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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

This one is a bit of both...worse and best...

It was certainly way ahead of it's time, and over the head of many today. The start of the film deals with the ape on discovery of himself and what he is capable of. What the Obelisk symbolizes is still up in the air, but it is a constant thruout the movie. Obviously alien in origin, we really do not know where it came from or it's purpose. But it's everywhere in human existence.

The beauty scenes of space travel are tops and still regarded as accurate. The Pan-Am logos now are a giggle, but the actuality of such flights are just now becoming a reality 40+ years later.

I think the highlight of the film is on HAL. HAL is paranoid and controlling, programmed by similar paranoid and controlling humans (NASA?). "I can't do that......Dave". Whenever I see the movie with astronomically challenged friends, the scene when Dave jumps the gap from the pod to the ship in total silence always brings up the question..."What happened to the sound?" Sigh...

The ending is rather nonsensical. A bit of time travel, a bit of rebirth...lot of flashing colors...it really doesn't make much sense. And we really don't get any answers either. Left to interpretation for the ages.

I have had people fall asleep to this movie, and I really don't blame them. But I like it anyway.

[starbux]

The movie was definitely a "trip", especially back in 1968. But the part of the movie that defies scientific explanation was the moon-hopper crafts. What kind of propulsion used, as well as vector has made me scratch my head. The flight path is awfully low as orbits go. Or do they take a ballistic trajectory, punctuated by intense bursts of the rocket engine as the hopper starts getting too low in altitude? An informed explanation is appreciated.

One thing to take note of was the presence of privatized space travel, a la Pan-Am shuttle. As well as pay-as-you-go services on the space station. In a very real sense, the absence of these things (a market economy in space) is what made the real 2001 the shadow of what it could have been as far as space colonization goes.

Alot of folks hated 2010. But I liked it. It was very faithful to the book.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

The Chicago Astronomers view 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70mm

On the 13th of October, a handful of us Chicago Astronomers met to view the film in a quaint movie house on Chicago's north side.

Settling on the third row, we proceeded to experience this kooky movie with dramatic opening music and curtain rise. With squeaking chairs and a big screen before us, we began.

We were enjoying passing along observations to each other during the film, and chuckling at the "Futurist" predictions of Kubrick. Some of our elbows to the side comments: HAL is brought to us by IBM, only a single passenger on the Pan AM flight to the space station..(No wonder they went out of business!), the micro digital camera at the briefing session, why isn't there weightlessness on the Moon hoppers and actually pouring a beverage into a cup and the cool anti-grav boots of the flight attendants. The sound was good and loud and the screeching sound of the monolith really had my ears ringing. And...why does Dave request HAL to turn the pod around, in direct view view of HAL, when the two astronauts enter to covertly converse? Yea..better plot developement...but still!...

And when Dave does the emergency pod escape, I lose track where the hatch explodes to. I understand the decompression would probably eject the contents out, but what about Newtons Law of opposite and equal reactions. Shouldn't the pod be pushed away violently...away from the ship? Rule number one...NEVER leave the ship with out your helmet!...

We had a fifteen minute intermission, and now, after a long day with only a hour of sleep...I was starting to get groggy, but I pushed on.

HAL is the highlight for me here, and always smile when he says: "Can't do that...Dave". And his pathetic pleads to prevent Dave from shutting him down. "I feel better now, Dave"....."I'm afraid"..."We can work this out"...almost like a dejected lover trying to return to the relationship! Interesting that HAL 9000 was programmed to accomplish the goals of the mission, (1992), by "any" means necessary. And he was built right here in in my state of Illinois!...

Now, the end of the film really falls apart for me at the end and this is where I was starting to nod off. Steve shared with me the differences in the book and the movie, with the book having a better explanation and scenes pertinent to the storyline. Never having read the book, it was a fascinating comparison.

After the film, we mulled around the lobby for a bit, and of course, I had a shot taken of the crew...

Here from left to right are, Me, Liz, Steve, Alfred, Linda and Jude

I enjoyed watching this with my fellow astronomers, as I had never seen it on the big screen...and still...after decades...scratch my head...

[Centaur]

Glad you finally got to see it on the full screen, Joe. I saw it at the Cinerama Theater in Chicago while on leave from the Army before being shipped to Vietnam. I had already been following the progress of the movie while it was being filmed. At that time we were anticipating the Apollo missions which soon would be circling and landing on the Moon. It was generally assumed that men would be walking on Mars by 1980. Nevertheless, seeing the film back then was awesome (a word less used in 1968.)

Did you notice that the first forty minutes were without dialogue? That included not only the early hominid scenes, but also the flight to the Moon. The Strauss waltz scoring was mesmerizing.

We were wondering at the time how accurate the depiction of 2001 would prove to be. It’s turned out that men's dress suits and ties have not really changed, other than being worn less frequently. Stewardesses have generally switched from skirts to pants, but have not gone to mod-sixties headgear.

The lunar shuttle had a single passenger due to his emergency top-secret mission. The force of gravity would not have been felt on the lunar hopper, if it were not moving at orbital speed. It did not appear to be. If it had, then great force would have been required both to launch it and to brake it to a stop. We must assume there was a continuous stream of exhaust gasses keeping the craft above ground level.

Did you catch that the acronym HAL is a single letter cryptographic displacement of IBM? Indeed HAL had been programmed to believe that the mission objective was paramount. Once he determined that astronauts were of more hindrance than help, he attempted to remove them. Our use of robotic spacecraft today may be a nod to the actual soundness of his decision. Although if humans were to be placed onboard post-odyssey missions, one would suppose that upgraded software would have been written with a human sense of morality.

The monoliths and the film's ending were designed to interest those who were into new-age themes of the late sixties. By not being more explicit, Kubrick was appealing to the hippie culture that liked to read deep meaning into things.