Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy: Hear a Radio Dramatization (1973)

in Audio Books, Sci Fi | August 6th, 2015

TheFoundationTrilogy
Last year Jonathan Nolan–screenwriter of Memen­to and Inter­stel­lar and not coin­ci­den­tal­ly direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan’s brother–announced that he would be devel­op­ing Isaac Asimov’s leg­endary Foun­da­tion tril­o­gy for HBO as a series. And we assume he’s still doing that, because there’s been nary a peep from the chan­nel since. So far the Inter­net con­sen­sus has been a col­lec­tive “well, that could be good!” instead of groans, which is a heart­en­ing thing these days.

For those who haven’t read the clas­sic books, but would like to get the jump on ol’ Nolan, we sub­mit this BBC Radio pro­duc­tion from 1973, which is now avail­able on Spo­ti­fy below. (Down­load Spo­ti­fy soft­ware here.) The record­ing also lives on Archive.org as well.

Right from the begin­ning we know we are in good hands, with the ana­log drones of the BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop ush­er­ing us into a stereo land­scape filled with plum­my British accents and atmos­pher­ic sound effects. It’s like the best ever episode of Doc­tor Who with­out a Tardis, cor­ri­dors, or the enfee­bled cries of a lost com­pan­ion.

The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy is heav­i­ly indebt­ed to Edward Gibbon’s The His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as well as a belief in the cir­cu­lar nature of his­to­ry.

Asimov’s hero in the first book, Hari Sel­don, using a sci­ence called psy­chohis­to­ry, can see the inevitable col­lapse of the Galac­tic Empire in which he lives and sets about try­ing to change it by set­ting up an oppo­si­tion called the Foun­da­tion. The nov­els then jump decades ahead, check­ing in with this essen­tial con­flict, much like Gibbon’s work goes from emper­or to emper­or, mark­ing the decline of empire and its inevitabil­i­ty. Free of aliens and shoot-em-ups, Foun­da­tion is very human despite its galac­tic scope.

Adapt­ed by Patrick Tull and Mike Stott, the eight part radio series does a good job of pre­sent­ing the nov­els as a char­ac­ter-dri­ven dra­ma, and while it is talky (it’s radio after all), it was Orson Scott Card who said of Foun­da­tion, it is “all talk, no action — but Asi­mov’s talk is action.”

It also influ­enced many future sci-fi writ­ers. No doubt some­where along the way Dou­glas Adams was lis­ten­ing to the radio play’s talk­ing ency­clo­pe­dia and think­ing, hmm, what if this had jokes?
And once you get through the trilogy–maybe after an eight-hour flight?–there’s more Asi­mov radio plays for your lis­ten­ing plea­sure on Spo­ti­fy: Host­ess, Peb­ble in the Sky, and Night­fall.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asimov’s Favorite Sto­ry “The Last Ques­tion” Read by Isaac Asi­mov— and by Leonard Nimoy

Lis­ten to 188 Dra­ma­tized Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries by Ursu­la K. Le Guin, Isaac Asi­mov, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Bal­lard & More

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Listen to 188 Dramatized Science Fiction Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard & More

in Radio, Sci Fi | July 22nd, 2015

Mind_Webs_cd_-_01

We here at Open Cul­ture believe that, as far as sci­ence-fic­tion deliv­ery sys­tems go, you can’t do much bet­ter than radio dra­ma. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured quite a range of it, from the clas­sic 1950s series Dimen­sion X and its suc­ces­sor X Minus One to adap­ta­tions of such clas­sic works as Isaac Asi­mov’s Foun­da­tion tril­o­gy, Aldous Hux­ley’s Brave New World, and, most recent­ly, Ursu­la K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Dark­ness. Now we’ve opened up anoth­er trea­sure trove of sci-fi radio in the form of the archives of Mind Webs, orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast on Madi­son, Wis­con­sin’s WHA-AM, start­ing in the 1970s

One old-time radio site describes Mind Webs as “not real­ly audio dra­ma in the strict sense of the def­i­n­i­tion,” but “read­ings of sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries by some of the gen­re’s best writ­ers [ … ] enhanced by music, peri­od­ic sound cues, and the occa­sion­al char­ac­ter voice.” As the col­lec­tor who made his record­ings of the series avail­able to the Inter­net Archive puts it, Mind Webs “stands as a tes­ta­ment to not only some of our great­est spec­u­la­tive fic­tion authors, but just how well sim­ple dia­log and music minus major sound effects can con­vey sto­ries so well.”

