Inception and a definition

We saw Inception last night. It was... like having my brain put in a jar and alternatively fed with shrooms and poked with a stick. What a mind-bending trip of epic proportions!

It is directed by Christopher Nolan, possibly my favourite director in the world (he is the genius responsible for Memento, The Prestige and Batman Begins. I see The Dark Knight as a minor blemish in his otherwise illustrious career to date).

And in true Nolan form, it's a movie that keeps you on your toes. Poor TSC thought we'd go see a movie to relax and said that his brain was working harder watching the film than if he'd been home doing his varsity assignments.

The cast is fantastic, with Leonardo DiCaprio proving once again that he is indeed a fine actor who should be remembered for his more recent roles rather than Titanic, along with Ellen Page (the chick from Juno), Ken Watanabe (you'll remember him from The Last Samurai, Batman Begins and Memoirs of a Geisha), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 Days of Summer and 10 Things I Hate About You) and the much underrated Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins and Red Eye).

But what made the film for me is how Nolan (and his very talented editor) managed to convey incredibly complex concepts (at some points you are watching a dream within a dream within a dream) without losing the audience.

I'm a fan of sci-fi that makes you think (not the run of the mill aliens invade the world stuff) and of well-crafted action movies (not the type that feature Arnie, Stallone or Seagal). This, for me, was the perfect mixture of the two.

This is one of those movies that I will watch again on DVD and hope to see the special features and making-of info.

Have any of you seen it? What were your thoughts? When people ask me what I think of it, I'm going to tell them I'll let them know when I've finished thinking of it.

A word of caution though - don't see this one before bedtime. Your mind will still be trying to fit all the puzzle pieces together.

Now, that definition...

I realised that many of you have no idea what I mean by "ghostwriting". Sorry about that. You know how every industry has its own jargon and TLAs (three-letter acronyms) and you kind of forget that they don't make sense to anyone else? That's what happened here.

To clear things up, here's what a ghostwriter is, courtesy of WorldWideFreelance.com:
A ghostwriter is a writer who writes on an assigned topic under someone else's name, with their consent. They often write books completely from scratch but sometimes their work involves rewriting or polishing an existing work.

Most books by famous personalities are actually written by ghostwriters. When you see an autobiography or memoir from a politician, businessperson, or celebrity, chances are that it has been written by a ghostwriter.

A client may decide to hire a ghostwriter because the client does not have any writing talent or because they are too busy. Ghostwriters, for their part, are usually well-established writers already, and are selected on that basis.

What Do Ghostwriters Write?

Ghostwriters are hired to write many types of documents, from autobiographies for famous personalities to e-books for internet marketing gurus, and even letters for politicians.

They also write fiction. Sometimes it is for a series of books written by several ghostwriters under one name, as with the stories of Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys. Ghostwriters also continue to write novels under the name of popular authors who have died, as in the case of Robert Ludlum.

There. Now I can pretend that this blog is educational, and not just an arbitrary selection of my crazy thoughts!