who watched 2001 space odeyssy
TT
Mr. Anderson
@imsp212.netvigator.com:
> what's do you think?
The single greatest movie ever made in the history of this universe, as
well as all POSSIBLE alternate universes!
vmac...@yahoo.com
I caught AMC's 'Films that Shook the World' featurette that showed it
getting a cold reception from preview audiences, but then being
embraced by the youth of 1968. It was neat seeing the Pan Am space
shuttle and the outsize lunar lander of the movie playing against their
real counterparts. Then there was that zero-gravity footage of a guy
running in a loop track. Didn't know they could do that.
VMacek
Dave in Toronto
One reason it became a big hit with the young in the late 60' was
because anong with "Fantasia" it became a "trip" movie. They would get
stoned and get turned on by the effects. Probably hadn't a clue what
the movies were about. Some enterprising movie house house owner should
have had a double bill of "Fantasia" and "2001". (Perhaps they did in
San Francisco).
Dave in Toronto
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
news:1128191328.3...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
The same way Fred Astaire danced on the ceiling in _Royal Wedding_? Well, it
shook my world.
--
Frank in Seattle
____
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
"Millennium hand and shrimp."
Dave in Toronto
> >
> > I caught AMC's 'Films that Shook the World' featurette that showed it
> > getting a cold reception from preview audiences, but then being
> > embraced by the youth of 1968. It was neat seeing the Pan Am space
> > shuttle and the outsize lunar lander of the movie playing against their
> > real counterparts. Then there was that zero-gravity footage of a guy
> > running in a loop track. Didn't know they could do that.
>
> The same way Fred Astaire danced on the ceiling in _Royal Wedding_? Well, it
> shook my world.
>
> --
> Frank in Seattle
> ____
>
.....and as you probably know (I think is was discussed here a while
back) that scene was shot without optical efforts of any kind. It was
purely mechanical.
Dave in Toronto
vmac...@yahoo.com
Watching the latter, someone in the theater got kind of freaked out at
the baby pegasus...es. Go figure.
I totally get the mechanics of shooting the gravity-defying scenes
(must've been a trial sitting in a chair in the spinning Discovery
set)...I'm still stumped at how that would work in real life. Wouldn't
an object, say, dropped from your hand stay put as the place spinned
around it? No real gravity at work...
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
news:1128205486....@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
Fred, Stanley Donen, Robert Planck, and whoever else shot the number in a
rotating room from a fixed camera. It is really Fred's timing and incredible
smoothness and physical deftness that make it work so seamlessly. That and,
I suppose, hours of rehearsals -- as with all of Fred's dances.
--
Frank in Seattle
____
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
"Millennium hand and shrimp."
Doubting Timus
it was in 1968. (I think dada, the dada of Surrealism, was kicked off after
the horrors of the Great War.) I doubt many heads in the theatres
understood what they were seeing. It was just so heavy, man, like, y'know?
It was a rather simple story when explained in the noveliztion by Clark
himself. Often I've noticed reading a story renders it much more accessible
than the movie of it was, at least for me, and this is one prime example.
--
Doubting Timus
ubi dubium ibi libertas
ti...@nerdnosh.com
Bill Bonde ('by a commodius vicus of recirculation')
Doubting Timus wrote:
>
> Surrealism is very attractive whenever "reality" is so very unpleasant, as
> it was in 1968. (I think dada, the dada of Surrealism, was kicked off after
> the horrors of the Great War.) I doubt many heads in the theatres
> understood what they were seeing. It was just so heavy, man, like, y'know?
>
> It was a rather simple story when explained in the noveliztion by Clark
> himself. Often I've noticed reading a story renders it much more accessible
> than the movie of it was, at least for me, and this is one prime example.
>
You mean because the movie doesn't make any sense?
--
So they are even more frightened than we are, he thought. Why, is this
all that's meant by heroism? And did I do it for the sake of my country?
