“It’s not straight action and it’s not straight thriller,” director Christopher Nolan told Empire when discussing the tone of his new movie Interstellar. “I do liken it to the blockbusters I grew up with as a kid. A lot of them by [Steven Spielberg]. I don’t like talking about Spielberg too much because he was the director on the project before me and I don’t want to keep coming back to that, but the truth is, there’s a great spirit to films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jaws that I really wanted to try and capture, because I haven’t seen it in a very long time.”
These are the kinds of words I love hearing, particularly that “I haven’t seen it in a very long time” bit as Nolan recognizes the change in the cinematic landscape and wants to bring audiences closer to what he experienced with movies when he was younger. He does acknowledge J.J. Abrams paid what he refers to as a “literal homage” to Spielberg with Super 8, but instead of an homage Nolan approached it asking, “What would that kind of film be now? Not in that period, as J.J. did, but now.”
Nolan also continues to compare the film to Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but has also added Philip Kaufman‘s The Right Stuff to that mix:
“You can’t pretend 2001 doesn’t exist when you’re making Interstellar, but the other film I’d have to point to is The Right Stuff, I screened a print of it for the crew before we started, because that’s a film that not enough people have seen on the big screen. It’s an almost perfectly made film. It’s one of the great American movies and people don’t quite realize how great it is — probably because it’s four hours long!”
In addition to all that we now have a new trailer for the film and along with it confirmation it will be opening in IMAX theaters a couple days early on November 7, before going wide on November 7. You can find theaters and tickets by clicking here.
A press release sent out with the information stresses the fact the movie was shot on film with the following bullet points:
- Select IMAX theaters will be offering The IMAX Experience® featuring 15 perf/70mm film projection which combines the brightest, clearest images at almost 10 times the resolution of standard projection formats, with powerful, laser-aligned digital sound and customized theatre geometry to create the world’s most immersive movie experience. Select sequences will expand to fill the entire screen and will deliver unprecedented crispness and clarity.
- Interstellar in the 70mm film format offers brighter, clearer image, with three times the resolution of standard projection formats, using the process of projecting light through celluloid to deliver clear images in rich analog color with state-of-the-art digital sound.
- The 35mm film presentations project light through the 35mm frame to deliver clear, high resolution images with rich analog color combined with state-of-the-art digital sound in most locations.
Empire quotes via The Playlist
