Quote from: quiller on April 26, 2015, 07:27:33 AM
Clarke's work suffers almost as badly as anything else from the sci-fi writers of our "yoots." The job Hollyweird has done on Robert Heinlein, for example. But with "2001," it wasn't just dull, it was pointless. I realized that after watching it on DVD. The fact I paid for it makes me adapting to being a full blown idiot of my own sort. It's ghastly.

I was trying to be nice, dammit!
But it's true, if not for the effects (of it's time), the movie was one long boring moment of wasted time, I'll never get back.

Quote from: quiller on April 26, 2015, 07:27:33 AM
Clarke's work suffers almost as badly as anything else from the sci-fi writers of our "yoots." The job Hollyweird has done on Robert Heinlein, for example. But with "2001," it wasn't just dull, it was pointless. I realized that after watching it on DVD. The fact I paid for it makes me adapting to being a full blown idiot of my own sort. It's ghastly.

I'd be willing to bet you never read the book. (Hard to do in 1967, since the book wasn't published until after the movie's run.) 2001 is one of those experiences that's meaningless without some clues as to WTF is going on. Once you know that, it is truly a work of genius... except that last part, which was just cheap crappy chromatization effects.

The whole project was a collaboration between Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick. Clarke was the literary and imaginative power and Kubrick, of course, was a movie maker. As the project progressed, the relationship between the two deteriorated; Clarke had a lot of other irons in the fire, and he wasn't even in the country a lot of the time. (Pre-internet, pre-email, pre-cellphone days.) Kubrick just wanted to make the damn movie; he also had a reputation for not playing well with others. Eventually, and before the film was finished, the two men essentially went their separate ways. Kubrick finished the film on his own, which I think explains that ridiculous mish-mash toward the end. Clarke finished the story on his own, but the novel wasn't published until after the movie was out of theaters.

Although the film is one of my personal favorites, and considered to be among the best sci-fi movies ever made, it has its flaws. There's too little dialogue, for one thing. I know that the silence had a purpose, but it was taken too far, leaving viewers in the dark about a lot of things. The movie also was too short, in my opinion, to tell the whole story clearly. In a number of ways, it's an example of a story (or a book) that wasn't adequately transferred to film.

The first time I saw it, I walked out of the theater confused. What the hell did I just see? Later I got a paperback copy of the book Clarke had published, and as I read it, I found myself saying, "Oh! THAT's what it meant," or "THAT's what that was." The movie, I think, should never be shown to people who haven't read the novel. Without knowledge of Clarke's story, Kubrick's film really is a beautifully produced nothingburger. FWIW, Clarke wasn't happy with Kubrick's finished product either, and there was discussion at the time about Clarke's name being taken off the credits altogether -- at his request.

As an example of the disconnect between novel and film, I'd first mention the aliens. And you would say "What aliens?" And we'd both be right. Remember the black slab? First it was with the apes, then it was gone. Then it was buried on the moon. Then it was out beyond Jupiter with a hundred-year-old Dave Bowman. If you read the book, you'd understand what that thing is, how it works, and most importantly, how it got to be in all those places, and why. There be aliens! But watching the movie, which features no non-primate creatures other than the tapirs and the wild cat in the beginning, you wouldn't know that. Those aliens are actually the prime movers in the story, but they're not in the movie at all. Those aliens are the reason all the weird shit in the movie happens, but without any knowledge of the aliens' part in things, it's just weird shit.

Another example of the disconnect is the treatment of "Hal," the HAL9000 computer. In the film, "he" comes across as sort of evil and conniving, but you have no idea why. The novel fleshes out that part of the story. What the movie never shows you is that Hal was suffering from the digital version of schizophrenia. He had been programmed, on the one hand, to render true and accurate information. On the other hand, Hal had been programmed to protect The Mission at all costs, taking whatever actions made sense in his "mind" to facilitate that. On the third hand (Hal is a computer; he can have as many hands as he wants.), Hal was programmed to HIDE information, specifically the true nature of The Mission, from Dave Bowman and Frank Poole. (The true nature of The Mission was fully known to the dudes in hibernation, but who they are and what they're even doing on board the Discovery is another thing never touched upon in the movie.)

I think the story, and the novel Clarke wrote, is utterly wondrous and imaginative. I think the film Kubrick made is, in large part, a technical masterpiece, with many of its special effects worthy of anything Hollywood can make even today. I wouldn't want to part with either experience -- reading the book or seeing the film. (I own a commemorative copy of both the DVD and the soundtrack on CD.) But I freely admit that the film is simply impossible to fully appreciate without the background of the story in the novel.

