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da6d writes "The Independent Online Edition has an article on the release of interviews Stanley Kubrick conducted of numerous prominent scientific minds of the day in preparation for the movie 2001. The topic of the interviews: extra-terrestrial intelligence. The transcripts of the interviews are due for release in book form next month. The actual footage of the interviews seems to have been swallowed by time." From the article: "Some of the interviewees have looked back at their original comments. Professor Good stood by his, including his suggestion that computers might have personality traits: 'My Windows 98 computer tells lies and often forces me to shut down improperly. Such behaviour in a human would be called neurotic.'"
'My Windows 98 computer tells lies and often forces me to shut down improperly. Such behaviour in a human would be called neurotic.'
This glass of contaminated water is deceptive in appearance and often causes death. Such behavior in a human would be called sociopathic and homicidal.
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Spielberg "saved" parts of it? The Spielberg parts are the maudlin, emotional, go out of the theatre with a warm glow, your brain be damned parts. Kubrick was fascinated by alienation, whether caused by technology, training, or personal obliviousness (try "Barry Lyndon" some time). Beautifully shot, if somewhat distant, movies.
His interpretation of "The Shining" left you the ambiguity whether Jack is having a break down, or whether there are really ghosts. He went for the long, slow, unsettlement of the audience, rather than the cheap and quick gross-out horror.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Yeah, but there was no Nethack in 1968. I think I like things better today.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Cutting edge visuals and cinematography presented with a sweeping score, a healthy dose of symbolism, and slow pacing...all released at a time when a significant proportion of the moviegoing public was experimenting with marijuana and hallucinogenics. Seriously, the word of mouth publicity about what a great movie this was to see while stoned and/or tripping had a LOT to do with its success. I had a professor who claims he saw it two or three times a week when it was out, and then years later saw it sober and couldn't believe how long some of the scenes took to unfold while nothing was happening. You don't need drugs to appreciate the film, but they don't hurt. You also don't need to have read the books to appreciate the film, and in my mind having read them DOES hurt. This is a big example of a movie ignoring a lot of what makes a book good, and it seems to get a free pass because of what it did visually. The movie and the books are both good, but in totally different ways.
"Someone somewhere had to wear pants for the first time. The meek and indecisive do not change our world." -Montville
I don't see how we have come very far - that is still how Science Fiction is portrayed to the masses. Space battles against aliens, aliens invading the earth, etc. etc. What I find fascinating with all this is the science fiction that I read does not usually have this type of plot - just most science fiction movies.
... Sagan certainly knew about the culture of religious zealotry). That movie was essentially a flop with the public. But if it had been about an intrepid anthropologist decoding mysterious communications from a lost tribe in Amazonia - critical acclaim!
Ah, the great unwashed entertainment-consuming masses, blahditty blah. Remember Contact, starring Jodie Foster - based on Sagan's book? It was pretty interesting, and a well-made film. No aliens attacking (just religious freaks blowing up things on their own, here at home
Why? Because people like watching stories about unfolding (and usually, resolved) conflict - and "subtle space stuff" doesn't usually compute with most people, just out of sheer momentum. People who like non-explosion stories about complex human interaction are so sure that they won't find that in science fiction films that the market research by the film makers tells them there's a hole there that's not worth filling. Sometimes they try, though:
How about George Clooney's Solaris? Nice sci-fi setting, but basically a morality tale about letting go of your past and your troubles. At the box office? Big snoozer. If, though, it had been about an aging butler, starring Anthony Hopkins... big bucks and Oscars for everyone.
Now, if those Merchant/Ivory fans could only bring themselves to see Lucas's last work, and see the incredibly subtle nuances brought to life as Darth Vader cries, "Noooooooooo!" they'd realize that sci fi can be riveting drama, too. Hopkins Shmopkins!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Dude, Kubrick was a genius.
He did get the book - 2001, that is. He just chose to interpret it differently. I'm actually interested in discussing what you think he missed in regards to 2001.
