Sing It Like You Mean It

I don't get to go to the theatre that often, so when I do, I usually don't want to go see some kids movie. Don't get me wrong, there are some great animated films out there (see: The Incredibles), but typically, these types of "family friendly" films are geared more towards kids than families, with a few "adult" jokes thrown in to try and keep the parents from gouging their eyes out in boredom and frustration, which, to the studios' credit, has a decently high success rate. Especially considering that taking a family of four to the movies, including tickets and concession, is somewhere in the sixty to seventy dollar range, it's rubbing salt in the wound when I also have to shell out that kind of cash for a movie I have zero desire to see. Cue the "Won't somebody think of the children!" Simpsons meme here.

Sing, the latest and greatest from Illumination Entertainment, seemed even less appealing to me as it seemed from the trailers and everything I had read that it was little more than an excuse to show animated, anthropomorphic animals singing pop hits from both past and present. I tried to push the kids towards Moana, which seemed like it had landed among Disney's more palatable fare, or a second theatrical outing to Rogue One, but I was outvoted by both the kids and wife. I'm not sure when the fuck this family became a democratic republic, but I followed my typical strategy in most social situations: go along quietly, bide my time, and implement a silent campaign of espionage and misinformation, manipulating events until the perfect time to strike.

Intergalactic Planetary: Interstellar and the Duality of Everything. Philosophical Bifurcation at Its Finest

Excellence, or the perception thereof, is the kind of knife that can cut both ways.  On the one hand, it drives forward, inspires the same in others, and garners accolades from the layman and master alike.  It also elicits a higher degree of scrutiny and larger scale of criticism because the statues of heroes lining our Hallowed Halls must not be commissioned without due cause lest the bar be lowered and standards be plundered.  Either way, blood will be drawn.  To be held up as a paragon in any field requires a significant blood sacrifice: first willingly on the part of the potential candidate and second painfully at the hands of the gauntlet.

In the world of film, Christopher Nolan is no stranger to these grotesquely beguiling cultural rituals and is perhaps one of the best examples of the costs required for entry into the fellowship.  It is, perhaps, small comfort that these sadomasochistic cultural tendencies mirror elements of life for which there is no safety word.  Nolan's films have been subjected to increasingly rigorous critical analysis, and his latest opus, INTERSTELLAR, is no exception.  While it's sometimes frustrating--even infuriating--listening to never-ending criticisms of the most minute details of Nolan's work, a level of scrutiny usually reserved for lawyers, smarmy British food critics, and war crimes tribunals, it's also a sort of validation.  Movies made by Michael Bay, par example, don't receive the same amount or quality of criticism because it's generally accepted through historical precedent that there's nothing really substantial there to critique.