Inception (with implanted spoilers)

Tom Hardy was indeed awesome

I looked him up on imdb to see why he looked so familiar to me, and it turns out he was that horrible Jean Luc Picard clone in Star Trek Nemesis!

He's phenomenal in Bronson. Good actor generally, I first noticed him in the BBC4 remake of A For Andromeda a few years ago. Always notice when he pops up randomly in something - a tiny cameo in Marie Antoiette, supporting role in Guy Ritchie's godawful Rock'n'Rolla. He usually plays nutters/weirdos. Hopefully this will lead to bigger, better roles.

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it was definitely a dream at the end--the kids were wearing the same goddamn clothes theyd been wearing all movie

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Haha, good, simple point. Well noticed / deduced.

yea when I see it later tonight there's like five items mentioned in this thread alone that I plan on taking a close look at.

i would probably have liked this more when i was 18 and smoked more wed. at that point i hearted the heck out of films about dreams/reality/memory/_____. like 'brazil' and 'existenz' got under my skin in a big way.

liked so much about this, and it's obviously amazing for a blockbuster, but it was never uncanny. (better than 'the matrix' though.)

too much exposition, and a little too little clarity about what was going on from time to time. my fave moment was probably the train coming down the street. but i don't entirely understand the limbo thing. the time differential is an interesting idea and very cinematic in execution, but the limbo idea felt way too far away from anything i've experienced.

lot of it reminded me of the collapsing memories in 'eternal sunshine', but not in a good way.

helped out by pretty amazing cast: hardy and jgl espesh.

maybe as i get older and jaded and lyfe gets more and more real i get less interested in exploring the idea that hey man dreams, reality, what's really real nahmean?

you smoke wed.

i actually dug the amoutn of exposition, i was impressed that it was pretty well thought-out, except for the time disparity between the different levels which they cheated a lot.

mostly i liked this.

when shit gets real though dude just can't direct a fast-paced action sequence to save his life.

also: shutter island much?

lol'd at max's line that leo shd've kept the accent

but yeah s0 much like 'shutter island'. tragic dead wife and all. liked 'em both.

probably going to see this again as part of 'curb your enthusiasm' type mix-up. might help.

juno's line 'whose subconcious is this' was lol but im kind of like -- that's a fair question? she designs the thing. but why is it only leo's mental artefacts who intrude.

sorta reminded me of that guinness ad with the big beat soundtrack from the 1990s, as well as 'intolerance'.

tragic CRAZY dead wife who he couldnt save from her craziness no less

sorta reminded me of that guinness ad with the big beat soundtrack from the 1990s, as well as 'intolerance'.

― I’ll put you in a f *ckin Weingarten you c*nt! (history mayne), Friday, July 16, 2010 7:54 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark

oh man that is so one for the print campaign

guess i was also a bit disappointed that shit didnt get weirder and cooler the deeper they got. leo & marion really spent 50 years designing a generic-looking city with a bunch of their old houses?? they weren't having magical adventures and flying thru space and shit?

also the way the staircase thing finally got pulled out i really expected j g levitt to actually say "lol"

eternal sunshine handled dreams/memories way more "realistically" and interesting

also the way the staircase thing finally got pulled out i really expected j g levitt to actually say "lol"

― al-goreda (s1ocki), Friday, July 16, 2010 7:56 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i actually did "lol" because what he said was "paradox" and it was really dumb

leo & marion really spent 50 years designing a generic-looking city with a bunch of their old houses?

exackly! it was a really depressing place, and kind of empty of people? i dunno, the dreams that 'get' me are ones involving people i haven't seen in years. probably more like 'land of the lost' than the video game 'civilization' (iirc, i haven't played a video game in a while).

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otm x 2

ken watanabe was pretty great too i thought

he looks kinda like jimmy smits

aha, not guinness, smirnoff, and directed by michel gondry. and using pre-matrix bullet-time.

boom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vj4jppqwkw

http://www.taoistic.com/images/chuangtzu-3.jpg

SPOILET

I kept expecting the kids to have horribly disfigured faces the way that he shied away from looking at them.

or clown faces

u know i did actually like this and thought the premise was pretty clev, and i give it props for making me give a shit about stuff that happens in a dreamworld - it actually felt like there were things at stake, people in danger, etc

was hoping theyd have lil leo faces

yeah the last 20 minutes or so were hella tenssse~

anyone else have trouble making out ken watanabe's mumbling in the first 30 mins or so

fuckin everyone mumbled in this movie

anyone else have trouble making out ken watanabe's mumbling in the first 30 mins or so

― al-goreda (s1ocki), Saturday, July 17, 2010 1:40 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yes. i was wondering if it was the particular screening i was in. but the dialogue was mixed too low, especially him. and at the end too.

inception: secretly a mumblecore film?

not enough sofas

o come one everyone's lying all draped all over the place all the time

(come on)

come on come al

max, what adjectives are you warehousing in case any beyond "sweet" are needed for films w/ actual substance?

pls 2 use only four syllable words to describe movie

I notice you Millennials love to use both "pretty dumb" and "great" to describe the same film

cuz u know, they're movies, just brain candy

anyways i want to militarize my dreamspace

u gonna bother to see this one morbs or just go on auto-complain mode for 400 posts

~~there is no difference between substance and surface~~

hey quick q who were they being chased by in that super-shaky-cam moombassa chase sequence?

