2001: A Space Odyssey Draft 1

Stanley Kubrick’s “masterpiece” 2001: A Space Odyssey has many mixed emotions from viewer to viewer. On one side people absolutely love it and say that it is an amazing work of art; while, on the other side of the spectrum, many say that it is not that good and mostly do not enjoy the movie much at all.
The beginning 20 seconds of the movie brings a strong sound and excitement to the viewer. Then it goes to a deserted land with no noise whatsoever and only shows random animals. For a lengthy amount of time, it shows these animals drinking water and arguing with others. This is a horrible start to the film because the audience is already losing interest.
Then the apes wake up to a very annoying noise and see a black block. They approach the block and its increasingly loud noise and start screaming at the object. Suddenly the scene changes to the apes’ bones lying around where the block was. Another ape comes up and grabs a bone and starts to smash the bones and use the bone as a weapon or tool. This is to show how the first weapons and tools were to come about. It was pretty interesting how Kubrick showed this, but used way too much film and time to get to this point.
The next scene moves forward several years to around the year 2000. This is another long segment showing space shuttles, satellites, and other space objects floating around with annoying orchestral music. Again the audience is losing interest due to the fact of how much time is being used showing the same things over and over. Given the fact that this movie was made in 1968, it does have great special effects, for the time period, such as floating pens and other objects, but is still way too long of an introduction to the upcoming scenes.
Then the first scene of any scripted acting came next. Dr. Heywood Floyd goes onto a boarding station outside of earth before his flight to the moon. This scene shows many futuristic ideas such as a waitress walking upside down due to her “sticky shoes,” a video telephone, and food trays floating due to no gravity. The scene sets the mood for the rest of the movie and also brings a mystery to the plot when the Dr. is questioned about an epidemic occurring on the moon base.
Once Heywood leaves the boarding station, he stops at another station that appears to be a very important and secretive base. He then talks to a panel of people that there has been, “the most significant discovery in the history in science.” The panel is discouraged about the secrecy of the program and question Floyd about it. Finally this scene starts to bring some action to what has been a very mellow, almost exhausting plot.
Then Dr. Floyd and some other men are on a shuttle heading to the moon. They are in futuristic space suits and talking about the discovery they had made. Once they land the men go out onto the surface and walk up to the same annoying noise and block that the apes had seen. All of a sudden the block makes a loud, screeching noise and the scene cuts out to the Jupiter Mission, eighteen months later.
The shuttle is very intriguing and a great part of the movie because it is so realistic. It shows the astronauts defying gravity and running around the station. It also introduces the most controversial character of the movie, the computer Hal 9000. He is representing the futuristic technology for the movie. This brings up the problem. “He” is supposedly flawless and has never made a mistake; however, when there supposedly is a computer error, the astronauts decide to disconnect him.
Once this happens, Hal kills the hibernating astronauts and locks the other two out of the ship causing ones death. Then the surviving astronaut disconnects him and heads on the Jupiter.
Once he reaches Jupiter it shows the random black block floating around and then starts to send the astronaut in an uncontrolled time lapse with great visual effects. This goes on for quite awhile and brings the audience at edge. Once the time warp is complete, the final scene comes on.
He somehow is put in an elegant room that appears to be exactly like earth. After he walks around he sees a man sitting at the table. He disappears and then the audience realizes that the old man is actually the astronaut. Then all of a sudden it shows him become older and laying in the bed much older staring at the block once more.
The ending then shows a baby fetus in space. This is supposed to represent the monolith had sucked him in and turned him into the star child, which needs no technology to survive and is supposed to be the ultimate being. This brings a very confused but excited audience in the end.

Compiling a Portfolio

Today's reading was about making a portfolio for artists and such. Why create a portfolio? Well some reasons are to create a record of your writing, organize your research, and even to just explore you literacy. You can include several different things in a portfolio. These include drafts, source materials, responses, in-class writings, etc.

There are two main portfolios. One is paper portfolios. You can use a two pocket folder or something of the sort and just find all of your papers and work and put it in there neatly organized and filed. To help you can create a main page which shows where all papers are at. The other portfolio is an online portfolio. This can include a home page and have links to the contents of your work. If you look on pg 228 of The Norton Field Guide to Writing, it shows a helpful table showing you what to put on your website.