Donnerstag, 26. März 2015

INTERSTELLAR - Between Science and Fiction

 

 Hello there puny humans,
it has been more than 4 months now that Interstellar came out, and since then, it has been one the most talked about movies of last year. Critics accuse fanboys of hyping the film too much and over-looking its mistakes, while fans of the movie are annoyed that people seem to deliberately nit-pick just because it's made by Christopher Nolan and they want to see him fail. Despite all that, it is undeniable that the science presented in Interstellar is amazingly accurate for such a fantastical and large-scale sci-fi adventure. Not only was Kip Thorne (one of the leading experts on gravitational theories) advisor and producer on the film, but other theoretical physicists like Clifford V. Johnson (i.a. science consultant for the Discovery Channel), and even the famous Neil deGrasse Tyson praised the movie for its realism. So which parts are fact and which are fiction? I've worked my way through tons of videos and articles to find out, and though I'm still no science expert, I think I am now able to break it down for you! But those who haven't had the pleasure of watching this film yet, be aware: There is spoilers ahead!  

1. Another One Bites the Dust
Scene from Interstellar
Christopher Nolan's movie starts back on earth in the late 21st century, where due to food shortage most people have become farmers. The land has dried out and huge sandstorms are plaguing the cities, forcing a lot of families to simply pack their things and leave their homes, and heavily affecting the health of those who chose to stay. If you ask yourself wether something like this could really happen or not, you might be surprised by the answer: It already has happened!
Photograph of a Texan Farm, 1935
Yes, during the 1930's in the southern plains of the United States (including Kansas and Oklahoma) agriculture and ecology in general were severly damaged by great dust storms. Just like in Interstellar, these storms had a big impact on peoples lifes. In fact, the interviews with the elderly people you see at the beginning of the film are taken from Ken Burns' documentary The Dust Bowl, where eye-witnesses of the so-called "Dirty Thirties" talk about their actual experiences of that time (with the exception of the ones with Ellen Burstyn playing "old murph").
This phenomenon was caused by the dramatically quick increase of agriculture in a short amount of time, which was the result of the government funding the cultivation of land. This could easily have happened in the film, as here too, the government is supporting the idea of people becoming farmers due to the food shortage.

2. Sleeping Tight
To travel as far of a distance as the crew of Nolan's "Lazarus" mission does, its members put themselves into cryo-sleep. This technique, which is based on the principles of an animal's winter sleep, does not exist yet, but agencies like NASA are doing a lot of research on that matter, hoping to use it for a manned Mars mission. Eventhough they have yet to come up with anything beyond the therapeutic hypothermia that is used as a medical treatment today, there are a few cases that lead them to believe that cryonics might actually work:
Mitsutaka Uchikoshi of Japan purportedly survived 24-days without food or water after falling in snow and entering a hypothermic state. Erika Norby, a one-year old, was revived after her heart stopped beating for over two hours when accident left her exposed to -20 C weather conditions and her core temperature dropped to 17 C. And in 1999 Dr. Anna Bagenholm, at 29 years old, was revived after her heart was stopped for 3 hours after being submerged under ice while skiing. So who knows, maybe one day this bit of fiction might become reality...

3. Holes in Space: The Worm ones
Of course to get to a whole different galaxy as far away as the one in the film, even cryosleep wouldn't have helped because it would have taken way too long. In Interstellar however, the crew manages to overcome this obstacle because of a little help they got from "them". And what "they" did was placing a wormhole in the perfect spot for the spaceship to take a shortcut.
A "two-dimensional" demonstration of a wormhole
Now wormholes are a highly theoretical construct. Yet, a lot of scientist believe they exist. Stephen Hawking explains it like this: It's a basic physical principle that there are no truely flat surfaces. Even something as smooth as a billiard ball has cinkles and crevices that could be seen if it was magnified enough. The same applies for the rug-like structure of space-time (see 5.). On a scale much smaller than atoms and more than a sextillionth of a millimeter, tiny holes or tunnels can be found in it. Linking either two places in the same time or two points in time at the same place. If these shortcuts were (somehow) able to be captured and enlarged many trillions of times, a spaceship would be able to fit through them. Another challenge however would be to stabilize the wormholes as they form, fall apart and reform in less than a microsecond.
So eventhough wormholes are not proven to exist, the movie Interstellar uses the most current theories about them. Also its visual design is quite accurate, because as said in the film itself: A hole in space must be three-dimensional and therefore more of a spherical shape.

