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Here you are, sir. Here is your Reviewer. I'm a big fan of Arthur C. Clarke, Stanley Kubrick, and this film, but haven't seen it in several years. (I also stole part of the sound track for a play I directed, and stole an important plot element for a role-playing game--I had a group hiding from my apparently sentient computer, and they had their discussion on how to destroy it in a room with a window--I kid you not. Can we say, "lipreading?" As most of them had seen the film where HAL did the same thing, I had to try very hard not to laugh).
Also I did not look at earlier reviews. For this I don't want to be influenced by someone else's opinion.
As I often do, I'm combining the Humour section and Prose and Formatting so I don't end up repeating myself more than I normally do. I'll try avoid talking about the images too much in this section, but that might prove difficult as this is very image oriented. Nevermind that. I hope this isn't confusing, but I'm putting photo descriptions here too. But I will score the parts separately.
- "dun...DAH DAHHH!!!!" This pics with layout are a ripoff, and I really like it.
- "2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 science fiction film..." This is true but I don't find it funny. But it has a nice touch of irony, which I like.
PLOT SYNOPSIS
THE DAWN OF MAN--I love these images. One of my favorite moments in all of cinema is the transformation from the victorious bone weapon to the space ship. Excellent choice of photos (I see you uploaded many or maybe all of these yourself).
- "Here you are, sir. Main level D. You are now free to include human dialogue in the film."--nice. And I like it's all duh duh music before this, like the movie.
- "...head-wear of flight stewardesses have become overly ridiculous..."--I would prefer something more subtle than "overly ridiculous."
- "Daddy...cheese...." When I first saw this I didn't care for it. But with the followup about saying "cheese" for a photo, I rather like it.
- "...a big slab of black solid."--nice.
- "...All right, what part of "turn off any personal communications equipment that may cause interference" do you guys not understand?!"--like it.
- "Upon seeing daylight, the monolith sends a signal that intelligent life has reached the moon. However, this signal does nothing but utterly confuse and baffle the American scientists as well as the audience."--true. When I first saw the film it was with a friend who had not read the book (I had). I explained the movie to him.
Jupiter Mission
- "Because shape doesn't matter a bit in the vacuum of space. The USS Enterprise did not take the news very well."--one of the few parts I didn't get. The Enterprise isn't aerodynamically designed either. (Did you know the accepted model of the Enterprise was turned upside down? That's right, the version we know is topsy-turvy.)
- "To investigate this mysterious signal, a crew of five people, including Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, is sent to Jupiter on Discovery One, a spaceship whose mundane navigation and unimportant life support functions are left in the hands of a computer that is becoming more and more insane by being forced to lie." I'd cut this into two or three sentences (my journalism training and my experience say you virtually never make a sentence more than 25 words because you'll lose the reader). Also I think "unimportant" is a bit too over-the-top. Personally I'd cut it. And "becoming more and more insance" I think would be better if more subtle. "more and more confused," maybe.
- "Let me put it this way, Mr Amos. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made—and in science fiction, this is as good a guarantee as you can get that everything will go horribly wrong when I go and kill everyone off. Which I do." --again, I think subtlety would be better. Something like "Let me put it this way, Mr Amos. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made—this is as good a guarantee as you can get that absolutely nothing can possibly go worng. Wrong." (Yes, that's a rip off of old posters for West World, but I think it works).
- "Dave and Frank end up conspiring to disconnect HAL before he goes and kills everyone off."--again, I'd like more subtlety. Something like "Dave and Frank decide to disconnect the malfunctioning HAL before he malfunctions them out the airlock."
- "HAL, now aware of Frank's plans to disconnect him. hurls a space pod...." Again, I'd like more subtlely than "Focused on killing everyone off...."
- "Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult. Darnit, you're right! I knew I should have consulted the check-list on the back of my glove."--I like this, but would like the second sentence better as "You're right, Hal. I knew I should...."
Excerpt--for the most part, this is the tone I'm looking for here. Yes, most of it may be from the movie, but I like the tone. It's fits the images, which is probably why Kubrick brought them together.
- "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half-crazy..."--like this part. I like that HAL saying he acts with more emotion than the humans on the ship, and also like Dave figuring out which type of screws he has.
ARTISTIC AND TECHNICAL MERIT
- I like the subtitle joke, although would like the "AND IN CASE YOU HADN'T NOTICED" to be in a smaller font, or italics, or in parenthesis, something like that.
- "At the time of its release, 2001: A Space Odyssey...."--nice. Here's the subtlety I'm talking about. "...tedious instruction manuals...." and "...lack of lens flair" I really like.
- "Perhaps the most famous visual...."--again nice subtlety, with "...incorrectly critcised for taking up too much time."
- "On second thought, maybe 10 minutes was overdoing it a bit."--more wonderful subtlety, here with understatement.
- "Dude, where's my mid-life crisis?"--maybe better as something like "I've aged so quickly" or "I've aged years in 10 minutes" then "But at least I avoided my mid-life crisis."
- "Even the bread was slightly confused about what was going on."--nice.
- "(You?) and I both have no idea what's about to happen. Admit it."--on my computer, this image (400px-2001-44.png) slightly overlaps at the corner with 400px-2001-45.png and thus cuts off most of the first word of the caption. Frankly, I don't care for the caption as it doesn't really tell me much--some of the greatest moments in film are unexpected, and so are some of the worst.
- "...Arthur C. Clarke's novel was written concurrently with the screenplay for 2001, and feature (features) pretty much the same events...."--probably not needed here, but Clarke wrote the short story The Sentinel" on which both the movie and novel were based.
- "...few were keen to transcend their human selves to evolve into giant fetuses that float around in space."--yes, nice.
- "...the film that feature Dr Freud Floyd."--I don't like the Sex part as much of the others, but find it OK. But I don't find this ending joke funny.
- "...Kubrick and Clarke could have had multiple field days looking at leet."--I think this section's fine, but didn't get the joke at the end (maybe this is simply because I never have found the whole leet-1337 thing funny).
- "...nobody argues with the critics, however much of a bunch of complete and total twits they may be."--partially true and funny.
- "Nobody cares...." sadly, probably also largely true. Also I really like Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (and if you can fix that article, I will give you a cookie.)
Just a thought, but the last line of dialogue in the film is (if Wikipedia is correct) "Except for a single, very powerful radio emission, aimed at Jupiter, the four-million-year-old black monolith has remained completely inert, its origin — and purpose — still a total mystery." Maybe that could be incorporated into this section--"the 1968 movie...its origin -- and purpose -- still a total mystery."
A main reason I continually (and probably irritatingly) stress subtlety is because it fits the tone of the movie and of your excellent collection of photos. When you are subtle, I really like it. People die here to nice, pleasant, classical music. It fits the tone of these photos--it's big, it's expansive, it's space. You've done such an excellent job of assembling these photos that I don't want to see your text take away from that. I don't see these visuals not killing people and throwing temper tantrums. I would prefer a calmer, more serious and far-reaching tone--like what happens in the movie. How would Hal or Dave write these descriptions?
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Sir MacMania GUN—[05:45 6 Oct 2009]