NP: Kubrick Bio Rec

Tue Dec 1 21:15:57 CST 2015

The Arthur C. Clarke story, The Sentinel, which Kubrick used as a starting point for his larger conception if the film, concerned the discovery of a mysterious object on the moon, triggering an alarm. The story leaves unanswered whether this will be good or bad for the human race. It's merely a sign that humans have attained a level of intelligence needed to accomplish the task.

MS seems to put a more pessimistic spin on it; Kubrick an optimistic one.

Laura

Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:

>And I think that, for SURE it was "planted" in all three spots. The film doesn't make much sense without the idea that there is a puzzle there to decipher (otherwise, why would there be a beacon pointing towards a spot near Jupiter?).
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>On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 9:46 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
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>Horrible? I always thought it represented the sublime, with its perfect angles and proportions, and its impossible smooth blackness. Although I suppose there is an element of horror to the sublime. I always saw the monolith as the ultimate representation of the unknown, and thus, as something to strive towards. It's also pretty obviously meant to be a door... a door to the future... the big, long-term future... as in evolutionary future?
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>On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 9:14 PM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com> wrote:
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>I agree with what you're saying, and think enigma (especially taken to include the unknowable) is a good understanding of what the monolith embodies, though I would stress that it is an embodiment of broad things that cannot, due to their nature, be really known. And I don't think it's death exactly. But I think it includes death. Or rather that a human with, all his or her innate monomythic layers and assemblages and narratives of his or her world--by definition includes death as part of the unknown, because the who or thinking human mind is unable to conceive of a world in which it does not exist or matter (i.e. In death). 
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>I guess when I watch the movie I don't think of the monolith as necessarily purposely/purposefully imparting knowledge or advancement or anything to the people who glimpse it, or at least not as just doing directly that, but also as just giving them a portrait of something so incomprehensible (and thus horrible) that they then respond to it in some way. I mean I think the medium is basically the message, as MS sorta notes. The unknowability itself revealing to them, what, their own meaninglessness/powerlessness, the fallacy of knowledge or control. And maybe this can be called a message from the universe. And maybe their response is fallacious. 
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>I'm not disagreeing with you, at least not in my mind. 
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>On Dec 1, 2015, at 7:30 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
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>For me the interesting take on MS's outline is her overlay of morality on the alien-assisted evolution schema of 2001, apes or humans somehow failing a test posed by the monoliths. Black isn't evil, nor death. It is enigma. It sparks the crossing of new concious thresholds before unimagined, and each one is a huge leap forward' clearly illustrated by the Segway if the sinning airborne bone-weapon into a spinning space-station, a genius transition. And, obviously the star-child birth at the end is the next step forward.  2001 is about evolutionary "uplift," IMHO.  I'm sure this is a common understanding of 2001 today.
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>David Morris
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>On Tuesday, December 1, 2015, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
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>You were right, Johnny: http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0009.html.
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>Thank you.
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>2015-12-01 22:20 GMT+01:00 Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com>:
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>It's by Margaret Stackhouse. I'm struggling to send links (or to type competently for that matter) on this phone, but a bit of Googling will dig it up soon enough for anybody interested.
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>On Tuesday, December 1, 2015, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:
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>I think Eyes Wide Shut is major Kubrick - it's his defining statement on sexual identity, societal secrecy and individual reputation. Always find something new in that film. 
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>David Thomson claims that Kubrick locked Tom Cruise out of Nicole Kidman's cuckolding scene, demanding a strictly closed set, that the actor credited with playing the cicisbeo has no other recognised film or acting credits, and that Kubrick spent an entire day filming them copulate, only to use about five seconds worth of footage in the final cut.
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>I do have a loose theory that the final scene in 2001 is something of a collation of mankind's greatest achievements throughout history gathered together in a space-time continuum warp, as a final testament to mankind as he (we?) begin to die out and find ourselves replaced (much like the apes at the start of the film) by 'superior' beings.
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>Kubrick said the best and most intellectually rigorous analysis of 2001 he had ever read was from a 15 year old girl who wrote to him privately with his theories. I've read that letter and from distant memory it is very impressive - I'll try to dig it out soon.
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>On Sunday, November 29, 2015, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com> wrote:
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>Thanks for the recommendations, Mark. Agreed on all counts, really. Spent yesterday trying to find car floor mats in the pattern of the carpet from The Shining but no luck. The blog is very cool--I'm glad people like you are out there, keeping blogs like these. 
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>And John, yes, Eyes Wide Shut has grown on me lately as well, even if it's not, what, Major Kubrick? The whole thing's fascinating, anyway. All of it elevated by what became of Cruise in the years after that movie (which you almost sense Kubrick playing with, ahead of time, way prescient). 
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>On Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 5:57 PM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com> wrote:
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>Sis loved it, was deeply absorbed/moved. She's moderately-to-severely bipolar, and so had a really rough teenagerhood. Dropped out of high school, few hospital stays, etc. She is very, very smart but is so sensitive and has spent much of her life in so emotionally precarious a state that she has spent a lot of time shying away from art that is at all high-stakes. She's been a voracious reader, but much of that has been, like, harlequins. 
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>But lately she's been stable enough that I've been able to recommend things to her, and she's been able to follow through. I'm sort of her cultural gatekeeper so I'm basically trying my best to give her a trajectory that probably apexes with her being able to appreciate something like GR, to extract some of its wonders, etc. She can probably handle it from there.
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>On Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 5:43 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com> wrote:
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>what did Sis think about it?☺
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>On Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 5:51 PM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com> wrote:
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>Yesterday I got my sister very stoned and took her to see 2001. It was playing at the Logan Theatre here in Chicago. Her first time seeing it (she's 21) and the first time I'd seen it in theaters.
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>I'm sure the movie and the director have been talked about ad mortem on here but if anybody had anything to say about it I am all ears. I will personally confess that I consider it an important part of my life, a work of art that elicits genuine awe from me. Sometimes I put the scene of Hal's deactivation on in the background on a loop while I work.
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>Realized I've never actually read a Kubrick bio. Or anything about him/his movies. Anybody have any recommendations? -
>Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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