Mother nature's cruel axe has finally fallen. We've got the kind of snow that'll be sticking around a while and the single-digit temps that turn hands into frozen ham-hocks in no time flat. But it's not all a bleak and dreary outlook. In fact, we took the opportunity to go out for a long awaited dinner Friday night to the Hickory House. The ribs had never tasted so good. Baked potato smothered in melted butter. The bread basket and relish tray. Ice tea and a Manhattan. Dark and warm inside with the wind and snow blowing madly outdoors. Life is good.
Saturday was put to excellent use. Lodge-work all day long. Thawed the paint out over the kero heater. Alternated between final-coating fascia boards upstairs, electrical wiring in the kitchen and installing the west-side soffits. Without a pair of work gloves I would've been sunk out there. The wind up in that bucket was something else. Called it a night an hour or two after dark and came in for a hot shower, cold beer and made myself some dinner. I had the place to myself so decided to make the best of it. Figured I'd watch 2001. 25th Anniversary release with trailer and archive features spread out over 6 sides of CAV laserdiscs. The quality was stunning.
Never seen the movie before, never even delved into what it was about so I was seeing this totally fresh.
1. The special effects blew me away. Viewing this film on anything but the big screen is a huge disservice. While not shot in true 3x35mm Cinerama, the original Super Panavision-70 comes about as close as you can get to wide-aspect (as Cinerama) when it was shot.*
2. 40 years provides a lot of time for cliches and ideas to be stolen from this film and repurposed into other movies and tv shows, in part or whole. I can only figure that my dissapointment with expecting "something more" from many of the sub plots is a direct result of others taking said ideas individually and exhausting them. Then again, running time is already pushing the limits for a general release.
3. The film ages very well. Sure, there's a lot of "mod" which I can tell you was still years away from being a pop culture novelty, but for the most part what you see is what you get. How much was luck (at how "extreme" the future would turn out to be) and how much was careful planning, I have no idea.
4. I would not put this film in the top-10 of all time. Yes, the special effects are top-notch (rivaling a lot of today's "so perfect it's fakey" CGI) and the film was radically different from the mainstream at release), but I can't help but think Kubrick is pulling one over on me. In fact, I was slightly pissed off at the ending. This is it? "Wrap up at least one sub-plot…please!" The simplist in me would ask "Did he run out of film or did he run out of funding?" Yes, I realize this is a thinking-man's movie and when all is said and done, we are left to our own conclusions. But I still am left with the impression that even if I were to navigate the maze to completion, I'd find nothing but cobwebs.
*My mom (who was in jr. high at the time) and her parents saw this film in 70mm Cinerama when it was originally released. When I mentioned it in passing this weekend she recalled how she's still bothered by the astronaut floating off into space, yet neither her nor my grandma recalled much else. I was more troubled by the life support systems of the 3 scientists on board, failing. Note- unlike typical 70mm presentations we're familiar with these days, a "70mm Cinerema" showing would wrap around you on a louvered screen to really draw you into the action. More on the 2001 formats: http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/brown1.html
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