Barnes & Noble

Dubbed the "ultimate trip" in its day, Stanley Kubrick's influential masterpiece remains true to both senses of the phrase. A controlled kaleidoscope of images and ideas, 2001: A Space Odyssey is both a space-travel adventure and, with its explosive climactic sequence, a hallucinogenic voyage of the mind. Based on the Arthur C. Clarke story "The Sentinel," 2001 initially bewildered many viewers with its lengthy, wordless opening sequence involving prehistoric protohumans and a mysterious black monolith. Jumping four million years into the future, two robotic astronauts (Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood) and a supercomputer named HAL, who seems more human than they are, head to Jupiter aboard the space-ship Discovery. This doomed mission produces such iconic scenes as the homicidal HAL's attack on the astronauts and the legendarily enigmatic "star child" birth set to Richard Strauss's "Thus Spake Zarathustra." 2001's unconventional approach to narrative thrilled adventurous '60s audiences, and fans still ponder the questions this landmark science-fiction film raises. Is the monolith God or the work of aliens? Only God and the late Stanley Kubrick know for sure. Frank Lovece

Barnes & Noble

This limited-edition collector's classic box set of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey includes the restored digital transfer on DVD, the original soundtrack on CD, a 16-page behind-the-scenes booklet, a 70mm film frame matted and suitable for framing, and a free poster offer.

All Movie Guide

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. Lucia Bozzola

Product Details

• UPC: 012569791916
• Source: WARNER HOME VIDEO
• Region Code: 1
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby AC-3 Surround Sound
• Editions: Remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, Dubbed
• Time: 2:28:00
• Sales Rank: 1,822

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Stanley Kubrick
• Sci-Fi - TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection

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