How to Take a Balanced View of an Important Artist's Work

2001: A Space Odyssey is a landmark in cinema, a towering technical achievement, and arguably a work of true genius.

But!

2010: The Year We Make Contact is a more enjoyable movie.

That’s just my opinion. It is also the undeniable truth.

Interesting side note: 2010 was the first film I ever saw Helen Mirren in, so while many guys my age hear her name and picture her as a sorceress wearing highly impractical armor in Excalibur, the mental image I get is her as a badass Russian Cosmonaut Colonel.

This image is also from helen-mirren.org

Doing Google research for this comment lead me to discover that Excalibur and 2010 only came out three years apart. That doesn’t seem possible somehow. Helen Mirren doesn’t appear to have aged, but the film industry looks like it progressed multiple decades in those three years.

Speaking of how times change, thanks to YouTube making many of the early Bond movies available, I can now link directly to the least heroic three minutes in film history. I give you minutes 14 through 17:30 of Thunderball. It starts with Bond being menaced by a man in bandages, ends with him seeming friendly after a refreshing colonic, and those are the two most dignified parts of the clip.

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