Nakiska plays ski instructor to stars of movie, 'Inception

Edit: November 26, 2009

Recent newspaper article about Inception Canada shoot talking about the actors ski training for the final shooting sequences this week.

Nakiska plays ski instructor to stars of movie, 'Inception' : http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainm ... story.html

Excerpt:
"We would ski Homesteader down, depending on their ability," said Mosteller, of the beginner-to intermediate-level run which meanders down the mountain from the top of the Silver Chair.

Page, 22, had skied a couple times as a kid, but hadn't been on skis in years.

"She's a tremendous athlete, and an amazing person to hang with," says Mosteller.

Bigger than Batman: Christopher Nolan says 'Inception' is 'the biggest challenge I've taken on'

According an LA Times preview of a coming article, Christopher Nolan says of Inception:

“I grew up watching James Bond films and loving those and watching spy movies with their globetrotting sensibility.... We get to do that here, not just geographically but also in time and dimensions of reality as well. We get to make a movie that’s expansive, I suppose you’d say, in four dimensions.”

“It’s something that we had been talking about on and off for seven or eight years," Thomas said. "Coming off of the ‘The Dark Knight,’ the only thing we really knew is that we wanted to do something more personal. It seemed like the right time to do this. The fact that it’s really just an enormous movie -- that wasn’t ever really a factor in the decision. This story lends itself to a movie of this size."

“This is the biggest challenge I’ve taken on to this point,” said Nolan, who may return to Gotham City for his next feature. “We’re trying to tell a story on a massive scale, a true blockbuster scale – the biggest I’ve ever been involved with. We tried to make a very large-scale film with ‘The Dark Knight’ and with this one we wanted to push that even further.”

See: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocom ... n-on-.html

It's an understatement to say I'm excited about this film! Thanks for the post Jim

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New details on Inception - may contain spoilers(!)

Updates on Chris Nolan’s Inception

While many of us have been trying to decipher the plot of Chris Nolan’s Inception, few details about the upcoming sci-fi/thriller have actually come to light. Besides the fact that this is a movie “from the director of The Dark Knight” with Leonardo DiCaprio in the starring role, people hardly know what to expect. Not even the teaser trailer helped all that much.

During various press tours and interviews with the cast and director, a few Inception details have started to spill over the last few months; now we’re collecting them here to share.

Most of this information that follows was actually hunted down and first collected by our good friends over at /Film – so be sure to thank them for keeping you up to speed on this labyrinthine film that is Inception.We’ve simply added a few choice details, in case you missed them.

* In an upcoming issue of Empire Magazine, Chris Nolan mentions that he was only 16 when he came up with the concept for Inception.
* Leonardo DiCaprio recently told the website Movies.ie that Inception’s runtime is about two hours long.
* The Playlist has highlighted a new quote from Nolan, which confirms and exclusive broken last summer by In Contention regarding Inception’s plot.

Here’s the new quote from Nolan:


Speaking of the story that In Contention broke last year, here are some rumored details about the characters being played by the supporting cast. WARNING, these could be considered MINOR SPOILERS, even though they are still RUMORS at this point. As stated by In Contention:



If you want to know more about these rumored plot details of Inception, then head on over to In Contention.

This movie still sounds really interesting to me and with Nolan behind it I’m sure there are going to be twists, turns and plenty of heady ideas we’re left to think about at the end. However, in terms of actual, factual, confirmed details about the movie? Well, at this point not even DiCaprio can explain for sure what Nolan has in store for us. But then that’s half the fun of a Chris Nolan movie.

Inception will be in theaters on July 16, 2010

Source:screenrant.com

Ellen...the Engineer of Dreams....Beam Me Up, Ellen

Thanks for article Dom.....cannot wait anymore until Inception comes out.....no spoiler can hurt me Just to see Ellen in a different role is going to be so cool

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Sounding more and more interesting.

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Warner Bros. showed some new footage from "Inception" at the ShoWest 2010 yesterday. Here are some reports - which may contain major spoilers by the way.


Further articles are available on latinoreview.com, screenrant.com, collider.com, comingsoon.net and nolanfans.com.

I think we can really look forward to a big and great blockbuster this summer

Thanks for the info Dom This film is gonna be huge

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Yeah I read a briefer version of that the other day... so freakin excited for this movie! Can't wait. Thanks for that Dom

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Thanks to Milo (bluetoes) for creating this fabulous sig for us over 25ers

Great new article in the LA Times:http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-inception4-2010apr04,0,6869939.story

'Inception' breaks into dreams

Thanks for posting Jim. I like it how she's incorporated one of her fave authors into the interview and compares it with the film

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Thanks to Milo (bluetoes) for creating this fabulous sig for us over 25ers

Hey dont forget one of Ellen's fave terms....."humbled....humbling" Love when she uses that.....