Which authors count­ed as great enough for inclu­sion into the Mind Webs canon? Some of the names, like Ursu­la K. LeGuin, Isaac Asi­mov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Brad­bury, you’d expect to find in this archive, but oth­ers go far­ther afield: the series also fea­tures sto­ries by the likes of Philip K. Dick, J.G. Bal­lard, H.P. Love­craft — writ­ers who, each in their own way, bent the bound­aries of all known fic­tion, sci­ence- or oth­er­wise — and even such sup­pos­ed­ly tra­di­tion­al sto­ry­tellers as John Cheev­er and Roald Dahl who, in these selec­tions, put their own spin on real­i­ty.

Lis­ten to enough episodes of Mind Webs, and you may get hooked on the voice and read­ing style of its host Michael Han­son, a fix­ture on Wis­con­sin pub­lic radio for some­thing like forty years. Back in 2001, just after wrap­ping up his career in that sec­tor, Han­son wrote in to the New York Times lament­ing the state of pub­lic radio, espe­cial­ly its pro­gram direc­tors turned into “syco­phan­tic bean coun­ters” and a “pro­nounced dumb­ing down of pro­gram con­tent.” Mind Webs, which kept on going from the 70s through the 90s, came from a time before all that, and now its smart sto­ry­telling has come avail­able for all of us to enjoy.

The playlist above will let you stream all of the sto­ries — rough­ly 88 hours worth — from start to fin­ish. Or you can access the audio at Archive.org here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Inven­tive Sto­ries from Ursu­la Le Guin & J.G. Bal­lard Turned Into CBC Radio Dra­mas

Hear Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and 84 Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas from CBS Radio Work­shop (1956–57)

Hear Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Nov­el, The Left Hand of Dark­ness, as a BBC Radio Play

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

X Minus One: More Clas­sic 1950s Sci-Fi Radio from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Phony” Film “With Only Pretensions to Truth”

in Film, Sci Fi | July 15th, 2015

2001 stanley kubrick

Yes­ter­day we ran a list of 93 films beloved by Stan­ley Kubrick, which includes two by Andrei Tarkovsky: 1972’s Solaris and 1986’s The Sac­ri­fice. You expect one auteur to appre­ci­ate the work of anoth­er — “game rec­og­nize game,” to use the mod­ern par­lance — but the selec­tion of Solaris makes spe­cial sense. Just four years before it, Kubrick had, of course, made his own psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly and visu­al­ly-intense cin­e­mat­ic voy­age out from Earth into the great beyond, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The appre­ci­a­tion, alas, was­n’t mutu­al. “Tarkovsky sup­pos­ed­ly made Solaris in an attempt to one-up Kubrick after he had seen 2001 (which he referred to as cold and ster­ile),” writes Joshua War­ren at criterion.com. “Inter­est­ing­ly enough, Kubrick appar­ent­ly real­ly liked Solaris and I’m sure he found it amus­ing that it was mar­ket­ed as ‘the Russ­ian answer to 2001.’ ” Jonathan Crow recent­ly quot­ed Tarkovsky as say­ing: “2001: A Space Odyssey is pho­ny on many points, even for spe­cial­ists. For a true work of art, the fake must be elim­i­nat­ed.”

