2001 coming back in 70mm, unrestored

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by HiFi Guy 008, Mar 29, 2018.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    Well I said I didn't want to start a bashing Tarantino thing and that is exactly what has happened.

    For me I find all his films brilliant (just rewatched Hateful 8 and Django Unchained and they just keep getting better to me) and Pulp Fiction belongs on the top films of all times IMHO. Just love love love that movie.

    Regardless let us clarify. I said Tarantino has LESS respect. This means that he doesn't gush over Kubrick like others have.

    His exact words are "he is good....just not THAT good".

    You can hate Tarantino, but I call that far from disrespecting Kubrick. I think his comments actually show a great appreciation.

    My comment was more in line of his ignorance and not to trash the director Tarantino (who I have a great deal of respect for as an artist....not the person). If Tarantino doesn't know the history he should, but I can see how he feels judging from the final output percentage alone and knowing nothing else.

    Kinda like Beatles vs Elvis fans. Less output....less of a chance to fail.

    For the uninitiated Kubrick can seem to be a bore compared to DePalma or Scorsese for example. It is an aquired taste for me.
     
    coffeetime likes this.
  2. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    I can totally see Tarantino not appreciating Kubrick all that much.
     
  3. Wes H

    Wes H Forum Resident

    Location:
    Virginia
    "Inglourious Basterds" was a good film; I enjoyed it. But was it a great film? I can't imagine people will be lining up to watch it (or any Tarantino film) as a worldwide event 50 years from now.
     
  4. I like Tarrantino and Kubrick. Very different but you can like both.
     
    gd0, Jack Lord, genesim and 1 other person like this.
  5. Well keep in mind that Tarantino's films are inspired by a completely different genres from what Kubrick was inspired by. Their storytelling methods are different. Perhaps Tarantino doesn't care for Kubrick and that's fine. That doesn't mean that you can't enjoy his films either. This isn't an either or situation. I'm reminded of when Tarkovsky made "Solaris" in response to Kubrick's "2001" ( a film he didn't care for as he felt it was too sterile, too lacking in humanity). Both films are great but they take very different approaches to discuss humanity interacting with an alien intelligence and how it shapes their experience. I actually find the two films complimentary.
     
  6. Mugrug12

    Mugrug12 The Jungle Is a Skyscraper

    Location:
    Massachusetts

    Maybe Tarantino like Solaris better than 2001. After all it is a bit of a
    talk-fest! not enough violence though prolly ;-)
     
  7. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    You probably nailed it in his apprehension with Kubrick. Though I don't think Leone is exactly a talk fest either.

    It would be interesting to pick QT's brain on this, because so far, he has spoke very little about him...BUT

    Kubrick very much liked Tarantino especilly Pulp Fiction, and one thing that is can be absolutely said about QT is that he writes his own work. Kubrick just was a different beast in that way (though this is taking nothing away from his marvelous work!).

    Interesting quote from QT in the New Yorker 2003

    The Movie Lover

    Tarantino is not, in general, a great fan of Kubrick—he finds Kubrick’s films too cold, too composed. He appreciates the films; he just doesn’t feel any affection for them. Still, he will say that the first twenty minutes of “A Clockwork Orange” are as good as moviemaking gets. “That first twenty minutes is pretty *bleeping* perfect,” he says. “The whole non-stop parade of Alex and the druids or whatever they were called: they beat up a bum, they have a gang fight, they go to the milk bar, they rape a girl, they break into the house, and they’re driving and playing the Beethoven, and Malcolm McDowell’s fantastic narration is going on, and it’s about as poppy and visceral and perfect a piece of cinematic moviemaking as I think had ever been done up until that time. It’s like that long opening sentence of Jack Kerouac’s ‘The Subterraneans,’ all right, that great run-on sentence that goes on for almost a page and a half. I always thought Kubrick was a hypocrite, because his party line was, I’m not making a movie about violence, I’m making a movie against violence. And it’s just, like, Get the *bleep* off. I know and you know your *bleep* was hard the entire time you were shooting those first twenty minutes, you couldn’t keep it in your pants the entire time you were editing it and scoring it. You liked the rest of the movie, but you put up with the rest of the movie. You did it for those first twenty minutes. And if you don’t say you did you’re a *bleeping* liar.”
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2018
  8. HiFi Guy 008

    HiFi Guy 008 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New England
    No doubt about it. Quentin loves violence. But this is the first time I've read that he enjoys watching a depiction of an innocent homeless beaten up and a woman raped.
    But I think he's on point about Kubrick's hypocrisy. After the film was relased in the UK, there was a "copycat" crime. The controversy surrounding the film was about the "glorifying" of brutal crimes - which it does, yet, also condemns the "system's" hypocrisy. It could be argued that the glorification is supposed to reflect the punks point of view, and I think it does. But still...I think it goes beyond that. I've met a few "bad boys," and they love the film like it was God-like.
     
