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“Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

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Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#101

Post by kqr »

truculation wrote: post #10

>Explanations were his forte. He was uncomfortable with most forms of ambiguity. One can enjoy good explanations without necessarily enjoying them in movies. I think it's more fun like to try to explain what's going on by oneself from the few clues available. It seems to me that many works of art are polysemic . For example, a passage of Shakespeare can light up several different ideas in one's head thereby creating…

It's nice that you were able to put into words some things I like about classic books and poetry. Kafka was also a master of this.

That said, I don't enjoy it as much at all in films. Don't know why. I try to, for sure. It can be stimulating. But it's not on the level of "almost psychedelic" as you so aptly describe what I can experience with books.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#102

Post by psyc »

cromwellian wrote: post #74
indescions_2018 wrote: post #54

Have revisited 2001 recently. Particularly the scene just before Intermission. Where HAL is reading the lips of the astronauts in the pod. It just really holds up. Apart from the genius editing and sound design. It feels even more a cautionary moment for modern minds on AI. As it must have been to American audiences during the height of the Vietnam War era. Ridley Scott's original Alien and Blade Runner remain immens…

Try thto Person of Interest TV series, from season 2 and especially 3, onwards it is all about super intelligence combined with super surveillance. https://youtu.be/SmUO0v7VYTo

Can’t recommend this highly enough for its complex (for TV) treatment of strong AI.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#103

Post by chipotle_coyote »

hristov wrote: post #66
jccooper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stephen King is publicly critical of Kubrick's treatment of "The Shining", mostly about its unchanging and one-dimensional characters. While I expect "2001" would not have been improved by a lot of explanatory voiceovers, I think "The Shining" would be seriously improved by Jack not being obviously crazy right from the first.

Steven King got to write the screenplay for his own version of the shining in the form of a TV miniseries. It was so bad it was actually funny instead of being scary. I think it is safe to say here that history has proven Kubrick right on this particular point.

Eh. Unlike the previous commenter, I didn't like the miniseries "way more," but in certain respects it's an unfair comparison--a workmanlike director rather than Stanley Fucking Kubrick, an overlong script treated as more or less untouchable, and what was, when push comes to shove, a TV movie budget for special effects. This affected nearly all of King's TV adaptations, with the possible exception of "Salem's Lot," which had the good fortune to be directed by Tobe Hoober. (For all the fondness the original "It" is remembered with, it's...more unintentionally comical than I think people remember, too.) Even so, I would argue that the miniseries does a better job of capturing the novel's themes about alcoholism and mental illness than the movie does. If they'd had a slightly more inventive director--and both the willingness and contractual freedom to make it a two-part miniseries instead of a three-part one--it would have been pretty great. Not Kubrick great, no, but great.

(Also: Steven Weber is a better Jack Torrance than Jack Nicholson is. Fight me.)

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#104

Post by klenwell »

indescions_2018 wrote: post #54

Have revisited 2001 recently. Particularly the scene just before Intermission. Where HAL is reading the lips of the astronauts in the pod. It just really holds up. Apart from the genius editing and sound design. It feels even more a cautionary moment for modern minds on AI. As it must have been to American audiences during the height of the Vietnam War era. Ridley Scott's original Alien and Blade Runner remain immens…

Wasn't that film Her?

I thought that was a brilliant film, too.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#105

Post by egypturnash »

icantdrive55 wrote: post #85
thaumasiotes wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't blame Kubrick for cutting all the voice-overs, which probably would have made the movie unbearable to watch. If you were going to cut material from 2001 that made it unbearable to watch, the film would be 5-10 minutes long.

I've never met anyone who didn't like 2001, but I've lived a sheltered life. Could I ask your age? And maybe, what country you grew up in? (I'm trying to understand different generations, other than mine(mine is boring). I would like to develop a data sheet noting differing lines/values/morality between different age groups. I'm using 4chan for people under 25, but the different nationalities seem to throw everything…

I’m not the person you’re asking, but I was born in the early seventies and found 2001 to be incredibly boring when I finally saw it for the first time. Which was on the big screen, in my teens.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#106

