Movie Review: Interstellar Overdrive

Space. The final frontier. Space is futuristic, no matter what the context. The eventual penultimate sequel of any series of horror film must end in space. Cheech and Chong went to space, Brian Blessed went to space, Michael Fassbender went to space, the potential future of humanity is seen to be in space. And it is with this sort of nostalgia for the future that the film Interstellar plays upon over the 190 million dollar blockbuster directed by Christopher Nolan out in cinemas...Now!

The film starts with actor Mathew Mahoney working as an uneducated farmer in New York city before catching a zip-line ride into a secret underground base and blasted in a rocket through the universe! The film pays homage to many classics of the sci-fi genre. Flight of the Navigator, The Last Starfighter, Man of Steel and 2001: Abe's Odyssey are just a few of the movies Interstellar 'parodies' for extensive lengths of its 120 minute running time. Mathew Majonnahugh literally weeps throughout the entire film as he battles ice beasts, alien planets and even Father Time himself as he goes on a quest to find the true power of love. I think the swashbuckling nature of the main characters in the film add to its charm. For instance, MacConeys crash lands his spaceship on an alien planet and stands in the water, leaning back slightly so that his six pack really pops in the light thrown from the binary star system overhead. He looks around at the horizon and his mouth slowly drops open, the cigar he was smoking falls to the floor.
"Those aren't mountains." he says, taking off his sunglasses that had reflected the tsunami approaching him to reveal the steely cool gaze of M.M. He runs back to his ship and clambers on top of it. "Here goes nothing." he mutters to himself, as the wave begins to hit him. The entire screen is filled with a wave and suddenly we see the star riding the spaceship like a surfboard. A Hans Zimmer soundtrack of surf guitars and organ music is so loud it literally rips the cinema screen to shreds and blasts the entire audiences heads back simultaneously. Another classy moment is when Mathew McConnaghey is playing bass guitar in his space pod, lazily rolling around and around as he plays a version of 'Space Oddity', letting the CGI hair and beard float around in the zero gravity. Space is shown as not being a glamorous place for super scientists, but a sort of hyper-industrial working class structure in which humans are disposable, which makes it glamorous again.

Nolan does it again with another terrific film that is so contemporary it will be looked back on as being a classic 10's action flick. Maybe you will understand Inception more after getting into the mad mind brain of Nolan. Film critics in the future will often talk about it fondly, just as we look back on Barbarella or Event Horizon. Scanning any nerds film collection one is bound to see either no science fiction or almost be entirely science fiction, because science fiction is the language of the future. You can barely walk anywhere now without seeing a Star Trek quote etched into a boulder or teenagers discussing The Prisoner on street corners as they share electronic cigarettes. By 2019 the world will be entering a time so futuristic it will resemble that of Blade Runner! Interstellar is less about humanity's literal place in the universe than it is a celebration of how much fiction influences civilization, it doesn't pretend to be real for one moment. If you move your head from side to side whilst watching you will see how the entire universe exists on a two dimensional shape. Most of the people in the film are even played by well known actors and actresses. How am I supposed to believe that the head of NASA is a scientist when I know that he is in fact Michael Caine, famous actor? Everyone in the film are stood around in clothes they don't own in a fake room saying things that somebody else thought.

One thing to take away from this film is its technological optimism in the face of democracy. People are dumb is the main message of the film, yet delivered in a audience driven market of Dumb and Dumber To and Nativity 3: Dude Where's My Reindeer it will be interesting to see how this sci-fi blancmange blemishes against the eye, blossoming the blood vessels around the iris like exploding planets around the films eponymous black hole; Megadrive. Regardless I will give the film 8 stars out of 10, go and see it, tell your friends about it, tweet about it. #seenit

All Said And Done

One of the things I miss the most about alternative realities is that this one doesn't care much for the exploration and colonization of space, instead spending millions on a 3D film of Yogi Bear or soap that smells like Marmite. In some faraway place in space and time others will look back with eyes made from ectoplasm and wonder, what happened.

