THE RETURN OF W. DE RIJK Jan 14, 2015

sometimes you have to cross the line to know where the line is. just ask any two-year-old.

maybe this is what happens when you spend too much time with a movie: you start thinking about it when it’s not around, and then you start wanting to touch it. i’ve been watching 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY regularly for four decades, but it wasn’t until a few years ago i started thinking about touching it, and then over the holidays i decided to make my move. why now? I don’t know. maybe i wasn’t old enough to touch it until now. maybe i was too scared to touch it until now, because not only does the film not need my—or anyone else’s—help, but if it’s not THE most impressively imagined and sustained piece of visual art created in the 20th century, then it’s tied for first. meaning IF i was finally going to touch it, i’d better have a bigger idea than just trimming or re-scoring.

plus, it’s TECHNOLOGY’S FAULT. without technology, i wouldn’t have been able to spend so much intimate—and, ultimately, inappropriate—time with the film. by the way, i’ve seen every conceivable kind of film print of 2001, from 16mm flat to 35mm internegative to a cherry camera negative 70mm in the screening room at warner bros, and i’m telling you, none of them look as good as a bluray played on an pioneer elite plasma kuro monitor. and while you’re cleaning up your spit take over that sentence, let me also say i believe SK would have embraced the current crop of digital cameras, because from a visual standpoint, he was obsessed with two things: absolute fidelity to reality-based light sources, and image stabilization. regarding the former, the increased sensitivity without resolution loss allows us to really capture the world as it is, and regarding the latter, post-2001 SK generally shot matte perf film (normally reserved for effects shots, because of its added steadiness) all day, every day, something which digital capture makes moot. pile on things like never being distracted by weaving, splices, dirt, scratches, bad lab matches during changeovers, changeovers themselves, bad framing and focus exacerbated by projector vibration, and you can see why i think he might dig digital.

MY ONE GIGANTIC ISSUE WITH THIS TRANSFER

is that you can see, in the dawn of man sequence, the cross-hatched patterns of the front projection screen in several shots. this is INEXCUSABLE. i never saw these patterns in any film prints—this would never have gotten past the polaroid-happy SK—and ANY transfer in which these patterns are visible no matter how your monitor/TV is set up is TECHNICALLY FUCKED AND COMPLETELY WRONG. i hate saying that about my good friends at WB, especially since the WB remaster of CITIZEN KANE is literally a revelation, BUT on the other hand the ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN bluray is a disappointment, BUT on the OTHER other hand they did remaster and release a beautiful END OF THE ROAD disc, so….

AT THE REQUEST OF WARNER BROS. AND THE STANLEY KUBRICK ESTATE, THE RETURN OF W. DE RIJK HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THIS SITE.



