2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Remastered 1080p BluRay x265 HEVC EAC3-SARTRE

A mind-bending sci-fi symphony, Stanley Kubrick's landmark 1968 epic pushed the limits of narrative and special effects toward a meditation on technology and humanity. Based on Arthur C. Clarke's story The Sentinel, Kubrick and Clarke's screenplay is structured in four movements. At the "Dawn of Man," a group of hominids encounters a mysterious black monolith alien to their surroundings. To the strains of Strauss's 1896 Also sprach Zarathustra, a hominid invents the first weapon, using a bone to kill prey. As the hominid tosses the bone in the air, Kubrick cuts to a 21st century spacecraft hovering over the Earth, skipping ahead millions of years in technological development. U.S. scientist Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) travels to the moon to check out the discovery of a strange object on the moon's surface: a black monolith. As the sun's rays strike the stone, however, it emits a piercing, deafening sound that fills the investigators' headphones and stops them in their path. Cutting ahead 18 months, impassive astronauts David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) head toward Jupiter on the spaceship Discovery, their only company three hibernating astronauts and the vocal, man-made HAL 9000 computer running the entire ship. When the all-too-human HAL malfunctions, however, he tries to murder the astronauts to cover his error, forcing Bowman to defend himself the only way he can. Free of HAL, and finally informed of the voyage's purpose by a recording from Floyd, Bowman journeys to "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite," through the psychedelic slit-scan star-gate to an 18th century room, and the completion of the monolith's evolutionary mission. With assistance from special-effects expert Douglas Trumbull, Kubrick spent over two years meticulously creating the most "realistic" depictions of outer space ever seen, greatly advancing cinematic technology for a story expressing grave doubts about technology itself. Despite some initial critical reservations that it was too long and too dull, 2001 became one of the most popular films of 1968, underlining the generation gap between young moviegoers who wanted to see something new and challenging and oldsters who "didn't get it." Provocatively billed as "the ultimate trip," 2001 quickly caught on with a counterculture youth audience open to a contemplative (i.e. chemically enhanced) viewing experience of a film suggesting that the way to enlightenment was to free one's mind of the U.S. military-industrial-technological complex.

Extras

• All extras subtitled (ENG,CZE,DUT,FRE,GER,HUN,ITA,JPN,CHI,CHI-SIM,KOR,POR,POL,RUS,SPA-LAT,SPA-CAS,THA)

• 2001: The Making of a Myth is an interesting retrospective with a number of talking heads discussing the impact of the film. (480p; 43:08)

• Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001 features folks like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas discussing what the film has meant to them and the art of cinema generally. (480p; 21:25)

• Vision of a Future Passed: The Prophecy of 2001 looks at some of the things that seemed fanciful in 1968 which don't seem quite as much anymore. (480p; 21:31)

• 2001: A Space Odyssey: A Look Behind the Future is a longer form archival piece that includes production data and interviews and is kind of charmingly old school. (480p; 23:11)

• What Is Out There? is an interesting piece which seems to suggest that we can't handle the truth out there. (480p; 20:42)

• 2001: FX and Conceptual Artwork features some interesting comments from Douglas Trumbull. (480p; 9:33)

• Look: Stanley Kubrick! is a brief piece focusing on Kubrick's work as a magazine photographer. (480p; 3:15)

• 11/27/1966 Interview with Stanley Kubrick is an audio interview conducted by Jeremy Bernstein that plays to a still image of the Starchild gazing on his new toy (Earth). (720p; 1:16:31)

• Theatrical Trailer (480p; 1:51)

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