Christopher Nolan taking mind over bat-matter

Take some deep breaths, Batman fans: Christopher Nolan’s next Caped Crusader movie won’t be on screens any time soon. The writer and director has picked his next project, and it doesn’t come with a rubber suit (we think): Inception, which Nolan wrote and is set to direct, is “a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind.” The guy’s no stranger to cerebral storytelling — he wrote Memento, after all — but the phrase “architecture of the mind,” a dorm-room term if ever there were, is sending up all kinds of red flags for me. And written on those red flags is Herman’s Head. That early ’90s sitcom, literally set in a doofus’s brain, is a punchline unto itself. “Architecture of the mind” makes me think, and not fondly, of the finale for St. Elsewhere (pictured, left), in which we learned the whole series had been part of Tommy Westphall’s imagination. It’s conjuring intensely unpleasant memories of Vanilla Sky, which all took place in poor, confused Tom Cruise’s pretty little head.

State of mind movies aren’t all bad, though. Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind both nimbly play with the idea of consciousness and the self. But unless Charlie Kaufmann suddenly becomes attached to Inception, I remain nervous. Talk me down off the ledge, PopWatchers: What are some good it’s-all-in-your-head stories?

addCredit(“Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li”)