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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)

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great anecdote. Where do you have it from? I'd love to find more of this kind of stuff. And wow, by the way. That's harsh.

I heard about this a couple years ago when my orchestra (I'm a violinist) did a "movie music" concert with a guest conductor (Hal Beckett) who worked in the industry. We opened the concert with the fanfare from Also Sprach Zarathustra... then he turned to the audience and explained about temp music, and we played the Alex North fanfare. I have a feeling that these sorts of stories fall into the category of "well know…

In this case the story was printed in a booklet accompanying a recording of the score, though I'm fairly certain it had been reported on before that too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(score)

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

#162
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure which cut you watched, it does have a happy ending for the protagonist. He enjoys Beethoven again. EDIT: A friend who read the book initially just said it was not happy, but agreed it is when you only know the movie.

They both have happy endings. In the book, the final chapter is about Alex starting to mature into an adult. The book is also organized into three sections of seven chapters meant to represent the three phases of childhood and ending in chapter 21: adulthood. The movie was pretty close to the book it just left off the 21st chapter as did the American version of the book.

I had to study the novel in high school as you mentioned the 21 chapter thing is important because the book is divided into 3 parts of 7 chapters and there is supposed to be an element of symmetry in the progression.

One of the central themes running through the book is free will and choice. It has been a fair amount of time now since I've read it but I believe the book opens with the quote "So what is it going to be then?" and ends with Alex making the choice to set aside his past. Importantly he also says something along the lines that if he ever has children he won't try to stop them making the same choices as he has.

One of the things our teacher repeatedly stressed was Saint Augustine and Anthony Burgess's Catholic background.

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

#163

Arthur C Clarke wasn't the only person who was shocked at the premiere of 2001. Stanley Kubrick commissioned the prominent film composer Alex North -- famous for the scoring of Spartacus -- to write the music for 2001. However, film music is only recorded and added at the final stage of editing; normally all of the video is laid down first so that the music director knows exactly how long each scene will be and the m…

That's a great anecdote. Where do you have it from? I'd love to find more of this kind of stuff. And wow, by the way. That's harsh.

The YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting talked about the usage of temp music in movies on one of its video, titled Marvel Symphonic Universe:

https://youtu.be/7vfqkvwW2fs

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

#164

Arthur C Clarke wasn't the only person who was shocked at the premiere of 2001. Stanley Kubrick commissioned the prominent film composer Alex North -- famous for the scoring of Spartacus -- to write the music for 2001. However, film music is only recorded and added at the final stage of editing; normally all of the video is laid down first so that the music director knows exactly how long each scene will be and the m…

For those who are interested in hearing the music Alex North composed for 2001, it has been released. Here's one example [1]

[1] "Alex North's 2001: World Premiere Recording" [ https://www.amazon.com/Alex-Norths-2001-Premiere-Recording/d... ]

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

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I watched the movie via a video player made from Redstone, I didn't realize it at first, but the inexact color reproduction really subtracted nuance from the mood, and the fact that I had to run away from monsters every night really prevented me from mentally investing in the movie. This was all really subtle, but later on when I watched the movie in a big theater, I was amazed at the difference!

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

#166

The monolith really works as a Visial metaphor for the Cinema screen. Just as the movie starts as we are staring at the monolith ready to go on a literal space Odyssey. It's a shame so many re-releases "fixed" the faux screen jump when Bowman nearly touched the edge, and instead shattered the glass. It really is brilliant, a movie within a movie. All through the film there are so many rotating monoliths it's incredib…

> the faux screen jump when Bowman nearly touched the edge, and instead shattered the glass. It really is brilliant, a movie within a movie.

> that the upright position of the monolith as it is presented is incorrect.

Can you provide references for either of these?

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see I'm getting hammered for my negativity, but I certainly meant it when I said in awe about the first part. It's magnificent, never mind the lunar gravity problem, which I've never seen well done on film. It's only a couple of months since I last tried - and gave up on - watching 2001 to the end. Probably my own shortcoming entirely - I see nothing but pretentious late sixties posing from the stargate and onwards…

I tried to watch 2001 again about 8 years ago and had to put it on fast forward, at 10X speed, and even then I was still falling asleep through most of it

If you had it at 10x you weren't really watching it.

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

#168
post #11

Kubrick was fairly known for heavily adapting the novels he used for inspiration. There are huge differences between the novel "Lolita" and Kubrick's adaptation. Same with "Shining" or "Clockwork Orange". TBH, I'm really happy we didn't get a version with voice-overs and all. Hard to imagine a concept of "documentary" would have been better than what we ended up with.

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.

Ha! The joke's on himself. Most of his books get better when filmed than when written. He thinks more words equal character development.

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

#169
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is so true about Kubrick as a photographer. He’s able to create these big immersive worlds where the pallet of emotions I experience as a viewer is just so... wide. 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…

> Kubric got the fastest lenses he could

Not just any lenses! Lenses designed for NASA to capture the far side of the Moon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Zeiss_Planar_50mm_f/0.7

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