121–130 of 169 posts
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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.
Serious question: How is it possible to view Lawrence of Arabia on a smart watch?
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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…
The film, especially the original theatrical release that has the voiceover, echoes Film Noir and 1940s cop movies that you may not have seen, but many people in the 1980s would have had in memory. The sequel follows the visual style of the original, but it doesn't have the film noir feel. It's tone is much harsher. In the original the characters are able to find some meaning in their lives, and even find love or red…
The sequel does the same at the end, isn't it? Father and daughter are reunited, and K finds meaning in the struggle.
> it doesn't have the film noir feel
That would have been gimmicky. It was innovative when the original was released but it's now been done to death.
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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…
I’ve probably failed to explain that very well so here’s a well known example.
The story about the shooting of Barry Lyndon has been covered on HN before. In short Kubric got the fastest lenses he could and had old camera specially adapted so that he could film by candle light. Of course he also knew that such a wide aperture would give him a tiny depth of field, conveniently rendering the scene like a flat period painting come to life.
I suspect he may have worked backwards from that simple idea to the rest of the film but that just speculation on my part.
His use of newly invented steadycam in the Shinning for dream like scenes with the kids is another example.
Watching his films seems to be about more than just the plot and the story. I lack the vocabulary to adiquately explain myself, I’m just a fan, but it’s kind of like watching an art installation that happens to be a block buster film.
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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've never met anyone who didn't like 2001 In some circles, admitting that you find anything by Kubrick "boring" is considered uncool, so nobody will admit to it. It's like Blade Runner (also mentioned in Moorcock's essay, not coincidentally): their cultural and historical significance for genre development means that cinematographical critique will always be forced to take a back seat. Personally, I'm a child of t…
I can't blame Kubrick for cutting all the voice-overs, which probably would have made the movie unbearable to watch. At the same time, it's maddening in its ambiguity. Seeing it as a product of this enormous gulf between creative approaches explains a lot.
It would be fascinating to watch the Clarke cut. The spartan ambiguity of Kubrick's cut almost certainly makes it the better film, but to see A Space Odyssey from such a different creative perspective would nonetheless be a revelation. I wonder if prints of it still exist in a vault somewhere.
Peter Hyams essentially made 2010 much more along the "Clarkeian" lines suggested by Moorcock in the article, but even still some of the talky bits around Bowman's various appearances did not make it into the final cut.
It's a good enough film, but you would be hard pressed to find anyone who honestly prefers it to 2001, or who thinks adding in more talky bits would have helped. Indeed, compare the Soviet vs American "stand-offs" in the hotel lobby and in orbit around Jupiter respectively, and you can see Kubrick's subtle treatment of the cold war as a much more savage commentary on geopolitics than the overt on-the-verge-of-hot-war geopolitics in 2010. The climax of 2001 was the result of the cold war paranoia, whereas the climax of 2010 were events that overturn the less-cold war paranoia of the sequel.
2001's Kubrick-ness is reflected in that sort of subtle political satire that was one of the recurring themes in his films; Clarke by contrast favours an optimism based in technological leaps, which we see in full in 2010, but also in the novelization's elucidation of the film's ending.
Maybe the most famous transition in film history -- the bone thrown into the air -- exemplifies the difference: Kubrick takes a "you can take a violent ape out of the savannah and dress it up in business clothes, uniforms and space suits, but..." view while Clarke thinks the new environment transforms humans for the better.
As you say, it would be fascinating to have fuller documentation of the film-making processes for 2001, to at least the level of detail that we get for major films made in this millennium so far. However, as with 2001 itself, we have a large vacuum to speculate about.
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It would be fascinating to watch the Clarke cut. The spartan ambiguity of Kubrick's cut almost certainly makes it the better film, but to see A Space Odyssey from such a different creative perspective would nonetheless be a revelation. I wonder if prints of it still exist in a vault somewhere.
You can get a flavour for it in 2010 , which had several production advantages and generally better acting from better-known actors. Roy Scheider as Heywood Floyd (compare him to William Sylvester's Heywood Floyd in 2001) does several voice-overs and there is a lot of unrealistic dialogue for expository purposes. There was plenty of discussion about what went wrong with HAL 9000 and whether HAL 9000 was fixable, alth…
It still wouldn’t be 2001; in has the bones of a very different film. But as a rare example of a hard SF movie with a terrific cast and largely excellent writing, it could certainly stand on its own.
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Can’t recommend this highly enough for its complex (for TV) treatment of strong AI.
I tried a few episodes and thought it was stupid. I'd love to be wrong, so please tell me it gets better. I'm willing to give it a second chance.
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Can’t recommend this highly enough for its complex (for TV) treatment of strong AI.
I tried a few episodes and thought it was stupid. I'd love to be wrong, so please tell me it gets better. I'm willing to give it a second chance.
I couldn't get past the first season. I couldn't suspend my disbelief for it to be watchable.
Did anyone ever definitively figure out what Kubrick was trying to do with "2001"? (The interpretation that made the most sense to me was the one where the monolith is a metaphor to the cinema screen and Philosopher's Stone.)
The book addresses this. The Monolith is an interstellar "seed" sent out to stimulate the development of other forms of sentient life. This scene is supposed to depict the Monolith stimulating humanity's primate ancestors to develop tool usage (bones as clubs/etc) and catalyzing our societal development as a result. Next, we see Humanity discover the Tycho Monolith buried on the moon. As the lunar dawn strikes it, it…
* The number 4 and 3 keep appearing in the movie. * Lots of 90-degree angles in the movie compared to the book. * Why everyone is cold and sterile as the move away from Earth. * Rectangles and circles. HAL is a black rectangle and a red circle. The monolith is a black rectangular object. * Kubrick excited at making the biggest "religious" movie. * The original cut of the movie had the scene of the broken wine glass jerk/skip, giving the impression Bowman had realized he was in an artificial environment created by others. * The appearance of diamond shapes in the movie and his other movies, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSo6s_xrj4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpWMnlMIWAU
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…