4 ms·

It certainly does. Being much, much more Clarke than Kubrick, I watch the thing in awe up till and including "My God, it's full of stars", and then usually swit

CamperBob2 9y ago
It certainly does. Being much, much more Clarke than Kubrick, I watch the thing in awe up till and including "My God, it's full of stars", and then usually switch off, as I know from then on the masterpiece will be descending into lava lamps and nonsense. I envy you the progress you'll make when you get around to re-examining some of your faulty assumptions (as we all eventually must, or at least should). Most of us don't have that much room left for personal growth and discovery in our lives.
- dang 9y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this, regardless of how much another comment annoys you. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    Personal attacks? What personal attacks? I'm on record (although it would require a pretty exhaustive Google News search to find it) as saying pretty much the same thing as the OP, right after I watched 2001 for the first time. In that case, other people on rec.movies were patient enough to give me some good advice, which was to set the Clarke book aside for the moment, give the film another try in a better viewing environment, and move past my prejudices and knee-jerk first impressions. It sounds like HN's goal is somehow to create an even less open-minded environment than 1990s-era Usenet, which will be quite a trick. But if anyone can pull it off, it'll be you guys.
    - dang 9y ago
      I read your comment as saying that another user's personal growth level falls short of your own and "most of us". Putting someone else down like that isn't ok here, regardless of what they think about a movie.
arca_vorago 9y ago
"Descending into lava lamps and nonsense." is hardly what I'd call it. Kubrick is all about subtext.
- interfixus 9y ago
  I know I am supposed to find it deep and like it to the bitter end. And boy have I tried. There'a lot of Kubrick I don't get. I have actually read A Clockwork Orange, the novel, and liked it despite its Burgessian lapsed catholic babble, but I intensely dislike the movie. And don't get me started on The Shining.
  - arca_vorago 9y ago
    What did you think of the ending difference between the book and the movie in ACO?
    - interfixus 9y ago
      Conflicted, actually, as I would have to aggree with the American expurgation of the last chapter from the novel, but I sort of feel I have to take the author's view as canonical - and Burgess famously disliked the redaction. Anyway, I gave up on deeper meaning in Burgess' work a long, long time ago. I still read him with great pleasure, but that's for the linguistic fireworks and his steamrolling, gutpunching flair for telling a story so you hear the sounds and smell the smells.
firasd 9y ago
I was very let down when I watched it some years ago--I was like, 'where's the climax?' But I've watched a few more arty ambiguous movies lately ('Under the Skin', 'The Neon Demon', 'Mother!') and recently liked 'Annihilation' despite its slow pacing and ambiguity, so I've been thinking maybe I'll like '2001' better this time if I check it out again... Something I've noticed about '2001' in the meanwhile is that its aesthetics seem very future-proof. It doesn't seem dated or plastic-y like other stuff from that era. An interesting article about the setting and social environment: 'HAL, Mother, and Father: Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien.' https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-and-father/ https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-an...
- interfixus 9y ago
  I see I'm getting hammered for my negativity, but I certainly meant it when I said in awe about the first part. It's magnificent, never mind the lunar gravity problem, which I've never seen well done on film. It's only a couple of months since I last tried - and gave up on - watching 2001 to the end. Probably my own shortcoming entirely - I see nothing but pretentious late sixties posing from the stargate and onwards.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mcguire 9y ago
    I don't know. Looking at the mental landscape of a transhuman, pretentious late-sixties posing is probably the best you can hope for.
  - itronitron 9y ago
    I tried to watch 2001 again about 8 years ago and had to put it on fast forward, at 10X speed, and even then I was still falling asleep through most of it
    - colordrops 9y ago
duncanawoods 9y ago
> I watch the thing in awe up till and including "My God, it's full of stars" Interestingly, this isn't actually said in 2001. It is in the novelization but its only said in the sequel 2010. It surprised me re-watching 2001 in the cinema a few years ago to not see it said, so I thought I might be watching a weird recut, but no. How the mind plays tricks.
- interfixus 9y ago
  My God, I think you may be right. By the way, as touched upon in Moorcock's article, Clarke would not have appreciated you calling his novel a novelization.
  - terminado 9y ago
    And 2010, the sequel, is pretty unwatchable. It is a bad movie. The worst part about the movie is Roy Scheider's fatherly internal monologue narration, which tediously explains-like-i'm-five for half the movie. So maybe that gives us a hint, about what Clark's narration would have done to 2001. That little sound bite also chimes in over and over again, sounding forced, poorly performed and with a corny distortion effect layered on top, in some presumptive attempt to resonate an idea with the audience. Maybe to remind you once more that the movie is supposed to be a sequel, despite an almost total discontinuity with 2001. It draws a lot of parallels with Stephen King and The Shining, which had provoked Stephen King to exert more creative control over movie adaptations, often with laughable (or maybe unintentionally comedic) b-movie results.
    - duncanawoods 9y ago
      For sure its no 2001 but I don't find it bad - it has many quality scifi moments I enjoy e.g. Heywood and Russian comforting each other during aerobraking, the brutally tense traversal between the spacecraft and the interactions between Chandra and Hal are interesting if uncomfortable.
    - newnewpdro 9y ago
      It's cheesy, has more of a B-movie feel to it - but I get the impression that the budget was a fraction of Kubrick's. I still enjoyed it though, and rewatch it occasionally.
DEFCON28 9y ago
I don't know where you downloaded your copy of the movie from, but I don't think that line is really in the movie. (See http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/my-god-its-full-of-stars http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/my-god-its-full-of-stars )
klenwell 9y ago
The last time I saw my grandmother was the last time I saw 2001. It was a few years ago. She was bedridden but living at home with a full-time caregiver. Hospice care had been initiated. Her bed, a full-size hospital bed, was located in the room that used to be the den. There was a large TV in the room that she spent most the day watching. It was early afternoon. When I walked in, for reasons both mysterious and comical to me, the TV was tuned to a cable channel showing 2001. It was the start of the psychedelic wormhole scene. The room was decorated, as it had been since I was a kid, in a style I'll call organic American kitsch. Her caregiver and my aunt were in the room. My grandmother was half-sleeping. She smiled when she saw me. Then she fell back to sleep. The others left the room. Standing next to her bed, I watched the movie to the end as my grandmother snored lightly beside me. I don't remember if there were commercial breaks. When it was over, I said goodbye to my grandmother and left her sleeping. I still can't figure out who turned on 2001. The caregiver usually turned the channel to Fox News. I think my aunt preferred to turn the TV off. If my dad had been there, it might have made sense. He hadn't. It was a very uncanny experience.

