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

[Maxwell Everett]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Pretty much nothing can be worse than a Kubrick movie in my book. Seriously, 2001 is a 50 minute CBS special stretched out to 2:20 because Kubrick refuses to hire an editor ... 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.

I sympathize. I used to share this negative view of 2001... I couldn't stand how leaden the pacing was or how experimental and unclear the narrative seemed. The lack of dialogue and human interaction. It was infuriating. This was supposed to be the masterpiece of Sci-Fi filmmaking? I could barely get through the film in one sitting. But then something interesting happened: about ten years ago I sat down and watched the 1998 DVD put out by MGM (I think it was that original DVD release) and... I actually made myself sit though the whole thing and, surprisingly, I didn't hate it. I truly didn't, for the first time. I actually was getting into it. I couldn't believe it. Something had changed. I was only 20, so it wasn't that my film horizons had matured that much since the last time I viewed it on crappy letterboxed VHS. But I was somehow drawn in by it its inscrutability and refusal to play by the rules.

Then I actually saw the film in (the year) 2001 in 70mm at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood and I was floored in a whole new way by the tremendous visuals (to this very day, unparalleled in my opinion -- Geoffrey Unsworth's 65mm photography and Douglas Trumbull's visual effects are incredible technical achievements -- and beautiful) and I was totally unprepared for the HAL scenes in which his creepy voice came, god-like from every speaker in the theater, surrounding me. It was an outstanding, fantastic cinema experience and it was then that I finally realized that I had seen the film for the first time. It seemed bold and new to me.

I realized that there really weren't any rules. There doesn't necessarily need to be plot, dialogue or character development. Not in the traditional sense anyway. This was a film by a master craftsman who was in complete control of image and sound. He had learned the "rules," mastered them, then completely rewrote them or threw them out as he saw fit. He was deliberately being anti-narrative and reducing filmmaking to its essence, using the medium to demonstrate what humanity might look like with some distance and perspective -- almost like a removed, nature photographer... like a sci-fi David Attenborough, contrasting terrestrial life a few million years ago with future(!) extra-terrestrial intelligence, provoking the audience intellectually and philosophically rather than emotionally (the way it's usually only done by most paint-by-number filmmakers). It was a whole new, novel way to make a film. Just as valid and just as powerful.

Today, 2001 is one of the best and most prized Blu-rays in my collection. A truly great film.

Roger Ebert's reviews:
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 review)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1997 "Great Movie" review)

[Jeff Kleist]

Filmmaking still requires coherent narrative and structure

A good example is when after the acid trip, bowman ends up in the hotel room. The book spends a solid 10 pages there, describing what he was doing, his thoughts. The movie it's a WTF moment that makes zero sense

If he wanted to do a photoessay it would have been much easier and cheaper

[Bobby Henderson]

Books have the luxury of things like internal monologue, among other factors (like the reader being able to put down the book and resume later). Movies are an entirely different story telling medium and that makes it difficult or even impossible for many novels to be transferred to the big screen with everything intact.

I think one of primary effects Kubrick was trying to impart with 2001 is that anything regarding space exploration takes place very sloooowwwwwww if it is presented in a realistic manner.

Spaceships also don't fly in aerodynamic dog-fighting fashion, as they're often shown in so many science fiction movies. There wouldn't be any sound from the guns or explosions either since there is no air in space to serve as a medium for sound to travel. 2001 did a good job of describing some of those things even if the effect seemed boring.

[Blu-rat]

Hello, a query to The Digital Bits that I hope hasn't been asked yet:

I was disappointed that The Middleman series was issued only on DVD, even though it aired in glorious hi-def on ABC Family HD.

How do studios determine which recent TV shows get released on Blu-ray or not when the HD content is apparently available?

Thanks for your insight.

[Blu Titan]

Originally Posted by Maxwell Everett

I sympathize. I used to share this negative view of 2001... I couldn't stand how leaden the pacing was or how experimental and unclear the narrative seemed. The lack of dialogue and human interaction. It was infuriating. This was supposed to be the masterpiece of Sci-Fi filmmaking? I could barely get through the film in one sitting. But then something interesting happened: about ten years ago I sat down and watched the 1998 DVD put out by MGM (I think it was that original DVD release) and... I actually made myself sit though the whole thing and, surprisingly, I didn't hate it. I truly didn't, for the first time. I actually was getting into it. I couldn't believe it. Something had changed. I was only 20, so it wasn't that my film horizons had matured that much since the last time I viewed it on crappy letterboxed VHS. But I was somehow drawn in by it its inscrutability and refusal to play by the rules.

Then I actually saw the film in (the year) 2001 in 70mm at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood and I was floored in a whole new way by the tremendous visuals (to this very day, unparalleled in my opinion -- Geoffrey Unsworth's 65mm photography and Douglas Trumbull's visual effects are incredible technical achievements -- and beautiful) and I was totally unprepared for the HAL scenes in which his creepy voice came, god-like from every speaker in the theater, surrounding me. It was an outstanding, fantastic cinema experience and it was then that I finally realized that I had seen the film for the first time. It seemed bold and new to me.

