The Smoking Gun of Bart's "Smoking Gun" Footage

[JayUtah]

Often I get the complaint that logic rules are arbitrary and don't apply to them.

[PhantomWolf]

You know, I have actually only seen the first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes of 2001 (I've watched 2010 a few times) however, I bought it on DVD the other day, so I guess I will get around too it sometime soonish.

[LunarOrbit]

That's funny because the first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes are the parts I usually skip.

[Ginnie]

Are you kidding? I like those parts the best! While I'm not sure what the monolith did at the beginning with the ape-men-sot of guys. Passed on some divine inspiration, or sparked forth some knowledge that was clouded by the subconscious - I'm not sure. I read some review where it was suggested that man's natural aggression was set loose or something like that but I disagree with that.
As for the end, I was only 10 yrs. old in 1968 when I saw the movie in a theatre. We used to watch the matinee and then stay until the movie started again. I watched all movies twice in those days.
...getting back to the point...I loved the psychedelic sequence. Kinda mesmerized me at the time. Even if I didn't understand it. (still don't). You know, I read the book a few years back and still couldn't figure it out.
The movie to me is like a painting. When I look at a great painting I don't try to figure out what it is about necessarily. I feel it. It inspires me. It makes me emotional. Could be an abstract or expressionist. I love Picasso - but can't tell what a lot of his paintings are saying - doesn't matter - looking at it,, feeling it.
I know what Guernica is about, but before I did I could feel the horror that the painting expresses. I laugh when people look at a Picasso or Van Gogh and say "my kid could paint that:.
Sometimes a painting is bigger that the sum of its parts if you know what I mean. As an artist myself, when I'm in a rut - kinda like a batting slump - I go to an art gallery to get inspired. Before I get home my head is usually already full of great ideas. Wow, this is off topic isn't it?

And 2010 I found to be a regular Hollywood movie - a quality film for sure, but a bit predictable and regular.
I'd put it this way:
An artist made 2001. Stanley Kubrick's best film, but Paths of Glory is close.
A painter made 2010. (to connect this with the forum: Peter Hyams also directed Capricorn One!) An HBer can figure out some dots to connect with that.

[Jason]

The monolith at the beginning flipped whatever mental switch was required for an animal to become a tool-user. Aggression was already there between the two groups of apes- it's just now one group could do something serious about it.

I find the psychadelic sequence at the end goes on a little too long for even me, and I love the film. The ending is obviously the evolution of man to the next step. Bowman's final years in the hotel/zoo seem to last only a few moments, even to him, compared to the eternity that is his as a liberated over-human.

2010 while cool and with a cool idea is, unfortunately, not an equal.
I find the inconsistent gravity in the movie particularly annoying when compared to Kubrick's perfectionism. Most of the time it seems like the Leonov and Discovery both have artificial gravity. Maybe they could have developed artificial gravity between the two missions, but how did they install it on Discovery so quickly then? And what's with the pen in zero-g on the bridge when Floyd and the Russian Captian are obviously standing in a normal gravity environment?

[Ginnie]

I understood the evolution idea. Kinda, Man to Superman or SpaceChild. But looking at it in a realtime/humanbased/linear way I have trouble linking it all together. I've never really analyzed it too much, just sat back and took it in.

[acpinto]

2001 is so good that there are guys figuring out a possible game sequence for the check mate ( winning chess game - it is like that?) hall 9000 gave to David Bowman!

The film is precious. I love the ape sequence and for me it ment something like passing intellegence to the apes.
Tools and religion are a man thing. the monolith simbolizes that for me. Worship of it and them the apes managed to use the bones as a tool. In the end the man gets close to God as the monolith interacted with Bowman.
Loved the computer amoral issues to complete his task.

[reynoldbot]

if you notice during the end sequence, the younger version of bowman will see the older version of himself, but the older version never sees the younger version. Once the younger bowman sees the older bowman, he becomes the older bowman. It happens a few times and it's really fascinating to watch.

[Nowhere Man]

The chess game in 2001 is (apparently) taken from a real game played in 1913. I found this answer on the web, as my 2001-related books are mostly in boxes right now.

Fred

[Count Zero]

After the Monolith has taught the apes to use a tool (the club) to provide provide food (meat), there is a shot showing the apes asleep in their "cave". The Monolith, its work done, is now gone. At this moment I always say aloud, "And no sooner has the teacher left the classroom..." The scene cuts to show the apes using their clubs to kill rivals chief and take back their water-hole.

[Jason]

Bad teacher! Teaching your students to play with matches and then leaving the room!

[dwight]

And every time I see the Star Child at the end I think of Homer Simpson when he becomes the Star Child in his space adventure episode and the Fox TV satellite crashes down on the orb thing he is in, and you hear a cosmic "D'oh!"

[PhantomWolf]

Well I started watching 2001 last night (inspired by the death scene of Scorpius' neural clone "Harvey" in Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars.) So far I have watched through to the start of the Jupiter mission.

Things that looked wrong to me.

Inconsistant gravity: Actors are obviously in gravity by the way they move, and lean on objects, yet other objects are used to make it represent a weightless enviroment. On the moon, both outside and in Clavius Base, the actors move as if in 1g rather than low gravity

Dust: The dust billows extremely noticably when the moonbus and shuttle rocket land.

