December 09, 2004

• anyone curious about this could, like, read the book.
• anyone curious about this could, like, read the book. Touch the obelisk. Go ahead, it won't bite.
• Ook! OOK! Aaiigh! Ook!
• Yech! As someone who became obsessed with understanding this movie when it first came out, I really found this was too simplistic and disappointing. The music, however, can still thrill me. I suggest one go read the original Clarke story it was based on, several other books and keep watching over and over again until one derives their own understanding. I still get deep rumbles of pleasure from 'Thus spake Zarathusta' - or however it's spelt.
• That site is even slower than the movie.
• The technological explanation, where man's evolution depended on his reliance on tools, and will depend on his escape from them, is a popular one. I think a more satisfying answer is to look at what it says about the nature of consciousness itself -- to see the movie as a mediation on first philosophy, if you will. Man is forced by his external surroundings to confront his own consciousness. But that's just my take. That's the beauty of 2001, that it's a empty vessel into which all these interpretations can be placed (as reflected in the the blankness of the monolith itself -- a more sophistimicated version of the Pulp Fiction briefcase). But this interpretation is wrong on one thing, though -- HAL did NOT make a mistake. That's where these guys are amateurs...
• fun aside from a story i wrote in 2001: The 83-year-old author, reached by telephone at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka, exploded with a hearty laugh when told of such events as "2001: A Colposcopic Odyssey," the upcoming meeting of the Australian Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology. (A colposcope, for 50 percent of you, is an instrument used in gynecology.) "Of course, there's no way of copyrighting a year," Clarke said. He acknowledged his own infringement on the Greek epic poet of ancient times: "As far as the word 'odyssey' goes, well, we have yet to hear from Mr. Homer's lawyers." Clarke added that there is one "odyssey" that he considered an honor: The Mars Odyssey 2001 Orbiter, a NASA craft that launches April 7 to study the planet's surface using thermal imaging.
• I hate, hate, hate, hate 2001. Most overrated movie ever. That said, the site was nice, although it was close to being as boring and slow as the movie.
• Great, now is there a sight that explains shy I should sit through Barry Lyndon?
• I always thought the message was "We don't need women! We have spaceships!"
• s/spaceships/computers
• I saw this movie first when I was six, on a dad-and-son night out. It was absolutely fascinating to me, a revelation, but of what I had no idea. I just remember the feeling of their being great, unknowable forces in the universe and in life, the feeling of knowing nothing but having the potential to know everything. Not to get all melodramatic, but it was probably the first time I got a feeling for what "infinite" means, and in some ways a transcendent experience. (And it worked for my dad, too! Just differently. Still, who knew?) Over the years I've had fun coming up with a theory of what's actually happening in the film (not very different from what's on this site), and I've enjoyed having the movie's dreamlike textures wash over me again and again, but no viewing will ever approach that first time.
• The flying monkeys were really scary.
• Preview is your friend: uh, "there being great, unknowable forces..."
• I have been to that site before. Those flash movies are indeed twice as slow as the movie is. And at least the movie is interesting.
• You should sit through Barry Lyndon because it is the most beautiful and hilarious character study ever made, you ignorant twat. THEY USED NATURAL LIGHT. IT'S NOT LIKE A NOTMAL MOVIE.
• Damn, why is everyone so cranky this week?
• I don't know about anyone else, but I was having a shit day and took it out inappropriately on MoFi. Everyone else probably just smells funny.
• cranky? really? I find the jokes are just a little meaner than usually. I don't know if you should read the book to try to understand the movie. After all, they are two separate, distinct entities and almost all of Kubrick's movies are novel adapatations, but they're clearly Kubrick's. Or something.
• I haven't seen the movie, only read the book. I heard the movie was a little...weird. The book was bad enough. Admittedly, the only Kubrick movie I've seen is The Shining.
• 2001 isn't a book adaptation.
• what richer and dng say.
• Book and movie written simultaneously. Mutual adaption?
• Collaboration
• I was referring to a book like this one, that was written back in the early '70's. I've never read a book called '2001'.