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Looking Back On Looking Forward
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.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
In 1968, there were fast cars, good music and free sex.
In 2005, we watch movies about fast cars, good music and free sex.
I disagree about the bit about Win98 'lying' and being 'neurotic'. It's fun to anthropomorphize but Win98 is a product of various engineering compromises that allowed the Windows userbase to move as seamlessly as possible from DOS to NT (a process that took ~8 years). Its crashes etc are completely explainable when you understand the limitations of its core OS and in particular its driver model.
What is more interesting is that Prof Good is passing off behavior he doesn't understand (I'm willing to bet he's NOT a Win32 dev) as 'neurotic'. Makes one wonder how we'll see mentally challenged people once we have a far better understanding of the brain than we have now...
Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
Of course- if you were the last of your family to actually do something useful, you'd be neurotic too.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
A few days ago, Fark had a link to an explanation of Kubrick's "2001". I didn't get the movie when I watched it a few years ago, but this explanation seems plausible and made sense (to me) where the movie didn't.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
Off topic perhaps, but the title of this article reminds me of the afterward of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
This book has a lot to say about Ancient Greek perspectives and their meaning but there is one perspective it misses. That is their view of time. They saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs with the past receding away before their eyes.
When you think about it, that's a more accurate metaphor than our present one. Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?
Ten years after the publication of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance the Ancient Greek perspective is certainly appropriate. What sort of future is coming up from behind I don't really know. But the past, spread out ahead, dominates everything in sight.
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.
I wonder what stupid things Carl Sagan said that he wasn't willing to have his statements published without having "editorial control"?
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
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
What about Dr. Strangelove or Full Metal Jacket?
I have to disagree with you there. Steve had to add that hokey - schmaltzy ending with the future aliens (or robots) giving "David" his wish of one more day with his "mother". If he left the boy/robot wishing from the "Blue Fairy" under the ocean as the ending, it would have been a great and dark ending. Instead, it's a Steve Spielberg pop-corny ending. Of course if I knew anything, I'd be the billionaire movie producer/director.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
And to think I had jsut used my last mod point. *sigh* I definitely agree. AI had moments when you can tell Speilberg blunted what Kubrick would have done. The scene where the android undress I think is the most blatant one. Speilberg stops the undressing... where as I believe Kubrick would have the others carry on and snicker and she would be naked and oblivous and the point would have had much more impact. As for the shining: King makes great books... or at least become great when rewritten by someone else to add depth, The Shining is a prime example.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Did not "get" the book? He co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke, after which the novel was written.
Ummm, you do know that Kubrick and Clarke wrote the screenplay first, and Clarke "novelized" it later, right?
Full Metal jacket... well I loved the first part... Oh wait, that's the one Kubrick added after because the movie was too short and was disatisfied with.
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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
Are you saying that the driver model is not a part of Windows? Or that the templars forced Microsoft to use that driver model? Because otherwise, the driver model is a core part of the OS design, and if it is unstable and errorprone, then that makes the OS total garbage.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
"Warm glow?" That's not the feeling I got from that movie (to avoid a spoiler, I'll just point out LOTS OF ICE)!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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
Take their theology, too. When you look around the world, which makes more sense, that the universe is run by a single all-loving, all-knowing all-powerful God, or passel of flawed, vindictive, egotistical childlike brutes?
Play Command HQ online
The article really doesn't tell us much, apart from the notion that ideas about extraterrestrial life project a society's current fears and preoccupations, but then we knew that.
Perhaps our ideas have changed a bit in the last 20-30 years, though. These days it seems that we are slowly coming round to the notion that extraterrestrial life does exist and is more of a given than a wild speculation, so the next and pressing question is what sort of life?
You can see the old projections in the popular coverage of the Mars explorers, where the theme seems to be that life, if it existed, is or was on a collision course with the planet whose conditions fostered it in the first place and then snuffed it out. Cue global warming, etc.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
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.
That's just a bit strong, don't you think? While some people consider 2001 to be boring, and there are many people that think The Shining was a mistake; you shouldn't fall into the trap of lumping all Kubrick movies together. Remember, this is the man that directed Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, and Full Metal Jacket.
For the record, I love Kubrick. Even the movies that everyone else hates.
The Shining Redux appears to capture the spirit of the book much better.
Humm you do know the screenplay was based on previous short stories by Clarke ?
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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.
