Tag Archives: Chris Nolan

Chris Nolan’s “Interstellar” Rip-Off

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Interstellar is but a messy compilation of almost every science fiction film done before.

It opens as Shyamalan’s Signs – a paranormal tone established on a farm – and develops into Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind – the lead character following intuitive clues to a secret government installation.close_encountersOur cast goes off in search of other worlds – like all other star-bound yarns – and toils through predictable and half-developed space-age themes like isolation, claustrophobia and love in close quarters, with a couple of buddy-robots thrown in for laughs. Short circuitThe worst of the plagiarism is the sophomoric rip-off from 2001: A Space Odyssey. 936full-2001-a-space-odyssey-screenshotNolan makes repeated attempts at reaching a Kubrick-ian plateau by diving through worm holes, black holes and inner space, eventually arriving at a fifth dimension where time becomes a soft-focus library, from which the viewer can only beg to be released.

The only way this film could be made more tedious would be to view it on Dr. Miller’s Water Planet (pictured below) where an hour equals seven earth-bound years. Interstellar-Dr. Miller's PlanetThat’s right, 21 straight years of Matthew McConaughey tearing up because he can’t age fast enough.

Instead of Interstellar, I recommend a 1996 episode of The Outer Limits, Worlds Apart. Screenshot (522)As cheap as the special effects may be, the story is the same and it’s free on-line.

An Ominous Sound for an Ominous Future

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Fripp & Eno started it with The Heavenly Music Corporation, not ambient music but ominous and terrifying sonic explorations, lovely too. (Click preceding link to listen.)An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureI heard the sound again, years later, at a Grateful Dead show in Miami in 1988; it was like being inside a jet engine, all-encompassing, so very loud.

An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureAnd then, in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2006), a new version, low and distant, perhaps over-produced, arrived on screen. (Click preceding link to listen.)An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureIt arose again in the trailer for Chris Nolan’s Inception (2010), promising aural profundity; regrettably, the sound was brief and the movie was not.An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureThe sound became more realized in Gravity (2013), providing the soundscape for the impending doom of debris.An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureIt has now returned to the frontier of music, more than My Bloody Valentine’s sonic wall, in Sigur Ros’ latest work, Kveikur (2013).An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureLouder and deeper, back-filled by drums and wailing voices, the sound builds, just falling short of the next plateau. An Ominous Sound for an Ominous FutureAs this sound continues in its evolution, getting deeper and fuller, it might even be a synchronistic backdrop for our promised apocalypse.