[ms] · Est. May 2002
One durable person. One social graph. Many communities—and every way people speak, share, listen, write, gather and remember.
Re: Inception
[QUOTE=floridaorange;879246]I didn't find this movie to be ground-breaking... I thought the casting was off enough to be distracting throughout and it was pretty boring in many parts since you had no idea what was really going on... If you've seen "The Cell" and "The Matrix" then you've seen this movie already.[/QUOTE] :Gay:
Re: Inception
[IMG]http://cdn.fd.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Inception-xzibit.jpg[/IMG]
Re: Inception
[URL="http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/?attachment_id=31661"][IMG]http://cdn.fd.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Inception_Infographic_Crop.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
Re: Inception
[video=youtube;UVkQ0C4qDvM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVkQ0C4qDvM[/video]
Re: Inception
^hah. cool.
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so did the dam thing stop in the end????
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Delightful movie. I understood everything from beginning to end. I don't think it was really that difficult. I'm hoping to see this again at some point down the road. Just that good. The score was AMAZING.
The ending was sweet. not the last few seconds part (it's an open story cause the top was slightly wobbly, so you just don't know what it was). I think they could have left that last scene out and ended it at the airport and it would have been awesome. But that extra bit...that's just an extra bonus for discussion.
Very thought provoking. Nothing like the matrix whatsoever although I can see how it's to be interpreted as such.
Really, that score was epic. A few times I was wondering if Vangelis had dusted off his old synths.
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Damn it when is this movie coming to China?!
Re: Inception
[QUOTE=feather;880969]Damn it when is this movie coming to China?![/QUOTE]
You could have purchased Inception on DVD out there before it's release date here in the US ;)
Re: Inception
Unfortunately no :lol: ... besides this is a movie you wanna watch on the big screen.
(Iron Man 2 isn't available yet either, didn't catch it in the cinema because they censored the dialogue, removed all references to Russia, WTF :roll:)
Re: Inception
^gotta love government sponsored censorship.
Re: Inception
[QUOTE=88Mariner;880967]The ending was sweet. not the last few seconds part (it's an open story cause the top was slightly wobbly, so you just don't know what it was).[/QUOTE]
There's a clue in that final scene that (I think) tells you whether or not it's real -- I'll black it out below in case some people haven't seen it yet:
[SPOILER] [COLOR=darkslategray][COLOR=gray]Whenever Cobb is in a dream he's wearing his wedding ring, when in the real world there's no ring on. That last scene - no ring.[/COLOR] [/COLOR][/SPOILER]
Re: Inception
Zigmund Freud would be very proud of this movie.
great stuff - go see it if you havent already
Re: Inception
[QUOTE=BSully828;881047]There's a clue in that final scene that (I think) tells you whether or not it's real -- I'll black it out below in case some people haven't seen it yet:
[SPOILER] [COLOR=darkslategray][COLOR=gray]Whenever Cobb is in a dream he's wearing his wedding ring, when in the real world there's no ring on. That last scene - no ring.[/COLOR] [/COLOR][/SPOILER][/QUOTE]
thats brilliant observation...:Bingo:, never noticed it, but the damn thing looked like it was about to stop in the end
Re: Inception
Every single moment of Inception is a dream. I think that in a couple of years this will become the accepted reading of the film, and differing interpretations will have to be skillfully argued to be even remotely considered. The film makes this clear, and it never holds back the truth from audiences. Some find this idea to be narratively repugnant, since they think that a movie where everything is a dream is a movie without stakes, a movie where the audience is wasting their time.
[B]Except that this is exactly what Nolan is arguing against. The film is a metaphor for the way that Nolan as a director works, and what he's ultimately saying is that the catharsis found in a dream is as real as the catharsis found in a movie is as real as the catharsis found in life. Inception is about making movies, and cinema is the shared dream that truly interests the director.[/B]
I believe that Inception is a dream to the point where even the dream-sharing stuff is a dream. Dom Cobb isn't an extractor. He can't go into other people's dreams. He isn't on the run from the Cobol Corporation. At one point he tells himself this, through the voice of Mal, who is a projection of his own subconscious. She asks him how real he thinks his world is, where he's being chased across the globe by faceless corporate goons.