I realized that there really weren't any rules. There doesn't necessarily need to be plot, dialogue or character development. Not in the traditional sense anyway. This was a film by a master craftsman who was in complete control of image and sound. He had learned the "rules," mastered them, then completely rewrote them or threw them out as he saw fit. He was deliberately being anti-narrative and reducing filmmaking to its essence, using the medium to demonstrate what humanity might look like with some distance and perspective -- almost like a removed, nature photographer... like a sci-fi David Attenborough, contrasting terrestrial life a few million years ago with future(!) extra-terrestrial intelligence, provoking the audience intellectually and philosophically rather than emotionally (the way it's usually only done by most paint-by-number filmmakers). It was a whole new, novel way to make a film. Just as valid and just as powerful.

Today, 2001 is one of the best and most prized Blu-rays in my collection. A truly great film.

Roger Ebert's reviews:
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 review)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1997 "Great Movie" review)

Great analysis!

[Maxwell Everett]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Filmmaking still requires coherent narrative and structure

That's one point of view. Another point of view is that filmmaking only requires that images (moving or still) be edited together (with or without sound) to provoke a response in the viewer. Everything else is optional and up to the filmmaker.

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

A good example is when after the acid trip, bowman ends up in the hotel room. The book spends a solid 10 pages there, describing what he was doing, his thoughts. The movie it's a WTF moment that makes zero sense

If he wanted to do a photoessay it would have been much easier and cheaper

Consider this: Perhaps it makes zero sense because you have always resisted doing what Kubrick wanted you to do after you saw it: provoke thought and for you to attempt to make your own logical sense of it, rather than passively accept a pat ending delivered on a platter by the director?

But if you don't like it, you don't like it... and there's nothing anyone can say to change that. To each his own. My take on it is that Kubrick wanted the extraterrestrial contact at the end to be as inexplicable to the audience as the monolith was to the australopithecines in the first section of the film.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"If you understand '2001' completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered."

-- Arthur C. Clarke.

[captveg]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Filmmaking still requires coherent narrative and structure

A good example is when after the acid trip, bowman ends up in the hotel room. The book spends a solid 10 pages there, describing what he was doing, his thoughts. The movie it's a WTF moment that makes zero sense

If he wanted to do a photoessay it would have been much easier and cheaper

I completely disagree. It makes perfect sense, and Kubrick masterfully uses a handful of shots and a wonderful sound design to show Bowman's transition/evolution into the Starchild. I got it perfectly upon my first viewing.

2001 is a film with very restrained and specific narrative and structure drawn out to underscore the themes of distance, space, time, evolution, etc., and from my first viewing I "got it".

On the other hand, Dr. Strangelove and Spartacus aside, all of Kubrick's other films have taken me multiple viewings to truly appreciate. But across the board they always get better. Barry Lyndon bored me to tears the first time I saw it, but I was compelled to revisit it, and now it's probably my 3rd most favorite of his films.

[Doctorossi]

Thanks for your contributions, Maxwell and veg! I couldn't have said that better.

[garytma]

Ditto for me, Maxwell and Veg. Thank you for effectively coming to the defense of 2001.

I have been a long term fan of that masterpiece, as the letters after my name have always attested to.

[Jeff Kleist]

Books have the luxury of things like internal monologue, among other factors (like the reader being able to put down the book and resume later). Movies are an entirely different story telling medium and that makes it difficult or even impossible for many novels to be transferred to the big screen with everything intact.

Just read the book in that segment, I think youll find that the vast majority of it would translate quite well to his slow plodding style. For example, the fact that the TV programs were out of date can easily be solved by making them "and on this day, August 21, 1999" or something

Consider this: Perhaps it makes zero sense because you have always resisted doing what Kubrick wanted you to do after you saw it: provoke thought and for you to attempt to make your own logical sense of it, rather than passively accept a pat ending delivered on a platter by the director?

I read the book years before I saw the movie. There's no "resistance". It's just poor filmmaking. 20 minutes in the acid trip followed by 2 inexplicable minutes?

If you want to go for "he was being realistic in space". Well, NASA circa mid-60s would have told him "while in the depths of interplanetary space, you don't park half a mile from your spaceship and spend a year MMUing in". In fact in the book that's exactly what happens. Poole pulls up to the antenna directly, parks, and does his job. It's the tether to the pod that pulls him away as it turbos out of there.

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

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"If you understand '2001' completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered."

Then he totally failed by writing the book answering many of those questions, and then writing 3 more that answered the rest It's not magic. It's nonsensical in the narravtive. He walks in he melts, and then there's a glowing baby. The book handles it very well, and achieves the same goals

Hello, a query to The Digital Bits that I hope hasn't been asked yet:

I was disappointed that The Middleman series was issued only on DVD, even though it aired in glorious hi-def on ABC Family HD. How do studios determine which recent TV shows get released on Blu-ray or not when the HD content is apparently available?