Space Drugs

Some of the greatest discoveries of mankind were found under the influence of drugs, such as Isaac Newton ingesting a hefty bag of psychedelic mushrooms and seeing small orbs raining from the air keeping everything stuck to the ground giving him the idea of gravity or Charles Darwin, drunk, looking down a superstring and watching the entire history of biology in between saccades. Other discoveries were more controversial, with whole groups of scientists being so strung out for long periods of time they weren't even sure if they had written down their discoveries or not.

And now, in this calm before the brain storm of unending invention, we must acknowledge what kind of drugs the supermassive objects ingest. This is of course directed at those familiar with the work of Drake, the theory that suns are enormous brains that sing to each other over space and time like strange whales. There is certainly a tendency in the stars that go supernova, and thus become magnetars and pulsars, that space drugs almost definitely exist. Scientists are currently uncertain as to what form or effect these space drugs would have, although it is thought perhaps indestructible clouds of psychedelics float through the cosmos, warping matter itself by freaking out atoms. Others suggest comets act as hypodermic syringes, punching holes in the surface of stars and delivering chemical mixtures that make the star turn into liquid. Whatever form these take, every single scientist definitely agrees on their existence. All of them.

Like The Ocean

Please refer to this diagram if stuck in time loop.

Ambient Breakthroughs In Space Rock

Stoned Galls

State of the art technology is already obsolete.

The Summer Of Ennui

Not giving enough. Not caring enough. Not doing enough. Not thinking enough. About Mars.

Life Twist

When he slept he dreamt of living a life as a professor of biomechanical engineering at Boston University. When he woke he was a component in the ISS, his three inch metal body significant in holding the hull together. He would often forget his dreams quickly after waking but he sometimes wondered if his dreams were real somehow. Either he was observing the life of JJ Collins or he was in fact JJ Collins who dreamt of being a bolt integral to keeping the International Space Station together that was unable to tell reality from dreams. A bit like The Matrix but not as action packed.

Cannibal Planet

There is a planet spinning out in space where all the resources have been used. No metal, wood, water. No animals or plants. The only resource is the human being. Vast fields of pregnant women lie waiting to give birth to babies, a majority of which will be eaten. Some will be used as fuel for the few fires the cannibals use as warmth for those who haven't built houses made from clumps of hair and faeces. Oceans of bodily fluids span the globe, scab waves washing up on marrow shores. Everybody on the planet will die as the atmosphere slowly changes to carbon dioxide and all that will be left will be miles upon miles of deserts made from the chewed up bones of long dead space cannibals.

Fungal Infections throughout History

Catoblepas!

Display

Pioneer Ten bumped against the edge of the curtain and was gently pushed back. "That was close." whispered the stage-hand.

The Accelerating Man

“There are as many atoms in a person as there would take people to fill a star. I therefore suggest that stars are also people, what we see is merely a metaphor. This also explains the stars sometimes conducting particle acceleration experiments with people instead of protons.” - Richard Dawkins

The Truth

The booster rocket divorced itself from the shuttle, flying backwards into space. It is briefly caught in the path of debris that the other booster gives off before spinning down to Earth. The camera lens in it's eye looks up at the sun and down at the ocean, again and again. Sometimes it caught a glimpse of the other rocket as it left a yellow trail whilst re-entering the atmosphere but otherwise it was the simple white and blacks of space and the occasional flick of the sea below. Down it went, faster and faster until it entered enough air to begin making sounds again. A series of planes below it pointed huge magnets upwards, catching the metal framework and guiding it towards land. The silver planes eventually side winded away to leave the huge rocket engine hurtling into the twin towers, destroying them both in an cataclysm of interstellar velocity. “The mission was a success.” said the president of the united states, drinking a glass of bourbon whilst watching New York be engulfed in a toxic smog.

Rollercoaster into Space

Watch out for aliens and shit!