Identify a movie with just two words from it.
“I’m shocked” takes you to Casablanca.
And “Sorry, Dave” takes you to 2001: A Space Odyssey, in “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that” (which you can watch here)
That came to me thanks to a weekly mailing from King Features, with this panel from a Safe Havens strip (a quirky comic new to this blog):
The punch line to a set-up involving (from left to right) the characters Samantha, Dave, and Roger.
About the strip, from Wikipedia:
Safe Havens is a comic strip drawn by cartoonist Bill Holbrook. It was originally syndicated by Washington Post Writers Group before switching to King Features Syndicate in 1993. Started in 1988, the strip is currently published in more than 50 newspapers. The strip originally concerned the group of pre-schoolers at Safe Havens Day Care, but has focused on Samantha and followed her as she has grown up (approximately in real-time) and gone through elementary school, high school, college, and (currently) marriage. The comic then went online in 2010.
The strip is located near the seashore in a city, several hundred miles from the state capital.
— Samantha Argus is a teen growing into womanhood, with a hopeful nature and a scientific mind. Her technical side enables her to see the world rationally and realistically, which comes in handy when you’re surrounded by a mermaid, the spirit of a late grandmother, living dust bunnies and a genetic mishap that turned the family border collie into a school guidance counselor…
— Dave Hamper is Samantha’s husband. Dave is dyslexic, but found that instead of it being a disability it’s simply an alternate yet perfectly viable way of interfacing with the world. He uses his unique special talents to achieve stardom on the basketball court. He is currently stationed with “Nuova Pallacanestro Firenze,” a team in Florence, Italy.
— Roger is the mascot of the Havens High School Fighting Personal Digital Assistants (the team used to be called the Lions until a “contribution” from a high-tech firm resulted in the name change). Roger takes his mascot role incredibly seriously, communicating entirely through the costume’s screen display. Roger’s face has never been shown since he is always wearing some sort of full-body costume. Even in the day care, he wore a box, and then made it into a television costume.
So you see they were bound to reach the moment above.
And just to refresh your memory about the Kubrick movie, from Wikipedia:
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay was written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, and was inspired by Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel”. A novel also called 2001: A Space Odyssey, written concurrently with the screenplay, was published soon after the film was released. The film, which follows a voyage to Jupiter with the sentient computer HAL after the discovery of a mysterious black monolith affecting human evolution, deals with themes of existentialism, human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial life. The film is noted for its scientifically accurate depiction of spaceflight, pioneering special effects, and ambiguous imagery. Sound and dialogue are used sparingly and often in place of traditional cinematic and narrative techniques, and the film is famous for employing a number of pieces of classical music, among them Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II, and works by Aram Khachaturian and György Ligeti.
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