2001 has passed - in The odd entries from life …….

• but the Odyssey remains ……..

First seen in 1968 Stanley Kubrick’s film ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’ has been released again 46 years on, a film that tells a story with out words, a film we all have our own ideas and understanding. In 1968 I had a weekend in London a few weeks after ‘2001’ was released, back home in Shrewsbury the best seat in the Granada cinema cost £1.2/6 [£1.25] in London that was the cost of a front row seat, so I splashed out £1.17/6 [£1.75] and that got me a seat in the third row!

I remembered thinking when the curtain stop opening, the screen was three times the width of the screen in the Granada, from the third row it wasn’t a matter of watching the film but being up there with it, a screen three times wider is also three times; sit back and enjoy! The Ape-men towered over me, and the spinning centrifuge was very impressive as an astronaut ran round the centrifuge towards us; this was real sci-fi!

I have now seen ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’ four times in a cinema, I have a Millennium DVD set with the soundtrack on CD and a 70mm frame from the film, then a few years after I found a DVD version that had been digitally cleaned; then when we had a Blu-ray player I purchased a blu-ray copy. After all that I would like to see the film again on the big screen!

The two Sci-fi films I really rate are of course ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’ and ‘Blade Runner’ the latter was made fourteen years after ‘2001’ In ‘Blade Runner’ all the screens and televisions are cathode ray screen televisions, there is a seen in 2001 of the two astronauts in the centrifuge, they are watching BBC TV 12 on flat screen televisions; or what we would call now ipads!

Just a detail but how I wonder how they foresaw the technology of forty years hence, Arthur C Clark was involved with the making of 2001 A Space Odyssey, and he was abreast of the approaching digital world and computers. I have seen some resent photographs of the young astronauts Dr Dave Bowman and Dr Frank Poole, the astronauts have fared much better than the actors; alas much the same as overcome of those in that London cinema forty six years ago!

Note, £1.2 shilling and six pennies, old money!

Last updated December 02, 2014