4. Surfing Safari
After a juddey ride through the wormhole the spaceship lands on a planet covered in water. Just a couple of minutes have passed when the astronauts realize that what they thought to be a very high island on the horizon is actually a mountainous wave coming towards them. Not all of them make it back before it hits and so the crew has to deal with their first losses.
Naturally, a lot of viewers thought that the wave was just a little gimmick the writers made up to give their characters at least some kind of challenge, but here too, the events are scientifically logical. On earth, low and high tide are created by the gravitational pull of the moon. A "bulge" in the water forms right under it, but as moon and earth are both moving without our notice, it actually looks like the water is moving. In the film, the planet they landed on is said to be incredibly close to the black hole "Gargantua" which has a gravitational pull that is significantly larger than the moon's. As a result, the "buldge" is substantially larger here and appears to be one giant wave. The only thing the film does get wrong is that it would not have such a peak and be much less steep than portrayed on screen. But that just wouldn't look as menacing...

5. What time is it?
Water is not the only obstacle the crew of the Lazarus mission has to face after their first touchdown. Every hour that passes on this planet equals seven years on our earth. What sounds like a crazy reversed-Inception-dream-time logic is actually one hundred per cent possible and plausible.
space-time dilation
As we learned from Einstein's relativity theory, space and time aren't two sperate things, but rather one and the same, called "space-time". Imagine this quantity as something like a rug or a bed sheet. Now imagine that this sheet was elastic like rubber. Gravitation is able to bend space-time, which would be like if you put a ball in the middle of our rubber sheet. Around the ball the sheet would now stretch and get thinner, so that you'd have less rubber per square centimeter. The heavier the ball the thinner it would get, and the same can be applied for gravitation. The stronger the gravitation of a celestial body, the more space-time gets "stretched". In other words: we experience less time. It passes more slowly. Since Gargantua has extremely high gravity, every planet close to it must experience a very big space-time dilation, just as it is presented in the film.
This kind of phenomenon is in fact relevant here on earth as well. Some GPS satellites are so far out of our planet's gravitational field that their clocks must run a little slower in order to match the ones on earth.

6. Holes in Space: The Black ones
We've heard a lot about Gargantua by now, but what exactly is a black hole?
"Gargantua" from Interstellar
Mathematically speaking every object in the universe has a so called "Schwarzschild radius", which gives you the size to which said object would have to be compressed in order to basically become a black hole. Because what black holes really are is a region where mass is so dense that even light can't escape its gravitational pull. This is also why they are called "black" holes. What Interstellar demonstrates exceptionally is the way one would actually look from the outside. Using algorithms of Einstein's general theory of relativity, the animators of the film were actually able to create new scientifical knowledge about the way it bends light and distorts images (a.k.a. gravitational lensing).
coordinate singularity
So much for the outside. But the inside of a black hole is not one bit less interresting. As a result of its density, there is a singularity lying in its core. Within this singularity the quantities to measure our physical units become infinite, and therefore the rules of physics don't apply in the same way anymore. To understand this better you could look at a coordinate singularity. This phenomenon can be observed on a globe at the spot where the north (or south) pole is. Here, the longitudinal and latitudinal lines are all compressed in a way that their measurement becomes meaningless.
Now, if anyone (like Matthew McConaughey apparently) was crazy enough to jump into a black hole, it is wrong to assume that this person would die immediately. In fact, there is a point called the event horizon, which is where the black hole's pull is already strong enough for you to never get out again, but where you haven't reached the singularity yet. You'd probably even have a breathtaking view, but as soon as you left the event horizon you would get spaghettified. Yes, this is actually a term used by scientist to explain the horrible and (most likely) deadly stretch that your body would experience... 