  9. Jack Lord

    Jack Lord Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    Ummmmm ... Reservoir Dogs is clearly influenced by The Killing.

    So while I like QT and his work, he clearly does not know what he is talking about in this case.
     
    Kiko1974 likes this.
  10. Mugrug12

    Mugrug12 The Jungle Is a Skyscraper

    Location:
    Massachusetts
    I disagree with you guys that the clockwork orange violence is glorified in the movie. also I think it's sensationalist of you and lacking context when you just write that Tarantino "enjoys watching a depiction of an innocent homeless beaten up and a woman raped." He said he likes the beginning of the film in which these things happen. You know that's different from him liking to watch women get raped. Not too cool.
     
  11. HiFi Guy 008

    HiFi Guy 008 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New England
    He directly referred to those scenes in the first 20 minutes. Have you ever seen a Tarantino film? He loves violence. That's what he's about. Telling good stories with brutal, bloody violence. What's so great about the film after the first 20 mins to him? Nothing. I'm repeating what he said, and stand by my interpretation.
    Yes, cool.
     
  12. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    I think you missed his point.

    The buzz from making great work including violence is no different than riding an amusement park ride.

    Kubrick had some thrill of filming violence, or he wouldn't have done it. But like with what Tarantino said, the "joy" is creating questionable art and breaking walls not just showing rape etc...just for the "fun" of it.

    I think what I wrote should really go without saying. Then again maybe you should look up Tarantino's history and perhaps his view on home invaders. Not seeing this he enjoys rape or beatings conclusion.

    I love the beginning of A Clockwork Orange and agree with all he said. Doesn't mean I enjoy rape or beatings, but I do understand his point about Kubrick getting enjoyment over shocking the world. Pity one is placing emphasis on one part (s) as if it is indicative of the whole.

    Where did Tarantino say there was nothing to like after the first 20 minutes??? WHERE?

    By the way, another thing worth noting. Every notice that Tarantino doesn't like to film nudity? He worked in a porn theater and is not a big fan of it. He also doesn't like to subject children to horrible scary scenes.

    If any woman is violated has he not made it clear that them taking revenge on the situation is a priority? Could it be that his statements about the hypocrisy (real or imagined), is just calling it as he sees it? Can one not enjoy a scene for the fever pitch way it is filmed?

    I have never thought he took rape lightly in his films. NEVER
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2018
  13. Mugrug12

    Mugrug12 The Jungle Is a Skyscraper

    Location:
    Massachusetts

    Agreed. I think some folks are confusing depictions of evil in art w condoning the evil itself. A slippery slope that is.
     
    genesim likes this.
  14. Jack Lord

    Jack Lord Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    Off to see it and meet Mr. Dullea. Will report back tomorrow.
     
    genesim, Mugrug12 and coffeetime like this.
  15. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    The other threads are closed, but here's an interesting article with Kubrick revealing what the ending meant:

    Stanley Kubrick Explains Enigmatic '2001' Ending For The First Time In Never-Before-Seen Interview

    [​IMG]

    Here's what Stanley says: “The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film. They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty but wasn’t quite sure. Just as we’re not quite sure what do in zoos with animals to try to give them what they think is their natural environment. Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made some kind of Superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.”

    This was always extremely obvious to me, even when I first saw the film in its original release when I was 14. What other explanation could you have? Clarke's novelization confirmed it: that Dave Bowman (the astronaut) was placed in kind of an alien zoo near Jupiter, made comfortable by very highly-evolved aliens, time passes by very quickly, and he's transformed into a new kind of life. (In the novel, the "star child" baby detonates all the orbiting nuclear bombs around the earth to force peace on the planet.)

    The script had a different ending with more direct contact with the aliens, but since Kubrick's crew could never get their appearance to the director's satisfaction, he just chose not to show them.
     
    enro99, IronWaffle, sharedon and 2 others like this.
  16. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    You can make a very good case that all (or at least most) of Arthur C. Clarke's fiction is very cold and emotionally distant. He's a hard science fiction author where a lot of his stories are about science, about technology, about the future, but not so much about emotion, feeling, and the human experience. Clarke had degrees in mathematics and physics, wrote a wide variety of articles on rocketry, satellites, and communications, and was not exactly known for the emotional depth of his life or fiction. (Clarke had an interesting life for his last 50 years in Sri Lanka, but chose not to publicize how he lived or provide any information about his relationships, and almost never talked about his personal life. His diaries are set to be published in 2036, 30 years after his death.)