And was he to blame with his dimple and his blue eyes? How frightened he
was! He thought I was going to kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand
trembled. And they have given me the St. George's Cross. I can't make it
out, I can't make it out! +-Leo Tolstoy, "War and Peace"
Doubting Timus
"Bill Bonde ('by a commodius vicus of recirculation')"
<John.M...@magersfontein.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1128222197.d50bbb05da5a4d342da6261e3556cd96@teranews...
> You mean because the movie doesn't make any sense?
Sense is the mass murder of millions for no purpose. That sends you out
looking for nonsense.
Once I was in a boxing match with Kenny English, who was a year older and
way better. I could see the way it was going. I gave Kenny plenty of room.
The match took place in a house on a church lot made available to Boy
Scouts. In giving room, I backed into a window. It broke.
I remember spending a considerable time worrying, picking up shards, tracing
the remaining cracks in what was left of the panes. I was entranced by a
silly busted window.
Kenny asked, "You wanta go on?"
"Naw," I said. Actually, I cared nothing at all for the window.
Kenny English represented reality. I had discovered broken glass. I was
only nine or so, so I didn't know it was surrealism yet.
Bob
Well almost. It wouldn't "stay in place", but "stay in its same
straight-line trajectory". And remember, you are (and the object) are
moving in a circle as you drop it. This causes it to appear to "fly
outwards" when "dropped" which in this case would cause it to move towards
the floor which is further from the center than the object's initial
position. If you do all the math its movement cannot be distinguished from
that caused by gravity (from your perspective as a passenger on the
rotating platform).
I suppose you could throw the object in just the right way to make it keep
from "falling" to the floor, but you can do that on the surface of the
earth as well if you are strong enough. That's caled "putting something
into orbit". Perhaps if the object were introduced from outside the
rotating platform (where we are assuming there is no gravity) it would
remain motionless from the outside perspective and appear to be traveling
in a circle (and therefore not falling) from an inside perspective. Thus,
from the inside it would appear that the object was thrown into the
platform in just the right way to make it orbit. Just like one of our
space ships going into orbit around another planet.
salgud
Bill Bonde ('by a commodius vicus of recirculation') wrote:
> Doubting Timus wrote:
> >
> > Surrealism is very attractive whenever "reality" is so very unpleasant, as
> > it was in 1968. (I think dada, the dada of Surrealism, was kicked off after
> > the horrors of the Great War.) I doubt many heads in the theatres
> > understood what they were seeing. It was just so heavy, man, like, y'know?
> >
> > It was a rather simple story when explained in the noveliztion by Clark
> > himself. Often I've noticed reading a story renders it much more accessible
> > than the movie of it was, at least for me, and this is one prime example.
> >
> You mean because the movie doesn't make any sense?
Either it didn't make sense, or you didn't get it...
Dave in Toronto
> It was a rather simple story when explained in the noveliztion by Clark
> himself. Often I've noticed reading a story renders it much more accessible
> than the movie of it was, at least for me, and this is one prime example.
>
>
> --
> Doubting Timus
Right. If I remember correctly the movie never explained why Hal
rebelled - the book did.
Dave in Toronto
Dave in Toronto
> > .....and as you probably know (I think is was discussed here a while
> > back) that scene was shot without optical efforts of any kind. It was
> > purely mechanical.
>
> Fred, Stanley Donen, Robert Planck, and whoever else shot the number in a
> rotating room from a fixed camera. It is really Fred's timing and incredible
> smoothness and physical deftness that make it work so seamlessly. That and,
> I suppose, hours of rehearsals -- as with all of Fred's dances.
>
> --
> Frank in Seattle
> ____
>
Right. All due respect to the technicians involved but in the end it
all depended on Fred doing it right. Anyone know how many takes they
had? Or did they get it right on the first go?
Dave in Toronto
Doubting Timus
> Right. All due respect to the technicians involved but in the end it
> all depended on Fred doing it right. Anyone know how many takes they
> had? Or did they get it right on the first go?
