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Owlwise's Replies
Thanks, Heisenberg. When I first saw 2001 in 1968, at the age of 14, I was enraptured by those long establishing shots, which didn't seem slow or dragging to me at all. My entire class felt the same way. Kubrick really does make the viewer feel that immensity of the Universe!
(Our 9th grade science teacher had really just wanted to see the movie in one of those glorious old-fashioned theaters in NYC, so he arranged a field trip for the class as justified by the movie's scientific content. We were forever grateful to him.)
Yes, the question to ask is, "Who benefits?" In this case, those with power over malleable children, gladly condemning them to a life without the possibilities that the rest of us take for granted, cheating them of the chance to become their own persons, in order to maintain a controlling power structure based on rigid dogma.
Absolutely agree. Allow for the occasional soap opera touches, but focus on the quality of the series at its best. The early episode with Mildred Natwick as Kate's mother/Willie's beloved & supportive grandmother is a gem about family love & family loss, for instance.
Nothing particularly special as such, only that they were a somewhat upper-middle-class family, well-educated & basically decent people who nonetheless had their share of problems & sorrows, just like most people. It's a life that may seem far away & too privileged to younger viewers today, I'm sure; but it was reasonably honest, with a touch of soap opera to be sure, but also with real emotions. An unjustly underrated & neglected TV series, it was popular with many because they could identify with the Lawrences. Of course, the middle class in general was still thriving & upwardly mobile then ...
Poetic license.
I watched it & enjoyed it. Didn't find it sanctimonious, though. It was quite highly regarded by critics, in fact.
Oh, absolutely. For me, trying to imagine the mores & everyday lives of people from different times is part of the appeal of stories set in the past, whether recent or distant. As you say, the lived reality was far more complex that the one-dimensional clichés that we absorb by unquestioning osmosis from current culture. Even if I find some past mores & customs bad or downright appalling by my standards of today, I'd still prefer to try & understand them from their point of view, as that gives at least a somewhat more accurate picture of the past..
Excellent & accurate comment. One only has to read the poetry, letters, journals of men from that era to understand this.
This, precisely. And men during Tolkien's youth had especially powerful bonds of friendship that could unashamedly be called love, without having any sexual connotations. (And yes, for some men, there were certainly sexual connotations as well.) But male society in the 19th century, stretching into the 20th, constituted an intense depth of feeling & brotherhood among friends. Those true friends were the ones that a man trusted most, friends who could be depended on under any circumstance. It was like the unbreakable, shared bond that soldiers often form in war, but permeating all of everyday life.
Agreed! They could just as easily have had Phelps in retirement, having been forced out as a failure or a suspected traitor & then recruiting Ethan Hunt to track down the real traitor. Or Phelps could have been killed, branded a failure for it, leaving protege Hunt to tracks down his killer & expose corruption somewhere in the IMF. Same end result without spitting on the past.
Drugs (overprescribed meds) haven't been an improvement, either, at least not where inner growth & personal development are concerned. But they are more cost-efficient, which is all that matters to the bean-counters who run the world.
The world could use a good dose of 1960s psychedelia today!
As previous posters have said, he had incredible presence on the big screen, the kind of cool quiet charisma that smoldered for both women & men -- women wanted him, men wanted to be him -- and yet he also had that boyish, even sometimes lightly goofiness that was irresistibly charming … which in the blink of an eye could become an intense steeliness that was both impenetrable & invincible, the sort of force that could easily threaten even the toughest of men without ever having to boast or swagger. And then, in another blink of the eye, he could give you the warmest, friendliest "aw shucks" smile you've ever seen, completely open & honest.
Even among other Stars, he was a Star.
An astronomer closely observing heavenly bodies? :)
I saw it in a small local multiplex by my apartment complex, on its very last night. I was the only viewer in that theater! Everyone else was watching the other more popular & anticipated films. So it was quite an experience, having that particular theater entirely to myself. Not unlike being inside the movie, actually, which enhanced its already considerable power for me.
There is that ... but I prefer to end Clarke's 2001 at 2010; the subsequent books weren't anywhere near as good to me. And the novel 2010 does have that 20,001 epilog on Europa, which is far more satisfying … again, to me.
In the case of Europa, the monolith is there from the start to watch over the evolution of life there & protect it from any human intrusion or interference. The intelligence behind the monolith clearly wants European life to have its chance to develop unimpeded or threatened by another (our) life form/
2010 is a solid, perfectly enjoyable adaptation of the Clarke novel that works within its own terms. But it's best seen as a sequel to Clarke's novelization of 2001, not as a sequel to Kubrick's 2001, which is a sublime masterpiece. 2010 is prose, while 2001 is poetry.
I can only crack my knuckles and jump for joy at such praise, my friend. :)
Well, they <b>are</b> on an alien world, and the Universal Translator <b>is</b> approximating as best it can … hey, that's all I've got. :)