A BOOK OF BEAUTY ABOUT A FILM OF WONDER AND FEAR

Taschen’s The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey reveals the full breadth of Kubrick’s artful obsession.

The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey announces its epic intentions even before you read a single word of it. This deluxe Taschen publication is shaped like the giant black monoliths from an alien world that motivate and puzzle earthlings in the film, a landmark of cinema and science prophecy, as visionary today as it was upon its release in 1968. Pages fold out to reveal the full breadth of Kubrick’s artful obsession. He and his team toiled for several years to craft a realistic saga of a future existence where humans have mastered space flight yet remain wary of encounters with extraterrestrials, who may be helpful or hostile. It’s a book of beauty about a film of wonder and fear.

Heather in costume and with Honeywell ‘computer’ Back-of-seat film viewing is commonplace for today’s air travellers, but the stuff of sci-fi in 1968 when 2001 premiered. But Kubrick and his designer once again accurately foresaw the future, with...

Dullea in Discovery, and Lockwood with Kubrick Astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) prepares to retrieve a replacement control unit from an equipment storage corridor inside Discovery’s pod bay. One of the most memorable of scenes from 2001, a photo...

Storyboards of alien environments Throughout the four years of filming 2001, Kubrick and his artists wrestled with how to depict the alien environment the Earth astronauts would encounter when they reached Jupiter and its moons. They explored many...

The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Long before the dawn of computer-generated images in movies, Kubrick was exploring the use of multiple projectors to achieve the artificial reality of composite photo effects. For 2001, he pioneered a front-projection system used for the Dawn of Man...

Shooting, with the crew, in sterile futuristic interiors Nothing is out of place, apart from raised eyebrows, in the scene aboard the space station where tip-lipped Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester), head of the U.S. National Council of...

Aries over Clavius: Moon base Artist Roy Carnon’s1965 storyboard pastels of the Aries ferry landing at moon base Clavius look a lot like the corresponding scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and also like the 1969 first lunar landing by...

RICK MADONIK PHOTOS/TORONTO STAR Concept artworks of Discovery’s main control area Concept art of life inside the Jupiter-bound spacecraft Discovery shows how visionary Kubrick and his team were in designing 2001. The computers and other space gear look as futuristic today as they did...