Stanley Kubrick was never a darling of the Hollywood studios; his films were generally delivered late and over-budget.
2001: A Space Odyssey, originally budgeted at $6 million, ultimately cost MGM $11 million. And Kubrick missed the intended delivery date by two full years.
So some may find it appropriate -- a joke of cosmic proportions? -- that the newly restored 2001 won't be coming to a theater near you ... until 2002.
Except for limited runs in Seattle, Washington D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles this fall, Kubrick's seminal sci-fi epic isn't scheduled for movie houses until at least next year. According to a spokesman from Warner Bros., which is handling the release, that's only if this year's screenings are sufficiently profitable.
Kubrick, who died in 1998, would have been disappointed -- he looked forward to having audiences reevaluate 2001 in 2001, And the film's many fans, some of whom heard rumors of a Dec. 31, 2000, release, are growing frustrated.
Among them is film critic Roger Ebert, who will use his TV show this weekend to promote the film (and perhaps scold Warner Bros.).
"It disturbs me that 2001 is not getting a proper national release," Ebert said. "For a while, Warners was even wondering whether to re-release it at all."
Originally released in April 1968, 2001 was received with disdain by many critics. (Pauline Kael called it "a monumentally unimaginative movie.") But the film's trippy, otherworldly imagery, coupled with the era's star-gazing obsessions, gave the film a cultish appeal. That cult has only grown stronger during the past 33 years.
Some sci-fi buffs who see the restored 2001 will likely try to gauge the success of Kubrick and collaborator Arthur C. Clarke as futurists.
Interplanetary commuter travel? Not yet. Hotels in the sky? Nope. Homicidal computers with feelings? Not on my desk.
But, as Kubrick said, 2001 was not a forecast but a fable, and those who look beyond the crystal-ball musings might discover the film's considerable appeal. Some of the special effects, created 20 years before computer-generated imagery, are dated, and the film's insights on deep space today seem less than deep. Still, 2001 retains much of its mythic power.
One reason is Kubrick's vast ambition, which seems especially admirable in an era of mostly mindless sci-fi. ("In 1968 we dreamed bigger dreams and were more optimistic," Ebert said.) Another is 2001's position as an essential piece of film history. A group of movie buffs named 2001's multi-millennial jump cut -- a caveman's bone morphing into a spinning satellite -- the greatest shot in film history.
Some would even go as far to divide science fiction filmmaking into two eras: pre-2001 and post-2001. In 1968, the French magazine L'Express described 2001 as "Year One in the cinema of the future," and Kubrick's film was, at least for Hollywood, something completely different: nearly silent, densely symbolic, overwhelmingly imagistic, non-narrative, contemplative. For those bored with the B-movie outer-space thrillers of the 1950s and '60s, 2001 could seem revelatory: sci-fi with brains.
The restored version of 2001, which premiered at Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival last April, features 70 mm prints re-mastered from the original negative and digitally re-mastered sound.
"Seeing it on a big screen in 70mm is not just seeing a better picture, but essentially having a different experience," Ebert said. "Those unlucky enough to have seen it only on video have not really seen it at all."
