2001 coming back in 70mm, unrestored

Now here is one Stanley took just for the Steve Hoffman Forum.

 

And this to me is the most intriguing of all. I spied it down in a second row of photographs in the corner. A smallish print. Am I not correct, but do you not think this somewhat cute/perverse image must’ve been in the back of Stanley’s mind when he shot that infamous scene from “The Shining?”

 

Someone tell me that I’m not the only one who started hearing the hotel lobby piano version of When I Fall In Love from Eyes Wide Shut when they saw the last photo of the couple dancing?

 

Wonderful photos! By the way, the shoeshine boy above reminds me of myself (I wasn't a shoeshine boy; I mean the facial features and hair) at around 10 years of age, but the photo would have been around 10 years too soon!

 

I saw it in 70mm at the Arclight in Hollywood over the weekend. I seriously love this film and enjoyed it very much but not as much as I thought I would.

The print had many flaws but that wasn't as distracting as the sound, which was atrocious. I went with a friend who mixes film for a living and he has a db meter on his phone and checked the sound level during the psychedelic journey through the space time continuum - or the wormhole - whatever we want to call it and it showed a tad over 105db - for the entire sequence. Heavy mid-range peaks - distorting my eardrums, you know that sound in your ears when it just starts buzzing due to the SPL? Yeah, that.

This is one time I would have voted for some compression! There were many moments when I put my fingers in my ears. Another time was when the obelisk sent its signal to Jupiter. Maybe I'm just too sensitive but it was very unpleasant.

 

That’s a bummer. Sorry to hear about the level. At the theater I saw it at the signal to Jupiter was tough to take but the psychedelic second half was fine.
Sound wasn’t great just decent. Kinda like how I felt about the image quality.

 

I saw it in a (regular) theatre a year after its initial 1968 release. I was not impressed -- I was particularly irritated with the glacial pace and the somnolent acting-- and at one point during the spaceship scenes the sound was lost for ten minutes and no one in the audience complained. We all thought the silence was intentional. My opinion of the movie has evolved considerably in the intervening decades. When I first saw it I viewed it as speculation of what the world might actually be like in three decades. Of course 2001 now means the World Trade Center; not the next step in human evolution. So I now view the movie with some sadness-- the essential optimism that underlies it has been betrayed.*

*Yes, I know about the orbiting bombs.

 

via Imgflip Meme Generatoru



I Meme’d it.

 

You know I am getting peeved at the misinformation entirely, especially in relation to a film historian/technician that should know better. While there is the attempt to have me ejected from every forum possible, I am going to state it anyway. This is not aimed at you at all.

The 70 mm print that is currently showing is the exact same generation as the original print that was released back in 1968 with one exception. The negative has aged and it is printed from the new 1999 IP print. This is a very good thing, not bad. When someone keeps going on about how this is some kind of dupe of a dupe of a dupe, they are just flat out WRONG.

Christopher Nolan and Ned Price (Vice President of film restoration for Warner Brothers) have used Stanley Kubrick's original notes and corrected the color optically and did not use any dupes to make their print.

There is no way to correct the scratches or film wear without compromising the integrity of the look by digital means. For someone like myself that wants a pure analog experience there is absolutely no substitution.

What is of particular note is that a certain film technician who has been loudly decrying this reprint from the IP print used in 1999 actually had something quite different to say in regards to the 2007 digital copy released before.

"My assumption is that this transfer is derived from a 35mm interpositive produced several years ago, and it has yielded a superb master."

This is an exact contradiction from what was said before.

This prominent film technician has a lot of power which is why I haven't named his name. His goal is to have me kicked off of every forum because I am stating the truth. I had a great deal of respect for this man, and to this day I appreciate the restoration he was involved in. He changed my world.

All that said, Christopher Nolan has done a great thing by resurrecting this film print in pure analog form, and I say this with all sincerity...if you love the film, support this release. I support digital restoration, and I also support bluray physical media, but I also don't think that it is wise to put down analog preservation. This film technician made it clear to me that they don't want the analog film print to exist and he thinks that the only thing that should exist is the digitally tinkered with files.

I do not support this bullish ideology and preservation of film is more important than relying on film technicians to mold our view of the future.

Stanely Kubrick was wise to be apprehensive in not going all out in the digital world until he was confident that the technology was there. This idea that Kubrick would jump in head first and kiss the feet of the bastardization of some of this work just does not make any sense. I also don't think he or anyone else with a conscience would support censoring a person that repeats this fact.

These technicians have a lot of power, but that doesn't make it right.

So in closing, while I have no doubts that Stanley Kubrick would have enjoyed seeing his work restored, he was not happy with the way some of his films have been treated. I can't imagine why he would have a problem with an analog film print being shown that at least has accuracy based on his original notes and is the closest thing we can get to how it was originally intended to be released.

I am all for digital cleanup and I support the 4K UHD forthcoming bluray, but I also support seeing the film print in 70 mm as it was originally intended to be seen. Reports have mixed, but that isn't the 70 mm film prints fault. Projection error and miss-care have always been a part of projection and I have no doubt that it comes from poor training.

 

I first encountered 2001: A Space Odyssey in the cinema in the early 1980s. By then, actor Leonard Rossiter was famous for his portrayal of Reggie Perrin in the BBC TV dramatisation of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Perrin which frequently featured leatherette chairs that farted in (his boss CJ's office). The prominent Djinn chairs in the movie were disappoiningly silent!

 

The original ones were made out of stretch jersey covering from what I read. They looked like it. Funny thinking of it farting though. It would have sure given the movie a whole new perception! Thanks for the happy thought.

