28 FRIDAY NOVEMBER 21, 2014
PATTAYA MAIL
VOL. XXII No. 47
Review: ‘Interstellar’ a sublime cosmic knockout Jake Coyle Los Angeles (AP) - Since his breakthrough with the backward-running “Memento,” Christopher Nolan has made a plaything of time. In “Interstellar,” he slips into its very fabric, shaping its flows and exploding its particles. It’s an absurd endeavor. And it’s one of the most sublime movies of the decade. As our chief large-canvas illusionist, Nolan’s kaleidoscope puzzles have often dazzled more than they have moved, prizing brilliant, hocus-pocus architecture over emotional interiors. But a celestial warmth shines through “Interstellar,” which is, at heart, a fatherdaughter tale grandly spun across a cosmic tapestry. There is turbulence along the way. “Interstellar” is overly explanatory about its physics, its dialogue can be clunky and you may want to send composer Hans Zimmer’s relentless organ into deep space. But if you take these for blips rather
than black holes, the majesty of “Interstellar” is something to behold. The film opens in the near future where a new kind of Dust Bowl, one called “the blight,” brings crop-killing storms of dust upon the Midwest farm of engineerturned-farmer Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and his two children, the adventuresome 10-year-old Murph (Mackenzie Foy) and the 15year-old budding farmer Tom (Timothee Chalamet). The rustic homestead, where Cooper and his father-in-law (John Lithgow) drink beer on the porch, recalls the Indiana home of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” — an early hint that “Interstellar” — moving and sentimental — will be more Spielberg (who was once attached to direct) than Kubrick. In the imperiled climate, space exploration is viewed as part of the “excess” of the 20th century. Textbooks now read that the moon landings were faked. But Cooper, a former NASA pilot, still believes in science’s capacity
Matthew McConaughey (left) and Anne Hathaway are shown in a scene from the film, ‘“Interstellar.” (AP Photo/Paramount Pictures, Melinda Sue Gordon) for greatness. He seethes: grandeur. “We used to look up in the Nolan shoots for the stars, sky and wonder about our literally and cinematically, place in the stars. Now we when Cooper’s curiosity (he just look down and wonder and Murph tail a flying about our place in the dirt.” drone through the wheat The spirit of wonderment, fields) brings him to a secret too, has sometimes lacked in NASA lair run by a Dr. Brand our movies. Nolan — who (Michael Caine). Largeshot in both 35mm and 70mm scale dreaming has gone and prefers his films massive underground. They enlist on Imax, but not, thank our him to pilot a desperate misstars, in 3-D — remains one sion through a wormhole to of the few purveyors of follow an earlier expedition DeMille-sized big-screen that may have found planets capable of hosting human life. Much discussion of gravity and relativity follows, as Nolan (who co-wrote the script with his brother Jonathan and consulted with theoretical physicist Kip Thorne) tries valiantly to place his quasi-plausible scifi tale within the realm of mathematics and science. “Interstellar” is a trip, for
Making ‘Dumber’ sequel more fun than the first Marcela Isaza Los Angeles (AP) - Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels made another “Dumb & Dumber” film because fans asked for it, and the two actors said making the sequel was more fun than working on the 1994 original. “We were kind of just meeting each other as we were doing the first one,” Daniels said in a recent interview. “You got two different acting styles going on — is it going to even work? And the first one, we guessed right, and it did ... “Now it’s just a lot easier. We know more, we know what’s funny, we know the two characters well — all the stuff we didn’t know in the first one we already know in the second one, so we just get to do it again, only we hope better.” “And we were blood doping,” Carrey added. “So that made it easier.”
