Wilfred the Green Duck.

So I wrote last night in a power cut. I wrote this morning when Robin woke up for work, despite not needing to be at work until half eleven. Then I missed the early bus to work and was therefore five minutes late.

Um, yeah. Turns out writing before work is not a good idea, because I push myself for 'a little longer' and then leave it too late before I get up for work, and then I'm late, and then I get stern looks and have to stay afterwards. But it does leave me raring to continue writing. Plus, today it didn't exactly matter because I've agreed to stay the afternoon due to excessive busyness.

But I also have Wilfred the Green Duck. Wilfred the Green Duck came into my possession today as I bought a ticket for a local duck race and got an adorable little green duckie as a souvenir. For those unfamiliar with the tradition, British people sometimes do a weird thing where we all buy a ticket and in doing so sponser a rubber (well, plastic) duck. A big sack of these ducks, which are numbered to correspond with the tickets, get chucked into a local river and they then race downstream to the finish line. There are usually prizes given from the pot of money from participants, though most of the money goes to a particular charity or cause. I think it's a brilliant tradition and I love buying ducks for duck races. But this time I got Wilfred.

Wilfred is now sitting on top of my computer screen with his newly-given name blutacked to his chest. My day went from hellish to bearable the minute I got a small green duck :) It's the tiniest things that make the world awesome.

Am I middle-aged already?

Twitter confuses me. Like, really confuses me. It's...how does it even work? I mean, I've got a Twitter account, posted a couple of tweets but I don't talk to people in real life on a regular basis...why would I have staccato discussions on the Internet with them mostly consisting of symbols and text speak?

Plus there's this whole weird culture of being able to actually talk to famous people on there. Internet stalking reaches new levels and I am simultaneously in awe and slightly scared. First there's Google searches with IMDB, online pics and celebrity stalker sites, then there's Facebook and Myspace where you can suddenly type in someone's name and find out if they have a profile there, and then Twitter where you can follow their daily mundanities like some kind of reality TV show. Now, I'm not ragging on Twitter - I love Felicia Day's tweets and I'm sure if I were to think of something worthwhile to tell the world about in 140 characters (as opposed to the lengthy ramblings I post here), it would be a highly useful tool, but half of it is incomprehensible anyway.

And following...that also confuses me, I mean, it's awesome to be able to see what your friends and favourite musicians/writers/actors/whatever are posting on a day to day basis but the rapidity of Twitter makes one piece of information obsolete by the next minute.

It makes me wonder if I'd had my heyday of laughing at my parents for not understanding the Internet and am now one of the intellectually out-of-date. But then I suppose if I can get over the shame of Internet fangirling, maybe it could be useful to know when Neil Gaiman is bathing his dog or whatever.

'Inception'

This is the kind of film where I'd usually leave it a while before making definitive comments to allow it to percolate and make sense in my head, but goddamit I just can't stop thinking about it. I guess this is how people who watched 'Avatar' and decided they wanted to live on Pandora felt, only instead of a tropical world filled with aliens I can't stop thinking about dreams. I've always had incredibly vivid dreams but no ability to lucid dream except when directing a narrative, and that doesn't usually work for long (and I'm kind of grateful -some of my best ideas have come from dreams). But, like the very concept of 'Inception' (an idea planted subtly inside the mind so it can influence someone's decisions), the film refuses to leave me alone. Damn you Christopher Nolan, stop sneaking into my dreams and influencing my life!

Worst thing is I was actually put off by the coverage it got in the film magazines I read. I just got kind of sick of seeing pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio in a suit staring just above the camera, but I'm terribly glad I bothered.

