Speaking of dwarves, I'm (finally!) watching the blu-ray of Snow White. The Evil Queen is still the best thing about the movie. Her and the Magic Mirror. The restoration is gorgeous.

I really love all the scenes of her in the dungeon mixing up her potion and mocking the skeletons of her former victims.

Tom Hardy played the young Picard clone in "Star Trek: Nemesis". He's been around for a while but lost a couple of years through substance abuse. Definitely one of the more interesting young British actors to appear in the past few years, though.

The Observer Magazine had an article on him a couple of weeks ago, though it wasn't particularly revelatory:

[link]

I guess... for a movie about dreams, it seemed a bit literal?

I totally agree with you Strega. The whole plotting was wonderfully done, but I kept thinking, "This is awfully boring for a dream." If I could control dreams and build dream worlds, it would be a nonstop Dada amusement park. At the very least some one would fly or breathe underwater.

But it had to be boring for the Mark to believe it was real. There was also the issue of the projections turning on the architect. They were pretty explicit about that when Ellen Page was making the crazy-geometry-world.

Yep, what Jon said.

I loved it, and it only occurred to me afterward that pretty much all the "cool" shots were shown in the trailers, and it didn't matter. They were much better in context, and I didn't feel cheated. (Okay, maybe slightly cheated, because why wouldn't I want more awesome?)

I feel like Christopher Nolan is the live-action Pixar. The guy hasn't made a bad movie. I pretty much love them all. (Huh, I'm surprised that his lowest RT rating is for The Prestige (75%) rather than Insomnia (92%). I thought that was the one that wasn't very well received, since it had to follow Memento. )

I liked how solid and gritty the dreams were. Nolan resisted the impulse to go as crazy as the Matrix or The Cell, but instead gave the dreams lots of texture. The texture gave the effects much more weight. It's interesting when Paris folds in on itself; it's even better that it *looks like* Paris is folding in on itself.

Yeah, but pretty well every dream--except for the opening one, had very literal setting, literal turns of events.

The only fantastical elements of the dreams seemed to come at the hands of the architects or extractors. Everyone else was dreaming business or fancy parties and there was not one midget wrestler, nor potato that transcended time and space, nor dreams where one person was in B&W and the rest of the dream was in colour. The magic and mystery of dreams is that fucked up things can happen and your just accept that as reality. I just think there was an opportunity for some absurdity, and I was a little disappointed there wasn't any.

Also, Leo has to cut out the tanning or tanner, whatever that was. He looked positively orange.

He sure did look orange. I was like, damn.

Do you think that the fantastical stuff was put aside in the quest for making sure that it would be easiest to find the secrets the un/subconscious held? The metaphor of a safe makes things easy to find if you have traditional settings.

I actually don't recall my dreams, but Beau has certain kinds of fantastical dreams and he would probably know if something were weird if the things were behaving a bit differently than is typical for him. You have to know someone pretty well to replicate a believable absurd for them.

Do you think that the fantastical stuff was put aside in the quest for making sure that it would be easiest to find the secrets the un/subconscious held?

I think they stuck to a literal storyline in the dreams because there were so many lines of narrative going. In order to help the audience follow the storylines, the dream worlds were kept pretty simple.

Beau has certain kinds of fantastical dreams and he would probably know if something were weird if the things

I swear I have dreamscapes that don't exist in reality that are instatly recognizable in my dreams. Parts of my own ton that don't exist...a dream London that is unlike any bit of London I was in.

I used to write down my dreams every morning, but I never have time anymore, so I only remember a few. I've never had a superpower, like flying or breathing underwater...it's a big disappointment for me.

Oh, yeah, the literalness of the dreams themselves didn't bother me. Partly because I'm more and more convinced that it's a meta-commentary on movies anyway.

By literal I meant... thematically? I'm not sure how to articulate it. I guess I expected that I'd have more to ponder than the mechanics of the movie. I think Nolan usually ties some big ideas to a high concept, and this time I'm not sure that happened. But I'm open to the possibility that I may find something more there on a repeat viewing.