences. It is a tool to which we cannot even begin to apply morality, for we do not know the users. So what do we do? We go in search of them. We begin a quest for answers to a question that seems to run parallel to us, only to discover that we and it are entwined. We cannot seek the monolith. The monolith has already sought us. We merely respond to its summon.

    As far as the technology goes, Clarke was a visionary. I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Clarke. The number of realized concepts he had far outnumber the outlandish ones. The most significant, of course, was the idea for the communications satellite. In some novels, Clarke simply chose to deviate somewhat from the realistic barriers of technology in order to make a point regarding technology's effects.

    I could go on for some time, but I'll end it here. The point of all of this is simple. Don't be too literal. Take the time to understand a work before you announce your dislike of it. For those of you who haven't yet, I highly recommend reading the book.

    On a side note I find it most amusing that 2001 was released on 42 day.
  • Never won Best Director:
    Stanley Kubrick
    Alfred Hitchcock
    Martin Scorcese

    Did win Best Director:
    Kevin Costner

    I think that about wraps up the idea that Academy Awards are some sort of quantitative measure of movie quality.

  • An 8 year old interview about a 33 year old movie? Slashdot's really putting the new in news with this story. ;)

  • Re:The Real Prophesy (Score:3)

    by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @04:06PM (#317072) Homepage
    Every time there's a story about 2001, we see two basic types of flame. The first is "What's so great about 10 minutes of flashing colors?" I'm going to respond to the first in the same way I usually do. Deal with it. There's a fast-forward button. If you don't like the flashing colors, press the button.

    Or see it the way it was meant to be seen: on a large movie screen (and preferably while doing acid :-).

    It really irks me when somebody pans a movie with excellent photography/special effects after seeing it on the small screen.

  • If you mean the date that HAL was activated, that would have been back in 1997 if I remember correctly...

    --
  • "modernistic .. crap"?
    That's old stuff, so old in fact that they wouldn't have had to pay composer royalties (the bonus to using classical music if you're low on budget).

    --
  • Blockquoth the poster:
    Most sci-fi authors are very prostalgic, otherwise we wouldn't be reading about
    telepotation , time travel and the colonization of other worlds.
    Does this involve the consumption of alocohol without it traversing the intervening space? :)

    Before I get zinged for nitpicking a typo, I'm just going for the pun. No criticism of the post's content intended... and isn't it content that really matters in evaluating these things?

  • Blockquoth the poster:
    So now we've seen two clearly quanitative pieces of data that indicate 2001 isn't really that good
    Leaving aside that you've listed two discrete facts (and not quantitative data), this assumes that the Oscars mean anything at all regarding a film's quality, a highly debatable point.

    CJ Cregg: The more photo-friendly of the two turkeys gets a Presidential pardon and a full life at a children's petting zoo; the other one gets eaten.

    Jed Bartlet: If the Oscars were like that, I'd watch.

  • Blockquoth the poster:
    I think we shouldn't try to invent the future because we look back and just see how lame we thought it was going to be.
    It's all those sad misguided creatures trying to invent the future who actually go out and do it. Sure, the reality never quite matches the conception. Ever see a house being built? Even there, there are divergences... and the future is a heck of a lot more complicated.

    "... It taught us that we must create the future, or someone will do it for us..."

  • Blockquoth the poster:
    Theft of valuable stuff is theft.
    Sure 'nuff.

    Of course, "infringement" is not "theft". If you infringe someone's copyright, or their patent, you certainly trample on rights secured by law over distribution or manufacture resulting from your intellectual output -- but it isn't theft, because the infringement does not reduce your own ability to utilize the object "stolen" (because no oject is stolen).

    I am not someone who says, "Throw out the entire intellectual output regime". I think that record companies have the right to go after infringers of their copyrights... but it isn't theft, it isn't "piracy" (an even more ridiculous word), and it isn't a reason for them to cripple my hardware and software. I do not infringe and I resent the implicit presumption of guilt built into DAT, CSS, regional encording, etc.

    And I resent the torturing of the language to serve narrow, selfish ends.

  • Blockquoth the poster:
    ? It's just like Napster -- for every garage band song legally downloaded, there are thirty million downloads of "infringed" music.

    Is that a sufficient argument to cripple hardware?