I am watching the reports here of the creation of the dance sequences. I
have read before that the Astair/Rogers numbers were "filmed straight
through without interruption in one take." I think they all had different
camera angles along the way, but then so does live TV. Anyway, the one-take
legend sounds like mythology.
Doubting Timus
> Right. If I remember correctly the movie never explained why Hal
> rebelled - the book did.
I don't remember. Maybe I was too stoned during the running of the movie.
But it seems so straightforward now. The homing device on the antennae was
not faulty, and HAL said it was, therefore all their lives were essentially
in the hands of a misfiring computer. (This became less unsettling after
Windows was in general release.) A computer, however, with the sensitivity
to resent and resist being scrapped.
How many rooted for HAL? Hands up.
That's a scifi standard, since the fifties, the computer taking over, but I
think it's done nowhere to better effect than here.
The book even explained quite well the latter sequences, which everyone
figured were just more sixties flavoring. The book even told us the
provenance for the set in the zoo which Dave was set into. A catalog.
Sears, I think.
You can actually see Dave's puzzled look as the glass breaks, and you can
imagine the Veutians writing on their clipboards, "Grows old...breaks
stuff."
John Harkness
Watch the film. It's one take.
The question is, how many takes did Astaire, a notorious
perfectionist, require to get that one satisfactory take.
John Harkness
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
news:dhpjo...@enews4.newsguy.com...
What Fred Astaire did that an innovation at the time and which he insisted
on was that the camera shoot the whole dance and not cut to close ups of
face or hands or feet or reaction shots from some audience. It was a kind of
corrective to kind of editing and shooting and surrealist tricks that Busby
Berkeley introduced a few years before. Of course, Berkeley featured
hoofers, not a great dancer.
And as I and Harkness and others have said, Fred rehearsed until every
movement was perfect; he expected the same of whoever was his partner, too.
One of the _That's Entertainment_ entries has a telling segment of
side-by-side shots of Fred doing the same dance -- is one an outtake and the
other the one used? a filmed rehearsal and the final version? can't
remember -- and he is absolutely in synch with himself.
--
Frank in Seattle
____
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
"Millennium hand and shrimp."
Dave in Toronto
> How many rooted for HAL? Hands up.
>
I certainly felt sorry for HAL when Dave started to remove it's memory
banks. "Just what are you doing Dave? - My mind is going - I can sing
you a song - would you like to hear it? - Daisy,Daisy give me you're
answer do..........."
Dave in Toronto
jayembee
> what's do you think?
For me, it was *the* transcendental movie. I saw it on its initial release
in 1968. I was 14. Up to that point, I thought of movies as just a story,
nothing more. 2001 showed me that movies had the capability to be
much, *much* more.
-- jayembee
Doubting Timus
> I certainly felt sorry for HAL when Dave started to remove it's memory
> banks. "Just what are you doing Dave? - My mind is going - I can sing
> you a song - would you like to hear it? - Daisy,Daisy give me you're
> answer do..........."
I can see you're upset...I think you should sit down, take a stress pill,
and think things over very carefully...Stop, Dave...will you stop,
Dave?...My mind is going...I can feel it going...Good afternoon, ladies and
gentlemen, my name is HAL, I'm a...
Nobody but HAL could pull off those lines.
Dave in Toronto
> The book even explained quite well the latter sequences, which everyone
> figured were just more sixties flavoring. The book even told us the
> provenance for the set in the zoo which Dave was set into. A catalog.
> Sears, I think.
>
I think I've got this correct - Clark wrote the novel after the movie.
Right? - 2001 was based on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel". Kubrick
and Clarke expanded it for the screenplay of the movie then Clarke
based his novel on the screenplay - One case of a book of the film
working very well which isn't always the case.
