Inception (with implanted spoilers)

never understand 'lack of character development' as a criticism. sometimes not developing is part of the story. or lack of story. like in 'marienbad'. the dude who gets incepted 'develops' and learns to be his own man n e way.

xpost

kind of think movies are effective through their formal architecture innit. but the latter is way interesting.

like sorry scarjo, you're just not a-maze-ing enough

hmayne I don't have a problem w lack of character development unless the film tries to make it a plot point like leos conflicted relationship w cotillard

I don't understand why people are complaining that Nolan got dreaming wrong in the movie when the cornerstone of the plot is that they are crafting realistic-as-possible scenarios in order to fool the mark's subconscious but we've gone over that before.

Like, I get "I don't like the choice made with the dreams because it shut off a lot of potentially fantastic visual images that would have been too surreal to fit into the plot" but I don't get "bah dreams aren't like that, why weren't they flying around on giant eggbeaters" unless you just stopped paying attention to the movie within the first 3 minutes.

yes we did go through all of this before, I just felt like repeating it

i think the film had weaknesses, and the leo-cotillard relaish was one of them

I think Cotillard herself was my favorite character in the movie

leos quest to redeem his guilt qualifies as pretty heavy handed char development so I don't have a problem calling Nolan out on it

i had been having this quite confused conversation with a friend about the idea of parapraxis a few days earlier, and everything got tangled up in my mind, and so when I came out of the cinema i started going 'what is the thing that this film is not talking about that is the secret core of this film?' and briefly decided it was the fact that the father-son relationship doesn't have a mother in it, and then... decided i was being too 'but why does this nor conform to all freudian ideas??' and gave up.

hat it wasn't about what a movie does emotionally, more about the basic formal architecture of movies, which is much less interesting

see dude this is why i liked it! in fact i wrote a post on freakytrigger to this effect /plug

secret core of the movie is lol spinning tops

mind blown @ George Lazenby's post!

i still can't buy that george lazenby has a tumblr and tweets things like "fuck yeah amazing dollar bin finds"

the music in this is way overbearing, from the very first moments

― Dan S, Sunday, 1 August 2010 04:27 (4 days ago)

also very much this. when fischer is all "OMG NOW I KNOW" the music did something really cringeworthy

even if 'shared dreaming' is a metaphor for 'shared movie experience', I still think it's not a particularly insightful one. unless we're the projections attacking nolan's dreamer. argh

Lazenby's post is a good defence, granted, but I don't think it defends the movie on any terms grander than "I like how that guy thinks" and "well, it's obviously a huge event movie AND one man's personal vision and was ordained as such so the film itself has to deal with these things" - films should be more than self-fulfilling prophecies

G-Laz rolls on dubs

unless we're the projections attacking nolan's dreamer. argh

definitely can be read this way if you watch it with 'comment on movie making' POV

ie the better a job the inceptor is doing, the happier you are to go with the flow, stfu and leave him alone.

I don't understand why people are complaining that Nolan got dreaming wrong in the movie when the cornerstone of the plot is that they are crafting realistic-as-possible scenarios in order to fool the mark's subconscious but we've gone over that before.

Like, I get "I don't like the choice made with the dreams because it shut off a lot of potentially fantastic visual images that would have been too surreal to fit into the plot" but I don't get "bah dreams aren't like that, why weren't they flying around on giant eggbeaters" unless you just stopped paying attention to the movie within the first 3 minutes.

yes we did go through all of this before, I just felt like repeating it

― Mayor Hickenlooper and the liberal agenda (HI DERE), Thursday, August 5, 2010 10:49 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

yes BUT in the super sublime joint-dream world where all their fantasies can be fulfilled, i woulda liked to have seen something cooler than all their old apartments

dream what you know- otherwise the target gets suspicious- hence the opening scene with the rug giving them away

little known fact: that's where the expression "cut a rug" comes from

movies with dreams are a catch 22. if you dare to impart structure as Nolan and company did, then everyone complains that the dreams made too much sense and aren't like real dreams.

If someone goes all surrealist and puts a bunch of ridiculously discordant and nonsensical images, then they just made a movie filled with surrealist nonsense.

Plus like what HI DERE said times a million -- THEY INVADED THE DREAMS AND RETOOLED THEM.

oh and guyz btw THIS IS SCIENCE FICTION DREEMZ CAN'T RILLY BE INVADED

I love this thread because it keeps reminding me of Vince Vaughan playing a deadly serious cop and I can't help but giggle a little at the memory of it.

