Inception

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I saw Inception in 4D. Leo DiCaprio sat next to me and held my hand the whole time. Made a move for my knockers, too, but I swatted him away. Naughty boy, that one.

But if you give a close reading to TeeEm's post (and BOY, does it warrant close reading and study), they only say it was a 3D theater, not that Inception was being shown in 3D. Spatially, this is correct.
 
Begins before Dark knight, eh Holden? Seems a small margin of victory, as well. The origin story put it over the top for you? I feel like both films are only marred by some editing issues in the fight scenes, but are other wise top notch A-pictures. I just felt The Dark Knight added levels of complexity (successfully) that weren't present in the origin piece, and that made it a bit better for me. Eckhart's performance is also aces. Ledger's contributions have been discussed to death, so i don't need to mention how good his performance was.

OK - back on topic:

@ Ed - Do you dislike surreal pictures for the most part or did this particular one just not live up to the hype? Some of your complaints seem a little workman-like and banal. Something being weird, for instance, isn't automatically a bad thing for some folks - it's usually a boon to me, for instance. Also, the complaint about time shifting in dreams is downright silly, because time is always distorted in dreams, at least in mine - I am pretty sure most dreams that seem like hours take only seconds or minutes in real time. Nolan adding a set structure to the time shifting was there to help keep the different levels of time segregated for the viewer.
 
I've never encountered a forum with that feature before , so I might as well use it haha. I think the whole thing is pretty bad anyways. It's sort of an online middle finger; the semiotics are nonverbal.

My answer to you then: Paprika/Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There are always 2 types of Star Trek films, right? Kirk v. Kahn and exploration. Why then have they only ever had one exploration film? Because it sells, I guess?

Dreams are wonderful to explore, as Kon and especially Gondry show. Explorations of the unconscious, what Jung called this infinite reservoir of all your past/future possibilities. Exploration of the Escherian architecture more than just twice would not have outworn the novelty. That's the first time I've ever seen the impossible staircase realized in live action.

Plus, Ariadne had apparently spent a good deal of time creating a maze in the James Bond snowbase but they lacked time so they had to just cut through it. Well, there's a massive time killing chase sequence that would have been much more interesting than Saito tossing a grenade into the airvent.

I'm not going to argue that this film would have worked without action at the end since it began with action and has action music and stuff (i.e. I'm not going to rewrite the script without action), but Nolan didn't have to force it into an action film as he did. Isn't it kind of funny that DiCaprio just has to be holding a gun on the movie poster? Same thing with The Matrix. A Virtual Reality simulation has so many more possibilities for me than just martial arts fighting, as awesome at that was.

Action is Inception's weakest point as a film; that is, as a work of art. The token twenty mins of action took it down from maybe something around an 8.5/10 to a 7.0/10 for me; that is, 7 parts good, 3 parts bad.
 
Well, to me a 7/10 is a B and a 6/10 is a C+, so a D would be about a 4/10. I gave Inception about a 7.2/10, just shy of a B+.
 
If this fragment is your attempt at inception, your own preferences are not taking hold in either my subconscious or conscious mind. Insomnia is well made and acted but, among other things, totally unnecessary. Skjoldbj
 
A. I always thought you were a dude, Holden. Knockers?

B. That is really, really funny.

C. I would give my left nut for Leo to sit in a theater and hold my hand the whole time.
 
You just can't compare it to DK, they are 2 different films based on 2 whole different universes, DK is an adaptation while Inception is based on a material constructed entirely by the director himself..
Comparing DK to Inception, would be like comparing Se7en to Fight Club.

I saw it the 2nd time too.. & I didn't feel the same way as you did..
So the choices that Nolan made don't exactly fall completely dead!!... And it's noway a bad news.. why??? coz it's making the film work... in other words it's a SUCCESS!!!

Look at the ratings it has got.. It's on #3 on IMDB (I know that doesn't mean anything to you, like you already mentioned in another thread)... But it takes a lot to reach that position...
So I'd like to ask you again, How are those things you mention "BAD NEWS!" for the film?
 
My eyes we're kind of destroyed by the time the snow shooting started up. Just the concept of raiding a big snow base is awesome though, the brilliance of Inception (I think) is how convincing Dicaprio is in his motivations and character - while the movie is at it's heart an all-star mashup of epic action scenes.
 
