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    #26
    Interstellar

    Saw this yesterday. I like Nolan's non-Batman films, but this was not his best.

    *some vaguely spoilerishy comments below*

    It's not actively painful to watch as long as you don't want to think too much, and as long as you don't care that they repeat the same things over and over and over again - how many fucking times do I have to hear Do Not Go Gentle, or to hear someone tell me that time is relative, for fucks sakes? But it's a shambolic mishmash

    The first part, on Earth, in the future-dustbowl, I thought was actually OK film-making (although all kinds of question about the future come up, like, if they have all the technology to have fuel in 2050, or whenever it is, how come nobody's designed a vehicle that doesn't look like a Jeep Wrangler? Also, why are the only three crops anyone eats Wheat, Corn and Okra? Okra? Really? Okra? Why hasn't there been an aubergine blight, huh? Couldn't you eat tomatoes or turnips?).

    The second part was too much plodding around in space trying to look like Gravity, but with much less success because there wasn't the gentle grace, but instead lots of noise and Anne Hathaway's face wobbling around a bit.

    And then the big coup-de-grace ending (which had another utterly pointless ending tacked on afterwards) was utter, utter bollocks, really. Possibly more so, even, than the usual tosh you get when film-makers try and muck about with time.

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      #27
      Interstellar

      Far be it from me, a Star Trek fan, to ask for scientific rigour (I'm normally happy with a vague mention of thrusters/dilythium crystals etc, yeah- whatever) but....

      **more spoilers**

      I agree the dustbowl-future had potential but was a bit too US-specific and far from the worst scientific-WTF issue in the film:

      -if she gets the key data, co-ordinates etc sent to her across space and time, HOW does that result in a space programme that gets everyone off the Earth?

      NASA appeared to be a rump, semi-underground organisation, there was only enough fuel for one mission, the one Dad's on, so how did "the formula" overcome the huge economic, social, industrial and ideological barriers?

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        #28
        Interstellar

        Was in downtown Buenos Aires yesterday, where the side of one particular building was covered in a gigantic poster for "Interestelar". By the director of "Batman: el caballero de la noche". This last statement conjured up the image of The Dark Knight with a mariachi soundtrack. I think the world needs this.

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          #29
          Interstellar

          I'm still going to watch this on Thursday.

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            #30
            Interstellar

            Good luck. We're all counting on you.

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              #31
              Interstellar

              Smallcaps wrote: Was in downtown Buenos Aires yesterday
              You could've said.

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                #32
                Interstellar

                Sam wrote:
                Originally posted by Smallcaps
                Was in downtown Buenos Aires yesterday
                You could've said.
                Was only for a few hours; stopover on my way to Ushuaia, from where my South Pole cruise leaves in a few hours. The flight out of BA left at 4.45 AM, so I had to get up at an ungodly early hour (curse you, LAN!), making a meetup slightly awkward in terms of timing (hit the hay at 8PM, get up at 1AM, be jetlagged like a boss...).

                In case you want to meet up when I make my way back, I'm about to send you a PM.

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                  #33
                  Interstellar

                  Is jetlag going to be meaningful when you're in 24 hour daylight? Time is relative, you know...

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                    #34
                    Interstellar

                    That's only a theory.

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                      #35
                      Interstellar

                      La Lanterne Rouge wrote: Is jetlag going to be meaningful when you're in 24 hour daylight? Time is relative, you know...
                      I guess that by the time I reach that area I would be over the whole problem anyway. It's the night after traveling from Europe to South America that's causing me (slight) trouble.

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                        #36
                        Interstellar

                        It goes without saying, of course, that I'm frighteningly jealous.

                        And also somewhat disappointed that we've not had a "So, McMurdo Base, then" thread.

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                          #37
                          Interstellar

                          Well, this attempt to completely derail the thread worked magnificently.