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That's quite the opposite of the Zen (and Taoist) view of the past and the future. While many think that it is important to look to the past to predict the future, that is as effective as examining the wake of a ship to determine where it is going.
Even looking at the wake to determine where it has been is only effective for a short time.
Remember, the past does not exist anymore and the future has never existed. There is only now.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
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.
"Makes one wonder how we'll see mentally challenged people once we have a far better understanding of the brain than we have now...
Hi, I'm from the future. Our aging deity, now 2948 years old, clearly messed up on the original the user interface, yet the programming is surprisingly tidy. The mentally challenged can be considered akin to, oh dear, what was that OS from the 20th century . . . oh yes! DOS. Consider them the DOS of humanity. Not so pretty on the outside, but comprehensive from within.
A B A C A B B
Never anthropomorphize computers. They don't like it.
You are totally blocking my view of the wall. - Dogbert
I disagree about the bit about Win98 'lying' and being 'neurotic'.
But would you say that Win98 is the product of a deranged mind?
May the Maths Be with you!
A few years ago David Stork published a series of interviews anwith computer scientists about progress in artifical intelligence compared to the movie 2001. Stork is a cognitive scientist based in the S.F. area. Video's of these interviews were shown on PBS.
This material only looks at the computer side of 2001. Kubrick's interviews also looked at space travel, exterrestial intelligence, and potential social changes 35 years hence.
is it that Cliff posted this, or that I have a HIGH MEMEBER number that you took the one point from me and did format it?! cool!
Sig Hansen?
'My Windows 98 computer tells lies and often forces me to shut down improperly. Such behaviour in a human would be called neurotic.'"
Hey Stanley, you might want to try Ubuntu. It's behaviour in relation to a human would be called stable.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Dude, Solaris was a powerful film. Claustrophobic.
There's an interesting film out right now called Stay, also sometimes claustrophobic.
I work in film and here's the general audience's biggest gripe about sci-fi movies. No one wants to feel dumb. This is marketing 101 - the reason why films are rehashed and plotlines redone over and over is because only a small minority are comfortable in uncertainty... with not knowing. It's a manifestation of the adventurers spirit.
So you do a smart sci-fi film that challenges a Christian's notion of the universe, and they get scared. They dont want that feeling... that they're wrong, that they don't know. So next summer, another alien space movie will probably come out, and some elite team will be sent it to investigate, the lesbian gunner will die first and the black guy second, etc. and most will eat popcorn and they'll go home satisfied that aliens can never defeat us with our crude projectile weapons, religious sentiment and irrepressible warrior ethos. It's collective masturbation. And they'll polish their guns and dust off their bibles unafraid.
I've worked as a script consultant and 90 percent of my work over the past year has been to "dumb-down" scripts. Three modalities: get a PG-13 at the script stage, nothing more complex than a sixth grade level (aforementioned PG-13 rating; nothing troubling; no f-words, etc; avoid religion, no frontal nudity), after which point the one-liner guy comes onto the script and does what is called a polish (read: "smarten" up the dialogue with one-liners and slang, etc).
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A.I. should have ended with the boy at the foot of the statue but NOOOOOOO, Spielberg had to tack on a Spielberg ending.
Without being to leet, OMG, ROFLMAO!!
That shows what clever editing can do.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
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.
;-)
Erm... Doctor Strangelove?
Even 2001 has a brilliant joke - that being the terrifyingly long instruction sheet for the zero-gravity toilet...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
lol, I maintain that he didn't have a sense of humor. I'm a huge Kubrick fan, btw.
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...days gone by have to say about the future we live in today then I recommend Today, Then, a collection of essays written about 100 years ago about now. It's amazing just how off the mark most people are. But there are some great insights: my favorite being one essay that opens saying something like "All mail will be electronic". Not bad for over 100 years ago! I don't recall reading even the slightest hint that number crunching machines would have any significance in anyone's life.
Barry Lyndon - fantastic.
I love the lighting. This is one of my favorite period pieces.
In the tone of lighting, The Musketeer was also lit authenticly. Most people hated the Musketeer but I enjoyed it as a matinee type of popcorn flick. Just sit and enjoy the chop-socky action.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
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.
I have to respectfully disagree with your comment here. He had a sense of humour, but it was dark and satirical: Dr. Strangelove (which is still hilarious to this day), Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket.
