pendell

Current Hyperfixation: Wizard of Oz

  • He/Him

I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.

Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.



pnictogen-wing
@pnictogen-wing

It turns out that 2010 is on YouTube so I am revisiting it. I happen to have seen it well before watching 2001, thanks to TV broadcasts. It's not a great movie, but it was how I learned about HAL 9000 for the first time. (Then I read Clarke's book, then I read The Lost Worlds of 2001, and only after all that did I eventually watch the Kubrick movie.) ~Chara


pnictogen-wing
@pnictogen-wing

I think pi may have a good point with 2010: 2001 may be regarded as the enigmatic masterpiece but 2010 is good and straightforward and—most importantly—there's some actual emotional depth. Neither Kubrick nor Clarke were the best with that stuff.

~Chara


pnictogen-wing
@pnictogen-wing

a slight discontinuity between 2001 and 2010, although it's purely through subtext: Kubrick depicts Heywood Floyd as a smarmy bureaucrat and while the movie doesn't explicitly finger him as the one who decided to use HAL 9000 for some tedious spy games that backfired, the implication is clear enough: it's Floyd himself who appears in the recorded message to talk about the "security reasons" behind using HAL to conceal the real purpose of Discovery's mission. Clarke softens Floyd considerably in 2010 and Roy Scheider completes the job of transforming the sinister space manager into an honest scientific administrator. ~Chara


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in reply to @pnictogen-wing's post:

idk, 2001 has some stunning atmosphere and ideas - the slow, quiet, unnerving pace of everything builds a kind of anxiety and tension I've never quite seen replicated. I think to chalk up what 2001 does as "good cinematography" would be very reductive.

I think there's definitely a point of overanalysis as film buffs love to do with all of Kubrick's movies for some reason (ever see that Room 237 movie? Buffoonery) but I think even without that it's quite valuable and lovely. The most classically operatic of the space operas. Odysseus would be proud.