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40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey



 
 
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  #11  
Old April 5th 08, 03:19 AM posted to sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default 40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey



Kevin Willoughby wrote:
The instrument panels in the spacecraft are very similar to what we use
nowadays.


Careful about cause and effect. A while back, I read a story in an IEEE
magazine about how some NASA researchers were developing next-generation
displays based on the panels in the movie.

Our present spacecraft and airliners control panel concepts came as an
extrapolation of the the fighter plane control panels of the late
1970's-early 1980's with the idea that the pilot should have a interface
with the instrument panel that required him to take his hands off of his
throttle and control stick as little as possible, and be able to read
all critical aircraft operating status items while looking at the
instrument panel as little as possible, so he could keep his eyes up and
scanning the sky for threats as much time as possible.
This meant a multifunction CRT or LCD display at the center top of the
control panel made sense.
On the other hand, the layout of the bridge of the starship Enterprise
is a dead ringer for the SOAS (Submarine Operational Automation System)
proposed by Martin-Marietta and DARPA in the late 1980's- early
1990's...swiveling captain's chair and all.
There are times when the distinction between fact and fiction gets very
fuzzy. (Spinal Tap, for example.)



I imagine you could dock a Pan-Am spaceliner to a space station the way
it's shown in the movie, but I think a de-spun hanger area makes more sense.


Only from the point of view of the pilot of Orion. From the POV of the
designer of Space Station Five, a de-spun hanger has gobs and gobs of
nasty engineering issues.

I've already been jumped on this quite a few times since I posted the
original thought on the subject; okay, I'm wrong... spinning the Orion
up to enter the bay makes more sense than de-spinning the bay.
BTW...who paid for the station's construction?
It doesn't look cheap by any stretch of the imagination to build, and
seems to support both private and government-controlled space operations
from all around the world.
Who put forward the capital outlay for its construction?
Whoever built it seems to be doing well, if the new half under
construction in the movie goes.
Or, like Babylon 5, MIR, and ISS was it originally intended to be
bigger, but ran into funding problems?
If that's the case, then that was one hell of a prophetic movie. ;-)






The big question is of course what exactly is the purpose of the big
human presence on the Moon?
Clavius Base is apparently huge, and one suspects the Russians have one
of equal size.
What makes that expendature of time and treasure worth it to the two
countries?


That's simple enough. Both the US and the USSR are mining the lunar
mcguffins. (http://www.essortment.com/all/alfredhitchcoc_rvhd.htm)


Dear God... Slaver Stasis Boxes!
I should have known!
Now, the origin of cellphones becomes clear! :-D

Pat


  #12  
Old April 5th 08, 05:28 AM posted to sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default 40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey



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.
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.


Pat
  #13  
Old April 5th 08, 05:36 AM posted to sci.space.history
Andre Lieven[_3_]
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Posts: 388
Default 40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey

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

  #14  
Old April 5th 08, 09:27 AM posted to sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default 40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey



Andre Lieven wrote:
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.


Remember how well humanity interacted with the Martians in Pal's "War Of
The Worlds"?
We held up a white flag; they burned us down to ash with a heat ray.
Then they started taking out everything with their meson charge nullifier.
They had no more concern about us understanding them, or them
understanding us, than a person trying to figure out what the ants in
their yard were thinking when the insecticide hit.
Even in "The Day The Earth Stood Still" our relationship with a alien
race consisted of: "Take our advice, or this solar system is going to
have a asteroid belt between Venus and Mars as well as one between Mars
and Jupiter. We can do that; it'd cost a lot to do, but believe me, we
can do that. We did it before regarding the planet that used to be
outboard of us; we can do it again regarding the one inboard of us."
They should have put that in the movie, that would have really shaken
people up. :-D

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.


