Skip to main content

Movie: Interstellar *Minor Spoilers*

Christopher Nolan's Interstellar does a great job of keeping the story moving along at a steady and engaging pace. The reason I mention this is because the movie is partially inspired by the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film I've tried to watch on many occasions over the years and I still can't tell you how it ends. It just sends me to sleep - every time.

If you've also struggled with that film and thought Interstellar, which also tries to depict space travel in a realistic manner, sounds like a difficult proposition then there's no need to be concerned. There's plenty to keep you tuned in and awake.

That said, you'll probably get a lot more from this film if you have more than a passing interest in space travel, worm holes, black holes, relativity theory and time travel. Particularly if you're aware of some of the current research.



There's still the human story to engage, if you're not into the technical side of things, along with a bit of supernatural goings on to get you thinking too.

The basic plot follows former Astronaut, now farmer, Cooper as he becomes part of a secret NASA space project to save the human race from extinction. Earth is suffering a food and environmental crisis in the form of dust storms known as the blight and it appears Cooper's children will be the last generation of humans on earth.

As Cooper's journey is just beginning his daughter, Murphy, is experiencing  some kind of supernatural phenomena in her bedroom in the form of some kind of ghost.

The ghost takes a back seat as we follow Cooper's journey into space but it's worth keeping it in mind as it becomes important later in the film - and will be important to your discussion of the time travel aspects of the film with friends afterward.

Without spoiling the film too much the plot it is driven by a time paradox that is a bit of a head scratcher.  However, like anything to do with time travel, any argument is just theory since, as far as we know, travel back in time isn't possible.

Over all, I did like Interstellar. The effects are top notch as you'd expect from Christopher Nolan. All the acting performances are great. Particularly good to see Mathew McConaughey finally starting to take acting roles with a little more weight and depth that really showcase he's much more than eye candy for rom-com movies.

I did think Anne Hathaway's character was a little female stereo typed in some scenes, making weak decisions and unfortunate mistakes that a male character wouldn't get away with, but none of that had anything to do with her performance.

It's worth seeing this in a cinema though I don't know if it's really that necessary. It's filmed largely in a documentary style with much of the action taking place inside small spaces. There are a few space scenes that would look great in iMax but not seeing them on a large screen isn't going to make any difference to the story being told.

I'd certainly recommend it and you may even want to see it a few times if you're inclined to analyze and discuss the intricacies  of the plot. 


Comments

  1. I want to see this,and I do try to keep up with as much up-to-date space findings as Netflix will allow---so maybe I'll be able to keep up with the film. The people that I've talked to so far said, "They didn't get it" ---but that could of just been because they know I already have a passionate interest in the stars. I'll wait for it to come out on DVD--good review.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I saw it with my partner and she didn't really get the last part of the film or much about relativity and wormholes.

      Since the last part of the film is all based on 'movie science' it's best not to study it too closely and just accept that the events that occur are possible.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated by an actual human (me, TET) and may not publish right away. I do read all comments and only reject those not directly related to the post or are spam/scams (I'm looking at you Illuminati recruiters... I mean scammers. Stop commenting on my Illuminati post!).

Buy Whimsical Cat Art Prints by TET (Redbubble Store)

Enjoy Your Favorite TET Art Up Close, Interactive, and so Relaxing!

Enjoy Your Favorite TET Art Up Close, Interactive, and so Relaxing!
Relax and Challenge Yourself with a Fun, Whimsical Cat Art Jigsaw - 30-1000 pieces. Click Image for More.

Popular posts from this blog

New Cat Art Collaboration: TET's Cats Paintings and OpenArt AI Model Workspace (Photobooth)

TET's Cats AI generated art trained on my own art style. Way back in the early 2000's I started painting stylized cat artworks to illustrate some cat themed poems I'd written, that I exhibited and sold online in an exhibition titled 'Sleeping Cats' in 2004. You can see all these early works in my Flickr Album . Many are also available to buy as prints in my RedBubble Store . Leading on from that I began selling my paintings on ebay where the cat themed works were almost guaranteed to sell over any other subject I painted. As a result I became some what known for my cat art to the point where people would commission me to create images of their own pet cats in my cartoony style. Flash forward a decade (almost two at this point) and I haven't painted any cat themed art in years. To be honest I haven't done any traditional painting at all in years. In the last couple of years AI image generators have really caught my attention. Specifically that they are able t...