7. The Tessaract (...not from Marvel)
This is where we go deeper into the fiction part. After his jump, Joseph Cooper doesn't look like a spaghetti at all (or dead for that matter). On the contrary. He lands. And where does he land? Well, behind the book-shelf in his daughter's room...
At this point in the film, we don't really know if this is supposed to be the inside of Gargantua or if "they" somehow transported him there before he reached the end of the event horizon (the latter of which actually being less and more plausible at the same time). However, thinking that all scientific aspects of the movie have been thrown out of the window by now would once again not do it justice. I will not discuss the exact content of the ending here (though I personally quite like the message of love transcending space and time), and instead will focus on its visualization:
The difficulty the filmmakers faced here is that Coop' is supposed to be in a four-dimensional room. As the movie explains as well, for four-dimensional beings traveling through time would just be what walking up or down a hill is for us. Unfortunately, a visible fourth dimension is literally unimaginable for our brains. Yet, Nolan still gives it his best. He and his animators tried to construct something similar to a tesseract, which is to the fourth dimension what a cube is to the third (or a square to the second). When rewatching the scene you will notice that the "tunnel" that Cooper is stuck in is actually made up of a lot of cubic shapes. Further, (and just as explained before,) he is able to travel forwards and backwards in time by simply moving up, down, left or right inside the tunnel.
Thus, it might be a very speculative, but also a very ambitious way to portray a four dimensional room.

8. Cooper Station - or: Very weird baseball
Once again, we don't know exactly how Joseph gets out of the tesseract, but eventually he is rescued by a near by space ship. When he finally awakes in the medical facility of "Cooper Station" he looks out of the window, only to see more ground where the sky should be and people walking around upside down. This scene reminded a lot of viewers of a certain image from Inception, when the architect Ariadne is playing with the laws of physics within a dream. The idea of living inside such a habitat however dates farther back than the release of that 2012 blockbuster. In his 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space American physicist Gerard K. O'Neill proposes a design of a cylinder shaped space station, that very much equals the one presented in Interstellar. But why don't the people walking on the top fall off? And how is gravity generated at all?
space-colony art (1970)
The idea of the "O'Neill cylinder" is, that it rotates at certain speed, so that the centrifugal forces create an artificial gravity on its inner surface. A speed of forty rotations an hour would be fast enough to produce the 9,8m/s² we have on earth, but slow enough so that it wouldn't create symptoms of motion sickness. Special walls of windows set across from mirror-walls would be pointing at the sun and open at "daytime" to help reflect the sun's light into the cylinder.
So even this time Nolan has drawn on real scientific theories...

Aaaand that's it! I hope you enjoyed this in-depth look at Interstellar. It was lots of fun writing and researching for it, and I hope I didn't bore you to death with my newly gained knowledge. What were you surprised about? What did I miss? What did I get wrong? How are Joseph Cooper and his dad-in-law drinking beer eventhough corn is the only existing grain?* Feel free to discuss any of that and more in the comment section, and thank you so much for reading!

Sincerely,
Your Cinemartian

*the answer: corn beer exists

Montag, 23. März 2015

STILL ALICE - Movie Review

Title: Still Alice
Running Time: 101 min
Directors: Richard Glatzer (†), Wash Westmoreland
Starring: Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth

Review:
Less than two weeks ago, the director of this movie, Richard Glatzer, passed away. With his final film the man who had been batteling the motor neuron disease ALS brought us the story of a woman struggling with yet another uncurable disease: Alzheimer's.
It is very clear to see that Glatzer was able to bring a lot of emotions and experience to this somewhat sensitive subject and so, the result is very impressive. "Still Alice" is an incredibly touching piece that treats its subject with a lot of subtlety and respect. The titular Alice is a woman in her early fifties. Being a professor in linguistics and having a very loving family on her side, her brain and her memories might be the most precious things to her. Thus, her shock is quite big when she finds out she suffers from early onset Alzheimer's disease. More and more difficulties arise as her cognitive functions degenerate and she has to face many problems like losing the ability to carry out her work or knowing that all of her three children could inherit the condition.
This kind of premise always has the risk of getting overdramatized, but what cast and crew have created here is anything but. Instead, the movie keeps you invested by creating very genuine characters through great writing and exceeding performances. The film, for example, uses a lot of time jumps, but keeps the viewer in the dark about how much time has actually passed. As a result, you have to find that out by yourself and so the impact feels much bigger when you suddenly see how far Alice's disease has progressed already. And then of course there is Julianne Moore, who plays the main character with such an honesty that you immediately feel empathetic. It's a quick smile, a glance of her eyes or just a cocked eyebrow that tells you everything you need to know about what's going on inside of her, and one can really appreciate this kind of subtlety. A well deserved Oscar.
So in the end, "Still Alice" is an amazing piece about the struggle with a disease such as Alzheimer's. A film that doesn't need to dramatize and even in the few scenes that it almost does, it gets grounded by the excellent Julianne Moore. A film that even Kristen Stewart didn't manage to ruin for me.


For Fans Of:
Away From Her (2006)
The Theory of Everything (2014)
Deux jours, une nuit (2014)

Click Here To Watch Trailer!

Donnerstag, 12. März 2015

OUTSIDE HOLLYWOOD EP.9 - 87th Academy Awards

 Hello there puny humans,
once again, my buddy from B.A.'s Screentest and I got together to record another podcast. This time (because we had to do it) we tackled The Oscars. Who won? Who deserved it? Who didn't? And how did Neil Patrick Harris do? Find out in part one:

In part two we're giving you some speed reviews for the nominated films this year, and because there never is a podcast without it we will also talk comicbook-movie news: Spidey in the MCU!

I hope you enjoy the first episode of 2015!

Sincerely,
Your Cinemartian

Freitag, 6. März 2015

AMERICAN SNIPER - Movie Review

Title: American Sniper
Running Time: 132 min
Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Max Charles, Kyle Gallner

Review:
When you say someone is the most successful in his job, but said "success" is measured in the number of people he killed, it is already a pretty divisive statement. If you make a movie about this person you are most definetly in for some controversy. Nevertheless, the Clint Eastwood directed Chris Kyle biography topped the US Box Office, and was nominated for a total of six Academy Awards. So does this mean the film isn't debatable after all?
No, it doesn't. "American Sniper" is a failed attempt at an anti-war movie that tells such a one-sided story, that with the right (or in this case wrong) interpretation it could easily be used as propaganda. Whatever good intentions Eastwood might have had with this film, he misses the mark over 90% of the time. And yet, the film starts with such a great opening (basically seen in full length in the first trailer) that seems to promise a multilayered and questioning look at a soldier's duties. But it is a deceiving first impression. What follows is an uncritical tale of a glorified soldier that flagrantly paints war black and white.
Not one shot an American soldier fires in this film is portrayed as unjustified, not a single Iraqi is shown to be a good person (or a normal person for that matter), a connection between the events of 9/11 and Iraq is implied, and when Chris Kyle says that he isn't haunted by the many people he killed but rather by the soldiers he couldn't save, there is nothing to challenge the moral of that statement.
There is a scene where he aims at a little boy who is about to pick up a bazooka. Many questions could be asked here, like: Would Kyle have to make a kill shot, or could a warning be enough? Or even more interestingly: What drives a young lad to even consider using this weapon? Instead of touching on these subjects however, the movie simplifies it for you. If the child doesn't pick it up it's good and is allowed to live, if it does pick it up though, he needs to die. According to the film this would be tragic, but also absolutely necessary. Even the few strong scenes (the phonecall from the bar, or a frightened Kyle at a child's birthday party) can't redeem the film from these kind of blunders.
A lot more could be said about this movie (did I mention it contains the fakest baby ever?), but in the end one has to only know this: "American Sniper" depicts the life of a soldier who went on record saying he 'loved' and had 'fun' killing people, without ever scrutinizing this man's ethics. A brilliantly acted, but poorly written film that wants to show how war destroys everyone even beyond the battlefield, only to end up saying that war simply ain't for sissies.
Seth Rogen's comparison between this movie and "Inglorious Basterds'" fictional nazi-propaganda "Nation's Pride" might be exaggerated, but quite comprehensible.