Boring.
"Silent Running" had a better story, better visual effects, and came in
at around 1/10th the cost.
"Forbidden Planet" beat either of those movies for outright imagination,
and a intriguing storyline.
"2001's" ending was very cryptic in its meaning (at best).
"Forbidden Planet" was a examination of Lord Acton's concept of "power
corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely" driven forward as not
only as a challenge to Prof. Morbius...but to all humanity, by realizing
what had happened to the Krell's civilization.
That's a pretty deep concept when you come right down to it.
Is the end of technology to be gods of gold with feet of clay?
"Silent Running" had the profound concept of "don't give a tree-hugging
loon access to nuclear detonators, or all hell is going to break loose".
Rush Limbaugh has been warning us about this for over a decade.
Both concepts sure beat the hell out of split-screen filming technology
with reversed colors over Alaskan ice fields, a old fart dropping his
wine glass, and a fetus hanging around in HEO.
Good News - there are other forms of life than us in the universe, far
more advanced than we are, that wish to bring us their knowledge.
Bad news - that knowledge consists of the concept: "Acid is groovy man!
Dig this endsville star-trip we are laying on your heads. Fetus _FLYING
AROUND_ your planet! Can you dig it, man? Can you REALLY dig it? It's a
pure Zen super-mellow brain-change."
Babylon 5 addressed the problem far better in regards to the Vorlons and
humanity.
The Vorlons are trying to tell us something, and their way of thinking
and communicating and our way of thinking and communicating are so
completely different that both sides are very confused about what one
is trying to tell the other.
To us, their statements seem cryptic and evasive; to them, our
statements probably sound about as comprehensible as gibbering baboons.
Imagine if we could actually crack the complete dolphin language, and
ended up with a whole pile of info on water depths, size of squid
schools, and how thermal layers in the water affect your nose
sonar...with philosophical insights based on those inputs?
It might be very profound to the dolphins and their world view, but we'd
be very hard-pressed to interact with them in any form that wouldn't
completely confuse them as to what we were trying to talk about.
Christ, it would be like William F. Buckley sitting down to have a
insightful heart-to-heart conversation with ex-president George W. Bush.
(I leave the extraordinary possibilities of that surreal event to the
reader's imagination; Buckley wisely died at the right time, which is
more than can say about Dubya... that time, in his case, being during
his infancy. Where's SIDS when you really need it? The little tike
might have rolled over in his crib, gurgled out something about wanting
a cup of "aw-aw", emitted a snide snicker, and turned blue.)
Now, let's run into a alien race. Sure, we could agree that 2+2 = 4, and
maybe that pi is pretty difficult thing to put a end on...but beyond
anything concrete like that, we are going to be a real morass regarding
anything subjective in regards to our world views because we are
different species with brains wired to work in different ways.
It might be like this:
"You have the ability to destroy stars, aren't you concerned that
some of those stars might evolve species that could be friends to you at
some future point from the planets around them?"
And we are expecting a answer like this:
"We are very conservative... we consider any species that might evolve
in the universe to be a potential future threat to us and destroy those
stars as a means to protect ourselves against that possible future threat."
But instead we get back: "Total energy to destroy a selected star is
lower than the energy our Bussard ramscoops derive from traversing the
hydrogen bubble created by the star's destruction. Are you saying that
you intend to pose a threat to us at some future point? The energy
required to destroy your star, "Sol", is more than the hydrogen bubble
created by its destruction would generate. We do not understand why you
would suggest you are a threat to us that would lead us to destroy your
star, as the math is not in our favor. You are a very confusing species,
and we don't understand what you are trying to tell us."


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.


I want to see the monkeys getting violent, then wake me up when HAL goes
crazy. I'll happily sleep through all the rest.

Pat
  #15  
Old April 5th 08, 04:25 PM posted to sci.space.history
David Lesher
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Posts: 198
Default 40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey

Pat Flannery writes:




Saw the whole thing twice in 70 mm film and Cinerama


I too was sure I saw it in Cinerama, but it was filmed in Super
Panavision 70, not Cinerama's 3-camera extravaganza. Through the wonders
of renaming brands, however....

[You can read Wikipedia for just a hint of the confusion..]

I've seen it maybe a dozen times since 1968, and saw the new
"anniversary" print at the Uptown in DC, the last real theater around..
it was still & always stunning....

ACC and Kubrick could not have asked for a better legacy.