Thanks for the posting the article....the mystery of Inception slowly being revealed

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Christopher Nolan's 'Inception' -- Hollywood's first existential heist film

This is a longer version of my Los Angeles Times Sunday Calendar cover story on "Inception," the most ambitious film to date from director Christopher Nolan. Most of the interviews in the story were conducted last year on the set of the film in Cardington, England. I have also included a bit of video that shows my on-stage interview with Nolan and Emma Thomas, his producing partner and wife, at last weekend's WonderCon in San Francisco.
by Geoff Boucher, published on April 11, 2010 - 5:45 am



July is the month when movies gets dizzy (or is it ditsy?) from the heat, and this year is no exception, with films featuring heartthrob vampires, evil aliens, Nicolas Cage and the never-gets-old concept of talking dogs. But on July 16, in the middle of the usual popcorn parade, director Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. will deliver "Inception," a strange thriller that has been a Hollywood mystery for months thanks to its cryptic title and the fact that the studio has guarded the Nolan-penned script like a state secret.

So it was no surprise last summer that, at a musty old dirigible hangar outside London, Nolan welcomed a rare visitor to his "Inception" set with a guarded smile. "So you've read the script -- did you understand it?" Mazes and masked intentions are the specialties of Nolan, who burst on the scene 10 years ago with "Memento," a noir riddle told in two alternating narratives presented in opposite chronological directions -- a masterpiece of watchmaker cinema that earned Nolan and his brother, Jonathan, an Oscar nomination for their screenplay. In 2008, Nolan performed an even more impressive sleight of hand when he delivered a $1-billion success with the Batman movie called "The Dark Knight," the most cerebral of superhero films and one that barely used computer-generated effects.

"Inception," the 39-year-old director's seventh feature film and his first foray into science fiction, combines the perception riddles of "Memento" and the sheer scale of "Dark Knight" with its $160-million budget and location shoots in Morocco, France, Japan and three other countries. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a specialist in the new branch of corporate espionage -- he's a dream thief who plucks secrets from the minds of tycoons after pumping them full of drugs and hooking them up to a mysterious contraption. The problem, though, is the land of nod can be volatile -- as can DiCaprio's character, Dom Cobb, who is a wounded dreamer after the loss of his beloved wife.

The movie may be Hollywood's first existential heist movie, and though that may not sound like typical fare for the air-conditioning months, Warners and Legendary Pictures are banking on the movie catching on as a brainy "Mission: Impossible" by way of "The Matrix." In other words, the globe-trotting movie may have had its subconscious baggage packed by Sigmund Freud, but it also carries a passport stamped by Ian Fleming. DiCaprio says Nolan is the perfect director to turn that unlikely combination into a July hit.

"Complex and ambiguous are the perfect way to describe the story," DiCaprio said in a recent phone interview. "And it's going to be a challenge to ultimately pull it off. But that is what Chris Nolan specializes in. He has been able to convey really complex narratives that work on a multitude of different layers ... and make it entertaining and engaging throughout. You look at 'Insomnia' or 'Memento,' these movies are working on so many different levels. That's his expertise; it's what he does best, as a matter of fact."

For Nolan, "Inception" was an elusive dream. "I wanted to do this for a very long time; it's something I've thought about off and on since I was about 16," Nolan said during a break in shooting last summer. "I wrote the first draft of this script seven or eight years ago, but it goes back much further, this idea of approaching dream and the dream life as another state of reality."

Nolan split his youth between Chicago and London (he has dual citizenship). But with his stately, professorial mien and Oxford dress code, he seems far more in touch with the banks of the Thames than the shore of Lake Michigan. Ever since he was a youngster, he says, he was intrigued by the way he would wake up and then, while he fell back into a lighter sleep, hold on to the awareness that he was in fact dreaming. Then there was the even more fascinating feeling that he could study the place and tilt the events of the dream.

"You can look around and examine the details and pick up a handful of sand on the beach," Nolan said. "I never particularly found a limit to that; that is to say that, while in that state, your brain can fill in all that reality. I tried to work that idea of manipulation and management of a conscious dream being a skill that these people have. Really, the script is based on those common, very basic experiences and concepts, and where can those take you? And the only outlandish idea that the film presents, really, is the existence of a technology that allows you to enter and share the same dream as someone else."