You know, this looking back can be facinating. Humankind succeeded in landing on the Moon (granted with effort) in 40 years (counting from pre-WWII to 1969). Thirty six years later we're struggling to go back. Is that a fair description? I think so. While we have progressed in many areas, we are hardly any better at getting off this planet than we were back then. Legend has it that when 2001: A Space Odyssey was first shown to NASA employees, they were awed by the vision of space exploration the movie portrayed. Up to that point, it is said that NASA was thinking in terms of sensor and robotic exploration. Sound familiar? It should, since that is the kind of mission we design today without exception. Apparently, it looks like the vision in the movie failed to inspire a real change. While I think robotic exploration is the right first step, how long does it take to make that second step of sending human explorers?
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Jesus Christ, do you people need a large blinking neon sign pointing out every time a remark is tongue-in-cheek? It's funny. Laugh.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Yes, yes--loosely based on an idea from the Clarke story The Sentinel. The story involved finding something on the moon which had been left waiting for mankind to grow up enough to find it. It doesn't change the fact that what the GP said is entirely true. That idea was expanded by the two of them into a new story and screenplay which Clarke later novelized.
Sorry, I'm a writer. That makes you raw material.
I willingly concede that I could be the one without the sense of humor. I do agree with you that even in humor he ventured towards darker aspects of things.
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Killjoy
Fourty-two!
If you liked the Soderberg/Clooney version, you should watch Tarkovsky's orginal. Tarkovsky's penchant for dragging the viewer through some scenes at near-real-time adds significantly to the weight of story. It captures Stanislaw Lem's book much more effectively. Be warned, though, it doesn't mate well with modern western film sensibilities. It's too long, too slow, and you have to think too damn much.
Sorry, I'm a writer. That makes you raw material.
I'm disappointed but not surprised that you see things this way. Too many directors want to make that huge blockbuster money maker. And if that's what you want, go for it. But it ain't art.
However, I suspect that if Hollywood were interested in another film making model, they might want to explore the idea of running these scripts you "dumb down" in a largely unmolested state. These films would not have to be big budget films. In fact, now that movie quality screens are popping up in homes across the country and now that broadband is able to deliver such films to audiences never before thought of as economical, perhaps there is a new business model for the film industry: Films of cultural importance about real subjects of concern to be shown in micro markets.
Here's the funny part: Some of these will make it fabulously well. Remember Clerks? The Blair Witch Project? The amazing thing is that they made it at all. This could be a distribution vehicle for many more.
As you pointed out, this crap is getting too predictable. Now you know why I don't bother going to first run movies much any more. What the industry needs is a new business model that doesn't depend on insanely expensive yet pointlessly drab movies.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
It is possible to miss the subtle humour behind somebody beating the crap out of an old man while singing "Singin' In The Rain".
There is a one-liner-guy? I imagine doing small talk with him...
Me: Hey pal, don't you hate your job, you know, dumbing down good scripts?
OLG: Yes, it is a dirty job. BUT SOMEONE HAS TO DO IT! *smiles*
"Warm glow?" That's not the feeling I got from that movie (to avoid a spoiler, I'll just point out LOTS OF ICE)!
Then you haven't seen The Shining - Redux. There was a contest where people took movies, recut their previews, added different music and voiceover to make it seem like a diffent movie. On the page linked above, a link to the Quicktime file is in the Blue Box near the top of the page and a mirror is just below the picture.
But why is the rum gone?
In case those links don't work, try this one.
But why is the rum gone?
I don't watch film because of my biggest gripe about Hollywood movies. Nobody wants a movie to treat you like you are dumb.
On the other hand, it's easier to make money by aiming regurgitated crap at the mainstream than to aim at the MENSA crowd. But then on the gripping hand, there's a lot less competition up at the top end...
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Dude, I didn't say that I saw things that way.
My first script consult gig; I made the mistake of voicing general discomfort with the dumbing down process and lost the contract.
I'm not voicing my opinion; this is the machine. This is the way Hollywood goes about making wide swath films. I agree that it is not art.
You have to understand a bit about how films get made.
Studios do not spend their own money on making films. They finance films using loan/credit/financing structures. So as a producer of a film, it is in your vested interest to produce the biggest budget movies possible for two reasons: 1. because producers collect around 10% of the budget as a fee, and 2. high budget films condition the audience against lower budget films which stifles innovation and competition and prevents decentralization of the industry. I watched Primer with my girlfriend (now mind you Primer is a GREAT film) and all she complained about for 90 minutes, was how cheap the film LOOKED. More on Primer later.
