The Making of Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' (Varia)

I received my copy of Piers Bizony’s “The Making of Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey’” earlier today, and frankly, I’m overwhelmed.This is a beautiful and evocative celebration of one of the seminal works of the twentieth century, and the most succinct evaluation I can give is that (happily) it is fully worthy of its subject.M/M (Paris) brilliantly presents material from a myriad original formats in a mosaic of easily accessible layouts. This isn’t a rote catalogue of static movie stills; the reader actively participates in exploring the material with pages unfolding as large as 18”x14” or more – sometimes one on each side.I was reminded of the impact the film had on me when I first saw it at the Seattle Cinerama, way back in 1968. This format allows material from a great variety of aspect ratios to be presented at maximum advantage.Mr. Bizony’s prose brings it all together in a wry narrative style that never feels like historical documentation; one of the best surprises for me was the vital and vibrant experience of the creative process at work. One feels as if you’re watching over the shoulders of giants as idea after idea is refined or rejected, and the eventual masterwork comes into being.As someone who has followed Kubrick’s work since that fateful day back in ’68, I’m a tough sell. Over the decades, I’ve tracked down every glimmer of info I could find, obsessively absorbing as much as I could about the genesis of “2001” in particular. I even flew to Frankfurt back in 2004 for the first public showing of material from Kubrick’s personal archives; I simply had to be there.So it was with genuine joy that I discovered that a great deal of this material – both the imagery, and Mr. Bizony’s narrative – was completely new to me. Trust me; this is no small accomplishment. My first scan of the book was cursory at best; it was a little like the frenzied tearing of ribbons and wrapping paper you might have experienced as a child on Christmas morning. I’m looking forward to my second, deeper pass.For those of you who think you’ve seen it all – again, trust me. You haven’t. This volume is a true banquet for Kubrick mavens, for cinephiles, for anyone who cherishes creativity and the arts. Mr. Bizony, his colleagues, and Taschen have delivered a masterwork of their own – and it’s a bargain. Treat yourself; it’s glorious.

Possibly the greatest book about the greatest film in history. The book is a sumptuous coffee table 9 pound journey into Kubrick's classic with never before seen behind the scenes photos. The paper is of the highest quality and the colour is vibrant lifting right off the page. The size of the book is like as monolith and it works as something completely unique. The book is replete with photos to satiate any 2001 fan, but there are some wonderful surprises such as huge lift out pages detailing the superb art work, the characters, the crafts, and as such it is a visual feast. You can see Hal in close up, all the characters and actors are here, the scripts are detailed, the presence of the director is here, and there are some deleted sequences detailed in never before scene production art.The information provides enough detail to keep one reading for a long time. I learnt a heap of facts I had never read anywhere else, and it feels like you have been on the set after devouring this mammoth opus. Nothing else printed about the film before comes close to equalling this brilliant book. It is spell binding and I often return to it and it always fills me with delight. I love the film and I would not be without this book. It is one of the greatest books I own and I can not recommend this more highly. Buy it now!

Fantastic presentation of this ground breaking film. For the price (as of this typing is about $45 on Amazon while the regular retail is $80) you can't beat the amazing photo's and design of this book. Comes in an open ended slipcase with the book designed tall and black, like the Monolith, with circular embossed motif designs (very geometric and stylized) on the cover of the Monolith, a space-field, HAL and Bowman's eye. Paper quality and stitching/binding of the book is top notch. At about 563 pages it's heavy but not unmanageable.PRO's...- Overall fabulous behind the scenes look at a monumental film.- Book design and format.- Quality printing and binding.- Embossed motifs on cover.- All the concept art. FANTASTIC! We all know Douglas Trumball's contributions to this film but many unsung heros added their artistic talents: Roy Carnon, Harry Lange, Con Pederson, Richard McKenna, and many more. Roy Carnon's pastels are an absolute standout in this book. Great art throughout.- Schematics of the ships, sets, etc.- Incredible photographs of the actors, sets, scenes, etc.- Wonderful fold-outs. Many gatefold with more opening out larger for great panoramic shots.- Illustrations of alternate sets, scenes, various spacecraft a real treat. And yes, what possibly the 'aliens' could've looked like!- Interesting shots of the sets carpentry, engineering and mechanisms.- The price. For the lush amount of material even the original retail of $80 is well beyond reasonable.CON's...- Slipcase is nice to protect book but not of a heavy paper/cardboard. Careful when sliding book in and out.- There are 11 photo's which are double page spreads that have issues. Of the 11 spreads only 2 are bad. The other 9 can be forgiven. The 2 that are bad are pages 68/69 of actor William Sylvester's face. Color and tint on this photo is great but the layout has his face pinched at an awkward spot. Gives a handsome actor a deformed look. The second bad one is 496/497 of Bowman and Poole's profile/closeup of their lips that HAL lip reads in the movie. Their lips are falling into the gutter and can't be seen clearly which is the focus of this shot. EASILY the designers could've staggered the photo's flush right on the top and flush left for the bottom photo to clear the center gutter. Both photo's have enough black edges to clear the faces without looking crammed in. With that said the 9 others I mentioned that had benign issues could easily be remedied with staggering and cropping the photos. Not a big deal because you can see how well they designed the other pages and foldouts. Just strange those 2 bad ones got through.Now, with all that said of my CON's keep in mind, there are over 1000 photo's and illustrations. All great. Don't let just 2 bad crops sway you from picking this up.It's a tremendous work of art as a book documenting a tremendous film (which is a work of art itself).I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!Note: The original presentation of this book has four volumes contained in a metal slipcase which retailed from the same publisher for about $1200. You can find it online for about $1500. For a fan like me that missed out on that one this is the next best thing and for the fan who's budget conscious, you can't beat this price either. Go...RUN and pick this up. A MUST for 2001 and Kubrick fans alike.

