Waking Life

Watching Waking Life is like eavesdropping on a theoretical discourse between Kierkegaard and Kerouac, while standing in a modern art museum as the paintings come to life and melt into your visual cortex. An eye-popping, mind-blowing, groundbreaking, conceptual piece of stream-of-consciousness pop-art philosophy, director Richard Linklater's film turns the notions of dreaming and reality inside out, while telling an absorbing tale of a teenage boy (Wiley Wiggins) trying to wrap his brain around a ponderous waking dream from which he can't seem to escape. Shot in live-action on digital video, and then painted over in post-production with wildly vivid--yet startlingly life-like--animation, Waking Life oozes surreal artistic and cerebral vitality. Highly recommended. (R. Blackwelder)