All posts tagged: Nolan

Greece's Prime Minister Called Christopher Nolan To Thank Him For The Odyssey

Greece's Prime Minister Called Christopher Nolan To Thank Him For The Odyssey

Published by Sam Flores

!function(n){if(!window.cnx){window.cnx={},window.cnx.cmd=[];var t=n.createElement(‘iframe’);t.display=’none’,t.onload=function(){var n=t.contentWindow.document,c=n.createElement(‘script’);c.src=”//cd.connatix.com/connatix.player.js”,c.setAttribute(‘async’,’1′),c.setAttribute(‘type’,’text/javascript’),n.body.appendChild(c)},n.head.appendChild(t)}}(document);(new Image()).src=”https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=8b034f64-513c-4987-b16f-42d6008f7feb”;cnx.cmd.push(function(){cnx({“playerId”:”8b034f64-513c-4987-b16f-42d6008f7feb”,”mediaId”:”c41e05a6-7ba0-42f1-8023-0f5ff30eab87″}).render(“6a69cd7ee4b098352c300ce6”);}); Some have criticised Christopher Nolan’s new film, The Odyssey, for not having any Greek actors in it. Nonetheless, Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, seems pretty happy with the film. In a recent video call held with the British director, Mitsotakis praised the record-breaking blockbuster, per Euronews. According to a press statement from the PM’s office, he thanked Nolan for “boosting global interest in ancient Greek civilisation”, adding, “such productions bridge Greece’s rich cultural heritage with contemporary creativity.”  Sales of The Odyssey’s text have skyrocketed since the release of the movie. Mitsotakis also commended the Tenet director’s use of Greek locations. Parts of the movie were shot in the Peloponnese region of Greece, including Voidokilia Beach, the 13th-century Methoni Castle, the monolithic Acrocorinth overlooking the city of Corinth, Almyrolaka Beach, and Nestor’s Cave. And the Prime Minister reportedly mentioned the movie’s “great box office success”, too. The Odyssey is already the second-highest-grossing R-rated movie Universal has made since Nolan’s other huge hit, Oppenheimer. It‘s made $639.6 million (£480.5 million) since its release on 17 July globally. This comes after classical studies professor Emily Wilson, whose …

Christopher Nolan isn’t into Uggs. But you should be

Christopher Nolan isn’t into Uggs. But you should be

Published by Jenni Sidey

At the risk of sounding obvious: Making The Odyssey was no walk in the park. In the film, Odysseus and his army go on a wild bender across Ithaca, Troy, and the rest of it by foot and Viking longship. For the cast, that meant schlepping across six countries—Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Scotland and the US—to embrace what director Christopher Nolan called the “physicality of the real world.” We would probably call it a recipe for plantar fasciitis. “Running through Troy, you know, it’s all stone. You’re in these sandals, and they’re very real,” Matt Damon told SiriusXM recently. It makes sense, then, that, in-between takes, you would really want to kick back in a trailer and wear a big, fluffy pair of boots. Perhaps even a nice pair of Uggs. After all that acting, you’ve really earned that shearling-lining. Absolutely not, says Nolan. Speaking to CBS last week, the director revealed he had a “No Uggs On Set” policy. Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt had, apparently, wanted to turn up in something comfy. But …

Christopher Nolan Says He’d Be ‘Terrified’ to Direct a Romantic Comedy

Christopher Nolan Says He’d Be ‘Terrified’ to Direct a Romantic Comedy

Published by Daniella Wilson

Christopher Nolan has directed everything from sci-fi thrillers such as Interstellar, Tenet and Inception to historical dramas like Dunkirk and Oppenheimer, mysteries like The Prestige and Memento and superhero films with his Dark Knight trilogy. But there’s one genre the Oscar-winning filmmaker said he’d be “terrified” to tackle: romantic comedies. During his first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Thursday, Nolan discussed the lengths he went to shoot his adaptation of Homer’s Greek epic The Odyssey on 70mm IMAX cameras, making it the first feature film to do so. Fallon jokingly asked the director if he ever thinks about doing an “easy” next film, specifically asking, “How about a Christopher Nolan rom-com?” “I think doing a rom-com would be incredibly difficult,” Nolan replied. “I love watching those movies. But, no, I think people who direct comedy, people who do comedy, I think that’s one of the hardest things in the world to make people laugh that way.” “Particularly the risk they take,” he continued. “When you make a film … you know, if …

