2001 coming back in 70mm, unrestored

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

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  1. Borgia

    Borgia Do not speak wisely of this night

    Location:
    Arkansas
    I'm in for it. I watch 2001 probably every couple of years. Also, my dad took me, my older brother & a friend of his to the theater to see it in 68. I was all of 8 years old & didn't understand any of it, but it was a cool experience. What I remember most from my only theater viewing of 2001 was the ape men, and calm, reassuring voice of HAL.
    The theater was packed, and as we were leaving afterwards, a long line of people waited to get in for the second showing. My old man hollered out "The butler did it!"
     
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  2. Jack Lord

    Jack Lord Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington, DC

    LOL!

    Yea my old man took me to see it when I was 7 in 1972. The existentialism went right over my head, but between the ape men and the space ships, I loved it.
     
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  3. My dad took me to see it in 1968. I returned the favor (sort of) by taking him to see the anti-2001--Star Wars. in 1977.
     
  4. DaveySR

    DaveySR Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    We saw quite a few 70mm blow ups there, and at the KB back in the '80s and '90s. I believe it was the Uptown that had the better sound.
     
  5. hanshotfirst1138

    hanshotfirst1138 Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Michigan
    I’ll tow ether chance to see absolutely anything on film anymore, but this sounds like a particularly special opportunity.
     
  6. Splungeworthy

    Splungeworthy Forum Rezidentura

    I saw 2001 in 70mm several years ago in NYC. This is a movie I've seen many times, but that showing was a revelation. It must have been truly mind-blowing for those first run audiences.
     
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  7. j.barleycorn

    j.barleycorn Forum Resident

    Location:
    MN, USA
    I saw it when it first came out in 70MM at The Cooper Theater ( a Cinerama venue ) outside Minneapolis. A really great place sadly closed and torn down about 20 years ago.

    My 14 year old mind was blown that day. I hope this print comes to town.
     
  8. DaveySR

    DaveySR Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania


    Already reading elsewhere that the new trailer shows signs of revisionist color. I am not one of the complainers. I did see a 70mm print of this years ago and it was a little faded (this was most likely a re-release print from the early 2000s, because an original would probably have been quite magenta by then), but I wouldn't say it looked like a modern movie color-wise. This film was done originally in Metrocolor, and the original prints would have probably been timed for carbon arc light, which was prevalent in theaters until the 1970s.
    Is there anyone here that can shed more light on how this film looked originally and, especially, compared to that new trailer?
     
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  9. mmars982

    mmars982 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pittsburgh, PA
    This is one of those classics that I've never seen, so now I am looking forward to seeing it for the first time in a theater .
     
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  10. reddyempower

    reddyempower Forum Resident

    Location:
    columbus, oh, usa
    I went to that twice and will do so again. Love Gateway!
     
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  11. Steve Litos

    Steve Litos Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago IL
    The Music Box Theater in Chicago will be screening their own recent 70mm print of 2001 from May 18 to May 29.
     
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  12. Wes H

    Wes H Forum Resident

    Location:
    Virginia
    Some scenes in that trailer are too blue: The Discovery, the pod bay, the Space Station, the pod retrieving Frank Poole...

    I saw 70mm prints in the original run, as well as several 70mm theatrical screenings over the years. I also have the 1988 Criterion CAV Laserdisc, which was mastered from the only video that Kubrick approved after screening and making suggestions for tweaks--including color timing. The most common error made with most video transfers from the '90s forward (including the current Blu-ray) is that the space station is rendered too blue. It's supposed to be white. Same with the other space vehicles.
     
  13. RockDude4492

    RockDude4492 Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York, NY
    I’m interested in seeing this. Anyone know where it will be playing in the NY area?
     
  14. peopleareleaving

    peopleareleaving Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    In the Bay Area ? Anyone ?
     
