Kubrick’s “2001”, curated by Christopher Nolan

[BornOfAJackal]

Title: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Tagline: An epic drama of adventure and exploration

Genre: Science Fiction, Mystery, Adventure

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Douglas Rain, Daniel Richter, Leonard Rossiter, Margaret Tyzack, Robert Beatty, Sean Sullivan, Frank Miller, Ed Bishop, Edwina Carroll, Heather Downham, Penny Brahms, Maggie d'Abo, Chela Matthison, Judy Kiern, Alan Gifford, Ann Gillis, Vivian Kubrick, Kenneth Kendall, Kevin Scott, Martin Amor, Bill Weston, Glenn Beck, Mike Lovell, John Ashley, Jimmy Bell, David Charkham, Simon Davis, Jonathan Daw, Péter Delmár, Terry Duggan, David Fleetwood, Danny Grover, Brian Hawley, David Hines, Tony Jackson, John Jordan, Scott MacKee, Laurence Marchant, Darryl Paes, Joe Refalo, Andy Wallace, Bob Wilyman, Richard Woods, S. Newton Anderson, Sheraton Blount, Ann Bormann, Julie Croft, Penny Francis, Marcella Markham, Irena Marr, Krystyna Marr, Kim Neil, Jane Pearl, Penny Pearl, Burnell Tucker, John Swindells, John Clifford

Release: 1968-04-09

Runtime: 149

Plot: Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer.

As for Nolan’s handling of the imagery, the contrast is way up compared to any previous 2001 I’ve seen. It has denser blacks, some colors that look different (those lounge chairs outside the Space Station V Hilton aren’t red anymore.) and some grainy areas that weren’t so previously.

All this in service of a 2001 that has many other details I hadn’t noticed before.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I saw 2001 in 70mm a year and a half ago (the same week Rogue One came out, just a a marker.) Is the restoration really significant enough to go again?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Jake, i would recommend reading the other threads currently being written about "2001" as there's a lot of info on why the new print being released is not actually a "restoration" nor was it meant to be.

 

[BornOfAJackal]

Jake, the great color and sound are all the reasons you need.

Don’t let this (accurate) talk of tears, snow, and scratches put you off. It’s really just the same old reliable 2001 with some of the “sheen” taken off. Maybe Robert Harris can school us differently.

 

[DP 70]

This looks great on a big curved screen, do not miss this presentation.
Thanks Mr Nolan.

 

[Tino]

Jake, the great color and sound are all the reasons you need.

Don’t let this (accurate) talk of tears, snow, and scratches put you off. It’s really just the same old reliable 2001 with some of the “sheen” taken off. Maybe Robert Harris can school us differently.

He has....in the other threads on this film in the Blu Ray section.

 

[BornOfAJackal]

I’m hoping to get some accounts of people who have seen this release of 2001, without getting into the upcoming video release, or where people have watched past releases.

If Robert Harris goes to see it in NY or LA, and gives us his evaluation, I’d love it. But I’d rather read about everyone’s impressions of this specific release.

Go watch, then post, Kubrick-teers!

 

[Tino]

I’m hoping to get some accounts of people who have seen this release of 2001, without getting into the upcoming video release, or where people have watched past releases.

If Robert Harris goes to see it in NY or LA, and gives us his evaluation, I’d love it. But I’d rather read about everyone’s impressions of this specific release.

Go watch, then post, Kubrick-teers!

As has been stated they have in the two 2001 threads in the Blu Ray section.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I’m hoping to get some accounts of people who have seen this release of 2001, without getting into the upcoming video release, or where people have watched past releases.

If Robert Harris goes to see it in NY or LA, and gives us his evaluation, I’d love it. But I’d rather read about everyone’s impressions of this specific release.

Go watch, then post, Kubrick-teers!