--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
  #16  
Old April 5th 08, 08:15 PM posted to sci.space.history
Andre Lieven[_3_]
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Posts: 388
Default 40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey

On Apr 5, 4:27 am, Pat Flannery wrote:
Andre Lieven wrote:
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.


Remember how well humanity interacted with the Martians in Pal's "War Of
The Worlds"?


Yep. g

We held up a white flag; they burned us down to ash with a heat ray.
Then they started taking out everything with their meson charge nullifier.
They had no more concern about us understanding them, or them
understanding us, than a person trying to figure out what the ants in
their yard were thinking when the insecticide hit.


I have to disagree, because we understood the power of their
technology,
and, when we finally saw them dying at the end of the movie, we also
understood their situation and what was doing them in.

The aliens in 2001, we got nothing. I wonder if that non depiction in
2001 inspired Carl Sagan, both in his Cosmos sensawunda and in
not showing the aliens in Contact - we only saw one human form
manifestation of them.

Even in "The Day The Earth Stood Still" our relationship with a alien
race consisted of: "Take our advice, or this solar system is going to
have a asteroid belt between Venus and Mars as well as one between Mars
and Jupiter. We can do that; it'd cost a lot to do, but believe me, we
can do that. We did it before regarding the planet that used to be
outboard of us; we can do it again regarding the one inboard of us."
They should have put that in the movie, that would have really shaken
people up. :-D


How many movie watchers back then do you suppose knew that our
system had an asteroid belt ? g

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.


Boring.


Majestic.

"Silent Running" had a better story, better visual effects, and came in
at around 1/10th the cost.


Once again, the story in SR was fairly pedestrian, being about only
the
humans. It was a good story, but, it wasn't hitting the Big Question:
If theres anyone out there, what are they like ? Can we understand
them ?

"Forbidden Planet" beat either of those movies for outright imagination,
and a intriguing storyline.


Oh, I grant that, though they did rip off Baco... Shakespeare...

"2001's" ending was very cryptic in its meaning (at best).


Indeed: That was the point.

"Forbidden Planet" was a examination of Lord Acton's concept of "power
corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely" driven forward as not
only as a challenge to Prof. Morbius...but to all humanity, by realizing
what had happened to the Krell's civilization.


Sure. When I speak positively about 2001, don't take that to mean that
I'm dissing any other films; Its just that the other films didn't take
on
the key theme of 2001.

That's a pretty deep concept when you come right down to it.
Is the end of technology to be gods of gold with feet of clay?
"Silent Running" had the profound concept of "don't give a tree-hugging
loon access to nuclear detonators, or all hell is going to break loose".
Rush Limbaugh has been warning us about this for over a decade.


Well, a side lesson there would be, don't give your prophets
unlimited
prescription drugs...

Both concepts sure beat the hell out of split-screen filming technology
with reversed colors over Alaskan ice fields, a old fart dropping his
wine glass, and a fetus hanging around in HEO.


Oh, I grant that I would love a remastered SPFX sequence there. But,
given what audiences had seen up to 1968, it was kewl.

Good News - there are other forms of life than us in the universe, far
more advanced than we are, that wish to bring us their knowledge.
Bad news - that knowledge consists of the concept: "Acid is groovy man!


Or, much of what you will see will simply not be understandable in any
form to us 2001 era humans. We often saw the flip side of that point
in TOS, when aliens would take human form to interact with us puny
humans. But, thats because they saw us as being worth talking with,
that 2001's point is that thats not a given.

Dig this endsville star-trip we are laying on your heads. Fetus _FLYING
AROUND_ your planet! Can you dig it, man? Can you REALLY dig it? It's a
pure Zen super-mellow brain-change."
Babylon 5 addressed the problem far better in regards to the Vorlons and
humanity.


Well, we also never saw the Vorlon homeworld.

The Vorlons are trying to tell us something, and their way of thinking
and communicating and our way of thinking and communicating are so
completely different that both sides are very confused about what one
is trying to tell the other.


But, once again, they're an enigmatic alien race that sees humans as
being
worth talking with. The point in 2001 is that those aliens *don't*
share that
viewpoint.