  15. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I don't think the venues have been formally announced yet, aside from a few theaters that are already promoting it in their upcoming schedules. I'd expect Warner to issue a press release pretty soon since the screenings are kicking off on May 18.

    I tried checking Fandango for theaters in my area but none of them had schedule info available that far in advance.

    I've also been checking in70mm.com regularly as they will almost certainly have a list up, although I'll note that when they posted the list of 70mm venues for DUNKIRK, I believe it was at least partially crowdsourced and as such was not 100% complete. I know for a fact that they overlooked at least one theater near me that was most definitely screening a 70mm print.
     
  16. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Yeah, that be some Tweaktrocolor there, dude! I'm old enough to remember when the space station was white, and the stew on the Space Clipper didn't have that much gold on the walls. But as far as that trailer goes, the different recording of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" is the last straw.
     
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  17. hanshotfirst1138

    hanshotfirst1138 Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Michigan
    I savor the chance to see absolutely anything on film anymore, but this will be a particular treat. When do we get a list of showtimes and locations? This had better not be another New York/LA exclusive like Murder on the Orient Express was.
     
  18. peopleareleaving

    peopleareleaving Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    Thanks. Appreciate the info.
     
  19. shokhead

    shokhead Head shok and you still don't what it is. HA!

    Location:
    SoCal, Long Beach
    The studio says that the new 70mm prints are being struck from elements copied from the original camera negative, without any digital remastering, effects or edits -- as closely as possible matching the film as it was originally presented in April 1968, projected in 70mm on Cinerama screens.

    "One of my earliest memories of cinema is seeing Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey,' in 70mm, at the Leicester Square Theatre in London with my father," said Nolan, the director of "The Dark Knight," "Inception" and "Dunkirk." "The opportunity to be involved in recreating that experience for a new generation, and of introducing our new unrestored 70mm print of Kubrick's masterpiece in all its analog glory at the Cannes Film Festival is an honor and a privilege."

    This fall, the film will be released in 4K resolution Blu-ray with HDR./CBS news
     
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  20. peopleareleaving

    peopleareleaving Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    I've read this several times over the years and still feel like he nailed it.

    Roger Ebert (1968)

    The Monolith & The Message

    Good parables explain themselves. After you have read the story of Lazarus in the Bible, you don't need anyone to explain it to you. The same is true, I believe, of Stanley Kubrick's parable "2001: A Space Odyssey." It contains the answers to all the questions it advances. Why, then, has this film already infuriated and confused so many audiences? I went to see it again last week and was surrounded by the mumble of many conversations. Some of the whisperers were trying to figure out what was going on. Others were just killing time. Making up grocery lists, I guess. After the film was over, someone suggested that maybe MGM should require an IQ test before allowing people into the theater. I can understand that point of view. If people do not have the courtesy to shut up during a film, they should at least be segregated into special Saturday kiddie matinees, no matter how advanced their years. Silence and attention are especially useful during "2001: A Space Odyssey" because here for once is a film that makes a total statement. You cannot really understand part of it until you have seen all of it. Then, afterwards, you can go back and fill in the missing places. But while it is there on the screen, you should simply let it happen to you. No questions. No whispers. Let the movie have its chance. Because "2001" needs to be seen this way, I think it will have a better chance with younger audiences. Kubrick himself has speculated that his film wouldn't have much luck with audiences raised on "linear movies" - that is, on movies that follow a plotted story line from beginning to end. In a linear movie, you never ask why John Wayne wants to kill the bad guys (although perhaps you should). But in Kubrick's movie, there are questions harder to answer. What about that enormous black monolith, for example, which follows Man through Kubrick's universe? The people who surrounded me the other night had lots of questions for each other about that monolith.