 

I saw it with hundreds of people, and every single one had fingers in their ears when the monolith did the zinger on the moon! I thought it was awesome but also haven't heard anything since. ;-)

 

For any Melbourne forum members, the Sun theatre in Yarraville is playing the 70mm 2001 this week

 

Genesim, I inferred the comments from the person you reference as addressing the "restoration" assumptions. Creating new 70mm prints without any cleanup etc. should not be considered a "restoration." Also, there are reports of wildly different versions being screened worldwide: some are showing actual 70mm prints, some are showing 4k digital versions; some have good sound, some have harsh sound, etc.

 

Which is not the fault of the new 70 mm print.

Nolan has made it very clear that there was no restoration done on it so I don't know why there needs to be any clarity at all. If this person was addressing the "restoration" then they clearly didn't read what was promoted in the first place.

I know for a fact that this is the case, and it goes right along with applauding the IP print in a well published review, then going around trashing the reprint of that IP because it is exhibited without digital tinkering.

My post stands as I wrote it, but the projection errors are just that.

As for "harsh sound", I don't know if some people missed it, or are willfully ignoring the facts, but the key is this. The original magnetic tape was unplayable so they sourced it from an 80's protection tape.

To reiterate yet again, the focus was never restoration, but to exhibit a work in progress. I myself am going for the visual over the audio anyway. I am sure that it is more than serviceable. People want a digital recreation, by all means wait for the 4K UHD or seek out the 4K digital projection versions.

For those of us that appreciate analog film prints, you better go while it lasts and disregard the technician crying because it happened.

2001: A Space Odyssey: the backstage technology of a return to the big screen

 

I saw the movie here in PDX at the Hollywood Theatre, in 70mm. We left it late to go in so only had seats at the back right so the sound was not too loud at all.

I'm glad I went to see but I couldn't tell you what this film is supposed to mean. At all. The last 1/4 is just flat out weird.

 

If it is your first time seeing it, I feel your pain....but I bet you are still thinking about it?

If you are looking for an answer I think Kubrick boils it down to its essentials with this quote:

SPOILER ALERT
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0069.html

The final scenes of the film seemed more metaphorical than realistic. Will you discuss them -- or would that be part of the "road map" you're trying to avoid?

No, I don't mind discussing it, on the lowest level, that is, straightforward explanation of the plot. You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man's first baby steps into the universe -- a kind of cosmic burglar alarm. And finally there's a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system.

When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he's placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man's evolutionary destiny.

That is what happens on the film's simplest level. Since an encounter with an advanced interstellar intelligence would be incomprehensible within our present earthbound frames of reference, reactions to it will have elements of philosophy and metaphysics that have nothing to do with the bare plot outline itself.

What are those areas of meaning?

They are the areas I prefer not to discuss because they are highly subjective and will differ from viewer to viewer. In this sense, the film becomes anything the viewer sees in it. If the film stirs the emotions and penetrates the subconscious of the viewer, if it stimulates, however inchoately, his mythological and religious yearnings and impulses, then it has succeeded.

 

Eat acid. Ignore text-based explanations.

 

Yes, I am.

 

Before the screening, the MC told us that our tickets were laced with acid and we should eat them now.

 

Great read - thanks for sharing. What is this Napoleon picture he's discussing? Apparently he never ended up making it. Based on the description I would have loved to have seen it.

 

Watch Lost Kubrick: the Unfinished Films of Stanley Kubrick that is on the Eyes Wide Shut bluray. This will give you some great insight. It is both informative and painful at the same time, because Napolean and the Aryan Papers and A.I. seem criminal to not have been finished/started.

I love Tarantino but his less respect for Kubrick is obvious. I think a lot of it, is born out of ignorance. For instance his criticism that Kubrick sat back and didn't do enough films (thus not having the opportunity to fail more as others have done), but yet seems to be completely and utterly oblivious to the things that Kubrick abandoned or put off.

Again, not bashing Tarantino and I don't want that started, but I would no doubt like to sit down and have it out with him and say c'mon man, didn't you know about this??

 

I've seen it in the theater twice, once at the enormous Northpoint in San Francisco not long before it closed - the theater it originally played at in '68 - with a 70mm print that went around in the late '90s. The second time was hosted by Tom Hanks, featured special guests Gary Lockwood and Kier Dullea, along with Buzz Aldrin, at the Academy theater in Beverly Hills. Both of them were pretty spectacular screenings, although I'm sure the 70mm print we saw at the Northpoint probably looked more like the original than the digitally-restored print screened at the Academy.

Even if wasn't quite the same as the original, it was still a spectacular-looking film. I probably freaked out the audience at the Northpoint by cackling away at much of HAL's dialog throughout the film - in many ways 2001 is as dark a comedy as Dr. Strangelove.

I first saw the film as a kid of around 10 on NBC in the mid-'70s. Mind blown. Home video couldn't do it justice until the HD era - it looks damn good on Blu-ray. It's playing for two more days at The Castro here in San Francisco. I'm tempted to go see it, but that's not the biggest screen (especially for a widescreen film). The Northpoint was built for films like this, may she rest in peace.

 

Booked to see 2001 70mm in Liverpool on 30th June. Last saw it at the same cinema a couple of years ago, digitally projected (prob from BluRay). First and last time I voluntarily sat on the front row.

Also saw it in 35mm way back in 2001 itself. Parts of the film looked astonishing, whilst others looked at though the reels had been kept in kitty litter.

Looking forward on this. Is the entrance music included as well as the ntermission with the 70mm screenings?

 

It was at the screening I attended and I hope for all 70mm showings - it's an essential part of the whole experience in my view.