Nolan

Becca and Jack are aware this weekend and I, unwittingly, have stumbled into a Christopher Nolan themed couple of days.

I love movies, I love the art, the cinematography, the camera shot choices, the scripts, the characters arcs, the whole thing. From set design, lighting choices, editing choices and more, is utterly fascinating.

I grew up watching old movies on a Sunday afternoon. We had 3 TV channels and that was your choice. Thankfully some of those movies were Hitchcock (a surprisingly large number), but all of them gave me a love of the movies, of the heyday of the big studios, the musical numbers, the weird and wonderful effects, I couldn’t get enough of them.

Around the same age I was starting to read more novels, and my Dad handed me a story written by a man called Arthur C. Clarke. In it, a mission to Jupiter is scuppered by the onboard computer called HAL.

I was hooked, taken into the out reaches of our galaxy in something that felt real (Star Wars was clearly not real). My fascination with science fiction was born and as Kubrick managed with 2001, could be made real. The years progressed, the effects improved and these days a modern science fiction movie is breathtaking —Arrival, Moon, Contact, and that’s before we delve into The Matrix— but top of the list, for me, is Interstellar.

I sat down on Friday evening, the house eerily quiet, and started to look for a movie to watch. I had yet to see Oppenheimer so I started with that. I can see why it got so many plaudits, a powerhouse of a movie with some amazing peformances, and I loved the style of it as we delve in and out of Oppenheimers thoughts.

It wasn’t even 9pm when I finished that and, with no tiny terror to wake me in the morning, I started looking for something else to watch, determined not to head to my go to comfort watch of the Bourne Trilogy (it’s nonsense, but so well done, I love them all).

As I had recently watched The Batman —excellent film, loved the mood of it and can’t wait for the sequel— I had a quick look and up popped Batman Begins, so I started with that. With no real plans for my Saturday morning, I kept going and by midday on Saturday I’d gone through the entire Dark Knight trilogy. The middle one, with Heath Ledger’s Joker is by far the best.

Then, on Saturday afternoon I headed up to the Science Centre Planetarium for an Interstellar Meditation. It was 30 mins of guided meditation with the Hans Zimmer soundtrack burbling away in the background, which left me feeling floaty and very alive, then 30 mins of planetarium science facts which was utterly fascinating, the rendering of the scale of the universe was properly mind blowing. The kind of thing I thought I knew but seeing it visualised in slick graphics was very humbling.

And then on Saturday evening I loaded up Interstellar to complete the themed weekend.

I wonder if I can fit in Inception before Becca and Jack get home…