    Q. What's that big black monolith? A. It's a big black monolith.

    Q. Where did it come from? A. From somewhere else.

    Q. Who put it there? A. Intelligent beings since it has right angles and nature doesn't make right angles on its own.

    Q. How many monoliths are there? A. One for every time Kubrick needs one in his film. Now it would seem that these are obvious observations. But audiences don't like simple answers, I guess; they want the monolith to "stand" for something. Well, it does. It stands for a monolith without an explanation. It's the fact that man can't explain it that makes it interesting. If Kubrick had explained it, perhaps by having some little green men from Mars lower it into place, would that have been more satisfactory? Does everything need an explanation? Some people think so. I wonder how they endure looking at the stars. What disturbed the audience even more, however, was that bedroom at the end of the film. Kubrick's space explorer runs into another monolith beyond Jupiter and it takes him into a space warp.

    Q. What's a space warp? A. A warp in space, and therefore in time, thanks to Einstein.

    Q. Then when the pilot emerges into the objective world, where is he? A. In a bedroom.

    Q. A BEDROOM? Yes, a magnificently decorated Louis XVI bedroom. What's the bedroom doing out there beyond Jupiter? Nothing. It isn't out there beyond Jupiter. It's a bedroom. The spacecraft lands in the bedroom, and Keir Dullea, the pilot, looks through the window and sees himself in a space suit standing outside. He gets out, becomes himself in the space suit standing outside, and sees himself seated at a table, eating. He becomes himself sitting at the table, eating, and notices himself, very elderly, dying in bed. He becomes himself dying in bed, and dies in bed. Well, it's not every space adventurer who dies in bed. Now where did the bedroom come from? My intuition is that it came out of Kubrick's imagination; that he understood the familiar bedroom would be the most alien, inexplicable, disturbing scene he could possibly end the film with. He was right. The bedroom is more otherworldly and eerie than any number of exploding stars, etc. Exploding stars we can understand. But a bedroom? The bedroom also provides a suitable backdrop while Kubrick's man grows older and dies. Why can't it be just that - a backdrop? Poets put lovers under trees, and nobody asks where that tree came from. Why can't Kubrick put his aging man in a bedroom? This is what literary critics might call a non-descriptive symbol - that is, the bedroom stands for a bedroom. Nothing else. The film, in its most basic terms, is a parable about Man. It is what Kubrick wanted to say about Man as a race, an idea and an inhabitant of the universe. More specifically, it is a film about man's journey from the natural state of a tool-using state and then again into a higher order of natural state. It makes its statement almost completely in visual terms; and the little dialog in the center section of the film is hardly necessary, like verbal Muzak. Kubrick begins when man was still an ape, thoroughly at home in the natural environment of Earth. He shows us becoming a toolmaker in order to control our natural environment, and he shows us finally using our tools to venture out into space. At the end, he shows man drawn beyond his tools so that we exist in the universe itself with the same natural ease we once enjoyed on Earth. The opening sequence is brilliant. If it could be shown as an educational film, it would explain man's development as a tool-using animal more clearly than any number of textbooks. Two tribes of apes scream at each other. They are frightened of the sounds in the night. A monolith appears. One tribe of apes gingerly feels it, running its hands down its perfectly smooth edges. And as the apes caress the monolith, something like a short circuit takes place in their minds. A connection is made between their eyes, their minds, and their hands. Their attention is drawn beyond themselves and toward an object in the environment. They are given a "lesson" by the makers of the monolith - and they then discover that, they are able to pick up a club and use it as a tool (at first for killing, then, for more subtle ends). Kubrick cuts from this most simple tool, a club, to a most complex one, a space ship. The prehistoric bone is thrown up into the air and becomes a shuttle rocket on its way to a space station. Could anything be clearer? Here are both extremes of man's tool-using stage. Yet, when the men in the space station began to talk, 45 minutes into the film, the person behind me sighed: "At last, the story begins." This was a person for whom a story could not exist apart from dialog and plot, and audiences made up of those people are going to find "2001" tough sledding. So what then? Another monolith is found on the moon.

