Inception

Jul. 25th, 2010 10:30 pm
darthfar: (Default)
I caught Inception on the big screen with my aunt and cousin this afternoon. If you haven't heard of the movie, it's a science-fiction action film written, directed and produced by Christopher Nolan of Batman Begins fame, and deals with the subject of industrial espionage by extracting information from victims while they are dreaming, and the far more difficult task of implanting ideas in a sleeping person's mind (called "inception"). I won't give the story to anyone who's planning to watch it, but, as a lucid dreamer (and one who, after once having been caught in a series of false awakenings, once wrote a story fragment about a fake existence in which a person never woke up, but tripped from one dream level to another endlessly - and this was long before I'd even heard of Neil Gaiman's Sandman), it was a pleasure to see someone who'd pondered the same idea have the vision and creativity to develop it fully into a movie, where characters lucidly moved into deeper and deeper levels of dreaming. While there are definitely influences from past movies there, it's still about the most inventive show I've seen in a long time, and certainly the one most worth watching in these past seasons of remakes, remakes and more goddamn remakes. And for the first time since Titanic, it was actually possible to accept Leonardo diCaprio as a character in the movie rather than a pretty-boy actor who'd been cast in the role. (It probably helped that he's now 16 years older and more grizzled).

My aunt and cousin, on the other hand, firmly believed that Christopher Nolan was an insane escapee from Arkham Asylum. When told what the ending of the movie suggested, their reaction was along the lines of, "Whaaat? then what's the point..." *facepalm*

[Can I just say how much I appreciated Joseph Gordon-Levitt's wardrobe in this movie? Seriously, everything he wore was made of Win.]
darthfar: (Default)
All the good stuff arrived yesterday. I don't even know where to begin.

LEFT4DEAD 2


[Anyone reading my journal must be thoroughly sick of this by now. Yes, I mean you, Tory. It must be agonising to read about me blazing my way through it while your PC was stuck re-downloading it yesterday. Hahahahahah.]

L4D2 finally released! About an hour late, but gosh, who really cares? other than a bunch of highly impatient, trigger-happy people with damaged Broca's regions and hyperactive salivary glands, who started ranting about how the release was FIFTEEN MINUTES LATE. (Oh the horror! we might have time for more than one cup of coffee after all!).

L4D2 geekout )

RAY BRADBURY THEATRE

Yesterday also saw the arrival of my tin edition of the Ray Bradbury Theatre DVD set from Amazon.com - more Geekjoy!



I'll be honest: While I'd heard of the Ray Bradbury Theatre before, in spite of being a die-hard Bradbury fan, I never even thought of looking around to see if the series had been released in DVD format until I accidentally stumbled upon A Sound of Thunder on Youtube. This is significant: Thunder is just about my most favourite Bradbury story ever (barring The Martian Chronicles), because of its eerie treatment of the Chaos theory.

Spoiler goes here )

So yes, it was that one episode that sold the series for me. Because I reckoned, if they could get A Sound of Thunder right, even with cheap 1980s visual effects and synthesizer music, they couldn't really get very much else wrong.

For anybody who's even tempted to check out the 2005 film, maybe this frothing-at-the-mouth review I wrote when I returned from the screening of the movie will serve as a deterrent (posted here only because I removed the electronic version from my site long ago):

A Sound of Thunderous Disaster )

ANOTHER BRICK?

Also, my "to-be-abused" paperback copy of The Brick arrived alongside my Bradbury set. I've already installed a few tags at some important sections I'll be referring to (and perhaps drawing, in some cases). This may look like a hideous thing to do to a book, but believe me, I wouldn't have even contemplated it if I hadn't a hardcover Charles Wilbour translation in perfect condition already in my possession:



Yes the tags are 2.5cm long, and divided into seven columns (because the book is 17.5cm long). Because I'm anal-retentive like that. Force, does it show?

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