    I would say his American compatriot, Isaac Asimov, had a lot more humanity in his stories in terms of relationships and the emotional effect of the plots on the characters. Some of Asimov's stories (like Childhood's End, to name one) are extremely sad. Another SF master, Ray Bradbury, wrote stories that were far more about emotion and feeling than they were about science at all -- and yet all three are often mentioned in the same breath. They couldn't be more different, and yet they all lived at the same time and wrote some of the most brilliant science fiction and fantasy works of modern times.
     
    IronWaffle, sunspot42 and wayneklein like this.
  17. Indeed, the "secret" about Clarke was that he was gay and relocated because, at the time he moved from the UK, he would have faced prison if he had been unmasked. I suspect that the fact that he also had to keep his personal life under wraps also impacted his writing and the ability in his writing to develop fully fleshed out characters as he related to folks on a more superficial level. That's my theory anyway. I find it tragic that he had to keep his personal life so closeted (so to speak). He also was, I'm told, a very private person which, along with the old British reserve and the generation he was from, probably also informed his writing as well.

    It is ironic that Asimov with his obsession with robots in many of his stories was the more emotional of the two.
     
  18. darkmass

    darkmass Forum Resident

    Childhood's End isn't the best example of an Asimov story, given that Childhood's End was written by Arthur C. Clarke. :)

    However, a terrific example for Asimov could be Nightfall.


    Lifting from Wiki (here)...

    In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of Nightfall was a watershed in my professional career..... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." Nightfall is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
     
  19. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Of the three, I'd say Bradbury is the one most likely to be remembered a few generations down the road. He's the best wordsmith of the three, and his science fiction is resolutely surreal enough - and his characters vivid enough - to transcend the technological and sociological prognostications made by Clarke and Asimov. Not that those two weren't giants in the genre, but I don't think they quite transcended the genre, the way Bradbury and Ellison did.
     
    enro99 likes this.
  20. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I think this is a Beatles vs. Stones vs. ELO vs. Beach Boys vs. Moody Blues vs. I-don't-know argument. They're all good, all classic, all definitive, all very talented, their talent holds up many decades after the work was created, and they were immensely influential. Even Harlan would not compare himself to anybody else -- he revered Bradbury and Heinlein and Asimov, and knew basically everybody in SF for the past 50 years (and sometimes fought bitterly with them).
     
    enro99 likes this.
  21. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Damn, I actually meant Nightfall. I'm writing from work and doing three things the same time at work (four if you include eating).

    That is true, and some have commented on HAL's "jealousy" of the friendship of the two astronauts. Clarke made no secret of his orientation to friends in private, but didn't talk about it publicly as far as I know.
     
    IronWaffle and darkmass like this.
  22. Jack Lord

    Jack Lord Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    OK. All in all a nice evening.

    The print looks great, although it has always looked good to me on a big screen. Some of you technocrats could probably critique it better than I. The theater was sold out.

    Keir Dullea looks pretty good for 82. In fact, he looks much like the 2nd aged version of Dave Bowman in the movie, the one eating at the table. He was very affable and seemed genuinely happy to be there. He spoke a great deal about making the movie and then took questions from the audience.

    He answered my question without me having to ask. He stated that he loved working with Kubrick. He was soft-spoken and always listened to your suggestions and though he rarely used them, he did not make you feel stupid. His prior gig had been a film directed by Otto Preminger and going from Preminger to Kubrick was like going from "Hell to Heaven." Went on to say that Preminger's role in Stalag 17 was "Otto on a good day."

    He referred to Douglas Rain as the "Lawrence Olivier of Canada." Never actually met him on the set, but did later. Spoke of Martin Balsam doing the early lines for HAL but sounded "too New York". Some guy on the set read dummy lines and was very Cockney sounding.

    Doing several more anniversary events all around the world. Between those and the autographs he was selling, he seems to have made 2001 a cottage industry.

    I cut out a bit early as it was getting late. Great time.
     
    enro99, budwhite, IronWaffle and 3 others like this.
  23. dougotte

    dougotte Petty, Annoying Dilettante

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    Thanks for your notes. I hope to go see it also at the AFI. How was the sound?
     
  24. Jack Lord

    Jack Lord Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    The sound was FANTASTIC.
     
    dougotte likes this.
  25. sgtmono

    sgtmono Seasoned Member

    That is the literal explanation provided in the novelization and in the short story that the film was based on.
    But Kubrick purposefully left the ending and many other aspects of the film ambiguous and open-ended to allow for individual interpretation. That's what makes the film great. It's much closer to poetry than it is to a cut-and-dried narrative, and as a result I think it's easier (and more satisfying) for the viewer to interpret Kubrick's images metaphorically.
     
    DaveySR, enro99, Mugrug12 and 3 others like this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine