Interstellar

[Ben]

Yeah, 2061 is the stepchild that no-one wants to touch. Then again, none of the Odyssey books have been done "right" on the screen - even Kubrick's film strayed drastically from what Clarke eventually wrote (worth reading short story The Sentinel too, which is somewhat of a prequel to the whole thing). 2010 was a decent follow-up (and much better than given credit for) but got tied up in its Cold War 1984 aspects (even though the book does have elements of that, the film played its hand too heavily, I felt).

One day they need to do the whole Heywood Floyd/Frank Poole story (I would love to, given the chance), though I'm excited they have Scott on this upcoming show.


James...funny you mention the Shyamalan feel in Interstellar: Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian says the same thing:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/no ... cconaughey

[Dan]

Just saw the film earlier today. I can understand the feeling of Shyamalan-style storytelling near the end. Unlike Shyamalan, though, the reveal was a part of the story. Most Shyamalan films felt like they were thrown in for the sake of having it happen.

Interstellar probably won't be viewed as one of Nolan's best, but I felt it was another winner for him. I'm still in awe at his ability to leave me intrigued by what he's showing me and the manner in which everything unfolds is exciting. Once again, he also utilizes some fantastic music from Hans Zimmer, encouraging him to step outside the box with a score that has familiar tones, but is quite different in a wonderful way.

I like to think the film features some of the strongest acting in a Nolan film to date. McConaughey projected just the right amount of pathos to feel for him throughout and Jessica Chastain, I thought, got in some really good emotional scenes whenever she appeared.

[EricJ]

IMDB wrote:
Steven Spielberg, who was attached to direct the film in 2006 and hired Jonathan Nolan to write the screenplay, chose other projects instead. In 2012, after Spielberg's departure, Jonathan Nolan suggested the project to his own brother Christopher Nolan.

And given that Nolan's background was in tense realistic psychological thrillers, and now having big-budget superheroes and sic-fantasy thrown at him as their Go-To Money-Guy, I'm guessing he's starting to regret taking on that first Batman "reboot" as a favor to Warner...

[Dacey]

Seems highly unlikely to me that Nolan would "regret" making the movie that launched him from relative unknown among mainstream audiences to full blown A-list director, and has allowed for him to get the titanic production budgets on movies like Interstellar and Inception that he would in no way be able to have otherwise.

Anyway, I'd tell you what I thought of Interstellar...but the truth of the matter is, I don't know what I thought of Interstellar. There were certainly moments of cinematic wonder if you let the movie take you away, but this is a movie where the scenes on earth really could've been trimmed down. It takes roughly an hour for the characters to finally launch in to space, and when they finally do, the film then keeps (frustratingly) cutting back to earth in what at first seems to be a completely unrelated subplot. Granted, the two stories are "connected" by the end of the film, so some of those scenes are needed, but there's no reason a scissors couldn't have been used at least a little here.

But really your enjoyment of the film will depend on whether or not you are willing to go along for Nolan's almost beat-for-beat take of 2001. Obviously, there's more of a "plot" in this one (it's certainly easier to understand), but it still follows the four act structure of that film, right down to a third act involving a "Hal" and a fourth act in which the main character...well, you'll understand when you see it.

I will say that the score by Hans Zimmer was outstanding, even if it was WAY too loud at some points. Actually, a lot of the movie was too loud. As in The Dark Knight Rises, there were moments where the sound and music were so overpowering that it was impossible to hear exactly what the characters were saying...and sometimes it was crucial plot information!

But I won't say anymore until more people have seen it, for fear of spoiling. But if you aren't a Nolan fan, this movie isn't going to convert you. And if you are a Nolan fan, this still may challenge you, as Interstellar lacks the high octane action and exciting heist plot that made Inception so fun and accessible to most audiences. I do NOT expect for word-of-mouth to be strong on this one, and would not be surprised if the movie is done before Thanksgiving.

[ShyViolet]

I loved it. So smart, so trippy and yet somehow so warm all at the same time. Has all of Nolan's cleverness but at the same time I had tears in my eyes. Haven't seen such a good film in forever. I'm not a "Nolanite" (even though I do very much like his films) but seriously, this is his best film yet.

My only problem was that I guessed the "twist" of Cooper really being the ghost about halfway through the movie. It was a bit convenient and a little sappy, but still, that's just one complaint.

If you haven't seen this film yet, go as soon as possible!

[EricJ]

Seems highly unlikely to me that Nolan would "regret" making the movie that launched him from relative unknown among mainstream audiences to full blown A-list director, and has allowed for him to get the titanic production budgets on movies like Interstellar and Inception that he would in no way be able to have otherwise.

OTOH, I'd reasonably liken Nolan's psychological dip into resurrecting "Batman Begins" getting him handed the keys to Warner's sci-fantasy locker to heavy-metal documentarian Penelope Spheeris having gotten a hit lending her style to "Wayne's World", convincing Paramount that she was now the go-to girl for adapting TV series, and being handed "Beverly Hillbillies" and "The Little Rascals"...Look, she thought it was just going to be ONE MOVIE, okay???

This one very, very, very....VERY definitely has the look of a 00's-Spielberg "daddy" project (in the A.I., War of the Worlds and Minority Report sense); it was only his brother who got Nolan the gig on the picture, and it was Warner who bought the picture because they thought "Inception in space?....KEWWWWWWLLLL!!!"
Unfortunately, they didn't take into account that Nolan still prefers earthbound psychological thrillers like Memento and Insomnia, and give him an entire spaceship and alien landscape, and he'll talk us to death with Real Science.
Because, as Dark Knight haters frequently point out, Nolan doesn't like Stuff That Isn't Real. Bro-love aside, think Jon should have asked someone else.

[Ben]

Tomorrow night!

Sounds like word of mouth is killing it, though, with an under $50m debut. Looks like Big Hero 6 is hoovering up the added business...

I wasn't crazy on Inception (I can't sat how I coined the film for fear of offending people!), and this is going down and down in anticipation...we actually wondered if we would bother if we hadn't already booked tickets!


Oh, and I'm not gonna bother and work out Eric's angle on what he's trying to say as all I can make out is that he's talking crap as usual...

[EricJ]

Translation: THIS ISN'T NOLAN'S MOVIE. Nolan got the job from his brother, after Spielberg didn't want it,
http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/interste ... ent-ending
which explains what the heck Nolan is doing in a sci-fi movie he doesn't even like.
Guess we can be glad it wasn't written by Michael Bay's brother.

[Ben]

Um...I love how you present the opinion that Interstellar isn't Nolan's movie by bringing up a piece that *opens* with "the 2008 draft of Interstellar varied wildly from the one Christopher Nolan brought to the screen"...

Eric...once again your total lack of grasping of how movies are made astounds me, as you're quite astute otherwise. I'm working on a thing right now where the script has gone through multiple drafts, though the one presented to me is still the "first draft". I'm now doing a rewrite of that and changing lots, to bring it into line with what I see in it, just as Nolan changed things and made the previous Interstellar "his" so he'd be eager and willing to invest years of his life into making the thing.

As for WB's involvement? Nolan is very happy there: he has "protection" and a very nice deal. In going out to Paramount he'd lose that so it's a no-brainer that he would want to bring WB in on things so he'd still have the same people around him and same comfort zone. WB, likewise, want to be in business with Nolan and know they have his next film, so they came aboard.

But...basically...both Spielberg's (who decide he didn't want to do it because it was too close to his buddy Bob Zemeckis' Contact) and Nolan's script obviously share one thing: the writer! No matter that it's the director's brother...of *course* the thing is going to be similar...it's the same story! Developed with Spielberg, then redeveloped with Nolan. Things get cut, other things survive. And things are seen differently through the eyes of different directors!

To say a film is not the director's in this case, that he wasn't happy with it , didn't want to do it or suggest anything otherwise is just mindless, frankly.

Maybe we can make it simple: THIS IS NOLAN'S MOVIE!

[Dacey]

Nolan addresses the film's critics...

http://screenrant.com/interstellar-movi ... her-nolan/

[Ben]

Wow...after Gone Girl we get this!

Yes, I thought Interstellar was far less than stellar. Bad casting, bad performances, some sloppy editing, unintentionally funny moments and B-movie grade dialogue...

I so wish Spielberg had done this...the lightness of touch and John Williams music would have drawn us in more and allowed us to connect. I sometimes (three or four times) just wished Zimmer's monotonous score would just shut the hell up!

I "got it" all without any problems, and even guessed about the "ghost"(s), but the whole thing was so riddled with holes that even big stars (hello Matt Damon - Matt Damon! - whose "surprise" reveal pulled me out of the film) talking supposed science theories doesn't make it "real".

I get that they're living in a dust bowl, but the school couldn't be bothered to keep their desks free from the dust? I wouldn't want my kids going to a school like that. I get that the Earth's supplies are all run out and everyone's in trouble, but it seemed no-one had a problem getting gas for their cars. The most simplest bottom line items didn't add up and to then build such a fantastical story on top of this? It just doesn't work (in a movie that wants to make us think and be taken seriously).

Rand actually sent me this link, which says a lot:
http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2 ... away-with/

I kept giggling throughout too: seriously that TARS design is the best, most effective design for a mobile robot? Yeah...and when that kind of thing turns up in a 50s space movie we all laugh. As did I here. How crap, useless (unless rendered in CG) and most bizarre was he!?