                          Smallcaps wrote:
                          Originally posted by Sam
                          Originally posted by Smallcaps
                          Was in downtown Buenos Aires yesterday
                          You could've said.
                          Was only for a few hours; stopover on my way to Ushuaia, from where my South Pole cruise leaves in a few hours. The flight out of BA left at 4.45 AM, so I had to get up at an ungodly early hour (curse you, LAN!), making a meetup slightly awkward in terms of timing (hit the hay at 8PM, get up at 1AM, be jetlagged like a boss...).

                          In case you want to meet up when I make my way back, I'm about to send you a PM.
                          To be honest the hours bars open in this city, you could have got up an hour earlier and come for a pint at my local before heading to the airport for your flight. I have replied to your PM with a suggestion for when you're back, though!

                          As for the subject of the thread, the comments about the film have saved me a trip to the IMAX. Having seen the trailers during the year when they were released online, I thought it looked cracking, but pretty much every review I've seen since it was released (starting here) seems to be very disappointing. I'll still watch it when it's on the telly or Netflix, but not before.

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                            #38
                            Interstellar

                            Loved it.

                            Okay, I loved it with reservations. Yes there are plot holes, implausibilities and some sections that are baggy. And yes, it's too long and Hathaway's character is underdeveloped.

                            But I'll forgive Nolan all of that for the visual spectacle, the ambition and the audacity of this movie. It just reminded me of the magic that cinema can have.

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                              #39
                              Interstellar

                              +++spoilers+++

                              It's the most crying I've seen in a film since Sophie's Choice. I mean, that tsunami on the water planet was probably due to Mc H watching his kid's video.

                              Bits of it were fantastic; a lot of it was beautiful...and yet I didn't really think it was all that good. Spielberg was all over the ending too. I thought Haley Joel Osment's robot kid was going to shuffle in at one point.

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                                #40
                                Interstellar

                                Saw this sci-fi blockbuster from Christopher Nolan yesterday. Visually stunning, scientifically wonky in parts, ok-ish acting (even Hathaway, putting in a young Liza Minelli impression, wasn't horrifically bad). The sound effects and score were loud and impressive, but some of the dialogue was mumbled inaubibly - apparently "on purpose". If you do go, cough up the extra & see it on an IMAX screen. And if you can follow all the science twists and turns, and can work out everything said, well done.

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                                  #41
                                  Interstellar

                                  I quite enjoyed it.
                                  It had the odd feeling of being both horribly over long and strangely rushed, like there wasn't enough time to flesh out the ideas properly.
                                  Visually spectacular, scientifically laughable.

                                  **************spoiler****************

                                  The complete misunderstanding of what a black hole is and does and how far its influence extends was hilarious. Especially on the first planet.

                                  ***************Spoiler Ends**************

                                  That said, I wasn't bored despite it being 2 films long and I didn't find my mind wandering. And there was only one bit of dialogue that made me a bit sick in my mouth.

                                  All in all, I enjoyed. it's an ambitious film that can't quite match the ambition with actuality.
                                  Would probably have been better as a big budget TV show.

                                  Comment


                                    #42
                                    Interstellar

                                    hobbes wrote: The complete misunderstanding of what a black hole is and does and how far its influence extends was hilarious. Especially on the first planet.
                                    I'm curious to know what your objections are?

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                                      #43
                                      Interstellar

                                      Well...

                                      ************Spoiler**************

                                      time does indeed run differently in a gravity well.
                                      So far so good.
                                      However, to have the effect on time that was explained - 1 hour is 7 years - you'd have to be much, much closer to the black hole that the planet was. If that was the case, the planet wouldn't be there and nor would they have been. Tidal forces or just plain swallowing would have done for it.
                                      Not to mention that gravity increases with closeness, so as they approached the planet relative time would speed up gradually, not suddenly from orbit.
                                      A black hole doesn't exert a gravitational attraction over any more distance or any stronger that the star it was created from, plus whatever it's eaten (minus the hawking radiation.) So if a planet is far enough away to actually orbit the black hole long enough to have developed an ocean etc, then it's not close enough to have relativistic time dilation.

