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rooprect's Replies
That's true. But I don't blame audiences. I blame filmmakers for dumbing down the cinematic art form.
The same can be said about music. Back in the 70s there were best selling albums that featured 20 minute songs in multiple keys, time signatures and subject matter worthy of books ("Thick as a Brick", "Close to the Edge", "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" to name a few) which people loved. Nowadays, after music has been seriously dumbed down by 4 minute booty calls shoved down our faces, your average kid would be put to sleep before the vocals start on your average Yes tune. Not that kids are dumber today, but they are conditioned to expect garbage.
Audiences won't (re-)appreciate films like 2001 until filmmakers tell them "hey put down your Transformers and snap out of it, you're smarter than this".
Having read the book and seen the movie (and being a fan of both), I think the two are extremely different and may confuse people.
Clarke initially wrote the short story "The Sentinel" which was the basis for the film, but it only takes us up to the discovery of the monolith. In "The Sentinel" the monolith is destroyed, end of story. Kubrick took the story further in creating his film, and Clarke followed suit with his book which was published a month after the film. My point is the film is Kubrick's version, and the book is Clarke's version (in other words, the movie was not adapted from the book as a lot of people assume).
That said, Kubrick's story as well as his artistic style is much more expressionistic, expressing more mood and feeling than literal storytelling. Clarke explains things much more deliberately. For example, in Part 1, Clarke's book goes into precise detail about how the monolith "educated" the ape creature with images and audio-visual tasks. Kubrick, by contrast, simply showed the ape creature feeling intense curiosity as if coming to abstract awakening.
Which brings me to my point...
In Clarke's book ending, he goes into precise detail about how a "star gate" takes Bowman through alien worlds where he learns about other civilizations and eventually gets deposited in a menagerie where aliens feed him blue gloop and presumably alter, or "educate", him like the ape creature had been.
Kubrick's ending, like the beginning Part 1, is MUCH more abstract (and imo superior) to Clark literally spelling it out for us. Such is the beauty of the cinematic art form: a good director can use images to elicit an understanding that goes beyond words on a page.
Kubrick's final sequence represents the experience that lifts Bowman's consciousness beyond human existence. Just like the ape's consciousness evolves from ape to human, Kubrick's barrage of light & sound represents what you would feel if you suddenly evolved to higher understanding. Something words can't express. Was it effective, or was it overindulgent rubbish? That's up to the viewer.
The car scene outside Billy's home is awesome. It's like 2 minutes of Billy talking off camera, while the camera is focused on Layla the whole time. She only says 1 word when he asks her name, "Layla", and when he says "That's no good, your name is Wendy" her expression is hilarious.
"Only criticism for me is that it gets too sentimental in certain places. Like the scene with gallo and ricci on the doorstep in front of the house he grew up in."
That scene was deliberately over sentimental to set up the punchline. "Can you just hold me? ...Don't touch me!!"
Keep trying. Intelligence hits after puberty.
"(3) Horten left Molly the dog behind after Sissener died. He was spying on one particular lady who was making a cake and thought that she is perfect to take care of Molly. "
I think the film can be interpreted both ways, BUT Molly is definitely the tip off that implies what really happened.
If you notice in the 2nd to last scene at Horten's apartment there is no dog. He's in his bedroom, no dog, he walks to the living room, no dog, not a sound. I was paying close attention to this because I was trying to figure out what happened to Molly. He definitely didn't bring her back to his apartment.
In the final scene he's with Molly. I think this is the director's subtle way of *winking* at us as if to say this is not the way things really happened. It's an alternate reality of his imagination, or like dbeane said, it's what's flashing through his mind as he flies through the air before the final "crash". Either that or the director made a mistake by forgetting to show Molly in Horten's apartment, but judging by how meticulous the film is, I think it's a deliberate clue.
Hm well if sex didn't exist, then I guess all Woody Allen movies would be about an old guy and a young girl just being friends.
lol That and the way all spaceships are oriented "right side up" when they meet in space. Drives me up a wall.... figuratively of course
Did it really change scifi? 50 years later we still have sound effects in space -_-
Hmm considering my high school years were closer to "Better Off Dead" I'm thinking we'll keep it all in the past
Hey there, I can't answer all your questions (I'm curious about all the legal stuff too), but I can shed some light on the subject from the musical side.
I'm a musician/composer who has had some material used on films & commercials. I go through an agent (EMG) so I never communicate with, or even know who is, the company using my material. FYI I get paid a lousy $100 bucks per song, meaning the agency is the one getting rich but oh well I do this for fun.
Anyway, for example suppose you want to use The Beatles "Yellow Submarine" in your movie. You would need to purchase 2 different copyright licenses. First there's the songwriter's copyright, second there's the performance copyright (the recording itself). From what I understand, the performance license is the expensive one... if you want to use the actual Beatles recording, that could cost (I estimate) tens of thousands of dollars.
Here's where indie filmmakers can beat the system, sorta. You buy the songwriting license which is much cheaper, then you pay off some starving musician such as myself to re-record the song. I'm what's called a "side artist", and as you can guess the quality varies greatly, which is why there are agencies like EMG who act as quality control and provide filmmakers with decent song replicas (while of course screwing the musicians, but hey without them I'd be playing for tips in the subway).
There's an org called the Harry Fox Agency that has a ton of info on their site. They're basically like the SAG of music licensing. So that's a good place to start researching.
If your song pick isn't too famous, like some unknown band, you might get the licenses pretty cheap... wild guess, $1000 per song? But if you want something famous it could easily cost you $10-20k. Unless you hire some scab like me to copy the song. This is actually a lot more common than you think... ever see a low budget movie that uses a famous song, but the song doesn't sound quite right? Lol could be me.
Totally agree with everyone who felt cheated by the ending. It made me want to shove a spoon up my nose and bend it into my brain, I was so mad.
Ok, I was really miffed by the M.Night Shyamalan wannabe twist, but the more I think about it I might've accepted it if it hadn't been for the stupid action flick clichés and pyrotechnics (literally) at the end. Also, who gets their head slammed into a ceramic sink so hard that it shatters the sink, twice, and then they just walk out of there like 'oopsie got a booboo'?? Seriously, the force required to shatter an 8" thick ceramic sink is the equivalent of a sledgehammer swung by Thor's uncle. When this flick stooped to that level I knew it was done for (not to mention the camera in the toilet scene... I was saying to myself "oh please don't do the camera in the toilet scene, that'll be the end of it, pleaseplease... welp they did it).
From there the intelligence level hits rock bottom. A dramatic confrontation in a crowded theater (where the audience is so respectfully quiet that you can hear each line of dialogue that goes on for 5 minutes), a bunch of 500W stage lights blowing up and shooting sparkly sparks everywhere (again prompting little response from the audience, let alone the fire alarms, so as not to step on the last precious lines of dialogue) -- dear lordy mclord, I'm not even getting to the storyline itself, but the whole carefully crafted approach of anti-action which built our suspense for the first hour is ripped away revealing a fricking carnival. I was waiting for the damn bearded lady to ride out on a unicycle.
The idea that the investigator himself had paranormal powers? Seriously... I *might've* bought it. It's a hard sell but sure, maybe an actual psychic could be pretending to be normal whilst seeking out others of his kind. But then why reveal himself in such a grandiose way... to someone who is a fake?? As if Superman catches the bad guy, then says "And another thing... I'm Clark Kent!"