As for the music, I adore it. But the movie featured no original music. All of it was classical stuff taken from a variety of sources. The "shuttle to the space station" segment, which featured some of the best special visual effects, was decorated with Johann Strauss' "The Blue Danube," done by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. What everyone thinks of as the movie's "theme" music is Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathrustra" (Thus Spake Zarathrustra), performed by the Vienna Philharmonic. The action in the film was fitted to the existing recordings, sort of the opposite of most movie music.

Excellent review.  I can't add anything to it.  I liked it a lot... as the first film to make space actually look like Space.  I only started Clarke's first novel; Against The Fall Of Night...  His work is just too eclectic. 

The Rod Serling-scripted Planet Of The Apes was released pretty close to 2001's.  I saw each one about 3 times. 

The two films will always be linked together in my mind, for obvious reasons.

Quote from: kit saginaw on April 26, 2015, 04:24:45 PM
Excellent review.  I can't add anything to it.  I liked it a lot... as the first film to make space actually look like Space.  I only started Clarke's first novel; Against The Fall Of Night...  His work is just too eclectic. 

The Rod Serling-scripted Planet Of The Apes was released pretty close to 2001's.  I saw each one about 3 times. 

The two films will always be linked together in my mind, for obvious reasons.

Clarke was a visionary, and a hell of a storyteller. He foresaw concepts like shuttle travel, satellite communication, space stations, and others. I'm glad his masterwork (2001) got the film attention it did. I'm sad the movie wasn't about two hours longer. The story deserves four or five hours to tell in movie form.

And you're right, for the first time, 2001 presented space as space looks. But even further, it presented the utter silence of space.... almost. If you listen carefully, in the space shots where there's no music, there's a sort of quiet hiss. It's not silence, but it's close, and it's consistent. What you don't hear is the noise of physical impacts or rocket engines. I think the scenes where Bowman defeated Hal and re-entered Discovery through the emergency door and then invaded the core of Hal himself and started removing memory modules represented that whole concept quite well. The shot of the escape hatch blowing off the excursion pod -- the utter silence of the detonation of the explosive bolts -- was powerful specifically because of the silence. I think 2001 was the first film to present that aspect of space travel, and I have to say that very few later sci-fi space flicks have met that standard.

Quote from: TboneAgain on April 26, 2015, 09:54:18 PM
The story deserves four or five hours to tell in movie form.

-Definitely deserves it.  Because the HAL-segment (upon final edit, and the artist's regard for how a piece will age)  mushroomed out-of-proportion to the obelisk's mythos.     

Quote from: kit saginaw on April 27, 2015, 03:27:22 PM
-Definitely deserves it.  Because the HAL-segment (upon final edit, and the artist's regard for how a piece will age)  mushroomed out-of-proportion to the obelisk's mythos.   

Well, yeah. There were no villains except Hal, and you just gotta have a villain! There has to be conflict to keep attention high. Nobody had an issue with what you call the obelisk. But Hal, on the other hand, was killin' people! Once the story moved to Jupiter space, there were only three characters to choose from -- Dave and Frank, who seemed to get along famously, and Hal.

The more I think about it, the more I see that Clarke's story wasn't told at all in the film. How could you possibly tell the story without even mentioning the aliens? Sure, they were only briefly and vaguely described in Clarke's book, but, regardless of their level of description, they were the protagonists from start to finish. Every single event that took place in the entire story (and in the movie) was a result of their doings. But you can watch that movie a hundred times and never see or hear of an alien of any description.

As a matter of fact, the movie could never possibly make sense without the alien angle. I often watch the movie and love the shit out of it, but that's because I read the book and know the story. If you didn't read the book and don't know the story, the movie is, as has been mentioned by previous posters, a waste of time. That is actually the way I felt walking out of the theater after seeing it for the first time way back when.

The books sounds worth checking-into.  I have more cynical views about space now, though. 

A geometric-shape presumes certain things...

Quote from: kit saginaw on April 28, 2015, 08:24:34 PM
The books sounds worth checking-into.  I have more cynical views about space now, though. 

A geometric-shape presumes certain things...

I recommend the book highly! It's only 236 pages in the paperback edition, which you can pick up at Amazon for a few bucks. (Clarke was not given to thousand-page barn-burners, and the whole thing began with a short story of his in the first place.) Give yourself a special treat. Get your mitts on the book, read it twice, then sit down and watch the movie on DVD..... for the first time. Instead of a series of sparkly, slick mysteries, you'll see a continuum, a logical progression from start to finish. It will make sense. You'll find that, while the visual effects are literally breathtaking and beyond state of the art for their day, they are very much secondary to the story.

