A movie director and his leading lady feel the pressure as their shoot teeters on the edge of disaster ...Witty and big-hearted satire of the process of making an independent movie. This comes in three parts, each act dealing with a particular scene and bringing a change of emphasis. The story is almost perfectly self-contained, with unity of action, place and time, and the writing and editing keeps it clipping along at a good pace. The writer/director uses the full potential of his set up by bringing in a host of characters and a range of technical aspects of the shoot, and yet wraps it up nicely through the romantic concerns of his creations.Performances are good all round, and some real insights are delivered - the objection to dwarfs in dream sequences, the most self-obsessed person in the room coming up with the best idea (the blocking for the "admired from afar" scene). It's not a laugh a minute, but there are plenty of good moments.The only time I noticed the music was when the director was giving a pep talk to one of the actors. Maybe there could have been more jokes on that "score" - or maybe I missed them.Overall: Not a classic, but thoroughly enjoyable.

Small, low budget films hold a special place in many film goer's hearts. We embrace them as our own special offspring. It's an irrational attachment we have for them, like kidnapping our neighbor's child. But cinema, apparently, is some sort of expression of our collective desire to be acknowledged, to be contributing to the public conversation. That's a bizarre, absurd role to demand of independent films, of any film, but that's the weird world we've been born into, isn't it? The ignored, unnoticed independent film is often the container and conveyor of our most salient, real desires. Frustration and anxiety are palpable, ever present qualities of modern life, and low budget films should not be exempt. Tom DiCillo has incorporated these discomforting, disturbing qualities into his poignantly absurd film. The production of the film within the film is at the mercy of unpredictable, arbitrary forces, like malfunctioning smoke machines, incompetent crew members, emotionally distracted actors, and just plain bad luck. Nothing is as effortless and perfect as it is in the "real" movies. This revelation elevates this film into the realm of essential; essential for anyone who is considering making their own independent low budget film, and essential for any fan of quality non Studio, non mega budget films.That it can be so impossible just getting a single scene "into the can" — the expression for capturing on film a worthwhile moment — is a potent metaphor for all our own endeavors. We are continually assaulted with the infinite demands of our mundane lives but are so wiling to sacrifice so much of our precious time to the act of getting it just right, whatever "it" may be. We need to be succeeding at something, anything, in order to feel worthy. And maniacal persistence is the indispensable means to success. However, it's usually a non productive hobby, past time or diversion that occupies us so insistently.Living in Oblivion is a rare opportunity to examine this impulse of ours to perfect relatively minor, inconsequential things. The conceit of the film is that we, the audience, like to believe that we are above and beyond such tedious, temporal concerns, yet we are equally, undeniably fascinated by the intricacies of the "inner" film's creation. "How would I do it?" is a question that frames every scene. But our involvement is irrelevant. That's the paradox at this film's core. That's the ultimate message here, that we, the audience, are inconsequential. That might sound bleak and morose to some, but I found it deeply satisfying. I am not responsible, in the end, for this film's success. I am only watching.Tom DiCillo has earned a reputation as an iconoclast, as a rebel, as an anti establishment defender of the individual. I'm not sure just how justified is this reputation - he has lately directed arguably crappy TV such as Law and Order - but still, he proves himself a potent source of genuinely profound insights in this film. You will learn what it feels like to be an ambitious, hopeful, idealistic artist working in a crass, indifferent, commercial world. That's a rare treat.The fact that Steve Buschemi, Katherine Keener, and Dermot Mulroney are so wonderfully natural is proof that Dicillo has golden instincts. We are granted access to these artist's most transcendent talents. I've seen them all in many different, fantastic roles, but here they are at their absolute best, their most real. That's a quality that nearly all films aspire too, but so very few achieve. Enjoy this film for this commendable fact along with the knowledge that it's nearly impossible to make a film like this today or ever again. (David Lynch did it in 2006 with his Inland Empire which has been ignored by the general film going public. It's a monumentally original, powerful, revolutionary film experience. Charlie Kaufman also accomplished a tremendous feat of originality with his phenomenal Synecdoche, NY from 2008. Both films are subtle expressions of artistic desire in the face of a coldly indifferent, if not outright maliciously violent culture.)

Its been years sense I've seen this movie but the fact that It sticks out in my memory tells me it was one of the best independents I've ever seen.One of those diamonds in the ruffs.Amovie you may watch,just because your board and if your like me,you hate a movie in black and white unless it was made before color.The movies so good that doesn't even matter.Hard to find.Looks like it was made on a shoestring budget but worth seeking out.A movie about making a movie.Sounds boring but to me at least it wasn't.

This is for anyone who's ever tried to make a movie, or worked on a low/no budget film, it's a laugh-generator engine... but ya gotta be on the inside to really get some of the jokes."Living in Oblivion" is that wonderful kind of film that pulls you in, gives you a few points of reference, and then turns things upside down in classic screwball fashion.As a screwball film it follows all the conventions of the genre, but with a great twist, so that we become unsure if we're watching "real life", or some approximation of reality.The story is about an independent film director, attempting to complete his film, based on his own personal experiences- Or at least that what the film seems to be about at times.Nick Reve (Steve Buscemi) is trying to complete his low/no-budget film in Raw Space Studios in New York, and things just keep going wrong, from his pretentious cinematographer Wolf (Durmot Mulroney) who ends up wearing a beret and eye patch to star actor Chad Palomino (James Le Gros) who keeps re-interpreting every scene in the movie that the crew is trying to shoot. Things start going wrong right from the get-go when Reve tries to shoot a one-shot dolly in on a scene where Nicole (Katherine Keener) and Cora (Rica Martins) are daughter and mother emoting about a past event in the family. As the action progresses we discover that those in charge of making the film within the film are less than capable to the task. Things reach a nerve-wracking level when we suddenly discover that we are inside the nightmare of the director, and the action begins again. Later to complete a fantasy section for the film a dwarf actor is hired, Tito (Peter Dinklage) to act in a scene with Nicole, but things keep going wrong with adverse reactions to the script and Nick's direction. We're never sure if the "movie" gets finished but old wounds get salved and another day of creating is successfully completed.It's the little touches in the film that make this inside joke such a pleasure.Highlights are the scene with Nicole and Cora, where we feel that real emotion is being observed and something pure is artistically derived, only to be sidetracked by the incompetent bumbling of the comedy of errors that make up the film crew.Another great section is the one where Nicole and Chad are trying to finish a scene after having sex the night before and carrying all the baggage from that involvement onto the set, with all the accompanying vulnerabilities standing in their way of connecting creatively.The other great section is when we discover that Cora, the mother character of the character in the film within the film earlier, is really the director's own mother. Confused? It's all very funny once you start putting it all together in your own mind.There are some really great quotable lines in this comedy. When you want to really insult an actor call him a "Hostess Twinkie Mother F*****"- you get it when you see the movie.Another great bunch of lines: Chad Palomino: "Ya know the only reason I took a part in this movie is because someone said you were tight with Quentin Tarentino. You're nowhere man!" Tito: "Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it? Do you know anyone who's had a dream with a dwarf in it? No! I don't even have dreams with dwarfs in them. The only place I seen dwarfs in dreams is in stupid movies like this!" Although the movie "Living in Oblivion" will appeal specifically to film-connected people and those who have attempted to create a crew-involved film, even normal people will find laughs in it.You'll come back to this film again and again to look at single scenes to laugh at the stuff that goes on.