2001: Masterpiece or Pretentious Boll0cks?

TwoShedsJackson

Right, I've just seen it for around the sixth time and I am finally coming down in the Pretentious Bollo<ks camp.

Visually interesting, sonically superb, but MY GOD what a load of self-important grandiose $hite!!!

What say ye?

Yossarian

Last time i watched it, i fell asleep...

Stephen.

El_Presidente

Masterpiece

Can be a bit heavy though.

plastic membrane

Bit of both, that film. All in all ( and i could vey well be tarred and feathered for this but to hell with it), i prefer 2010. At least it has some semblance of whats going on, tries to explain what happens in the first film, has really good special effects, charcaters rather than cardboard, and some good SF ideas. Not a perfect film, but its not pretentios bollacks at least..

---

Im going to the bear fights tomorrow, want to come with ??

--Kaiser--

I would definately have to say masterpiece, the film is not another action film and is not hugely exiting, but as Castor says, its visually and sonically stunning.
Its hard to describe what the film is about, so i don't think i'll try, but stanley kubrick is one of my favourite directors, and that one of my favourite films.

The end of the movie doesn't make much sense til you read the book tho'.

Blitzkrieger

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Yossarian:
Last time i watched it, i fell asleep...

Stephen.</font>

Me too

The first and only time I tried to watch it. I fell asleep wondering what the hell those monkeys were doing and if I was on the right channel and woke up to catch the famous HAL bit.

Pretentious rubish - at least the bits I saw.

Zapper

Yeah, i would have to agree that it's a bit of both. IMO the book acctually told the story better, even though it was written AFTER the film was made.

When they acctually filmed 2001 it had a running spoken commentry over the top of it, in order to make it easier to understand. Im always curious about what that would have sounded like..

---

Dog.
KiT

WhiteWashMan

just a load of movie masturbation
like it could happen? (reference recently read lost world thread for better plots)

Panda

I do believe that its a Masterpiece, its a
classy film! U all know about the whole Hal
and IBM thing dont ye?

Shinji

Yeah, HAL transposed by 1 letter is IBM. Quite clever.

The film is definitely in the pretentious boll0cks camp though, much more so than the book (which was not written after the film, but rather was written simultaneously with the film script). 2001 as written by Arthur Clarke is a masterpiece; 2001 as directed by Stanley Kubrick was amazing, visually, for its time, but was quite poor otherwise - the ending is one of the weakest I've ever seen, and the actual direction and styling of the film loses all of the "feel" of the book/script.

I'd love to see it remade by a better director.

Ja,
Rob

DeVore

Clarke swears blind that HAL stands for
Heuristic ALgorithm. It makes sense from the AI world as at the time he was writing it (and even today) they were considered essential to independant thought.

I dunno, I personally think its a coincidence but its kinda funny anyway.

DeV.

Yossarian

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Blitzkrieger:
Me too

The first and only time I tried to watch it. I fell asleep wondering what the hell those monkeys were doing and if I was on the right channel and woke up to catch the famous HAL bit.

</font>

Thats exactly the same thing that happened to me!
Tho i was drunk at the time...

Stephen.

Excelsior

one of my favourite movies. i just love the mood it creates and i always enjoy watching it. my girlfriend however finds it to be the most pretentious crap ever.

but if a movie prompts discussion like this it has to be better than the "story of us" like crap we are forced to watch most of the time

Bard

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by DeVore:
Clarke swears blind that HAL stands for
Heuristic ALgorithm. It makes sense from the AI world as at the time he was writing it (and even today) they were considered essential to independant thought.

I dunno, I personally think its a coincidence but its kinda funny anyway.

DeV.</font>

An explanation?

http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=HAL

---