It’s funny- dark, absurd kind of humor and lovely, lilting prose of Twain. AND I really love the ending.

It’s not perfect but you gotta love Huck Finn for what it is. Mark Twain is simply a beautiful writer. Have you read Pudd’n’head Wilson? It’s brilliant, I think

Barry Lyndon- 1975, Kubrick’s period piece like none other, I think it’s the most beautiful film ever made. Ryan Oneal, Marisa Berenson, Schubert, Mozart, 18 century paintings, tragedy, humor. It’s spectacular, epic, poignant, superlative.

That’s amazing- where did you find this out? Jung is one of the most amazing people to have lived and what a claim that is.

All of my favorite movies, from Kubrick to Tarkovsky to Bresson to the Coens. I love them now, i’d probably love them again given a second chance.

Yea you get a lot of “the monolith is the movie screen” kinda stuff and yea I guess that works. Sexual metaphors also abound, the Discovery 1 which is dick shaped shoots a little Bowman sperm into a blackhole and is born again some glowing baby.

Anyway I watched Solaris while afraid and on mushrooms to the point where the movie was my anchor to reality, and many scenes i’ll never forget, like the leaf floating in the water and zoom in on streaming grass also in the water, the zoom in on that black hole, when the boy and the older dude are driving in the car on the highway.

Something about Tarkovsky’s scenes pull you into them, it’s a visual experience but very different from Kubrick’s kind of visuals. I’ll agree it is slow but if you’re afraid and on mushrooms it can save you from the chaos of your own mind.

I think the best thing about 2001, after all my investigations, is that there aren't any "hidden meanings" but the story is told in such a way to make interpretation a must.

All that being said it's a science fiction film about science fiction. It predicted a bunch of things, takes a serious look at intelligent AI and humans coexisting in space and then that mysterious through-line the entire film is hinged on is finally resolved and it seems like the alien presence does the same thing to Bowman as it did to the man-apes at the beginning of the film.

It's very mysterious in that besides Kubrick's direction, the alien intelligence seems so beyond man that they're akin to gods and a point Pauline Kael makes is that it makes man and his achievements seem ever more insignificant and a sort of experiment of these aliens.

Pauline Kael was the only criticism of 2001 and also The Shining that I found really compelling. I still think they're 2 of the greatest films ever made, but her strong opinions made me see the film a little more objectively.

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Also if you haven't seen Solaris (1972, Tarkovsky) it's a great counterpart to 2001. It's the perfect Russian response to the sterilization of 2001, Tarkovsky also had a lot of criticism for 2001.

Brothers Karamazov- i’m thinking specifically of Father Zossima, but the rest of the characters, all of them, have some great lines. The entire book is a cornucopia of profound insight.