...take any frame at random from the film and you could hang it on your wall.
The production does not appear dated at all, except perhaps the women's hair and clothing styles and some of the space station's furniture. Additionally, no one in 1968 could have foreseen that in the real year 2001 we would have abandoned the moon as a destination for scientific inquiry, that transportation giant Pan Am would have gone out of business, or that phone calls from an orbiting space station would cost more than $1.70 to Earth. Certainly, nothing about the special effects looks dated, thanks mainly to the imagination of producer/director Kubrick and the wizardry of special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull and others. It's easy to see how "Star Wars," "Close Encounters," "Alien," "Contact," and the rest owe their graphic origins to "2001."
Video:
The video engineers capture the movie's 2.20:1 Cinerama ratio nicely, the size measuring out about 2.10:1 across my screen, given a small amount of overscan. You may notice the smallest degree of natural film grain from the outset, some almost undetectable halos on occasion, and some minor shimmer; otherwise, the picture quality is spectacular. It's so clear in its 1080-resolution, VC-1 encode, you can almost read the complete instructions on the Zero Gravity Toilet. Blacks and whites are especially important in conveying all the imagery this film has to offer, and they come through beautifully, the blacks inky and the whites intense, setting off the rest of colors in dramatic fashion. The photography and special effects in "2001" were ahead of their time, and watching the movie today in high def, one would have to say they still remain ahead of their time. I watched a program a while back in HD on cable about astronauts working in space on the Hubble telescope, and I swear the images looked no more real than those in "2001." In fact, in some instances they looked less real.
Audio:
The user has the choice in English of Dolby TrueHD 5.1 or Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio tracks. Understand, however, that the engineers remixed the soundtrack for "2001" from its original sources, which Kubrick largely took from commercially available stereo recordings of music by Ligeti, Khachaturian, Johann Strauss, and Richard Strauss. As such, there is a touch of inevitable tape hiss present, which even this newly remastered rendition does not erase completely. Indeed, at high volume levels there is a trace of background noise during most of the quietest passages, music or not. The audio signals to the rear channels involve mostly musical bloom for ambient reinforcement, but they make the music appear more natural than ever. The frequency balance is a tad forward and sharp in the highs, but the smooth midrange and ample bass more than compensate. Although even in TrueHD, which is perhaps a little fuller than the DD+ track, the sound is not quite up to today's movie-audio standards, it effectively submerges the listener in the story.
Extras:
There is an excellent complement of extras on the HD DVD, and they will take you hours to get through. First, there's an audio commentary by stars Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood that is informative and fun, to be sure, although the two fellows don't appear to have been in the same room during the taping. Next up is the forty-three-minute documentary, "2001: The Making of a Myth," narrated by James Cameron and including comments from Arthur C. Clarke and many of the film's actors and filmmakers. Like the rest of the extras, it is in standard definition.
Following those main attractions, there is a series of featurettes. They begin with "Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001," twenty-one minutes with people like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Sydney Pollack, Peter Hyams, Dan O'Bannon, William Friedkin, and others that "2001" influenced. Then, there is a "Vision of a Future Passed: The Prophecy of 2001," twenty-one minutes; "2001: A Space Odyssey: A Look Behind the Future," a vintage segment at twenty-three minutes; "What Is Out There?," twenty minutes; "2001: FX and Early Conceptual Artwork," nine minutes; and "Look: Stanley Kubrick!," a three-minute collection of photographs Kubrick sold to "Life" magazine early in his career. And there is a sixty-six-minute audio-only interview with Stanley Kubrick, conducted by physicist and writer Jeremy Bernstein.
Finally, the disc contains thirty-four scene selections but no chapter insert; a 1.78:1 ratio theatrical trailer; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Portuguese subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. As with all of WB's HD DVDs, the disc also includes pop-up menus, bookmarks, a zoom-and-pan feature, a guide to elapsed time, and an Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
I can hardly think of a movie that benefits more from high-definition processing than this new HD DVD release of "2001." I mean, take any frame at random from the film and you could hang it on your wall. It's that beautiful, that visionary. Few movies can make such a boast.