To us, their statements seem cryptic and evasive; to them, our
statements probably sound about as comprehensible as gibbering baboons.
Imagine if we could actually crack the complete dolphin language, and
ended up with a whole pile of info on water depths, size of squid
schools, and how thermal layers in the water affect your nose
sonar...with philosophical insights based on those inputs?
It might be very profound to the dolphins and their world view, but we'd
be very hard-pressed to interact with them in any form that wouldn't
completely confuse them as to what we were trying to talk about.
Christ, it would be like William F. Buckley sitting down to have a
insightful heart-to-heart conversation with ex-president George W. Bush.
(I leave the extraordinary possibilities of that surreal event to the
reader's imagination; Buckley wisely died at the right time, which is
more than can say about Dubya... that time, in his case, being during
his infancy. Where's SIDS when you really need it? The little tike
might have rolled over in his crib, gurgled out something about wanting
a cup of "aw-aw", emitted a snide snicker, and turned blue.)


bg I dare say that that event would have saved a lot of lives...

Now, let's run into a alien race. Sure, we could agree that 2+2 = 4, and
maybe that pi is pretty difficult thing to put a end on...but beyond
anything concrete like that, we are going to be a real morass regarding
anything subjective in regards to our world views because we are
different species with brains wired to work in different ways.
It might be like this:
"You have the ability to destroy stars, aren't you concerned that
some of those stars might evolve species that could be friends to you at
some future point from the planets around them?"
And we are expecting a answer like this:
"We are very conservative... we consider any species that might evolve
in the universe to be a potential future threat to us and destroy those
stars as a means to protect ourselves against that possible future threat."
But instead we get back: "Total energy to destroy a selected star is
lower than the energy our Bussard ramscoops derive from traversing the
hydrogen bubble created by the star's destruction. Are you saying that
you intend to pose a threat to us at some future point? The energy
required to destroy your star, "Sol", is more than the hydrogen bubble
created by its destruction would generate. We do not understand why you
would suggest you are a threat to us that would lead us to destroy your
star, as the math is not in our favor. You are a very confusing species,
and we don't understand what you are trying to tell us."


So, when are you writing the novel that comes from that premise ? :-)

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.


I want to see the monkeys getting violent, then wake me up when HAL goes
crazy. I'll happily sleep through all the rest.


Thats OK, I'll be doing enough grokking for the both of us... g

( When 2001 first came out, I was around 10. I got my dad, who was a
very
good and supportive dad, to take me to it twice in the first week or
so that
it was out. He was very SF friendly for me. )

Andre
  #17  
Old April 6th 08, 02:46 AM posted to sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 18,465
Default 40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey



David Lesher wrote:
ACC and Kubrick could not have asked for a better legacy.


Kubrick's best-remembered film won't be that; Kubrick's perfect legacy
will be "Dr. Strangelove"... one of the most brilliantly funny movies
ever made.
It's been said that the major problem with filming it was that the
entire cast and crew (Kubrick included) found it almost impossible not
to start laughing out loud when Peter Sellers was doing one of his
multiple roles, and a lot of film stock was wasted due to laughter
showing up on the soundtrack. Kubrick was reported to have laughed so
hard at some points while filming Sellers that he was actually crying
and almost falling out of his director's chair.
Many people who saw 2001 left the theater confused or bored, and didn't
feel they had gotten their money's worth...that was certainly not the
case with Dr. Strangelove... the audience knew they had gotten every
penny of ticket price paid back in full, and then some.
One thing that did come up in interviews with audiences that saw 2001
was that they thought Heywood Floyd had gone to some place called
"Clavius" rather than the Moon, as it's not specifically mentioned that
Clavius crater is the site of the US base on the Moon.
It might have helped if the had put the base on the Moon at someplace
where people had heard of, such as Copernicus crater.
This isn't exactly helped by the fact that the people on the Moon in the
movie walk and move as if they are at full Earth gravity, rather than
1/6 G, so you might think they are on the surface of some other planet
that has near Earth strength gravity.

