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New trailer up for Christopher Nolan's upcoming movie (http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/inception/).  Looks like some crazy shit.  Reminds me a lot of the Matrix.

Pseudo-solipsism?  Looks interesting.

Oh yeah, I'll see that.

Yep, I'll be watching that too.

Sci-Fi-ish themed thriller.  (http://videosift.com/video/Inception-Final-Trailer-Christopher-Nolan)DeCaprio, Michael Cain. Looks pretty good to me:

Protip:  When making threads in the movie sub-forum, arrange threads by subject making it easier to see if someone has already made a thread for the movie.

Oops. Good call.

Admins, please den.

Variety has a review up (http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117943114.html?categoryid=4032&cs=1).  Might be some minor spoilers depending on how much of the basic plot you want to know about going into the movie.

Prequel comic that's actually pretty good:

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

Man, the reviews on this are really polarized. It's either one of the best movies in the last 5 years or an incomprehensible mess depending upon who your reading. Likely this means it is a challenging sci-fi movie that some people groove on and some don't, which is why I'm quite stoked for it.

Reading the Salon.com review has made me think it's neither of these things and worse than both of them... :(

I'm not that keen on DiCaprio, but Empire seemed really impressed by Inception (http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=136118).

inception's tracking pretty well, at 87% positive at RT. Contrarian negative reviews aside, it seems to be as divisive as Nolan (or any well made movie) movies tend to be.

I'm a big fan of Nolan's style and work, so I'm in.

Which makes it watchable!

All my friends are going  :ye_gods: at it. Lots of high praise.

I am not sure how to parse that.

They're stupified by its awesomeness.

Saw it last night at the midnight showing.  Was blown away.  Also thought it was really sad.  If I had a criticism it would be that some of the action scenes dragged on and seemed a little forced.  But I understand they've got to sell tickets.  Could have tightened it up a little, maybe shaved 20 minutes off the film.  We probably didn't need 10 minutes of that guy tying up those people in the elevator shaft.

Totally, I'm not trying to bash the film, loved it, just don't want to sound like too much of a fanboy. And the movie was like 160 minutes.  That's pretty long. 

That was an amazing movie. It reminded me of how I felt walking out of the theater after seeing 'The Matrix' the first time.

This is probably my favorite Nolan movie.
Deeper than TDK but not so far out there that I never want to watch again.

So much to think about.

Overall, I liked the movie.  I thought it did drag a bit towards the end, but then it went into breakneck speed and I stopped minding.

Saw it this morning. Very, very good. It was some odd Kubrickian-Tartovksy thriller by way of Mann.

nolan's body of work is starting to really form up to be fantastic. This may be my favorite Nolan film as well. He... may be the closest modern director to Kubrick. While the filming styles are fairly different, the study of certain topics and general philosophy are very similar.

it's going to be interesting to look more into his themes, if not just in this film. It works on a very basic level, but there is definitely more to this film that a lot of people are not going to pay attention to. (Which is not a fault, criticism or concern.)

It's a heist movie. Buck standard heist movie. 100% generic heist movie plot. JUST ONE MORE JOB AND I CAN GET OUT! The guy in charge changes the rules. He wants to go along. ASSEMBLE YOUR TEAM! Except there are no real twists, no triple crosses, no surprises... other than that almost every aspect of the film's worlds is surprising. Nolan grabs something familiar by its internal organs and turns it inside out.

Then he spends a lot of time on fight scenes that are long and ultimately meaningless. The sense of risk never feels particularly intense, and is undermined as the movie goes on. I still loved it. It's great to enjoy a mindfuck I don't need to see again to understand. The comparison to the Matrix was apt.


Some film worlds inspire us to imagine that they continue beyond the film's own boundaries. I love films like that.

I rather liked it. Was a well done mindfuck. My wife thought it was better than Shutter Island, but having recently seen Shutter Island, it kept messing her up and she couldn't get into it as much as I could.

I saw it last night, I liked it as well.

Did anyone else get some really wretched previews at the front? It was 4 terrible looking movies. I was really wondering if I was in the right theater. One with a guy who has to chose between his girlfriend and his dead ghost brother. One was a really dumb comedy about a dinner with crazy(?) people. There was another date movie and a really generic pseudo-action movie that was also sort of geared towards women. Every single one of them looked like Hollywood vomited on the screen and expected people to lap it up.

Ya, we got those previews as well. The one with the dead brother and the girlfriend looked like it had been filmed circa 1980. Just gobsmack, eye-watering bad.  Dinner for Schmucks didn't look that bad, but I like Steve Carell. There was also a preview for some rather vanilla looking Exorcist film which we'll not be seeing.

Roger Ebert: (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100714/REVIEWS/100719997)


Saw last night, and thought it was excellent, though I agree that some of the action sequences could have been edited down.

Very Matrix-esque, and Mrs. Naum struggled in comprehending the plot…

I think one you reference is the screwball comedy with Steve Carell, Schmucks (rather prodigious amount of movies he's starred in within the past year…). That one I saw, but in our viewing, the movie previews were actually interesting, for a change — a George Clooney action flick, Gordon Gecko Wall Street sequel (the giant cell phone elicits a most hearty chuckle from the crowd), and another that I cannot recall now…

tron,devil,facebook,american

This movie is hands down one of the best movies I've ever seen.  Jesus.