Post by paublyrne »

hetman wrote: post #87
indescions_2018 wrote: post #54

Have revisited 2001 recently. Particularly the scene just before Intermission. Where HAL is reading the lips of the astronauts in the pod. It just really holds up. Apart from the genius editing and sound design. It feels even more a cautionary moment for modern minds on AI. As it must have been to American audiences during the height of the Vietnam War era. Ridley Scott's original Alien and Blade Runner remain immens…

I recently watched the original Blade Runner with a bunch of friends; none of us had seen it before. Immensely watchable was certainly not the general opinion. A few of us decided it was worth watching only because it set the background for the new Blade Runner. We're probably missing some cultural element that meant it didn't elicit quite the same reaction as it did for you and I'm very curious what that might have…

I'm not sure if it's a film to watch with friends, at least not at home. It's a very visceral film, which needs close attention. Like the new Blade Runner, there are long periods without dialogue, slowly planning shots, and a lot of purposefully left out explanation of what is happening.

There's a whole universe in there. It's best watched alone in the dark.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#107

Post by coatmatter »

kqr wrote: post #96
ferorus wrote: post #57

This is funny. I read the book before I watched the film and didn't know that the movie was released before the book was published. I was amazed of how well the movie put images to what I had read in the book, and having read it, I didn't find it difficult to understand the movie, I just thought it was one of the best adaptations of a book I'd ever seen!

Yes, having read the book makes a huge difference. I tried watching the film first, but I failed and stopped watching a short way into it. Then at some point I read the book, which I really enjoyed. I thought I'd give the film a second chance and I'm glad I did because it was brilliant, having read the book. Strongly recommend treating them as two integral parts of one work of art -- consuming either one and not the…

On the other hand, I read the book before seeing the film and wish I had done it the other way around. Same case with The Martian too - I found myself distractedly comparing notes (in my head) too often while watching.

Perhaps the one book-then-movie reading/viewing sequence I'm happy with was Casino Royale. It was a good faithfully-gritty adaptation.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#108

Post by logicallee »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #99
rainloft wrote: post #89

I've watched 2001 twice in my life. Once on my laptop screen, and once in a theater. Wildly different experiences. On a laptop, it was maddeningly slow. I couldn't bear that scene where the spaceship docks on the space station while the Blue Danube Waltz played. Excruciating. I wish there was more explanation, as my mind was wandering watching this dull film. In a theater, I experienced a completely different film.On…

I've had the same experience with The Shining. On my PC, it's a bit plodding and slow, but on the big screen, it's a completely visceral and intense experience like no other film I've seen.

Lawrence of Arabia is supposed to be an immersive, "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" epic historical drama film which won Best Cinematography. But I couldn't avoid constantly glancing at the time and my notifications, when I watched it on a smart watch screen that also displayed a bar across the top showing the time and my notifications.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#109

Post by socceroos »

logicallee wrote: post #108
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the same experience with The Shining. On my PC, it's a bit plodding and slow, but on the big screen, it's a completely visceral and intense experience like no other film I've seen.

Lawrence of Arabia is supposed to be an immersive, "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" epic historical drama film which won Best Cinematography. But I couldn't avoid constantly glancing at the time and my notifications, when I watched it on a smart watch screen that also displayed a bar across the top showing the time and my notifications.

I had a similar experience when watching this through the terminal (img to ascii conversion) on my headless server. It was too easy to get distracted by syslog events that were overwriting stdout from the video.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#110

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

SiVal wrote: post #82
thaumasiotes wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't blame Kubrick for cutting all the voice-overs, which probably would have made the movie unbearable to watch. If you were going to cut material from 2001 that made it unbearable to watch, the film would be 5-10 minutes long.

I've always loved 2001 since I saw it as a kid on opening night. I was just a little guy, but I couldn't get enough space stuff, so my dad took me to 2001. He and I were both so excited about the experience it gave us of our future in space even though neither of us had any idea what the movie was actually about. And that's a legitimate problem for many people. I have lots of friends (and family) who find it unbearab…

Most people seem to want movies to give them a theme park ride - which is why many movies now are just an excuse for wild camera vertigo through CGI, gun play, explosions, and cliched “heroic” dialog.

2001 doesn’t do that. More than anything Kubrick was a photographer, and it’s possible to enjoy 2001 just for the visuals - the colour, the composition, the geometry and perspective.

It’s like a moving coffee table book that happens to be making a point about the far future of humanity.

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