Inception, the movie that makes this Summer almost worth living through -- almost -- has many cool things going on for it. Christoper Nolan's intoxicating love for cinema -- his characters always dream mashed-up film frames, from 2001 to Shining to La Jetée to silly James Bond movies; the little cruel visual jokes -- all reality is eventually unreliable because cinema is always more real anyway; the fact that Nolan is probably the only man in Hollywood, with the exception of Gore Vidal, who's read Calvino, and gawd bless him for it; Leonardo DiCaprio's successful attempts at hiding his double chin (we still <3 you Leo).
But one of the things that fascinated Opera Chic the most was the spooky grandeur of Hans Zimmer's score.
Maestro Zimmer just spoke to the Los Angeles Times: and while in the process of singing an ode to, well, Johnny Marr (forgive Zimmer, he's old), he makes quite a few interesting points:
"Instrumentalists aren’t interchangeable," Zimmer continued. "I’m thinking about Jacqueline du Pre playing Elgar Cello Concerto. There are many great performances, but her performance it that performance. I said to Chris, ‘What about Johnny Marr?’ I was going to ditch it if it wasn’t going to be Johnny."
The fact that Zimmer and Nolan had the balls to recycle "Non, je ne regrette rien" -- quite probably the most lamely overused cliché in the history of music -- as a key plot element and the movie's loopy, bizarre version of the song actually works -- well, it just makes one grateful for the fact that Nolan didn't go into investment banking and chose film directing instead.