2001: A Space Odyssey is a 4K/UHD Release possible? (1 Viewer)

[Allansfirebird]

Was that documentary called "A Man With No Name"? I found it on youtube. I didn't watch the whole thing but zipped thru it to find Kael's remarks. I had a reverse reaction, I didn't find her pompous, full or herself, or condescending. She remarked that Eastwood's films had a political point of view, that his characters killed without regret (comparing that to Bogart's portrayals). Yes, she was sure of herself, but I found her to be reasonable.

Yes, that's the one. I wasn't getting much of a political view from her in her comments, all I sensed was that she did not like Eastwood or his films, but reluctantly (very reluctantly) had to concede that audiences like him.

 

[Johnny Angell]

Yes, that's the one. I wasn't getting much of a political view from her in her comments, all I sensed was that she did not like Eastwood or his films, but reluctantly (very reluctantly) had to concede that audiences like him.

I think she even used the word "politics" or "political" to refer that his films had a political point of view and I could see she didn't agree with his point of view. She was not wishy-washy about her point of view.

 

[Brian Kidd]

When I first saw the film in college (in the early 1990's), it was via a P&S videotape that I borrowed on a whim from the school library. I enjoyed it well enough, but wasn't quite sure what most of it was about. It stuck with me, however, so that when it was released on a letterboxed VHS, I plopped down the money to purchase it. The widescreen composition and much nicer transfer made a huge difference. I still didn't quite understand it, but I was in love with it. After that viewing, I got hold of a paperback copy of the book and devoured it. It suddenly made sense. It soared to the top of my all-time favorite films list, where it has remained. It also ignited a love of Stanley Kubrick that has not wavered.

When my teenage stepson was looking for a film to watch with me a few years ago, I hesitatingly pulled the 2001 Blu-ray off of the shelf. I explained to him that he was either going to love it or be bored to tears, but that at the very least he was going to see a beautifully shot and edited film. To my surprise and delight, he was practically vibrating with excitement when it ended. That was a good evening.

 

[TJPC]

You shouldn't have to read a book to have a movie make sense I know, but I think that without it, the meaning of 2001 is really just guess work. I think some people enjoy it's inscrutableness (is this a word?!) and love to speculate on its meaning.
2010 I believe was based more directly on Arthur C. Clarks sequal, and there is a third volume I believe that was not filmed.

 

[Harry-N]

Three sequel books:

2010
2061
3001

 

[Nelson Au]

I found that 3001 was a real page turner. I couldn't put it down. I haven't read in a while, my opinion could change. The ending is what is maybe the weak part.

 

[Mark McSherry]

The movie INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996) employed the same trick ending as Clarke's novel which was published in early 1997. Some remarked at the time that this similarity did steal some of the thunder from 3001.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

In Clarke's afterward to 3001, he mentions the similarity in endings but notes that it was too late to change his story by the time he found out.

 

[Harry-N]

In Clarke's afterward to 3001, he mentions the similarity in endings but notes that it was too late to change his story by the time he found out.

I just checked my first edition hardback of 3001: THE FINAL ODYSSEY and there is no mention of a similarity to INDEPENDENCE DAY. Perhaps it happened in a later edition?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I just checked my first edition hardback of 3001: THE FINAL ODYSSEY and there is no mention of a similarity to INDEPENDENCE DAY. Perhaps it happened in a later edition?

I only have the first edition, so it must be in there. Maybe it was an interview conducted at the time of release, though I would have sworn it was in the book. My copy is in storage, so I am unable to check it at this time.

 

[Nelson Au]

My copy of 3001 should be a first edition so I'll try to remember to check it out when I get home tonight!

I know it's not a popular movie amongst the 2001 purists, but 2010 is a sentimental favorite still. While it's not as original or thought provoking, I still like the movie. Maybe it's Roy Scheider's portrayal of Floyd or the message at the end or that it's straight forward action. This recent discussion might urge me to watch both films.

 

[Harry-N]

I've always liked 2010 as a movie. It's different from 2001, yet touches on some of the same elements. In fact, having just re-read the final afterword in 3001, Arthur C. Clarke himself acknowledges that each of his sequels aren't direct sequels from the one prior, but each occurs in perhaps a parallel universe without shared histories.

I remember going to the premiere of the 2010 film. It was quite exciting to see any updates after all of the intervening years, and I'd love for someone to attempt to tackle the other two book sequels as films.

 

[questrider]

The acknowledgement to similarities with Independence Day is in the Afterword at the end of the 3001: The Final Odyssey book.

 

[Harry-N]

The acknowledgement to similarities with Independence Day is in the Afterword at the end of the 3001: The Final Odyssey book.

