On Apr 5, 12:28 am, Pat Flannery wrote:
Andre Lieven wrote:
Indeed. A good home theatre system can do it some justice, but I can
well recall my pleasure at seeing it at the end of 2001 in a 70MM film
house.

In spite of the fact that this was in NYC, just three months after
9/11, once that curtain went up and the film started, all that just left
me for well over two hours. Ahh....

Saw the whole thing twice in 70 mm film and Cinerama
As far as movies go, it's the cinematographic form of the "The
Emperor's New Clothes".
Spectacular as long you buy into the "revolutionary " aspects of its story.
Other than that, a very expensive and unimaginative version of the
"Forbidden Planet" school of Sci-Fi with a lot less imagination shown in
its plot, portrayal, and story than "The Day The Earth Stood Still" or
"It Came From Outer Space" - both of which managed to pre-describe the
story concept of "2001" with far less screen-time and money spent on
production.

The point is that 2001 blended the Clarkian story with the then
current
NASA no emotion crew images.

Further, it told an SF story in a visual medium where the humans do
not
succeed in interacting or understanding the aliens and their
civilisation
and motives. Its far too conventional a trope of much visual SF that
the
humans and aliens will be able to interact, communicate, and deal with
each other on comparable planes. Yet, the very real possibility also
exists that we won't be able to do with, and that at least some aliens
are
so alien as to give us no real basis for communication.

If for nothing else, 2001 is a valuable addition to the visual SF
patheon
for that very reason. The rest is all gravy, albeit very nice gravy.

One of the top-ten most over-rated films ever done in American cinema -
by Stanley Kubrick in particular; all of his other movies were
masterpieces that are worth watching time and time again ....or at least
worth watching once (I imagine I've seen "Dr. Strangleove" around 50
times, and immediately go to it or "Jaws" by the flip of a coin every
time I see it running on TV because those are two of _The Great
Movies_ ever done by great American director's in the past century.
Any of Kubrick's other films makes "2001" looking pretty mediocre by
comparison, when viewed with the space-fan blinders off.

I would somewhat disagree with that conclusion, but I do come to 2001
with the SF fan " sensawonda " view. I'm quite pleased to own the 2
DVD
copy.

Andre