'2001' - High-Def Digest review

[Collector]

Has anyone noticed any "defects" in some of the backgrounds in the "Dawn of Man" segment.... I thought my screen needed cleaning, then I realized I was looking at what was in the movie.... Specifically some splotchy segments of sky... In a few scenes...

I'm watching on a 37in set and it was pretty obvious. But still, this movie looks phenomenal given its age. And I am in the camp that likes it, even if it is slow at times. Mostly it is a well written and thought out example of science fiction!

[Porky Pine]

I just watched the first hour of this movie tonight... I found it really bizarre. Didn't really like it. I guess I just don't appreciate the film or its message at this point in time. Maybe later in life I can watch this film again and appreciate it, it sounds like it's incredible.

It's not a movie for everyone especially for those who have never experienced a Sci-Fi movie that didn't involve cute aliens/robots, big explosions in space, mean looking, toothy alien monsters and lasers vaporising battleships in space.

The movie is deliberately long and slow paced as to convey the feeling the utter boredom of traveling between planets with no one else to keep you company except your fellow astronaut and a talking, sentient computer. And the ending is so ambiguous as a ending, you'll wonder what it was about years to come. It's a cerebral Sci-fi as opposed to the space opera that people are used to seeing nowadays. The last movie that was as close to being as cerebral as this one would have to be Contact.

The movie was a first of it's kind in it's day and is still unique to this day. The special effects, while a little dated, are still a marvel today and can still have you guessing as to how they managed to do what they did.

Has anyone noticed any "defects" in some of the backgrounds in the "Dawn of Man" segment.... I thought my screen needed cleaning, then I realized I was looking at what was in the movie.... Specifically some splotchy segments of sky... In a few scenes...

Never saw any problem in the Dawn of Man sequence however, I had noticed in the segment with the spaceship Discovery, that there seem to be a problem with some of the darker greys/blues. Specifically, watch the hull of the ship when HAL refuses to let Dave back in. I saw some noise there. However, on the whole, I was floored by the quality of print. I would never had thought it possible but MGM hit it out of the ballpark with this one.

[ChrisInCali]

The movie is deliberately long and slow paced as to convey the feeling the utter boredom

Mission accomplished.

[bases1616]

I am missing something I do not see the uncompressed PCM 5.1 surround track (48 kHz/24-Bit/6.9 Mbps and a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 mix (640 kbps). I switched from the uncompressed which came up 48kHz/16-bit/4.6 Mbps and Dolby Digital 5.1 mix (448 kbps). Anyone else see the same thing?

[Josh Z]

However, on the whole, I was floored by the quality of print. I would never had thought it possible but MGM hit it out of the ballpark with this one.

Although the movie was originally produced by MGM, the current rights are held by Warner, who released it on Blu-ray and HD DVD.

Warner owns the entire pre-1986 MGM catalog, with the exception of a few titles (such as the early James Bond films, which were actually produced by United Artists).

[holsty101]

Has anyone noticed any "defects" in some of the backgrounds in the "Dawn of Man" segment.... I thought my screen needed cleaning, then I realized I was looking at what was in the movie.... Specifically some splotchy segments of sky... In a few scenes...

I kinda remember thinking along those lines, I just put it down to hi-def exposing flaws in the process used for filming the Dawm of Man section (being shot on a sound stage & all...).

[Jason One]

I kinda remember thinking along those lines, I just put it down to hi-def exposing flaws in the process used for filming the Dawm of Man section (being shot on a sound stage & all...).

That's exactly what it is. We're seeing the flaws in the screen on which the backdrop was painted or printed.

[Tec972]

To the reviewers and Josh Z who are obviously big fans of this film, I'm surprised that there is no mention of the deleted 19 minutes of the film. Sure wish they included that extra footage that Kubrick deleted between the premiere and the commercial release. That would have been interesting to see. What do you guys think?

[Josh Z]

To the reviewers and Josh Z who are obviously big fans of this film, I'm surprised that there is no mention of the deleted 19 minutes of the film. Sure wish they included that extra footage that Kubrick deleted between the premiere and the commercial release. That would have been interesting to see. What do you guys think?

Kubrick burned all that footage years ago. He did not want the audience to ever see deleted scenes or learn details about how the movie was made. He felt that it destroyed the magic of filmmaking. If he were still alive, he would probably be very upset about the audio commentaries and other supplements on these recent releases of his films.

When Kubrick participated with Criterion for the laserdisc edition of 2001, he insisted that he bonus materials on the disc only contain background information about the space program, and nothing about the movie itself. He did likewise for Dr. Strangelove, authorizing only material relating to the Cold War. Criterion initially included an early script draft on the Strangelove disc, one very different from the finished film (it opened and closed from the point of view of aliens visiting Earth long after its nuclear destruction). Kubrick demanded that they halt production and reissue it without that feature, which they quickly did. The earlier copies that got out into the marketplace are still rare and valuable.

[banzai]

I think there might be an authoring glitch in the Blu-ray special features.

"2001: The Making of a Myth" has some weird jumps in continuity on my copy. Either this is a really poorly made documentary that has a jerky flow (e.g. people are talking about X and suddenly--apropos of nothing--they're talking about Y) or the authoring is somehow truncating parts out of the presentation.

The most obvious (apparent) problem is during the discussion of the '60s space race. At 2min, 20sec into the program, James Cameron's narration goes "and the Soviet Union was dominating space." The next cut abruptly resumes the narration mid-sentence: "90 minutes, how far ahead were they in the nuclear race?"

