A Few Words About A few words about...™ 2001: a space odyssey -- in 4k UHD Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[compson]

More than half are already available or coming soon. Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket have been released. Kino Lorber are preparing Killer's Kiss and The Killing. So the ones left unannounced are Fear and Desire, Paths Of Glory, Lolita, Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut. But I'll bet these will be released in due course. There's a good chance that Stanley Kubrick will be the first director to have his entire oeuvre on 4K UHD!

On his website, Bill Hunt says Kino has confirmed that it is releasing Paths of Glory in 4K.

 

[titch]

On his website, Bill Hunt says Kino has confirmed that it is releasing Paths of Glory in 4K.

Criterion are still playing catch-up, when it comes to 4K UHD. Having started among the last of the physical disc publishers to start releasing UHDs, they are now watching as Kino licences all their titles for 4K UHD!

 

[jayembee]

Energy is somewhere -- or at least some thing

Exactly. The point is the mass isn't coming out of "nowhere", it's energy being converted into mass.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Guys, yesterday I happen to catch some very interesting thesis’ on YouTube of 2001 that was exploring the film in terms of how Kubrick shot the film and how he would frame shots. One thing I didn’t fully realize was how the Dawn of Man sequence was filmed. That I was partially aware of, but the thesis went into more detail I was not aware of. So last night I watched the 2001 4K UHD disc about a year after I first saw the UHD disc. The YouTube 2001 thesis is by CinemaTyler if anyone cares to see them. I only saw two parts of a multipart series.

As I mentioned in my earlier posts, I’d seen 2001 many times and I did see it at the Castro theater in San Francisco in 2001. That was a cool experience as I could see so much detail I’d never seen before watching on the smaller CRT and Plasma screens at the time. At the theater, I could notice in some of the Dawn of Man sequences, what I thought I was seeing was the background screen used for the front projection.

The reason I’m posting today is that I discovered something new. Apparently not so new to others. I did watch the film up to the point where Bowman disconnects HAL and Floyd delivers the true reason for the Jupiter mission.

What I discovered that amused me so much is the sequence where Poole and Bowman as in the centrifuge and having a meal while watching BBC 12 The World Tonight transmission. In the shots, I’ve always noticed the IBM logo. But what I never could see before or noticed is that it says IBM TelePad. So the question people have asked if if Steve Jobs was influenced by that to the call the iPad the iPad? Ha, ha!

Since I love to learn more about the props used in my favorite movies, that is a cool discovery. On a related note, the eye used for HAL is a Nikkor 8mm f/8 fisheye lens. I discovered that about 15 years ago. That’s really neat to know, but if you want to build an exact replica of HAL, the lens is very expensive now.

At any rate, it’s still an amazing experience to watch this film each time as the years pass. In my job I am aware of computer controlled numeric milling machines that precisely move a cutter to make prototypes. Watching the way the pod moves as Bowman maneuvers it to the outer hatch of Discovery, I could not help but imagine it had to have been done on rigs that were very precisely made to hold the pod and keep it from shaking and flexing and I imagine off stage prop hands are moving the pod and the arms. It looks like it’s being done with modern robotic motors. Amazing work!

Again, this is just the geeky stuff I enjoy learning about, the film itself is the thing though. It’s a great story. I find it interesting it’s possible an alien force violated the Prime Directive to influence Man’s discovery of tools. But I’m more a believer that Man himself is smart enough to have figured it out himself. Man is a pretty smart and clever ape.

PS: I was thinking about this more. Maybe I’m thinking too hard. It’s possible the alien’s who left the monolith did not teach humans how to use tools. But as depicted in the film, it could simply have inspired the apes to think more, to realize there’s more to life. And Moonwatcher is shown realizing that the large bones when dropped, could break smaller bones. So I think now it just sparked the apes to think more and not actually teaches them anything.

 

[Ahab]

Again, this is just the geeky stuff I enjoy learning about, the film itself is the thing though. It’s a great story. I find it interesting it’s possible an alien force violated the Prime Directive to influence Man’s discovery of tools. But I’m more a believer that Man himself is smart enough to have figured it out himself. Man is a pretty smart and clever ape.

