A few days ago, I received out-of-print gem The Making of Kubrick’s 2001 (edited wonderfully by Jerome Agel, 1970). I’m still over the moon.
There have been countless words written about Stanley Kubrick’s visionary masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey — some good, some bad — but after 45 years, this superb book remains the only one you’ll ever really need. It is such a shame that this book is out-of-print. It is filled with everything you ever wanted to know about 2001. It leads off with Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel” and closes with a complete reprint of Stanley Kubrick’s interview with Playboy magazine. In between are profiles, interviews with technical advisors, effects secrets revealed, letters to Stanley from the moviegoing public, as well as reviews of the film, both good and bad. A fascinating snapshot of a moment in history when the world was caught off guard by a motion picture. Search your local used book stores, like I did. If you’re a Kubrick fan, it’s worth the effort.
Now you can join me, I’ll fly you to the moon!
The Making of Kubrick’s 2001
(NOTE: For educational purposes only)With endless thanks to Matt DeGennaro
Wherever Christianity is viewed as a quiet submission to traditional patterns of conduct and an acceptance of social convention, there will be no appreciation of the atheism of Ivan Karamazov. His atheism begins to mean something when it becomes clear that the Christian gospel is a religious denunciation of religion–religion being understood as man’s attempt to relate himself constructively to the Holy. Traditional moralism and conventional piety have often put the objects of their search alongside God and have in that sense been guilty of idolatry. Atheism refuses to believe in the divinity of any traditional morality, and in this it is correct, more correct than some of the external Christianity that opposes it in the name of Christ. No distinction between right and wrong will avail me anything when I am faced by the awesome and fascinating presence of the Holy. Obedience to law and loyalty to social convention fall harmless to the ground before His glance… Dostoevsky’s study of human nature made him see a demonic element in man for which moralism could not account. Like few men before him, Dostoevsky learned to know the subtle means which the demonic employs in asserting itself with the hope of achieving divinity. The temptation “You will be like God” can come in the opportunity to violate moral law, as it did to Raskolnikov. It can also come in the guise of piety and morality, and it is in this latter form that the demonic is most seductive. Then it employs the sanctions of conventional morality for the accomplishment of its demonic ends. The ultimate and most profound critique of the identification of the Holy and the Good comes in the realization that the demonic in man transcends the moral sense and the ethical consciousness. Therefore, relation to the Holy is far more than accepting of living up to a moral code. As a matter of fact, accepting and living up to a code can be and often is the device by which the demonic ego defends its autonomy against the claims which the Holy lays upon it… God is more than the validation of our moral consciousness.
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| — | Jaroslav Pelikan / Fools for Christ: Essays on the True, the Good, and the Beautiful (via wtagg) |
Elvis only appeared on the Grand Ole Opry once, in 1954. The Opry’s preference to remain traditional rather than embrace the up-and-coming R & B-influenced Presley would prove defeating for its listenership, though, as their main competitor, the Louisiana Hayride, gladly hosted Elvis.
Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’
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| — | C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (via likeafieldmouse) |