She asks him that in a scene that we all know is a dream, but Inception lets us in on this elsewhere. Michael Caine's character implores Cobb to return to reality, to wake up. During the chase in Mombasa, Cobb tries to escape down an alleyway, and the two buildings between which he's running begin closing in on him - a classic anxiety dream moment. When he finally pulls himself free he finds Ken Watanabe's character waiting for him, against all logic. Except dream logic.
Much is made in the film about totems, items unique to dreamers that can be used to tell when someone is actually awake or asleep. Cobb's totem is a top, which spins endlessly when he's asleep, and the fact that the top stops spinning at many points in the film is claimed by some to be evidence that Cobb is awake during those scenes. The problem here is that the top wasn't always Cobb's totem - he got it from his wife, who killed herself because she believed that they were still living in a dream. There's more than a slim chance that she's right - note that when Cobb remembers her suicide she is, bizarrely, sitting on a ledge opposite the room they rented. You could do the logical gymnastics required to claim that Mal simply rented another room across the alleyway, but the more realistic notion here is that it's a dream, with the gap between the two lovers being a metaphorical one made literal. When Mal jumps she leaves behind the top, and if she was right about the world being a dream, the fact that it spins or doesn't spin is meaningless. It's a dream construct anyway. There's no way to use the top as a proof of reality.
Watching the film with this eye you can see the dream logic unfolding. As is said in the movie, dreams seem real in the moment and it's only when you've woken up that things seem strange. The film's 'reality' sequences are filled with moments that, on retrospect, seem strange or unlikely or unexplained. Even the basics of the dream sharing technology is unbelievably vague, and I don't think that's just because Nolan wants to keep things streamlined. It's because Cobb's unconscious mind is filling it in as he goes along.
There's more, but I would have to watch the film again with a notebook to get all the evidence (all of it in plain sight). The end seems without a doubt to be a dream - from the dreamy way the film is shot and edited once Cobb wakes up on the plane all the way through to him coming home to find his two kids in the exact position and in the exact same clothes that he kept remembering them, it doesn't matter if the top falls, Cobb is dreaming.
[B]That Cobb is dreaming and still finds his catharsis (that he can now look at the face of his kids) is the point. It's important to realize that Inception is a not very thinly-veiled autobiographical look at how Nolan works. In a recent red carpet interview, Leonardo DiCaprio - who was important in helping Nolan get the script to the final stages - compares the movie not to The Matrix or some other mindfuck movie but Fellini's 8 1/2. This is probably the second most telling thing DiCaprio said during the publicity tour for the film, with the first being that he based Cobb on Nolan. 8 1/2 is totally autobiographical for Fellini, and it's all about an Italian director trying to overcome his block and make a movie (a science fiction movie, even). It's a film about filmmaking, and so is Inception.
The heist team quite neatly maps to major players in a film production. Cobb is the director while Arthur, the guy who does the research and who sets up the places to sleep, is the producer. Ariadne, the dream architect, is the screenwriter - she creates the world that will be entered. Eames is the actor (this is so obvious that the character sits at an old fashioned mirrored vanity, the type which stage actors would use). Yusuf is the technical guy; remember, the Oscar come from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and it requires a good number of technically minded people to get a movie off the ground. Nolan himself more or less explains this in the latest issue of Film Comment, saying 'There are a lot of striking similarities [between what the team does and the putting on of a major Hollywood movie]. When for instance the team is out on the street they've created, surveying it, that's really identical with what we do on tech scouts before we shoot.'
That leaves two key figures. Saito is the money guy, the big corporate suit who fancies himself a part of the game. And Fischer, the mark, is the audience. Cobb, as a director, takes Fischer through an engaging, stimulating and exciting journey, one that leads him to an understanding about himself. Cobb is the big time movie director (or rather the best version of that - certainly not a Michael Bay) who brings the action, who brings the spectacle, but who also brings the meaning and the humanity and the emotion.
