Inception (with implanted spoilers)

I was raised in a time where we tucked our shirts into our jeans, ate our cereal, and let our neighbors in any time they wanted. That all changed after the towers fell.

What did YOU have? Bellbottoms and Vietnam? Pssh.

Speaking of which, am I alone in liking how Nolan directs action scenes? People who think he's bad at it; who do you think is good at it?

yeah i thought he pulled it off here. the action in 'batman begins' was pretty poor though. he has a whole lot of get-out-of-jail-free cards in this, and the 'on her majesty's secret service' stuff didn't really do it for me. but the zero-g fight scenes were awesome, imo. and the opening sequences were brilliant too. wonder if they'll be even better second time round, with a clearer idea of what's happening.

and the 'on her majesty's secret service' stuff didn't really do it for me

Ha, good call and you're right there -- when I first saw the figures in the snowscape on the mountain, I thought the opening of The Spy Who Loved Me instead but that's far more apt.

I suppose another Macguffin might be the weep father/son moment with Murphy and Postelthwaite, in that on the one hand you think "Ah, cliched garbage," but then on the other the whole idea IS that it's cliched garbage planted deep.

I would like to know if they cast Cotillard before or after they had determined they wanted an Edith Piaf song as a cue musical cue.

musical cue musical music. Yeah.

Oh and WTF at Lukas Haas there. More in the sense of 'wait he's still being cast in things?'

He is Leo's best friend, that is the only explanation I can come up with.

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@Sick Mouthy -- fair point, that was something I thought up but your explanation makes sense. I still don't buy that it was all a dream though. that's too lazy for Nolan. way too easy a solution. some parts that the audience is led to believe are reality are dreams, but not the whole thing, IMO.

"Hey bro. So you get to betray me and then are bundled off by security dudes after I turn down shooting you in cold blood."

"...thanks?"

xpost there.

@history mayne--stuff made a lot more sense and connected better the second time around when I saw it. it was much easier to notice small things and not have to worry about connecting the dots as much.

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did anybody else think the scene of Leo/Cotillard on the train tracks was a real pretty scene? that scene stuck with me a lot, with her face on the tracks looking at him.

I think the fact that it's never really discussed what Caine is an academic of suggests the whole thing is a dream, too.

I'd like to see a screenshot of his chalkboard.

Yes, I thought it was lovely in strange way. xp

Caine teaches Theory of Breakfast Cereal 101

OK can someone MARK THE THREAD TITLE AS *SPOILERS* cuz this is getting old

The movie's out! Fair game at this point; if you click on the thread and think we're not going to be talking about it then good grief.

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Cld well be something in the mumbling as signifier. About the only clearly enunciated scene was when Leo met Michael Caine, and came over all Leo and "it's my ONLY CHANCE so I MUST DO IT".

Snowscape: reminded me of CoD4. I thought it was going to be a deliberate gag at expense of games-playing young billionaire waster's subconscious.

xpost True, I'm still gunshy after on Yahoo message boards in 1999 people were crying that we ruiend the Sixth Sense ending for them. their sadness was so real :((((((

re: the mumbling, I don't know that we aren't overstating it a bit. other than a few things Watanabe's character said as the old man, I pretty much made out most everything that was said, and generally in movies there are always a few mumbled lines.

I'm still gunshy after on Yahoo message boards in 1999 people were crying that we ruiend the Sixth Sense ending for them. their sadness was so real :((((((

That should have been the first real indication that M. Night was bad for people in general.

M. Night is the Jose Lima of movie directing

can you not spoil the ending of sixth sense in the inception thread please? still got it to watch

Rosebud was Bruce willis's sled

you bast!

too much exposition, and a little too little clarity about what was going on from time to time.

― I’ll put you in a f *ckin Weingarten you c*nt! (history mayne), Friday, July 16, 2010 7:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban

it occurs to me that ~this is what dreams are like~ lots mental energy expended scrambling to explain nonsensical logic - most of the dialog was exposition but then yr still left going UH YEAH GUYS SYNCHRONIZED KICKS OKAYY - which is pretty hilarious and clever

one point of frustration - the leo incepted mol w/a dangerous concept in limbo reveal couldve been pretty weighty if they hadnt fucking given it away by having him say 'inception is possible, i incepted mol this one time lol' like just have him say 'its possible' or whatever - this bothered me

