The Daily Hilario: Interstellar

So, Interstellar.  Take all the usual Christopher Nolan things, add in a good bit of actual humanity and emotion*, a bit of Contact, a bit of Kubrick's 2001, and bucketloads of wonder and if you shake it all around properly, you might just get Interstellar.

Now, it may be just that new movie high speaking, but wow, what an amazing way to spend 2.5-3 hours.  All expectations: met.  I didn't watch it in IMAX, but I did see it at a D-Box enabled theater.  The trick with the stupid D-Boxes is to sit in the non-D-Box row just in front of them.  That way you get all the rumbles, but none of the silly motion things.  A little extra bass with a movie like this one is a perfect addition.

* About halfway through the movie, I suddenly became aware of some strange salty discharge welling up and overflowing out from my eyes.  I want to say the last time that happened was during that doggie scene in I am Legend.

I'm not going to talk much about the plot here since I can't do spoiler text.  A few things about a few other aspects of this instant masterpiece though.  One, love the emphasis on science.  Kip Thorne's theories served as basis for a lot of them, and he even got to serve not only as the consultant but as executive producer.  And after the Avengers bastardized the term tesseract to mean something entirely different, we get a "real" one in this one.  It's probably not perfect science -- much of it is theoretical after all -- but here we have a Hollywood blockbuster with wormholes, black holes, relativity, and 4+ dimensions.  And that, much like Inception's puzzle making the unwashed masses think for a minute, is a triumph for modern American cinema.

Two, the music.  It's by frequent Nolan-collaborator Hans Zimmer and while Zimmer was super cool and awesome at first, he's become boring and repetitive (by and large) over the years.  Sure, he can still produce the odd inspired theme or cue, but as someone's who's been listening to the man's music since the early '90s, seeing Zimmer's name fills me with slight trepidation rather than quiet excitement (like, say, Mansell or Burwell or Djawadi or even the more traditional people like Howard Shore or, still, John Williams).  While the full soundtrack won't be officially released for another 10 days, my initial impression is that it's a rousing success that takes some of the best parts of his recent scores like Inception and makes them even better.  It's epic, it's weird, it's wondrous, it's perfectly complementary of the movie.

Lastly, the ending.  Again, without touching on the plot, this seemed to be a major knock against the movie and while I see why it's been treated as such, I thought it was appropriate.  I should warn you, I happen to like the series finales to both Battlestar Galactica and LOST, which possibly renders my opinion not of the majority in this matter.  And it's not like whatever happens at the end is a shut-n-closed case.  Much like Inception, it can be interpreted in at least two different ways.  Remember what the man with the amazing cameo appearance tells McConaughey's character?

Anyway, big fan of the movie and can't wait to go see it again.

FOOTBALL (all times GMT):
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22.00:  MLS Playoffs:  New England vs. Columbus Crew (4-2 agg.)
00.30 (next day):  MLS Playoffs:  LA Galaxy vs. Real Salt Lake (0-0 agg.)