The movies-as-dreams aspect is part of why Inception keeps the dreams so grounded. In the film it's explained that playing with the dream too much alerts the dreamer to the falseness around him; this is just another version of the suspension of disbelief upon which all films hinge. As soon as the audience is pulled out of the movie by some element - an implausible scene, a ludicrous line, a poor performance - it's possible that the cinematic dream spell is broken completely, and they're lost.
As a great director, Cobb is also a great artist, which means that even when he's creating a dream about snowmobile chases, he's bringing something of himself into it. That's Mal. It's the auterist impulse, the need to bring your own interests, obsessions and issues into a movie. It's what the best directors do. It's very telling that Nolan sees this as kind of a problem; I suspect another filmmaker might have cast Mal as the special element that makes Cobb so successful.
Inception is such a big deal because it's what great movies strive to do. You walk out of a great film changed, with new ideas planted in your head, with your neural networks subtly rewired by what you've just seen. On a meta level Inception itself does this, with audiences leaving the theater buzzing about the way it made them feel and perceive. New ideas, new thoughts, new points of view are more lasting a souvenir of a great movie than a ticket stub.
It's possible to view Fischer, the mark, as not the audience but just as the character that is being put through the movie that is the dream. To be honest, I haven't quite solidified my thought on Fischer's place in the allegorical web, but what's important is that the breakthrough that Fischer has in the ski fortress is real. Despite the fact that his father is not there, despite the fact that the pinwheel was never by his father's bedside, the emotions that Fischer experiences are 100 percent genuine. It doesn't matter that the movie you're watching isn't a real story, that it's just highly paid people putting on a show - when a movie moves you, it truly moves you. The tears you cry during Up are totally real, even if absolutely nothing that you see on screen has ever existed in the physical world.
For Cobb there's a deeper meaning to it all. While Cobb doesn't have daddy issues (that we know of), he, like Fischer, is dealing with a loss. He's trying to come to grips with the death of his wife*; Fischer's journey reflects Cobb's while not being a complete point for point reflection. That's important for Nolan, who is making films that have personal components - that talk about things that obviously interest or concern him - but that aren't actually about him. Other filmmakers (Fellini) may make movies that are thinly veiled autobiography, but that's not what Nolan or Cobb are doing. The movies (or dreams) they're putting together reflect what they're going through but aren't easily mapped on to them. Talking to Film Comment, Nolan says he has never been to psychoanalysis. 'I think I use filmmaking for that purpose. I have a passionate relationship to what I do.'
In a lot of ways Inception is a bookend to last summer's Inglorious Basterds. In that film Quentin Tarantino celebrated the ways that cinema could change the world, while in Inception Nolan is examining the ways that cinema, the ultimate shared dream, can change an individual. The entire film is a dream, within the confines of the movie itself, but in a more meta sense it's Nolan's dream. He's dreaming Cobb, and finding his own moments of revelation and resolution, just as Cobb is dreaming Fischer and finding his own catharsis and change.
The whole film being a dream isn't a cop out or a waste of time, but an ultimate expression of the film's themes and meaning. It's all fake. But it's all very, very real. And that's something every single movie lover understands implicitly and completely.
Re: Inception
btw, spoiler alert.
Re: Inception
[QUOTE=Jenks;881100]btw, spoiler alert.[/QUOTE]
Orly?!!...:lol:
Re: Inception
I love 8&1/2, bought that movie on dvd about 10 years ago.
Cool write-up, I'm definitely going to be watching this movie again, a conclusion I came to several days after watching it...I think with long movies like this one I prefer to watch it home.
Re: Inception
this film is about catharsis. the dream stuff is a way of telling the story of catharsis.
{maybe}
Re: Inception
[QUOTE=Jenks;881099]Every single moment of Inception is a dream.....[/B][/QUOTE]
[IMG]http://zulfiqar.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/neo_whoa_1.jpg[/IMG]
whoa......
