GWC Podcast #205

[Sithwitch]

Okay, so I'm only a little into this week's podcast, but there is NASA discussion and this is where I hop in.

I'm not an expert but my husband is an honest-to-god rocket scientist who has been working on Orion for the past three years. The past week has been pretty stressful for them, understandably, and I get to hear aaall about it. The problem with the current guesses on dates for commercial manned space flight is that none of the contractors are working at NASA regulations--the main reason why things were taking so long and got so expensive.

On a more amusing note, some company was interviewed by my local news and said, "Well, here's our design!" It was literally an Orion capsule with the name filed off. Heh.

Re: 2001, I honestly wasn't a fan of the movie up until the very end with HAL, when I got both really creeped out and really sad.

[coco]

Originally Posted by LordCorbin

I think we undermine our own potential by holding up our current place as something to aspire to. "Humanity" is something of a catch all word standing in for all our perceived virtues, how convenient that it avoids all of our negative aspects and actions in the same breath. HAL is pretty frakkin' human when one of it's first actions as a sentient being is to try and snuff out another life to save itself. Humanity, blah.

Nicely put. On some level, you'd think that AI is better off being just that - artificial and neutral. (In movies and fiction, at least), it's almost always that when the robots start acting like humans and starts to feel things that they become 'evil' - because they gained the knowledge of choice, which means good or evil things can come out of that. Look at Cavil. Or Lore compared to Data. On the flipside, it's a learning process. I tend to think given time, HAL, Lore, heck, even Cavil (as the Cavil that hung around with the Pyramid team did), like any human, have the potential to feel guilt and regret and be good again. Anyway. I'm going right on a tangent, so I'd stop.

For me, 2001 is a must see, but isn't a movie particularly well suited for a lot of rewatches. But the thing is - anyone who watches it for the first time is always impressed with it - be it the story, the stoic acting, the direction and the lack of dialogue, the art direction, HAL, the crazy scene star child at the end (that really wrinkled my brain when I first watched it) etc, etc. It's influential in scifi and will always be a classic. But you probably won't watch it every week.

I noticed the same thing about the women in the movie and how they were only relegated to being the receptionist or the secretary while men do the 'real' work. And that it wasn't something production even noticed or thought about back then IS a big part of what gender issues were back then (and now, to a lesser degree)- the ease in which women weren't even thought of to do men's jobs because of nothing else other than they're women (and now, they do, but they don't get paid as much for it). Definitely not a socially progressive scifi movie for its time.

And congrats again to Mr and Mrs Sean. And, yes, it's always better to take more photos than less!

[HeadHunter]

Congrats to Sean! Thanks so much on doing the podcast on such little sleep. Very interesting comments on 2001. I just downloaded the book off audible so I too can understand what's going on. (Edited: My Bad, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?" book review was free, not the actual book.)

[turing cop]

Many congratulations to Sean. Hearing your news put a spring in my otherwise unsprightly step yesterday.

Really enjoyed the discussion of 2001. But while I love fast paced SF like Serenity as much the next geek, I'd like to put a word in for slower, more contemplative SF. Duncan Jones' Moon is a really fine recent example of that aesthetic. It was heartbreaking, intimate and probably one of the best films this year in any genre.

My challenge to GWC threesome is to tackle Andrei Tarkovsky's original Solaris. It's the equal of 2001 and has one of the most convincingly alien aliens every brought to film or literature. Stanislaw Lem's very different novel of the same name is also well worth a look.

best,

TC

[sexymollusk]

Originally Posted by LordCorbin

I think we undermine our own potential by holding up our current place as something to aspire to. "Humanity" is something of a catch all word standing in for all our perceived virtues, how convenient that it avoids all of our negative aspects and actions in the same breath. HAL is pretty frakkin' human when one of it's first actions as a sentient being is to try and snuff out another life to save itself. Humanity, blah.

This is an excellent point and actually relates to one of the movie's central themes (if not THE central theme): humankind transcending its origins. There's also an undercurrent here where Kubrick's very subtle, wry misanthropy comes into play.

The humans in this film are depicted as banal, almost mannequin-like beings, so used to the wonders of space travel and technology that they are utterly numb to it. Even when they express emotion it is in a stilted, blasé manner, almost as if they are on autopilot. On the other hand, HAL, despite being a machine with a monotone voice, is clearly an emotional being and is perhaps the most memorable character in the entire film.

This is not an accident. What Kubrick is saying here is that when a machine is more "human" than actual humans, it is clear that humans in their current state are almost at an end. They are like a caterpillar at its fattest and laziest right before it enters the pupal stage. Bowman, reaching the monoliths at Jupiter, is akin to the ape-man at the beginning of the film, on the threshold of becoming something more than he is. As the apes must go beyond the ape, humanity must go beyond the human. And machine intelligence is there waiting in the wings, ready to take up humanity's old slot in the chain of being.

This is a very Nietzschean concept. It is no coincidence that Kubrick opens the film with Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Tharathustra", which is a musical piece inspired by Nietzsche's philosophical treatise of the same name. Here is a quote from it:

"Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape...Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman--a rope over an abyss...what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end..."."

2001 certainly is challenging, and it is slow-paced, but it is also art with a capital "A". And like any artwork it is a reflection of its time (such as the film's utter lack of interesting female roles, as Audra noted, and some of the anachronistic speech and company logos). It's themes, however, are timeless.

Annnnnnyhoo, I'm kinda new here on the forums (registered a long time ago but don't think I've posted until now). Hope my debut post I didn't come across as too pretentious!

Oh, and congratulations, Sean!

[sexymollusk]

And to be clear I'm talking solely about the movie version of 2001. The book and its sequels, IMO, count as a "parallel but separate" works.

[dxf]

Alternate versions or no, the 5-disc Blade Runner set is totally worth having. It has excellent making-of docs that say a lot about not just the movie, but art in general. And the documentaries and presentation of the extras are excellent.

[Fenatic]

It has excellent making-of docs that say a lot about not just the movie, but art in general. And the documentaries and presentation of the extras are excellent.

Including some comments from Ron Moore!

We were discussing the different versions of Blade Runner in this thread: http://forum.galacticwatercooler.com...ead.php?t=2687

[fastcart]

Originally Posted by Fenatic

Including some comments from Ron Moore!

We were discussing the different versions of Blade Runner in this thread: http://forum.galacticwatercooler.com...ead.php?t=2687

Wow, that thread had some legs!

Originally Posted by Starbuccaneer

I actually PM'd the trio about this a few months back and they said it was definitely on the to-do-eventually list.

Little did they know...

[Thunderscreech]

First human tool: backscratcher.

That is all.