*PLEASE NOTE: There will be spoilers of both “Inception” and “Shutter Island” in this two-part interview with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. For yesterday’s installment, featuring extended conversation with the actor and director Martin Scorsese, click here.
Leonardo DiCaprio was very aware of the similarities between “Shutter Island” and “Inception” when he was considering starring in the latter. The idea of a man haunted by his past and living in an alternate reality, these are themes that interest him, in particular because he enjoys playing characters which are in some ways unreliable protagonists (to play on the “unreliable narrator” literary device).
“There’s nothing obvious,” he says. “It forces you to sit with the other characters and be deceitful to yourself and to the people around you. No line is taken for what it is. You can never read a line with either of these characters and say to yourself, ‘He means exactly what he says.’ There’s a hidden agenda there. Both of these characters are lost in the labyrinth of their own mind and living an alternate life completely that they hadn’t come to terms with. And how one lies to oneself is interesting, too, with both of these guys.”
If you’ve been itching for more 
All of the cards (save for the elusive James L. Brooks title 
The Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association will officially announce its winners tomorrow (after releasing a list of 
I find it somewhat appropriate to be ending my in-depth looks at the crafts categories with a discussion of Best Visual Effects. This is, after all, a category which awards the sort of behind-the-scenes crafts work that is often prominently displayed in advertisements and talked about with reverence after the film ends.
I say over 150 because I honestly lost count. In any case, the International Press Academy has announced it’s slate of nominees for the 15th Annual Satellite Awards, and as usual, every film under the sun seems to have been nominated for SOMETHING.
I haven’t bothered taking a stab at predicting this year’s Oscar winners yet. Now seems like the right time, given that everything has been seen (save for two Sony entries with comedy stylings that look to be commercial enterprises more than awards plays).
On the precipice of December, the season feels at once stale and fresh. We’re in the post-Thanksgiving food coma paradox that hits every year. But things are going to start heating up real soon.
Welcome to Oscar Talk.
Sound mixing has a lot in common with sound editing, but the distinctions are still critical. While both clearly relate to what we hear in the theater, sound editing specifically relates to the creation of artificial sounds (“sound effects”) while sound mixing brings everything together — from effects to music to dialogue (recorded on set or during post-production) to music – into the overall soundscape of a film.
Entertainment Weekly columnist (and a dabbler in fiction) Stephen King is the first out of the gate this year with a top 10 list, beating the usual early likes of Peter Travers et al to the punch.