Ask questions to The Digital Bits team (Bill Hunt, Jeff Kleist et.al.)

[The Big Blue]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

Please don't blame Kubrick for Spielberg's sins.

Oh snap!

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Filmmaking still requires coherent narrative and structure

Coherency is subjective, though. There’s no objective standard, because each viewer will have their own reaction to the material.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Hell, I consider A.I. to be one of Spielbergs worst (god was it boring) films, which was based off an idea of Stanley Kubrick.

I rather liked A.I. I thought it was one of Spielberg’s better films, and it was damned fascinating watching the styles of Kubrick and Spielberg complementing each other in the same film.

[FourToedStatue]

Man and I thought Jeff's BSG and Star Trek Comments were controversial. You should have your own Blog Jeff!

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

I'd say most of what was wrong with AI, aside from the CE3K ending was Kubrick influenced

Of course, Jeff, you are most welcome to be wrong to your heart's content.

On the serious side, I can't begin to judge the value of Kubrick's ingredients in that movie because I don't have any way of knowing what Kubrick would have done with them (and, thus, why he was attracted to them, in the first place). As you well know, the same subject matter, the same mise en scene, the same footage can produce extremely different results when tasked to serve different agendas.

I do know what Spielberg's ingredients did and what Spielberg's final product tasted like and that was crap.

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

Of course, Jeff, you are most welcome to be wrong to your heart's content.

He is right on occasions, too!

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by merrick97

He is right on occasions, too!

Of course! He is right on a great many occasions.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

I do know what Spielberg's ingredients did and what Spielberg's final product tasted like and that was crap.

Your opinion. I'm sure Kubrick's version would have had David mindlessly wandering around the forest for hours on end, Joe would have raped David's "mother" (as seen through Teddy's eyes), the Blue Fairy would be Vincent D'Onofrio in drag, and it would have taken 3 years to shoot it.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Your opinion.

Yep.

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

I'm sure Kubrick's version would have had David mindlessly wandering around the forest for hours on end, Joe would have raped David's "mother" (as seen through Teddy's eyes), the Blue Fairy would be Vincent D'Onofrio in drag, and it would have taken 3 years to shoot it.

Hey, sounds more interesting already!

[neo_reloaded]

Wow, the last couple pages of this thread hurt my head. Man Jeff, you sure hate a lot of things! Different people are obviously going to have very different tastes, but what frequently strikes me is how you seem to assert that these things you don't like are objectively bad. You can hate Kubrick to your heart's content and I won't try to change your mind, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that his work spoke a great deal to a great many people.

[SpaceDog]

My understanding is that Spielberg and Kubrick communicated frequently about AI during Kubrick's preproduction on the picture. If I remember properly they were faxing ideas back and forth to each other almost daily.

There are a lot of clear Kubrick homages in the final AI product, and I can't think of another director who would have carried it off more effectively.

I liked AI quite a lot. It's not one of my top 10 movies of all time or anything, but I enjoyed what it was.

And I want a Teddy.

[StimpsonJCat]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Get me $30 million (or 50 and let me shoot 65mm) and I'll demonstrate how to make a 2001 movie with a narrative and pacing

This may be true, but other than your relatives who would be watching it four decades later? You may not like Kubrick's 2001 (My wife hated it), but I think it has proven to stand the test of time with its current following of fans. I have to be in the right mood to watch 2001. But when I do I'm reminded of how lucky I am as a fan of cinema to have directors who don't make what is expected.

The Coen Brothers, Terry Gilliam, Samuel Fuller, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, and countless others have made films that many might find off in narrative and pacing. But I can't imagine a cinematic world without their amazing contributions.

[Jeff Kleist]

This may be true, but other than your relatives who would be watching it four decades later? You may not like Kubrick's 2001 (My wife hated it), but I think it has proven to stand the test of time with its current following of fans. I have to be in the right mood to watch 2001. But when I do I'm reminded of how lucky I am as a fan of cinema to have directors who don't make what is expected.

Given that you haven't seen my version, I think you're a little quick to judge

And we'll hold the premiere in Amsterdam. After I walk out with the umm....concessions sales I won't have to worry about my legacy

[cjamescook]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

...

As far as WB and AVC, reply hazy, ask again later

My Magic 8-Ball said, "Outlook not so good."
My friend replied, "Yes, but Microsoft ships it anyway."

[Vincent Pereira]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

That was never brought up. The fact that the book has a clear narrative, character development, lack of jumping around and explanations of events that the movie lacks is where the problem lies

This still all goes back to personal taste, Jeff. You like a clean narrative and everything explained- great. Not everybody likes that. Some of us like to be left to wonder and figure the movie out for ourselves. There are lots of theories as to what exactly 2001 means. That's the beauty of it for many of us.

Like all art, what is "good" or "bad" is subjective. Some love Picasso paintings, others like realistic landscapes. The same can be applied to film (or music, or whatever), and when folks start talking in absolutes about what does or does not make a good film, i.e.-

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Filmmaking still requires coherent narrative and structure...

