Tag: 2001: A Space Odyssey

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Stardust

Director – Gabriel Range – 2020 – UK – Cert. 15 – 109m

****

In 1971, an unknown David Bowie tours America to promote his new album The Man Who Sold The World – on VoD from Friday, January 15th

The late David Bowie remains one of the most significant and iconic musicians, artists or stars of the last century. Aside from numerous clips of him performing music or being interviewed of radio or TV, he has a presence in a number of films, among them science fiction adventure The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicholas Roeg, 1976) and Japanese POW outing Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (Nagisa Oshima, 1983). So if you’re going to try and recreate Bowie on film, you’d better be sure of what you’re doing.

On paper, Stardust seems to be doing everything right. Director Range is first and foremost a Bowie admirer familiar with the music, the albums, the wider body of work, the man. You’d have to be in order to make a film like this. And he’s honed in on a particular episode of Bowie’s life – a very interesting one too, the period in the early seventies when he was known for little more than two seeming novelty records, The Laughing Gnome and Space Oddity, the latter now widely regarded as one of his finest songs.… Read the rest

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2001:
A Space Odyssey
(50th anniversary,
70mm)

Director – Stanley Kubrick – 1968 – UK – Cert. U – 149m

*****

“Dave, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” Fifty years after its original release, the SF movie considered by many the greatest ever made returns to UK cinemas in 70mm – exclusively at Picturehouse Central for two weeks from Friday 18th May, 2018

2001: A Space Odyssey is back in a brand new 70mm print struck from new printing elements made from the original camera negative. Like known champion of physical celluloid over digital print Christopher Nolan who was involved in the process, I saw the film in a cinema as a boy with my father, although in my case I saw one of its many reruns in the seventies. Nevertheless, I relish the chance to go back and see this brand new ‘unrestored’ 70mm print because it recreates what audiences saw on release, no remastering, re-edits or redone effects… [Read more]

2001: A Space Odyssey (70mm)is back out in the UK on Friday, May 18th. Watch the film trailer below:

Review originally in DMovies.org.

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Prometheus

Director – Ridley Scott – 2012 – US – Cert.15 – 124m

*****

UK release date 02/06/2012.

Western social attitudes to women have come a long way since Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) gratuitously stripped down to her underwear prior to fending off the malevolent creature in the finale of Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi shocker Alien (1979), but would appear still to have a long way to go.

You might think the glass ceiling has been abolished with the expedition on spaceship Prometheus being run by ice-cool blonde Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), but subsequent plot twists (which we won’t reveal) suggest otherwise. Scientist Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), impossibly pregnant with a mysterious and rapidly growing embryo, is unexpectedly forced to improvise when the automated medical operations facility with which she had hoped to perform her own Caesarian turns out programmed for male surgery only. If sisters are now doing it for themselves, plenty of male-designed hurdles are still making sure they don’t do it it that easily.

Elsewhere, as Prometheus pre-empts the Alien franchise’s “which one of the crew is an android?” gambit by introducing us to the non-human David (Michael Fassbender) walking around the ship before he awakens first Vickers then her subordinate crew members from hyper-sleep, the android male still appears to possess more final authority than anyone else on board.… Read the rest