Quote from: TboneAgain on April 29, 2015, 12:04:20 AM
I recommend the book highly! It's only 236 pages in the paperback edition, which you can pick up at Amazon for a few bucks. (Clarke was not given to thousand-page barn-burners, and the whole thing began with a short story of his in the first place.) Give yourself a special treat. Get your mitts on the book, read it twice, then sit down and watch the movie on DVD..... for the first time. Instead of a series of sparkly, slick mysteries, you'll see a continuum, a logical progression from start to finish. It will make sense. You'll find that, while the visual effects are literally breathtaking and beyond state of the art for their day, they are very much secondary to the story.

Readin' it...  In Chapter 2...  Moon Watcher returning to the New Rock... 

Quote from: kit saginaw on April 30, 2015, 07:15:09 PM
Readin' it...  In Chapter 2...  Moon Watcher returning to the New Rock...

Hehehe..... Have you slapped your forehead yet? Are you having moments of, "Aaaahhhh! THAT's what that was!" yet? You'll find that the "new rock" is a pretty talented rock, with some very talented minds behind it.

All of John Williams' music!

Quote from: TboneAgain on May 01, 2015, 09:32:06 AM
Hehehe..... Have you slapped your forehead yet? Are you having moments of, "Aaaahhhh! THAT's what that was!" yet? You'll find that the "new rock" is a pretty talented rock, with some very talented minds behind it.

Yes, I've had a major ah hah! moment, with Moon Watcher's clan being singled-out for ability-testing.  The movie couldn't depict that in the time it needed to.  Right now, I'm at the part where the leopard is being assessed for execution.

Great description of the obelisk's visual effects... 

Quote from: kit saginaw on May 01, 2015, 02:57:44 PM
Yes, I've had a major ah hah! moment, with Moon Watcher's clan being singled-out for ability-testing.  The movie couldn't depict that in the time it needed to.  Right now, I'm at the part where the leopard is being assessed for execution.

Great description of the obelisk's visual effects... 

More to the point, the movie couldn't (and didn't in any way) point out the ability-testing without acknowledging and explaining the aliens, who were, of course, conducting the testing in the first place. That's the REALLY big thing the film just ignored, and the production suffered because of that. Actually, in my opinion, the entire opening sequence of the film is useless without acknowledgement of the presence of alien beings. You can presume, if you have an active and fanciful imagination, that aliens were at work, but nothing in the film backs that up.

As I've said before, the story can't really be told without the aliens -- and I use that term loosely -- because without them, nobody would do the things they do. Certainly there's a parallel to real life. I don't doubt that the Kenyan's government, for example, would hide evidence of extraterrestrial existence (or anything else, for that matter) if it met their political goals. But from the storyteller's viewpoint, the tale can't be told without them. For that reason, Kubrick, in my opinion, failed in his duty to tell the story. The existence of the aliens, and of their long-term objectives, is all that could ever hold the whole tale together.

You will see exactly what I'm talking about as you explore Clarke's story.

Ok...had to get the book...paperback on Amazon for 1 penny (plus the 3.99 s & h) Good deal! Should be interesting!   

Before you're finished with the novel, you'll be exposed to nothing less than an alternative theory of evolution -- Clarke's fascinating idea of species alteration by means of alien intervention. His description of the activities of the aliens, and specifically what they do in their travels, could substitute for the actions of God.

Please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying that Clarke was an atheist or an agnostic or anything else, and I'm not promoting or denigrating any sort of religious belief. In fact, after reading 2001, I can't believe that Clarke was agnostic. His work embodied the concept of a higher power. The aliens in Clarke's story were nothing if not a higher power.

The short story on which the novel is based was called "The Sentinel." Think about the monolith buried under the surface of the Tycho crater for millions of years, waiting all that time for exposure to the sun. Like a good sentinel, it sent out its shout when the event it was assigned to monitor happened. It took millions of years for mankind to find "TMA-1," but when the sun finally touched the monolith's surface,  it was time to blow the trumpet, to sound the alarm, to shoot that radio beam on a trajectory that almost struck Jupiter, and nearly blew the eardrums out of the folks posing for pictures nearby at the time. The message -- it's time for the next shift, the next mutation, the next skills test. Or perhaps the message was just that somebody has found the thing buried on Earth's moon, and it's time to take another look in that direction.

Y'all will find one thing in the book, if nothing else -- depth.