Welcome to the Universe

"The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible." ~Arthur C. Clarke


I recently jumped feet first into the realm of Blu-Ray. I bought the latest and greatest player by Samsung (and still can't figure out the fucking remote) and a 1080p TV from Wal-mart (I hope I don't regret it in a year), but had failed to add any Blu-rays to my collection. Until now. My first personal Blu-ray was none other than Stanley Kubrick's science fiction mindfuck masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Wow. I forgot how fucking weird this movie is. (My next viewing requires copious amounts of LSD.)

The movie is divided into four acts. Act 1, the Dawn of Man, shows a group of hairy hominids cackling and shouting in apemanese at a different group of hairy hominids, scaring them away. Then after a long night of tick-picking and cuddlefucks, they awaken to the awesomeness of the SPACE DOMINO.

This megalith from beyond the stars telepathically teaches our good hairy hominid clan how to use an old femur to bash in the fucking ape-brains of bad hairy hominid leader. (I'm pretty sure they went on to sell car insurance.)

~"Try to get MY pubes off the bar soap, you hairless fuckwad."~

Act Two jumps forward a few MILLION years (without a montage song too) to the flight of Dr. Haywood Floyd (William Sylvester). Apparently a group of lunar geologists were digging around and discovered the SPACE DOMINO. This act is where we get our first sputterings of dialogue. Thirty  goddamned minutes into the movie I might add. So, after telling everyone there is definitely not a giant black crayon box on the moon, the group of scientists go touch the SPACE DOMINO only to have it burst their fucking eardrums apart with its sheer awesomeness.

~Haywood Jablowme~

Act Three is the meat and potatoes of the movie. Taking place another 18 months later, we get introduced to  our sidekick / villain HAL 9000. Oh, and some peeps -- Dave and Frank. This act, in fact, has a plot. HAL is the supercomputer aboard the spaceship Discovery with our human friends heading to Jupiter because apparently our SPACE DOMINO sent out a radio signal to the giant ball of gas. Now, HAL informs the peeps about the communication satellite going kaput in a few hours. No big deal, right. Except a HAL 9000 on Earth ran the same diagnostic and found no such malfunction. Since HALs are always right, one of em must be wrong. 

~He looks trustworthy to me.~

The peeps decide to disengage HAL, just in case he's a psychotic killer computer. HAL decides to kill the peeps because he's a psychotic killer computer. There's where the conflict lies.

Act Four is where you're hoping the acid REALLY kicks in,  because astronaut Dave from Act Three encounters our SPACE DOMINO, entering a psychedelic space warp into the very point where time and space and tacos combine to, to, . . . Ok, I'll admit. I have NO fucking idea what Act Four is about. Dave flies through the air. Then he's in a room as an old man eating. Then he's on the bed dying. Then he's the fucking spacebaby. Yes, spacebaby. 

~"I can taste the purple in your soul."~

Hey, I don't get it either, but it was the Sixties. Maybe Kubrick was hanging out with Timothy Leary a little too often. Or not enough. Either way, this is regarded as the first serious science fiction movie. It's the grandfather to every decent and otherwise space movie since. This is what George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg were jerking off to in Film school. 

And yes, this is what I was jerking off to last night. 

The Scientist and the Cowboy

Hell, there are no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something. ~Thomas Edison

When film was a shiny new toy in the wee budding years of the Twentieth Century, everyone tried to be a Spielberg. . . and usually failed miserably.  Most of these early shorts are easily forgettable. Two innovators who actually didn't choke on their own ineptitude and made some pretty damn good flicks were Georges Méliès , with his Le Voyage Dans la Luna and Edwin Porter, with his The Great Train Robbery.

Le Voyage Dans la Luna, (1902) ,or A Trip to the Moon, for all you Nationalists, is th first science fiction story, and Melies' most famous work--but after doing over 500 films, you'd hope at least ONE would make it's way into pop cultural history. It's a quaint little movie about a group of scientists who decide to build a cannon and shoot a large bullet into the eyeball of the Man on the Moon.

 

~Science is such a dick.~

Upon landing on the moon, they wield their mighty umbrellas of doom ("This is my BOOMstick!") to destroy the Moon Satyrs. It's your typical Invasion and Conquer story, and has been a great influence for every science fiction film you have or haven't seen. Oh, and music videos....like this one.

(TRIVIA BITE: The directors of the above video were Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the married directorial team behind Little Miss Sunshine.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Great Train Robbery (1903) is considered the first Western, even though it was filmed in Delaware and even though Edison had apparently made some crappy Western 4 years prior. This is another quaint little story about Invasion and Conquest. Just replace the scientists with cowboys....and the moon with a train. This film has the unique privilege of being the first Blockbuster, and subsequently, giving us our first "movie star," Gilbert Anderson.

 

~the Brad Pitt of 1900s~

The greatest innovation each of these films provided was the advancements in editing. yes, editing. Before these, film was pretty much like watching the home videos of people plowing, or waving, or shitting. Yes, i'm talking about you, Lumiere Brothers. These two films utilized different sets, camera techniques, and even used some real fucking actors. Hollywood has come a long way indeed, but owes oodles of inspiration and perspiration to these early pioneers.