Re: Inception
[QUOTE=feather;881030]Unfortunately no :lol: ... besides this is a movie you wanna watch on the big screen.[/QUOTE] you cant find it in shanghai? (that's where you are right?) i have been in shanghai for about 4 years and i bought almost every dvd before it was officially published :P my personal source was on hong song lu. you come from jin hui lu and walk west. on the left hand side after a few hundred meters. they will even tell you if the quality is good enough, what languages and subtitles and so on. you can watch the dvd in the store to check if you like. they were very friendly. good luck
to topic: i have watched the movie yesterday and i love it. in the very beginning i was a little disappointed, but it turns out great.
Re: Inception
[QUOTE=xellsys;881206]you cant find it in shanghai? (that's where you are right?) i have been in shanghai for about 4 years and i bought almost every dvd before it was officially published :P my personal source was on hong song lu. you come from jin hui lu and walk west. on the left hand side after a few hundred meters. they will even tell you if the quality is good enough, what languages and subtitles and so on. you can watch the dvd in the store to check if you like. they were very friendly. good luck[/QUOTE]
Yeah I have a store near Xinle Lu that I visit, near the office. But pretty sure they didn't have Inception (plus it's something I wanna watch on the big screen) and I picked up a dud copy of Iron Man 2 that was in Russian or something, a good copy in English hasn't been available yet :lol:
Re: Inception
very strange, may be they got stricter with that. last time i have been in shanghai was 2008, so... :) anyhow, you are right, this one you gotta watch on the big screen!
Re: Inception
spam.com
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i d/k, Rubens mom is pretty dreamy!
Re: Inception
[img]http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l61mhy8SyX1qzoyqxo1_r1_400.gif[/img]
Re: Inception
[video=youtube;DQ2v4kh5CY4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ2v4kh5CY4[/video]
no harm on watching it!!!
anyway.....i liked it very much, think i need to watch it again, very important observation....didnt catch that!...thanks
Re: Inception
[IMG]http://imgur.com/r75Et.jpg[/IMG]
Re: Inception
[B]Dissecting 'Inception': Six Interpretations and Five Plot Holes[/B]
[url]http://www.cinematical.com/2010/07/19/dissecting-inception-six-interpretations-and-five-plot-holes/[/url]
END.
Re: Inception
Great film, thoroughly enjoyed it and didn't think it was too hard to follow unless I got it all wrong :lol:
I agree everything's a dream including the ending. Probably the first sign that I thought was weird was DiCaprio using his wife's totem because Ellen Page was clearly instructed their totems cannot be handled by anyone else except them.
Also suspected that his wife left him and took their children, hence his fixation on his children. This feels more accurate if we all agree that his wife never died, her suicide scene was clearly a dream.
Re: Inception
Loved it - the suspense of the spinning top in the end definitely gives rise to the possibility of part 2. I just absolutely loved how many dreams they jump in and out of, and how time dilation from the moment of falling off the bridge until hitting the water, generates so many different sequences. Conceptually, the movie is incredible and Nolan has outdone every other movie I have ever seen to deliver the confusion, yet cognizance of plot lines. Give it my highest rating [B]9/10[/B]
Re: Inception
[QUOTE=Kamal;905473] Give it my highest rating [B]9/10[/B][/QUOTE]
Your rating system only goes to 9?
Re: Inception
No, it only goes to .9
Re: Inception
My system goes to 11.
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9/10 on Imdb WOW ! that's one of the highest scores i've ever seen.
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^yeah normally new releases always skew high and then slowly level out, but this one already has 230k votes and is still up there, behind the godfather 2 with 250k votes. but i do this new titles are biased vs old ones, as all uber nerds are going to vote 10/10 for all the lord of the rings flicks, and i bet a ton of them havent even seen any of the godfather flicks.
Re: Inception
230k that's a big number if you consider it was out a couple months ago....i think people are too excited about this movie, too bad it's too late to watch it on big screen.
Re: Inception
[QUOTE=Jenks;905494]Your rating system only goes to 9?[/QUOTE]
no but its my highest score I have given a movie to date (I think the other one was battle for haditha, which I gave an 8.5 iirc).
Re: Inception
picky bastard
Re: Inception
you better believe it.