2001: A Space Odyssey

[Feathas]

I don't know how everyone considered it boring, it has some of the best cinematography and greatest shots of all time.

Rob Ager's analysis is quite interesting too if you have the patience for it, probably not if you didn't for 2001 though

It is not my favorite Kubrick though

[808billdo]

Originally Posted by bighaben

I'm all for slower movies if they are at least engaging. This movie was terrible at hooking tHe audience, instead we get a borefest of epic porportions. Don't get me wrong parts of the movie were amazingly well executed and deserve some praise, but 20 minutes of greatness is not worth the 2 hours of struggling to find a reason to keep watching the movie.

well the movie received critical acclaim for its accuracy regarding physics and space, lol it's other movies that have clouded our perception of what space travel really is. u say the movie is boring, endless, doesn't hook? the same could probably be said about space. space isn't some glorious shoot-out like star wars perceives it to be. it's boring, black, lonely, and endless, something the film captures very well. no sound, as someone mentioned earlier, so kubrick decidedly limited the dialogue in the film, and instead let the score do the speaking.

this movie is a natural beauty. as time goes on, more people begin to recognize its brilliance, b/c it is well made and doesn't play on corny animation or cgi. filmmakers appreciate the actual time and labor put into the production, which is ENORMOUS when u compare it to a film that moves quickly but is all CGI: lets say transformers, which will probably have no replay value 5 years from now.

[1classydude]

I liked the book (written and released I think simultaneously with the movie, right?), but the movie wasn't my cup of tea. The beginning wasn't very clear (though I knew what was supposd to be happening) and nothing else was either. And holy cow was it boring. You can tell me it's great and all, and I see people still praising it today, but I'm not sure I'll ever really appreciate it. It may have been good for its time, but if I can't stay awake during a movie it can't be one of the best of all time.

[808billdo]

did u stay awake for citizen kane?

lol anyway yes the book and screenplay were written simultaneously, and i do believe the film has garnished much more praise today than it had received when it first opened. but most of kubrick's films do tend to shine after the fact.

[Blinking Spirit]

Originally Posted by Feathas

I don't know how everyone considered it boring, it has some of the best cinematography and greatest shots of all time.

Cinematography and pacing are two very different aspects of a film. It is possible for amazing cinematography to be badly mispaced and, thus, boring.

[bighaben]

Originally Posted by 808billdo

well the movie received critical acclaim for its accuracy regarding physics and space, lol it's other movies that have clouded our perception of what space travel really is. u say the movie is boring, endless, doesn't hook? the same could probably be said about space. space isn't some glorious shoot-out like star wars perceives it to be. it's boring, black, lonely, and endless, something the film captures very well. no sound, as someone mentioned earlier, so kubrick decidedly limited the dialogue in the film, and instead let the score do the speaking.

this movie is a natural beauty. as time goes on, more people begin to recognize its brilliance, b/c it is well made and doesn't play on corny animation or cgi. filmmakers appreciate the actual time and labor put into the production, which is ENORMOUS when u compare it to a film that moves quickly but is all CGI: lets say transformers, which will probably have no replay value 5 years from now.

Nothing you mention here means a damn thing when it comes to how watchable the movie is. Sure, it's art, and it's art I can appreciate but it's a boring movie with abhorant pacing. It's a form of entertainment first and foremost and the movie fails at being entertainment.

Also don't think about bringing Star Wars into this, anyone with a brain can figure out the two movies are not comparable at all. I've seen many great movies that moved at glacial speeds and enjoyed them greatly. I've also enjoyed my fair share of Kubrick films.

[( N_S )]

beauty is in the eye of the beholder is what we can learn from these (rather futile) discussions

[808billdo]

Originally Posted by bighaben

Nothing you mention here means a damn thing when it comes to how watchable the movie is. Sure, it's art, and it's art I can appreciate but it's a boring movie with abhorant pacing. It's a form of entertainment first and foremost and the movie fails at being entertainment.

Also don't think about bringing Star Wars into this, anyone with a brain can figure out the two movies are not comparable at all. I've seen many great movies that moved at glacial speeds and enjoyed them greatly. I've also enjoyed my fair share of Kubrick films.

i don't really care how unwatchable u feel the movie is. about 5,000 film critics, who know much more about film than u or i ever will, will disagree with you on that one.

also i wasn't trying to promote it's "watchability" to you at all. i was explaining the filmmaker's reasoning behind the pace and silence of the film. if you don't understand that, i don't know what to tell you.

who was comparing this to star wars? i simply stated that movies like star wars have impacted/ fantasized are views of space/sci-fi while other movies, like 2001, give it a more realistic illustration.

[Feathas]

Originally Posted by Blinking Spirit

Cinematography and pacing are two very different aspects of a film. It is possible for amazing cinematography to be badly mispaced and, thus, boring.

Man you took that a lot drier than I meant it. I'm aware that I care a lot, lot more about cinematography than most people. I guess I'm just surprised with how impatient people are given that I'm from allegedly the most impatient generation of recent time.

The only time I got at all bored was ironically during the stargate scene; as others have mentioned I actually liked that it gave me a lot of time to think.

[dcartist]

Originally Posted by Blinking Spirit

This is ironic on so many levels.

Thats hilarious. Yeah like 1984 never gets dated either.

Originally Posted by BigHaben

bighaben I'm all for slower movies if they are at least engaging. This movie was terrible at hooking tHe audience, instead we get a borefest of epic porportions. Don't get me wrong parts of the movie were amazingly well executed and deserve some praise, but 20 minutes of greatness is not worth the 2 hours of struggling to find a reason to keep watching the movie.

