Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014)

[mfunk9786]

Early reviews are underwhelming. Some choice reviews/pull-quotes from shrugs/pans:

Alonso Duralde: "Weighing against that, without getting into spoilers, is a third act of staggering wrongheadedness, along with female characters whose intellect takes a backseat to their exploding emotionalism and rage. Nolan is, presumably, among a handful of filmmakers who gets to do whatever he wants with minimal studio intrusion, but the resolution of “Interstellar” feels so inorganic that you'd swear it was concocted by a Glendale focus group."

James Rocchi: "Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" spends hundreds of millions to take the audience on a journey to the farthest parts of the cosmos ... so they can be told sentiments as close, and as cheap, as any of the offerings at your local Hallmark card retailer."

Devin Faraci: "It’s a movie designed for people who watched the bedroom sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey and wished there was more exposition about who built the room, how, why and what thread count was on that bed; Christopher Nolan, who aspires to Kubrick’s precision, cannot match his messy metaphysics. There’s an equation for every emotion in Interstellar, including love."

A few critics are really fawning, though:

Scott Foundas: "...“Interstellar” reaffirms Nolan as the premier big-canvas storyteller of his generation, more than earning its place alongside “The Wizard of Oz,” “2001,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Gravity” in the canon of Hollywood’s visionary sci-fi head trips."

Dave Calhoun: "Christopher Nolan’s overwhelming, immersive and time-bending space epic ‘Interstellar’ makes Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Gravity’ feel like a palate cleanser for the big meal to come."

[eerik]

Paul Thomas Anderson calls the film "beautiful"-- "Don't fuck around, go see it in IMAX"

The first IMAX in Estonia (or the Baltic and Nordic region in general) is set to open in December. Hoping to make Interstellar my first IMAX experience.

[GaryC]

The Odeon Leicester Square (London) is dusting off its 70mm projection facilities to show Interstellar, the first UK commercial run in 70mm since The Master at the Odeon West End two years ago, and before that the 2001 reissue of 2001 at the Curzon Mayfair. I'm booked for the BFI IMAX, one of three UK venues showing it from a 15/70 print, the other two being in Manchester and Bradford.

[flyonthewall2983]

Guardaian article, which includes praise from Quentin Tarantino, comparing it to the work of Tarkovsky and Malick.

[mfunk9786]

Jessica Chastain is Christopher Nolan's indentured servant until late December, other projects be damned; other 'unusual contract demands' hinted at

[flyonthewall2983]

This sounds more like the studio's doing than Nolan's.

[mfunk9786]

Nolan could snap his fingers and make this go away. He's one of the producers of this film, has been cozy with Legendary Pictures for more than a decade now, and is named in that New York Times article as one of the people trying to stretch the terms of that contract. I don't buy the idea that he's innocent in trying to be petty about this.

[domino harvey]

She signed the contract and I don't hear her complaining, so despite Gawker's best efforts at scrounging up a tizzy, this is a non-story

[The Narrator Returns]

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[knives]

She signed the contract and I don't hear her complaining, so despite Gawker's best efforts at scrounging up a tizzy, this is a non-story

To play devil's advocate it could be part of the contract not to complain. Ultimately you are right because she is a grown up, but a silence on her part doesn't necessarily reflect her opinion. Just her professionalism.

[Jakamarak]

It is my understanding that most contracts have clauses spelling out the publicity obligations for the actors which typically include periods of exclusivity. These obligations can get especially demanding for big studio tentpole releases. Depending on the actor's profile, the importance of his/her role in the film, the film's budget, etc., it is possible to negotiate certain limits. Generally, however, these are standard clauses and when an actor has multiple releases in the same season, the respective publicity machines will work together to make everyone happy -- regardless of the wording of the contracts.

It seems to me that Warner Brothers is preparing a massive rollout for what is destined to be a huge moneymaker. They don't see any advantage on their side to granting exceptions, so they want Chastain to stick to the letter of the agreement.

[knives]

Paramount, not WB at least in America.

[flyonthewall2983]

IMDB just tweeted pictures of Chastain on the red carpet at tonight's premiere of A Most Violent Year. Also one of the comments in the Gawker article suggests Nolan managed to get her out of an appearance on the Late Show to promote it.

[warren oates]

The optics of this seem bad for Nolan. It's starting to feel like he's gunning for serious Oscars with his new film and simply doesn't want to help any of the potential competition.

[GaryC]

The Odeon Leicester Square (London) is dusting off its 70mm projection facilities to show Interstellar, the first UK commercial run in 70mm since The Master at the Odeon West End two years ago, and before that the 2001 reissue of 2001 at the Curzon Mayfair. I'm booked for the BFI IMAX, one of three UK venues showing it from a 15/70 print, the other two being in Manchester and Bradford.

Make that four UK 15/70 IMAX prints. The Science Museum IMAX in London is also showing one.

