Posted on 03/09/2018 6:09:34 PM PST by Rummyfan
Fifty years ago next month, invitation-only audiences gathered in specially equipped Cinerama theaters in Washington, New York and Los Angeles to preview a widescreen epic that director Stanley Kubrick had been working on for four years. Conceived in collaboration with the science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, “2001: A Space Odyssey” was way over budget, and Hollywood rumor held that MGM had essentially bet the studio on the project.
The film’s previews were an unmitigated disaster. Its story line encompassed an exceptional temporal sweep, starting with the initial contact between pre-human ape-men and an omnipotent alien civilization and then vaulting forward to later encounters between Homo sapiens and the elusive aliens, represented throughout by the film’s iconic metallic-black monolith. Although featuring visual effects of unprecedented realism and power, Kubrick’s panoramic journey into space and time made few concessions to viewer understanding. The film was essentially a nonverbal experience. Its first words came only a good half-hour in.
Audience walkouts numbered well over 200 at the New York premiere on April 3, 1968, and the next day’s reviews were almost uniformly negative. Writing in the Village Voice, Andrew Sarris called the movie “a thoroughly uninteresting failure and the most damning demonstration yet of Stanley Kubrick’s inability to tell a story coherently and with a consistent point of view.” And yet that afternoon, a long line—comprised predominantly of younger people—extended down Broadway, awaiting the first matinee.
Stung by the initial reactions and under great pressure from MGM, Kubrick soon cut almost 20 minutes from the film. Although “2001” remained willfully opaque and open to interpretation, the trims removed redundancies, and the film spoke more clearly.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The first flat screen monitor I ever saw was on a piece of photofinishing equipment in ... 2001.
I heard that, too. The rationale was that each letter in HAL is one step ahead of IBM. If it’s not true, it should have been. LOL
“Dr. Strangelove was a **huge** propaganda victory for the USSR.”
It was nothing more than a well-made satire.
What victory?
It implanted in the minds and hearts of generations of Americans terror at the (mostly illusory) prospect of a runaway nuclear war. That made us timid, which disadvantaged us in the Cold War.
The point of nuclear weapons is not to use them, but to deter aggression from enemies. We often cowered before the Evil Empire because we feared their nuclear arsenal too much to assert the deterrent value of ours.
It was a ground breaker, alright. The best way to see it was in a theater while under the influence of psychedelics. The stargate scene was ...WHOA.
I agree. It sucked. More like a film of a bad LSD trip.
“2010” at least had a logical story line.
“Dr. Strangelove”. Who couldn’t love Peter Sellers and Slim Pickens.
“A Clockwork Orange” - horrible film.
“The Shining”. Scary but well done. “I’m back”
“Full Metal Jacket” - sucked big time. So full of hatred for the American military that it had things in there that were as viciously anti-Vietnam as any communist propaganda I saw there or in their publications.
For great SciFi, try these:
“Alien” and “Aliens”. “Prometheus was pretty good to.
“Mission Mars”? with Gary Sinese and Don Cheadle. The other “Mars” films were also interesting (Val Kilmer in one; Matt Damon in the other).
“Ghosts of Mars” was more of a space spoof but I like Ice-Cube and Natasha Henstrick so I watched the film.
“The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” - the original, in black and white. Not the color version which was just stupid.
“The Thing”. the original. My wife liked the Kurt Russell version, which was different as versus “good” or not.
“THEM” - great, great, great.
“Forbidden Planet” - took space sci-fi into a higher realm of film making.
“The Blob” - both were pretty good. The third version, coming out his year, is autobiographical - the story of Michael Moore.
How about “Lifeforce” with Steve Railsback? Saw it again the other night and today it would be renamed “Vampires in Space” but the she-vampire was awesome and so were their attack scenes.
For fun, “Space Cowboys”. Leave you intellect at the door and enjoy.
AWESOME: “Armageddon”. Look at the science involved in the story. Better than “Deep Impact” and other “meteor/asteroid” films.
“X-Files: The Movie”. pretty good. David Duchovy is always funny but focused. Gillian Anderson is just beautiful. “The Cigarette Man” is diabolical - he’s the John Podesta of the supernatural world.
“Signs” with Mel Gibson. Makes you think.
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” - an absolute masterpiece.
“ET” - a great film for children and adults who want to be kids again.
There are more but I’m tired. Good night!
People....it’s a great movie.
For one, It achieved something almost impossible......showing us how insignificant man is in the vastness of the universe while also flooding our senses ‘with the possibilities’ of existence....both good and bad. The movie was mind blowing as any movie about such a huge topic should be. It’s absolutely appropriate that we can’t figure out the meaning of the movie....because that’s it’s point. Ultimately, the movie was about existence and mans simple yet pre-ordained quest to find meaning.
After watching this movie I concluded that we are all looking for the meaning of life...some through philosophy, some through religion, and some through science. The meaning those disciplines seek will be found at the place where they all intersect....which is to say one day there will be no difference between science, religion, or philosophy.
HAL, or Sauron’s Eye...
THAT is VERY interesting, considering recent enlightenments...
“The stargate scene was ...WHOA.”
IIRC the stargate scene was created by driving down a city street at night with an unfocused lens...you’re seeing neon signs, etc.