Lighting: The lunar surface is far too dark. some areas are brightly lit, but much of it is in total shadow.

Earth: From the very start the Earth looked awful. I would have thought that by 1967 they would have had enough photos of the Earth from space that they could have made it look a bit more realistic. Inside the space station the moving earth looked like what it was, a painting rotating, and it didn't look much better in the space scenes. The moon by contrast looked real because they used real images of it. From the moon the Earth was far too large, and it seemed to me to be in the wrong position, though I don't have the appropriate software to check this out.

Lunar Surface: Apart from the lighting (already mentioned) the lunar surface looked wrong, like someone had simply spread sand over the floor and left it. There was barely any texture to it, and further away the hills and mountains looked like those in 50's comics, all jagged and pointy.

There are probably more that I missed, but this is my first watching, and these are the things that leap out at me as I watched it.

[Count Zero]

Good list, but I have some comments (don't I always? ):

Inconsistent gravity: Actors are obviously in gravity by the way they move, and lean on objects, yet other objects are used to make it represent a weightless environment. On the moon, both outside and in Clavius Base, the actors move as if in 1g rather than low gravity

Yeah, they tried to peg the free-fall "walking" to Velcro shoes, but the danged actors kept leaning on things. I'm sure 1/6th G didn't even occur to them when they shot the briefing room scene.

Dust: The dust billows extremely noticeably when the moonbus and shuttle rocket land.

Probably unavoidable, short of using no dust at all . They could have justified that because earlier rockets would have already blown the pads clear (unless someone on the ground crew inadvertently tracked dust onto the pad). I suppose they needed to show that the rockets were using braking thrust on landing. For this purpose, I'll take unavoidably billowing dust over a cheesy flame any time. I wonder if they could have used higher pressure air to blow the dust out of the camera frame before it started to billow? Too bad rocky wasn't there to show them how easy it is to wash & strain sand so it wouldn't air... aeri... aeroso... billow.

Lighting: The lunar surface is far too dark. some areas are brightly lit, but much of it is in total shadow.

It's supposed to be dark, with the Sun just rising. The plot point that it was supposed to depict (in this movie, darn-near everything is in the subtext) was that the Monolith was uncovered during lunar night. Floyd & Co. arrived at dawn, and the sunlight hitting it for the first time in 4 million years triggered the radio signal. Kubrick blew it by having the plains still in shadow when Floyd entered the pit. The sun should have been up and working its way down into the pit. As shown, it would've been hours or days before sunlight reached the Monolith. Worse yet, most of the moon images while the shuttle is in route show Tycho & Clavius in full sunlight

Earth: From the very start the Earth looked awful. I would have thought that by 1967 they would have had enough photos of the Earth from space that they could have made it look a bit more realistic.

This has always mystified me. Gemini was bringing back lovely color pix in 1965. Apparently, instead of using those they modeled their Earth on early weather satellite images, which this seems to resemble.

From the moon the Earth was far too large...

I can forgive this. The angular size of the Earth would depend on the lens being used. We are used to the Apollo photos, which had an unusually wide field-of-view. This made the Earth look small in comparison to the frame.

...and it seemed to me to be in the wrong position, though I don't have the appropriate software to check this out.

I have a 4" globe, and it's enough to tell me you're right. Clavius is roughly 60 S. Lat Tycho is ~ 40 S. Lat. I can forgive this, too. They obviously took the time to pick features that would put Earth near the horizon. By having the moonbus going from Clavius to Tycho, they kinda-sorta put the nose facing Earth. The Earth is shown too low in the sky, but I can forgive that on aesthetic grounds.

The phase of the Earth was somewhat wrong. Rather than gibbous it should have been slightly less than half. More egregiously, when the Monolith signal is sent, we see the Monolith and sun aligned with a crescent Earth.

What I can't forgive in the moonbus scene is that the Earth phase kept shifting from gibbous-to-the-left to gibbous-to-the-right. Chesley Bonestell railed against this movie for all of the wrong phase angles and continuity errors. When he did Destination Moon in 1950, he had them set down in the crater Harpalous so that not only was the Earth suitably near the horizon (and he made sure that the height was exactly right), it was also "right-side-up" when compared to maps. He also got the phase illumination right.

Lunar Surface: Apart from the lighting (already mentioned) the lunar surface looked wrong, like someone had simply spread sand over the floor and left it. There was barely any texture to it, and further away the hills and mountains looked like those in 50's comics, all jagged and pointy.

I can forgive this one since we didn't have a good idea of surface conditions at the time (the production was already well under way when the Surveyor & Lunar Orbiter missions started returning data). In the film, the only time we see it close up is when they're walking on the floor of the pit - which is an excavated surface. Ironically, the afore mentioned Chesley Bonestell was famous for painting jagged mountains on the Moon. To me, the mountains in 2001 look like a compromise between Chesley's vision and the reality that was being revealed.

[nomuse]

I thought I read, perhaps in my Chesley Bonestell book, that he originally turned in paintings that were pretty close to how the Moon actually looks. And Kubrick basically frowned and said "This isn't working for me. Give me something fake instead."