OK, I've found it now. My earlier mistake was not looking back far enough in the book. I was only looking in the section called "Valediction", and the reference to INDEPENDENCE DAY occurs some four pages earlier.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It was mentioned briefly before but I just saw the comment now, about the movie version of "2010" (aka "2010: The Year We Make Contact")

I'm a fan of the movie.

With Stanley Kubrick being my favorite director and "2001" being my favorite film, the likelihood of me enjoying a sequel made without Kubrick seemed pretty low. I think there are a couple important things to remember that help with my enjoyment of it:
-The novel for "2001: A Space Odyssey" was developed by Clarke and Kubrick during scripting for the movie, and was finished by Clarke and published after the release of the film. It's not accurate to say that "2001" is based on a book by Arthur C. Clarke. Nor is it accurate to call the book a novelization. It is accurate to say that both were created simultaneously yet separately, with Kubrick having more control over the film and Clarke more control over the novel. (All were suggested by a Clarke short story called "The Sentinel" which basically is about the discovery of an unknown artifact on the moon.)

-Therefore, the events in "2001" the book are different from "2001" the film. Neither is more correct than the other; it's just two different takes on the same idea. The book, by necessity, is more literary, while the film is more visual. The book isn't meant to "explain" the movie. Kubrick and Clarke were good collaborators but they did not agree 100% on every single little thing, so Clarke's telling of the story is not meant to be an explanation of Kubrick's film.

-The novel for "2010" is meant to be a sequel to the novel for "2001" -- sorta. Because there are some differences between the plotting in the movie version of "2001" compared to the book, Clarke states that when both versions clashes, he chose to follow what the film showed rather than what the novel depicted, believing more readers would be familiar with the film and not wanting to cause confusion. (For instance, in "2001" the novel, Discovery goes to Saturn, not Jupiter. But because Kubrick couldn't get an effect for Saturn that he liked, it was switched to Jupiter in the film. But Clarke kept the Saturn setting in the original novel. For the "2010" novel, he decided to have the events take place at Jupiter in keeping with the film. But it's not nearly as significant a difference to the plot as it might sound.)

-Peter Hyams' film of "2010" is a fantastic adaptation of Clarke's "2010" novel

And when I view the film like that, I don't even need to waste any brainpower trying to hold "2001" and "2010" on the same level. And, to a certain degree, I like that "2010" is basically the story of those left behind on Earth. It doesn't spend a lot of time trying to decode the mysteries of "2001." It does explain why HAL malfunctioned, however, Clarke also explained this in his "2001" novel, so it's never been as much of a mystery as people who were only familiar with the film version of "2001" would believe. But while it shows us a little more of Bowman after his encounter with the monolith, it doesn't really explain too much of it. There's a healthy amount of mystery that's allowed to remain mysterious. But I absolutely love the "2010" film's opening slideshow, and the opening conversation between the Floyd character and his Russian counterpart that immediately follows.

Whereas "2001" is a film that allows us to follow our protagonist to the beyond, "2010" is a film that keeps its feet planted in our universe, and explores what people on Earth would have tried to make of a space mission going suddenly wrong.

It's a film I revisit fairly frequently, probably once a year or every other year. I rarely watch it back-to-back with "2001" but usually not too far apart either.

 

[Harry-N]

I feel much the same way regarding 2010.

 

[Nelson Au]

You've been drinking too much of your Kentucky bourbon!

I would agree with your thinking on 2010. I enjoyed that book very much as well and separately I enjoyed the movie from the book, 2001 and 2010.

There is one area Kubrick's film did really well that Hyams could not duplicate. The monitors on Discovery all looked real, where as the rebuilt Discovery sets used CRTs. Of course that made filming a lot easier.

Tell them we'll lie! They'll love that!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

There is one area Kubrick's film did really well that Hyams could not duplicate. The monitors on Discovery all looked real, where as the rebuilt Discovery sets used CRTs. Of course that made filming a lot easier.

The film loops that Kubrick used in "2001" during filming were apparently a nightmare in every possible way. The loops themselves were a pain to make, and could tear or otherwise wear out. Then, because there was a limit to how bright they could get, all of the other lights in the set would have to be dimmed in relation to those, which was a nightmare for the cinematographer. Then they had to get everything cued up right for whatever scene was taking place, and a single mistake or issue with the loops could destroy a scene. On the flip side of that, if an actor flubbed a line, it wasn't as simple as just starting another take immediately, they'd have to stop and reset all of the loops.

In other words, this is why the bridge of the Enterprise used slides

CRTs were available in 1968 but there wasn't really an efficient way to write them all up to play back video. I wonder what Kubrick would have done if he had made the film in 1984 instead; I can imagine that he might have went with CRTs for ease of shooting.

The problem isn't even so much that they're CRTs, it's more (in my view) that the panels look like off-the-rack standard screens with a little bit of a curve and edges that weren't quite square. I guess flat-screen CRTs weren't popular until much later, but I think they would have stood out less if they had been squarer/flatter. You can tell how many times I've seen the movie by the fact that I can dissect all of this minutia over the background monitors!