I kind of feel like I've been waiting for 'Inception' for quite some time without realising it. It's a brilliant piece of cinema that doesn't make you question your reality to the same extent as 'The Matrix', but shows you the possibilities of what virtual worlds can be. It's cyberpunk for the new millenium, without ugly jacks and 'Avalon'-esque cyber suites, instead an organic and psychic journey into different levels of consciousness. Honestly, I was mentally designing a roleplaying game as I watched the film, because the world's internal consistency is really really good. Of course, flashy special effects and high-concept awesomeness are nothing without a good story and characters, as the Matrix sequels showed us. The thing that makes this film so damn good is the actors. Leonardo DiCaprio is Dom Cobb (I consistently misheard names throughout the film - 'Dom' as 'Tom', 'Mal' as 'Mol' and 'Seito' as 'Zeito', so forgive me if any are incorrect), a highly skilled 'Extractor', who breaks into people's minds and steals their secrets. Cobb is deeply messed-up on many different levels and the audience's journey of discovery is with him rather than the plot. The plot stands up really well on its own, but it also provides a fantastic vehicle for bringing his personal issues to crisis and resolution. Cobb's wife, Mal, has been haunting his journeys into the dream world, causing problems and messing up his heists. In a wonderfully James Bond-esque section at the beginning, cross turns into double cross with pace and tension, while the audience is still desperately trying to understand why they're in Japan...and then someone's dream...and, yeah, OK, let's just go with it till they explain it. Cobb's attempts to reconcile with his wife, get back to his children, avoid men who are hunting him and clear his name are all carefully woven around the plot. DiCaprio portrays Cobb's inner life and emotion with depth, realism and subtlety that show his acting skills: he is Cobb, just as Heath Ledger was the Joker in 'The Dark Knight'. It never feels like DiCaprio is acting because you can't see the cracks, the self-consciousness and the decisions to play it this way or that. The supporting cast (if they can even be called that - this is an ensemble piece) are brilliant too. Even the characters with the least screentime are well thought-out and likeable. Ellen Page is wide-eyed and adorable with that nice edge of intelligence she does so well, but her character Ariadne (get your subtle Greek myth references here) is smart and audacious enough to basically save the day, which Page plays well. I hope I'm not the only one who noticed the slightly creepy but brilliant vibes of emotion between Cobb and Ariadne (symbolically she mimics both Mal and Cobb and there's a definite 'other woman' feel to the scene where Adriadne breaks into Cobb's memories). But I like that there isn't a love interest (except Mal, kind of, in a messed-up way) - it would have been all too easy to have a brilliant architect from Cobb's past as Ariadne so he could simultaneously resolve his issues with Mal, move on to someone new and tick a Hollywood box. Thank you, Mr Nolan, for constantly surprising me.

Man, I'm going to go on about this all day, but every character in the thing was good. Like Eames (Tom Hardy), the guy who mimics figures from a person's life while in their mind, and has some of the best snarky lines (plus is British and therefore awesome). Then there's Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). I adore Arthur for his deadpan exhanges with Eames and Ariadne. If Gordon-Levitt had played the character weakly, he could have faded into the scenery, but like every other character in this film, Arthur in 'Inception' just makes me want to know more. Even the 'Chemist', Yusuf (Dileep Rao), Cillian Murphy as the 'Mark', Ken Watanabe as Saito and Marion Cotillard bring depth and brilliance to their performances, however little they're onscreen or archtypal they're required to be. I mean, this film had Michael Caine and Pete Postlethwaite as bit-parts, for God's sake! The strength of the cast really elevates 'Inception' to awesomeness.

The effects are top-notch, too. Nolan likes to do things the hard way rather than relying too much on CGI (thank God somebody does) and the fight scenes are enjoyably non-Matrix-y. This isn't beautiful, balletic wuxia fighting: it's people who are pretty decent at fighting punching and shooting each other. Still, if that sounds boring, bear in mind that one fight scene takes place in a hallway as it tips to bizarre angles and eventually goes into zero-gravity. Yup, zero-gravity. And Nolan did that with a minimum of CGI. It looks awesome. The conceptions of the dream-worlds are beautifully done as well. They're shot to look real, giving the minimum of clues that you're in a dream, but then Paris folds over on itself or water starts bursting through every window. And then there's the great, eerie city of Limbo, filled with crumbling edifices and memories. Some critics have commented that Nolan's dreamscape is very limited and mundane, and I must say my dreamscape would likely be some kind of floating zeppelin library, but it's necessary. See, the whole point is to trick the Mark into thinking they're not dreaming. Or, sometimes, to think they're dreaming, and then think they wake up, and they're actually still dreaming. So a city made purely of hamburgers is probably not what the dream thieves are going for. Still, I'd be interested to see what characters made inside their own heads when they dreamed (we see the dreamscapes of Cobb, Ariadne and Seito, but they're all pretty mundane. I like to think Eames's would involve some kind of stately pleasure-palace where he can snark all day long).

The pace of 'Inception' is weird, more novelistic than movie-pace, but it kind of works. Frankly, when you have a climax consisting of three action scenes across three dream worlds, each with its own level of time distortion, I have to give serious kudos. Pretty much the only criticism I can level at 'Inception' is that it could have been several different films and each is one I would watch. Or a TV series. I would love a TV series with this kind of conceit and talent behind it, but that would never happen or would end up like 'Dollhouse'. There is an awful lot squeezed into the film and it's already pretty long. Nolan doesn't suffer fools gladly in his films and you know if you're going to see a Nolan sci-fi thriller you'd better be prepared to keep up, but the expectation might well put off some viewers. But damn, I would love to see more heists in the dream scape and exploration of the concepts behind it, as well as the characters I now like so much. I was really sad when 'Inception' ended (though also satisfied with its conclusion) because there was no more of it. I simulataneously hope for and fear a second movie, because Nolan has built a world I want to spend more time in, but the thing that makes 'Inception' really great is its emotional heart, and I'm not sure that could be sustained for another film. Still, I want more Eames and more Arthur, more Ariadne and Seito: I want to see where they come from and how they develop. It's enough to drive a girl to fanfiction.