Inception (with implanted spoilers)

To clarify for max, Borges (who was a huge fan of Morel before it was published) couldn't invent dream-VR because it was already staked.

oh i see. i was hoping he had a good dream-vr story.

i knew that he and morel were friends thanks to the nyrb editions intro. i love the little drawings in that book.

or rather, casares

they even wrote a book together!

or rather, some stories, i think

imaginative stuff:

the people staring thing
people tearing you to shreds thing
being able to go into a dream
being able to go into a dream inside a dream
the projections, the totems, the limbo world
the syncing of layers with music and kicks
the effects of gravity on other layers
the stuff like the endless staircase that an architect is forced to use
being able to shape-shift after you are in a dream
getting killed to leave the dream or alternately ending up in limbo
the idea of stealing secrets or planting thoughts (without being able to do it directly)
....

there was lots of imagination put into this movie besides the artsy stuff like a city folding on itself

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

i think a good bit of bickering about this movie is because people weren't willing to accept all the made up dream rules

the effects of gravity on other layers

dreams getting weird because of external stimuli is observant, dreams ONLY getting weird because of external stimuli is the opposite of imaginative

I don't think the bickering here & elsewhere about Inception is because people resent the free pass Nolan gets after The Dark Knight. I think it's because TDK put his head above the parapet.

xpost and only one guy could shape-shift during the dream, though ellen page was able to give everybody ski suits

http://i32.tinypic.com/29vgyux.jpg

^The inclusion of this after credits were over would've explained so much^

/the effects of gravity on other layers/

dreams getting weird because of external stimuli is observant, dreams ONLY getting weird because of external stimuli is the opposite of imaginative

Except that the team put a lot of work in to STOP the dreams getting weird so that the subject doesn't realise they're dreaming. These aren't regular dreams, they're constructed, shared dreams in which the sharers are lucid.

Except that the team put a lot of work in to STOP the dreams getting weird so that the subject doesn't realise they're dreaming.

yeah, two and a half hours of this sure feels like a waste of $200 milion.

i agree that the non-weirdness was a letdown but it was still fun if u got over your desire to see weird dreams onscreen

that said if i had access to a fantasy dreamworld where i could create whatever i wanted, i sure wouldn't make it a shrine to my old apartments.

less fun than A-Team, Twilight, Knight And Day, MacGruber...basically every movie I saw that WASN'T set in the subconscious

haha I mean Eclipse, I'll take this over New Moon

"I don't like it, it wasn't like my own dreams!"

Leo looking haunted between shootouts >>> Kristen Stewart looking haunted between trees

xpost oh ffs

it was still fun if u got over your desire to see weird dreams onscreen

This really is key for me here -- the strongest complaints about the film from friends have been "But he didn't do any really crazy shit!" I went in intrigued by the general idea of heist + dream + cast + Nolan and as a thriller it worked just fine for me, so I had no regrets about seeing, I don't know, Sting's blue turtles or whatever.

btw, they WERE old when they did the train tracks thing; it was just misremembered. A shot late on was quite explicit about this.

xpost -- About NOT seeing etc. Though I would regret seeing anything to do with Sting these days anyway.

no WAY this was less fun than fuckin 'knight and day'

If you want to see Gilliam, watch Gilliam.

i owe my friend a ticket to PREDATORS because i thought this movie would be amazing, but it's SO BAD! wtf wtf wtf

no WAY this was less fun than fuckin 'knight and day'

Did you see it? I know a lot of critics just went "Tom Cruise AIYEEE" but I enjoyed watching the guy battle his demons in a psychotic dreamworld.

If you want to see Gilliam, watch Gilliam.

But I didn't! I wanted to see an exciting film with a charismatic cast set in dreams! Gilliam only would have given me the "in dreams" part.

re: gravity being imaginative
it was more imaginative seeing a slowed down time perspective of a van rolling causing the hotel to roll tjan having the movie not play with gravity at all. plus the van dropping off the bridge resulting in a zero gravity hotel scene.

as for "there wasn't enough weird stuff in the dreams" argument I must say that we never saw a dream that hadn't been made by an architect. the limbo stuff was a dream in a sense but it wasn't very random because it had been designed a good bit during Leo's 50 year or longer stay

Meanwhile, nice quick interview with Tom Hardy that went into why he disappeared for a while there.

On a roffle note, some Wall Street Journal affiliated rich dork invokes the movie. Because it's timely, you see.

http://www.impawards.com/1984/posters/dreamscape.jpg

DOH!

http://fusedfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/803.jpg

Did Drew Struzan do that or was it just a knockoff?

xpost^Now that's the good shit right there.

But as far as movies where a director with money to burn BLOWS YO MIND and a megastar wrestles with memories of The One That Got Away, this didn't hurt like Vanilla Sky.

So is the consensus that the dream worlds run 4 deep (plunging van, zero-g hotel, snow prison, Saito (or Cobb's) limbo). If so, The Saragossa Manuscript still holds the record for most levels of recursive storytelling, nesting 6 deep once and 5 deep quite a few times. Not a bedtime film, unless you revel in the confusion.

shameless plug: discussion on this got a little heated on the podcast I co-host. some mild spoilers. review starts around the 15-minute mark.

Part of me agrees with this take - http://chud.com/articles/articles/24477/1/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-MEANING-AND-SECRET-OF-INCEPTION/Page1.html

this movie is like donnie darko: the director's cut except:
-minus atmosphere
-minus intelligent humor (OMFG THAT ONE TERRIBLE JOKE WHERE HE PULLED OUT THE BIGGER GUN?!)
-minus ANY EMOTION WHATSOEVER
-minus awesome soundtrack
-minus imagination
-plus a middling protagonist
-plus a generic hans zimmer score (wtf, stop praising this bullshit)
-plus even more dull explication
-plus juno
-plus (admittedly competent) action sequences

the thing about inception and TDK is that nolan is trying way too hard to come up with something thats a masterpiece/art so its just far too po faced. its not even enjoyable on a pure explosions and heists and CGI level.

its just a pretty boring, bloated, patience testing movie, admittedly with a few moments of emotional resonance where you care a teeny bit about the characters (well, leo) and some intrigue, though it doesnt really reward you for any of that cos its such a big fucking mess.

If this movie was anything like Donnie Darko I would have set fire to the screen.

wow I expected some of the above arguments from Yahoo! Movies users....

so sad that people don't agree with me : (

http://ikbenangie.nl/joomla/images/jmovies/img_pictures/innerspace1.jpg

"hay guyz if Inception was like the reel dream world there'd be flying hot dogs and antelopes who sing german operas fuk dis i want my money bak also there was a pred ship in fischers dream"

had a dream last nite i ate amazing food for like a week straight, inception was nothing like that smh

"hay guyz if Inception was like the reel dream world there'd be flying hot dogs and antelopes who sing german operas fuk dis i want my money bak also there was a pred ship in fischers dream"

you're right, its wrong to suggest that we can do better than three mundane action movies happening concurrently with Shutter Island.

If Ridley Scott's Monopoly works out maybe Nolan can do Rubik's Cube: The Movie.

or maybe he can consolidate 6 sylvester stallone movies into pill form

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/07/ellen_pages_outfits_in_incepti.html

According to our very informal survey of grad students (er, our friends), neckerchiefs are not currently a staple of the PhD crowd, and yet she dons one in every single scene

except in the hotel and in the snow fortress...