    Like the first one, it provides a transcendent experience. By now, man is intelligent enough to realize that the monolith was planted by another intelligent race, and that is an awesome blow to man's ego. So he sets out toward Jupiter because the monolith beams signals in that direction. And man takes along "Hal 9000," a computer (or tool) so complex that it may, even surpass the human intelligence. The ultimate tool.

    But Hal 9000, made by man in his own image and likeness, shares man's ego and pride. What is finally necessary is the destruction of Hal - after he nearly destroys the mission - and that leaves one man, alone, at the outer edge of the Solar System to face the third monolith.

    And here man undergoes a transformation as important as when he became a tool-user. He becomes a natural being again, having used his tools for hundreds of thousands of years to pull himself up by the bootstraps. Now he no longer needs them. He has transcended his own nature, as that original ape did, and now he is no longer a "man."

    Instead, having grown old and died, he is reborn as a child of the universe. As a solemn, wide-eyed infant who slowly looks over the stars and the Earth and then turns his eyes on the audience.

    These last 20 seconds, as the child of man looks down on his ancestral parents, are the most important in the film. We in the audience are men, and here is the liberated, natural being, Kubrick believes we will someday become.

    But when Kubrick's space infant looked at the audience the other night, half of the audience was already on its feet in a hurry to get out. A good third of the audience must not have seen the space infant at all.

    Man is a curious animal. He is uneasy in the face of great experiences, and if he is forced to experience something profound, he starts immediately to cheapen it, to bring it down to his own level. Thus after a great man is assassinated, lesser men immediately manufacture, buy and sell plastic statues and souvenir billfolds and lucky coins with the great man's image on them.


    The same process is taking place with "2001." Two out of three people who see it will assure you it is too long, or too difficult, or (worst of all) merely science fiction, In fact, it is a beautiful parable about the nature of man. Perhaps it is the nature of man not to wish to know too much about his own nature.
     
  21. apesfan

    apesfan "Going Ape"

    Can't wait for everything. Saw it back in 1968 and again around, 1973-75 in a revival at the Brentwood Theater, Brentwood, NY. I could be wrong but did it play at the same Capitol theatre,NY,NY, a couple of months after Planet of the Apes. I think maybe they were different theaters I was 8 years old and remember the screen but not the venue.
    Just looked at my old LPs I have the original album, I only played once, I was into Apes more. Also original Fantasia 1957 2. -3 lps, I must look, and about 15 RCA late 1950s stereo lps. All in very good to very good+ condition.
    Sorry, I don't usually change subject but I just rediscovered them.

    If anybody interested in aquiring them email, pm me. I rather a real fan have these lps. Take care John M..
     
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2018
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  22. LitHum05

    LitHum05 El Disco es Cultura

    Location:
    Virginia
    I've seen it in 70 (twice). One of the best cinematic experiences of my life.
     
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  23. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    Not quite, Roger. It actually becomes an orbiting weapon and then we pan over to the shuttle.
     
  24. Wingman

    Wingman Bored of the Rings

    Location:
    Europe
    Yeah, from what I understand, that weapon satellite represented the many that were circling the Earth.
     
  25. HiFi Guy 008

    HiFi Guy 008 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New England
    I'm not complaining, but that trailer does show much more vivid and bright colors than I've seen in it before.
    Saw it once - not in 70mm - at the Brattle in Cambridge, MA, and numerous times on tv.
    If this is truly "unrestored" then it must have been that way in the beginning. No?

    Regarding Ebert's excellent review posted above, I disagree on one point. You don't have to see the whole film to get all the answers. Because the film doesn't give all the answers. This is according to what Arthur and Stanly said themselves. They left it up to the viewer to contemplate what might be or not might be, or, in my interpretation, is unfathomable by our limited understandings of logic. Still, I think the film is a bit flawed in that it could have given more answers within reason. It's a gorgeous, profound, unpretentious film. And that is quite a feat itself!

    Spoiler alert: Btw, the monolith was a block of wood.
     
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2018
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