For Fans Of:
Lone Survivor (2013)
Shooter (2007)
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Click Here To Watch Trailer!

Donnerstag, 5. März 2015

SELMA - Movie Review

 Title: Selma
Running Time: 128 min
Director: Ava DuVernay
Starring: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, Giovanni Ribisi, Oprah Winfrey, Common, Wendell Pierce, Keith Stanfield

Review:
"I have a dream...!" These are words you will not hear when watching this Martin Luther King film. Why? Well, not only does this movie take place just after the activist's famous speech, but writer/director Ava DuVernay had to rewrite all of King's original speeches as his estate licensed them to a different studio. But isn't the story of  his campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery engaging enough?
It certainly is! "Selma" is a biographical drama that works. And it works well. Following the new trend of only showing a specific point of a person's life, the movie still manages to show the different facets of the legend that is Martin Luther King Junior. An absouletly fantastic David Oyelowo portrays him in many different situations: There is the Martin Luther King that gives compelling speeches to his followers, the one that negotiates with the president, the one that discusses the next steps with other leaders of the movement, as well as the Martin Luther King at home with his wife, who is assailed by doubts.
As fascinating as Oyelowo's transformation into this pastor turned activits is, it is the story itself that makes for the big emotional impact. Until the very end, it shows that every step forward in this civil rights movement came at a cost, and that resistance came in many different forms.
Overall, "Selma" is an important piece that carefully displays what was going on in the United States at that time period. Touching, engaging, and educating, it's a film that should be shown in schools, and which everyone even only remotely interested in this topic should have a look at. Especially after the events of Ferguson.

 
For Fans Of:
12 Years a Slave (2013)
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013)
Malcom X (1992)
Gandhi (1982)

Click Here To Watch Trailer!

And check out my friend's review over at B.A.'s Screentest for a second opinion!

Mittwoch, 4. März 2015

INTO THE WOODS - Movie Review

Title: Into The Woods
Running Time: 125 min
Director: Rob Marshall
Starring: Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Cordon, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Lilla Crawford, Bill Magnussen, Daniel Huttlestone, Johnny Depp