But I almost didn't see "2010" at all. When I was first introduced to "2001", I was about ten or eleven years old. It took forever to find a video store that actually carried it, and other than some enthusiasm from my stepdad who was leading this video-hunting mission, I knew nothing about it. I had never seen anything like it. Even cropped from it's original 70mm widescreen presentation, I could tell that I was watching something special, and the effects looked completely real to me. Every time I'd think I'd get a handle on what the film was going to be about, it jumped to the next segment, and just as I'd start to put together how this one might have related to the last, it would jump yet again. But I had also gotten sick that day, and by the time the "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" sequence started, I had a fever - I was sitting in a bucket of sweat and I'm not sure how much of that was from being sick and how much of that was from sheer terror. I was the right age and in the right state of mind that when Bowman starts his journey through the stargate, I thought I was right there with him. I was mesmerized by the movie, and yet, I didn't know quite what to make of it. It was one of those things where it seemed to make perfect sense as I watched it, and only became confusing if I tried to put it into words. I think my brain understood the concepts before I had a vocabulary to express them. Anyhow, fantastic experience viewing 2001, despite not feeling well. The next day though, I passed on watching "2010" because I was pretty much bed-ridden.

Weeks or months later, I decided that I wanted to see "2010" and a copy was found for me. I started watching it on my own, and this creeping feeling of terror started building in me right from the opening slideshow with the eerie background music and then the reprise of Zarathustra. The sight of people on Earth put me at ease temporarily, and I got distracted by the mechanics of aerobraking on the journey to Jupiter, but once the Discovery appeared onscreen (spinning wildly out of control), I felt the tension beginning to build. When John Lithgow boards it with the Russian engineer, and they take their face plates off in the pod bay, and the Russian starts smelling something rotten and freaking out, I just had to turn it off. I was terrified. I didn't know what they'd find, if it would be the re-animated, evolved ghost of David Bowman sitting on the toilet or nothing at all or something cosmic, but it was like my body remembered that feeling of fever and associated it with the movie. I just could not make myself continue. (Give me a break, I was 11!) Not long after that, HBO was showing "2001" and I channel surfed into it. I made it up until the stargate sequence, but that same mixture of fever flashbacks and fear made me unable to watch the end.

Near the end of middle school, my dad let me know that a movie theater would be showing "2001" on the big screen and asked if I wanted to go. I don't think I had ever seen a classic film on the big screen before (I think, but am not 100% positive, that this was before the Star Wars '97 reissue, so seeing a classic space movie in a theater was a new idea to me), and I was very much into the idea, but terrified about the ending. In the days leading up to the screening, and even in the car ride there, I kept trying t think of how I'd get out of watching the ending. Maybe I could just take a well-time bathroom trip and pretend to occupied until the end credits. Maybe I could ask to leave early. I couldn't think of anything that didn't make me seem like a scaredy cat (something I didn't want to admit for whatever dumb reason). I hadn't come up with a plan before the movie started, and when it got to the end, there was nothing for me to do except sit there and watch it. Seeing the movie on a big screen, in widescreen for the first time, I was so sucked into it that I had forgotten about the ending, and when it arrived, I just surrendered to it. Seeing it on the big screen didn't make it scarier; it made it stranger and my eyes were too busy just trying to take it all in. (It was a brand new 35mm print too, pristine!)

And thus, my fears were conquered. I went out and rented "2010" very shortly after and finally saw the rest of it and loved it. And then I went out and bought the books and loved those too.

 

[Nelson Au]

Josh, thats a pretty interesting story of how watching 2001 with a fever affected your perception of it. Kind of like the way some people watched it in 1968 while under the "influence".

What you see in 2010 regarding the monitors is what I see that pulls me out a little. They're standard monitors with those deep bezels. They didn't have LCD panels in 1984, so that's all they had. If only the production designer could have done something to hide the deep bezels.

Star Trek The Motion Picture bridge screens also had those looped films. Made the devils old noise as I recall.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Star Trek The Motion Picture bridge screens also had those looped films. Made the devils old noise as I recall.

Notice when you watch ST:TMP how low the lighting is in the bridge, and the presence of the split-diopter lens (that's where you see Shatner's head in focus in closeup with everything else around his head out of focus, and then almost a split-screen of a wide shot of the bridge to the left or right of it. The lighting had to be so low on that set to accommodate things like the looped films that they couldn't get enough depth of field to do that shot with a regular lens. Nowadays, they have faster film stocks and digital sensors so it wouldn't be an issue.

I do recall someone in the family having some kind of CRT that had a flat glass surface -- the rear of the set was bulky but the front was flat, this was before flatscreen TVs became commonplace so it seemed like a big deal at the time. But that was probably still mid-to-late 90s.