Here's what I wrote in one of the other threads regarding this 70mm presentation at the Village East Cinema #1 in New York City:
-------------
Pretty much agree with everything you said regarding the print. The best way I can describe its look would be "dated" - first giveaway was the MGM logo, which was yellow instead of white. The printed-in wear (at least 4 negative tears, white dust, mottling, scratches) and dupe sections made it look like an "old movie", which is not how it looked with the 70mm prints in 2001 (I saw it in NYC at the Astor Plaza and drove to DC to see it on the curved screen at the Uptown). Also, even though it's been reported to the contrary, I do not believe this is the original sound mix. The 70mm print I saw in 1978 and the 35mm original release print I saw in magnetic stereo (from a collector) both featured HAL's voice coming prominently from the surround speakers. This effect wasn't present in this print (nor in the year-2001 70mm print).

Regarding the projection, the extreme down angle and short throw, for once, did not present a focus issue. That's the good part. The bad part was that the distortion was a tad distracting - I think everyone noticed it during the "Computer Malfunction" screen, which was a trapezoid instead of a rectangle. The stability issues you noticed are almost certainly 100% from the projection - they made an adjustment at intermission which tightened things up a bit. Yes, they have a silver screen and the hot-spotting was noticeable - left and right edges during a lot of the Dawn of Man were noticeably darker than they should be. There was also a persistent flicker, the result of a misaligned lamp or shutter. They were also trimming off the top and bottom - the image was overshooting the masking by several inches. And even though this was only the 5th or 6th showing, there were a few vertical scratches and some dirt that were *not* from the print element - damage should not be occurring! As a (former) projectionist, this stuff is incredibly annoying to me. I'd like to see this again at a venue with a better 70mm setup.

All in all, it's still worth seeing in 70mm as the movie overcomes these issues and remains the incredible piece of cinema it always was. But I did feel a little ripped off by the 'special' $20.00 ticket price.
---------------

 

[Jean-Pierre Gutzeit]

First run prints from Metrocolor lab in 1968 in 70mm were nearly perfect. No UHD could surpass this quality.
The Christopher Nolan restoration (yes, it is restored) occures (as his Dunkirk + Interstellar prints) very poor: nearly no details in shadows and lights, desaturated colors, last reel to dark, unsteadiness, very grainy. Poor work at Fotokem... 70mm looks like a 35mm Blow up.
Restore it in 70mm again, please!

 

[Tino]

My screening had none of those issues.

 

[Jean-Pierre Gutzeit]

This is not possible, because all prints were made from the same 65mm Intermed negative, processing in the same lab.
And other descriptions as in Europe and in USA sound similar.

Please compare the mentioned issues directly with the ten years old Blu-ray.

 

[Tino]

This is not possible, because all prints were made from the same 65mm Intermed negative, processing in the same lab.
And other descriptions as in Europe and in USA sound similar.

Please compare the mentioned issues directly with the ten years old Blu-ray.

It is possible. Because I have seen it...and I saw none of the issues mentioned by others who have seen it.

 

[Jean-Pierre Gutzeit]

Then you have seen a version before the Nolan version.
The lost of details in shadows and (!) in the lights are inherent the new 65mm negative. It is impossible to compensate these both issues with color correction or processing correction. You need once more to go back to the original negative.

 

[Tino]

Then you have seen a version before the Nolan version.
The lost of details in shadows and (!) in the lights are inherent the new 65mm negative. It is impossible to compensate these both issues with color correction or processing correction. You need once more to go back to the original negative.

I saw the Nolan version. Please stop insisting that I did not.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Tino, with respect, there are some flaws with the Nolan version that are just baked into the print from the source - it's simply not possible that there's one print that doesn't have any flaws if it's from this same source.

What I will say is this - the presentation at City Cinemas Village East, where I first saw it, was not great. There were a lot of issues that were due to poor projection and some that were unavoidable due to the design and setup of the auditorium. Yesterday, I saw a print from the "Nolan version" at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Boston, where the projection was much better. As a result, it looked a lot better than it did at Village East. Many of the issues I had with my first viewings of the Nolan-sourced prints were not issues at the Coolidge, which points to those issues being projection and theater related.