It was the success of "The Dark Knight" (which broke records as a home-video release and now stands as the bestselling Blu-ray ever) that allowed Nolan to put his most ambitious idea on the screen. Then there's DiCaprio, who since the mega-success of "Titanic" seems to be working his way down a checklist of world-class filmmakers by teaming with Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Danny Boyle, Sam Mendes and, on four occasions, Martin Scorsese. The actor's elite education has made him more than a fellow who shows up and reads his lines; his presence led to changes in the film that may make it more accessible to moviegoers.

"I've incorporated a huge number of his ideas," Nolan said. "Leo's very analytical, particularly from character point of view but also how the entire story is going to function and relate to his character. ... It's actually been an interesting set of conversations, and I think it's improved the project enormously. I think the emotional life of the character now drives the story more than it did before."

Critics of Nolan say he makes frosty films with no detectable human heartbeat, just the clicks and whirls of his intricate story gears. "He's a cold guy who makes cold films," says one top producer with ties to Warner Bros., although it easy to hear envy in the voices of industry peers who have watched Nolan become something akin to the Hitchcock of wildly lucrative superhero cinema. Regardless, it's interesting to consider the contributions of DiCaprio (who is coming off another dark fever dream of a movie, Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island") and how they meshed with Nolan's own revised view of his original "Inception" story.

"I originally wrote it as a heist movie, and heist movies traditionally are very deliberately superficial in emotional terms," Nolan said. "They're frivolous and glamorous, and there's a sort of gloss and fun to it. I originally tried to write it that way, but when I came back to it I realized that -- to me -- that didn't work for a film that relies so heavily on the idea of the interior state, the idea of dream and memory. I realized I needed to raise the emotional stakes. What we found in working on 'Batman' is that it's the emotionalism that best connects the audience with the material. The character issues, those are the things that pull the audience through it and amplify the experience no matter how strange things get."

Altered states and untrusted perception are recurring themes in Nolan's films: "Memento" is about an amnesia victim; "Insomnia" (2002) presents a corrupt cop addled by lack of sleep; "The Prestige" (2006) is about rival illusionists; and in the two Gotham City films (the first was "Batman Begins" in 2005) there are no truly super-powered citizens, but the senses are blurred by fear toxins and ninja mind tricks. In all of them, Nolan put a premium on achieving the unreal on camera as opposed to in computer, which runs counter to Hollywood's obsession with the pixel possibilities of green screen and 3-D. With cinematographer Wally Pfister (Nolan's director of photography since "Memento") and special effects guru Chris Corbould (the man who built the Batmobile and has worked on a dozen James Bond films), the director put a premium on an old-school approach to movie magic.



Corbould's teams, for instance, built giant rotating hallways and a massive tilting nightclub set to film the startling "Inception" scenes when dream-sector physics take a sharp turn into chaos. One of the film's stars, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, spent long, bruising weeks learning to fight in a corridor that spun like a giant hamster wheel.

"It was like some incredible torture device; we thrashed Joseph for weeks," Nolan said. "But in the end we looked at the footage, and it looks unlike anything any of us has seen before. The rhythm of it is unique, and when you watch it, even if you know how it was done, it confuses your perceptions. It's unsettling in a wonderful way...we want an extraordinary thing that happens in an ordinary way. That's always been the goal."

"Inception" does have major computer effects: Several vivid sequences show a dream metropolis in churning calamity, a city skyline seems to fold in on itself as a dream begins to lose its shape and, unlike many Hollywood versions of dream surrealism, the scene has the look of a massive mechanical failure, not a morphing, liquid calamity. Nolan's dreams have the sharp edges of Escher, not the surreal syrup drips of Dalí. Architecture is a major influence on the culture of the film too with dreams that are more like blueprints than poems. That speaks to Nolan's longtime interest in architecture. A key scene in "Inception" was filmed at the architecture school at University College London, where Nolan was an English major and also met his future wife and producing partner, Emma Thomas.



There's a temptation to frame the film as a comment on the "otherness" of modern life. These are the days, after all, of second-life movies such as "Avatar," "Surrogates," "Gamer" and the upcoming "Tron: Legacy," all of which place a human consciousness into a separate being.

Nolan, though, shook his head when asked if his "Inception" is part of that cinematic conversation.