There’s also some footage taken from Dr Strangelove, where Slim Picken’s B52 is flying over the Russian tundra
The Sentinel was a very short story that came out much earlier (1948). In short, it takes place in the future when men are exploring the moon in lunar vehicles, when they discover a pyramid of alien origin. It is protected by a force field that baffles and confounds the brightest of scientists and prevents them from getting near the structure. It is also determined to be sending a repeating signal away from earth to an unknown destination deep in space. 50 years after the pyramid’s discovery, scientists, while trying to crack into it, end up destroying it with an atom bomb. This prevents humans from understanding its secrets and also stops the beacon from transmitting for all time. In the end, it is determined that this event has ‘alerted’ the aliens that mankind has left mother Earth and is now capable of space travel. All we can do is wait to see how we will be dealt with by the superior beings. We are left to wonder if we will be welcomed into the universal family of beings or are we to be eradicated.
How this concise and far seeing story got twisted into the behemoth that was 2001 A Space Odyssey is another story.
The movie came out in 1964 when I was 3 years old so I can’t speak to how it effected people at the time.
But I can say that the movie never had that effect on me or anyone that I know. I first saw the movie on TV when I was around 15 years old and I thought it was a laugh riot.
It is one of my favorite movies I bought it on Laser disk back in the early 90’s (Criterion Collection). I still have it by the way.
My high school friend and I never seemed to have any issues with nuclear deterrence that I know of. I personally always thought it was a good idea.
However, when I did run in to a coed in college that I brought to tears when I argued that I thought that the strategy had maintained the peace between the US and USSR since the end of WW II. I made it to college a little late so she was 5 years younger than I so I will give her the benefit of the doubt on emotional stability.
The point being, I don’t see the film having that effect from my perspective given that the film is an excellent comedy/satire. Now atomic café’ might be more the kind of film to have the effect you are proposing. It came out in 1982 and may have been aimed at RR and the image of him as a loose canon / cowboy.
You didn’t mention Colossus. That one foresaw the Singularity, when all the computers are in communication with one another, once predicted for 2021 but altered to 2017. And 2017 is indeed when computers developed their own language that is not understood by humans. The computers were developed by a private corporation, can’t remember which one now.
In Colossus, two computers (presumably the United States and the Soviet Union are the respective developers) talk to each other for the first time. One (presumably ours) is teaching the Russian one everything it doesn’t know in order to be able to communicate totally. There’s a hilarious scene that mimics certain human behavior, where the Soviet computer is catching up to the U.S. one and then at last! they both start running in sync.
The political part is that the two computers were devised to figure out how to have peace on earth. They do, but it means we have to give up our freedom in order to have it. I don’t think it goes into whether that actually takes place or just becomes possible.
I remember sitting there and watching it all the way through a second time, which you could do in those days.
Open the bathroom door Hal!
“The point being, I don’t see the film having that effect from my perspective given that the film is an excellent comedy/satire.”
I was 12 when it came out, and have been observing the film’s effects throughout the ensuing 55 years.
Many of the ideas it presented to the public consciousness have come to be accepted as “facts,” in much the same way that many Americans believe that Sarah Palin really said she could see Russia from her house.
It is precisely because the film is the film is an excellent comedy/satire that it was so effective as propaganda. Those two things are certainly not mutually exclusive.
Yes, but that's besides the point I was making, that the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" didn't have flat screen monitors depicted.
As for the actual year 2001, yes flat screen monitors existed. I have a collection of computers. Among them, I have several 20th Anniversary Macintoshes, otherwise known as TAM computers. They were sold in 1997 by Apple. I have one in my living room next to my recliner. Why? because it has a built-in TV, CD music player, radio in an upright flat screen layout, and Bose stereo with an attached large woofer speaker. Plays much better music than some other entertainment systems I have. Plus I can watch TV on it. It was ahead of its time, a forerunner of the iMac computer.
Hollywood can't adequately imagine the future, even when its only a few decades ahead. For instance, "Back to the Future" where we were supposed to have flying cars in 2015. While watching some sci-fi futuristic movie today, I was wondering why people would use ordinary handheld flashlights to light their way in dark areas. I would imagine people in just a few years would have flying drone lights that would greatly illuminate the area ahead of the user. You'd be able to command them to fly ahead, then return to your palm. There is an outfit selling pocket drones the size of a cellphone. Pull it out of your pocket, it unfolds propeller blades and scouts ahead at your command sending video back to your cellphone. It'll come back, you fold it up and pocket it. That's selling right now. Easy enough to mount an LED light source on it. But Hollywood would have you imagine future people holding large clunky flashlights.
I certainly acknowledge that satire is a very effective tool in propaganda.
I just don’t see Strangelove as effective in the light that it (at least in my generation) was never much more than a cult film. Most people I talk to in my generation (and later generations) have never heard of the film.
It occurs to me that I may be looking at propaganda in a narrow and different aspect than you.
I am thinking of propaganda as opinion changing sense. But, after reflection I can see the film being opinion reinforcing.
If someone had a preconceived opinion that nuclear weapons were going to bring on the apocalypse then Strangelove would only confirm that opinion.
“If someone had a preconceived opinion that nuclear weapons were going to bring on the apocalypse then Strangelove would only confirm that opinion.”
And if someone hadn’t thought about it, then Strangelove could create that opinion.
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