When a film's budget approaches 100 million, it has to appeal wide swath. This isn't an artistic demand - this is a corporate demand, coming from finance execs that have to contend with intractable investors. So it's damn near impossible to get a singular vision film made at that scale because of the financial strictures involved. It just doesn't happen.
Studios make money off the library and make structured payments on debt. Individuals (executives, actors, etc.) draw individual weath from the system because they are getting paid from those same VC//investment/banking funds. There is little room in this structure for art.
The system is horribly corrupt and bloated. Since investment funds are being used, everyone in the revenu stream tries to draw the fattest chunk of cash they can, further inflating costs.
What you mention is actually being done. I'll find the link and post it later, but an arthouse distribution network is being currently designed. Mark Cuban's Landmark Theaters is also considered an arthouse distribution model, andhe's experimenting with day-and-date via DVD and digital distribution.
The ability to do an artistic film is directly correlational to the cost. A great movie that came out recently is Primer, a sci fi done by some engineer turned filmmaker in Texas, I think. He did it for 7 grand of his own money, shot on super 16 mm. You want to be an artist in the film industry, be prepared to suffer for your art form. He got a film deal out of it, butthe film had made little to no cash - and he'll probably be presented with some hackneyed stuff so he can cut his teeth in a more professional setting. It's the way.
I personally am using some of the cash from my script consulting to do my own film. The subject: Stanley Kubrick of course. I'm gonna focus specifically on his early years, when he hustled chess in Washington Square Park in New York.
To belatedly answer your questions. Do I want to "make" art, yes. Do I want Hollywood cash. Yes. Can I do both. Yes.
Hollywood responds to the critical mass audience, the lowest common denominator.
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The cars in the movies now may be faster, but real life is still the place to get good music and free sex.
Yes, I hated the Spielberg A.I. ending too that ended up being more creepy than anything. Kubric, saw the problems and how pointless the struggle was and that's why he never got around to making the film IIRC.
Also, who would have thought that the twin towers would not be there for the next ice age??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
On the other hand, it's easier to make money by aiming regurgitated crap at the mainstream than to aim at the MENSA crowd. But then on the gripping hand, there's a lot less competition up at the top end...
exactly!!!! EXACTLY!!! Now the question is how to effectively tailor to that crowd. It's been neglected for that very reason. It's really hard to consistently put out compelling content for a very discriminating audience.
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Long after its original release, I went to see 2001 on the Harvard University campus "cheap movie" showing. About 30 seconds into the opening "Moonwatcher" scenes, some wise-acre yells out "I don't understand it!" I guess that is the culture where the Lampoon comes from.
No, he had a subtle sense of humor. That's not a flaw.
The future ain't what it used to be
It's worth it, really.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
that is as effective as examining the wake of a ship to determine where it is going
Er, that's actually a pretty good way to know where the ship is going, because the ship has inertia.
Are you saying the Taoists deny that people and the organizations they create have inertia? That knowing, for example, how a person has behaved is not a pretty good basic guide to knowing how they will behave?
I'm as much into the wonderful unguessable future as the next person, but frankly, the part of the future that is completely impossible to predict is fairly small. And that's a good thing. Plenty of mundane but important facts about the future are very predictable on the basis of the past -- e.g. the Sun will come up on schedule all next week, next winter will be about as cold as this one, so I might as well not sell my warm coat and save up some money for heating bills, and in 2006 as in 2005 and 2004 four or five big hurricanes will hit the Gulf Coast, so we might as well fix those levees now while the wind's not blowing.
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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There is also the possibility that he was just being sarcastic.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The problem you'll run into there is that (at least in my experience) the MENSA crowd is nearly as diverse and fragmented ideologically as the non-2%ers are. I say "nearly" because it takes a certain inclination to even want to be tested to get into the group to begin with, so your ultra-slacker "fuck it" types are probably not as well represented in MENSA as they are at a Halo II tournament or something like that, but I think by and large that statement is true. To say that they're all "discriminating" is a certainly bit hasty.
The motivations of any particular demographic group to see a movie are varied: some go to unwind & totally escape from real life, others to learn more about real life, others to see T&A just like everyone else, etc. I'd say that the ones who are truly interested in cinema as art will find it anyway, while the others won't miss it. The key is to get the info out there where the hardcores along the entire intellectual spectrum are going to be able to find it. And then, as they say, ...Profit!