"I think ours is of an older school, ours is more of 'The Matrix' variety and the concepts of different levels of reality," Nolan said. "The whole concept of avatars and living life as someone else, there's a relationship to what we're doing, but I think when I first started trying to make this film happen it was very much pulled from that era of movies where you had 'The Matrix,' you had 'Dark City,' you had 'The Thirteenth Floor' and, to a certain extent, you had 'Memento' too. They were based in the principles that the world around you might not be real."

Cillian Murphy, the Irish actor who played the Scarecrow in the two Batman movies and is one of Cobb's targets in "Inception," said that Nolan is creating a body of work that feels somehow more mature than some of his bright- fantasy peers. "It's the fantasy world, but it's the one that the mind itself can create or fall into, so the audience can access it in a different way than these other movies where you go to another planet or something," Murphy said. "It's the place the mind goes, and it's often very dark and always interesting."

The cast for "Inception" is peppered with Nolan favorites, such as Murphy, Ken Watanabe (who was in "Batman Begins") and Michael Caine (who appeared in the director's last three films), as well as veteran actors such as Tom Berenger whose face fits the filmmaker's universe of grim choices and gun-metal hues. The film gives much of its prime screen time, however, to a pair of younger actors: 29-year-old Gordon-Levitt, who grew up on screen in the television comedy "3rd Rock from the Sun" and solidified his film profile with "(500) Days of Summer," and 23-year-old Ellen Page, who was nominated for an Oscar for "Juno." Those two play junior partners in DiCaprio's dream team.

Sipping tea in her trailer during a break in shooting last year, Page seemed a bit overwhelmed by the set, which was housed inside the converted old zeppelin hangar. "I've never really seen anything like this," she said. "It's humbling." It's the same place that Nolan used for his Batman films; Arkham Asylum, the Narrows and other Gotham City landmarks are still standing, waiting for the inevitable third Batman film that will almost certainly be Nolan's next project. That topic, though, is verboten on the "Inception" set, as is the Superman franchise that Nolan and Thomas will be trying to get off the ground in the next few years. ("I would never ask, and you shouldn't either," Murphy said with an expression of alarm. "He's got enough on his plate without us getting all fanboy on him.")

"Inception" plays to Nolan's two proven strengths -- massive scale and psychological puzzles -- but Page said what makes him a singular filmmaker is that he would attempt a summer film that evokes literature and architecture in an era when other directors seem to be tilting toward a video-game aesthetic.

"There's a tangible realism even when it gets crazy, and somehow that makes the jeopardy feel more real," Page said. "It's like reading a Haruki Murakami novel -- it's fantasy, but instead of feeling like some strange surreal world it feels very honest. The emotional spine of the story is there too, which is the key to his movies. There's the big scale, but the sincerity isn't left behind. The story is complicated but never confusing."

Time will tell if Nolan can build a major commercial success out of his mysterious blueprints, but he has already proved to be the rare blockbuster director willing to wander the dream world of challenging cinema.

"I always find myself gravitating to the analogy of a maze," he said. "Think of film noir and if you picture the story as a maze, you don't want to be hanging above the maze watching the characters make the wrong choices because it's frustrating. You actually want to be in the maze with them, making the turns at their side, that keeps it more exciting...I quite like to be in that maze."

Source: latimesblogs.latimes.com

I'm starting to get mad at reading new articles about this movie - cos I just want to see it already!!!

Thanks for posting Dom

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'Inception' Star Ellen Page Joins Christopher Nolan's 'Boys Club'
'It was the most action I've ever been involved in,' she tells MTV News of the mysterious summer movie.
By Eric Ditzian // Apr 30 2010 6:52 AM EDT

In the beginning, there was only a name: "Inception." It was the project Christopher Nolan had on his calendar rather than a return trip to Gotham City for "Batman 3." Its deliberately vague description — an action flick "set within the architecture of the mind" — set the tone for pretty much the next year and a half: plot details were on lockdown, castmembers had their lips sealed, and everyone was on a frustrating quest to unlock the mysteries of Nolan's upcoming creation.

Slowly, the layers have begun to peel away in the run-up to the film's July 16 release. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as the leader of a covert crew that is able to enter people's dreams and steal secrets locked away inside their minds. But if you ask co-star Ellen Page, it's best to head into the theater knowing as little as possible about the story. Page plays a member of DiCaprio's team, alongside co-stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy. As MTV News' Summer Movie Preview Week comes to a close, Page called us up to talk about why Nolan is a "rad guy," her childhood habit of sleepwalking and how she wants people to walk into the cinema blissfully unaware about everything except that one word: "Inception."

