‘Interstellar’: Christopher Nolan takes his act to outer space

With the exception of 2004, director Christopher Nolan has had a movie come out in every even year dating back to the 1990s. That will continue with his ambitious sci-fi project “Interstellar,� due in November 2014.

A random bit of trivia, to be sure, but a timely one as domestic distributor Paramount and worldwide studio Warner Bros. announced he’s begun shooting the new film in Alberta.

Even before the first camera whirred on, plenty has been written about the project, which concerns a group of human explorers jumping through space. (Per a logline in the announcement: “The script chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.�)

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The announcement noted that he’ll use Imax along with a 35mm anamorphic shooting technique (Nolan has not been a practitioner of 3-D), which will hopefully bring the sweep and depth we saw in movies like “The Dark Knight� to the galaxy’s outer regions. As has been previously reported, Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain star. The announcement also reminded us that theoretical physicist Kip Thorne will consult on the movie, in case you were wondering what he’s been doing lately.

Nolan has been a master of taking well-trod genres and reinventing them — the murder-romance with “Memento,� the superhero film with the Batman movies and the inside-the-brain head-trippers with “Inception.� The “humans in outer-space� category (or is it the time-travel movie, as some have called it) has of course been plumbed over the years by the likes of “2001: A Space Odyssey� and the “Star Trek� franchise, and has another big entrant this fall with Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity.� As of today, Nolan has begun adding his spin to it, right on schedule.

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