Purchased this after “The Shinning” Taschen version was available for pre-order. Loaded with tons of material from the making of the movie - models, artwork, behind the scenes, concept art. If you’re a fan of movie making, movie model shop work, or the movie itself get this book.The issue with the binding take up space with some of the photos seems to have been resolved. Almost all pages seem to lie fairly flat.The length of the spine does make for interesting reading while in bed, tho. It’s literally two books stacked on each other.

Regardless of all the bad reviews regarding the layout of this book I still wanted to have it as a keepsake on the 50th anniversary of the movie release date. I must say the reviews were quite accurate because the book binding "swallows" up some very nice photos in the crease. It is as though a black hole (or the almighty monolith) was sucking the photo away from your view into the black void of that crease. First of all the glossy slip cover is so beautiful but the problem was that some idiot decided to glue the slip cover to the book jacket. The only was I could get to the book out of the slipcover was to unfortunately cut the end tab and removed the slipcover. I will have to go back and modify the slipcover so I can slip it over the book to display the glossy cover. I know the book itself is shaped like a monolith but the pages are hard to distinguish between ordinary single pages and the bi-fold pullout pages. This I found irritating. They should have the bi-fold pages marked with a corner tab or color indicator. The text font is a bit smaller than expected but can be tolerated. I got the book at a good price knowing the deficiencies it had when I read the ratings. I suggest not to overpay for this book and get a good deal to compensate for its failings. Overall the book is good and quite informative with a sprinkle of humor but they need to change the layout.

I cannot add to what prior reviewers have posted. This is an exceptional treasure for fans of 2001. Taschen produced a luxurious limited edition four-volume set which sold out, but they followed up that release with this one volume celebration of the movie. Someone on Ebay is asking $499 for THIS version, perhaps hoping people will be confused and believe they are ordering the numbered, limited edition signed by Christiane Kubrick.The real reason I'm writing this review now is that this book is still in print and retains for $70, though you can probably get very fine copies for $50. You don't need to pay the ridiculous prices some people are asking, because there is nothing "rare" about this book, and it is not out of print.Just sayin'.

Let me qualify my comments by saying I had read many negative reviews about this book which actually kept me from buying it until just recently when the price dropped dramatically. I knew full well what I was buying, but once the price dropped to $30, I felt it was worth the purchase.That said, even at $30, I came close to returning it to Amazon. It's actually debatable if the book is even worth buying at that price point because the design makes it virtually unreadable.The content is excellent. Many wonderful, previously unseen photos, designs, etc. Had this book been formatted to something more reader-friendly, even if just changing the layout to horizontal (longways) and keeping the "monolith" aspect and size of this book, it would have been a winner. Unfortunately, text graphic design, the layout, binding, even the poor choice of paper utterly cripple the enjoyment of this book. Even the edges of the pages are cut unevenly giving it a ragged, cheap appearance. It's basically a catalog of graphic design and print fails on every aspect. Other reviews here go on in great detail how badly flawed the design of the book is, so I won't beat a dead horse repeating them. Suffice to say, if you attempt to actually read the book, you will likely damage it trying to do so.If Taschen/Bizony ever reprints this title correcting the litany of flaws this book has, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

