I wanted to post a picture of the star baby wearing a birthday hat but I'm too lazy to photoshop. According to the IMDB, 2001 premiered 40 years ago tonight:

USA 2 April 1968 (Washington, D.C.) (premiere)
USA 3 April 1968 (New York City, New York) (premiere)
USA 4 April 1968 (Los Angeles, California) (premiere)
USA 6 April 1968 (general)

I've only seen it once in a theater but that's the viewing that's stayed with me out of the ten or so times I've seen it total. Just last month I got sucked into watching it yet again on TCM. I don't think it moves me enough for me to call it one of my favorite films but it's surely one of the greatest by any standard. Anyone ever have a cinepiphany while seeing it?

I got to see it at the Seattle Cinerama a few years ago. I had seen it in theaters several times before, but this was certainly the best experience ever. Seeing it on that vast screen really drove home the sense of scale when we see a body drifting across a star field. A very poetic image of the insignificance of humanity in an infinite universe. The movie is definitely a strange marriage of visions, between Clarke's materialist mysticism and Kubrick's icy satire.

I watch it every year on Christmas Eve while wrapping gifts. I admit to rarely finishing it, but it does make for a comfortable, pleasant, familiar evening that I always look forward to.

. . . this is where I saw it also - but back in 1968; it ran here for a very long time, at least a year - I remember it as the longest run in the country for this film, but that might not be correct . . . a friend of mine worked at the MGM booking office in Seattle at the time (the studios used to have regional offices to deal with things like that) and he told me how amazed the studio was at the number of people who returned night after night to watch this movie from way down close to the screen - it didn't take them long to figure out why and, if I remember correctly, they soon started including "the ultimate trip" into their advertising . . . Disney also took notice, and the re-release of FANTASIA (1940) a bit later was treated like a head trip from the very beginning . . . by the way, 2001 is a movie that certainly looks good on BluRay . . .

I just recorded 2001 from the Universal HD channel, not yet having it on Blue Ray. DOn't know how it compares to the BR, but it looks beautiful in HD. I think I'll sit down with it during the next day.

Now if there were only a television screen big enough to truly create the impact of the imagery...

Get a front projector if you can. I just upgraded to the very reasonably priced Panasonic AX200U and it's f***ing incredible. The brightness, clarity, and all around film-like look when watching HD or well-mastered DVDs on a 7-foot wide screen continually blows me away.

Vincent

What were the deciding factors in your going for that unit over any others you may have been thinking about? I'll be ponying up myself before too long, and am thinking about Sony's Black Pearl, among one or two others.

Point of fact, I've stopped researching until I'm about a month from purchase. I'll see what the landscape looks like from that vantage. In the meanwhile, I'm collecting links to peruse more fully later - like the one you just posted...

Lest we forget, it is also marks the 40th anniversary of a version of 2001 that has not been seen since - and quite probably never will be. Unless, of course, the Kubrick estate knows something we don't.

First, my older projector that I had for almost 4 years was a Panasonic and I was very happy with it, so I wanted to stick with the brand when I upgraded to a higher-res model (my older one had 4:3 768 X 1024 pixel chips, so the 16:9 HD window was only 576 X 1024 pixels, compared to the native 16:9 720 X 1280 pixels on the AX200U). I'd actually been reading up on the new Panasonic models over the past couple years years so I knew that they had introduced the "smooth screen" feature that eliminated visible pixel structure, as well as vastly increased the contrast ratios compared to older LCD projectors (DLP was not an option as I am very sensitive to the rainbow artifacting that occurs with single-chip DLPs, and single chip model DLP would be the only ones in my price range). The AX200U came about right around the time the current bulb on my older Panny was needing to be replaced. It was getting great reviews, was/is one of the brightest projectors in its class, and I found it for sale at a great price right around the time I got my income tax return. So it was a matter of brand-loyalty (hell, my laserdisc player is a Panasonic and that baby's almost 20 years old and still works perfectly), the great reviews, price, and timing.

Vincent

It sounds beautiful, although I'm a bit puzzled, as it's native resolution is 720p, yet the article indicates the ability to display 1020p. Still, it's a great bargain, and a 10 foot and above screen would help a great deal when it comes to films like 2001.

The native resolution is 720P but it can accept all the way up to a true 1080P input which the projector then scales to 720P. Heck, even my older projector could accept up to a 1080I input, which would then be scaled down to 576P for playback.

Vincent