By Lincoln Spector
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY celebrated its 50th anniversary in style this year with two totally different restorations. Warner Brothers released new 70mm prints overseen by DUNKIRK and INTERSTELLAR director Christopher Nolan. Kubrick assistant Leon Vitali (himself the subject of a recent documentary) supervised a new, 4K digital restoration. The Castro Theatre in San Francisco offers the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY 70MM/4K Challenge December 28-January 1 where you can see both versions.
My own lifelong engagement with 2001 started in the spring of 1968 at the age of six. My mom, a confirmed Clarke fan, took me to an afternoon matinee within weeks of the film’s premiere. Whether it was in Washington (where we then lived) or New York (as I remember it) is unclear. While I was already excited by the jump into space as then best represented by the Apollo program—which had already launched two of its towering Saturn V Moon rockets on unmanned test flights—it was no preparation for my first exposure to such a powerfully ambiguous, visually stunning work.
