Anyway, I really like this easter egg:
12 Likes
Not helping, but largely unknown to the West at the time were that the Soviets almost started WWIII by accident
and tried to create its own real life version of the Dr. Strangelove’s Doomsday Device
3 Likes
About six weeks before that, the world was saved by a Soviet lieutenant colonel deciding (correctly) that his early warning system was faulty and not reporting a suspected American missile launch to his superiors.
In classic bureaucratic fashion, he was initially praised and promised a reward, but eventually reprimanded for improper filing of paperwork.
9 Likes
Also he had Hans Zimmer doing the soundtrack. Going toe to toe with a giant like Gyorgy Ligeti is a losing proposition.
SF film I enjoyed recently was Claire Denis’ High Life. If you like say, Solaris and Under The Skin (great Mica Levy score!) You may like this.
5 Likes
https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/jcws_a_00952
it appears to be open access.
2 Likes
I’d seen 2001 before I saw 2010. I was terribly disappointed by 2010. It was like reading a sequel to LOTR written by Alan Dean Foster.
5 Likes
High Life was on my radar, but I never managed to catch it.
I will make an effort to remedy that. I’d forgotten about it.
Thanks!!
2 Likes
I may be setting you up for disappointment by comparing to those two greats but it has real similarities to both. He’s bringing up a child on his own on a spaceship at the beginning. By the nature of things that’s a bit boring and frustrating!
Anyway I thought it was fantastic.
1 Like
Perhaps, although he went out of his way to show the boredom of long voyages… even in space (or especially).
Computers don’t get bored. They don’t need gravity. They don’t need oxygen or food. HAL was fated to become the starchild, were it not for Dave Bowman – a ape barely capable of pooping himself in zero g.
4 Likes
Whoa! I was in that audience, too! We must have been in line together for his autograph!
2 Likes
I’d venture to guess that even the highly advanced Sentinels would have considered HAL’s murders as a factor in their final choice. 
4 Likes
Me, too. Interstellar was disastrously bad on just about every level except the VFX, and I don’t understand why people go to bat for it.
2 Likes
smash that skull!
2 Likes
You know, Clarke never physically described the Sentinels. In light of the “alarm bell” on Tycho, the Sentinels could be like HAL – thinking machines – only with a less bloody sense of humor.
3 Likes
While I’ve loved 2010 since I first saw it in '85 (but for different reasons than I loved 2001), a couple of other things really bugged me even as a kid back then:
- The scale of the Discovery is waaay too large in 2010, inconsistent with its size in 2001 (admittedly a minor point)
and - The pod bay was supposed to be in zero-G, but the characters in 2010 lounge around and slouch, leaning on the scenery as if they’re standing on Earth. This REALLY bugged me - Hyams should have noticed this, and directed them differently. In 2001, when Bowman and Poole are walking across the pod bay floor they’re obviously aware that they’re supposed to be wearing magnetic boots in a zero-G environment, and it shows in their movements.
4 Likes
What did you use for scale for the 2010 Discovery? Astronaut walking on it outside?
1 Like
Yep. The scene when they’re traveling to the emergency airlock on the cable car and the astronaut (I forget who it is - Floyd?) is dwarfed by the door. Compare that to when Bowman is trying to get back into Discovery in 2001 - IIRC, it seems about 1.5-2X too big in 2010.
6 Likes
I’ll re-watch and check scale using human/ship juxtapositions. Maybe they just got the door wrong? (For something that got a big design leg-up from 2001, you’d think 2010 would have done a better job.)
1 Like
I’m prepared to give them a lot of slack for minor things like this - they did such a good job with almost everything else (the incorrect proportions of the monolith, though, still sticks in my craw, though ironically that IS consistent with the first film)
3 Likes
