2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

An important and innovative sci-fi classic film but one that is often overrated

Trailer

Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke
Produced by Stanley Kubrick
Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth
Edited by Ray Lovejoy
Production company: Stanley Kubrick Productions
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Running time: 142 minutes
Budget: $10.5–12 million
Box office: $146 million

Cast

Keir Dullea as Dr. David Bowman
Gary Lockwood as Dr. Frank Poole
William Sylvester as Dr. Heywood Floyd
Daniel Richter as Moonwatcher, the chief man-ape
Leonard Rossiter as Dr. Andrei Smyslov
Margaret Tyzack as Elena
Robert Beatty as Dr. Ralph Halvorsen
Sean Sullivan as Dr. Roy Michaels[3]
Douglas Rain as the voice of HAL 9000
Frank Miller as mission controller
Edward Bishop as Aries 1B lunar shuttle captain
Edwina Carroll as lunar shuttle stewardess
Penny Brahms as stewardess
Heather Downham as stewardess
Alan Gifford as Poole's father
Ann Gillis as Poole's mother
Maggie d'Abo as stewardess (Space Station 5 elevator)
Chela Matthison as Mrs. Turner, Space Station 5 reception
Judy Keirn as voiceprint identification woman (Space Station 5)
Vivian Kubrick as Floyd's daughter, "Squirt"
Kenneth Kendall as BBC announcer

Opening sequence

The film opens with pitch blackness – a complete absence of light and matter as if at the moment before the universe came into being. On this science and religion can agree: in the beginning there was darkness until...until….until, and that is what the sustained musical note sets us up for as it gradually rises to a crescendo of sound.

Our expectation is then met with the view of our planet suspended in the inky void of space with the sun seeming to emerge from behind and above it. Celestial gases and gravity have long worked their magic gradually coalescing to form light and life-giving stars and planets and solar systems, so many of which come together to form constellations.

By some miracle, this single planetary jewel (perhaps one might be forgiven thinking - the only one in the universe) has been blessed with the addition of a single seemingly unique and miraculous element – LIFE!

Read on for more

SILENT RUNNING (1972)

A melancholy sci-fi film that makes you think about what could happen, and is in fact happening to our planet, along with the consequences for us all if no action is taken.

Directed by Douglas Trumbull
Written by Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, Steven Bochco
Produced by: Michael Gruskoff, Marty Hornstein, Douglas Trumbull
Cinematography: Charles F. Wheeler
Edited by: Aaron Stell
Music by: Peter Schickele
Production company: Universal Pictures
Running time: 89 minutes
Budget: $1,350,000

Cast

Bruce Dern: Freeman Lowell
Cliff Potts: John Keenan
Ron Rifkin: Marty Barker
Jesse Vint: Andy Wolf
Mark Persons: the Drone
Steven Brown: the Drone
Cheryl Sparks: the Drone
Larry Whisenhunt: the Drone
Joseph Campanella: Neal - Berkshire' Captain (voice)
Roy Engel: Anderson (voice)

Trailer

Spoilers follow below....

The viewer is at first treated to a close-up view of a slice of nature in all its colorful and vibrant splendor. The camera takes us on a journey through water droplet speckled plant-life along with glimpses of its insect, amphibious and other denizens.

As the camera pulls out, our view is jarred by the sudden appearance in the shot of a section of an artificial surface feature which appears to be a metal foot-ramp. Next we see a monk-like robed human figure and behind and above him a star-strewn view of space. This is not what might at first have been expected.

The robed individual is Freeman Lowell, one of four crewmen aboard American Airlines space freighter Valley Forge. Lowell is the resident botanist and ecologist who maintains the various plants, cultivates the crops and attends to the animal life, all of which are contained in enormous, geodesic greenhouse domes attached to his and other large spaceships.

The lush foliage being framed against the pitch black of outer space and contained within a marvel of human technology makes the existence of the flora and fauna all the more remarkable and miraculous.

“On this first day of a new century, we humbly beg forgiveness and dedicate these last forests of our once beautiful nation, in the hope that they will one day return and grace our foul Earth. Until that day, may God bless these gardens and the brave men who care for them.”

This is the not too distant future, where all plant and animal life on Earth is becoming extinct. What remains has been preserved in the domes of the 2000 meter long orbiting space freighters. The plan or mission is to eventually return the preserved plant and animal life to earth. The Valley Forge, is part of a fleet of freighters currently located just outside the orbit of Saturn.