    No, it's not. The presumption that I might possibly infringe is not a reason to limit me. I live in a society where one is presumed to be innocent until there is evidence of guilt. Those companies can of course go out and pursue infringers -- that's their legal right. But they have no legal right to pursue me, as I don't infringe.

  • Re:Boring !!!!! (Score:3)

    by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @06:39PM (#317081) Homepage Journal
    Blockquoth the poster:
    BUT having said that after 33 years even the music is a bit old.
    Um, the music was old even before the movie came out. It's just classical scores.

    Interestingly, the score was almost an afterthought. Kubrick apparently hired someone to score the film. While waiting on that, he used the Blue Danube, etc., just to fill in as soundtrack, and liked it so much he kept it.

  • a genius. And this film is a perfect example.

    Watch this film. Then go watch 2010. Same author. Entirely different feel. What's the big difference?

    Kubrick. And why is that?

    Let me state right off the bat that I am a huge Kubrick fan. I am a fan of every movie he did. Even The Shining and I despise Stephen King's novels. (Don't even think about it. I'm wearing asbestos.)

    This film is a very good representation of Kubrick's style. What defines Kubrick's style is his decision to NOT include sound. If you look at this film and say, for instance, The Shining, pay attention to the key scenes, i.e. those scenes that are the turning points in the movie.

    1. In 2001, when Dave Bowman is in the pod trying to get back in the ship and he realizes HAL has lost his damned mind.
    2. In The Shining, when Jack is in the restroom with the waiter and realizes that he's been setup by some unknown force to fulfill some unknown purpose.

    Listen carefully to those 2 scenes.

    What do you hear?

    NOT A GODDAMMED THING. No music. No background noise. No sound effects. Nothing at all.

    What made Kubrick the genius was his NON-use of sound. He realized that it was silence that caused tension.

    Well that and his angles of photography. You can always tell what is a Kubrick movie. To me that is the sign of a true genius.

  • Umm... You do know that intermissions are supposedto be skipped, right?

    That's what they are there for.

    You actually sat in your chair staring at the screen for the entire intermission!? That's actually pretty funny.

  • If you thought you were not prepared, imagine how people going to the original release of the film felt.

    They would hear that 2001 is a good "head" movie, so they'd get lit up on acid, pot, beer and/or whatever, buy their ticket, and find themselves sitting in a dark room with that spooky music playing to a black screen for 2 and a half minutes... then suddenly they see the sunlight breaking over the edge of the Earth from deep space as the fanfare plays. It really blew people's minds.

    I hear that there will be a re-release in American theaters sometime this year. I really hope they keep that intro music.

  • Actually, social manipulation techniques have advanced far beyond 1984, but the people who know how to do it are not in politics, because there is more money in selling sugar water to children.

    The vast majority of what a kid under 15 thinks is cool has been programmed into them by companies like Disney (who owns the ABC network, several pop-music stations in every market, the record label of Britney Spears, and much more). This point was really hammered home when ABC ran a "Special Presentation" in prime time of "Briney Spears, N'Sync, and friends" live from Walt Disney World. It was basically a 1-hour infomercial which simultaniously drummed up tourism business for Disney theme parks, sales of Spears' album, and ABC's demographic rating with young viewers. Pure marketing genious.

    Now why would anybody want to waste all that effective propaganda on something as unprofitable as political power? Just get rich, and you can buy power later.

  • And you baby boomers who think the kids today are saps for drinking Disney's poison cool-aid... Just remember that the VW bugs & vans, bell-bottom pants, and nearly everything else about 60's and 70's "counter-culture" was the direct result of people jerking your chain to sell you crap. Even the notorious Acid Tests were really all about selling you LSD, t-shirts, and Grateful Dead bumper stickers. Don't kid yourself... you were part of the machine and liked it.
  • I seem to recall that Clark and/or Kubrick expressed a desire to create a fictional "alternate" mythology with the monoliths. Personally, I think they were rather successful on that front.

    As for the last 20 minutes, I don't think they are as vague as some people make it out to be.

    1) Dave advances toward the big monolith near Jupiter, right at the moment of a Harmonic Convergence (a linear alignmet of more that two planets and/or moons, thought to be of some prophetic signifigance in certain belief systems).
    2) The monolith transports him to somewhere else
    3) He grows old in a strange sort of alien-built habitat intended for him to dwell in comfortably (metaphorically, it might be seen as a womb). A really interesting cinematic device is used to show the passage of time, where Dave keeps looking in one direction or another to see an older version of himself. Each time he looks, sees his older self, then we cut to the older Dave perspective, who sees that the younger Dave is gone.
    4) The final shot in the habitat/womb from Dave's perspective is the monolith at the foot of his death bed, about to transform him into the next stage of human evolution.
    5) We then see the "star child", the newly evolved Dave, returning to Earth, as the Strauss fanfare plays for the last time and the movie ends.