                                      Plus they kept banging on about nothing escaping a black hole (it does, it's just information that doesn't. X-rays and hawking radiation do a decent enough job.)
                                      And when he got close to the black hole in that little ship he'd have been spaghettified, given the difference in distance between one point of his body and another.

                                      Of course, you can wish all of this away by saying the future us have solved gravity. In which case, why send now us to such a shitty place where all the planets would have been sterilised by the radiation from the black hole anyway?

                                      *************spoiler ends****************

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                                        #44
                                        Interstellar

                                        @hobbes

                                        It's an odd criticism to pull out in the context of a film where so much of the physics is either accurate or at least plausible. (Caltech's Kip Thorne was an advisor on the film.)

                                        Neil deGrasse Tyson responded to that very segment by stating:

                                        ""I'm a big fan of Mark Twain's saying: 'Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.'"

                                        It's rather like rubbishing Seinfeld on the basis that there's no way somebody as anal as Jerry would let Kramer just walk into his apartment unannounced. The reason he does so is because it's funny.

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                                          #45
                                          Interstellar

                                          But if you're going to hang so much of the plot (the loss of time) on something so specific, it either has to be right, or something completely made up. "sort of right" is just bollocks.
                                          If they'd have said "this black hole is weird, it's not behaving like you'd expect" then they could have ridden it. Or if they surmised that it wasn't actually a black hole, but a new kind of singularity. Anything, really.
                                          If you make an effort to be correct and plausible in the rest of the film, shit like that stands out like a sore thumb.

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                                            #46
                                            Interstellar

                                            You can apply the same sort of criticism to most epic science fiction films.

                                            I mean don't get me started on 2001. Great chunks of that film make no sense. Still like it though.

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                                              #47
                                              Interstellar

                                              Yeah, but Kubrick wasn't pretending that they do make sense.
                                              That's my point. If you make a big deal about the science being right, then it has to actually BE right. Nolan and Thorne have been telling all and sundry that their house is built on bedrock, while ignoring that a whole wing of it is on a swamp.

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                                                #48
                                                Interstellar

                                                slackster wrote:

                                                but some of the dialogue was mumbled inaubibly - apparently "on purpose".
                                                I hate that. Mumbled incomprehensible and mangled dialog is one of those modern "hip" trends that I find royally loathsome and pretentious. It's rubbish filmmaking, lazy acting and a rubbish excuse for so-called verisimilitude in filmmaking. Just fucking speak up so we can hear you or just shut the fuck up. You're not fucking Brando.

                                                There. Got that off my chest.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Interstellar

                                                  hobbes wrote: If you make a big deal about the science being right, then it has to actually BE right. Nolan and Thorne have been telling all and sundry that their house is built on bedrock, while ignoring that a whole wing of it is on a swamp.
                                                  Well, I was scratching my head as well, but Kip Thorne's written an accompanying book, explaining the science behind it (including the water planet orbiting the black hole). So I suggest your best course of action is to take down his theoretical physics.

                                                  Must say, reading articles in the Daily Mail accusing someone of sketchy science is jaw-dropping.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Interstellar

                                                    Elvis Wilbury takes a turn wrote: slackster wrote:

                                                    but some of the dialogue was mumbled inaubibly - apparently "on purpose".
                                                    I hate that. Mumbled incomprehensible and mangled dialog is one of those modern "hip" trends that I find royally loathsome and pretentious. It's rubbish filmmaking, lazy acting and a rubbish excuse for so-called verisimilitude in filmmaking. Just fucking speak up so we can hear you or just shut the fuck up. You're not fucking Brando.
                                                    Amen. It's been a real problem in American films for a long while. Actors workshop wankers. Have the courage to let people hear the lines, the writers had years to work on them.

                                                    McConaughey could do that in True Detective cause he's playing a muttering loner who's seen the void, but it's just aggravating here.

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