I've been following georgelazenby for awhile - whoever he really is - and in my opinion he's the best Twitterer on the planet.

oh and guyz btw THIS IS SCIENCE FICTION DREEMZ CAN'T RILLY BE INVADED

again want to repeat what lots of other said- really glad that he didn't try to explain this other than having one box with a couple tubes and a button. get on with the story, job done.

dream what you know- otherwise the target gets suspicious- hence the opening scene with the rug giving them away

yes BUT this was in limbo where none of that shit mattered

ya a real danger of over-explaining the tech in these things, besides being boring, is that the screenwriter always imagines the solution is somewhere in there, like they'd have ended up "hacking" the machine or some deus ex machina boringness

yes BUT this was in limbo where none of that shit mattered

oh yeah limbo sucked balls, it's true.

yo dawg I heard you liked hacking the gibson so we

cf. "midichlorians"

^^^ Buñuel should have given Fernando Rey a shotgun.

― Would love to hear Bam babble about this (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 20 July 2010 13:46 (2 weeks ago)

my first thought at the end was "fuck I need to see The Discreet Charm again"

yeah great he doesn't explain the technology or anything, but there IS technology - in Being John Malkovitch there's just a hole in the wall - now THAT'S some effective suspend-yr-disbelief shit right there (from a FAR superior movie)

eh yeah being john malkovich exists and i've seen it. guy form 2 1/2 men has a good cameo i lolled

admittedly the only way i may have enjoyed inception more was if one of the "dream defender" dudes or whatever have driven by dicaprio in level 1 and shouted "think fast!" and nailed him in the head with a beer can

the timelapse thing was genuinely suspenseful and the movie was largely compelling - I'm just saying I don't think it has a great deal of substance in retrospect

and how they revived Fischer by killing him in limbo and then defibrillating him after he was shot and then reprising the Watanabe scene for no reason = Nolan you are being v silly

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l6ohsl8fef1qbufw3o1_500.jpg

"there's not a lot of substance" is a criticism with not a lot of substance imo

Enjoyed your FT post, c sharp major, thanks. Those looking for more realistic depiction of dream strangeness should seek out an old episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show in which Rob Petrie puts some kind of salad dressing onto his scalp before retiring only to have a nightmare about growing a head of lettuce, or another episode of same show involving aliens, walnuts and third eyes.

Had not known what a Heath Robinson machine was. Here we name it after Rube Goldberg.

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l6m81iuE271qa6d7co1_500.jpg

ha

Leo's squinchy face is appropriate for all kinds of punchlines.

if we accept the movie as a filmmaking allegory...what does Limbo refer to?

Development hell

development hell

development hell

too slow! xp

sequels

The Lost City Of Limbo

"there's not a lot of substance" is a criticism with not a lot of substance imo

well I've listed some of mine above - wish I could remember everything I said last night

basically, we learn very little about the characters, and a helluva lot about the director

my criticism is not that the dreams are unrealistic as dreams - I thought they were a decent filmic representation of the dream-state, albeit stylised in a very particular manner

my main criticism is "why should I care" - it says almost nothing about the human condition, about why we don't or do change our minds, about the frequently humorous, frequently inexplicable vagaries of human engagement - the shared dreamers were too much in league, too much in unison, a slick multi-person task-force trapped in a high-concept action movie that was more 'action' than 'high-concept' way too often

the idea that li'l miss creative was 'improvising' by shooting leo's projection of his wife is silly - it seemed like the obvious thing to do, plus she'd already been 'killed' by her earlier so tbh it was revenge

also re: movie metaphor thing, "they come here to wake up" - a comment on how the only reality some people can find is in film? maybe you, Nolan, but not me

limbo was done SO much better in Being John Malkovitch - getting trapped in the subconscious of your now-lesbian ex's adopted child! not washed up on a beach of architecture GROWING OLD LIKE AN OLD MAN

malkovich was a COMEDY

yes BUT in the super sublime joint-dream world where all their fantasies can be fulfilled, i woulda liked to have seen something cooler than all their old apartments

I kind of took this as "secretly, deep down, most ppl are really boring" commentary

also I thought the improvisation was tossing Cilian Murphy off of the balcony, or am I misremembering?

basically, we learn very little about the characters, and a helluva lot about the director

it all happens in his head- on whichever level (leo/nolan) you want to take it. there is no other character to develop

Shooting wife was improvising i think

don't think we learn that much abt the director. he made leo kind of look like him, but im p sure nolan never did half the shit leo does.

ok it's not 'discreet charm of the bourgeoisie', but it's better than a bunch of other bunuels, but as s1ocks says, that kind of talk is kind of apples and oranges. this film is streets ahead of any other film with its budget that i can think of.

yes

also I thought the improvisation was tossing Cilian Murphy off of the balcony, or am I misremembering?

She does that immediately after saying it, I think

Am now reading some theory that Cobb was the mark, and Fischer was in on it - the idea being that Mal was alive the whole time and the idea was to insert the idea that he could be happy in reality

not buying it, but cute

this film is fun, and is better than most modern action-movies, but it's not blown me away