SoCS: Going back and forth

 The first thought that came to my mind when I read the prompt was the movie ‘Back to the Future‘. I am not particularly fond of Sci-Fi books or movies, but this series is one I absolutely loved watching and have watched each of the movie at least three times. It is pure fun. The only thing that always bothers me or rather I am unable to comprehend is the concept of travelling back/forth in time aka time travel. Ever since H.G Wells coined that term its been used everywhere. Recently in the movie Interstellar, we have the concept of time travel that comes into play. There were lot of concepts that were described in that movie, but one of my friend told me how they have used the ‘Grandmother/Grandfather’s paradox’ in it. You can google for that but in short a Grandmother’s paradox goes like this. You go back in time and kill your grandmother even before your mother/father was born (there are variations to this, some might say even before she met the grandfather etc etc…but basically the idea is you kill your grandmother so that your mother/father isn’t born) So that would mean you wouldn’t be born. But unless you were born you can’t go back in time to kill your grandmother. So there in lies the paradox. This was used in the movie (spoiler alert for the movie here) when the protagonist enters the blackhole only to come back in time to tell him how to reach the NASA facility in the first place, from where his journey to the space actually starts. The only funny part I realized was that he had to go forward to reach back in time. Or did he really go forward ? Does that make sense? Not like the Back to the Future series, where they did go back in time in the first place. 

One more question that was there in my mind for sometime now. Why does the back seat of a motorbike have so less space that people look like this ?

And with that I end it with a quote/saying I like ,

“Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward” – Erika Taylor

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Post for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is one word: “Back.” Use it however you’d like: as a standalone, as a prefix, a suffix, noun, verb, or adverb (can you tell I’m an English teacher in my daytime life?); just make sure you have fun and enjoy the words flowing onto your screen so you can share them with us!

SoCS Badge by Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

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Interstellar again

Spoiler Alert

Yeah, finally made it to Interstellar in IMAX  yesterday(on a weekday, bunking office for a show that spans before and after the lunch time ….shhhhh). So, did that change my views on the movie, now that I watched it in a better screen with better sound and visual effects ? Before I go into that, let me tell you about the horrifying few minutes, where the movie started and every thing in the screen looked like a 3D movie sans the 3D glasses. You know where things are seen in double or triple. That is how it started and everyone looked at each other wondering if we forgot our glasses by mistake. But it was a IMAX movie not a 3D one for godsake. Then some of them went and complained and they stopped the screening for a few minutes. And when they restarted it, it started with the same blur but then it got better. Phew !!! The relief of it! The people who come to the theater should have some basic common sense , even though the theater keeps repeating some basic stuff  (like put your phone in silent mode, if you want to really speak please step out and take the call, don’t litter the theater) before the movie begins, we still hear the ringtones here and there. In one quiet moment, one lady from behind picked up her phone (which was ringing loudly of course) and told to the caller and to everyone in the theater, ‘I am in the movie hall’. Yeah, right! Seriously, when will these people learn ? And I am not even going into littering.

OK, now back to the movie. Nope, still nothing tugging my heart and making me emotional. But what was better ? The visuals….just wow. The impact of IMAX on this movie is amazing. It was like sometimes I felt like I was there in the space floating. When they were walking in Mann’s planet, I felt a little giddy. All that white and grey expanse does that to me , even if a little, in real life too. Sometimes seeing that teeny tiny speckle of space craft in that wide wide space makes you feel like nothing (not sure if that is a good thing, but then it is what it is). As my friend says frequently, ‘In the Grand Scheme of things…’

The sound effects. I could hear the dialogues very clearly and understand them better, even though they did have subtitles (which I ignored for most cases). I realized that I had missed some subtle humor in between when I had seen them the first time. I could appreciate some of the concepts much better now that I was able to hear them clearly. No disturbance or noise ruining it. The score of the movie was so so AMAZING in IMAX. I could feel the vibrations in my seat. It was that powerful. Pure awesomeness.

Since we knew the story and weren’t surprised by anything, we could analyze little bit on the characters. My friend found Cooper’s character a little annoying and a little hypocritical. No one here is the hero, except for the story. Even though we can still say that Mann was more of a villain in this.

Overall, I could appreciate the movie a lot better after watching it in IMAX both in terms of understanding (even though I can’t talk about any concepts from it related to the time and gravity yet) and the grandeur of the story thanks to the better sound and visual effects. Even if I had to spend a 150Rs more for that, it was totally worth it, except for that little scare in the beginning.