PS: I was thinking about this more. Maybe I’m thinking too hard. It’s possible the alien’s who left the monolith did not teach humans how to use tools. But as depicted in the film, it could simply have inspired the apes to think more, to realize there’s more to life. And Moonwatcher is shown realizing that the large bones when dropped, could break smaller bones. So I think now it just sparked the apes to think more and not actually teaches them anything.

Thanks for the interesting post. Have probably watched this film more than any other. When it was released I spent a whole day at the theater watching every showing of it for that day and numerous times since then.

I do have a different interpretation of the film. Considering the radical transformation that was performed on Bowman at the end I believe the Monolith did more to the pre-humans than you think. Also, I doubt that the Aliens would have been too concerned about Rodenberry's Prime Directive.

Unfortunately, one thing that has dampened a little my love of this film is the promotion of Intelligent Design by creationists seeking to attack evolution. The film does support ( or, at the least, is consistent with) that view even though I'm sure it was never intended to do so by Kubrick or Clarke.

 

[Nelson Au]

Thanks Hal for your comments. I had to double check, your name is Hal.

To quote Clint Eastwood from In The Line of Fire, I had to look that it up! I am not familiar with that theory or the term of Intelligent Design. I see what you mean. I don’t think Clark or Kubrick had intended that either. But based on the information I found about Intelligent Design, it would mean a deity would be what is doing the work of transforming the apes. And it’s clear to me it’s the work of alien beings.

Agreed the aliens had no Prime Directive. And I can see that the monolith did something. I think it wasn’t as much as you feel it is, and that’s OK. I like that Kubrick left it for the audience to interpret.

 

[Dick]

Criterion are still playing catch-up, when it comes to 4K UHD. Having started among the last of the physical disc publishers to start releasing UHDs, they are now watching as Kino licences all their titles for 4K UHD!

Yes, Criterion now seems hell-bent on getting out the 4K's, and I worry that this will negatively affect future upgrades to Blu-ray from its DVD catalog. Every time a new, "better" format comes along, there are fewer upgrades to older titles, and this is true of all studios and distributors.

 

[jayembee]

I find it interesting it’s possible an alien force violated the Prime Directive to influence Man’s discovery of tools. But I’m more a believer that Man himself is smart enough to have figured it out himself. Man is a pretty smart and clever ape.

PS: I was thinking about this more. Maybe I’m thinking too hard. It’s possible the alien’s who left the monolith did not teach humans how to use tools. But as depicted in the film, it could simply have inspired the apes to think more, to realize there’s more to life. And Moonwatcher is shown realizing that the large bones when dropped, could break smaller bones. So I think now it just sparked the apes to think more and not actually teaches them anything.

I do have a different interpretation of the film. Considering the radical transformation that was performed on Bowman at the end I believe the Monolith did more to the pre-humans than you think. Also, I doubt that the Aliens would have been too concerned about Rodenberry's Prime Directive.

Unfortunately, one thing that has dampened a little my love of this film is the promotion of Intelligent Design by creationists seeking to attack evolution. The film does support ( or, at the least, is consistent with) that view even though I'm sure it was never intended to do so by Kubrick or Clarke.

It always seemed clear to me that the monolith jumpstarted man's evolution. Whether that evolution would've happened on its own without the alien intervention is a separate question. I'm not convinced of Hal's point that it promotes -- whether intentionally or not -- the concept of Intelligent Design. Even if the aliens uplifted humans, there's still the question of how the aliens themselves evolved.

In arguments I've had with people who question Evolution, I've pointed out that we see evidence of Evolution every day, from the existence of labradoodles to viruses jumping species. Some people have tried to argue that in some of these cases, it's because of the actions of man that cause the change. So, it's because dog breeders mix labradors and poodles that we have labradoodles, but I counterargue that if a poodle in heat dashes out the door and encounters a labrador in the wild, it's gonna end up with a litter of labradoodles, whether the human owner likes it or not.

But more to the point, my argument is not that Evolution is true because these things exist, but that these things exist because Evolution is true.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It might be interesting to note what the Clarke novel has to say about this - now for what it’s worth, I don’t think the novel is simply a decoding of the film. They’re more like siblings - they each have the genetic material of the same parents but presented in different ways. Kubrick wasn’t beholden to every Clarke idea in the film, and Clarke wasn’t tethered to every Kubrick idea in the novel. One does not necessarily “explain” the other.

