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‘INCEPTION’: Ellen Page and Leonardo DiCaprio star.
■ moviereview Sweet Dreams ‘Inception’ the best of 2010 so far. n If you’re planning on going to see writer/ director Christopher Nolan’s new film “Inception,” stop right now. With a script this intricate and delicately made, pretty much anything beyond the names of the principal actors is a spoiler. There’s just not a whole lot you can say about the movie without spilling some bit of carefully laid beans. So if you’ve already got a date set to go see it, just put the paper down. You can read my thoughts on the movie later, after Nolan’s ass-over-teakettle take on the heist flick has reduced your frontal lobe to figgy pudding. Now that’s out of the way, let’s get on with it. If you’re not planning on going to see “Inception,” do so. Play hooky from work. Go tonight. It’s that good. If you’re a fan of Nolan’s other works — most notably his debut, “Memento” — you already know that he’s a writer/director who likes to take a cleaver and pick axe to the expectations of his audience. Though he has gained quite a bit of notoriety in recent years directing the superb reboots of the Batman franchise, “Inception” really represents a return to his roots. Yes, it’s a vast and sprawling film, one that feels like it contains — just outside the reach of the camera — volumes of history that we’re never going to be privy to. At the same time, there’s the character-driven brilliance and breakneck twists that made his plot-busting “Memento” such a dark and lovely film. The story behind “Inception” sounds a bit too sci-fi for most serious cinephiles, but just go with it and you’ll be OK. In the near future (or possibly even a parallel universe), the military develops a kind of mental simulator to train sleeping soldiers:
a machine that can enter the dreams of a subject, rearrange the furniture any way the person running the simulation wants it, and then make the subject believe it’s all real. Of course, as you might imagine, this kind of thing quickly breaks out into the open market, spawning a whole new kind of crime: “extraction,” a kind of mental espionage where trained dream-thieves enter the often-bizarre world of a sleeping person’s subconscious and then steal secrets like bank account numbers, intellectual property and the like. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Cobb, one of these dream criminals. Exiled from the United States, pining to get back to his young children, Cobb ends up striking a bargain with a Japanese businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe). The job: to break into the head of Robert Fisher (Cillian Murphy), the son of Saito’s business rival. Instead of taking away a secret, however, Saito wants Cobb to do something almost infinitely harder: to plant a memory, a process called inception, which few in Cobb’s shady underworld think can work. If Cobb can pull it off, Saito will use his powerful connections to clear his record, allowing him to go home to his children. Cobb assembles his team, including young “architect” Ariadne (Ellen Page, of “Juno” fame), whose job it is to create the incredibly complicated world of the dream. Cobb proceeds to tell his crew that to get the idea to take root in Fisher’s mind, they have to go deeper than anyone has ever gone before: a dream within a dream within a dream. One issue with the plan is that every time you go down a level, time slows down exponentially, so that a minute in the
real, waking world can seem like decades to someone wandering around a subject’s mental sub-sub-basement. Worse, Cobb tells them: If they get lost, they might never make it back out. Mind blown yet? Good. “Inception” is what science fiction — and indeed film — should be. No built-bycommittee plot baloney, no unnecessary special effects, just one deeply-imaginative twist after another. Sure, it’s an oldfashioned heist movie, complete with a ticking clock and a team of experts who are all the best at their individual skill. The difference is that Nolan turns that tired old trope straight on its head with the idea of dream theft, a wrinkle so damn cool that it’s sure to have every other screenwriter kicking himself for not thinking of it first. There is so much neat stuff going on in this movie that I could write a review 10 times this long and not get to it all. Zero gravity. Runaway trains plowing through downtown streets. The shade of Cobb’s wife, who seeps through Cobb’s guilty conscience and comes out as a really, really pissed version of Lady Macbeth. Though it looks for awhile like “Inception” is finally just going to spin off into weirdo limbo, somehow Nolan holds it through the skid and gets it straightened out on the other side. It is a beautiful thing to behold. “Inception” is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea and I don’t blame you if you hate it. It takes a fair bit of focus just to keep up. The plot is so complicated that I think I’m going to make a return engagement later this week, just to pick up everything I missed. That said, if you want to know what the action/thriller genre would look like in a perfect world, this is a good place to start. Watch for this one to be a contender at Oscar time. — David Koon In case you missed it, check out Bernard Reed’s review of “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” on page 23.
