Inception as a TV programme?

Film references

Following the success of Limitless the TV series, maybe its time for Inception the TV series? I mean its been talked about in many circles, heck there was the motion comic, and even REM which became Awake.

Jonathan Nolan has been behind Person of Interest for quite some time, and even helped out Christopher Nolan (brother) and creator of Inception.

They say TV is the new Cinema, well maybe its time? Christopher? Chris please?

Inception as a TV series?

inception the cobol job

Myself and Chris were talking about a number of things at breakfast in Vivid Lounge as we do. We got talking about the Marvel and DC universe and the state of cinema and TV media.

I mentioned, TV is the new cinema.

Forget what you’ve read about cinema’s dominance over the small screen. Television has plenty to teach the movies about characterisation, storytelling and breaking new talent.

And the differences and experience between Cloud Atlas and Sense 8 for the Wachowskis. TV allows for build up and character building cinema can only dream about. This is especially good when thinking about universes such as the Marvel one.

Chris said he would love to see inception as a TV series? I obviously am in total agreement.

This isn’t anything new but it certainly got me thinking about other films which could be better told in a TV series and heck a game/experience?

It strikes me that any film with plot device like eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, chronicle, etc… could work. Similar to person of interest, where small things happen every episode but theres a over arching plot leading to something much bigger.

An ex-assassin and a wealthy programmer save lives via a surveillance AI that sends them the identities of civilians involved in impending crimes. However, the details of the crimes–including the civilians’ roles–are left a mystery.

I mention person of interest because the director is Jonathan Nolan, who is Christopher ‘Inception’ Nolan’s younger brother.  Who knows maybe a Inception TV series isn’t as far fetched as first thought?

Inception is a metaphor for cinema?

Abandoned Cinema

…One of the coolest ideas behind the film “Inception” is that the entire film was widely reported on the internet to be a metaphor for cinema. Cinema creates an artificial dream world and invites the audience into that dream that we then fill with our subconscious. We already have dream sharing technology. It’s called cinema.I am a story junkie and I am immersion junkie.

The dream is real…? Now that makes sense…

I had never heard this but then again at the build up of Inception, I was kinda of busy. Mind blown!

This was taken from a interview with Jason Silva. It really got me thinking while reading it on my kindle today. I specially love this reply to Why are you so fascinated about what happens to our brains when we watch movies?

Diana Slattery writes that Immersion is a “necessary precursor for any kind of interpersonal persuasion or transformation to occur”..  Janet Murray writes that we “long to be immersed” and that we “actively metabolize belief in story”… because we are effectively narrative beings.

I’m fascinated by the liminal spaces we enter when we are absorbed by cinema: that magical borderland between dreams and reality, the space of archetype, of myth, of madness and ecstasy, the landscape of the imagination, freed from the constraints of time/space/ distance.
Cinema is the realm of subjectivity. The only technology that allows us to enter the mind of another.  Cinema is cartography for the mind.   As Gene Youngblood wrote: “cinema reflects mankind’s historical drive to manifest his consciousness outside of his mind in front of his eyes”
Love it… We long to be immersed, we have always wanted to manifest our consciousness for others to be immersed in…

Who’s dream are we in, Mr Charles

Film references in small cartoons about glasses of water

I don’t know who originally wrote the one on the left but I saw George Takei tweet about it from Josh’s Retweet. Instantly got me thinking about inception (specially since I recently watched it again).

Such a great film and love the scene about Mr Charles. Originally I was going to put “my first thought is: wheres mr charles?” but decided it was too insider baseball. So I must be dreaming won out over mr charles and who’s dream am I in?

Only after watching it the 40+ time did I notice there is no opening credits for Inception

More Fan Art on everything

My plans to slowly replace all the movie posters in my flat has been slow, but here is two more to the collection…

I’ve grown tired of the movie posters. There always too brash in my mind or don’t include the parts which are movie defining.

I got the idea a while ago to blow up Fan Art using Rasterbator and then replace my crappy movie posters with them. It might seem slightly cheeky but if I’m not replacing any of the attribution and I’ll happily point to where I got the art. I know Deviantart do sell poster sizes of some of the art but I quite like the rugged non-descript way Rasterbator makes Fan art.

That iconic first scene from the Dark Knight. Although I was looking at this one too for a while.

A different way of looking at Inception… Another great scene from a film I love, when Arthur leans in for a kiss on Ariadne.

Ariadne: What’s happening?
Arthur: Your subconscious is looking for the dreamer; me. Quick, give me a kiss.
Ariadne: [She kisses him and then looks around]
Ariadne: They’re still looking at us.
Arthur: Yeah, it was worth a shot.

Got to do one for Donnie Darko, Fight Club and Cloud Atlas.

Fan Art on everything…

I love movies and decided a long time ago to hang them in my living room instead of the usual pictures.

However recently I’ve grown tired of the movie posters. There always too brash in my mind or don’t include the parts which are movie defining.

I got the idea a while ago to blow up Fan Art using Rasterbator and then replace my crappy movie posters with them. It might seem slightly cheeky but if I’m not replacing any of the attribution and I’ll happily point to where I got the art. I know Deviantart do sell poster sizes of some of the art but I quite like the rugged non-descript way Rasterbator makes Fan art.

So for my first piece I did one for Inception…

I used PosteRazor which is one of the most ugly linux apps I’ve ever used (but it does the job) and created a A2 sized poster out of some excellent Fan Art. Then bought an Ikea frame.

