Films that influenced Barbie, the movie by Greta Gerwig

Showing all posts tagged: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Films that influenced Barbie, the movie by Greta Gerwig

17 July 2023

American filmmaker Greta Gerwig shares thirty-three films influencing her new feature, Barbie, and a varied collection it is. Titles include Saturday Night Fever, Playtime, The Truman Show, The Philadelphia Story, Heaven Can Wait, Gold Diggers of 1935, and (of course) 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There’s quite a few films here that I haven’t seen. It seems to me if you’re looking for some film watching inspiration, Gerwig’s list makes for a great starting point.

What if 2001: A Space Odyssey was directed by George Lucas?

4 February 2023

Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey is remixed with George Lucas’ 1977 space opera Star Wars, by YouTuber Poakwoods, and this is the result.

Truly awesome.

Also, it seems hard to believe from the third decade of the twenty-first century that less than ten years separate 2001: A Space Odyssey and the first Star Wars film.

Barbie by Greta Gerwig, a very 2001: A Space Odyssey trailer

18 December 2022

What prompts you to see a movie? An interest in the story? Because you liked the book and are hoping against hope the film adaptation is going to be ok? Maybe you’re a fan of the director, or one of the lead actors? But what about the trailer? Would viewing a trailer — in isolation, without knowing anything about the film — be enough to inspire you to watch a given title?

The teaser/trailer for Barbie, the latest feature from American filmmaker Greta Gerwig, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, might just the trailer that does it for me…

No aliens: Carl Sagan’s big 2001: A Space Odyssey contribution

16 May 2022

Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey were at loggerheads for years as to how to portray the highly advanced aliens who created the mysterious black monolith seen throughout the film.

Kubrick had been considering depicting the extra-terrestrials as human-like, until American cosmologist and author Carl Sagan suggested not showing them at all. Best idea ever. The approach created so much more intrigue.

2001: A Space Odyssey, a 2022 remake

14 February 2022

Related to my earlier post, can it be? George Lucas and Steven Spielberg collaborated on a remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey? How did I miss this? And even though the remake has a release date of 3 December 2022, it has already been appraised by the critics:

The film got mixed reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 89%, which is very close to the original films rating. People thought that it had good music (while the original barely had any music) since it was performed by John Williams, who makes great music, and they loved HAL 9000’s theme “Bad Programming Day”. Also, a lot of people thought that it was similar to the original film. Harrison Ford even got a reward for his excellent acting in this film, people even say that it was better than his performance as Han Solo.

In this… “remake” Harrison Ford voices HAL, Chris Pratt is David Bowman, Jason Bateman is Frank Poole, and Mark Hamill portrays Heywood Floyd, so it looks like the reboot fails the Bechdel Test. John Williams composed the soundtrack, which is awesome even if it means no Blue Danube this time around.

Can’t wait to see it though…

Vale Douglas Trumbull, film visual effects artist

14 February 2022

Douglas Trumbull, a visual effects artist whose film credits include Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: the Motion Picture, The Tree of Life, and the mind-boggling “star-gate” sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, died last week at the age of 79.

By the way, the above trailer was made in 2018 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Arthur C Clarke’s Newspad RSS news aggregator

30 May 2008

Author and futurist Arthur C Clarke is credited with predicting the emergence of a number of technologies, including a tablet-like device called a “Newspad”, which could serve the latest news stories from electronic versions of newspapers.

So far more has been said about comparing the Newspad to PDAs or Tablet PCs, but the Newpad also worked in a very similar way to today’s news aggregators, or RSS feed readers.

In the novelised version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, (chapter title “Moon Shuttle”, pg 66-67) Dr Heywood Floyd, chairman of the US National Council of Astronautics, spends time reading on his Newspad, while traveling to the Moon.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites.

Not only did Arthur C. Clarke predict PDAs and Tablet PCs, he also foresaw the emergence of news aggregators, and RSS technology.

Originally published Friday 30 May 2008.