Four Featurettes
The DVD contains a 21-minute featurette titled "Standing in the Shadows of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001." In it, a score of people talk about how influential and groundbreaking 2001: A Space Odyssey has been. Among these are directors George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Sydney Pollack and William Friedkin, as well as cinematographers Caleb Deschanel and Janusz Kaminski.
Another featurette is the 21-minute "Vision of a Future Passed: The Prophecy of 2001." Here various people discuss how the filmmakers were trying to look 35 years into the future, and they got many things right. However, they were too optimistic about space travel and failed to predict miniaturization in electronics.
The most curious of the featurettes is the 23-minute "2001: A Space Odyssey — A Look Behind the Picture," which was made in 1966 by Look magazine to try to get companies to advertise in a special section devoted to celestial exploration. However, we do see Kubrick at work in MGM's studio in Borehamwood, England. Also, Arthur C. Clarke takes us to the Grumman plant on Long Island where the Apollo Lunar Module is being built.
For the thinking man (or woman), there's the fourth featurette, the 21-minute "What Is Out There?" Here Keir Dullea presents the thoughts of various scholars on the issue of humans making contact with intelligent, advanced extraterrestrials. Inserted into Dullea's presentation are about four-and-a-half minutes of a 1966 BBC interview of Arthur C. Clarke.
Additional Bonus Materials
The nine-and-a-half-minute "2001: FX and Early Conceptual Artwork" shows how some special effects were achieved and some preproduction visual ideas. Introducing the artwork is Christiane Kubrick, the director's wife for the last four decades of his life. He met her in Germany when he was making Paths of Glory, and she has a small role in that film as a singer.
Right after he graduated high school, Stanley Kubrick worked for four years at Look magazine as a photojournalist. The DVD includes a three-and-a-quarter-minute montage of still photos he took while doing that job from 1946 to 1950. The soundtrack plays bebop.
For me, the most interesting DVD extra is an audio recording of a 1966 interview Kubrick, then around 38 years old, gave to Jeremy Bernstein, a physics professor at NYU. The interview, which lasts about an hour and a quarter, covers a wide range of topics. Among many other things, Kubrick talks about supplementing his income as a young adult by playing chess in the park for a quarter a game. He also mentions that as a young man he particularly liked the movies of Rossellini. Kubrick discusses how he got started making short documentaries, then moved on to feature films. He says he likes only the first 45 minutes of Spartacus. And he contends that the ideas in 2001 are much less complicated than those in Dr. Strangelove.
DVD Details
Below I've listed the details for the Two-Disc Special Edition DVD set containing 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Release Date: October 23, 2007
Number of Discs: 2
Disc One:
Feature Film (2 Hours 28 Minutes)
Widescreen (2.35:1), Color
MPAA Rating: G
English 5.1 Dolby Digital
French 5.1 Dolby Digital
English Captions for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired
Spanish Subtitles
French Subtitles
Commentary by Actors Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood
Theatrical Trailer
Disc Two:
2001: The Making of a Myth (43 min.)
Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001 (21 min.)
Vision of a Future Passed: The Prophecy of 2001 (21 min.)
2001: A Space Odyssey — A Look Behind the Future (23 min.)
What Is Out There? (21 min.)
2001: FX and Early Conceptual Artwork (9 1/2 min.)
Look: Stanley Kubrick! (3 1/4 min.)
1966 Audio Interview With Stanley Kubrick (1 hr. 16 min.)
