— Still losing sleep pondering the ending of this summer’s smash hit ‘Inception’? Can’t decide whether it’s a dream or reality? Have insomnia over the thousands of blog posts and comments about the meaning(s) of the film? Well, Michael Caine — who played the father to lead Leonardo Dicaprio’s character, Cobb — has come to the rescue.

Caine, while promoting his autobiography, ‘The Elephant to Hollywood,’ on BBC Radio’s ‘The Chris Moyles Show,’ chimed in with his take on the ending: “[The spinning top] drops at the end, that’s when I come back on. If I’m there it’s real, because I’m never in the dream. I’m the guy who invented the dream.” Think that puts the debate to rest? Think again. It’s just one man’s opinion which, of corse, just adds more speculative fuel to the “meaning” fire. Time for more NoDoz! (PS: Caine did have one fact to reveal: Shooting for ‘Batman 3’ will begin this May).– Christopher Plummer has been added to the cast of David Fincher’s English-language remake of the smash Swedish thriller ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.’ Plummer will play family patriarch Henrik Vanger, the ailing tycoon who hires journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to solve the mystery of his niece’s disappearance. Plummer’s made a career of playing leaders and family heads — sometimes with dark secrets — from Captain Von Trapp in ‘The Sound of Music’ through Field Marshal Rommel in ‘The Night of the Generals’ to General Chang in ‘Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country’ to Dr. Goines in ‘Twelve Monkeys’ and Arthur Case in ‘Inside Man.’ The cast of the remake is slowly but surely being filled out now, with Rooney Mara playing Lisbeth Salander, Stellan Skarsgaard portraying Henrik’s nephew, Martin Vanger, and Erika Berger as Blomkvist’s colleague and lover.– Ben Affleck’s comeback road is starting to be paved with gold. Not only has ‘The Town’ wowed the critics and performed impressively at the box office, but the actor-director has now been offered ‘Tales from the Gangster Squad,’ a Warner bros.’ script about the L.A.P.D.’s squad of mercenary cops who tried to chase infamous gangster Micky Cohen out of the city in the 1940s. Although tons of offers aren’t (yet) being thrown his way (wait), he has a starring role in an untitled (2012) Terrence Malick project and is considering directing a Showtime pilot, ‘Homeland,’ about, you guessed it, terrorism.– Double-threat (actress-singer) Keke Palmer has been offered a part in Marvel’s 2012 actioner ‘Runaways.’ The star of TV’s ‘True Jackson VP’ and the feature film ‘Akeelah and the Bee’ told Essence.com that she was ready to get back into movies now that she’s “had a nice little break with the steady TV show … I’m definitely ready to do some more films again. I was just asked to join a new Marvel comic project called ‘Runaways.'” The film revolves around a group of teenagers who band together to run away from their homes in order to atone for their super-villain parents’ actions and to discover the secrets of their origins.