On the casting: it's like Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway had their headshots assigned to their characters and then got mixed up before shooting began. HELLO!? Can no-one else see that Hathaway looks *just* like an older version of the young girl? The girl looks nothing like Chastain! I would also believe Chastain explaining some of the science (or even just agreeing with it, which is what Hathaway mostly did), but I couldn't accept Hathaway's total lack of gravitas in trying to go along with the ways out of trouble. (And don't get me started on the stupid, idiotic get-out-of-jail-card plotting that allowed them to get out of that trouble!)

The writing was B-movie grade with some really laughable situations and lines. Imagine "The lies! The horrible lies!" being said in any 50s B-movie and again you're there with Interstellar, which had about as much gravity as a glass of air.

Apart from all that (and more, this is only what comes to mind), it was also that worst thing a movie can ever be...drab.

[Randall]

Until your last sentence, you actually had me wanting to see it!

[Karizma]

I think the title of the movie should have been something like: 'Interstellar - For those who love Physics'. Agreed, the visuals were amazing, the effects were amazing and very realistic as well, the acting was superb.. but just as I thought I was getting hold of the storyline, I got lost in all the terminology... Black holes, relativity, singularity and even the fifth dimension! Was the target audience supposed to be primarily geeks and scientists? Still, made for a wonderful watch and I would rate it 4/5.

[Randall]

Funny how this topic died way back in November. This film lost all its buzz, yet stores had tons of copies available to buy last week. I wonder if they're selling?

With all the varied reactions to the film, I was ever more intrigued to see it. I did buy the slick Wal-Mart exclusive (in a NeoPack, with a small book), after waffling between buying the film and just doing an On Demand rental. Ultimately, the bonus features sounded better than the film, so I bought the Blu-ray (last copy, after checking 2 Wal-Marts for their exclusive), and I watched it last night.

... and I'm still not sure what to think. I liked a lot of it. In fact, I mostly enjoyed it until the last half-hour, when it did its 2001 thing and went all weird and nonsensical. Yes, there were plot holes all along, but for a while there, I could just go with it.

Spoilers ahead, naturally...

Wow, just what the heck was that all about? I've read Hawking, and I've taken university-level physics, so I can deal with all the science. But that ending made noooooo sense. A tessaract? Made out of Murph's bookshelves? That was the most efficient means of communicating with the past? Via dumped books and the altered ticking of an ancient timepiece?!?! Really, that was future humanity's great plan? That is just too bizarre and, really, stupid. The time paradox here also is too much, since mankind's future survival depends on its future existence?! Gah. That's the wrong way to write a time travel epic.

And... NASA has a top secret compound a couple of miles from Coop's place, yet they couldn't just ask him to be their pilot more than a day or so before they left? Coop made mention that the old prof didn't know he was alive. Okay, but why was that exactly? He lives out in the open just across the corn field!! And was there a secret reason as to why Michael Cain never aged in the film? Is that actually a revealing plot point? Or just more of Nolan under-thinking the areas that normal people actually care about?

Like Shyamalan indeed. You could hear Nolan tripping all over himself trying to set up a "twist" that in the end made no sense. (At least it wasn't quite as obvious as the so-called "twist" in The Prestige.) But so many of the simple plot points were just wrong or poorly thought out. Plus, the usual Dark Knight Rises complaints were there in force--- lack of real emotion (with a few exceptions, I grant you), nonsensical plotting, poor sense of time passage (all the more ironic here), and frequently an utter lack of understanding of character motivation.

Wow, who knew that an ice planet wasn't actually suitable for human life. Yeah, that came as a shock. Etc., etc.

Actually, the more I think about this film, the more I dislike it. It keeps you going for a while, but totally collapses under its own pretentious weight. Just like most Nolan films.

I'm still glad I watched it, though. As I said, it had enough going for it to keep me involved for most of the run time.

[EricJ]

Funny how this topic died way back in November. This film lost all its buzz, yet stores had tons of copies available to buy last week. I wonder if they're selling?

They were also pushing a special Fathom showing this month with a roundtable discussion of the science with experts and the filmmakers, as if everyone had suddenly gotten together on historical revisionism and agreed this had really been the New Inception, whether it had been nominated for Best Picture or not.
(Well, think it.....did get something at the Oscars, maybe Screenplay nomination or other.)

Like the Ridley Scott cult and Prometheus, the buzz of "What the heck was that about?...Musta been genius!" dies down quickly by the time it hits Blu-ray, and Nolan's people, especially at Warner, are too used by now to having Cults For Life. Sort of disappoints them when the next films don't follow suit, and they keep pushing the son to be like the father.

Plus, the usual Dark Knight Rises complaints were there in force--- lack of real emotion (with a few exceptions, I grant you), nonsensical plotting, poor sense of time passage (all the more ironic here), and frequently an utter lack of understanding of character motivation.

And the fact that Nolan hates the genre, so he overcompensates his embarrassment by trying to make it Really, Really Relevant and Realistic?