So the wait is over. And the movie of the year is in theatres. For Christopher Nolan films, to watch or not to watch is never the question. And if you belong to the same tribe, you are at the right place. And more so, if you love reading countless pieces about a film that you love. But only counted few films and filmmakers give us the luxury of doing “Everything you always wanted to know about” posts. Cuaron’s Gravity was the last film we did a post like this.
We are trying to make this one the definitive post on all reading material on Nolan and Interstellar. Welcome aboard!
Before Watching
Three must-read articles on Nolan and his cinema –
Caine told him, “I’ll read it and have my driver bring it over tomorrow.” But Nolan, who is notoriously secretive about his projects, said he’d stay and wait. “He had a cup of tea with my wife while I read it,” Caine told me. “I said I’d do it. Then he took the script away, and I never saw it again.” (Nolan defends his predilection for secrecy with the good sense of one of his paternal figures. “We all want to unwrap our Christmas presents early,” he told me, with a tone as sympathetic to childlike curiosity as it was firm in its tut-tutting advocacy of the greater pleasures of deferral. “But we all know we’ll be disappointed if we do.”)
– From NYT’s The Exacting, Expansive Mind of Christopher Nolan
The name of his production company, Syncopy, is the word for the temporary loss of consciousness caused by loss of oxygen to the brain, and all his films, to some extent, use the tropes of the detective film or heist movie to dramatise the twists and turns of consciousness.
– From Guardian’s long read Christopher Nolan: the man who rebooted the blockbuster
And in contrast to the frantic last-minute reshoots of so many big-budget movies, Mr. Nolan’s work is reliable. He delivers films that are remarkably close to what he originally pitched to his backers. They come in ahead of schedule and under budget. Last April, a time when many summer releases were still far from complete, studio executives saw Mr. Nolan’s first cut of “Interstellar”—nearly identical to the one hitting theaters now.
– Ffrom WSJ’s Why Hollywood loves ‘Interstellar’ director Christopher Nolan
– The Physics Refresher You Need To Read To Understand ‘Interstellar’ (No Spoilers). Click here
After Watching (SPOILER ALERT)
– Plot of Interstelar – Read if you are still lost and confused about the film’s plot. In “Prologue and Epilogue: The Fifth Dimension and the Bookshelf at the End of the Universe” and “Love is Science, and Vice Versa”
– The Science of ‘Interstellar’ Explained (Infographic) – All about wormholes, black holes and space-time
– The Spaceships of ‘Interstellar’ Explained (Infographic). Click here
– What Is the Fifth Dimension in ‘Interstellar’? Click here
The one place where I am the least comfortable is on [a] planet where they have these ice clouds. These structures go beyond what I think the material strength of ice would be able to support. But I’d say if that’s the most egregious violation of physical law, they’ve done very, very well. There’s some artistic license there. Every time I watch the movie, that’s the one place where I cringe. I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody that.
– Kip Thorne’s interview is here – Physicist who inspired Interstellar spills the backstory—and the scene that makes him cringe
One of the older women, Murphy Cooper, is played by the actress Ellen Burstyn. But the rest are not actors. They are interview subjects fromFrom Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan’s 2012 documentary “The Dust Bowl,” and they are speaking about their experiences in that real environmental catastrophe, rather than a fictional cataclysm.
– How Ken Burns’ surprise role in ‘Interstellar’ explains the movie (click Here)
– A spoiler-filled look at Interstellar’s ending | Den of Geek
What is Nolan’s secret?
He has his tea in his pocket that he drinks all day. He has a coat with a big pocket and in it, a flask of tea. He drinks it all day. That’s his secret.
– Michael Caine’s interview is here. On Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s Secret, and Drinking With Dylan Thomas
I said, Steven, if it was a contemporary space exploration film, it would be about 15 minutes long. And it would consist of the they all go in to the Appropriations Committee and quietly die, right? We don’t do that anymore. It’s fucking done. We peaked. In the years when the anthropologists come down, they’ll find a little polyester flag in the Moon and they’ll say, fuck, they almost made it. Right?