That pro­nounce­ment comes from a 1970, pre-Solaris inter­view with Tarkovsky by Naum Abramov. The Russ­ian auteur indicts what he sees as 2001’s lack of emo­tion­al truth due to its exces­sive tech­no­log­i­cal inven­tion, effec­tive­ly declar­ing that, in his own for­ay into the realm of sci­ence-fic­tion, “every­thing would be as it should. That means to cre­ate psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, not an exot­ic but a real, every­day envi­ron­ment that would be con­veyed to the view­er through the per­cep­tion of the film’s char­ac­ters. That’s why a detailed ‘exam­i­na­tion’ of the tech­no­log­i­cal process­es of the future trans­forms the emo­tion­al foun­da­tion of a film, as a work of art, into a life­less schema with only pre­ten­sions to truth.”

solaris-1

Crit­ic Philip Lopate writes that “the media played up the cold-war angle of the Sovi­et director’s deter­mi­na­tion to make an ‘anti-2001,’ and cer­tain­ly Tarkovsky used more intense­ly indi­vid­ual char­ac­ters and a more pas­sion­ate human dra­ma at the cen­ter than Kubrick.” And the films do have sim­i­lar­i­ties, from their “leisure­ly, lan­guid” nar­ra­tives to their “widescreen mise-en-scène approach that draws on supe­ri­or art direc­tion” to their “air of mys­tery that invites count­less expla­na­tions.” But Lopate argues that the themes of Solaris resem­ble those of 2001 less than those of Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go: “the inabil­i­ty of the male to pro­tect the female, the mul­ti­ple dis­guis­es or ‘res­ur­rec­tions’ of the loved one, the inevitabil­i­ty of repeat­ing past mis­takes.”

As a lover of both Kubrick and Tarkovsky’s work, I can hard­ly take sides. Maybe I just need to watch both 2001 and Solaris yet again, one after anoth­er, in order to bet­ter com­pare them. (Find Tarkovsky’s films free online here.) And maybe I need to throw Ver­ti­go into the evening as well. Now that’s what I call a triple fea­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Solaris (1972), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Haunt­ing Vision of the Future

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Break­down of the Director’s Film­mak­ing

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

A Poet in Cin­e­ma: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Film­mak­ing and Life

93 Films Beloved by Stan­ley Kubrick: From Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927) to Ron Shelton’s White Men Can’t Jump (1992)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Blade Runner’s Miniature Props Revealed in 142 Behind-the-Scenes Photos

in Film, Sci Fi | July 7th, 2015

BRSet 1

Blade Run­ner, unlike most sci­ence-fic­tion movies of the 1980s, improves with age — in fact, it seems to hold up more robust­ly with each pass­ing year. Rid­ley Scot­t’s adap­ta­tion of Philip K. Dick­’s Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep? endures for many rea­sons, none of them quite so strong as the rich­ness of its set­ting, a vision of 2019 Los Ange­les replete with fire-belch­ing smoke­stacks, tow­er­ing cor­po­rate obelisks, 30-sto­ry geishas glow­ing­ly endors­ing prod­ucts on the sides of build­ings, and crum­bling “old” archi­tec­ture retro­fit­ted to inhab­it this simul­ta­ne­ous­ly glossy and ram­shackle real­i­ty.

BRSet 2

The film’s pro­duc­tion design pays close atten­tion to those big things, but also to the small ones: the side­walk noo­dle bar where we meet repli­cant-hunt­ing detec­tive Rick Deckard; the glow­ing han­dles of the umbrel­las held by the count­less passers­by stream­ing past; the detail­ing of the firearm with which he cuts down his android prey one by one. And often, the big things are small things; at the top of the post, for instance, we see the hulk­ing head­quar­ters of the repli­cant-build­ing Tyrell Cor­po­ra­tion — and, for scale, a mem­ber of the design team work­ing on it.

BRSet 3

Blade Run­ner, you see, rep­re­sents per­haps the high water mark of the now seem­ing­ly lost art of minia­ture-based prac­ti­cal visu­al effects. Most every­thing in its slick­ly futur­is­tic yet worn and often makeshift Los Ange­les actu­al­ly exist­ed in real­i­ty, because, in that time before real­is­tic CGI, every­thing had to take the form of a mod­el (or, far­ther in the back­ground, a mat­te paint­ing) to get into the shot at all. You can take an exten­sive behind-the-scenes look at the blood, sweat, and tears involved in build­ing all this in a gallery show­cas­ing 142 pho­tos tak­en in the Blade Run­ner mod­el shop.