MTV: This film has been shrouded in mystery for so long. Are you looking forward to everyone finally seeing it for themselves so you don't have to be so vague about everything?

Ellen Page: I can just e-mail you the script if you want ...

MTV: Awesome! Do you have a pen to take it down?

Page: Yeah, I'll do that after the interview. No, I'm excited, but I haven't even seen it yet. I'm really excited. I hope that doesn't sound rude, because, like, I'm in it. Visually, this film is going to be unbelievable. But on top of that, it was just such a strong script that Chris wrote. So original. Although the concept is elaborate and complex, it's based in so much truth and so much sincerity. The actual emotional spine of the story is so touching. I think it's going to be a very special movie. I wish people would spend less energy trying to find out what it's about, because an experience is always way more exciting having no idea. It must have been awesome going to movies 20 years ago and having such a limited idea of what it's about and either loving or hating it.

MTV: What were your initial conversations and audition with Chris like?

Page: I actually had a general meeting with Chris, because I'm a huge fan of his films. I didn't know about "Inception" when I met him. I really liked him — such a down-to-earth guy, no ego at all, just a pleasant, enjoyable guy to talk to. I left the meeting just thinking Chris is this really rad guy. And then, maybe a week later, the idea of "Inception" came up and that he was thinking about me for it. Then I got to read the script in an office. I wasn't sent a copy. The script totally blew me away. I was totally into playing the character, and he decided I was right for the part.

MTV: So during the shoot, you're talking about dreams, acting out dreams. Did all that affect your own dreams at the end of the day?

Page: No, I wish it did, because it would make an interview more interesting. Give me a couple more months until we're in the thick of it, and I'll come up with something. Sometimes I have incredibly vivid dreams. I used to sleepwalk a lot. I don't anymore, thank God. I used to have night hallucinations where I would see somebody and talk to them when I was asleep. The other night, I had a dream where the headboard above my bed had all these bird nests. I was like, "What are all these bird nests doing here?"

MTV: I have no idea what that means. It sounds weird.

Page: It was so weird.

MTV: We've seen some brief glimpses of the movie's action sequences — fight scenes in rotating hallways and stuff like that. Does your character take part in the action?

Page: God, it's so hard to know what I'm allowed to talk about. I'm definitely involved with the action, which was so enjoyable. You feel like you're a little kid. There were times, especially at the beginning, where I felt incredibly out of place and slightly confused as to how I got cast. It was such a boys club. It was the most action I've ever been involved in. Chris is doing things we've never seen before.

MTV: Does working on a huge production like this make you more open to summer tentpole movies, or are you keen on more intimate films?

Page: I'm just open. As an actor, being able to do all sorts of different films is an incredible gift. I would, in a millisecond, work with Chris again. I found that an incredibly fulfilling experience. Despite the massiveness of this production, when you're working with Chris, it's an intimate experience. He's a filmmaker because he loves film and he loves making films. And there's no ego attached to what he does. When you feel that sincerity and passion, it's an amazing atmosphere. Despite how visually incredible and massive this film is — similar to "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" — there's so much honesty that makes them better than those broad summer movies that come out.

Source: http://www.mtv.com

Awesome article! And, hey, one time I was sleeping and thought Ellen was talking to me No, actually I had left the TV on, and one of these movie shows was doing a review of "Smart People"

I finally saw an Inception poster in the movie theatre yesterday....when I went to see Kick Ass again. Not much on the poster except for that photo that has already been released....with the city scape in blue. It did list Ellen's name up top.

Interesting that I saw Kick Ass again in a theatre....can't remember the last time I saw a movie in a theatre more than once that did not have Ellen in it I am practicing for Inception

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The article is very good. I'm wating for releasing "Inception" in korea.
And I heard that the subject of "Inception" is a dream which is especially Lucid dream.
Very interesting is the subject.
I'm very interested in Lucid dream. And I had a try before.
Whether you believe in me or not, sometimes I succeeded.
It was very fantastic exprience.
But ellen don't appeared in my dream yet. Umm..
Even if she apear in my dream, I can't say anything to her(How can I talk in Englsh).

Anyway, I can't wait to watch the movie.

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if wrong paragraph or word were in my writing, Please correct errors.
(It is helpful for me in studying English.)
Thanks~

--- !!! SPOILER !!! ---

Thanks Dom.... Getting more and more stoked for Inception

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Insiders have seen a rough cut and are blown away:
http://www.deadline.com/2010/05/chris-nolans-inception-seen-by-insiders/