CamperBob2 9y ago

It certainly does. Being much, much more Clarke than Kubrick, I watch the thing in awe up till and including "My God, it's full of stars", and then usually switch off, as I know from then on the masterpiece will be descending into lava lamps and nonsense. I envy you the progress you'll make when you get around to re-examining some of your faulty assumptions (as we all eventually must, or at least should). Most of us don't have that much room left for personal growth and discovery in our lives.

dang 9y ago
Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this, regardless of how much another comment annoys you. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  Personal attacks? What personal attacks? I'm on record (although it would require a pretty exhaustive Google News search to find it) as saying pretty much the same thing as the OP, right after I watched 2001 for the first time. In that case, other people on rec.movies were patient enough to give me some good advice, which was to set the Clarke book aside for the moment, give the film another try in a better viewing environment, and move past my prejudices and knee-jerk first impressions. It sounds like HN's goal is somehow to create an even less open-minded environment than 1990s-era Usenet, which will be quite a trick. But if anyone can pull it off, it'll be you guys.
  - dang 9y ago
    I read your comment as saying that another user's personal growth level falls short of your own and "most of us". Putting someone else down like that isn't ok here, regardless of what they think about a movie.

arca_vorago 9y ago

"Descending into lava lamps and nonsense." is hardly what I'd call it. Kubrick is all about subtext.

interfixus 9y ago
I know I am supposed to find it deep and like it to the bitter end. And boy have I tried. There'a lot of Kubrick I don't get. I have actually read A Clockwork Orange, the novel, and liked it despite its Burgessian lapsed catholic babble, but I intensely dislike the movie. And don't get me started on The Shining.
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  What did you think of the ending difference between the book and the movie in ACO?
  - interfixus 9y ago
    Conflicted, actually, as I would have to aggree with the American expurgation of the last chapter from the novel, but I sort of feel I have to take the author's view as canonical - and Burgess famously disliked the redaction. Anyway, I gave up on deeper meaning in Burgess' work a long, long time ago. I still read him with great pleasure, but that's for the linguistic fireworks and his steamrolling, gutpunching flair for telling a story so you hear the sounds and smell the smells.