BRSet 4

“Take a look at the dystopi­an minia­tures, each tiny car hand paint­ed with future dirt from rid­ing clouds stuffed with future smog,” writes io9’s Mered­ith Woern­er. Par­ti­sans of these sorts of tech­niques argue that minia­tures remain supe­ri­or to dig­i­tal con­struc­tions because of their per­cep­ti­ble phys­i­cal­i­ty, and per­haps that very qual­i­ty has helped keep the look and feel of Blade Run­ner rel­a­tive­ly time­less. Plus, unlike CGI, it gives die-hard fans some­thing to hope for. If you dream about own­ing a piece of the film for your very own, you the­o­ret­i­cal­ly can; just make sure to do your home­work first by read­ing the threads at propsummit.com, a forum about — and only about — Blade Run­ner props.

Enter the pho­to gallery here.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book: The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead and Rid­ley Scott Online

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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William Gibson’s Seminal Cyberpunk Novel, Neuromancer, Dramatized for Radio (2002)

in Radio, Sci Fi | July 3rd, 2015

Who can call them­selves fans of cyber­punk, or even mod­ern sci­ence fic­tion, with­out hav­ing expe­ri­enced William Gib­son’s Neu­ro­mancer? That 1984 nov­el, which many see as the defin­ing work of the sci-fi sub­genre where, as Gib­son him­self put it, “high tech meets low life,” has gone through many print runs in many lan­guages. But you don’t need to read it to get to know its dis­tinc­tive real­i­ty — its Japan­ese mega­lopo­lis set­ting of Chi­ba City, its char­ac­ters like “con­sole cow­boy” Case and “street samu­rai” Mol­ly Mil­lions, its tech­nolo­gies like advanced arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse weapons, a vir­tu­al real­i­ty space called, yes, the Matrix. You can also hear it.

Last year, we fea­tured the out-of-cir­cu­la­tion audio­book ver­sion of Neu­ro­mancer read by Gib­son him­self, and though it faith­ful­ly trans­mits his char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sawed-off writ­ing style, some may find that form a bit lack­ing in dra­ma. But as luck would have it, the BBC, home to some of the last remain­ing mas­ters of the radio dra­ma form, adapt­ed the nov­el in 2002, and you can hear the result­ing two-hour pro­duc­tion on the Youtube playlist above or stream it from SFFau­dio. Even Gib­son purists may well come away sat­is­fied, since its respect for the orig­i­nal text begins right with the clas­sic open­ing line: “The sky above the port was the col­or of tele­vi­sion, tuned to a dead chan­nel.”

In any form, Neu­ro­mancer has endured for many rea­sons, not least that it still gets us think­ing every time about the inter­sec­tion between tech­nol­o­gy and human­i­ty. It cer­tain­ly gets crit­i­cal the­o­rist Fredric Jame­son think­ing, and you can read his thoughts in his new essay “A Glob­al Neu­ro­mancer.” He con­tends that, among oth­er things, cyber­space still does­n’t exist: “It is a lit­er­ary con­struc­tion we tend to believe in; and, like the con­cept of imma­te­r­i­al labor, there are cer­tain­ly his­tor­i­cal rea­sons for its appear­ance at the dawn of post­moder­ni­ty which great­ly tran­scend the tech­no­log­i­cal fact of com­put­er devel­op­ment or the inven­tion of the Inter­net.” Jame­son does­n’t write prose quite as eas­i­ly fol­lowed as Gib­son’s, but like any true clas­sic, Neu­ro­mancer keeps inspir­ing not just works sim­i­lar to it, but works wild­ly dif­fer­ent from it as well.