 

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

All is well that…

Saturday did start a little dull. Just one of those days, you know when everything seems dull , and I almost thought of cancelling the brunch I had earlier planned with friends and join them only for the movie Interstellar. But then at the last minute decided to go ahead and boy, was I glad. We went to this place called ‘Dice n Dine‘. A place where there are so many games that you can keep playing till your heart’s content along with some good food too. We ended up spending almost 3 hours there, not to mention a lot of food and money.

The first game one of our friend chose was ‘Cards Against Humanity‘. I never knew I had a wicked side to me, until that game. I won the first round with the most outrageous answers that I never would have thought of or said in real life. Wow! that was so much fun that I asked for a another  game almost at the end when we had less time left to leave for the movie. 

And then we chose something called ‘Say Anything’, basically to test how well you know your friends. 

We almost chose ‘Game of Thrones’ but since it was a long game and we were running out of time we decided to forgo that.

And instead choose ‘Trivial Pursuit’. I am so bad in General Knowledge and was the least scorer in this. But among all the answers the one answer that stood out was, the tea that has the most antioxidants present is ‘not’ the green tea, but the ‘white’ tea. Hell, I didn’t even knew there was something called a white tea till then.

And I ended up having a big cup of ice-cream all by myself (sorry, I never share my chocolates or ice-creams) which made all of it much more sweeter.

What started out as a dull day ended up pretty good with lots of fun.

 

Interstellar – Not quite up there

Interstellar – It’s a Christopher Nolan movie, so how can I miss watching it. Except for Transcendence, I have watched all his movies. But the only sad part for Interstellar was that we didn’t get tickets in an IMAX. So had to watch in a normal theater with some light disturbances across the screen whenever someone moved in and out of the room. I am not going into the story or any spoiler here (even though there isn’t any except for the last one part where it was a Aha! moment). Having watched Gravity (again not in IMAX) let me start first with what I felt as soon as I watched the movie. I thought I should have watched it in IMAX to see if it made the same impact , visually I mean, as Gravity made on me even in spite of me watching it in the small screen. Upfront, because of the same space theme and all, I did compare the visual effects to Gravity and so far Gravity won. My friend suggested that we should watch it in IMAX just to be sure 🙂 but let me come back to that when that actually happens. No doubt that the visual effects for this was very good for the topic and the depth that this movie had, but still.

One more thing that made me compare to Gravity was, the emotional impact. With Gravity, I had tears at the end when she makes it. I rooted for her through out, it was like a personal thing. Well, this one didn’t quite make there with that. There was one scene where they are trying to get control of the spacecraft back which was quite intense, and the whole theater was waiting with unabated breath, but I would say it was mostly due to the sound effects more than the actual visuals. Comic relief and the one liners by TARS , the robot, was very funny and cheeky. I should also accept that the whole five dimensional thing details, I quite didn’t get it. Granted that I am not very smart but I was able to follow Inception without any problem. Even Gravity was understandable to a large extent. Here I got lost in the intricate details and given that I am not a fan of sci-fi or rather the time-space related stuff (except for the movies like ‘Back to the Future’ – fyi: I love that series) I had struggle grasping the concept. And the whole love concept in between their 3/4/5 dimensional space talk was a little scary actually. There is no love angle here, which was good in spite of all those talk, if you skip the parental love that is. And you know what, I clapped so hard when I saw Matt Damon, and I may or may not have done a little jump in my seat. Man, come on, I never knew that guy was there in that movie. OK, I didn’t read anything about the movie until I saw it because it could spoil the surprise, but Matt Damon!. Just for moments like these, I should learn to whistle. And Michael Caine got the same welcome from my friends and myself. That man deserves a good welcome. Matthew McConaughey, he is in every single frame, if not his daughter is there. But I think I am glad to see him in these kind of roles, rather than the ones like ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 days’. Jessica Chastin , the Zero Dark Thirty woman (that is how I remember her) and Mackenzie Foy, the Renesmee girl from the Twilight Series, did very good too as did Anne Hathaway. Acting wise every single one did their job well. I have to say that when I heard that the daughter’s name was Murphy and she complains to her dad that he should have named her something else, I remember a blogger’s comment in my other post and made me smile :).

No doubt. Story wise, it was good. But as an end result, there was something missing. Something that made me sit at the end of Inception to wonder what was I supposed to be even thinking now because it was too much to consume that I had to go back to the movie to understand the connecting bits again. Something that made me cry and my heart almost ached for that woman to finally make it on her own in Gravity. Something that made me sit back in shock and surprise and wonder in The Prestige. Everything was there, but then something definitely was missing to make me remember this movie like the rest. And I don’t know what it is.