firasd 9y ago

I was very let down when I watched it some years ago--I was like, 'where's the climax?' But I've watched a few more arty ambiguous movies lately ('Under the Skin', 'The Neon Demon', 'Mother!') and recently liked 'Annihilation' despite its slow pacing and ambiguity, so I've been thinking maybe I'll like '2001' better this time if I check it out again... Something I've noticed about '2001' in the meanwhile is that its aesthetics seem very future-proof. It doesn't seem dated or plastic-y like other stuff from that era. An interesting article about the setting and social environment: 'HAL, Mother, and Father: Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien.' https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-and-father/ https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-an...

interfixus 9y ago
I see I'm getting hammered for my negativity, but I certainly meant it when I said in awe about the first part. It's magnificent, never mind the lunar gravity problem, which I've never seen well done on film. It's only a couple of months since I last tried - and gave up on - watching 2001 to the end. Probably my own shortcoming entirely - I see nothing but pretentious late sixties posing from the stargate and onwards.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mcguire 9y ago
  I don't know. Looking at the mental landscape of a transhuman, pretentious late-sixties posing is probably the best you can hope for.
- itronitron 9y ago
  I tried to watch 2001 again about 8 years ago and had to put it on fast forward, at 10X speed, and even then I was still falling asleep through most of it
  - colordrops 9y ago

duncanawoods 9y ago

> I watch the thing in awe up till and including "My God, it's full of stars" Interestingly, this isn't actually said in 2001. It is in the novelization but its only said in the sequel 2010. It surprised me re-watching 2001 in the cinema a few years ago to not see it said, so I thought I might be watching a weird recut, but no. How the mind plays tricks.

interfixus 9y ago
My God, I think you may be right. By the way, as touched upon in Moorcock's article, Clarke would not have appreciated you calling his novel a novelization.
- terminado 9y ago
  And 2010, the sequel, is pretty unwatchable. It is a bad movie. The worst part about the movie is Roy Scheider's fatherly internal monologue narration, which tediously explains-like-i'm-five for half the movie. So maybe that gives us a hint, about what Clark's narration would have done to 2001. That little sound bite also chimes in over and over again, sounding forced, poorly performed and with a corny distortion effect layered on top, in some presumptive attempt to resonate an idea with the audience. Maybe to remind you once more that the movie is supposed to be a sequel, despite an almost total discontinuity with 2001. It draws a lot of parallels with Stephen King and The Shining, which had provoked Stephen King to exert more creative control over movie adaptations, often with laughable (or maybe unintentionally comedic) b-movie results.
  - duncanawoods 9y ago
    For sure its no 2001 but I don't find it bad - it has many quality scifi moments I enjoy e.g. Heywood and Russian comforting each other during aerobraking, the brutally tense traversal between the spacecraft and the interactions between Chandra and Hal are interesting if uncomfortable.
  - newnewpdro 9y ago
    It's cheesy, has more of a B-movie feel to it - but I get the impression that the budget was a fraction of Kubrick's. I still enjoyed it though, and rewatch it occasionally.

DEFCON28 9y ago

I don't know where you downloaded your copy of the movie from, but I don't think that line is really in the movie. (See http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/my-god-its-full-of-stars http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/my-god-its-full-of-stars )

klenwell 9y ago

The last time I saw my grandmother was the last time I saw 2001. It was a few years ago. She was bedridden but living at home with a full-time caregiver. Hospice care had been initiated. Her bed, a full-size hospital bed, was located in the room that used to be the den. There was a large TV in the room that she spent most the day watching. It was early afternoon. When I walked in, for reasons both mysterious and comical to me, the TV was tuned to a cable channel showing 2001. It was the start of the psychedelic wormhole scene. The room was decorated, as it had been since I was a kid, in a style I'll call organic American kitsch. Her caregiver and my aunt were in the room. My grandmother was half-sleeping. She smiled when she saw me. Then she fell back to sleep. The others left the room. Standing next to her bed, I watched the movie to the end as my grandmother snored lightly beside me. I don't remember if there were commercial breaks. When it was over, I said goodbye to my grandmother and left her sleeping. I still can't figure out who turned on 2001. The caregiver usually turned the channel to Fox News. I think my aunt preferred to turn the TV off. If my dad had been there, it might have made sense. He hadn't. It was a very uncanny experience.