Viewing with my PS3 (latest firmware v2.10) w/detail display on, I see no jump in the playback timeline so I don't think it's Blu-ray's seamless branching feature going awry; it's like this program was encoded with small sections just missing.

Total running time reads 43:08.

Anyone else notice this problem or see similar behavior in their copy? Is this just in the Blu-ray or is it in the HD-DVD also?

[Crispin]

Kubrick burned all that footage years ago. He did not want the audience to ever see deleted scenes or learn details about how the movie was made. He felt that it destroyed the magic of filmmaking. If he were still alive, he would probably be very upset about the audio commentaries and other supplements on these recent releases of his films.

Josh, I think the point that the previous post was trying to make was about the cuts to the original roadshow version which was 160 minutes long and which was the version I saw in a huge curved screen theater 40 years ago. Since this was the version he brought to the world in 1968 then this is the official version of the film - not the truncated 139 minute version that now exists on video.

From IMDB:

The film originally premiered at 160 minutes. After the premiere, director Stanley Kubrick removed about nineteen minutes worth of scenes and made a few changes:

* Some shots from the "Dawn of Man" sequence were removed and a new scene was inserted where an ape pauses with the bone it is about to use as a tool. The new scene was a low angle shot of the monolith, done in order to portray and clarify the connection between the ape using the tool and the monolith.
* Some shots of Frank Poole jogging in the centrifuge were removed.
* An entire sequence of several shots in which Dave Bowman searches for the replacement antenna part in storage was removed.
* A scene where HAL severs radio communication between Discovery and Poole's pod before killing him was removed. This scene explains a line which stayed in the film in which Bowman addresses HAL on the subject.
* Some shots of Poole's space walk before he is killed were removed.

Other details can be found at IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/alternateversions

[Josh Z]

Josh, I think the point that the previous post was trying to make was about the cuts to the original roadshow version which was 160 minutes long and which was the version I saw in a huge curved screen theater 40 years ago. Since this was the version he brought to the world in 1968 then this is the official version of the film - not the truncated 139 minute version that now exists on video.

The Roadshow version was a work-in-progress. Kubrick used audience reaction to it to fine-tune the movie before its regular theatrical run, and later destroyed that extra footage. The current version is his only approved and finalized cut.

He also had prints of The Shining recalled from theaters after its opening weekend so that he could change the ending. He was notorious for doing things like that, and he had enough clout with the studio to get his way.

The Roadshow venue was a place where many studios tested out movies before settling on a final cut. For movies where the Roadshow cuts still exist, those prints are considered alternated versions, not "the official version of the film".

[holsty101]

I think there might be an authoring glitch in the Blu-ray special features.

"2001: The Making of a Myth" has some weird jumps in continuity on my copy. Either this is a really poorly made documentary that has a jerky flow (e.g. people are talking about X and suddenly--apropos of nothing--they're talking about Y) or the authoring is somehow truncating parts out of the presentation.

The most obvious (apparent) problem is during the discussion of the '60s space race. At 2min, 20sec into the program, James Cameron's narration goes "and the Soviet Union was dominating space." The next cut abruptly resumes the narration mid-sentence: "90 minutes, how far ahead were they in the nuclear race?"

Viewing with my PS3 (latest firmware v2.10) w/detail display on, I see no jump in the playback timeline so I don't think it's Blu-ray's seamless branching feature going awry; it's like this program was encoded with small sections just missing.

Total running time reads 43:08.

Anyone else notice this problem or see similar behavior in their copy? Is this just in the Blu-ray or is it in the HD-DVD also?

My blu-ray's the same, having watched the it @ the point you mention (2.20) it sounds to me like "90 minutes" is said by a different voice, so if you take that out from the narration it would be "the Soviet Union was dominating space, how far ahead were they in the nuclear race?".

So I'd guess it's a problem with the editing of the doc, seems like a bit of a stupid SNAFU (which completely passed me by the 1st time I watched it ... )

[Crispin]

The Roadshow version was a work-in-progress. Kubrick used audience reaction to it to fine-tune the movie before its regular theatrical run, and later destroyed that extra footage. The current version is his only approved and finalized cut.

Josh, I would like to say I agree with you but I don't. A premiere is a premiere. An audience test version is an audience test version.

I would compare this to 1966 "The Sand Pebbles" 200 minute audience test version that screened in L.A., Minneapolis and Houston before its official premiere in NYC. The roadshow premiere clocked in at 194 minutes and was the version that Robert Wise approved. Fox took it on themselves later to trim it down to what is now referred to as the 182 minute "theatrical" version.

Kubrick had plenty of time to trim his premiere version yet he waited until the film had "premiered" in 3 U.S. cities and had other various screenings. I know that as the director he is free to do whatever the studio will allow and if he feels it needs a tighter edit later on then so be it. But it is NOT the premiere version no matter what the semantics.

Screening for Life Magazine - March 29, 1968
Washington D. C. Press Previews - March 31, April 1, 1968
Washington D.C. World Premiere - April 2, 1968
New York Press Previews - April 1-2, 1968
New York Premiere - April 3, 1968
Los Angeles Premiere - April 4th, 1968
Kubrick cuts 19 minutes from film - April 4-5, 1968
Final cut shown in New York - April 6th, 1968

[Josh Z]

Crispin, at this point you're arguing semantics. Regardless of what you define as the movie's premiere, the current version of 2001 is Stanley Kubrick's only approved final cut, and he destroyed all the extra footage. That footage isn't going to magically re-appear from the void. It was incinerated.

As I mentioned above, he also pulled all of the national release prints for The Shining after that movie's official opening weekend to have the ending changed. That original ending isn't coming back either.