Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday, as you probably knew, but did you know that the Franklin Institute was showing 2001 this Saturday. Odd but true, it’s part of a SciFi film series in support of their new Star Wars exhibit. Pretty lame as far as film series go: 2001 followed, in successive weeks, by Terminator and Terminator 2.
It wouldn’t have taken too much imagination to come up with other movies that, I don’t know, were more influential in creating Star Wars. I respect the role of 2001 as the Citizen Kane of science fiction movies, but I was never a huge fan. Too much Kubrick quirkiness for my taste. Still, everything before the floating space fetus was pretty interesting.