Freeman Lowell is passionately and one might say obsessively dedicated to his work of preservation and conservation. Not so, however his crew-mates whose main priority is to return to Earth after their one-year deployment to space.

“Do I have to put signs up here to keep you guys off my grass?”

The tranquility of the scene is rudely disrupted by the antics of Lowell’s crew-mates who burst in on Lowell driving motorized buggies, tearing up the soil and nearly bowling Lowell over. Blowing off steam and having fun is a lot more appealing to Lowell’s crew-mates than dedication and respect for what’s around them and their responsibility toward it.

In the next few scenes featuring his interaction with his crew mates, Lowell comes across not just as some hippie drop-out intent on merely shunning civilization. Instead, this is a man who appreciates the natural world and all that it offers, who is adept at working in partnership with technology as a tool and one who can play a mean hand of poker which suggests skill at strategy and bluff. He probably just prefers the natural world and technology to his fellow ass-hole human beings and is fully committed to the ideals behind the forest preservation mission.

More importantly, Lowell appears to be a hopeless and naive optimist who fervently believes that the authorities back on earth have indeed paid attention to his communications and that “they're about to re-establish the parks and forest system” with him as director. After all, he’s spent the last eight years dedicated to the project and that “here's no way they're gonna announce cutbacks, not after this amount of time.”

“You don't think that it's time that somebody cared enough to have a dream?”

What Lowell doesn’t seem to understand is the fickle and self-absorbed nature of human beings as alluded to by crewman Wolf who tells him, “it's been too long, Lowell, people got other things to do now.”

This sentiment is underscored by a radio transmission from Con Central in which their boss, Anderson informs the crews of the fleet that orders have been received to “abandon, then nuclear destruct, all the forests and return our ships to commercial service.”

It is at this point that something within Lowell’s psyche seems to snap and begins to unravel. It is as if there is no place in the universe anymore for logic, reason, for rationality, for a sense of right and wrong. To him, such a destructive course of action as the blowing up of the Earth’s last remaining forests in space is just “insane.”

"Rejoice in the Sun"

♪ Fields of children ♪

♪ Running wild ♪

♪ In the sun ♪

♪ Like a forest is your child ♪

♪ Growing wild ♪

♪ In the sun ♪

♪ Doomed in his innocence ♪

♪ In the sun ♪

♪ Gather your children ♪

♪ To your side ♪

♪ In the sun ♪

♪ Tell them ♪

♪ All they love will die ♪

♪ Tell them why ♪

♪ In the sun ♪

♪ Tell them ♪

♪ It's not too late ♪

♪ Cultivate one by one ♪

♪ Tell them to harvest ♪

♪ And rejoice ♪

♪ In the sun ♪

(Joan Baez)

A future time where all flora and fauna is extinct on Earth.

The planet's ecosystems exist only in large pods attached to spacecraft.

Commercial interests have now taken precedence.

The pods are to be jettisoned into space and destroyed by nuclear devices.

The crew of Valley forge and other ships can return home to earth.

Botanist and crew member Freeman Lowell has tended the plants for eight years.

How will the dedicated Lowell take the news?

Is the earth destined to lose the last of its forests and living creatures?

Read on for more....

Demon Seed (1977)

A chilling prescient and deceptively complex sci-fi thriller of a film

Directed by Donald Cammell
Produced by Herb Jaffe
Screenplay by Robert Jaffe, Roger O. Hirson
Based on novel, “Demon Seed” by Dean Koontz
Music by Jerry Fielding
Cinematography: Bill Butler
Edited by Francisco Mazzola
Production companies: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Herb Jaffe Productions
Distributed by United Artists (United States), Cinema International Corporation (International)
Running time: 94 minutes
Box office: $2 million

Cast

Julie Christie as Susan Harris
Fritz Weaver as Alex Harris
Gerrit Graham as Walter Gabler
Berry Kroeger as Petrosian
Lisa Lu as Soon Yen
Larry J. Blake as Cameron
John O'Leary as Royce
Alfred Dennis as Mokri
Davis Roberts as Warner
Patricia Wilson as Mrs. Trabert
E. Hampton Beagle as Night Operator
Michael Glass as Technician #1
Barbara O. Jones as Technician #2
Dana Laurita as Amy
Monica MacLean as Joan Kemp
Harold Oblong as Scientist
Georgie Paul as Housekeeper
Michelle Stacy as Marlene
Tiffany Potter as Baby
Felix Silla as Baby
Robert Vaughn as voice of Proteus IV

Film Clip

A human has created

a machine…

Now the machine

wants to create

a human!