Dave in Toronto
Sawfish
>Surrealism is very attractive whenever "reality" is so very unpleasant, as
>it was in 1968. (I think dada, the dada of Surrealism, was kicked off after
>the horrors of the Great War.) I doubt many heads in the theatres
>understood what they were seeing. It was just so heavy, man, like, y'know?
>It was a rather simple story when explained in the noveliztion by Clark
>himself. Often I've noticed reading a story renders it much more accessible
>than the movie of it was, at least for me, and this is one prime example.
This is an interesting discussion.
Yeah, I did see it, in SF, in the original theatrical release. No, I
wasn't stoned (but boy, was I fucked up when I saw Clockwork Orange at the
Castro, I could just barely drive across the bridge from Marin).
In retrospect, I think the strongest parts of the film, for me, were the
art direction, and the execution. The "storyline" was far too spiritual
for me to ever connect with (who cares if we are being guided by a high
order...or not?), but I did like the part with the apes and the black
monolith.
Sometimes, when I'm in a foul mood, I speculate that I am descended from
the apes who *didn't* touch the stone...you know, that other tribe...
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shit <------------------------------------------------------------> Shinola
"Which is which?" --Sawfish
Sawfish
It is the very thing you hope does not happen to you, when you die...
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
Thirty-three years ago I read Clarke's "The Lost Worlds of 2001" in which, I
seem to remember, he wrote that he was working on the novel at the same time
while Kubrick and he were developing the script. A kind of synergy between
the two formats and versions.
Dave in Toronto
> >> The book even explained quite well the latter sequences, which everyone
> >> figured were just more sixties flavoring. The book even told us the
> >> provenance for the set in the zoo which Dave was set into. A catalog.
> >> Sears, I think.
> >>
> >> Doubting Timus
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I think I've got this correct - Clark wrote the novel after the movie.
> > Right? - 2001 was based on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel". Kubrick
> > and Clarke expanded it for the screenplay of the movie then Clarke
> > based his novel on the screenplay - One case of a book of the film
> > working very well which isn't always the case.
>
> Thirty-three years ago I read Clarke's "The Lost Worlds of 2001" in which, I
> seem to remember, he wrote that he was working on the novel at the same time
> while Kubrick and he were developing the script. A kind of synergy between
> the two formats and versions.
>
> --
> Frank in Seattle
> ____
>
Seems as though he might have had the same writing method as Graham
Greene who always wrote his original stories for movies as novels even
if had no intent of publishing them as such. He said that he just
couldn't think in screenplay form.
Dave in Toronto
Doubting Timus
> Seems as though he might have had the same writing method as Graham
> Greene who always wrote his original stories for movies as novels even
> if had no intent of publishing them as such. He said that he just
> couldn't think in screenplay form.
I've been in a discussion of The Third Man, and this answers it. The term
`novelization' is justly derided, but if an original story is in that format
then it isn't in the same category. Many writers I think find the camera
directions a hindrance to the natural flow of a scene.
Dave in Toronto
> That's a scifi standard, since the fifties, the computer taking over, but I
> think it's done nowhere to better effect than here.
>
I remember a scifi story of scientists gathering information from every
computer in the world and assenbling it into one gigantic computer.
They met to ask it questions. The first question asked was "Was there
a God?" the computer replied "There is now."
Dave in Toronto
jayembee
> I remember a scifi story of scientists gathering information from every
> computer in the world and assenbling it into one gigantic computer.
> They met to ask it questions. The first question asked was "Was there
> a God?" the computer replied "There is now."
"Answer" by Fredric Brown.
-- jayembee
Frank R.A.J. Maloney
news:k4l5k1lpkvc13upih...@4ax.com...
Not dissimilar to the classic Asimov story, "The Last Question" (1959),
about the growth of the ultimate computer Multivac/Microvac/Galactic
AC/Universal AC/Cosmic AC/AC (ac for "analog computer" btw) which ends with
. . .
***SPOILER***
"The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe
and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.
"And AC said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!"
"And there was light---- "
--
Frank in Seattle
____
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
"Millennium hand and shrimp."
