Behind every man alive stand thirty ghosts

December 11, 2004 8:16 PM

2001: A Space Odyssey
"This site showcases the printed program for Stanley Kubrick's film, 2001: A Space Odyssey."
via Haddock
posted by thatwhichfalls (14 comments total)

Is this real?
posted by Cryptical Envelopment at 8:34 PM on December 11, 2004

[this is sweet]
posted by neckro23 at 8:44 PM on December 11, 2004

Is this real?
[extreme geek] It looks like something put together from the original notes Clarke made - a lot of that stuff ended up in Lost Worlds of 2001[/extreme geek]
Thanks for the link though.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:50 PM on December 11, 2004

Thanks, thatwhichfalls. It's easy to make words look like the screenplay and I don't have the film here except for the Strauss and Ligeti soundtrack stuff.
posted by Cryptical Envelopment at 9:03 PM on December 11, 2004

I don't have the film here except for the Strauss and Ligeti soundtrack stuff.
Me too. That wasn't supposed to be the soundtrack though - see here
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:20 PM on December 11, 2004

Cryptical Envelopment: That looks like the screenplay that I've read but I read it many years ago in Penn State's Library so I might be misremembering it. I do remember for sure that there was a narrator and at least twice as much expository dialog than ended up in the film. Much more like the novel than the film turned out.

Oh and that printed program is very cool, good thing its not on Ebay or I'd bid on it.
posted by octothorpe at 9:23 PM on December 11, 2004

Super groovy. I liked the contact sheets better than the HTML. It's unfortunate that the text copy was so bad, though. The ideas were spot-on, but the wording was often painful. The Milky Way is our galaxy, by the way, and not in any sense a universe, local or not. Still, this is a cool companion piece to one of the greatest films evah.
posted by squirrel at 10:19 PM on December 11, 2004

Amazing that a science fiction film from the 60s still stands as a masterpiece of the genre. A real testament to Kubrick and Clark. Thanks for the link.

I wonder if anyone has considered digitally remastering the film (not changing it at all, just repairing any damage from the original, color correction, etc.) and re-releasing it? It's a film I bet a lot of younger folks haven't seen and would appreciate.
posted by mstefan at 10:25 PM on December 11, 2004

Thanks for the link.
I'm totally amazed by how fresh the design looks given its age. Very cool...
(oh, and I agree with squirrel's opinion about the contact sheets).
posted by numlok at 11:17 PM on December 11, 2004

My favorite film ever! Amon Tobin has produced a masterpiece CD with a very similar feel, if anyone is interested. Actually, he uses visuals from the movie in his live act . . . completely haunting, for lack of a better word.
posted by biochemicle at 11:35 PM on December 11, 2004

Toynbee ideas in Kubrick's 2001 resurrect dead on planet Jupiter.

Discussed here.
posted by growli at 11:53 PM on December 11, 2004

That's a fascinating link, thatwhichfalls! I'd love to hear North's score! I will soon rent "Spartacus" (I've never seen it) and I'll look for North's 2001.

...and North himself had used some of the [2001] ideas in other compositions.

I bet! What an incredible let down for a composer at the time and after! And it does happen often, all the time to composers who aren't John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith, but only he can claim to have written an original score for "2001" (well, I bet a few other's have and will, it's that kind of movie!). Often these days as a composer a great bit of scoring - your favourite cue, your greatest contribution - will be replaced with a few bars and the chorus of a saleable "soundtrack song". It's easy to think that the spirit of the "original score by" credit died when Bernard Herrmann finished "Taxi Driver"..

Kubrick was always different, though, and I am sure Mr. North took solace in future Kubrick soundtracks.

I'm sorry for my lengthy derail here, but whenever I think of Kubrick I immediately think of his intense use of "classical" music and his "anti-scores". As your link describes, Kubrick rough-cut his films ("temporary tracks", ha!) to orchestral music, and the music he often used is some of my very favourite music. His use of Ligeti (again), Penderecki and Béla Bartók's "Music for Strings, percussion and Celeste" in The Shining is so terrifyingly perfect. I can see him editing frames to bar numbers (rather than the reverse) and matching filmic sequences to musical transitions. Kubrick is the only major director I can think of who took such serious music music that seriously when he used it. I'm sure that he timed certain (many?) scenes in his movies to match up perfectly with his favourite performances of great far-out music. And as a musician (and son of a film composer) I love him for that.

Well, enough! I'm off to listen to some Polish music, and I'll be renting "2001" tomorrow. Thanks, thatwhichfalls!
posted by Cryptical Envelopment at 11:54 PM on December 11, 2004

[this is something wonderful]

2001 remains one of my long-time favs. 2010 was sadly rendered and badly directed. i'm eagerly awaiting more news on the rumor that 2061 is in pre-production.
posted by moonbird at 10:16 AM on December 12, 2004

A question for the 2001 geeks: Anybody notice a shot in The Incredibles that looked like an homage to 2001's images of the pods inside their bay? A shot of the monorail cars in a station tickled something at the back of my brain, but I'm not certain about it.
posted by NortonDC at 9:00 PM on December 13, 2004