The result is…

Inception poster

And this is only the start… Not bad for the first attempt, although the line up isn’t right and I’m not so happy with the framing…

Certainly like the idea of changing the art around every once in a while too

The Batman Complex

If only… But what a amazing piece of work by a fan.

And so, as promised, this is the follow up to the teaser. Here we have a full length (well, a bit longer than the norm, but hey, what can you do…hahaha) theatrical trailer that delves a little deeper into the story behind The Batman Complex. As explained in the teaser, the gist of the idea revolves around a few fun topics, mainly the whole “what is real?” train of thought, and also every fans desire, deep down or upfront, to be Batman at least once in their lives. LOL. And so, I tried to craft a story where we see what happens when someone takes their dream of being Batman a little bit too far. An idea, after all, is a truly resilient parasite. 😉

While some of it is still left a bit ambiguous (both unintentionally and intentionally – while there’s only so much that can be strung together, I often like to leave a little bit open so as to see what fellow fans are able to imagine/create), I believe it offers a bit more than the teaser. As you might be able to tell, the theatrical trailer takes on less of a “horror” vibe than the teaser. For this extended look, I wanted to focus more on the character aspects (and a bit of the tragedy as well), and attempt to move past the initial shock of the psychological twist. One aspect I tried to hint at was the paralleling descent of both Bruce and Cobb. As Cobb and the team go deeper into Bruce’s mind, they start to encounter the truly dark issues that his subconscious houses. As a result, Cobb himself gets caught up in the obsession of all that lingers in the mind of a Batman. There are a couple fun things in there that are best left to surprise, but all in all, I’m relatively happy with how it turned out. It’s fairly fast paced and doesn’t leave much room to breath, which helps amplify the tension I think. But that’s just me. I hope it works just as well as the teaser did.

As for the future of the project, I’m not sure what’s next. I don’t think I’ll do a second theatrical trailer. Maybe a couple of TV spots, but other than that, I think I’ll let this one remain as it is. We’ll see. Perhaps I’ll be further inspired by some other ideas that’ll come to me in a dream… 😉

Hollywood is loving the apps

Inception the App

I had multiple people tell me about the Inception App on Apple iOS devices. I think its interesting but not good enough to make me want to rush out and buy a apple device.

Interestingly, Michael Breidenbrücker is one of the guys behind the app. I know Michael from my course at Ravensbourne where he co-founded Last.FM and decided to go off and develop that away from the fingers of the college. Recently… he’s been focusing on RJDJ which is a music generation tool.

Anyway, the idea of Augmented sound isn’t new but its so so interesting. The rest of the app is well a little bit of a wet squid in my view but hey you can’t have it all. The app is pretty expensive but you do get a copy of the film tied to the app. There is a question in my mind if buying the app for 10 pounds and getting the ability to tweet and like sections is actually worth it.

Ether way, you can see Hollywood jumping into the app market in a big way in 2011. Warner brothers already have a Dark knight app too, while the Unstopable app is Fox’s work and runs on Android (the largest platform now).

I do find it intriguing that Inception isn’t available on Android, I wonder if the lack of content protection mechanism (or plainly put DRM) might be the problem for Warner Brothers? No problem for Fox or even Sony though…

Films you should have seen last year

Inception

I seriously don’t get it. There is no doubt Inception was one of the high lights of last year but the golden globes seemed to skip over inception.

Anyway, this is my list of films you should have seen (or look out for in 2011) in 2010,

  • Inception
    Need I say more?
  • The Social Network
    Didn’t really want to like it, but after seeing it I really liked it. Its certainly one of the best internet/tech to movie translations I’ve witnessed. The tone is just right throughout.
  • Scott Pilgrim vs the world
    This film is simply nuts. A whirlwind of modern film techniques wrapped up in a fantastic coming of age plot with like-able multi faceted characters.
  • Cash
    Simple plot with devastating results. A very heart felt to the characters who end up on the wrong side of this psychopath.
  • Takers
    Stylish heist movie in the vein of Inside man and Lucky number Sleven. Reminds me of Guy Richie’s Revolver crossed with Heat. Tasty stuff.
  • Catfish
    What on earth is going on with this movie? All I can say is its intriguing true or false.
  • Exit through the gift shop
    Like Catfish, a documentary style which could be true or false, don’t really care its just a intriguing tale.
  • Freakonomics: The Movie
    The film based on a few chapters from the famous and popular Freakonomics book. Well worth watching as a introduction to the books.
  • Flipped
    2 children growing up together and learning from each other how life can or should be. Each bit is told from each point of view which makes for a interesting story.
  • Monsters
    Imagine Cloverfield happened 5 years ago, Monsters is what would the future be like after a alien invasion. It is like District 9 in scenario but this is a very slow burning storyline which will lose lots of people expecting more
  • 4,3,2,1
    4 girls different storylines which over lap in places. Noel Clarke has once again outdone himself with this stylish and sometimes quite gritty drama
  • 127 hours
    I wanted to put in both 127hours and buried. But choose 127 hours because although there quite similar, 127 hours isn’t so focused on one scene. The flashbacks are a good break from what was going on.

It still shocks me when I hear people say they haven’t seen inception. I mean I can understand it if you haven’t because of time but the reason I usually hear is because they have heard its a bit of a mind screw.

In actual fact, its actually not that much of a mind screw. Yes you do have to pay attention and quite a lot does indeed happen but its not any more difficult to understand that Twelve monkeys. Put it this way, its nothing like Primer. and that crazy timeline of the film.

For goodness sake if you’ve not seen Inception, go rent it today!