Pat
  #18  
Old April 6th 08, 05:03 AM posted to sci.space.history
Andre Lieven[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 388
Default 40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey

On Apr 5, 9:46 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
David Lesher wrote:
ACC and Kubrick could not have asked for a better legacy.


Kubrick's best-remembered film won't be that; Kubrick's perfect legacy
will be "Dr. Strangelove"... one of the most brilliantly funny movies
ever made.


Sure. More to the point, its a satire of a topic that most people
would
have previously bet was unsatirisable, nuclear war. I would call The
Mouse That Roared more of a farce, in the strict sense.

It's been said that the major problem with filming it was that the
entire cast and crew (Kubrick included) found it almost impossible not
to start laughing out loud when Peter Sellers was doing one of his
multiple roles, and a lot of film stock was wasted due to laughter
showing up on the soundtrack. Kubrick was reported to have laughed so
hard at some points while filming Sellers that he was actually crying
and almost falling out of his director's chair.


I've heard that Chloris Leachman said similar things about some of her
best work on Blazing Saddles.

Many people who saw 2001 left the theater confused or bored, and didn't
feel they had gotten their money's worth...that was certainly not the
case with Dr. Strangelove... the audience knew they had gotten every
penny of ticket price paid back in full, and then some.


I was too young to see Strangelove in a theatre, but I liked it once I
did see it, but I can't really compare the two films, they're so
massively
different, in almost every way. And, thats a point that marks Kubrick
as
one of the great directors, in that his films could be, well,
anything.

One thing that did come up in interviews with audiences that saw 2001
was that they thought Heywood Floyd had gone to some place called
"Clavius" rather than the Moon, as it's not specifically mentioned that
Clavius crater is the site of the US base on the Moon.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A524477

2001: A Space Odyssey

Another factor was that Arthur C. Clarke felt that there was no need
to
educate the audience, as the contemporary astronomical events that
were happening at the same time as the film was being made was
doing it instead.

Arthur C. Clarke's response to what the film is about is his novel,
"2001:
A Space Odyssey", although he has also said "If you understood 2001
completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we
answered".

Stanley Kubrick's response to people asking what the film is about
was
to say: "I don't like to talk about 2001 much because it's essentially
a
non-verbal experience. Less than half the film has dialogue."

It might have helped if the had put the base on the Moon at someplace
where people had heard of, such as Copernicus crater.


I'm not sure that the list of people in 1968 who had heard of either
crater
would have been that different.

This isn't exactly helped by the fact that the people on the Moon in the
movie walk and move as if they are at full Earth gravity, rather than
1/6 G, so you might think they are on the surface of some other planet
that has near Earth strength gravity.


There were, after all, limits to 1968 SPFX technology. Plus, don't
forget,
as of 1968, no member of the public had yet seen humans walking on
the Moon, so there was nothing immediate to visually compare to.

Obligatory space history factoid: NASA was, at the time work on the
film
started, spending the same amount of money as 2001's budget every day
-
$10,500,000.

Andre


  #19  
Old April 6th 08, 03:01 PM posted to sci.space.history
Pat Flannery
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 18,465
Default 40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey



Andre Lieven wrote:
The aliens in 2001, we got nothing. I wonder if that non depiction in
2001 inspired Carl Sagan, both in his Cosmos sensawunda and in
not showing the aliens in Contact - we only saw one human form
manifestation of them.


They did think about putting them in the movie, but couldn't decide what
they should look like.
There's one scene during the "big trip" at the end where the space pod
is being escorted by flying tetrahedral things; I always wondered if
those were the aliens.

Pat
  #20  
Old April 6th 08, 03:27 PM posted to sci.space.history
Al
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Default 40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey

On Apr 4, 11:28*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:


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".


Pat


Interesting how many film critics, historians and buffs disagree with
you on that.
In the every 10 year critics poll that the British Film Institute
does, 2001, jumped out of
nowhere to 6th place as the best film of all time.
To me it is the deepest film about time and space and biological
evolution, all that
BIG THINKS stuff H.G. Wells spoke of.
A very difficult film and totally ground breaking if taken
seriously.....
which I think many people are not willing to do, to much thought has
to be put into it.





 




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