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Groucho Marx
I saw it on its original release (as a 6th grade graduation present) and again in 2001 and was amazed at how well it help up, how much more interesting it was than so much other sci-fi currently going on and how good the special effects still were.
[OffTopic] I originally saw it in a special theater in Super Cinemascope - I belive it was called - with the smell of hippies smoking pot before it started. [/OffTopic]
limitations of its core OS and in particular its driver model
I believe that marked out the driver model specifically for attention, not made it somehow separate from the core OS.
> Or that the templars forced Microsoft to use that driver model?
No, economics and engineering compromise did. At the same time Win95 was released Microsoft was beta-ing NT4 around which had a vastly superior model.
Real products always contain compromises. Things that don't, don't ship *cough* Hurd *cough*.
Well, I remember the original (1968) release of "2001," even though I was just a kid. And I think to understand its impact it's important to put it into the context of the late 60s early 70s.
Lots of people seem to think those were hopeful optimistic times, but my memory is very different. They seemed dark and chaotic times, with on the one hand amazing promise (spaceships to the Moon! transistors! jet airplanes!) and on the other depressing and scarily intractable problems (nuclear war only five minutes away, "Silent Spring" despoilation of the environment, Vietnam, assassinations, and race riots).
"2001" was absorbing on the minute-to-minute attention span level, with its passion for plausible portrayals of not too distant future technology. Lots of people wanted to see where all that moon rocket stuff might be taking us. CGI was utterly unknown! If you wanted to see it, you mostly had to use your imagination. Kubrick brought imagination to life. It was marvelous in 1968, although I admit it looks cheesy and obsessed with minor detail in the jaded present, when we are used to seeing entirely realistic "photographs" of star destroyers taking off from planets full of alien species and talking robots. The time they spent showing us what weightlessness would be like! Absurd by today's standards, naturally, but at the time it was fantastic. So that's what it's like! is how I remember viewing it.
But also "2001" reassured the dark fears we had about our future, by sketching a grand Master Plan for us that did not fail to acknowledge our present struggles with the consequences of our amazing new technology ("Open the fucking pod bay doors, Hal!") but which suggested that we would someday transcend them spectacularly, that we would master our bewildering and dangerous new tools (computers, missiles and thermonuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert) just as thoroughly as the ape-man mastered the thighbone of the antelope, because there was a plan, a purpose, or at least a general theme to our existence.
And "2001" said these things in the sardonic, skeptical mood we admired at the time. People say "2001" was predictive, or challenged complacency, or provoked insight, but I say phooey on this: it was just comfort food for the 1968 mind. It said "Yea, all these new machines and things are scary, but Fear Not for there is a Plan and you will transcend your tools as you always have. And, by the way, here's some cool previews of what it'll be like to travel to the Moon in 30 years' time. Enjoy!"
would a period be a Denial of Service attack?
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
Hey, if you love Barry Lyndon, how can you have missed the humor in the very first scenes there?
Kubrick's only flaws as a filmmaker are that he had no sense of humor
You're kidding, right? 2001 is full of tongue-in-cheek stuff. Example: A streamlined spacecraft slowly approaches and enters a rotating space station to Strauss's 'Blue Danube' waltz. It's an echo of the opening sequence in Dr. Strangelove, where a B-52 couples up to a tanker plane with romantic music. I nearly spat out my popcorn when I saw that.
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.
That's because time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I think films will soon let people express their visual ideas much like blogs let people express their thoughts. However, I hope we end up with a system where independent films can thrive without forcing people to stick with the standard approach used today. In 20 years your cellphone could probably film a few hours worth of 4k*4k video but it's going to take a more complex distribution system to nourish such talent.
PS: I am starting up a small digital distribution backbone company and would be more than happy to distribute films at full DVD quality movie at ~1.25$ a copy + whatever the producer want as their cut. To protect us from risk we would probably charge a 1k fee to verify the movie is really yours and get it into our system. But it would be a lot easier for people to operate independently if they only need ~10k viewers (anywhere in the US/on earth) at 2.25$ a pop to break even on a vary low budget film. I expect such a system could let people make more risky films where they don't have to try and fill a theater over a few days to break even. My views might be a little off but I am trying to do something to keep "Doom" style crap from being the most watched movies out their.
