John and I watched Interstellar on opening weekend. We thoroughly enjoyed and want to go back and watch it on IMAX, since it will likely be the last major feature film ever to be filmed on IMAX. While it’s certainly not a flawless movie (personally not a fan of Anne Hathaway’s acting), the visuals and cinematography are breathtaking. And the story is intriguing and has enough of a an emotional core to keep me invested from start to finish. The movie centers on Cooper (played by Matthew McConaughey) an astronaut-turned-farmer living in the not-too-distant future America, where the population has been decimated by blight and food shortage, in a post-modern Dust Bowl era. As the trailer suggests, Cooper goes on a mission to save Earth. I can’t say much more than that without giving away major plot points; I will say Interstellar is a movie I find myself pondering even now, nearly two weeks after we saw it in the theater.
As a result of watching Interstellar, John and I have been on this science/science fiction kick. This has played out in the following fashion:
- We watched as Contact, which will henceforth be known as “that other Matthew McConaughey space movie.” It was much better than I remembered watching it as a high schooler back in the 90s. I read this original novel by Carl Sagan and remembered really enjoying the story.
- We have started to read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, which appears to have been partial source material for Interstellar. I am currently in the chapter on black holes and it is blowing my mind. I haven’t even gotten to imaginary time yet. I don’t even know how I’ll process that information. The book features illustrations like this one, in attempt to unpack the nature of the singularity and event horizon:
- We listened to a few podcast episodes of The Liturgists. This is a fascinating look at faith, science and art, hosted by “Science Mike,” Michael Gungor and Josh Loveless. There’s a great episode in which Science Mike addresses the real science (and also not-so-scientific science) behind the film Interstellar. One of his fascinating points is that he said compared to most sci-fi shows and franchises (Star Trek and Star Wars included) that Interstellar surprisingly has a lot more real science informing the story and plot points. I highly recommend listening to the Interstellar podcast if you’ve already seen Interstellar (spoilers aplenty on this one).
- We bought tickets to see 2001: A Space Odyssey in a local movie theater next Thanksgiving weekend. The local artsy-indie movie house The Enzian is hosting a 2001 showing. I heard an interview where the cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth ridiculed the idea that anyone would watch this film on anything less than a movie screen. Of course, this was before DVDs and streaming movies on our tiny iPhone screens. Anyway, his point taken – I am really looking forward to watching this film on the big screen.
Have you guys seen Interstellar? Did it make you want to binge on real science/science fiction too?
randomness and ruminations 