TET Artwork Diary: Nansen The Cabin Boy's Cat of the Belgian Sailing Ship, RV Belgica, Trapped in an Antarctica Winter, 1897

Belgica in the ice. 1897. Photo: Adrien de Gerlache   Y ou wouldn't ordinarily think of cats and penguins together in the same image but that's what I found myself creating when thinking of an idea for my next painting. I have painted penguins before as part of my Australian Animals series from the early 2000's, and I have a couple of cartoon  penguins (that you can see in a very old post, Designing Formal Penguins ) I created for a Yeti skateboard graphic, so, I didn't just randomly think, 'penguins'. Recently I had a revelation about my art, in that I don't simply paint pictures of cats, I paint 'relationships'. Almost all of my paintings of cats feature two or more cats, or a cat with something, such as a butterfly, bird, fish, goat... and why not a penguin? However, I didn't want to just paint some random cat with some random penguin. I wondered if there was ever any real cats in history that may have a reason to meet a penguin? Turns out, on...

"Ya Mum Reads it..."

You'l find my own Photography in this blog too. Quite a while back I did a survey that tells you what kind of audience credibility your blog has. I'm not sure what the score was but I do remember the commentary which boiled down to "Your mother reads your blog regularly but you probably don't have much wider appeal". Fuck you survey! (Hi Mum, sorry for cursing! I do appreciate you reading, really I do!) I don't know how many regular readers I have, if any, but I do know, on average this blog receives more than 4000 page hits per month, much of it coming from search engines like Google. Perhaps of some interest is my new current top search entry point of all time, people looking for Bert and Ernie,  who I wrote some commentary about when it was officially announced that the Sesame Street Characters were not gay . Which is quite a departure from Krippin Virus from a few years back when the movie I am Legend came out. The thing about this blog is t...

Movie Review: Project Hail Mary (2026) *No Spoilers*

T his wasn't a movie I particularly wanted to see even though it's right in my wheelhouse, realistic Sci-fi. However, after Project Hail Mary did so well in theatres it became a movie I wanted to check out once it reached streaming. In this case I watched it on Amazon Prime Video. It wasn't really on my radar because, on the surface, it's not anything I haven't seen before, even quite recently. Lone astronaut goes on some kind of mission, mission fails, astronaut tries to salvage the mission and somehow finds a way home. However, in my opinion, what makes this film different is in the detail. There are a lot of often seen tropes here presented in new ways, that may capture your imagination. The movie opens with science teacher, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), waking up from deep sleep on a spaceship, far from Earth, with no memory of why he is there. Presumably a side effect of basically being put in storage while the spaceship travels across vast distances. From the...

Movie Review: Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) *No Spoilers*

T his is the first time in quite a while we've seen a live action Spider-Man that is, essentially, a fully formed, grown up superhero, fighting crime on his own terms rather than looking to mentors to guide him.  In  Spider-Man: Brand New Day  it's four years after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home . No one knows who Peter Parker is but Spider-Man has become a local legend, helping to keep New York free of crime. Personally, Peter is still struggling with not reconnecting with his former friends, whose lives are again put at risk when a new foe crosses his path. If you're a fan of Tom Holland's Spider-Man films, and the MCU in general this film should not only not disappoint, you may even consider it to be one of the best MCU films you've seen in a while. I really enjoyed all the quick cameos by small time Spider-Man villains even though I don't know many of them. Their inclusion really started to broaden the scope of the character, despite this installment ...

Review: ArtHelper - The All-In-One AI Writing + Marketing Assistant for Artists - 'ChatGPT for Artists'

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

Embarrassing Yourself with Doof Doof Music

Ever since Spinal Tap popularized the notion of turning an amp up to eleven audio systems have been rising to the challenge of louder, more awesome sound. In particular, car audio systems have embraced the notion of the bigger the noise the better the sound must surely be. What I'd like to know is, if these sound systems are so good, why do they make all music sound the same... Doof, Doof, Doof? You've all heard them. Pimped up cars, with audio systems seemingly worth more than gold, volume blasting way past eleven. Sound waves booming long before you make a positive visual on the car... Doof, Doof, Doof. It has to be the audio system right? Surely all these people can't be playing the same tune? Doof, Doof, Doof. Could it be that the more money spent on a car sound system the less musical range it will actually play? Maybe these people can't afford to buy music after purchasing the audio system so they all play the same demo track? Doof, doof, doof. In my own car I hav...