I am with you. And for me particularly because the whole first contact thing itself is not much of a payoff at all.

I think the irritating thing is that certain people try to argue that not liking the movie is some kind of negative reflection on you.

They feel the movie is "objectively good", therefore your inability to enjoy the experience means you suck on some level (ADD, Transformers advocate, no taste in cinematography, whatever).

A lot of people are bored as hell by the movie. Simple as that. It's a made up story about made up aliens, an implausible first contact scenario, with a lot of arbitrary imagery at the end signifying something that is supposed to be of deep significance... Using dated looking space ships in a timeframe that is incompatible with current events, that may have been cutting age at the time they were made, but that was 54 YEARS AGO!

Movie was made in 1968!

Today is 2012.

2012 is to 1968, as 1968 is to WW-I. Not even WW-II, but World War ONE!

Which makes it an impressive achievement for it's time, an admirable movie, and fascinating for film buffs. But that doesn't make it enjoyable for most people. The movie is not timeless at all. It has an expiration date printed right on the DVD!

Human drama and interaction might be considered timeless. Visual razzle dazzle tends to not be.

World War ONE... Yeah.

[Morphling]

Originally Posted by LogicX

I couldn't get through more than a half hour of Blade Runner.

Please try again. So so SOOOOOO good. Even if only the basis of what he does visually in that movie. It is just ****ing stunning throughout. The color, the lighting, the atmosphere..

re: 2001, A Space Odyssey: I admit the pacing is kinda bad but I actually like lots of pauses. I try and figure out what the director (presumably doing it on purpose) is trying to push me to think about during each pause. It is torturous, but kinda enjoyable when you hold it up next to 99% of today's movies where it's all

Spoiler:

WHIZ-BANG-F-Bomb-SMASH-BANG-F-Bomb-CARCHASE-OMG EXPLOSIONS!!

A modern example of this kinda thing was, surprisingly, Drive. It was FULL of pauses, almost bordering on unsettling. It improved the movie, imo.

[Jay13x]

Movie pacing has sped up considerably in the last twenty years. Most young americans today probably wouldn't be able to sit through Three Days of the Condor, or other movie classics. I love old Samurai movies and old Westerns (which frequently borrowed plots from those Samurai movies). Sometimes you just have to let something reach a slow boil. It's why John Carpenter's The Thing was so much better than the recent prequel. But when I try to watch some of these movies with friends, unless they have that classic cheese factor to enjoy, they can't really watch them.

On the flip side, I'm one of those who didn't like Blade Runner. I was also never a fan of 2001: a Space Odysee either.

[Blinking Spirit]

Originally Posted by dcartist

Using dated looking space ships in a timeframe that is incompatible with current events, that may have been cutting age at the time they were made, but that was 54 YEARS AGO!

Movie was made in 1968!

Today is 2012.

2012 is to 1968, as 1968 is to WW-I. Not even WW-II, but World War ONE!

Double-check your figures.

Originally Posted by Jay13x

Movie pacing has sped up considerably in the last twenty years. Most young americans today probably wouldn't be able to sit through Three Days of the Condor, or other movie classics.

Three Days of the Condor, nothing. I know a teenager who had a hard time sitting through Die Hard.

Die Hard.

So his father, older brother and I mocked his masculinity savagely to keep him awake through the thing. It was for his own good. He'll thank us in ten years.

But until that incident, I didn't really realize that, yeah, compared to modern films, the greatest Christmas action movie of all time is relatively slow.

[Feathas]

Originally Posted by Blinking Spirit

Three Days of the Condor, nothing. I know a teenager who had a hard time sitting through Die Hard.

Die Hard.

So his father, older brother and I mocked his masculinity savagely to keep him awake through the thing. It was for his own good. He'll thank us in ten years.

But until that incident, I didn't really realize that, yeah, compared to modern films, the greatest Christmas action movie of all time is relatively slow.

That's pretty... wow.

Can he only make it through Crank or something?

[808billdo]

Originally Posted by dcartist

I think the irritating thing is that certain people try to argue that not liking the movie is some kind of negative reflection on you.

They feel the movie is "objectively good", therefore your inability to enjoy the experience means you suck on some level (ADD, Transformers advocate, no taste in cinematography, whatever).

A lot of people are bored as hell by the movie. Simple as that. It's a made up story about made up aliens, an implausible first contact scenario, with a lot of arbitrary imagery at the end signifying something that is supposed to be of deep significance... Using dated looking space ships in a timeframe that is incompatible with current events, that may have been cutting age at the time they were made, but that was 54 YEARS AGO!

no, not liking the movie is not a negative reflection on anyone at all. i don't think anyone even suggested that. an opinion is an opinion.

if u don't like the story of the film, or the pacing and wide shots, that's fine too. it did win an oscar for visual effects and was also nominated for best screenplay, so u not following the story probably says a lot more about you than the film.

if u can't appreciate the labor that went into the visual effects or cinematography, u probably just don't understand the laborious techniques used in making the movie, and i don't mean that disrespectfully. every director has their own style, and kubrick was, to say the least, a perfectionist.

timeless: not affected by the passage of time or changes in fashion.

this movie is in the top 100, has more critical acclaim today than it did when it first came out, and we are still talking about even today on this mtg message board.

50+ years old yet still couldn't have been done any better today.

the film is definitely timeless. people's attention spans, not so timeless.