2001: A Space Odyssey HD (1 Viewer)

[Douglas Monce]

I also find 2001 to be a film that I put in more to watch specific sequences than to actually enjoy the movie. It's a bit too cold for my taste, but it's technical execution is brilliant.

Doug

 

[RobertR]

My appreciation of the film has grown over the years. I used to confine my viewings of it to the theater, and 70 mm at that. The 70mm showing I saw several years ago was awesome (70 mm film simply blows the best digital formats out of the water). But when it was shown on HDNet, I tuned it in, and simply found myself drawn into it again. I'll likely pick it up in an HD format, which will likely be HDDVD, but may be BR if a good low priced player comes along.

 

[Gary Seven]

Mike, I found that to be an amusing post.

I am hoping Mr. Harris is able to screen a copy as I would be most anxious to hear his thoughts. Judging from you all, though, it sounds like a winner.

Which brings me to my question. While I do have both formats, my receiver (B&K AVR 507 S2) is incapable of reproducing the lossless codecs. Since I will not be upgrading my receiver for the time being, I was hoping to get opinions of which to get since I assume the picture quality is identical. Now with BD, I can listen to PCM but my receiver will decode as Pro Logic IIx, though it is lossless. The other codecs are downmixed, which still sound very good. If you were in my shoes, which version would you get to experience the best sound?

 

[Peter Neski]

This is a Wonderful Blue Ray,got it from warners

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Gary,

so far I've preferred lossless downmixed to 2.0 played back in Prologic on a traditional non-HDMI receiver to "lossy" 5.1 soundtrack options regardless of format.

Obviously, lossless 5.1 is the holy grail and that's what you'll get with your next receiver. But for now trust your ears and do what sounds best. I've spent lots of time A/B switching between lossless and lossy on my own HD titles and found that, every time, I preferred Lossless, even when it meant downmixing to 2.0 for transmission over SPDIF coax/toslink.

That's not too surprising. Those of us from the laserdisc era remember how good that 2.0 PCM sounded. I've been amazing at how few 5.1 lossy tracks come close to the realism and low-level-detail of 2.0 PCM... even when processed with ProLogic.

5.1 Lossy... that's where you'll be tomorrow... so what you do now is only temporary anyway! The important thing is that your *software* is aimed for the future with lossless 5.1 tracks.

 

[Gary Seven]

Being an old LD head, I remember the quality PCM sound. I should. I still watch lasers.

Anyway, that does make perfect sense. Thanks David for presenting such a logical choice.

Ok... BD here I come.

 

[Nelson Au]

Gary, I have an older B&K Pre-amp, 4090. I spoke to B&K and they told me the best it can do is 5.1 DTS downmixed at the processor via optical. As was said, this will be my temporary solution till I upgrade in the very near future. I look forward to this disc, I just have to buy a player now.

 

[Jim_K]

I'm jealous. :frowning:

I've got my Kubrick's on order with WHV and at the way they conduct their operations I probably won't get to see this until April or May next year.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Jack, I doubt very few people here bought both copies. In fact they may have expected YOU to have purchased both copies and afterwards post your opinions vis-a-vis the BRD and HD DVD versions.

I'll be more than happy to return the favor on Lawrence of Arabia when Sony releases it on both BRD and HD DVD. :rolleyes

 

[Jefferson Morris]

Josh wrote:Perfect answer.

I understand some folks' continued aversion to this film. It continues to provoke and divide opinion nearly forty years after its release, and I know many highly intelligent people with good taste who see little merit in it. De gustibus non est disputandum.

While I consider 2001 the "greatest" film I have seen, I will confess it's not my "favorite" movie - my desert island pick. That film would be the 'Fellowship of the Ring' (my most coveted non-existent high-def disc). But Kubrick's achievement with 2001 - its vast thematic reach, formal daring and pictorial beauty - put it in a class by itself for those who can tune into it. You know, IMHO.

--Jefferson Morris

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

I have chronic insomnia. When I wake up at 2 AM and know I won't be able to get back to sleep, my favorite film is 2001. It's all cerebral and not emotional. There are 5 murders shown on screen (actually 6 including HAL - or is that a lobotomy?), and yet none of them evoke strong emotions. At 2 AM I know I won't get hungry, go to the kitchen, get interrupted on the phone, etc. I can just sit there and let the film unfold in front of me without distractions.

It's sort of like Bach's Goldberg Variations for the telly.