there were some nice meta touches that played symbiotically w/dreamscape constructs - like the ice comandos layout was so bond/video game overtly action movie to the point of being corny BUT then i mean juno grew up watching that shit so of course its gonna look like that BUT its also an irl action movie BUT then WHAT IS IRL LOL

tbf i couldve done w/90% less gunshots - its cowardly hedging against the sweet psychological imaginarium imo - tho i did v much enjoy the line 'his projections have become militarized' lol 'weve seen this before'

ps i dress beautifully IN MY DREAMS

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

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Friday, July 16, 2010 9:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hay morbs i made this thread for commenting on maxs gawker work, which imo is somewhow a fundamental betrayal of ilx I LOVE CRICKET: THE CHINATOWN OF ILX: THE CHINATOWN OF ILX > GAWKER hope to see u there

After he said his cliche-o-rama bit about one last mission and then he could get back to his family, I kind of gave up and concentrated on my ice-cream.

o hai

in dreams 'you never know how you got there' w/all the exposition the dream warrior history was never explained past 'developed by the military for training purposes'

one point of frustration - the leo incepted mol w/a dangerous concept in limbo reveal couldve been pretty weighty if they hadnt fucking given it away by having him say 'inception is possible, i incepted mol this one time lol' like just have him say 'its possible' or whatever - this bothered me

well, tbrr (or not ha), uh, i didn't rly get how leo incepted mol when they were in limbo. what does that entail? how? incepting cilian murphbro entailed all kinds of charadery and inventing situations etc. how did he trick is missus. also, you know, it's just an idea. in fifty years you'd prolly incept loads of ideas into yr significant other, right?

That's what she...um, never mind.

also, has Leo's voice changed yet?

tbf i incept people all the time irl 'hay we should go see that new what is dreams movie' 'o ok sure'

he actually uses a kind of minnesotan thing here. an odd choice but effective.

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him: "maybe there is no real"
her: "wow i'd never thought of that before"
him: "clearly you never went to college"

'lets put our heads on the train tracks now lol ok u crazy frickin hot french one'

Anna Kalolina

A bit I remembered in talking with the folks I saw this with last night -- I was actually pleasantly surprised by a couple of things that didn't happen, most especially (in light of Haas's character at the start) what I was convinced was going to be one of the team members turning to out be an antagonist/fifth column/inside man type. So when the team saw it all the way through as far as they could when I had been primed for Page or Gordon-Levitt or somebody to reveal their true colors, that was unexpected enough, and made Haas a red herring.

Related to that was Cotillard's character since I figured her first appearance and actions was explained away by her being his opposite in the employ of Saito, so the slow degradation of assumptions that followed was a good touch. Like much of the movie at base it wasn't a groundbreaking move by any means but it was nicely handled.

i thought that about edith piaf too ned!

and mayne, i agree that the hallway fight scene was good, definitely the best in the movie. the moombassa stuff / van chase was pretty weak tho

bothered me a bit how they played so fast and loose with the time differential between the different layers - if they were really on different clocks the gravity shifts wouldnt be so sudden, etc. but i was generally ok with it, it was for a reason.

i thought for a movie the last hour of which takes place with characters simultaneously in a dream, in a dream within a dream, in a dream within a dream within a dream, and in a sort of ur-dream limbo, it was pretty clear what was going on. some of the details about what when where with the kicks and all that i glossed over.

as for the last shot im betting it was jsut nolan's idea of a funny joke on the audience, which it was

it was def clear what was going on (a second viewing was surprising to me at how neatly interlocked the whole premise was during the last 30 minutes), but the mystery ending kinda calls many earlier details into question.

maybe it was a bad move to retrospectively muddle an otherwise admirably clear complicated movie

tbh i would have felt a little cheated if there wasnt some kind of GOTCHA/OR IS IT...? ending

feel like that was an admission that there is no figuring it out, jus a trippy movie abt dreams

well that could have been done in a disclaimer at the end

Inception: the Unbreakable cut.

If Shamwow had directed this Michael Caine would have explained to the audience how this was all a dream at the end.

I think the idea is supposed to be, "it's not important whether or not the top keeps spinning, cuz Leo accomplished what he set out to." Still unnecessary, though.

then they should have put THAT on a title card at the end

If only movies were more like NES games.

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See, right there, it's the snow fortress after global warming:

http://nedmartin.org/amused/pics/panel_14.gif