But with that said, Clarke used the analogy that the unseen aliens were like gardeners, not deities. And I don’t think anyone would say that maintaining a garden denies evolution.

 

[JoshZ]

and Clarke wasn’t tethered to every Kubrick idea in the novel.

That's definitely something that becomes more and more evident with each of Clarke's sequel novels.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

FWIW, I'm not sure about all variations of "Intelligent Design", but I would at least imagine some variation(s) would allow for the evolutionary process (vs all of what's typically/generally posited/theorized in big letter Theory of Evolution) to be true while still being part of some design of an intelligent supreme being (whether called God or not).

Certainly, plenty (maybe even a majority) of theistic believers have no trouble reconciling evolutionary process (however long it's actually been operating... vs what we can readily observe today) w/ their deities. I, for one, have no trouble reconciling such (and that was certainly even an initial requirement for me to even consider investigating the viability of any faith towards the end of my college days)... though I also do not insist on being 100% certain of prehistoric events while agreeing that the vast majority of what we "know" in Science certainly appears (very) close enough to how things occurred, but not necessarily *why* nor the original/ultimate cause -- things certainly get more hazy as we looking further back in time toward the very beginnings of the universe, etc... and of course, all based on the assumption that everything occurred w/out some "interventions" as-yet-scientifically-unknown to us...

_Man_

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

Harvard Medical School ran a fascinating experiment demonstrating evolution on a huge Petri dish… monolith not included.

 

[usrunnr]

I wish Kubrick was here to enter this discussion, but, and this is just an assumption, he is probably watching or listening from Jupiter. In spirit at least.

 

[Henry Gondorff]

54 years later - still we ponder.

 

[sbjork]

That's definitely something that becomes more and more evident with each of Clarke's sequel novels.

When the film version of 2010 was first released, the film (and its writer/director/cinematographer, Peter Hyams) took it on the chin from critics and audiences alike for lacking the "visionary" qualities of 2001. It promised something wonderful, and showed us something relatively mundane compared to the first one. (Yes, the creation of a new star is impressive, but it's still shy of the promise of the ending of 2001.) But 2010 is a relatively faithful adaptation of Clarke's novel, so the lack of vision goes back to him. Clarke may have written the dictum that any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic, but in practice, he was too rational and logical to apply that to his own writing. He wanted to explain everything, and that limited his vision. By definition, as the next step in human evolution, the further adventures of the Star Child would be beyond our limited human comprehension, and appear magical to us. That's the promise of the stargate sequence in the original film. Clarke felt the need to explain things that should have been left inexplicable.

After a certain point in the development of both the script and the book for 2001, Kubrick spearheaded the former, while Clarke took care of the latter, on his own down in Sri Lanka. It's the same story filtered through two different sensibilities, and never the twain shall meet.

All of that leads to my own interpretations of the film, which build on Clarke's dictum and go a bit afield even from Kubrick's own comments about the meaning of the film. Thanks to the ambiguity in the final product that Clarke never would have stood for on his own, it's open to interpretation, and that's the real magic of the film. But that's a whole different story, for another time!

 

[JoshZ]

When the film version of 2010 was first released, the film (and its writer/director/cinematographer, Peter Hyams) took it on the chin from critics and audiences alike for lacking the "visionary" qualities of 2001. It promised something wonderful, and showed us something relatively mundane compared to the first one. (Yes, the creation of a new star is impressive, but it's still shy of the promise of the ending of 2001.) But 2010 is a relatively faithful adaptation of Clarke's novel, so the lack of vision goes back to him. Clarke may have written the dictum that any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic, but in practice, he was too rational and logical to apply that to his own writing. He wanted to explain everything, and that limited his vision. By definition, as the next step in human evolution, the further adventures of the Star Child would be beyond our limited human comprehension, and appear magical to us. That's the promise of the stargate sequence in the original film. Clarke felt the need to explain things that should have been left inexplicable.

Wholeheartedly agreed. The thing that really gets me is how stuck in his literalism Clarke was that he felt the need to ret-con the dates that events from the early books occurred when referring to them in the sequels, because they didn't line up with real-world history anymore. By the time we get to the third and fourth books, the events of "2001" are moved much further ahead. Yet the original book is still called "2001," because that title was too inconic to change.