Holy shit, that's about the most god damned depressing thing I've read in months. Look on the bright side, there are worse jobs, at least you don't have to peddle your ass for a hit of crack.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
nope. For the most part, he's right. I'm a believer, I worship the creator, and I've spent a lot of time around churchgoing folk who like to claim they do as well. They're pretty much mostly just a bunch of terrified wackjobs hoping that the Rapture will wisk them away from the unbearable hell that is their miserable pathetic ignorant joyless lives. They tend to spend a lot of time hating other people for having fun, or going about their lives, without regard to whether that fun causes anyone else harm.
And for the most part - things that the self-proclaimed religious people oppose out of "moral absolutes" they really oppose out of fear, and they use morality as a rationalization.
My final point? The Bible is a graven image. Those who worship it are idolators.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
While I agree with you to some extent I think the "Mensa" crowd implies those people who like to make a big deal about being smart. As such they tend to try and watch "Intellectual" movies where talking about the IQ 140+ group would be more diverse.
PS: This is filtered though my father who having passed the test and showed up to a Mensa meeting said the people their where just the type of people you would expect to be active in a high IQ group. And at IQ ~158 he was wall within their acceptable range. I mean Mensa is only talking about the top 2% IQ ~ 133 or SAT 1300 which means they are more selected by simply wanting to join than being particularly smart.
I like the rationalization the Jargon File gives to the tendency of "hackers" to anthropomorphize computers. Although I imagine it might be one of ESR's charming contributions, the argument is that it's not that we're elevating computers to the levels of humans, but rather that we lower humans to the level of computers. Humans after all, are ultimately just organic mechanisms made of meat.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Technichally, remembering is an action which occurs in the present that merely gives the impression that there exists a "past" and that in this past there existed an entity which is essentially the same as "you," and that in this past you percieved something which gave you the impression of "things" happening in an external "world."
:)
Of course, calling it an "action" assumes that you are actively doing it. All you know is that you have the afforementioned sensation of remembering and that you also have a sensation of having the impression that "you" are initiating it. This impression is not neccesarily accurate.
Eastern philosophy is for geeks, western philosophy is for nerds.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
I'd actually like to talk to you about your startup.
What would your distribution model be? Some kind of DRM? Are you streaming?
un burrito me trampeó.
I think we already see mentally challenged people that way. This goes especially for people with mental illnesses (depression, schizophrenia, etc) - it is seen as an illness and hence an aberration, rather than as a fundamental part of what they are trying to be. In other words, a bug.
Grab.
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
teach reading comprehension?
It's still an early stage startup so a lot of the specifics are up in the air. As of right now I am setting up a system with it's own custom DRM that works with several video formats, a fast secure scalable backed, and a simple integrated player that works on Windows and OS X. I am more interested in getting the cost of distribution down than working with content suppliers right now. IMO focusing on a single market this early is a bad idea, if you make the right technology and you can sell it to independent films AND Hollywood AND Bollywood AND blogers ect.
For now I want to focus on selling / renting high quality video on line, but as the costs goes down I plan on being flexible enough to try out other approaches. At some point I will add video blogs. And yes I know most blogs suck, but if it's cheep enough we can run adds for any content or let them pay for the cost of distributing their own video's. Yes, you get a lot of junk blogs, but you also get people like Paul Gram, father of the modern spam filter, to provide interesting content such as "What you can't say" http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html. Heck, once things are set up we might setup an interface for school plays, (It's a hassle and lot's of people get riped off on these right now, so it's a good market to get into) but the goal is to have a good interface and then add on these features in a natural fashion rather than focusing on one and getting stuck.
PS: Yes, the goal is to make a tun of money, but the way to do it is to make a service that people like to use. If you have any ideas or want more info please email "J KIRBY JOBS" at H O T M A I L (.com). AKA jki_______mail.com
> Remember Contact...That movie was essentially a flop with the public.
Really? It's made about $101 million dollars. That's not far from the top 100 movies of all time, and is probably somewhere near 150th, because things drop off pretty quickly, as most mainstream (read: released in major theatres, widely available, etc) films make much less.
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
I should have been clearer. Contact, at the time it was released in theaters, and for what it cost to make, was considered a flop (relative to the hype) by those on the business side of things. It was definately profitable, just not in the way that they were hoping (and hyping). Why? Because they really couldn't run any ads that showed attacking aliens and whatnot... since there weren't any. A lot of the peer-to-peer fan buzz at the time was not positive, or least, didn't appreciate the somewhat more cerebral aspects of the film.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.