Good concept, poorly executed.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Nick Reve (Steve Buscemi) is the director of a low budget film. Nicole Springer (Catherine Keener) is his star. Wolf (Dermot Mulroney) is the artistic cinematographer. Wanda (Danielle von Zerneck) is the production assistant. The shoot keep getting interrupted and Reve blows up but it's all a dream. Reve directs another sequence but it turns out to be Nicole's dream. Then the filming continues on a dream sequence with angry Tito (Peter Dinklage) as a dwarf.It's a perfectly fine as a behind the scenes indie but the two dream reveals just annoyed me. The movie is not particularly dramatic or funny. The first dream reveal deflated my expectations but the second one was the real killer. By the time the third section comes along, I didn't care about anybody or anything in the film. I do understand Tom DiCillo is trying to portray but one dream reveal is more than enough to get the point across.

I stood this for 41:33---root canal is more bearable than this gruesomely predictable time- waster from the indie psycho ward. All the by-the-numbers indie elements are here: zero budget, non-existent production value, flaccid pace,"edgy" characters (=weirdos), cut-&-paste "script" (no more than a collection of notions about what a film *really* is)---in other words, the same old indie riff.*Yawn* They crank these things out, like sausages, for the tax break that these born-to-lose duds provide- --their only reason for being. These indie dogs have a liturgical quality---lovable losers struggling through life, make you laugh/make you cry, blase blase. Absolutely nothing new here. The inevitable Steve Buscemi--- hideously loathsome in the stomach-turning "Ghost World" (2001), is here doing his indie thing (=pre-psychotic nut-job) for the ten thousandth time. Next case. This is pure indie, to the bone: ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad absurdum. There will always be a small hard-core audience for junk like this, just like the market for '70s TV sit-coms, banjo music, political "documentaries", etc. "Bad & The Beautiful" (1951) and "Le Mepris/Contempt" (1963) are the real-deal films about movie-making, made by pros who knew what they were doing---but for grown-up adults only. Indie-stoner characters will salivate over this, for sure---they're an easy sell. It's worth noting this pimple got SEVEN "awards". From whom, and for what ? "Citizen Kane" (1941) only got three.

Just one of the most engaging, likable, watchable films I've ever seen.What?!!! I am not going to write 9 more lines of fluff to satisfy some arbitrary requirement by the web site. You want a comment to improve the site? Stop with the 10 line minimum. Brevity is the soul of wit. Q.E.D.Now is the time for all good men...I could have Danced all night, I could have danced all night and still have begged for...Oh, Hi, White Fang. Is that meringue pie for me?The good ol' song of Wah-hoo-Wah, We'll sing it o'er and o'er... It cheers our heart and warms our blood, To hear them shout and roar.

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.