Kubrick's 2001 - Is it safe to buy? (1 Viewer)

[Jim_K]

Well I sold off my old horrible looking MGM disc a long time ago in anticipation of that super deluxe Special Edition that was rumored to come out last year from Warner.
I know the Warner remaster version is the way to go right now.
Is it safe to say that we won't see a Special Edition of 2001:ASOin the near future?
Jim

 

[Guy_K]

I think we won't see one, or any of Kubrick's WB titles in a SE any time soon.

 

[Craig Beam]

Good God, it's 2001 !!!!! SE or not, how can you NOT have the remastered edition in your collection? It looks and sounds AMAZING.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

This movie deserves much more than a threadbare release and I held off on buying it until this past Christmas, when my boss gave me a $100 gift certificate for Amazon.com. I wanted it badly but refused to get suckered into picking it up, then being hit with the old, "Oh, but the 2-disc special edition has just been announced!" routine.

But for free, who cares? Plus, this movie is just plain awesome.

 

[Clinton McClure]

How is the 2-disc SE (One disc movie & one disc CD score)? I have seen it at Hastings for $50, but didn't know if it was a good copy.

 

[Jesse Leonard]

The DVD in that set is the same as available seperately (which is a VERY nice transfer).

 

[Tom-G]

It's safe to buy it. It won't become a sentient DVD and overtake your home theater.
As mentioned previously this DVD looks and sounds superb and I doubt that there will be another release anytime soon, but one never knows.
So what are you waiting for? Buy it!

 

[george kaplan]

This new disc came out in June. There were rumors of a special edition making it before the end of the year. 2001 ended with no such edition, so I went and bought the remastered disc from June. Would suggest you do the same.

 

[Butch C]

I used to own the score...besides Blue Danube theres nothing you would play to enjoy...the rest of the music taken out of the context of the film is just creepy experimental classical stuff that is plain old annoying

 

[RobR]

Is the 2001: A Space Odyssey limited collector's set by Creative Design Art OOP? It's been out of stock at all major online retailers for quite a while. If not, does anybody know approxmiately how long Creative Design Art keeps a set on the market?

 

[Michael St. Clair]

It has a fair amount of edge enhancement, but you won't see another release in the near future. Buy it!

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

*You're sitting in your home theatre. You press the play button on you DVD player remote. Instead of complying, the DVD forces the drawer open and pops out of the machine. Catching a red gleam from some neon sign far distant, it's silver-gold surface glows red. It speaks "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't let you do that."*

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Is it safe to buy? My only concern was that it was past the expiration date on the cover, but then the sales clerk informed me that it was the film's title.

Regards,

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

...the rest of the music taken out of the context of the film is just creepy experimental classical stuff that is plain old annoying...

I'd agree with that statement. I sat here one day at work listening to the "Eee-eee-eeeeeeee!" track from 2001's original soundtrack and was later impelled to pick up a nearby chicken bone (to the strains of Also Sprach Zarathustra) and beat my co-workers with it.

 

[Michael_Y]

Actually 2001 is one of the very few films of which I'd rather own a bare-bones disc, due to its themes/structure/nature. So I was glad they removed the Clarke interview from the previous release

 

[Gil Jawetz]

For those who were hoping for an SE this year, here's a slightly conspiracy minded (but probably 100% correct) reason why the one in a forever opportunity to make a big stink about "2001" in 2001 was passed up by Warners:
http://www.nypress.com/15/2/film/film.cfm