*********

“A beautiful woman…

A master computer…

The most shocking act

Of creation ever imagined!!”

*********

A woman...

imprisoned

and

forcibly impregnated

by an

artificially intelligent computer!

“Fear for her!!!!”

Read on for more.....

The Last Man on Earth (1964)

A thoughtful and absorbing post apocalyptic movie that has soul

Directed by Sidney Salkow, Ubaldo B. Ragona
Produced by Robert L. Lippert
Screenplay by Logan Swanson, William F. Leicester
Italian version: Furio M. Monetti, Ubaldo B. Ragona
Based on “I Am Legend” by Richard Matheson
Music by Paul Sawtell, Bert Shefter
Cinematography: Franco Delli Colli
Edited by Gene Ruggiero
Italian version: Franca Silvi
Production companies: Associated Producers Inc.; Produzioni La Regina
Distributed by American International Pictures (US), 20th Century Fox (International)
Running time: 86 minutes

Cast

Vincent Price as Dr. Robert Morgan
Franca Bettoia as Ruth Collins
Carolyn De Fonseca dubbed for Franca Bettoia's voice in the English release of the film.
Emma Danieli as Virginia Morgan
Giacomo Rossi Stuart as Ben Cortman
Umberto Raho (billed as Umberto Rau) as Dr. Mercer

“By night they leave their graves, crawling, shambling, through empty streets, whimpering, pleading, begging for his blood!

Do you dare to imagine what it would be like to be... the last man on earth... or the last woman?

Alive among the lifeless... alone among the crawling creatures of evil that make the night hideous with their inhuman craving!”

“HOW MUCH HORROR CAN YOU FACE?

...where lifeless hands reach out for the warmth of human flesh

...where terror walks on tiptoe begging for the blood of...

The Last Man on Earth!”

A plague devastates life on Earth and turns all of humanity into the living dead!

Dr. Robert Morgan is the sole unscathed human survivor on the planet.

For three years his daily routine consists of killing the zombie-like creatures by night and fortifying his house for his own safety by day.

With his wife and daughter having been taken by the outbreak, Morgan faces a constant battle against loneliness while trying to preserve his sanity.

But is there any point to all this?

It seems that the odds are against this last remnant of humanity……

Trailer

Read on for more........

Countdown (1968)

A rather dry, less than exciting but well-acted snapshot of the space race during the Cold war period of the late 1960s. The film deals with complex emotions and human behavior instead of technology but suffers from a lack of tension and suspense.

The Soviets are about to launch a manned mission to the moon.

A desperate bid by the US to land a man on the moon before the Soviets do.

An Apollo moon program that isn’t ready to launch yet. 

A rushed preparation to send a single astronaut in a modified Gemini capsule to land on the moon.

He is to remain alone on the moon in a lunar shelter for a year until an Apollo mission can rescue him.

BUT.....

Who will be selected for this hastily prepared and perilous mission and can it succeed?

Directed by Robert Altman
Produced by William Conrad
Screenplay by Loring Mandel
Based on “The Pilgrim Project” by Hank Searls
Music by Leonard Rosenman
Cinematography: William W. Spencer
Edited by Gene Milford
Production company: A William Conrad Production
Distributed by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Running time: 101 minutes

Cast

James Caan as Lee Stegler
Joanna Moore as Mickey Stegler
Robert Duvall as Chiz Stewart
Barbara Baxley as Jean
Charles Aidman as Gus
Steve Ihnat as Ross Duellan
Michael Murphy as Rick
Ted Knight as Walter Larson
Stephen Coit as Ehrman
John Rayner as Dunc
Charles Irving as Seidel
Bobby Riha as Stevie Stegler

Trailer

(Spoilers follow below....)

We are transported back to the late 1960s, a time we recall being one of change, the rise of counter-culture and impending social and political turmoil. Shielded from all of the ructions of the times within the bubble of the Gemini and Apollo moon programs, we find three astronauts training in an Apollo 3 simulator with their main concern consisting of having their session being aborted abruptly with the “third orbit coming up.”