A plot synopsis could be this:
- man invents tools
- man perfects tools
- the tools rebel
- man evolves beyond the use of tools

A man named Zemeckis once did a virtual remake of 2001 but added in huge amounts of human emotion. It's called Contact. You may decide which is the superior film.

Another director once made a sequel to 2001 called 2010. It's just wrong. A more appropriate sequel to 2001 is the film Forbidden Planet. The end of 2001 may be seen as the birth of the first Krell.

And along with Jefferson, it's not in my desert island pack. I'd take ACO over 2001. And I'd pack Casablanca, The Third Man, and Lawrence first.

 

[Carlo_M]

Ha ha, don't feel bad Ron. I could say the same thing but replace 2001 with a number of "classic" or "all-time greats" films. Take Citizen Kane. Bought it sight-unseen. Researched it. Knew of why it was "important" and "groundbreaking" etc. Still did nothing for me once I finally got around to watching it. And no, I'm not an "MTV Generation Kid" with no attention span. I love plenty of classics and slow-paced, dialogue/story/plot driven movies. Just not Kane. To each his own.

FWIW, I've grown to love 2001. Growing up w/ Star Wars and Star Trek (yes I was a geek in both geekdoms), at first viewing of 2001 (in my teens) I thought "How lame are these effects? And can the story move any slower?"

Now I rank 2001 above all of those films except for The Empire Strikes Back.

 

[Carlo_M]

Actually, wouldn't the comparison be between Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan

FWIW - I love both films for different reasons.

And Sagan's book is a lot less ambiguous about things than the movie.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Carlo,

Actually that's the point.

Zemekis followed Sagan's book.

Kubrick merely took Clarke's original idea as a point of departure.

IIRC Kubrick wrote the screenplay based upon a short story of Clarke called The Sentinel. Only AFTER the film was in production did Clarke write a book-length version.

I get frustrated debating about what 2001 means. People always come back with "but Clarke's book says XYZ!" But this is completely irrelevant when discussing Kubrick's film. Kubrick never gave more than two ice cubes off a witch's tit to slavishly following an author's book. Ask the authors of Red Alert or A Clockwork Orange how they were treated at Kubrick's hands.

 

[Patrick Sun]

The main reason I picked the blu-ray version was because I needed some quality stuff to feed my Panny BD10A, plus the BD10A is the one connected via 5.1 analog inputs on my old Outlaw 950, so it worked out for my setup these days.

 

[Gary Seven]

Hi Nelson,

I also called B&K to find out their HDMI plans and the availability of upgrading my reciever. As expected, I got no definite answer other than they are working on their next line which will incorporate HDMI and ethernet connectivity. Expected release is first quarter 2008. It won't be until second quarter 2008 as to whether it will be known if my receiver will be upgradeable or not.

Sorry to go OT fellas. Now back to our regularly scheduled posts.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

I would LOVE it if I could upgrade my B&K AVR 212 (reference-30 decoding performance) to HDMI 1.3 and adavanced audio decoding...

 

[Josh Steinberg]

That's pretty much it. Kubrick met with Clarke to discuss making "the proverbial good science fiction movie" and the two of them looked over pretty much everything Clarke had done before settling on "The Sentinel" as a starting point. They collaborated on the screenplay and novel, with Kubrick doing most of the screenwriting and Clarke doing most of the novelization. (And if you read the book, you can tell that it's based on an earlier draft of the screenplay; the mission in the book is to Saturn, and it had originally been planned that way for the film, but they couldn't come up with a visual for Saturn that looked right to Kubrick. So the film was changed while the book stayed the same.)

I think they're both perfectly valid but separate works of fiction. I think the novel works well as a novel, but if they had filmed it as written, it wouldn't be the memorable film that it was. Clarke did things in the novel that you can really only do on the page; Kubrick did things in the film that can really only be done on film. Though some debate which is superior or more valid, I think it's a pointless exercise. It's fun to examine the similarities and differences, and people will have different preferences, but there's not one version that's inherently "wrong" while the other is inherently "right".