Saw this today. Wow. Just...wow. Review definitely forthcoming. I still need to finish one for Despicable Me, too, but maybe it's for the best, because there's a hell of a lot to digest here.
 
Just a quick note: did anyone else catch the Inception prequel comic online? It's called "The Cobol Job" and details some of the events leading up to the movie's beginning:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/inception-comic.html

I think this represents another noteworthy mark against the "everything we see is a dream" theory, because it establishes a world outside the film, and we see Cobb's totem stop spinning in it, as well.
 
I would have to respectfully disagree, mam. I don't think that the defence mechanism in anyway invalidates the idea of the human mind as powerful. I would say it's the other way around, the fact that somebody would have to train subconscious gives you an idea of just how powerful the nature of dream and constructing dreams is. The fact that you would have to defend against such a technologically advanced forced shows you how far the human mind has come.

It seems that you and a few others may have figured there the film will be a bit more random and you guys may have taken the whole 'anything goes' scenario a bit too literally. I think having such things pop in and out would have been too easy, personally. 99.9% of films that deal depict dreams tend to go a bit too over the top, imo.

It's almost like having someone win the lottery and go on a spending spree with most of the money spent in one day. Nolan showed some considerable restraint while still making the film feel very surreal. I agree that there were more gunplay than there should have been, and yes, I would have like to have seen a bit more variety in the subconcious acts, but, really, do you guys honestly think it affects the film to an extent where you would have to take away a star?
 
I agree that the original is superior, but that shouldn't matter when judging art. If Nolan redid it shot by shot, it still would have been a good work, and it is.

Also Nolan's smugass face is pissing me off right now.
 
I must admit Juno, I ended up liking Paige's character more than I thought I would, and she did a decent enough job considering it's her, more so than the rest of the other cast, that is the voice of the audience. Christine, i'm not sure if a film that's as high in concept as this would have worked with a smaller budget. The human mind is limitless when unconcious and in order to reflect that, well, I agree with Nolan, you need a pretty big budget.

Anxiously awaiting your review, Yoda.
 
Thanks for pointing that out, hadn't seen that yet!

I saw the movie Monday night, and needed to wrap my head around it for awhile before I felt like saying anything about it.

Once again Chris Nolan shows that he is a master of utilizing film to tell stories that might be impossible to tell any other way. Unlike the disjointed storytelling in Memento, this narrative begins to make sense quite early on. The pacing is great and the storyline unfolds rather smoothly, but you still feel a bit like you're stuck in an M.C. Escher piece. That the film is surrealist while still drawing the types of audience that typically would spend money on an action flick is a point in it's credit, I think.

The film is peppered with seemingly metatheoretical comments on the meaning of film. When Cobb tells Ariadne that you start in the middle and don't know how you got there, we think back to the beginning of the film, where we (the audience) experienced precisely that. The spinning top seems to remind us that a movie isn't really reality; it just seems real while we watch it. Even the idea of the dream world being populated with projections of the subconscious seems to comment on film: as a viewer, we can only understand the actions of the characters through the filter of our own mind and experience.

It felt great to leave the theater thinking about the meaning of reality, the nature of dreams, even the existence of a higher being (is there are world beyond the one we conceive of as reality? Is Mal there?). I don't think this is going to be a big winner at the Oscars (although I didn't expect Lord of the Rings: Return of the King to get as much recognition as it did, and was pleasantly surprised), but I appreciate a summer blockbuster that makes the audience think. Unfortunately, I could tell that some members of the audience didn't share this appreciation: one group loudly complained that "the ending didn't tell us anything!" (that's the point; also it seems pretty clear that they are in "reality" at the end, whatever that means). Another girl said that they surely had to do a sequel to tie up the loose ends (I sure hope not). Seems filmgoers often expect things to be handed to them, wrapped up in a neat little package. Too bad.
 
Boys have knockers, too. And nipples! I'm no Mamie Van Doren, but I do OK. Leo seemed to be intrigued.
 
Well, I do think it's probably his best film, and I've actually seen both Following and Memento within the last couple of months, so both are pretty fresh in my mind. Granted, I'm totally subject to change my mind on this, because Memento, both Batman films, and Inception, are pretty much all bunched at the top of the list for me. It's not 1, 2, 3, 4, so much as 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d. I suspect it could end up at something like 1c after many viewings, but it's hard to say.

All I know is that it's right up there in the thick of things; whether or not it's technically his best is slicing pretty thin, given how much I like the other candidates.
 
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