Christopher Nolan’s Inception: the Man Behind the Dreamscape

[serious crayons]

Am I the only one who thinks LDC and Nolan totally look alike?

No, I've thought the same thing! And I have wondered if that was part of why Nolan cast him, just as Robert Redford cast Brad Pitt in A River Runs Through It, back when BP looked exactly like a young RR.

LDC's features are arranged more interestingly.

That's true, too. I sometimes wonder how two people can look superficially similar except that one is more beautiful than the other. It's often really hard to pin down. Here are two men with basically the same face, but one is far more interesting. Maybe the eyes? I'm not the world's hugest LDC groupie, but he does have beautiful eyes.

     

[Clyde-B]

I enjoyed the movie, because, like Memento, you have to pay close attention.  But I wished there had been more use made of the mutable nature of dreams.  Dreams change, suddenly, abruptly, but the dreams in the movie behaved too consistently, like real life. 

I remember a sequence in Cocteau's Orphaeus where Death is played by a woman in a black and white suit.  Every time there is a camera cut, the black and white parts of Death's suit reverse positions.  The effect is very subtle, surreal and unsettling.  I wished the dream sequences had more of that kind of dream inconsistency.

[serious crayons]

I thought the movie was OK, but I don't think I can give it a fair assessment because I kept dozing off. I have dozed off in only three other movies in my life (The Seven Percent Solution, The Hudsucker Proxy and Rugrats in Paris, if you must know!), but I can't tell in this case if it was Inception's fault or just the fact that I hadn't had enough sleep the night before. It did seem like there was a long stretch in the middle, where JGL was fighting with somebody or other and LDC was off doing something or other, that contained a lot of action but not much else. But again, that might have just been me. As Clyde points out, it requires that you pay close attention, and I wasn't in good shape to do so. I might try it again sometime.

Memento is one of my favorite movies of all time, though. Just a notch or two below you know what.

[Front-Ranger]

No, I've thought the same thing! And I have wondered if that was part of why Nolan cast him, just as Robert Redford cast Brad Pitt in A River Runs Through It, back when BP looked exactly like a young RR.

That's true, too. I sometimes wonder how two people can look superficially similar except that one is more beautiful than the other. It's often really hard to pin down. Here are two men with basically the same face, but one is far more interesting. Maybe the eyes? I'm not the world's hugest LDC groupie, but he does have beautiful eyes.

     

It can be just small things like the fact that LDC's mouth is smaller and thus there is more contrast between the browline and the mustache line. Also, his eyebrows are more arched and the more eyebrow real estate, the more expression. Although when I saw this movie last night, I thought LDC's face was remarkably flat and featureless for much of the movie. I'm afraid I concur with reviewers here that the film was a disappointment for me. None of the lyricism and metaphor that is present in my dreams. I feel sorry for the dreamer in this case, he has oppressive dreams despite the best efforts of the dream team that invaded his head. I was tempted to doze off too Katherine. Part of the problem is that the movie just starts without any credits or fanfare, and I wasn't paying attention because I thought it was another trailer. Then when LDC showed up, I realized that this was the feature, but I had already missed some plot points.

What I did like was the role of Ariadne as the redeemer. She not only crafted the foundations of the dreams, but she dignosed and prescribed the remedy for what was impeding LDC from carrying out his mission and also was stymying him in his read/dream life. She was something like Trinity that way.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://holykaw.alltop.com/the-christopher-nolan-flowchart

The Christopher Nolan flowchart
Posted Aug 13th, 2010 at 9:00 AM




The lighting is dimmed, the film score is dark and piercing,
and suddenly you’ve forgotten which Christopher Nolan movie you’re watching.
Don’t worry. It happens to the best of us.
Just follow this handy flowchart to help you remember.

[serious crayons]

http://holykaw.alltop.com/the-christopher-nolan-flowchart

The Christopher Nolan flowchart
Posted Aug 13th, 2010 at 9:00 AM

Good one! Thanks for posting that, John. I love those flow-charty things.

Hmm ... I wonder if someone could do one about BBM.

So you're Ennis Del Mar, deciding whether to spend time with Jack Twist. Do you have the girls for the weekend? Yes -----> No -----> ... When you're out on the pavement, is everybody lookin at you? Yes -----> No ------> ... Do you have to work? Yes -----> No -------> ... Is it August? Yes -----> No -----> ... How about November? Yes -----> No ----->

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

New York Magazine 's Year End Wrap-Up


A Very, Very Big Year
In 2010, over-the-top was often just right.

By Adam Sternbergh
Published Dec 5, 2010


If you were to gather the culture stars of 2010 in a room and ask them to retroactively pitch their biggest ideas, it would sound like an inmate’s meeting at an asylum for the delusionally grandiose....Yet if there was one thread that connected the highlights (and a few failures) of the last year, it was this: the Grand Gesture, the Big Gamble, the all-out Swing for the Fences....

Inception

Here’s an idea: Why not follow up your sure-thing, box-office-topping Batman movie The Dark Knight  with a convoluted, complicated, based-on-nothing-but-your-own-twisted-imagination thriller with a title that sounds like a movie about IVF treatments? Yet Warner Bros. gambled $160 million on Christopher Nolan’s Inception,  the only 2010 summer blockbuster that wasn’t a sequel, a franchise, or a reboot. It made $823 million globally.