George Peatty
wrote:
>I remember a scifi story of scientists gathering information from every
>computer in the world and assenbling it into one gigantic computer.
>They met to ask it questions. The first question asked was "Was there
>a God?" the computer replied "There is now."
I remember one like it, where a man dies, and awakens in the afterlife to
complete darkness. He thinks something like, "I wish there was a little
light in here," and suddenly an infinite array of galaxies spring instantly
into being.
George Peatty
wrote:
>> I remember a scifi story of scientists gathering information from every
>> computer in the world and assenbling it into one gigantic computer.
>> They met to ask it questions. The first question asked was "Was there
>> a God?" the computer replied "There is now."
>
>"Answer" by Fredric Brown.
Brown wrote some wonderful science fiction, and a fair amount of Twilight
Zone or Alfred Hitchcock-style horror as well. Pick up a collection of
short stories called "Nightmares and Geezenstacks" if you ever get the
chance. Wonderfully inventive trick-ending, gotcha stuff from cover to
cover.
Dave in Toronto
Thanks. Whould you know the author of another famous short,short,short
story that went something like this - "All life on earth had ended save
for one man who sat in his room. There was a knock on the door".
Dave in Toronto
Brigid Nelson
<dmatt...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
The shorted Sci-Fi story ever, it goes like this:
The last man on Earth sat in his roomr. There was a knock at the
door.
It's also Fredric Brown. While known mostly for his short fiction he
was also the author of the novels _Martians Go Home_ and _The Lights
in the Sky are Stars_.
brigid
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look
things in the face and know them for what they are - Marcus Aurelius
Doubting Timus
"Brigid Nelson" <irja...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:6ve6k117nih2640nj...@4ax.com...
> The last man on Earth sat in his room. There was a knock at the
> door.
"Hello. I'm the last woman. Boy, do we have our work cut out for us."
jayembee
> jayembee wrote:
>> "Dave in Toronto" <dmatt...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>
>>> I remember a scifi story of scientists gathering information from every
>>> computer in the world and assenbling it into one gigantic computer.
>>> They met to ask it questions. The first question asked was "Was there
>>> a God?" the computer replied "There is now."
>
> Thanks. Whould you know the author of another famous short,short,short
> story that went something like this - "All life on earth had ended save
> for one man who sat in his room. There was a knock on the door".
Your quote is actually longer than the story itself. It goes: "The last man
on Earth sat alone in the room. There was a knock on the door."
Also Fred Brown. Basically, if it's science fiction, and it's really short,
chances are it's Brown.
-- jayembee
Dave in Toronto
> "Hello. I'm the last woman. Boy, do we have our work cut out for us."
> Doubting Timus
I remember a short story by Ray Russell in "Playboy" called "The
Loneliest Girl in the World" about the last woman on earth. Good story
but very sad.
Dave in Toronto
Sawfish
>> Doubting Timus
Man! I just found 3 SF anthologies I bought when I was about 12. So last
night I was reading Heilein's "All You Zombies". The very lack of
sophistication and "gee whiz" in these 1950's stories are in themselves
refreshing. And there's even some good inventive technique (Sturgeon's
"The Man Who Lost the Sea").
I can vaguely recall a post-apocalyptic story in which on eman and one
woman are left. The man is an older, world-wise character who is looking
forward ti repopulating the world with the other survivor, a younger,
puritanical woman, who exhibits signs of shock and depression.
A plot gimmick (pretty weak stuff, but the twist is the pay-off) is that,
as a result of whatever killed all of the rest of the world's population,
the man falls into fits of catatonia that can only be relieved by the
woman administering a drug.
He finally has found a way to convince her that repopulatingthe earth is
not sinful. He goes into the swinging door fo a public restroom, and has
an attack. He knows full welll that the woman, as puritanical as she is,
will *never* come into a room marked "Men".
That 50's stuff is filled with these sorts of punch-line driven stories,
it seems.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Man! I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!"