[barryconvex]

just came back from the theatre and despite the lingering big movie afterglow i wasn't particularly impressed with Interstellar i think the Alonso Durade's quote below that mfunk posted earlier is kind of exactly on the money unfortunately:

Alonso Duralde: "Weighing against that, without getting into spoilers, is a third act of staggering wrongheadedness, along with female characters whose intellect takes a backseat to their exploding emotionalism and rage. Nolan is, presumably, among a handful of filmmakers who gets to do whatever he wants with minimal studio intrusion, but the resolution of “Interstellar” feels so inorganic that you'd swear it was concocted by a Glendale focus group."

i really wanted to like this movie-i like Nolan's movies. In particular, and i know this board is not the biggest fan of it, but i thought Inception was pretty ingenious in spite of its girth. Interstellar makes Inception look like Evil Dead 2 by comparison. In fact even something as dramatically cautious as Contact seems like the gospel compared to Interstellar. I'm not even going anywhere near 2001 comparisons. Mostly because they're aren't any...I don't want to get into plot points or spoilers until others have seen it so i'll just comment quickly on the performances, all by actors i like or respect. Mccconaughey in the lead is as limp here as he was inspired last year in Dallas Buyer's Club. He's back to giving every line reading in that same stoned, texas drawl that's he's used since Dazed and Confused. Anne Hathaway looks lost without Nolan letting her cling to any of her actorly devices (READ: playing the emotional aspects of any given part entirely with her eyes) which she's honed so well over the last ten years or so. Michael Caine is solid enough but Jessica Chastain is the only member of the cast who seems to have really responded to the material. She handles the inept dialogue and Sub-Spielbergian pathos deftly. I doubt she'll win any awards but at least she came to play...

[flyonthewall2983]

I heard that the sound mix has some major issues, anyone experience that?

[solaris72]

I heard that the sound mix has some major issues, anyone experience that?

Yeah! I saw it in 70mm at the Air & Space Museum IMAX- there were several scenes where there was this low-frequency rumbling that almost drowned out the dialogue and seemed very out of place.

There was a lot I loved about this film- the visual grandeur of the space shots, the dust bowl/depression-era based apocalypse which posited the film's conflict as between a dead past and a living future -but on the whole it was way too silly (and I have a soft spot for ambitious space movies so I am often more forgiving of them).

[malpractice]

I think once you accept that the film is a melodrama, a lot of the "flaws" don't really bother me as much. In that way it seems like Douglas Sirk directing Solaris with Douglas Trumbull handling all the effects.

Granted i am a pretty big fan of Nolan so i might be a lot more forgiving than most on here.

[barryconvex]

I loved the space shots too. The wormhole and the other worlds were also handled well but Nolan basically has carte blanche at this point. With all his resources everything else should've been so much better. He went with a quantum physics heavy script that he then tried to leaven with alot of half-assed exposition about love being able to transcend and alter interdimensional borders. It's not a completely terrible movie and i look forward to whatever he does next but this time around I think he bit off way more than he could chew...

[flyonthewall2983]

I really liked this. I saw it in regular IMAX today, maybe a row or two from the front so it was more visually overwhelming than previous experiences with the format. There were some issues with the sound mix too, not as bad as I'd been hearing elsewhere though. I had that lingering afterglow barryconvex referred to, it helped there was a rather awesome sunset outside waiting for me and my dad (who I actually saw shed some tears towards the end). The fanboys were out in force for this screening as there was something of a brief ovation afterwards (2nd time that happened, the other was when I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 with apparently everyone else who voted Democrat in Indiana that election).

It's not a total home-run as the lukewarm press and the BO numbers that came out will suggest, but I think it was very admirable that Nolan has done something with this kind of scale with reason and logic behind it (sketchy as it might be to some), as opposed to being closer to resembling sound and fury signifying nothing like a lot of films are with the budget he gets to play with.

[aox]

I heard that the sound mix has some major issues, anyone experience that?

I saw it last night in NYC at Lincoln Center (IMAX), and I couldn't make out a lot of the dialogue. The center channel seemed buried.

[mfunk9786]

Bad year for sound mixing - the $75 per ticket screening of Inherent Vice at the NYFF was waaaaay too loud, over-modulating some of the dialogue. Hopefully that film will be fixed by the time it's released.

[flyonthewall2983]

Was that shown on a digital projector? Maybe the mixes from stuff shot on the kind of film Nolan and PTA are using aren't jibing correctly with the new machines.

Few random musings. not quite spoilers but best to experience seeing it.

SpoilerShow

I liked Lithgow's character lamenting having a hot dog at a Yankees game, a callback to that nice scene in 2010.

I also liked Zimmer's use of the final chord of "Zarathustra" throughout the score, especially at the beginning. That itself echoes what he did in the opening scene of The Thin Red Line, using the first note of an Arvo Pärt piece.

[warren oates]

I don't know. I saw the film in 70mm Imax at the Mann Chinese in Los Angeles, a theater Nolan himself had supposedly QC'ed. I sat next to a professional sound designer more or less in the middle of the theater. And we both felt the mix had some of the same problems with muddy dialogue that people are widely reporting elsewhere.