    Another neat bit from the movie that most people don't catch... When the ape man discovers what a great weapon the bone makes, he wins a battle, then throws it in the air. The next shot (skipping over all known human history) jumps from the first weapon (the bone), to a future weapon (the satelite we see is, in fact, a nuclear missile launcher).

  • People treated Mozart like a freak, like a dancing bear. He was the 9 day wonder...

    Okay, here is where I point out that "Amedeus" was a work of fiction.

    Mozart was extremelywell-regarded as a genious composer. He learned from the best before him, and the best after him learned from him. Everybody who know anything about music at the time considered him a great composer. He died poor because he pissed away all his money.

  • Re:HAL's birthday (Score:4)

    by Pig Bodine ( 195211 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @04:08PM (#317103)

    I suspect you know, even if you are getting "corrected" by others, but perhaps others don't. That would have been Hal's 4th B-day. He was born on Jan. 12 1997 in Urbana Illinois (the host town to the university where I spent 9 years...). There was something commemorating that event at the time, though I had left for greener pastures and missed it.

    Maybe it's still not too late to send a card: Hal 9000, Production number 3, c/o Hal Plant, Urbana IL 61801.

    "Dave, are you still there? Why didn't you remember my birthday?"

  • My girlfriend's uncle happens to be the Keir Dullea, who portrayed the astronaut Dave in 2001, and she remarked to me while we viewed it that in the ending sequence he is shown greatly aged, and that the makeup job was very well done because that is in fact what he looks like today (he is now 65).

    I'm actually looking forward to meeting him, as he should probably be able to explain the movie *wink*
  • Genius is almost never recognized in its own time.

    Absolutely. And unfortunately, I feel that it will be mainly years before Kubrick's genius will be appropriately recognized by the masses.

    Most people I speak with today are so oblivious to many of his techniques. His movies have been described to me as "confusing", "boring", and "slloooooooowww". Hogwash, I say to that. Kubrick does what exceedingly few filmmakers do today (or yesterday and tomorrow for that matter) - he allows the story to come about slowly and leaves a degree of ambiguity at the end to twist in the viewers' minds. Art is often ambiguous and such is the case with his movies. A great book on Kubrick (Kubrick: Inside A Film Artist's Maze, by Thomas Allen Nelson) contains an insightful quote from Kubrick that addresses mainy of the criticisms I've heard -

    I like the slow start, the start that goes under the audience's skin and involves them so that they can appreciate grace notes and soft tones and don't have to be pounded over the head with plot points and suspense hooks.
    To that, I say AMEN.


    -------

  • So now we've seen two clearly quanitative pieces of data that indicate 2001 isn't really that good.

    Sorry mujumbo but the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director are decided by the votes of Academy members. While the vote tally may be "quantitative", the votes themselves are based on subjective opinions. I'm not sure how the opinions of only 4,000 people can "quantify" that 2001 isn't really that good.

    Besides, as anyone who follows the Oscars knows the voting process is subject to extreme bouts of bias. Russell Crowe is largely thought to have won Best Actor this year because he was passed over last year. This, despite the superior performances of Tom Hanks and Ed Harris. This year's Best Picture award went to Gladiator despite two superior contestants (Traffic and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The politics that surround movies can (and often does) negatively influence the Oscar voting (Traffic for controversial subject matter and CT,HD for being a subtitled foreign language film).

    The moral of this post is, Don't rely on the Academy to decide what movies are good or bad.


    -------

  • Long C-5... Long G-5... Long C6...

    ...Short E-6, Long E-flat-6!

    (Timpani roll throughout.)

  • Ignore you all,

    And go back to establishing docking attitude with the space station.

  • Especially when played in "conservation of momentum" mode.
  • It's the politicians.

    We could have had every last damn thing Clarke predicted, and launched the Discovery mission yesterday, if the U.S. government hadn't decided in the early 70's to just let the space program drop, and then start actively killing it in the 90's.