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so, if it was all a dream at the end omg THEN his wife was right and she's now awake back in reality which leaves leo, well, where, snoring on the couch somewhere? oh god what.

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the same dudes who the japanese guy gives the polyester architect to when theyre taking off in the heli, so, the powerful forces of the anti-extraction "maybe real world" ppl who have been attacked and robbed by leo et al? dont remember really if they are named...hmmm, good q.

when shit gets real though dude just can't direct a fast-paced action sequence to save his life.

― al-goreda (s1ocki), Friday, 16 July 2010 23:49 (Yesterday)

otfm. it's like the dude's afraid to use a long shot when people are fighting.

was it just me or did it seem like ellen page brought her own wardrobe to the set, it was like everyone dressed in these perfect retro suits and shirts and then theres fuckin JUNO in her g-damn bandana

No, this really annoyed me. It seems like she dresses the same way in every movie she is in.

I notice you Millennials love to use both "pretty dumb" and "great" to describe the same film

Maybe our hyper-accelerated brains are just better than you Bedrock residents' at embracing complexity and contradictions! How 'bout dem apples?

~~words~~ they mean so many things

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Mumbling, lack of clarity with certain things, some riles not necessarily being fully followed - all this unroll as being signifiers that the whole thing was a dream.

Apologies for 6am iPhone typos.

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Even better the second time, because I knew what to look for this time. Though I have to say, the average IQ of my fellow moviegoer had to have dipped at least 40 points from the first showing.

@Sick: I don't know that I buy that the "whole thing" is a dream. The totem Leo has falls over, and while that could happen in a dream, since the totem behaves differently in different environments, I have to think some of it was real. Also, the 'secret' that Mal had was the totem -- she owned it in the real world, so she had it with her in the dream. Locking it away meant she'd never have to know she was dreaming.

Now, interesting things I noticed the second time...

*Besides the ending, there are two other instances prior to the commencement of the inception where Leo spins the totem and the audience is not allowed to see whether it falls over or spins continuously.
*It is implied multiple times that being in 'limbo' can cause great harm to one's mind. When Saito says he will honor Cobb's agreement shortly after he is shot, Cobb replies that if he goes into limbo, he won't even remember they had an agreement. Yet he goes into limbo, and does remember, in the last sequence.
*Cobb's grandfather tells him that he never taught him to use shared dreaming to steal, implying that he only began using extraction illegally after he left the United States, after Mal died.
*It is never established how long Mal has been dead or how long Cobb has been gone.
*When asked how Mal was in real life, Cobb's partner says she was "lovely", implying that he knew her. This indicates that Cobb's partner knew Mal, which then means he knew Cobb prior to his involvement in illegal activity, and may have worked alongside him.
*Cobb is cognizant of the fact when he is in limbo that it is not reality. It is implied that Mal is too, as she consciously locks away her totem so that she won't know it is not reality.
*Cobb shows Ellen Page's character the house Mal grew up in inside the fourth layer of the dream, and it is a shoddy construction worthy of condemnation, hinting that Mal may have grown up in poverty.
*Cobb says he and Mal spent about 50 years in limbo, and there are shots of them 'growing old together', hand in hand, as elder adults. Yet when both lie on the train tracks, committing suicide and returning to reality, they are both their young selves again.
*The passport did have writing in it, although it was not clearly visible as to what it was.
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So, tying this altogether, I think we can effectively rule out that he was reunited with his children. Kids that young grow very quick, and it's never stated how long he has been gone, but I would guess at least a year or more. They likely wouldn't look exactly as he remembered them -- even if they were the same size, a different haircut, and as max suggested, different clothing.

I don't care who you are or what your connections are, clearing someone of murder charges likely takes more than a 5 minute phone call. Saito also admits he has no way to prove he can do it. I am guessing Saito admits in limbo that he has no way to clear Cobb of his crimes, that it was a ruse to get him to perform the inception. Cobb then probably stayed behind in the world he created and figured he'd never seen his children again, so that he would just trick himself into believing he did.

Since it was implied that being in limbo can cause harm to one's mind, I think we would have to assume the 50 years in limbo caused Cobb some psychosis and resulted in difficulty in telling the difference between reality and fantasy. It is possible that he never had children in real life. The children are never shown in any pre-limbo memory of Cobb's -- just limbo memories, and post-limbo memories. It is possible he conceived them while in limbo, and THAT'S why he can't see his children again -- because they don't exist.

Ok....someone else run with it, or I won't go to sleep tonight.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-07-13/film/with-inception-can-christopher-nolan-save-the-summer/

"One of my favorite brain teasers, or things to occupy my mind with when I have spare time, is that if you look in a mirror, left and right are reversed, but up and down are not. How is that possible? I've been trying to wrap my head around that for decades and I make no progress. If any of your readers have the solution, I'll be interested."

and fucking magnets, how do they work?