Christopher Nolan Admits Directing A Rom-Com Is A ‘Terrifying’ Thought

Christopher Nolan Admits Directing A Rom-Com Is A ‘Terrifying’ Thought

Published by Sam Flores

Still, the director has insisted that he’s more in his comfort zone doing something as strenuous as his latest big-screen epic than he would be something seemingly more straightforward, like a traditional romantic comedy. During a new interview on The Tonight Show about just how much his latest film put him through his paces, host Jimmy Fallon joked to Nolan: “Did you ever think to yourself, ‘man, next movie I want to do an easy one?’. How about a Christopher Nolan rom-com?” “I think doing a rom-com would be incredibly difficult,” the Oscar winner responded. “I love watching those movies, but I think comedy, people who direct comedy, people who do comedy, I think that’s one of the hardest things in the world – to make people laugh that way.” He explained: “You know, if I show [one of my films] to people and maybe they don’t respond to bits of it, I’m like, ‘ah, they don’t get it’. There’s no hiding behind that when you do comedy.” “I would be terrified of doing anything …

Christopher Nolan Brands AI A 'Trojan Horse Everybody Knows The Greeks Are Inside'

Christopher Nolan Brands AI A 'Trojan Horse Everybody Knows The Greeks Are Inside'

Published by Sam Flores

Christopher Nolan on stage at CinemaCon earlier this year Christopher Nolan is doubling down on his stance on AI-generated content. The Oscar-winning filmmaker recently sat down for an interview with YouTube personality Hugo Décrypte to discuss his latest movie The Odyssey, with the host suggesting that the rise of artificial intelligence is comparable with a “glass” Trojan Horse. “I think AI is a Trojan Horse that everybody knows the Greeks are inside,” Nolan agreed with a laugh. He went on to say he’d found it “fascinating” that “in the last few years” AI had “sort of taken over Wall Street and the world of business and investment”, but pointed out that he’d “never seen a technology advancing so rapidly” being “so completely rejected by the public”. He said that the “suspicion” towards AI was particularly prevalent among “young people”, highlighting that “the reaction to AI videos online” among “people my children’s age” has been “immediately calling it AI slop and coining that term and just putting it in a box”. “I think [that] is a …

Christopher Nolan Defends Decision To Cut 3000-Year-Old Joke From The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan Defends Decision To Cut 3000-Year-Old Joke From The Odyssey

Published by Sam Flores

Christopher Nolan This article contains spoilers for The Odyssey. Christopher Nolan has defended his controversial decision not to include a rare moment of humour from the original text in his adaptation of The Odyssey. The Oscar winner’s big-screen epic has received near-unanimous praise since its release last week, featuring a star-studded cast led by Matt Damon as Odysseus, who embarks on a mammoth, years-long trek home to Ithaca at the end of the Trojan war. Along the way, he survives life-threatening conditions and encounters a range of weird and wonderful characters, among them a cyclops who he and his crew must outsmart to save their own lives. It’s this part of Homer’s original epic poem, on which Nolan’s The Odyssey is based, that the “joke” in question occurs. The source material depicts Odysseus introducing himself to the cyclops as “Nobody” (or “Outis” in Ancient Greek). When the central hero shoots the cyclops in its eye, the commotion draws the attention of other creatures, who ask their compadre who has put them in danger. The Odyssey finally …

Independent autopsy ‘inconclusive’ on cause of death for 18-year-old Nolan Wells in Mississippi : NPR