Thanks for your insight.

My best source on that is currently on vacation, but Shout Factory and not ABC issued that disc. Also if the show is cancelled the likelyhood of a Blu-ray gets cut by about 75% A show aimed at a "family" audience gets that cut in half again.

[MerrickG]

Jeff,

I felt that 2001 was one of the most overrated and boring movies of all time.
Frankly, I have NEVER been a fan of Kubrick. 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.

The Shining was OK, but thats all I can say for Kubrick.

There.

You no longer stand alone.

If only Arkham Asylum would get here sooner.

[Tok]

Originally Posted by merrick97

Jeff,

I felt that 2001 was one of the most overrated and boring movies of all time.
Frankly, I have NEVER been a fan of Kubrick. 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.

The Shining was OK, but thats all I can say for Kubrick.

Have you seen Dr. Strangelove? "Gentlemen, there's no fighting in the war room!"
Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens... that movie is a classic.

[MCT]

Hey Jeff, did you guys shut down the Rumor Mill? There hasnt been an update going on 2 months now lol

[Jeff Kleist]

Nothing mill worthy I'm afraid

[Knight-Errant]

On the discussion of films in the previous few pages, I have to say, is there anything more subjective than film? It's amazing how we all get something often completely different out of the same picture and sound.

How great is that?

I've given up debating the quality of anything on the screen anymore because it's all so wildly varied how people respond.

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by Blu-rat

Hello, a query to The Digital Bits that I hope hasn't been asked yet:

I was disappointed that The Middleman series was issued only on DVD, even though it aired in glorious hi-def on ABC Family HD.

How do studios determine which recent TV shows get released on Blu-ray or not when the HD content is apparently available?

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

My best source on that is currently on vacation, but Shout Factory and not ABC issued that disc. Also if the show is cancelled the likelyhood of a Blu-ray gets cut by about 75% A show aimed at a "family" audience gets that cut in half again.

Jeff, from your response, it seems like you never saw "The Middleman"?

Yes, the show was cancelled (a lot of people, myself included, are still upset with that), and yes, it aired on ABC Family, but I wouldn't necessarily call it aimed at a "family" audience, even though it was mostly appropriate for families.

The show itself was aimed more for the Sci-Fi/Comic Book crowd... the latter not being that surprising considering the show was BASED off a comic book. Picture "Men In Black", "Pushing Daisies", "Batman", and "The Naked Gun", etc...

Brilliant show that won over critics, as well as myself. The show even forced me to do the unthinkable (buy the DVD set)... hoping to support Shout's sales in the hope that a FUTURE Blu-ray release would not be out of the question.

Totally recommend it...

~Alan<~~~~~~~~~Who needs to watch "2001"...

[Doctorossi]

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.

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

[StimpsonJCat]

Originally Posted by Knight-Errant

On the discussion of films in the previous few pages, I have to say, is there anything more subjective than film? It's amazing how we all get something often completely different out of the same picture and sound.

How great is that?

I've given up debating the quality of anything on the screen anymore because it's all so wildly varied how people respond.

+1

I love all of Kubrick's work. I can see why some people don't and I can respect their personal take on his movies. To me the experience of watching a particular film is personal thing that can change with each viewing. For example I didn't like "The Thin Red Line" much when I saw it in the theater, but after seeing the DVD later I really feel in love with the movie.

This is all part of the fun of being entertained by movies. I agree that debate over films is usually a waste of time because of its subjective nature. I'm not against criticism, but when it comes to a discussion of a film I like I find myself skipping all the negative posts. And I usually skip discussions of films I dislike all together.

[Jeff Kleist]

Jeff, from your response, it seems like you never saw "The Middleman"?

Yes, the show was cancelled (a lot of people, myself included, are still upset with that), and yes, it aired on ABC Family, but I wouldn't necessarily call it aimed at a "family" audience, even though it was mostly appropriate for families.

Yes, but being it's on that channel, it carries that stigma in marketing

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

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

This is all part of the fun of being entertained by movies. I agree that debate over films is usually a waste of time because of its subjective nature. I'm not against criticism, but when it comes to a discussion of a film I like I find myself skipping all the negative posts. And I usually skip discussions of films I dislike all together.

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

[Knight-Errant]

Originally Posted by StimpsonJCat

+1

I love all of Kubrick's work. I can see why some people don't and I can respect their personal take on his movies. To me the experience of watching a particular film is personal thing that can change with each viewing. For example I didn't like "The Thin Red Line" much when I saw it in the theater, but after seeing the DVD later I really feel in love with the movie.

This is all part of the fun of being entertained by movies. I agree that debate over films is usually a waste of time because of its subjective nature. I'm not against criticism, but when it comes to a discussion of a film I like I find myself skipping all the negative posts. And I usually skip discussions of films I dislike all together.

+1 back at you

Well as you say when a person's views on a single film can change over time, how can we expect people to agree with our views? Even if two people love the same film, do they love it for the same reasons? Probably not lol

I just know which films appeal to me. Everyone's different.