Note: You can down­load for free a pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read ver­sion of Neu­ro­mancer (the com­plete book) if you take part in one of the free tri­als offered by our part­ners Audible.com and/or Audiobooks.com. Click on the respec­tive links to get more infor­ma­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Gib­son Reads Neu­ro­mancer, His Cyber­punk-Defin­ing Nov­el (1994)

Cyber­punk: 1990 Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing William Gib­son & Tim­o­thy Leary Intro­duces the Cyber­punk Cul­ture

Take a Road Trip with Cyber­space Vision­ary William Gib­son, Watch No Maps for These Ter­ri­to­ries (2000)

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

William Gib­son, Father of Cyber­punk, Reads New Nov­el in Sec­ond Life

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metropolis (1927)

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | June 26th, 2015

On Mon­day, we brought you evi­dence that Stan­ley Kubrick invent­ed the tablet com­put­er in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Today, we go back forty years fur­ther into cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry to ask whether Fritz Lang invent­ed the video phone in 1927’s Metrop­o­lis. In the clip above, you can watch a scene set in the home of Joh Fred­er­sen, stern mas­ter of the vast, futur­is­tic, tit­u­lar indus­tri­al city of 2026. In order to best rule all he sur­veys — and to com­plete the image of a 20th-cen­tu­ry dystopia — he lives high above the infer­nal roil of Metrop­o­lis, safe­ly ensconced in one of its ver­tig­i­nous tow­ers and equipped with the lat­est hulk­ing, wall-mount­ed, inex­plic­a­bly paper-spout­ing video phone tech­nol­o­gy.

Fred­er­sen, writes Joe Malia in his notes on video phones in film, “appears to use four sep­a­rate dials to arrive at the cor­rect fre­quen­cy for the call. Two assign the cor­rect call loca­tion and two small­er ones pro­vide fine video tun­ing. He then picks up a phone receiv­er with one hand and uses the oth­er to tap a rhythm on a pan­el that is relayed to the oth­er phone and dis­played as flash­es of light to attract atten­tion.”

Not con­tent to infer the mechan­ics of these imag­i­nary devices, Malia would go on to cre­ate the super­cut below, a sur­vey of video phones through­out the his­to­ry of film and tele­vi­sion, from Metrop­o­lis onward, includ­ing a stop at 2001:

The super­cut also includes a clip from Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner, whose (on the whole, aston­ish­ing­ly time­less) design I called out for using video phones in a video essay of my own. In real­i­ty, con­trary to all these 20th-cen­tu­ry visions of the far-flung future, video phone tech­nol­o­gy did­n’t devel­op quite as rapid­ly as pre­dict­ed, and when it did devel­op, it did­n’t spread in quite the same way as pre­dict­ed. Even the rich world of 2015 lacks bulky video phone box­es in every home and on every street cor­ner, but with voice over inter­net pro­to­col ser­vices like Skype, many in even the poor­est parts of the world can effec­tive­ly make bet­ter video phone calls than these grand-scale sci-fi pro­duc­tions dared imag­ine — then again, they do often make them on tablets more or less straight out of 2001.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Did Stan­ley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

Niko­la Tes­la Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed the Rise of the Inter­net & Smart Phone in 1926

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Did Stanley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | June 22nd, 2015

While it now bears embar­rass­ing marks of the 1960s here and there, the future envi­sioned by Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey remains, on many lev­els, chill­ing­ly plau­si­ble. True, Pan Am Air­lines went under in the 1990s instead of launch­ing a space sta­tion like they’ve got in the movie, but in the small­er details, 2001 gets a lot right, at least inso­far as its real­i­ty resem­bles the one in which we find our­selves in the actu­al 21st cen­tu­ry. No less an aggre­ga­tion of brain­pow­er than Sam­sung thinks so too: in fact, they’ve gone so far as to cite Kubrick­’s sci-fi mas­ter­work before a judge as proof that the direc­tor invent­ed tablet com­put­ing.

“In 2011, an unusu­al piece of evi­dence was pre­sent­ed in court in a dis­pute between tech­nol­o­gy giants Apple and Sam­sung over the latter’s range of hand­held tablets, which Apple claimed infringed upon the patent­ed design and user inter­face of the iPad,” writes the British Film Insti­tute’s Samuel Wigley.

