Why is there a black screen at times on 2001? (Possible spoiler alert)

[oldmike]

saw it for the 1st time and one thing gets me times of no pic at all is that ment to be or did i get a bad copy?

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by oldmike

saw it for the 1st time and one thing gets me times of no pic at all is that ment to be or did i get a bad copy?

what do you mean no picture. at the beginnig its just music, but after that there should always be some sort of picture, even if its just random colors. there is also an intermission.

[J6P]

In the old days going to the cinema was a lot bigger deal than it is today. You always had a cartoon or two before the feature, or a short film. You also had something called the Overture. Before the curtain rose and the lights dimmed you would take your seat, and the music from the film would play for a bit before the picture began. When the Overture was over the curtain would go up, the lights would dim, and the film would begin. Sometimes a longer film would do the same thing in the middle. This is called the Intermission.

This is what you are seeing, preserved on the Blu-ray.

[doctorsteve]

The black picture is intentional.

Picture sitting in the theater, the darkness enveloping you. It's meant to be sensory deprivation in a sense so you are bombarded with nothing but sound, and it also symbolizes the passage of time. Then - Boom - image and silence, a reversal of experience. The intermission is just that - an opportunity to strech your legs, use the john, wake up...

Great flic, very underappreciated then and now. It's sad many would rather see I now pronounce you chuck and larry...

[doctorsteve]

The inclusion of an intermission in Olde Tyme Cinema was parodied in The Holy Grail... "Intermission" appeared partway through - with goofy organ music, then right at the time people would have got up from their seats, the action abruptly resumed... an there was much rejoicing (yaaaaaaaay...)

[ben7ben3]

Originally Posted by doctorsteve

The black picture is intentional.

Picture sitting in the theater, the darkness enveloping you. It's meant to be sensory deprivation in a sense so you are bombarded with nothing but sound, and it also symbolizes the passage of time. Then - Boom - image and silence, a reversal of experience. The intermission is just that - an opportunity to strech your legs, use the john, wake up...

Great flic, very underappreciated then and now. It's sad many would rather see I now pronounce you chuck and larry...

how funny, i WOULD rather see i now pronounce you chuck and larry

[Marcusarilius]

Originally Posted by doctorsteve

The black picture is intentional.

Picture sitting in the theater, the darkness enveloping you. It's meant to be sensory deprivation in a sense so you are bombarded with nothing but sound, and it also symbolizes the passage of time. Then - Boom - image and silence, a reversal of experience. The intermission is just that - an opportunity to strech your legs, use the john, wake up...

Great flic, very underappreciated then and now. It's sad many would rather see I now pronounce you chuck and larry...

Speilberg did the same thing with Close Encounters of the third Kind. It builds a sense of light tention and anticipation.

[oldmike]

intermission that must have been it i did not rember that the time i saw 2001 on TV
realy freeked me out for a sec

[U4K61]

Originally Posted by DrinkMore

Never seen the film and I am watching it now. Can someone tell me if it's normal for the first few minutes to be nothing but sound and a black screen? When I fast forward, it then brings me to a blue MGM logo, then the moon starts popping up. Pictures alas!
Is this normal?

The overture, meaning opening, is an instrumental introduction. The music playing without seeing the picture dignified the movie. It helped get one in certian mind set and got us get all excited the someting big was going to happen.

2001 goes back when movie going was much more elegent then it is in this world of cheep plastic cup holders and bagged popcorn. People actually dressed up for the event. It was back when they had drapery controllers not only above and behind a stage, but also on the sides that changed the aspect ratio by moving further in or out depending on how the movie was shot. Now, all to often we have to contend with a fixed screen size, a simple piece of plastic hung above two ugly exit doors. If the movie is too wide to fit the screen, the sides are masked or cut off by the projector. A good reasion why we should see it at home on Blu-ray despite destractions from family and friends. At least I know I will be viewing the correct OAR, the picture as the director intended.

An der schönen blauen Donau, Johann Strauss II, 1866
The Blue Danube - Hervert von Karajan, 10:44

Back to The Odyssey

[DrinkMore]

Never seen the film and I am watching it now. Can someone tell me if it's normal for the first few minutes to be nothing but sound and a black screen? When I fast forward, it then brings me to a blue MGM logo, then the moon starts popping up. Pictures alas!