Warner Bros. have made "2001: A Space Odyssey" available in HD DVD, Blu-ray, and standard-definition. All three formats are available separately, and the SD versions are also available in the big "Stanley Kubrick Director's Series" box, which includes "2001," "A Clockwork Orange," "The Shining," "Full Metal Jacket," "Eyes Wide Shut," and the documentary "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures." Most of the films in SD come in two-disc special editions, with the exception of the single-disc "Full Metal Jacket" and the Kubrick documentary.
"In an infinite and eternal universe, the point is, anything is possible." --Stanley Kubrick
Video:
The video engineers capture the movie's 2.20:1 Cinerama ratio nicely, the size measuring out about 2.10:1 across my screen, given a small amount of overscan. You may notice the smallest degree of natural film grain from the outset, some almost undetectable halos on occasion, and some minor shimmer; otherwise, the picture quality is spectacular. It's so clear in its 1080-resolution, VC-1 encode, you can almost read the complete instructions on the Zero Gravity Toilet. Blacks and whites are especially important in conveying all the imagery this film has to offer, and they come through beautifully, the blacks inky and the whites intense, setting off the rest of colors in dramatic fashion. The photography and special effects in "2001" were ahead of their time, and watching the movie today in high def, one would have to say they still remain ahead of their time. I watched a program a while back in HD on cable about astronauts working in space on the Hubble telescope, and I swear the images looked no more real than those in "2001." In fact, in some instances they looked less real.
Audio:
The user has the choice in English of Dolby TrueHD 5.1 or Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio tracks. Understand, however, that the engineers remixed the soundtrack for "2001" from its original sources, which Kubrick largely took from commercially available stereo recordings of music by Ligeti, Khachaturian, Johann Strauss, and Richard Strauss. As such, there is a touch of inevitable tape hiss present, which even this newly remastered rendition does not erase completely. Indeed, at high volume levels there is a trace of background noise during most of the quietest passages, music or not. The audio signals to the rear channels involve mostly musical bloom for ambient reinforcement, but they make the music appear more natural than ever. The frequency balance is a tad forward and sharp in the highs, but the smooth midrange and ample bass more than compensate. Although even in TrueHD, which is perhaps a little fuller than the DD+ track, the sound is not quite up to today's movie-audio standards, it effectively submerges the listener in the story.
Extras:
There is an excellent complement of extras on the HD DVD, and they will take you hours to get through. First, there's an audio commentary by stars Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood that is informative and fun, to be sure, although the two fellows don't appear to have been in the same room during the taping. Next up is the forty-three-minute documentary, "2001: The Making of a Myth," narrated by James Cameron and including comments from Arthur C. Clarke and many of the film's actors and filmmakers. Like the rest of the extras, it is in standard definition.
Following those main attractions, there is a series of featurettes. They begin with "Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001," twenty-one minutes with people like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Sydney Pollack, Peter Hyams, Dan O'Bannon, William Friedkin, and others that "2001" influenced. Then, there is a "Vision of a Future Passed: The Prophecy of 2001," twenty-one minutes; "2001: A Space Odyssey: A Look Behind the Future," a vintage segment at twenty-three minutes; "What Is Out There?," twenty minutes; "2001: FX and Early Conceptual Artwork," nine minutes; and "Look: Stanley Kubrick!," a three-minute collection of photographs Kubrick sold to "Life" magazine early in his career. And there is a sixty-six-minute audio-only interview with Stanley Kubrick, conducted by physicist and writer Jeremy Bernstein.
Finally, the disc contains thirty-four scene selections but no chapter insert; a 1.78:1 ratio theatrical trailer; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Portuguese subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. As with all of WB's HD DVDs, the disc also includes pop-up menus, bookmarks, a zoom-and-pan feature, a guide to elapsed time, and an Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
I can hardly think of a movie that benefits more from high-definition processing than this new HD DVD release of "2001." I mean, take any frame at random from the film and you could hang it on your wall. It's that beautiful, that visionary. Few movies can make such a boast.
Warner Bros. have made "2001: A Space Odyssey" available in HD DVD, Blu-ray, and standard-definition. All three formats are available separately, and the SD versions are also available in the big "Stanley Kubrick Director's Series" box, which includes "2001," "A Clockwork Orange," "The Shining," "Full Metal Jacket," "Eyes Wide Shut," and the documentary "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures." Most of the films in SD come in two-disc special editions, with the exception of the single-disc "Full Metal Jacket" and the Kubrick documentary.
"In an infinite and eternal universe, the point is, anything is possible." --Stanley Kubrick
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