Finally finally! I had heard about the movie ‘Waking Life’ a year ago on the previous board, but now they finally showed it in my country. And I absolutely LOVED it. I’m going to buy it to watch it every time I want some inspiration for my life. For those of you that don’t know it: It’s an animation film, explicitely set in a lucid dream, consisting of a series of monologues and dialogues about the nature of reality, consciousness and dreaming. All in a floating, liquid, dreamlike style. Though some parts were better than others, I came out with my eyes wide open, feeling alive and inspired. Go see it or buy it. Or go to https://www.wakinglifemovie.com
I can’t wait to go back to New York. There’s so many theathres playing it in Manhattan.
anyone willing to sell me the dvd version? i am trying to find it.
Well for those who didn’t see this movie and want some motivation, here’s the coolest site I found about Waking Life - got it from another LDer on some mailing list:
prism.gatech.edu/~gte484v/wakinglife.html
Just go see that movie, it’s is one big lucid dream!!!
A friend of mine said to me one week ago: “hey man, I’ve heard, Waking Life is going to be shown in theatres in Germany in some weeks.” I didn’t believe him first, but if it is even shown in the Netherlands, hopefully my friend is right. However, hope has returned.
i saw the movie a couple of days ago - awesome. I used to be into lucid dreaming a few years ago but this movie totally resurged my interest. It is the reason why i found this site, (this site and the forum rocks by the way)
That bit were the main character realises he’s dreaming and then floats through the city - sublime! I seriously began to doubt whether or not i was dreaming while watching that film.
As for the philsophical diologue though, it kind of bored me, reminded me too much of my first year uni philosophy lectures.
I saw the movie yesterday! Way cool man! 
I especially liked all those dialogues.
But hey, does enyone know how is the animation technique called? I’ve never seen anything like it before.
There is more info about the animation technique on the website. It is basically people tracing video stills to create “cartoon” animations.
sputnik: i think it’s called rotoscoping. It’s when you edit a movie frame-by-frame.
The lightsabers in star wars are made the same way.
That is right, rotoscoping. It was also used in some old-school special effects, like the lightsaber fight scenes in early Star Wars movies, but they didn’t edit the entire frame, sonly parts of it. Whereas, in this movie, they edit the entire frame on a seperate transparency and use that still as the replacement.
guys: i am disappointed. it’s not your fault, of course, but i was sure that the movie will be shown at least in one near big city. I searched a german cinema-website for the date and tickets and such stuff for the movie but all i found was a high rating and only 4(!) cinemas in Germany which show this movie. Imagine! 4 cinemas in whole Germany (Germany is the biggest country in Europe). That sucks, because these 4 cinemas are in the capital (Berlin) twice and two other big cities much more away from me than Berlin. So I could only enjoy a nice description of the movie and one of the highest ratings of all movies ever but no cinema to watch it.
Now it’s clear for me why people download illegal movies from the web. Luckily I watched this movie at a friend of mine a while ago and so I had at least seen it once (in English) 
I don’t know what’s wrong that it isn’t to be shown more but I guess that either the publishers of this movie got enough money or they thought that not so many people may be interested in it.
I may repeat myself, but THAT SUX.
But what else i have to say is, that this movie is really great. i never saw a movie with so much philosophy in it. i really enjoyed it. the technique they used is awesome and gave the movie its unique feeling.
I must say I love Waking Life. What an amazing, interesting, beautiful, and thought provoking piece of film! I do have a question, though. Does anyone know Richard Linklater’s thoughts on Lucid Dreaming? He seem like a very smart man and I would like to hear his opinion.
I really want to see this movie now that I have read all the good reviews on it and for just the fact that it deals with this subject. Problem is, I can’t seem to find it anywhere, so my only other alternative is to order it online.
I’m kinda hesitant to buy movies for full price though, when I can rent them. I mean $20 for a DVD is quite hefty.
A side note about rotoscoping - it was very interesting to read about how the animators made this film come to life. I am very interested in animation and have rotoscoped lightersaber battles before. It’s a lot of work but the end result is worth it. This type of rotoscoping seems much more tedious even. (I was reading about how there was a team of 30 animators, and it took 250 hours of work to do 1 minute of film!) Some of the critics don’t realize how much hard work went into this and how it looks like they achieved the desired effect beautifully!
I recently saw the bizarre movie waking life and was disappointed. When he goes Lucid he does nothing but walk around looking for a way to wake up. No offence but what an idiot. Why didn’t he have fun?
I have the feeling that he faded in and out of lucidity. 
First of all i think there’s a topic for this movie somewhere…
About why he didn’t have fun? well i think the director didn’t want it to be like that, maybe he wanted to be a “talk-a-tive” good for sleeping movie(lol). No it was good if you have time to see the movie, it’s very philosphical and open-minded.
I don’t know that he was actually looking for a way to wake himself. Most of the time he was interested in the conversation that was going on. There was a time when he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or not. Its not really clear if he is dreaming, tripping, or dead. Although due to the conversation he had inside the dream, he must have known about lucid dreaming somehow. Otherwise it would not be planted in his mind.
The movie was kind of dry of anything interesting, and also the fact that he had such long conversations was kind of far fetched for a dream. I don’t think I would ever have a conversation for more then thirty seconds while in a dream. Just doesn’t seem possible.
The movie did have some interesting ideas that I had never thought of before. Especially the one that Ethan Hawk mentioned how maybe its possible that the point where you die, to the point where your brain dies might have a dream state and the time might seem like an infiniti since you won’t become conscious again.
It was very hard to find, indeed ! I finally found it and merged the topics ! 
this was a very strange movie, had some interesting ideas though.