YES, the Rare and Wonderful Images and artworks in this large 2015 book are AMAZING....BUT the ABSOLUTELY STUPID vertical Book-Design (meant to CLEVERLY resemble the shape of the alien monolith in the film) TOTALLY RUINS the presentation of MOST of the photos and images !!!....And this validly negative review is from someone who has almost always written VERY POSITIVE reviews of other books, Blu-Rays and other items....The thoughtlessness and carelessness of the publisher for this (M/M, Paris) have most probably since recd, read and heard MANY similar valid complaints by now (2019) for this astonding PUBLISHING BLUNDER (....just read the many similar valid COMPLAINTS of it by purchasers just on AMAZON and EBAY alone)....I even called the Los Angeles M/M office months ago and courteously discussed this, kindly asking them to please consider those complaints, and after M/M needs to RE-PRINT it in proper horizontal-format....and they KNEW that thousands of "2001-" fans had been waiting DECADES for a spectacular "coffee table" size /WIDE-format book....but the office lady was getting annoyed....As with many others, i had been patiently waiting FIVE DECADES for this Book (on the MOVIE that is, even TODAY, universally acclaimed as the Greatest Science Fiction Film EVER made)....but when i discovered the INCREDIBLY NONSENSICAL and EXTREMELY USE-CLUMSY shape of the book....(and i cant recall ANY other publisher making THIS STUPID a Mistake for a LANDMARK Film)....But because i really wanted to see those MANY rare images and learn more of the historical information, AND the EXTREMELY reduced price, i hesitantly went ahead and purchased this Book. And altho i truly am grateful that it includes MANY wonderful (70mm-film images printed too small because of the DUMB book-shape) and fold-outs (only a partial relief), the large, deep center spine-gutter just SWALLOWS UP too many IMPORTANT images and artworks (even down the center of large FACE portraits !!!)....Even the fold-outs ALL have those PERMANENT top-to-bottom fold-creases....And, because all the 8-INCH wide pages are so NARROW, the spine-width is DOUBLED, so open pages CANNOT be laid flat to view images without distortion !....There is only ONE way to rectify this blunder- a PROMPT, full REPRINTING of this book in HORIZONTAL (wide-screen) format, as it SHOULD HAVE been printed originally !April 2019

Magnifique objet de décoration ;) le format n'en fait pas un ouvrage agréable à la lecture mais le concept tient la route.

Poco hay que decir que no se haya dicho ya en las otras opiniones. El contenido me ha gustado, me parece espectacular sin género de dudas. Buenas fotos, buena calidad de impresión, y textos muy informativos. Sin embargo, coincido con los comentarios sobre la poca idoneidad del formato. La idea es original, imitar la relación base/altura del monolito, pero la estrechez del libro no me termina de convencer. Es cierto que en casi todos los libros de fotografías muchas imágenes se reparten entre ambas hojas, y que en este han hecho un esfuerzo importante en minimizarlo incorporando muchas páginas desplegables, pero me sigue pareciendo algo estrecho. Me parece mejor opción, por ejemplo, el formato elegido por la propia Taschen en el libro de Los Archivos de James Bond (otro libro magnífico, cuya edición "económica" acaba de salir a la venta esta semana), aunque en el que nos ocupa la "gracia" reside en imitar el famoso monolito.A pesar de ese inconveniente, que a mucha gente sin duda no le parecerá tal, el libro es fantástico y su compra imprescindible para todo amante no solo de la película, si no del buen cine en general.

Empezaré describiendo el producto: magnífico, gran tamaño, la calidad tanto de las imagenes como del empaque es impecable, es toda una bitácora de como fue la realización de esa gran película. En cuánto al envío me impresionó ya que me llegó en menos de una semana y eso que el producto fue importado y me avisaba qu llegaba en un tiempo aproximado de 3 semanas. El precio fue un plus: $750, es difícil de conseguirlo en alguna librería y si lo encuentras no creo que baje de el doble de su precio al que lo adquirí. Si eres fan de Kubrick, del cine o de el arte visual, definitivamente debes adquirirlo, ya que puede que el precio suba o que no lo encuentres después tan fácilmente. Suerte.

An outstanding book for any fan of the film with lots of background stories and photos from the sets. There are also concept drawings. The whole book is in the shape of a monolith with lots of fold out pages. While this gives the material a unique look and feel, in all practicality I find you must lay the book on table and work with it carefully in order to get through it.

Thank you Taschen Publishing! An amazing tome, I am thoroughly impressed, by this important book.The book is shaped as the black monolith, this constrains the outlay of photographs inside, with many disappearing into the 'gutter'.However, this is the most impressive book, a perfect corresponding volume to the film.There is so much information, set-photos, drawings, etc. Oh, yes, the price is so reasonable too!!