Christopher Nolan Modern Master Award

Reviewed By Nick Hincapie. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2011.

I had the great pleasure of seeing Christopher Nolan receive the Modern Master Award last Sunday. I have admired all of Mr. Nolan’s previous work from “Memento” to  “The Dark Knight” so I was very happy to see him get this recognition for all of his work. I was bit surprised when I heard he was receiving the award because he has only made seven films in his career which shows how great of director he is. They started the show with the moderator Pete Hammond praising all of Nolan’s work then with a short montage of all of  the films he’s made which is always fun to see at these tributes.

It was really interesting to hear Nolan talk about his process of film making and working with actors. For me the mos interesting part of the show was hearing Nolan talk about how he became involved with the Batman films because I have always been a huge fan of comic’s. Nolan talked about working with Heath Ledger on “The Dark Knight”  and said “Heath was all about surprise, he keeps the audience on edge, they don’t know what he’s going to do next.” Nolan then gave some information about his upcoming film “The Dark Knight Rises” and confirmed that they are 12 weeks away from shooting.

It was good see Nolan receive this award just days after his film “Inception” was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars. Unfortunately Nolan was not nominated for Best Director which is ashame because “Inception” was one best directed films of the year. It’s great to see Nolan getting all of this recognition after only making seven films. Few directors have achieved this much in their careers but Nolan has achieved this and has placed himself among the very best directors in history. Hopefully Nolan has more interesting ideas in his head and continues to make great films and one day win an Oscar.