“As part of Samsung’s defence, the company’s lawyers showed the court a still image and clip show­ing the astro­nauts played by Gary Lock­wood and Keir Dul­lea eat­ing while watch­ing a TV show on their own per­son­al, mini-sized, flat-screen com­put­ers.”

kubrick tablet

Apple and Sam­sung have not, in recent mem­o­ry, played nice. Apple accused Sam­sung of “slav­ish­ly” copy­ing the design of the iPad for their own Galaxy tablet, a charge that in some ways aligns with Sam­sung and oth­er major Kore­an man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies’ rep­u­ta­tion for rapid­ly adapt­ing and even improv­ing upon prod­ucts devel­oped in oth­er coun­tries. Sam­sung’s defense? Watch 2001’s footage of its “News­pads” (above), and you can see that Kubrick invent­ed the tablet before either com­pa­ny — or, in the words of their attor­neys, he invent­ed a com­put­er with “an over­all rec­tan­gu­lar shape with a dom­i­nant dis­play screen, nar­row bor­ders, a pre­dom­i­nate­ly flat front sur­face, a flat back sur­face, and a thin form fac­tor.”

Even in their life­times, 2001 gave Kubrick and his col­lab­o­ra­tor Arthur C. Clarke, sci-fi emi­nence and author of 2001 the book, rep­u­ta­tions as some­thing like seers. “I’m sure we’ll have sophis­ti­cat­ed 3‑D holo­graph­ic tele­vi­sion and films,” Kubrick spec­u­lat­ed in a Play­boy mag­a­zine inter­view we fea­tured last year, “and it’s pos­si­ble that com­plete­ly new forms of enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion will be devised.” Cer­tain­ly the open­ing up of the realm of tablets has made new forms of enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion pos­si­ble, but I won­der: could he ever have imag­ined we would one day use our News­pads to watch 2001 itself?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Fea­tur­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Blade Runner Recut with the Sci-Fi Masterpiece’s Unused Original Footage

in Film, Sci Fi | June 16th, 2015

I recent­ly talked with a friend who’s plan­ning to sched­ule a screen­ing of Blade Run­ner at her film fes­ti­val. We dis­cussed the impor­tant deci­sion that any­one who wants to show Rid­ley Scot­t’s Philip K. Dick-adapt­ing mas­ter­piece faces: which Blade Run­ner? Sev­en dif­fer­ent offi­cial cuts exist: many would instinc­tive­ly choose the 2007 “final cut,” some might pre­fer the 1992 “direc­tor’s cut,” and a curi­ous minor­i­ty might even like to see the cut orig­i­nal­ly released in U.S. the­aters in 1982, fea­tur­ing the Har­ri­son Ford voiceover and hap­py end­ing that fans now con­sid­er ruinous.

But now we have yet anoth­er cut of Blade Run­ner, per­haps the most unusu­al of them all: a “new” ver­sion made out of shots that, even if you’ve seen every offi­cial cut of the film, you may nev­er have seen before. “Some enter­pris­ing souls have com­piled a B‑roll cut of the film, using all of the excised footage that was not incor­po­rat­ed in the pre­vi­ous cuts,” writes Nerdis­t’s Joseph McCabe. “There’s so much here that most Blade Run­ner fans have not seen before that it’s absolute­ly required view­ing. I found it worth watch­ing all forty-five min­utes just to hear Edward James Olmos’ gruff Gaff hilar­i­ous­ly exclaim, ‘I spit on meta­physics!’ ” Not to men­tion all the new views of the pic­ture’s still-strik­ing pro­duc­tion design.

That run­ning time, over an hour short­er than every oth­er cut, effec­tive­ly con­dens­es Blade Run­ner into a short film. It does­n’t play quite like any of the wide­ly seen ver­sions of the film, even though it retains the hat­ed nar­ra­tion and incon­gru­ous Hol­ly­wood end­ing of the Amer­i­can the­atri­cal cut. But the ele­ments that feel clunky, over-explana­to­ry, and audi­ence-dis­trust­ing in a two-hour Blade Run­ner some­how work bet­ter in this briefer ren­di­tion. (Cer­tain­ly Ford’s voiceover, awk­ward though it always sounds, helps this trimmed-down sto­ry cohere.) You haven’t real­ly seen Blade Run­ner, so many who love the movie feel, until you’ve seen every Blade Run­ner — but even now, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them.

via Nerdist

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book: The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead and Rid­ley Scott Online

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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