There Are Screaming Ape-Men on My TV

[ase]

I've been pretty happy with CDex in the past, but it's the 21st century and you never know when your favorite freeware program will go away. I recently tried Exact Audio Copy because it's the 21st century and I should branch out, and the five or six classical CDs I ripped with it sound skin-crawlingly lossy. (Also, it absolutely refused to work on the laptop, so major, major thumbs-down.) So I'm installing CDex on the desktop, beating the ports with a permission stick, re-ripping those CDs, and telling everyone: don't mess with success.

This message brought to you by me messing with two PCs and the library copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I have been alternately underwhelmed and baffled by the first 20 minutes, so I'm wondering if what I'm seeing on the screen is what Kubrick meant to put there. At all. Fortunately, I read the book first, so I know the plot. Which is moving at a glacial pace. (Not melting ones.)

...oh, for a side of datedness: the "jet liner of THE FUTURE" has one person taking the Earth-to-LEO flight. Remember, kids: 1968 predated the first oil/fuel crisis.

ETA Also, remember: no matter how awesome your effects budget us, in 30 years false-color Earthscapes will be super-passe.

ETA #2 Oh Em Gee GIANT STARBABY OF DUBIOUS INTENTIONS. That is a sight I could've done without.

Conclusion: Kubrick, whatever you were trying, I'm parsing this through the filter of having read the book first.

Comments

[ase.livejournal.com]

Sooooo slooooowwww. I may revise my initial distaste from "total failure" to "deeply flawed", but it's got a lot of problems. What do you like about it?

[(Anonymous)]

It's the self-referential ways it examines humanity, defining it through artificiality and the limits of perception. Our basis for the straight line, the horizon, is actually curved, so the monoliths are a kind of creation of the impossible right angle, in a universe where it's possible that what humans are is not entirely defined by their terran origins - and yet they absolutely are defined by earth, as our viewing of transcendent things is limited. In a way, it's coming to terms with what we consider ours by creation overtaking us: our technology as our children, with oedipal complexes of their own. Everyone can approach that movie in a different way, but maybe the main thing is that it's supposed to threaten the limits of your eyes' and minds' tolerance and expectations.

[limnrix.livejournal.com]

sorry, that was me!

Anyway, yeah, it's about humanity being unable to understand the unhuman. Perhaps almost being used as a tool by some agency of the universe and being transformed in the process. I don't get space baby either. Maybe you need to see it on a big screen: for one thing, it's filmed in consecutive square proportions, same as the monoliths: 1x4x9

[ase.livejournal.com]

Aren't the monolith dimensions 1x3x9? Anyway. You have obviously thought about this way more than me. I appreciate the man vs the unknown themes, but surely there could've been a better way to shoot it.