sure, but it’s not a supernatural one. There will be no aliens poking forth from bellies or monument-blasting battles with extraterrestrials; it’s just about us humans. The journey means Cooper will, under the best of circumstances, be gone for years. The parting from Murph, who resents the abandonment, is wrenching. He’s a dutiful, driven father stepping out to work, only in another galaxy. All they can send him are video messages. His crew are Brand’s daughter (Anne Hathaway), a pair of researchers (a wonderful David Gyasi and Wes Bentley) and a robot named TARS that looks like the monolith of “2001: A Space Odyssey” if it were a shapeshifting Transformer. Voiced by Bill Irwin, it’s programmed to speak with 90 percent honesty and a dash of humor. What happens when the space ship, Endurance, moves past Saturn and passes through the wormhole? For starters, Nolan and his cinematographer, Hoyte Van Hoytema, conjure beautiful galactic imagery, contorting space and, eventually, dimensions. But what he’s really doing is dropping countless big ideas —science, survival, exploration, love — into a cosmic blender, and seeing what keeps its meaning out there in the heavenly abyss. As in “The Dark Knight,” Nolan doesn’t investigate all of its philosophical
questions so much as juggle them in an often dazzling, occasionally frustratingly incomplete way. But under extreme gravitational forces, the core of “Interstellar” holds. It remains tethered to Earth, toggling between barren, otherworldly landscapes and life back home on an increasingly uninhabitable planet. There, Murph (now played by Jessica Chastain) has grown into a physicist trying to solve an essential equation. More than anything, “Interstellar” makes you feel the great preciousness of time, a resource as valuable as oxygen. A misadventure of a few hours on one watery planet, where relative time accelerates, costs the astronauts decades. Returning to the ship, Cooper watches videos of his kids growing up before his eyes and weeps uncontrollably. All of the visual awe, the quantum mathematics, the seeming complexity of the hugely ambitious, nearly three hour-long film is just stardust clouding the orbit between a dad and his girl. Whereas most science fiction withers out in space, “Interstellar” rockets home. “Interstellar,” a Paramount Pictures release, is rated PG13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “some intense perilous action and brief strong language.” Running time: 165 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
Director changes plot for Malaysian plane movie Nekesa Mumbi Moody Jim Carrey (left) and Jeff Daniels arrive at the premiere of “Dumb and Dumber To” in Los Angeles, Monday, Nov. 3. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/ Invision/AP) Daniels and Carrey reprise their roles as painfully dim pals Harry and Lloyd in “Dumb & Dumber To,” which opened this month. Reuniting on a sequel 20 years after the original wasn’t hard, Carrey said. “Honestly, it was like we just did it yesterday and boom, we were back in it,” he said. “It was a fantastic,
familiar feeling.” Daniels was delighted to return to comedy after spending the past three seasons starring in the Aaron Sorkin TV drama, “The Newsroom.” “Comedy is a joy,” he said. “There’s a freedom to it. There’s a fearlessness to it that you don’t get in everything else. It was a thrill to do.”
New York (AP) - A filmmaker who sparked anger earlier this year with plans for a love triangle-themed movie about the Malaysian Airlines plane disappearance says he’s changing the plot to a thriller so he won’t offend the families of the missing. Director Rupesh Paul unveiled a teaser trailer for “The Vanishing Act” at the Cannes Film Festival, based on the March disappearance of a Malaysian Airlines jet
with 239 people onboard; the plane, which was on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, has yet to be found. The trailer included an image of a gun and two crew members kissing as a third looks on in anger. That sparked anger, leading Paul to apologize to the families of the missing MH370 passengers. Now, in a statement to The Associated Press, Paul said he’s shooting a new trailer and the movie will be a psychological thriller. “We respect the sentiments of all those who experienced
loss due to the tragedy, and the intention was never to benefit out of it,” the Indian director said. “I am a filmmaker, and I would like to loosely base the film on one of the most baffling mysteries which has remained unanswered.” The movie was to be out by fall, but assistant director Sritama Dutta said the change in the plotline led to a delay. Casting is expected to be completed by the end of this month with filming set in January. Filmmakers hope to show it at the Cannes festival next year.