Review: 
Director Rob Marshall stunned audiences and critics alike, when he released the 2002 musical comedy "Chicago". After a few more acclaimed films like "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "Nine" he teamed up with Disney to make... "Pirates of the Carribean 4"?! Yes, it seems like musicals bring out the best in Marshall, while the Mouse House brings out more or less the worst. So what do we get when he directs a Disney produced film adaptation of Tony Award-winning a Broadway musical?
We get "Into the Woods": A pleasantly fresh and clever film, that only suffers from not being as cheeky as its source material would allow it to be. The movie mashes up well-known fairytales like Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella and Rapunzel with a new storyline including a baker and his wife, who collect items from all of the other tales to trade them with an evil witch, who may then reverse a curse she's put on them.
There are a few elements here that make this film exhilarating and quite fun to watch. For one, there are a lot of great comedic moments that come to being due to the casual way the movie adapts a lot of the darker under(and over-)tones of the original stories that are often left out in American film versions. Further, it turns a lot of the classical fairytale elements on their head, ruthlessly exposing how little sense they make (Cinderella is mainly on the receiving end here).
Then there is the music and the choreographies. Solos and duetts balance each other out very nicely and often verses or lines of the different performers overlap, which creates a great harmonies. Moreover, Marshall has created great set pieces without ever forgetting the films theater roots. Often you can see that he refrained from CGI and instead oriented himself after the play. Nonetheless, he still uses his ability of switching camera angles to support the choreographies, and point out certain actors reactions. Most notably in the song "Agony", which is one of the most hilarious moments in a movie musical since "Reefer Madness".
But not only the two singers of that song, Bill Magnussen and Chris Pine, are giving fantastic perfomances. The whole cast does. Meryl Streep and Anna Kendrick have already proven that they can sing and act at the same time, and now Blunt and Corden get to show off what their vocal chords have to offer. Johnny Depp who has fallen from grace in the last couple of years, gets to redeem himself a bit with his performance here. Special mention, however, has to go to Daniel Huttlestone, who brings back a lot of the charm he had in "Les Misérables", and to Lilla Crawford, whose portayal of little red riding hood is incredibly whitty. Both of these child actors manage to hold their own against the rest of this strong ensemble cast easily, and it would be nice to see more of them in the future.
The movie has only one problem: The first act of original musical concludes with the typical happy ending, and then, after the intermission, it lets everything go to hell. A keen concept, but the movie version spends about two thirds with the first act, and then rushes the second (and more clever) act after you thought the movie was already over. Unfortunately, that makes it feels more like a big afterthought, but if you are aware of this structure, it won't keep you from having a great time.

For Fans Of:
Mirror Mirror (2012)
Enchanted (2007)
The Muppets (2011)
Maleficent (2014)

And check out my friend's review over at B.A.'s Screentest for a second opinion.

Montag, 2. März 2015

WHIPLASH - Movie Review

 Title: Whiplash
Running Time: 107 min
Director: Damien Chazelle
Starring: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser, Melissa Benoist

Review:
Just a week ago, the "Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences" honored the best of the best in the film industry once again. One of their little golden statues went to J.K. Simmons, who gave one of the sweetest acceptance speeches by saying that everyone should call their parents and tell them they love them. Ironically so, the reason he recieved the Oscar that night was his portrayal of what IMDB describes as "a ferocious, bullying music teacher" who pushes his students beyond their limits to realize their full potential, or so he claims.
In any case, the film "Whiplash" has realized its potential by all means. It is a supremely riveting and endlessly thrilling movie that will leave you in awe once the end-credits roll. For a start, there is Miles Teller. He plays Andrew, who is a rather quiet guy, but once he holds sticks in his hands the instrument becomes his way of expression. Impressively so, Teller did all of the drumming himself. He sweats, he screams and he bleeds on the drumset, and when his final performance starts it really feels as if he puts his whole life on the line. But the stakes wouldn't nearly seem as high if it wasn't for J.K. Simmons' cruel and spine-tingling Terence Fletcher, whom he plays to perfection. Everyone knows the kind of shame and tension that you feel when you are chewed out by a mad authority figure in front of everyone, and thus, you can completely comprehend what is going on in Andrews mind when his band teacher torments him. But Fletcher goes even beyond that, and so eventhough music is featured prominently (and performed awesomely) in this picture, it isn't a music film a là last year's "Begin Again" at all. Instead, it is a psychological thriller, that shows how far people go for artistry. Because our main character also has his reason's why he endures such suffering.
All the drama, the emotions and the tension in this film are beautifully directed by Damien Chazelle, whose various shots, angles, and edits are almost like a composion on their own. Every frame seems to serve a purpose, and most of the time it is to get you inside of Andrews head or amplify the already amazing chemistry between Simmons and Teller. 
To sum up, I can honestly say that "Whiplash" deserved all the Academy Awards it got and maybe even a few more (Best Adapted Screenplay, anyone?). It is a cinematic experience that will keep you on the edge of your seat at all times. You don't want to be missing this one!
For Fans Of:
Black Swan (2010)
Birdman (2014)
Grand Piano (2013)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Click Here To Watch Trailer!

And check out my friend's review over at B.A.'s Screentest for a second opinion!