Just sitting here watching 2001 Space Oddysey and cannot believe this is a film from 1968! 35 years old!! Why did I not appreciate this when I was 15?
robo
Horrible thought, but if 2001 was true to life HAL 9000 would be using Windows 95 or 98.
Maybe that's why he went wrong.
no chance.
HAL was a IBM machine so would have been running either an old version of OS/2 warp or Novell 5.
Pan 'n' scan on 4:3 tv screen never really did this film justice, even when it was shown in cinemas in 35mm CinemaScope and glorious optical mono it was still a bit lacking.....
I had the fortune to do a lot of work around the place in 2001, preparing sites to run the 70mm, 6 track Dolby SR Magnetic print that was struck for the occasion.
It's quite something to see and hear it properly!
I noticed it was the pan n scan version, even the letterbox version on an 4:3 tv is a lot better.
I saw the original in magnificent 3-projector Cinerama.
This is one of my favourite films of all time.
I was so disappointed at the 4:3 format on TV that I switched off.
Why didn't they show it widescreen in letterbox formay ??? 
I seem to recall that when 2001 was shown on tv for the first time it was shown in widescreen and some "genius" had the bright idea of filling in the black bits at the top and bottom of the screen with stars. The result was that spacecraft seemed to be appearing out of nowhere.
How I envy you folks who have seen it in cinerama - it blew my socks off on the medium sized screen in my local cinema.
I was watching Lawrence of Arabia on telly the other day and like 2001 it just doesn't seem right seeing a film like that on a small TV screen.
That was a BBC two thingy many years ago. I remember it, looking strange as some stars never appeared to move as others did.
Interesting facts department...
2001 ran so far over budget and time that it bankrupted the studio. It was the only production on site at the time and prevented at least three other films being made there. They went elswhere with the money, and the studio folded.
Yes, the Beeb 'extra stars' were added to hide the letterbox image. Fat chance. Took a long time for that film to be shown on telly - and I hear that Krubrick (as was his way with Clockwork Orange) refused permission for pan and scan to be used.
I saw it at a Coventry cinema on its release and even today I can feel my head spinning as I walked out into the street. My girlfriend at the time (I can see her face but have forgotten her name) thought it was a load of twaddle, but it has remained my all-time favourite film these 35 years. Any other space adventure film with sounds of explosions in space (Alien, Star Wars, etc etc) is made to look boys-own silly.
Poor HAL. So convinced that what he was doing was right, so convinced that for the mission to succeed all non-logical variables must be deleted. So obvious really.
tom.
Arthur C. Clarke (who collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the story) had so many problems in writing the book of the film (because the screenplay kept changing during the course of the production) that he wrote a whole book (The Lost Worlds Of 2001) about the experience. The book includes many of the different endings that were contemplated as well as his short story (The Sentinel) which was used as the basis for the Moon sequence.
Ray Liffen
quote:Originally posted by John Willett at Home:
I saw the original in magnificent 3-projector Cinerama.This is one of my favourite films of all time.
I was so disappointed at the 4:3 format on TV that I switched off.
Why didn't they show it widescreen in letterbox formay ???
Are you sure you saw it in a 3-projector Cinerama set-up John? Reading this I was amazed to think that Kubrick would find the obvious fuzzy joins and slightly different colours between the 3 film strips acceptable. It seems that the film was shown in some Cinerama cinemas on the large curved screens but utilising a single 70mm projector, something I found here http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/brown1.html .
I saw How The West Was Won in true Cinerama (3 projectors) in the Cinerama cinema in Compton Street, Soho in the early 60s, and the joins were obvious and, in my view, unacceptable then.
Regards NL
[This message has been edited by Nigel Longman (edited 11 January 2004).]
I think you may well be right Nigel.
For anyone's interest, there is an operational 3 projector cinerama set up at the Pictureville Cinema in Bradford.
Houses that can show 70mm are few and far between these days, sadly. Houses that can show 70mm on a deep dish screen are even fewer and futher between, and of the houses that do have 70mm, most do not have the necesaary Le & Re loudspeakers behind the screen for Todd AO, in fact these days it's nearly impossible to buy a cinema sound processor that will correctly handle the Todd format. The current Dolby units will handle the Dolby 70mm formats, but not Todd. The Australian Panastereo unit does everything and does it well, AFAIK there is only one in the UK, installed at the NFT in London, which is fully equipped for 70mm Mag sound.
I recently installed a 5perf/70mm machine in the Rehged at Penrith, it projects onto the existing large format screen, so the picture is HUGE and dished 
We did some mods to matrix the Le& Re channels with left and centre, and right and centre respectively. The result is a 'phantom centre' on each side, which whilst not perfect, is better than nothing.
Hi Pete
I'm afraid this is drifting OT a bit (apologies to robo), but regarding 70mm projection we used to go on pilgrimages to the Odeon Marble Arch in the 70s where they had 70mm projection equipment with what I believe was called a D-150 (Dimension 150?) lens. This showed films on an amazing huge curved screen, with top-notch sound from the mag tracks too.
We went there several times to watch the original Star Wars and were often treated to a visit to the projection box to see the machinery (best word for those mega-projectors) courtesy of the manager. Apparently even with all the lumens available (xenon arcs?) they had to have prints specially graded lighter to illuminate the screen optimally.
Great memories. NL
quote:Originally posted by Nigel Longman:
Are you sure you saw it in a 3-projector Cinerama set-up John?
Obviously not, from the information on your link.
I went with the school and saw it at the Cinerama Cinema in London.
It was great on the big screen - which was why the 4:3 pan and scan was so horrible and not worth watching.
John
Odeon Marble Arch I believe was equipped with the might Phillips DP70, a huge machine designed originally for Todd AO. Other notables are the Cinemecannica Victoria 8, the Century JJ and the Westrex 5000 (very very rare in the UK) There are quite a few DP70's still running, and loads of Vic 8's and JJ's.
Here's a link top everything you ever wanted to know about 70mm but were afraid to ask! 2001 will be mentioned in there someplace.
http://www.in70mm.com/index.htm
Another bit of 2001 trivia...
The camera Kubrick used was a Mitchell 65mm, serial number 7. Last year, the camera was donated by Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlin to "JDC" (that's Joe Dunton) to shoot the last Concorde flight. The message came to me in an email titled "Sunsets on Concorde in 70MM!" but it must have been 65 because 70mm is the release print size, 65 in the camera.
Jon Thompson operated it, I've got a couople of stills showing it in action at LHR. I've no idea what will become of the footage, but it would be interesting to see it anyway.
There are times, and this is one of them, where the wealth of knowledge available to us all on this forum is beyond words.
robo
It's not so much the information itself, it's the fact that we're happy to share it, within limits. And even so, it's less what we know, but who we know that matters. Underneath all the pseudonyms (I don't use one) lots of us are highly experienced professionals in our own circles, these circles overlap but they aren't coincident or same size, so we can all find something the contribute that we find easy or trivial but which seems spectacular to others. That's the joy of this game, the continuous serendipity of accidental discovery (now, that's tautology, try looking up serendipity in a decent dictionary and work out who invented the word, and when)