– Writer Jonathan Nolan’s interview is here
– “Academy Conversations: Interstellar”, followed by a new featurette and a bonus video of Nolan introducing his first film “Following” at the 1999 Rotterdam Film Festival. Click here
– Some interesting trivia on the film’s making #InterstellarHangout – Cast LIVE from Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum
– Christopher Nolan’s Favorite Shot, and How It Reflects What His Movies Are Really About. On Slate
– Interstellar’s Black Hole Once Seen As Pure Speculation. Fifty years after the term “black hole” was coined, audiences and scientists remain captivated. Here
– The plot of ‘Interstellar,’ in 10 TED Talks. Click here
– NASA | Caltech: An Interstellar Conversation – How is it possible to do it in reality (Panel of Astronomers, Physicist, Engineer)
CRITICISM
21 Things in Interstellar That Don’t Make Sense – On Vulture
What the movie gets wrong and really wrong about black holes, relativity, plot, and dialogue – by astronomer Phil Plait. On Slate
It’s showtime, folks! Come to the Master!
(Pic courtesy – via FB. Whoever created it, please come forward and take the credit. Jejus still loves you 🙂
Thanks for this . A treat.
I have tickets for 2.30 tomorrow. Will come back here for the ‘after watching’ parts.
Strange thing is that even if you believe for a moment in every fiction that nolan creates in his science of 5th dimension, when first time around cooper in his infinite time loop sends a dust based nasa coordinate morse code to his earlier self then even nasa admits about gravitational anamolies. Then how does nobody realise the anamoly of time when he plays around with time as shown on the second hand ticking erratically on his daughters wrist watch(or does only time of that wrist watch get affected,so we have a personalised black hole n a personalised wrist watch which has its own time??? future apple products anyone?) also stopping time literally means stopping the earth going round n round the sun or making it erratic with catastrophic effects.
The story completely buys into hawkings kind of only physics will save the world,but whenever it is zombies that attack humans,it is always pharmacy,biotechnology,genetics,drugs,etc which saves the planet but today lets choose physics n completely ignore the power of organic biology or chemistry.very convenient
any paperback scifi short story of 50s,60s,70s, beats interstellar hands down sadly there was no filmmaking technology to create their worlds and they remain forgotten esp works of asimov,bester,simak,pohl,ballard,heinlein.
their short stories have so many films waiting to be made.hope interstellars earns a billion to atleast spark the indie sci-fi film making not the hugo award winners but the paperback stuff.
for all nolan fans https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PFdmAgA_Gfo
It was an awesome experience watching the film. Most heartening is to see how it has excited people about space-time.
For more on extra dimensions watch this ted talk by Brian Green
However I would have liked more if they had ended differently.
Cooper enters the black hole and accesses higher dimensions chances are he has lost all his mass and is just a conscious particle interacting with space time. In that case he should obey the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
The plot would have been more awesome it explored quantum physics properties on how observation or the lack of it defines the eventuality of an event.
The coming out and meeting the kid and all was a cop out.
Thanx for the Link. Even though there is confusion about whether cooper actually went into a black-hole or not, he should not have came out or rather should have transformed into non reversible form. As of now everything indicates that we wont be able to access the other dimensions in our physical form. But again there is nothing to prove or disprove it. First thing is to prove the existence another dimension and put forward a unified theory. Till then i will give to Nolan. And Ossum post Moi !!!
Nolan is definitely a genius- but once you become a ‘rockstar’ director, it is absolutely essential that you have an Editor who can curtail your worst impulses. Not sure if Lee Smith and he share that kind of relationship, because Interstellar seemed unnecessarily overindulgent at many places
took that “leap of faith”.
Loved Interstellar. A film
About messages which we keep sending although we know they are never read, will never reach.
How time passes differently for those who go away,
and for those who wait.
About how a feeling is sometimes beyond ‘social utility’.
How two children love Cooper equally but while Murph gets chosen to follow a path, Tom just suffocates.
About the ghosts that we make up in our head.
Ghosts of the people who we want should Stay.
I listen to Christopher and Jonathan Nolan as they whisper a story about love.
Light bends around the black hole,
I do not notice ‘loopholes in the plot’.
Resemblance to Contact and many other films,
and what else are reviews saying?
Too much Science(!)
Yes,yes we know.
But as Mal asks Dom Cobb in Inception – “What do you FEEL?”
My thoughts on the film: http://simpmaster.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/interstellar/
http://www.slashfilm.com/interstellar-script-differences/ spielberg version vs nolan
http://www.slashfilm.com/interstellar-timeline-chart-explains-christopher-nolans-theory-space-time-relativity/ the timeline of interstellar
finally neil deGrasse Tyson speaks about Interstellar
http://www.slashfilm.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-interstellar-comments/
who put tht wormhole there??
Awesome stuff from Nolan, however these plot holes are hard to ignore:
http://digestivepyrotechnics.blogspot.com/2014/11/interstellar-plot-holes-explained.html