Shining. Kubrick thought horror films were lame. To him the greatest horror one could experience was the losing of one's own mind (he was pretty much an atheist and existentialist by nature), as one's own mind is all that you are. This was truly horrifiying to him. Interestingly enough, Nicholson is attirbuted to the following about Kubrick: Nicholson was traumatized by the harshness of the script and talked to Kubrick about lightening up the tone a bit. Kubrick responded that the film was optimistic. Nicholson was surprised and asked him to elaborate.... Kubrick's response was that anything that alludes to the existence of an afterlife is optimistic. In his own way, this was his way of alluding to his own beliefs while simultaneously acceding to hope that there is something more. The horror was to lose one's mind... the hope, that there was some form of external cogent cause... the implication in microcosm of some larger framework.
Spielberg saved AI? Are you fucking kidding me? Spielberg is a hack who rehashes his own unresolved father issues in EVERY FILM HE DOES.
Kubrick's only flaws as a filmmaker are that he had no sense of humor; therefore he couldn't give his films a variety of tone. The other is that he was a shitty editor. His films ran too long because he could not edit himself. There's a lot to be said about directors who get final cut because most who do end up producing indulgent films. Kubrick is no exception. You could trim serious fat from almost all of his films.
Oh, and Barry Lyndon is a fucking amazing film and IMO one of the most underrated films of all time.
un burrito me trampeó.
Prof. Good in fact gets it backwards: the "neurotic" diagnosis tells us less about computers than it does about us.
We do anthropomorphize, not just comparatively intelligent things like computers but cars and even utterly inanimate objects. If you stub your toe on a rock, you might well "punish" the rock by hitting it. You know it's irrational but the illusion of anthropomorphization is strong.
The lesson is that we should design our UIs knowing that people will interpret the responses as if they were coming from a human. And yeah, that means that like most people, the computers will appear to be neurotic. Windows 98 is only marginally more neurotic than some of my friends.
Never anthropomorphize computers. They don't like it.
You are totally blocking my view of the wall. - Dogbert
Kubrick's films have always been about more than they appear at first glance. He was notorious for being painstaking with every shot to make sure it contained several layers of detail. As you think that the Shining was just about one man's mental breakdown, let me ask you whether you thought it odd that the hotel lobby had a huge statue of a soldier attacking a native american woman in the lobby, native-american artwork everywhere and whether you noticed that Wendy looked more native-american as the film progressed (especially towards the end)?
Kubrick called his last film "Eyes wide shut" for a reason.
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That is the whole point of "2001," in particular the final section, "Beyond the Infinite."
Kubrick is the only filmmaker who really got the concept of alien contact--ALIEN contact--in his gut. Contact with an alien intelligence, particularly a more advanced one, would be utterly confusing to us. Even the concept and structure of "intelligence" or "technology" is likely to be so alien as to be completely incomprehensible.
2001 is a brilliant movie because it is the only movie in which the audience experiences that first-hand...the movie watcher is thrust into the same overwhelming experience the characters are, with the same utter lack of explanation or exposition. In that respect it is probably the MOST realistic alien encounter movie made.
It is a movie about an alien experience that is, itself, an alien experience. It's the ultimate expression of the "show don't tell" maxim of story making. Its supreme achievement is that it makes such an experience watchable and enjoyable.
In his version of the story, the book "2001", Clarke was hampered by the limits of the medium...he had to tell--it's writing. The only science fiction novel I've read that compares to the movie experience of "2001" is another Clarke book: the original "Rendezvous with Rama." Again the entire experience is detailed, with no explanation forthcoming or even possible (this is why the subsequent books were such a huge dissappointment).
Too many movie fans want to be *told* amazing things. That's why "Contact" was so popular, and is consistently held up as a good science fiction movie. It tells you in clear exposition all the amazing things that are happening, and it wraps it all neatly up in the end.
Ultimately most movie are deeply plot driven--they get you to empathize with a character, then they explain what happens to that character in the course of the story. Most filmmakers do not like to keep the audience in the dark, unless it is to set them up for a big "reveal."
Kubrick was so great because he simply put the viewer into the experience and didn't bother to explain it. That's why his movies are often considered disturbing, and why they stick with you. And 2001 was his best, as it tackles a completely unknown and utterly foreign subject matter that way, and still succeeds.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.