Good morning Dave.

I am just going to come out and say that I do not like 2001. Without a doubt it is a stunningly beautiful film, but that was part of the problem. The shots are just too damn long. I get that Kubrick was essentially showing off how lovely his compositions were, but it slowed the story down so much that I could not even pretend to care anymore.

My first issue is with the entire Ape sequence. Okay, I get the metaphor, chill out and move on already! This sequence was unnecessarily long and ridiculous. I got extremely bored and left the room until the scene finally ended. Also, humans in ape suits just isn't convincing. Ever.

This is yet another example of how time is brutal on a lot of art. In my opinion, 2001 has not aged well. At this point, the story is deeply embedded within pop culture and it has been parodied endlessly. In fact, some of the parodies have been BETTER than the film.

Ah, HAL. Apparently he is gay. Okay then. All I really have to say about that article is, seriously, is it possible to read any more deeply into a film? For that matter, it basically boiled down to seeing whatever you are looking for. For example, the article claims that HAL's voice is androgynous. I disagree. It was always male for me. I never once questioned it. Even now, when I try, I cannot hear the voice as a female. HAL is a man. Not a gay man, either. Just a computer program with an ego complex that happened to be programmed to have the voice of a male human.

For my opinion and input on the topic of egomanical super computers, please see my overly long first post about Colossus. I said absolutely everything there that I would care to say here and now. If I had watched this first, I am sure my thoughts would be deeper and more in depth, but as it is, I feel like I have said all that I want to.

I will say that the special effects here were incredible. People generally credit Star Wars with pioneering the visual effects era, but I really feel like everything looked just as good in this movie as in Star Wars years later. Star Wars simply took the theme and made it even more grand, but not much better.