He should have just embraced that his story took place in a fictional alternate timeline, but that wasn't how his mind worked.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

By definition, as the next step in human evolution, the further adventures of the Star Child would be beyond our limited human comprehension, and appear magical to us. That's the promise of the stargate sequence in the original film. Clarke felt the need to explain things that should have been left inexplicable.

After a certain point in the development of both the script and the book for 2001, Kubrick spearheaded the former, while Clarke took care of the latter, on his own down in Sri Lanka. It's the same story filtered through two different sensibilities, and never the twain shall meet.

All of that leads to my own interpretations of the film, which build on Clarke's dictum and go a bit afield even from Kubrick's own comments about the meaning of the film. Thanks to the ambiguity in the final product that Clarke never would have stood for on his own, it's open to interpretation, and that's the real magic of the film. But that's a whole different story, for another time!

Thing is though I'm not sure a (coherent enough) sequel would even be possible or at least commercially viable/successful in that case. Certainly, if the illustrated vision is going to be "magical" and beyond "human comprehension" along the lines of the ending of 2001, such a sequel will probably play more like some very avant garde, perhaps/probably psychedelic, art film at least much of the time, which is basically how the 2001 ending was, haha... Well, I suppose they could hire Terrence Mallick (of this past decade or so) to make it and not be quite psychedelic w/ a modest chance for commercial viability/success, hehheh...

In the end, maybe there simply shouldn't be a true sequel to 2001, the film... and we might just enjoy 2010, et al as a slightly alternate, spawned/spun-off timeline sequels of sorts instead...

_Man_

 

[sbjork]

Wholeheartedly agreed. The thing that really gets me is how stuck in his literalism Clarke was that he felt the need to ret-con the dates that events from the early books occurred when referring to them in the sequels, because they didn't line up with real-world history anymore. By the time we get to the third and fourth books, the events of "2001" are moved much further ahead. Yet the original book is still called "2001," because that title was too inconic to change.

He should have just embraced that his story took place in a fictional alternate timeline, but that wasn't how his mind worked.

Even things like the 1x3x9 ratio of the monoliths was a retcon. The monoliths in the first film clearly don't match that ratio (nor are they consistent to each other). But that bit of mathematical harmony appealed to Clarke's rationality.

 

[sbjork]

Thing is though I'm not sure a (coherent enough) sequel would even be possible or at least commercially viable/successful in that case. Certainly, if the illustrated vision is going to be "magical" and beyond "human comprehension" along the lines of the ending of 2001, such a sequel will probably play more like some very avant garde, perhaps/probably psychedelic, art film at least much of the time, which is basically how the 2001 ending was, haha... Well, I suppose they could hire Terrence Mallick (of this past decade or so) to make it and not be quite psychedelic w/ a modest chance for commercial viability/success, hehheh...

In the end, maybe there simply shouldn't be a true sequel to 2001, the film... and we might just enjoy 2010, et al as a slightly alternate, spawned/spun-off timeline sequels of sorts instead...

_Man_

Well, yeah, that's kind of my point. There really could never be a true sequel to 2001. From a thematic perspective, the ending precludes that. I love 2010, which is a supremely well-crafted piece of entertainment -- well-shot, too, by Hyams -- but to me it essentially takes place in a parallel universe. I'm glad that both films exist, but despite sharing storylines and characters, they're just two completely different animals, separate from each other.

 

[sbjork]

Certainly, if the illustrated vision is going to be "magical" and beyond "human comprehension" along the lines of the ending of 2001, such a sequel will probably play more like some very avant garde, perhaps/probably psychedelic, art film at least much of the time, which is basically how the 2001 ending was, haha...

Stan Brakhage. Jordan Belson. John Whitney. Et.c. They all made films that couldn't necessarily be appreciated rationally. Dog Star Man may have been made before 2001, but it's as close to a sequel as we'll ever get. The fascinating thing with underground filmmakers like those is that the rational sides of our brains still try to create order out of chaos -- in all the flickering imagery of a Stan Brakhage film, we still try to pick out familiar shapes or objects to anchor ourselves to reality as we know it. It's like seeing things in clouds, or faces in rocks on Mars, or Jesus on a piece of burnt toast. Clarke may be an extreme example, but we all rationalize in our own ways. Even if it was possible to make a truly visionary sequel to 2001, we'd still try to interpret the uninterpretable.