p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sat. 664-2787. HEARNE FINE ART, 1001 Wright Ave.: “Collaborations,” paintings and sculpture by Kevin Cole, Benny Andrews, Kennith Humphrey, Tonia Mitchell, Marjorie Williams-Smith, photographs by Ernest C. Withers, and other work. 372-6822. HEIGHTS GALLERY, 5801 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. 664-2772. KETZ GALLERY, 705 Main St., NLR: Tim Jacob, paintings, 529-6330. LOCAL COLOUR GALLERY, 5811 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Christmas in July,” jewelry by Mary Allison, other work by members of cooperative. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 265-0422. M2 GALLERY, 11525 Cantrell Road: Work by new artists Danny Broadway, Todd Williams, David Walker, Char Demoro and Morgan McMurry. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 225-5257. RED DOOR GALLERY, 3715 JFK, NLR: Work by Twin, Robin Steves, Brady Taylor, Georges Artaud, Lola, Jim Johnson, Amy Hill-Imler, James Hayes and Theresa Cates. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 753-5227. SALON UNDERGROUND, 2821 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “More Selections from the Estate of Howard S. Stern,” paintings, prints and photographs by Leonard Baskin, Carroll Cloar, Selma Blackburn, Frank Freed, Hiroyuki Tajima, Sheila Parsons, Douglas Walton, Marjorie Williams-Smith, Jason Williamson and Stern, through July. SHOWROOM, 2313 Cantrell Road. Work by area artists, including Sandy Hubler. 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 372-7373. THEA FOUNDATION, 401 Main St.: Area artists’ open studios in THEArtists Gallery (2nd floor), 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 379-9512. TOBY FAIRLEY FINE ART, 5507 Ranch Drive, Suite 103: Contemporary Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Fri. or by appointment. 868-9882. UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK: “Groovy Summer Show,” 1960s rock band posters from the permanent collection, through July 20, Gallery III, 2nd floor Fine Arts Building. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 569-8977. UALR BOWEN SCHOOL OF LAW: “Law in a Land Without Justice: Nazi Germany 1933-1945,” World War II artifacts, through July. 7 a.m.-11 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Fri., 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Sun. WILLIAM F. LAMAN LIBRARY, 2801 Orange St., NLR: “Draw Me a Story: A Century of Children’s Book Illustration,” 40 original illustrations by Maurice Sendak, Ralph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway, William Steig, Lois Lenski, Tomie DePaola, Chris Van Allsburg and others, through Aug. 11. 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 758-1720. n Benton DIANNE ROBERTS ART STUDIO AND GALLERY, 110 N. Market St.: Area artists. 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. 860-7467. n Bentonville CRYSTAL BRIDGES AT THE MASSEY, 125 W. Central: “ArtBuzz: Vintage Vessels,” gallery talk, 11 a.m.-noon July 15, companion to “Transforming Tradition: Pottery from Mata Ortiz,” Field Museum exhibit, through Aug. 29. 479-418-5700. n El Dorado SOUTH ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, 110 E. Fifth ST.: “2010 Juried Art Competition,” photographs by John Bridges and John Watson, pastels by Virmarie DePoyster, linoleum cuts by Neal Harrington and LaToya Hobbs, watercolor by Nina Louton, and work by other artists, through July 29, Merkle Gallery. 870-862-5474. n Hot Springs ALISON PARSONS GALLERY, 802 Central Ave.: Paintings by Parsons. 501-625-3001. AMERICAN ART GALLERY, 724 Central Ave.: Jimmy Leach, Jamie Carter, Govinder, Marlene Gremillion, Margaret Kipp and others. 501-6240550. ARTISTS WORKSHOP GALLERY, 810 Central Ave.: Eletha Hise, Joanne Kunath, paintings, pastels, through July. 501-623-6401. ATTRACTION CENTRAL GALLERY, 264 Central Ave.: Work in all media by Hot Springs artists.
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