2001
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
A gorgeous new print of 2001: A Space Odyssey is playing in Manhattan right now, but unless you happen to walk past the Loews Astor Plaza and spy the title on the marquee, you’d never know. It was sneaked into that one theater for an abbreviated engagement that started December 14; as of the late show this Thursday evening, it’ll be gone.
Despite the once-in-forever nature of this event (2001 in 2001!), Warner Bros. heralded the rerelease of his masterwork with zero publicity–at least none that I’ve seen, and I do this for a living. No tv ads, no newspaper ads, no billboards, no posters, no nothing; unless you already knew where it was playing, you couldn’t even find it on MovieFone, which is owned by Warner Bros.’ parent company, AOL Time Warner.
What gives? The rereleased Star Wars and The Exorcist blew current releases right out of the theaters. Then again, maybe the potential success of a 2001 rerelease explains why this particular one was handled so indifferently. Warner Bros., Kubrick’s home studio from 1971’s A Clockwork Orange onward, had a contractual obligation to rerelease 2001 last year. Warner Bros. and New Line, both owned by AOL Time Warner, are responsible for the year’s two biggest blockbusters, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Fellowship of the Ring. Could Warner Bros. have buried 2001, arguably the greatest science fiction movie ever made, so as not to steal thunder from its two new, extremely expensive holiday blockbusters?
No matter. The crowd at last Thursday’s 10:15 showing suggested the mother lode Warners missed out on. I counted two dozen people–not bad under the circumstances, but still a paltry turnout for such a huge hall–but those two dozen cut across ethnic lines, and ranged in age from roughly 17 (a couple on a date) to maybe 70 (a senior woman sitting by herself near the front). The group’s smallness suggested a pilgrimage. Which makes sense: legend has it that when an MGM executive viewed the finished version of 2001 back in 1968, he said the studio was about to release the first $12 million religious picture.
Kubrick never had much use for God or religion, but he was awed by what he didn’t know; the sense of awe that pervades 2001 brings moviegoers closer to religious wonder than any Hollywood movie made before or since, articulating the notion of God as a concept humans measure themselves against. Kubrick’s refusal to explain exactly what’s happening or what it means is his masterstroke. Along with 2001’s masterly compositions and editing, which render subsequent advances in special effects technology moot, Kubrick’s insistence on the inexplicable is what keeps the film from becoming dated. Each time I see it, I’m pleased to realize how much I’ve learned since I saw it last, and humbled by how much I don’t know. And that, I think, is the subject of 2001 in a nutshell: mankind bumping up against (and, in the end, transcending) the limits of its own mind.
Seeing it again for what must have been the 20th time, I was struck, most of all, by the simplicity and mysteriousness of Kubrick’s metaphors, and the unparalleled control with which he deploys them. Throughout, round shapes that represent the organic and unknowable (suns, planets, moons; the gateway-eyes of leopards, apes, humans) are juxtaposed with hard, flat, machine-tooled rectangles and squares (the bone cudgel, the orbital weapons platform, the shuttle). The ship that takes the astronauts to Jupiter for their final evolutionary rendezvous with the giant monolith has a soft, circular head, a spinal column midsection and a hard, flat, rectangular backside–a merger of the organic and the manmade, reverence and arrogance. Bereft of anything resembling a standard linear narrative, the film is conceived as a series of voyages from point A to point B: caveman times to modernity, Earth to the moon, the moon to Jupiter, Jupiter and beyond the infinite. Throughout, the voyage is the point, not the destination; that’s why each section of 2001 ends abruptly, just as a supposed limit on human progress has been transcended. Kubrick might as well have called the movie On to the Next Thing. (Is it coincidence that the monolith is shaped like a door?)
Despite its G rating, 2001 is a brutally violent movie, and if you think about it, it had to be: it is about progress, after all. The famous section of Richard Strauss’ "Thus Spake Zarathustra" that’s always associated with 2001 isn’t associated exclusively with the monolith; its second appearance comes during the caveman prologue, when one of our ancestors figures out that you can use a bone to break other bones; meaning Kubrick associates this particular Strauss cut with both evolution and violence. The caveman doesn’t merely create a tool; he creates a weapon, and from there it’s a short hop to the domestication of livestock, the consumption of mammal meat and acquisitive warfare with rival tribes–all the things we associate with civilization, for better or worse.
By linking progress and violence, I don’t think Kubrick was being cute or codemnatory; I think he was just calling it like he saw it, without judgment. For Kubrick, the ability to think (and consciously act) lifts humankind out of animal existence and into a so-called "civilized" state; yet each advance brings unforeseen side effects, and no matter how splendid or terrifying the invention, we invariably adapt it to humdrum purposes.
Some of the film’s technological predictions were so on-the-money it’s a bit frightening. During his top-secret trip to the moon to view the newly excavated monolith that will point the way toward Jupiter, Dr. Heywood Floyd sleeps on a commercial spacecraft while a screen on the seat in front of him plays a car commercial (he’s the only person in the cabin, and still he’s required to watch tv); he gains access to a restricted part of the space station via voice-print identification. In a touching moment that belies Kubrick’s reputation as a cold fish, Floyd calls his daughter on Earth using a credit card and an access code and tells her that Daddy can’t come to her party because he’s traveling. (The daughter is played by Kubrick’s own daughter, Vivian.) This, to Kubrick, is the fact of progress: astonishing things become everyday things. But humankind, the supposedly pessimistic Kubrick suggests, is never content to rest on his laurels. All the questions raised by 2001 are variations on two questions: How did we get from there to here? And what’s next?

 

[Jack Briggs]

Like a moth attracted to an incandescent bulb, I'm here to chime in:
* Craig Beam said it all in his post. SE or not, if you like or love this film then get the new DVD; it's the only version we have. Having had the pleasure of seeing this Masterpiece in 70mm recently (bringing my commercial-cinema tally for 2001 up to sixty-one screenings), I can tell you the new DVD edition does the film justice. On my WEGA, I can see minor edge-enhancement; on a friend's Toshiba 56H80, I can see a little more enhancement; none of it detracts from the film. The 70mm presentation is not to be missed simply because it is so immersive and has such high resolution.
But those who own the MGM edition should hold on to their copies because of the extras (the Clarke talk, the original trailer).
* Gil, that was an excellent review you copied and pasted in your post. May I ask who wrote it? The critic is spot on, but he makes a couple of minor errors: It was Arthur C. Clarke who said that MGM had just financed the first $10.5-million religious movie. The other is his reference to Mr. Kubrick's "predictions" being so on-the-money. The film did not "predict"; it presupposed a certain future by which the story could be told.
As for the author's comments about Warner's indifference to the film and its reissue, I must concur. During its recent two-week run here in L.A., I saw a single 1"x3" ad in the alternative paper LA Weekly. And that's all.
I've said it before, and here I go again: Warner does not deserve to have control over this film's distribution rights. The film is way too good for so clueless and out-of-touch a studio as Warner. And I sincerely hope some of the studio's wags are reading this thread.
Another example of the studio's indifference: Why haven't we been treated to an all-out Special Edition of this of all films? Is it because Warner fears it might have to issue the DVD in a keepcase instead of a snapper or something? (Sarcasm intentional.)
And for that matter, I want the unrated version of Eyes Wide Shut, too. Damn it, but I wish The Criterion Collection could get the DVD rights to EWS.
The hell with Warner.

 

[Gil Jawetz]

The review is by Matt Zoller Seitz. I wasn't trying to insinuate that I wrote it and I included a link to the original source.

Regardless, it is a good piece (a couple of possible errors aside) and it's disgusting that AOL Time Warner would bury this historic opportunity.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Thanks, Gil. Also, I didn't mean to give the impression that you were implying authorship to it; I knew that--you made it perfectly clear in your post. Sorry that you thought that I thought that!

 

[Gil Jawetz]

Eh, buddy, it's all good!

(hackneyed 1996 phrase alert)