june gloom on 12/4/2009 at 20:41
Quote Posted by 242
It's a problem for you? Then you just can't appreciate many great deep films. It baffles me when people don't like something just because they don't understand it immediately.
"You just can't appreciate many great deep films" is an insanely bullshit copout argument. Don't presume to know what films I enjoy and appreciate on the basis of my not liking 2001's ending. Granted, I could've been clearer and pointed out that I understood the ending fairly quickly while watching it, the problem is that
I still thought it sucked. I'm sorry, but not every movie has to be full of obscure symbolism to be "deep."
Martin Karne on 12/4/2009 at 20:46
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
I don't think 2001 would make any sense whatsoever if you changed the ending. I guess the ending is confusing to a lot of people, but most people don't seem to understand the HAL sequences, either. It doesn't really help that Clarke's followup novels (including 2010) each had a unique focus rather than being part of a cohesive series.
Have I even mentioned this more than once already or people is simply thick around the web this days, I do get the ending, I do get the whole movie, simply I dislike the monkey business and the LSD hallucinating effects.
Kolya on 12/4/2009 at 20:51
It wasn't trying to be deep and obscure and it didn't use symbols for symbols' sake. The ending was just the best way Stan could think of to present a transition that would be incomprehensible for us by it's definition.
Just like the apes wouldn't understand or value the use of instruments before they made that step.
Martin: We're getting down to this then: I only like polished space ships, but not apes and weird things.
That's fine actually. Tastes differ.
Jackablade on 12/4/2009 at 21:50
Quote Posted by dethtoll
If you would like to explain what the fuck that has to do with anything, go ahead.
You, in response to snauty: You are the last person to tell anyone they didn't get something.
Doesn't unchecked animosity make you feel a bit miserable?
june gloom on 13/4/2009 at 00:45
No. And how does that constitute a "grudge"?
And anyway, as to the ending, Kubrick got the incomprehensible part down, at least. Disclaimer: the floating flashy colours thing I didn't actually have a problem with- it was everything after that.
Jason Moyer on 13/4/2009 at 01:10
I'm not a big fan of the star gate sequence (because of its length more than anything) but I thought the very end, where he's shedding his corporeal form was the most haunting part of the picture. At least, I assume that's what's happening since I haven't looked it up on Wikipedia.
demagogue on 13/4/2009 at 01:35
I thought the stargate scene was appropriate for the time it was made in; it still gets the job done today but is dated in its execution, which distracts more than inspires more experienced and jaded audiences of today. I try to imagine a more innocent audience seeing that sort of thing for the first time. And I wouldn't want to cut it
now just because of us.
But I agree with Jason, yeah, putting that aside, the final "white room" sequence culminating in the spacebaby is just as inspired today as ever IMO.
Of the interpretations out there about it, I'm with the story that it's a metaphorical readying room for the next stage in evolution, playing off Neizsche's idea of humans as a bridge between apes and supermen. Our consciousness can't comprehend the next stage, but what I like about the readying room idea is that we can just grasp the edges of comprehending the
transition, and that's what I dig about it. E.g., We can't comprehend how we'll view time and space then, but we can get the slightly sick feeling of our previous experience being stretched and morphed during the transition.
Totally switching gears: when I hear "Stanley Kubrick" these days, I tend to think about the retro-trippy (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8J98ZeS-ME) Mogwai video.
I really like this for some reason.
Muzman on 13/4/2009 at 03:22
Kubrick's another one whose love I just don't get. He's got an enviable track record with some genuine classics but I really can't see this supernatural genius that so many ascribe to him. He's a craftsman among many as far as I'm concerned. He's interesting and different but not much different from similarly obsessive contemporaries like Herzog. But all time greatest or some similar accolade? Not while genuine revolutionaries with massive bodies of work like Hitchcock and Bergman have graced the planet.
I'm one of those who think The Shining, is a flat out bad movie; clunky, overacted, not scary and even dull. I suspect it's very much of its time and I missed the boat there.
Anyway, Full Metal Jacket is probably top of the heap for me, but most of his big name stuff should at least be seen.
(Wow, seven year bump. It better be one hell of a baby)
Sulphur on 13/4/2009 at 07:09
Quote Posted by Kolya
And the "LSD-trip" is not just an amazing effect and it's length well in tune with the pacing of the movie and having a meaning instead of just being eye-candy, it still looks fucking great after all these years. Something no one will say about today's CGI effects in 10 years to come.
Can you imagine how people at the end of the 60s must have felt watching this in a cinema? And I don't mean drugged hippies, but your average family, being subsumed in this halo of light. They must have felt as if they're making the next step in evolution right now themselves, catapulted into the stars.
The first moon landing took place one year later.
I admire your perspective on that, Kolya. I really would have liked to have seen it that way. But that's not the case with the here and the now.
Today, when we've already explored Mars via rovers and shot satellites at the outer planets of the Solar System and beyond, the Stargate sequence gets its point across with the light show, then overstays its welcome for far too long. Long enough for today's average, CGI-jaded person to check his watch and tap his foot in impatience at it.
And, to be completely honest, streaming fluorescent lines of colour don't look all that fantastic after a while. Slit-scan was great and all, but there's more technical and artistic brilliance to be found in the other parts of the movie.
Jackablade on 13/4/2009 at 07:39
nawwh man, it's still pretty cool.