Independent autopsy ‘inconclusive’ on cause of death for 18-year-old Nolan Wells in Mississippi : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Elmore Wonsley, center, speaks next to attorney Ben Crump, left, and Rev. Al Sharpton during a memorial service for Nolan Xavier Wells on Monday. Gerald Herbert/AP hide caption toggle caption Gerald Herbert/AP An attorney representing the family of Nolan Wells said on Wednesday that an independent autopsy failed to identify a clear cause of death in a case that has drawn national attention. “These findings are inconclusive … pending further investigation,” said Benjamin Crump. Speaking during a press conference at an NAACP gathering in Chicago, Crump, a prominent civil rights attorney, said the body wasn’t in a state that would allow a complete forensic review of the remains. The autopsy was performed by Dr. Roger Mitchell, who was not present. While Crump acknowledged the autopsy found no evidence of wrongdoing, he described the findings as inconclusive: “This pathologist cannot rule out if any intervening non-accidental factors contributed to or caused the death of Nolan Wells,” he said. Wells was found dead on an island off the Mississippi coast two days after he and friends boated …

Nolan Wells’ independent autopsy results in ‘undetermined’ cause and manner of death

Nolan Wells’ independent autopsy results in ‘undetermined’ cause and manner of death

Published by Sam Flores

An independent autopsy report commissioned by the legal team representing Nolan Wells’ family found that the teenager’s cause and manner of death were “undetermined,” pending investigation. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. But the doctor who performed the autopsy said in the report that he could not rule out foul play, according to the family’s lawyer, Ben Crump, who revealed the findings at a news conference Wednesday at the 117th NAACP National Convention in Chicago. Crump added that the independent autopsy, which was the second one performed on Wells, also found red discoloration on the back of his head. But the report appeared to have gaps because of what Crump said were missing body parts and incomplete procedures. More coverage of Nolan Wells’ death “This is only another part of the puzzle, and even though it tells us significant information, we still have more questions than we have answers at this time,” Crump said. The autopsy was performed by Dr. Roger Mitchell, a board-certified forensic pathologist …

The Odyssey: How Nolan won the culture war with new IMAX movie

The Odyssey: How Nolan won the culture war with new IMAX movie

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter It was always going to be a tough challenge to please everyone when adapting an ancient text – but Christopher Nolan has proved he was the writer-director for the job: The Odyssey has become not only his best-reviewed film to date, but a certified box office smash hit. The director’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem was released on Friday (17 July), and it made $264m (£196m) in its opening weekend – even more than Oppenheimer managed back in 2023 off the back of the highly publicised Barbenheimer movie showdown. (For those who’ve forgotten, Oppenheimer was released on the same day as Barbie.) This initial performance is the director’s best since The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, and it looks set to become one of his most bankable films overall, rivalling both The Dark Knight (2008) and Inception (2010), which made $1.09bn (£815.4m) …

The Odyssey scholar whose work inspired Christopher Nolan offers key criticisms of hit film

The Odyssey scholar whose work inspired Christopher Nolan offers key criticisms of hit film

Published by Daniella Wilson

Greek translator Emily Wilson whose work reportedly inspired Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey has criticised some of the changes he made to the poem. The new movie, which is based on the ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, follows Odysseus’s decades-long voyage home to Ithaca in the aftermath of the Trojan war. The film has proved to be a critical and commercial success, having drawn an impressive $264 million opening weekend global box office haul and a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, who is behind the 2017 translation of The Odyssey which Nolan reportedly cited as inspiration for his take on the poem, has questioned some of Nolan’s decisions. In an interview with The Associated Press, Wilson questioned the absence on screen of Zeus and Poseidon as well as the “incoherent” messaging that condemns both war and physical cowardice. Wilson also wasn’t a fan of Anne Hathaway’s Penelope, and criticised the thinned-out role, which she said endangered “any possibility of believing in …