Is this normal?

[Banjo]

Originally Posted by DrinkMore

Never seen the film and I am watching it now. Can someone tell me if it's normal for the first few minutes to be nothing but sound and a black screen? When I fast forward, it then brings me to a blue MGM logo, then the moon starts popping up. Pictures alas!

Is this normal?

Yes.

[DrinkMore]

Thanks, I just didn't know. Watching this thing now and it seems weird so far.

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by DrinkMore

Thanks, I just didn't know. Watching this thing now and it seems weird so far.

its different, but great. wait til u get to the last 25 min. ur going to trip out.

[Deciazulado]

It's called the Overture . On a Theater (in ancient times) the movie was treated like an event so no thousand trailers and ads leading to the movie without interruption. Sooooo you sat on your chair while other patrons slowly showed up and sat, listening to the cool magnetic 6-track multichannel music running at more than 22 inches per second (while the Beatles were recording at 15 and mixing to mono Lps) coming from behind the closed curtains while the lights dimmed into darkness and then the curtains openned and you saw the MGM logo and the Odyssey started.

I applaud Warner for leaving it like blank film, because I don't like watching a title card (Overture, Intermision, Exit, etc) telling me what I'm listening to for several minutes on end . If it's there, I turn the projector off (or actually change to a black input)

[DrinkMore]

Hmm. Maybe I really missed something, but the point of this movie was? The only thing that I can think of is he was playing on people's fascination with the future and man vs machine kinda thing.

Other than that - it was pretty - boring. Maybe during the time it was cool, but it was rather uneventful.

[HDJK]

Here is a review on it.

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by DrinkMore

Hmm. Maybe I really missed something, but the point of this movie was? The only thing that I can think of is he was playing on people's fascination with the future and man vs machine kinda thing.

Other than that - it was pretty - boring. Maybe during the time it was cool, but it was rather uneventful.

There's alot of symbolism and meaning in there. It roughly follows the story of Homer's Oddyssey which is about Oddysseus' long voyage home from the trojan war, but there's also a lot of ideas based around Nietzche's progression from ape to man to higher man to overman and Arthur C Clarke's theories about the evolution of man into symbiosis with machines.

It's well worth looking up as it really is a very clever blend of themes all interlocked.

[Seretur]

Or, for a slightly less convoluted explanation, it talks about the evolution of mankind -- how far we've come from the initial spark that created us into a sentient, tool-using species, to the global civilisation that is able to leave its world and reach for the stars.

There's the great Unknown -- represented by the Monoliths -- that seems to have been guiding us along. More importantly, the Unknown is so vastly beyond us that even our seeming advancement seems quaint compared to it. We're still children, taking our first baby steps into the greater universe.

This lack of our ability to fully comprehend what's going on is always contrasted in the film with the superiority of our tools to actually achieve something and get somewhere -- from the bone to the spaceship. Really, the confrontation of the two tribes of the ape-men over the water-hole isn't that different from the polite conversation of the Russians and the Americans at the space station's... water-hole. And our continuous mistrust of each other is what ultimately creates a schizoid reaction in HAL 9000, the ultimate tool that gets unleashed and tries to overpower its master.

Kubrick was going for an unbelievably grand concept here, and the fact that he created an enduring masterpiece instead of a lot of pretentious tosh is probably his single biggest contribution to the art of cinema. It's not an easy film to look at, especially now that we've been conditioned to spoon-fed reactions and easy three-act dramatic arcs: 2001 is a film from an earlier, more sophisticated time, that wasn't afraid to engage the viewer with some very challenging intellectual concepts and audiovisual narrative methods.

If you have any inclination toward any of the topics I mentioned above, this film is worth making the viewing effort. I'm sure the extras will help, too. And at least the Blu-ray edition is the closest you can get to the original 65mm presentation these days -- seeing as how most of the 35mm copies one can still see occassionally are in much less than perfect condition these days.

I've seen the film when I was around 8, and it was this title, not Star Wars, that defined my love for both cinema and sci-fi. And I've spent the intervening three decades peeling its layers...

[mastertang]

Apparently when it was first released, people left the theater because they thought the were watching the wrong movie.

[HDJK]

^^ As to your sig: yes, you should