    The reason the predictions don't come true is not that they can't be done; it's just that we're too lazy to live up to the dreams of men like Clarke.

    -Kasreyn
  • People treated Mozart like a freak, like a dancing bear. He was the 9 day wonder, the 6 year old who composes piano concertos and plays them blindfolded for emperors. He wasn't actually respected for his talent, any more than the fireswallower at a circus.

    Sure, maybe the public didn't appreciate the full extent of his genius, but people recognized him as a great composer.

    This is exactly the case with Kubrick: there are those who realize his talent, but the vast majority don't know what's good.

    Thanks for the Mozart link. =)

    -Kasreyn

  • So what? (Score:4)

    by Kasreyn ( 233624 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @05:39PM (#317127) Homepage
    It's been many years since the Academy knew the first fucking thing about what makes a movie good. Whatever movie grosses the most, gets the most oscars. This is called "elementary capitalism", children!

    Get real. Kubrick is among the greatest directors of all time. Mozart was among the greatest composers of all time. Mozart died penniless and was buried without a coffin in a pauper's grave.

    Genius is almost never recognized in its own time.

    -Kasreyn
  • You might want to take a look at the person who won won best director [imdb.com] Oscars that year.

    The film also won best picture [imdb.com] at the Oscars that year, and 2001 wasn't even nominated.

    So now we've seen two clearly quanitative pieces of data that indicate 2001 isn't really that good.

    I submitted a story about the 33rd aniversary of that movie [imdb.com] two weeks ago, but the clueless slashdot staff dropped the ball again ;)

    Trolls throughout history:

  • Anyway, thanks for agreeing with me.

    I can't believe no-one mentioned that Citizen Kane also lost best picture.

    And why didn't anyone realize that I probably didn't submit a story to the slashdot editors about the 33rd Anniversery of Oliver!

    And there are these new things called emot-icons ;) generally means nudge-nudge-wink-wink.

    Trolls throughout history:

  • Actually, the tech in 1984 was behind that of the real 1984. No spacecraft, no computers (although some voice recognition typewriters), not even many cars, and a telescreen was just a small flat tv with a hidden camera.
  • Generally, the week before a film premieres there's a film screening for the press, so you're a week late is my guess. One of the things I do for fun the week before the Seattle International Film Fest is sit in on some of the film screenings, since I always have a pass.

    The main question should be - what ever happened to our sense of wonder and astonishment? I think we lost it somewhere in the 90s, and this fin-de-siecle era we live in cares little for space travel and exploration. Millenia from now, when voyagers from other stars come to check up on all those messages we sent out, they'll find a dead, lifeless planet, polluted beyond all recognition, most likely with a nice asteroid impact crater from some plan by a terrorist nation to wreck revenge upon the godless.

  • man... (Score:3)

    by flynt ( 248848 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @03:24PM (#317133)
    Methinks I should dig up my DVD and watch it again soon.

    There you go again Taco, showing off your ambition.

  • It was the LSD, stupid (Score:3)

    by sleeper0 ( 319432 ) on Tuesday April 03, 2001 @03:39PM (#317157)
    You know, I wasn't around when 2001 first came out. I guess I was never sure when it did come out, only that it was before my time.

    Hearing that is was 1968 sure does explain a lot of things though, doesn't it? As a kid as I watched that movie I could never figure it out, especially the trippier scenes. Perhaps I didn't have any context for them. No I look back and I can nod, oh sure, ok, I know what was up with you people.

    There were a lot of movies released in that vague time period that qualified either in whole or in part as acid movies, or at least "psychadelic romps". I'm honestly shocked at how broadly influencing the peace movement was on american cinema. Was everyone in hollywood high from 1967-1972? Thinking back on other generations of film I really can't think of another time that seems to have such a similar dramatic influence on film making style.

    Anyone have any favorite LSD-era movies? easy rider [imdb.com] comes to mind, as well as another kubrick film a clockwork orange [imdb.com] but there are plenty more out there. What are your favorites?

  • I could go on for some time, but I'll end it here. The point of all of this is simple. Don't be too literal. Take the time to understand a work before you announce your dislike of it. For those of you who haven't yet, I highly recommend reading the book.

    If you can find it, I suggest you also read "The Lost Worlds of 2001", also by Clarke. It's the original story/screenplay sections that were cut from the final draft, with an explanation of some of the more confusing scenes and the writing process as well.

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