The novel "2010" I think is a fantastically written sequel to "2001" the book. I think the film "2010" is a good adaptation of that book. Do I think the "2010" movie is a good sequel to the "2001" movie? No, because nothing could be. As I wrote earlier, I think the film is pretty much about Everything, so there's really nothing more to be done with it, no questions to be easily answered. It's a visual journey that you experience more than a riddle to be figured out. But the scope of the novel "2001" is much narrower, and both the "2010" book and film are fitting and entertaining sequels to Clarke's original novel. If you can look at them as separate things, you can find merit in each. If you didn't enjoy the film "2001" (or conversely, if you absolutely loved it) and expected "2010" to somehow build on that or explain everything, you'll be disappointed. As far as entertaining sci-fi literature goes, I enjoy reading "2001" and "2010" back-to-back, and do so every couple of years. And I usually watch "2010" when I finish with that. But I don't watch "2001" and "2010" back to back as I don't find any inherent value in doing so; the more separate I can keep those movie experiences, the more I'll enjoy each.

By the way, as far as Kubrick and accuracy to original novels go, I think in a lot of ways "Clockwork Orange" is the closest; I mean, the narration was read by McDowell from a highlighted version of the book! It's entirely possible that Kubrick never read the controversial 21st chapter when he started work on the film, and only found out about it later, just as it's possible that he read it right at the start and threw it out. Personally, I'm not a fan of that last chapter in the book; I find it problematic at best. I respect people who find merit in it, but I don't see it as being a good ending to the story, I think it flies in the face of everything that followed before. You know how sometimes you watch a movie and you think, "the ending should have come there! Why on earth does it go on another ten minutes?" That's how I feel about the book. Excluding the final chapter in the film doesn't take anything away from it in my opinion, but including it would have. It's one of those things that could be argued forever and there really is no right or wrong answer, only opinions. If there's one thing I love about Kubrick's work above all, it's that decades after the fact we still have these debates. There aren't many filmmakers that can actively engage an audience and encourage this kind of passionate discourse long after their passing. Putting all of his technical innovations aside (and lord knows, there are tons and tons), to have contributed a bunch of films to the mainstream that have no easy or simple explanations is an incredible achievement.

To me, the only thing more amazing than the way-ahead-of-its-time visual effects of "2001" is that Kubrick was able to get a big pile of MGM's money, lock himself in a studio in London for four years, and get away with putting out the movie as he wanted it. (Can you imagine anyone trying that today? The filmmakers with the clout to do it aren't in the habit of making those kinds of films, and good luck to anyone else going up to a studio head and saying, "Yeah, I'm gonna need $200 million to do this giant science-fiction film that's going to be loaded with classical music, begins with apes, lasts about two and a half hours but only has about forty minutes of dialog, ends with a big light show and a floating baby in space, and I'm not going to bother to explain it to you or the audience either. Oh, and by the way, this isn't for art houses or critics, this is for the biggest and best cinemas in the world, it's going to be your big summer blockbuster too!") It's not that people today don't make memorable, thought provoking, controversial films; it's that no one before or after has gotten to do it with the resources that Kubrick had, or to the degree in which he did it. Often copied but never equaled, there will never be another Kubrick. And if we're still debating the merits and ideas of his films fifty or a hundred years from now, I can't help but think that that's exactly what ole' Stanley had in mind.

(Sorry for the rant...slow work day...)

 

[Nelson Au]

I took a quick look at the SD-DVD last night to check on the dialogue during the Clavius sequence when Floyd makes the speech and then heads out to the TMA-1 site. I never noticed that there's a small gaff here as the Earth is lit on the left side, then another shot shows it lit on the right side. What I am curious about, does the new high def disc show the Earth with any more detail? On the current disc, it looks washed out. I suspect it was always that way.

For the B&K fans, I started a thread here to discuss the new hardware: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...68#post3256868

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Clarke wrote a standard sci-fi book about extra terrestrials having an effect on human evolution. He was comfortable with that idea, having used it before e.g. in Childhood's End.

Kubrick on the other hand made a film about man, religion, and ethics.

Zoroastrianism is the original monotheistic religion and the parent religion of modern Judism, Christianity, and Islam. The prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra in German) proclaimed the one diety, Mazda. The symbol used in Zoroastrian worship is a flame, or, quite often, the Sun itself. This is not to say the Zoroastrians "worship" fire or the Sun, anymore than Christians worship the cross, but that fire or the Sun are symbols which should focus the thoughts of their worshipers.

Kubrick starts his film with the audience staring directly into the Sun while listening to Thus spake [the prophet] Zarathustra. He's hitting you on the forehead with a baseball bat: "this film is going to be about GOD, not about extraterrestrials."

I suppose if Kubrick had started a film with an image of the Christian cross while Handel's Hallelujah Chorus played as the score, people would have said "Oh, I'm sure this film isn't about religion." :rolleyes