But there were still some flaws from damage to the original negative that can't be repaired in the analog realm, that are simply going to be baked into each and every new print that's made from this source. There are several tears in the original negative, and those tears were left intact in these new prints. There aren't many, and it is entirely possible to blink and miss them, or to be looking on one half of the screen while the tear appears on the other side. There's one at the very beginning of the Dawn Of Man sequence, for instance, and there's another one at the very beginning of the "space ballet" after the jump cut from the bone throw. If a theater is showing a Nolan print, it will have those tears in it. It's possible to blink and miss them. But they are there.

At the Village East, every flaw built into the print was magnified by poor projection. At the Coolidge, most of the flaws were minimized because the projection quality was much better, and the setup of the theater led to a better technical presentation.

From what you're reporting, it sounds as if the theater you saw it at had both a better layout and better people running the projection, which would have the effect of minimizing how some of these issues might appear. And it's very easy to miss some of this stuff, to be into the power of the filmmaking and to miss, for instance, the mottling that plagues many of the Discovery sequences. When I was at the Village East, the presentation was at times so poor that every single issue stood out because at a certain point, I wasn't watching the movie anymore, I was watching the presentation. When I was at the Coolidge, the presentation was so much better that I got sucked into the film and didn't notice the problems until I actually thought to look for them - and they were there, but everything else that could be controlled by "the human element" was done so much better that the occasionally flaws were far less distracting. So my guess would be that the presentation at your theater was high quality, which minimized the flaws and allowed you to get into the film so that you weren't looking for problems. And that's a good thing!

 

[Tino]

Josh

I looked for the issues you experienced and saw none of them at my screening. Nor any of the other issues I had read about. That’s all I’m saying.

I don’t know the film as well as you do nor have I seen it in a theater before, so to my eyes the presentation was pretty spectacular for a 50 year old film.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I believe you

I think what happened was that I -- and many others -- saw the film in the worst possible scenarios, and that you saw the film being presented on equipment that was in good condition, being run by people who had a keen understanding of what they were doing, which allowed the baked in issues to go unnoticed.

The negative tears weren't long - we're talking several frames here, less than a second of screen time. It's very possible to miss them. Although I saw the tear in "Dawn of Man" each and every time I viewed the film this year, I did not see the "Blue Danube" tear at every single viewing - I must've blinked at the moment it happened, and with the tear lasting just a fraction of a second, it's easy enough to miss.

The Coolidge Corner presentation I saw was like night and day compared to Village East. At Village East, the movie just looked bad. There was flicker galore, hotspotting everywhere, colors seemed off, there were focus problems throughout and all of that was due to the projector and the silver screen (which in a perfect world should only be used for polarized 3D presentations and not 2D). At the Coolidge, where presumably they had a better projector, and where they run film on a regular basis, and have a white screen, it looked a million times better. Colors seemed far better, clarity and sharpness were better, flickering was virtually nonexistent, and focus was what it should have been.

I had never seen such a variance in how a film looked based on projection quality alone before. I was truly shocked, because I had genuinely believed that a lot of the problems I was seeing at Village East were in the print. Much to my surprise, they were actually from the theater. So while I still think these prints are flawed, I think they can look fantastic when presented by people who know what they're doing in a well-designed auditorium. And I'm truly glad that was your experience, because the film deserves no less, and you deserve no less.

 

[WillG]

Starting to sound like the arugment from a few months back here where, I forget who, was insisting that “Episode IV: A New Hope” was on 1977 “Star Wars” prints.

 

[Tino]

Starting to sound like the arugment from a few months back here where, I forget who, was insisting that “Episode IV: A New Hope” was on 1977 “Star Wars” prints.

That was a hilarious discussion.