The astronauts inhabit a world of buzz and crew-cutted, skinny-tied, narrow-trousered and short shirt-sleeved mission focused dedication to the achievement of a history-making goal: sending a man to the moon.  

♪♪ Johnny we gotta make a moon shot

Or the Russians will leave us behind

So get ready soon and we'll drop you on the moon.. ♪♪

Read on for more

Francois Truffaut’s, Fahrenheit 451 (1966) - Part 2

 

Commentary

(Some spoilers below...)

Background & Production

Truffaut’s film is based on Ray Bradbury's famous novel, Fahrenheit 451. It was Truffaut's first color film and his only non French-language film. At the 1966 Venice Film Festival, Fahrenheit 451 was nominated for the Golden Lion.

In a detailed diary Truffaut kept during the production, he referred to Fahrenheit 451 as being his "saddest and most difficult" film-making experience, mainly because of intense conflicts between Werner and himself, about which much has been made by others. For instance, Oskar Werner supposedly cut his hair for the final scene to create a continuity error, being motivated by his hatred for the director. For the last two weeks, both men reportedly didn't speak to one another. Still, what work place doesn’t have conflict and difficult interpersonal relationships? Not all films that have cast and crew holding hands and singing Kumbaya turn out to be masterpieces. It’s the end result that counts and in the case of Truffaut’s film, it’s a pretty good result.

Julie Christie was originally cast as just Linda Montag, with the part of Clarisse being offered to Jean Seberg and Jane Fonda, with even Tippi Hedren being considered. Truffaut ultimately decided that Christie be cast in both roles as two sides of the same coin so to speak. Julie Christie agreed to star in this film for $200,000, while her asking price at the time was $400,000.

The film was shot at Pinewood Studios in England. The monorail exterior scene was taken at the French SAFEGE test track in Châteauneuf-sur-Loire near Orléans, France. It was dismantled shortly after filming. The film featured the Alton housing estate in Roehampton, south London, and Edgcumbe Park in Crowthorne, Berkshire. The final "Book People" book reciting scene was filmed at Black Park near Pinewood. It was hoped the weather would improve for the final days of shooting. Instead, it had begun snowing during the night. The presence of snow in the final shots was unexpected and unplanned but proved to be effective.

The production work was done in French, as Truffaut spoke virtually no English but co-wrote the screenplay with Jean-Louis Richard.

The movie's opening credits are spoken rather than displayed in type, which suggests what life would be like in a society in which the printed word is banned.

Truffaut’s “Fahrenheit 451” doesn’t offer us a sleek whiz-bang typical sci-fi 'futuristic' view of the future. Unlike Bradbury’s book, there is no deadly mechanical hound. Bradbury wasn’t focused on anticipating the possible great technological advancements of the future. Instead of such details, he would focus on presenting “what if?” scenarios and considering implications and consequences for humanity. What we do have though in the film version are commuters traveling via monorail and living rooms with wall screens uncannily resembling our own 21st century HDTV sets. The houses are uniform ‘60s style modernist functional but soulless structures that seem to contain retro gadgets like the wall phones. Even the red fire engines look like dinky Tonka toys rather than massive high-tech futuristic beasts. Such elements seem to suggest to the viewer that we are dealing with a world that is not too far removed from our own experience.

Read on for more....

Francois Truffaut’s, "Fahrenheit 451" (1966) - Part 1

An excellent adaptation of a great novel and in keeping with the spirit of Bradbury’s classic story.

Trailer

“Fahrenheit 451” is a 1966 British dystopian sci-fi film directed by François Truffaut, starring Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, and Cyril Cusack. The film is based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury. The story is set in a future tightly controlled society in which the government deploys firemen to incinerate all literature in order to prevent any independent thinking that might upset the established order of things.

This post concentrates on Truffaut’s film version of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.” Any mention or consideration of Bradbury’s excellent novel is confined to “The Points Of Interest” section in the next post (part 2).

Note: In the world of “Fahrenheit 451” books and print have been banned and upon discovery are put to the flame and burned to ashes. Therefore, the story’s synopsis will be in the form of a mp3 file which you can download here:

Mp3 File Film Synopsis

PDF Download (Film Synopsis)

BBC Radio Play Adaptation

EPUB/PDF Book 

Audiobook

Full Film Link

©Chris Christopoulos 2021