- well, that's just a little bit presumptuous, don't you think? You're basically saying that abstract art doesn't matter.

Vincent

[cjamescook]

Originally Posted by Vincent Pereira

Are you SURE? I haven't seen any 400% blow-up screen shots of the pages of any books lately. ...

You haven't? You may be falling off the trailing edge of technology if you have not seen this.

[neo_reloaded]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Filmmaking still requires coherent narrative and structure

I think David Lynch missed that memo

[Jeff Kleist]

This still all goes back to personal taste, Jeff. You like a clean narrative and everything explained- great. Not everybody likes that. Some of us like to be left to wonder and figure the movie out for ourselves. There are lots of theories as to what exactly 2001 means. That's the beauty of it for many of us.

Read the book, there's your answers. Since the two were written by the same people, I'd say that's pretty authoritative. No need to do analysis. The monolith evolved humanity, then it evolved the result of that evolution that got there to create a bridge between humanity and the builders. HAL went nuts because he couldn't reconcile the concept of lying and deception (hiding the true nature of the mission) with his purpose. In the book, his betrayal makes sense, because mission control orders his disconnnection. All handled in a single paragraph instead of this elaborate "let's go hide in the pod" thing. Instead of chasing after Poole, Bowman realizes he's dead and there's no point and is reviving the other team members (who will undoubtedly tell him the truth). HAL opens the bay door to suck the air out, and Bowman gets to an emergency shelter just in time.

So how do you justify the gigantic jumpcut between the loss of Poole and the acid trip? Bowman had no reason to be there, or to even have been on a trajectory to arrive at Io in the movie. I re-read the book last night, it's a 4 month jump in a single frame to a 30 minute epilogue with 3 minutes of actual content. Clarke does the whole thing in maybe 10-15 pages which include the tipoffs from the hotel room contents that they're constructing it from his mind

- well, that's just a little bit presumptuous, don't you think? You're basically saying that abstract art doesn't matter.

Abstract art is abstract and stands on its own, though I admit a preference for striving toward photorealism in art, at least when it comes to paintings. 2001 is a poor adaptation of simultaneously planned and existing narrative. A motion picture is intended to tell a story. When you take a thimbleful of plot and dump it into a swimming pool of 2.5 hours, and you fill that time with endless shots it just shows you need an editor, and if I made a movie on a completely different subject matter, replicating the length, compositions and plot elements, I would get sent back to film kindergarten real fast. Because it's Kubrick, 2001, and it was the first modern SF film, it gets a pass from most people I don't choose to give it.

Here's a video that proves my point

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR5pX_d1J6Q

I think David Lynch missed that memo

Indeed he did

[cjamescook]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

I fail to see how, for example frank poole spinning for 5 minutes, or 10 minutes of beauty shots of a space station set to a piece of stock music improve the film. There needs to be plot, dialog, character development. ...

You have to read the book to get any meat out of it. Which I enjoy greatly I might add.

He also has a huge jumpcut after the spinning where there's zero explanation. All of a sudden Discovery is at Jupiter and Bowman cruises toward the monolith. The book contains a gigantic amount of material between the two events. ...

I understand your frustration, if that's the correct word. Kubrick set out to make the "proverbial good SF film" (if I have my quote correct). Kubrick and Clark essentially locked themselves up in a hotel suite to hammer out the story for some weeks or months. That the films would have missed material from the book is a little weird (allowing that books do allow a lot more details to be fit in).

Kubrick was a technologist and artist at setting up his shots. I guess your real question is whether he had problems balancing pacing and art. <shrug>

Given that the rough cut of a film is typically (several times?) longer than the final cut, I would love to see all the material that wound up on the cutting room floor.

I wonder if someone started with all the original material, then cut their own version, what they would wind up with. I would bet the result would be seen more as heresy than art. Today's films often feature a lot more back-and-forth cutting, so re-cutting the film would not only reduce what you perceive as needless length, but probably cause this modern editing style to also creep in, hence why cries of heresy would arise.

The thing is, some of the story telling does require those long shots (how do tell a story with non-verbal apes?). Personally, the "feel" of 2001 is in those long shots. To me, some of those long beauty shoots of the space wheel with people working on two or three axis said to me, "THIS is engineering."

If I have any question, it is with Kubrick's decision to make his model shots use very deep focus as that is what he believed was true of sight in space. Unfortunately, when I first saw the sphere lunar lander, I wondered why they used a cardboard cutout instead of a model. Clearly, there was something lost in the area of "visual perception".

I have the blu-ray of 2001 in my queue. I wonder if, 40+ years later, I will have the same impressions.

Cheers!
-Jim

[captveg]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Seriously, how many of the people toting the movie's virtues have read the book?

I've read all four, and I would say that 2061 is the best one.