--Sawfish
Doubting Timus
farmer by trade wrote out on the back of a cartoon coaster in the blue TV
light something he remembered from the preamble to Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason:
"Pure reason is, indeed, so perfect a unity that if its principle were
insufficient for the solution of even a single one of all the
questions to which it itself gives birth we should have no
alternative but to reject the principle, since we should then no
longer be able to place implicit reliance upon it in dealing
with any one of the other questions. "
HAL represents of course Pure Reason, and as HAL was insufficient for the
solution of the one question of the failure of the RS-232 antennae-homing
device, then he must be decommissioned. It only means Dave and Frank and
Clarke had all read their Kant.
At least, that's what the farmer said. "Wail, eff that don't beat all!" I
said.
Doubting Timus
this before it was detailed in the novel. HAL was programmed to both
cooperate fully with the crew and also to keep the secret parts of their
mission hidden from them. Schizophrenia.
Edward Ruden
Doubting Timus wrote:
> HAL was programmed to both
> cooperate fully with the crew and also to keep the secret parts of their
> mission hidden from them. Schizophrenia.
Yes, the programing conflict played an important role and did result in
schizo-type behavior, but it was a little more complicated than that.
Piecing together the HAL problem from bits an pieces of things I saw
and read in the book/movie, HAL never technically "malfunctioned"; he
was just executing his function in way that his programmers didn't
anticipate or approve of in hindsight. That's why they called it an
"anomoly" instead.
He was programmed to, in rough order of priority:
1. Keep true mission (alien contact) secret from awake crew until
others are awakened.
2. Compete mission, solve mission related problems, and execute
solutions to best of his abilities via automatic control systems or
crew assistance, if necessary
3. Maintain crew life support; keep crew alive and healthy.
4. Process information and report results/conclusions accurately.
I may have the order off a bit, but 2 definitely preceded 3 in order of
priority. That is, if 3 got in the way of 2, the crew *must* be
sacrificed. That's exactly what HAL did when he concluded that being
disconnected would risk the mission. After all, the wake crew didn't
even know what the true mission was because of rule 1, so how could
they do a better job than him? In the second book/movie, the "anomomly"
was successfully prevented from recuring by reversing the order of 2
and 3.
Incidentally, the reason HAL was so willing to explain to Dave why he
had to die and how it was unlikely for him to get back in the ship
without his helment was not cockiness, as many assume. It was just rule
4 working.
Ed
Bill Vermillion
I loved it from the first - during the opening week - and every
projected presentation I've seen since then has not been as good -
including one where the shutter was out of sync and all the
whites in the space scenes smeared vertically.
I'll admit after 37 years it's getting to be a bit creaky and
the product-placement surely gives it a dated look :-).
But still a good film.
Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
Grendel
>straight-line trajectory". And remember, you are (and the object) are
>moving in a circle as you drop it. This causes it to appear to "fly
>outwards" when "dropped" which in this case would cause it to move towards
>the floor which is further from the center than the object's initial
>position. If you do all the math its movement cannot be distinguished from
>that caused by gravity (from your perspective as a passenger on the
>rotating platform).
Actually, I believe they were trying to portray exercise in a
centrifugal wheel: a very old mechanism for attempting to replicate
'gravity' in a weightless environment (both in fact and in movies
and fiction). If you were to drop an object in such a 'wheel' then
it would tend to 'fall' (i.e. inertia would send it falling outward
from the hub, toward the inner surface of the wheel).
The interesting thing, though, is that while the object would
'fall' in a straight line away from the hub, the wheel would
continue to spin under it. So, from a person who is standing in the
wheel's viewpoint, the object would fall in an arc away from him
(anti-spinward).
Yol Bolsum,
Grendel.
p.s. Actually, 2001 also geos excellent if you turn down the sound and
play some Pink Floyd (Meddle - Ummagumma - Atom Heart Mother -
Ummagumma - Meddle).