Movie marathon alone

Watched When Harry Met Sally followed by Inception  to keep from feeling lonely.

 

Living in Inception

For the past while, I’ve been waking up from dreams and feeling like I was in Inception, in that my dreams were a false reality, and that I was waking up into another false reality.  I felt just like Mal, believing that the only way to free myself is to die and wake up in the real world.  It was a really strange sensation, but it dissipated after a few moments.  I’ve never felt it before, but it certainly made me wonder a lot about what was real and false, if I’m actually living in another world, if everything I see and touch and feel is simply Simulacra and my body is somewhere else… how strange and frightening.

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 8: Favorite thriller

I think the genre of “thriller” is hard to define because it’s very often paired with another genre, like action or crime or horror.  There isn’t really a movie that is strictly a thriller, whereas it’s easier to label other movies as simply comedies or horror films or dramatic features.  Once again, I turned to imdb’s top 250 list and thought Inception would be a really good choice, since it did thrill me, but the genre of thriller wasn’t in the top 3 genres for the film.  Sure, movies can be categorized different from one person to the next but maybe I suppose thriller wouldn’t be the first genre I’d label for Inception.

Further down the list, I came across a little 1955 French film called Les diaboliques (which was remade by the Americans with Sharon Stone 40 years later and apparently it’s not very good).  I won’t go into the story much but I will say that it’s a film that made me wonder what was truth and what was lie, that really made me guess everything going on to try and figure it all out.  The climax and twist of the film is also filmed really well and for me anyway, managed to shock me and even scare me a little, despite today’s standards of shock, gore, violence, etc.  Watch it alone in the dark at night and the film will be even more effective…

Forbidden Frienship — John Powell (How to Train Your Dragon Soundtrack)

Up against veteran composers like Alexandre Desplat, Hans Zimmer, and also Oscar-winner A.R. Rahman, John Powell’s resume is just as comprehensive and long as Desplat and Zimmer’s.  According to IMDB, his first break in scoring happened in 1989, so he’s been around for a while.  It’s just taken him a long time to get noticed by the Academy, apparently.

How to Train Your Dragon is an alright film.  It’s enjoyable, yes, and I haven’t seen Toy Story 3 so I can’t compare it to that one but it probably won’t win the best animated feature film at the Oscars on Sunday.  However, I think John Powell does have a relatively good chance at winning the Oscar for Original Score.  When I saw HTTYD, the melody and the score really stuck out to me, particularly the main theme that’s played again and again in the film.  I’ve chosen to feature a different track from the film titled “Forbidden Friendship” which I think is really moving and full of some wonderful stuff, not to mention it’s not as popular as the main theme.

I haven’t heard the soundtrack from Rahman or Trent Reznor for The Social Network but from the other three films I’ve seen, it’s between Zimmer and Powell for the Oscar for original score.  In the meantime, enjoy this track!

“Time” — Hans Zimmer (Inception Original Soundtrack)

Since the nominations for the Oscars a few days ago, I decided to take a listen to some of the nominees for Best Original Score.  I have seen How to Train Your Dragon, The King’s Speech, and Inception but seem to be the only person not to have seen The Social Network yet.  127 Hours is also a film I wanna watch though the prospect of watching James Franco cut off his arm is a little off-putting at the moment.  Anyway, I remembered that there was quite a good melody/theme in Inception, and since it had been a while since I saw it, I went on the awesome site that is youtube to hear the soundtrack.

Although I absolutely love the pulse-pounding Inception theme in “Dream is Collapsing”, I particularly like the nostalgia and the emotional impact of “Time”, the closing track on the soundtrack and if I remember correctly, also played during the end credits of the film.  Although I do feel like Inception lacked strong emotional connection with the characters, this track almost (*almost!*) makes up for it.  It’s slow and contemplative in the beginning, add in the orchestra later and it bursts into true Zimmer spirit.

(Eww.  I just had a kettle corn kernel and it tasted like a cherry tomato… yuck.)

I’ve always been a fan of Zimmer, and I think this is a better, more rounded soundtrack than Sherlock Holmes.  I have a feeling this won’t win the Oscar for original score but oh well.  This is a great score nonetheless.

The real Inception

I’ve had a dream within a dream before, but I believe that was about as complex as my dreams have been.  Last night, it was a little more puzzling than that.

Before any of you get ideas about how my mind was infiltrated by people or assume that I was involved in some kind of zero-gravity fight scene, no.  I’ll just explain by writing it.

First dream: Something scary.  I don’t remember much.  I think I was in bed and there was something that scared the crap out of me in my room.  I didn’t want to do it, but eventually I resorted to screaming and yelling for my mom and after a while, she came in and I probably stopped.

Second dream: I woke up in my bed again, realizing what just happened was only a dream.  I felt relieved, yet still a little wary/scared because I felt like there was something else in the room.  I could see it faintly, an outline of someone, standing nearby…

Third dream: My mom and I were in a parking lot, going to the car.  I was telling her about my two dreams, about how scared I was but that I was relieved they were only dreams.  As we started to pull out of the parking space and get on our way, another van was in our way, with lots of stuff packed on the top of their car.

Reality: I woke up!  This time for realz, yo.  Then I told a bored-seeming mom who didn’t say much about it.

There’s a name for dreams within dreams, but the name escapes me.  I can’t remember if they mean something, like how most things in dreams are symbols of other things.  Anyway, I thought that was cool, if a little scary.

Other parts of the dreams include my grandparents sitting together and my grandpa being an actor, posing as if dead with fake blood on his head (I mentioned the blood part to my mom and asked if fake blood still meant money but she just smiled and didn’t say anything).