The more I think about it, I think he was out of the dream at the end.  The top was going to fall.

The previews I saw were Tron, the Gordon Gecko thing, The Town (Ben Affleck, auto miss there), some Facebook thing (wife says it's called Social Network), Schmucks for Dinnner.  Tron was the only one that I think I'd even be remotely interested in seeing, although the Gordon Gecko movie might be all right.

Well, the kids weren't going to be in a daycare center or something. The location of them at the house, mirroring the dream state, and turning around instead of running off was meant to deliver the maximum emotional impact of the moment. That seemed to be the primary intent while "lol he might still be in the dream!" is the secondary.

Saw it with the wife last night.  We both liked it a whole lot, and thought it was much, much better than we expected it to be (and I always expect Leo's movies to be good).

I might just be making all of this up, but this is a movie that provides in-world reasons to mistake symbolism for plot and vice versa. Which is awesome.

Nolan wasn't doing it for a cheap mindfuck. He was making a subtle point about reality.

I play with spinning random things like coins and dice on tables as an idle habit, and my spinny professional opinion is that the top was falling.  It had that shudder that spun things get in the instant before they tip; I've seen it hundreds of times.

Patience is right on.

More thoughts

Dileep Rao (Yusuf) answering some movie questions:

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

Nolan can do no wrong in my book after this movie.

It's also a welcome bright spot in what has been a fairly disappointing summer for movies.

If I liked Memento, will I also like Inception?

If you like awesome movies, you will like Inception.  Seriously, I don't know who gives a negative review to a movie like this...you'd have to be a giant douche. 

Saw this last night at imax.  GREAT film, really enjoyed it.  I agree with some of the minor knocks that they could have titened it up and some of the ending fight scenes were to long (and I mean seriously, was the British guy an SAS operative or something?  He took out all those people by himself, sort of broke immersion a bit..).  But thats about it.  Perfect film otherwise.

We actually had some decent trailers in front of the imax showing.  Tron Legacy, Mastermind, Harry Potter....and I think one more I can't remember.  Nothing looked outwardly bad though.

Haha, I hate that.  Mainly because each subsequent dream is 'boring' for a dream.  Hear the alarm, get up, take a shower, etc.  Repeat.

Ending:

Welp, that does it.

It's art.

Thoughts not on the ending, only Bhodi has touched on this really.

Beside the arctic bit being too long and too pointlessly action blahblah did anyone else feel like the casting/characterization was the weak part of the movie? I felt like the forger and to a lesser extent Arthur and Saito stole the show. The girl was a complete deus ex machina with no explanation for why she cared so much why she always had the right ideas and why she was so good and Leo while he was good wasn't completely amazing because I didn't feel like this character was getting a unique treatment. I've seen him do that haunted but cold and cool character in other movies and he just didn't breath a new life into his character which was a shame because the movie was so cool.

 

Arthur was my favorite character by far, but I can't really figure out why.  His suits were just that awesome, I guess.

Watching Joseph-Gordon Levitt in Inception made me REALLY hope for the rumor of him being Riddler in the next Batman film is true. I think they could work very well together.

Holy crap, I thought it was my girlfriend breathing through her nose! She kept apologizing too! I'm in such deep shit.

Dora the Explorer in Incepcion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrYPJ4Yc31g

Really interesting take on the movie that kinda blew my mind. Obviously, spoilers.


Edit: Spoilered for link name.

The girl's name was Ariadne....  In Greek myth, Ariadne was the one that gave Theseus a ball of yarn he could use to guide his way out of the labyrinth when he went in to face the minotaur.  With that name, Nolan was announcing that the character was far more than what she seemed.


I like the idea that there actually was no job...  a team was sent into Cobb's dreams to try and get him over the paranoia and guilt that had trapped him.  They used a Mr. Charles ploy, and presented the case of Robert Fisher as a counterpoint for Cobb to come to terms with his wife's death.  It was still inception, but they were giving the idea to Cobb so that he could begin to function again.

I'm not sure if this is true, but the top?  Every time Cobb tries to use the top on screen he is interrupted before he can tell if the top is going to stop or not.  At the end of the movie, it doesn't matter anymore since he has stopped living in his memories and paranoia.  He's made the resolution to move forward.  Even if he is trapped, that seems like a good first move towards eventually awaking.


As a side note, I find Ellen Page (played Ariadne, lead in Juno, and Kitty Pryde in Xmen) to be fucking disturbing.  She's in her mid-twenties and looks like she's about 12.  Also, when did Tom Berenger get old? 

I like the interpretation, I think the director left enough hints for it through film-making techniques, and all that comes through, but the single distinguishing thing I can think of to counteract the "It was all a dream" thing is the fact that the movie follows more than Cobb and that events happen outside his purview that we are witness to. Moreover, the people in the "real world" do not act like the "dream state" projections. It's movie-logic. It's very difficult to explain. I imagine the shit they are going through is like a character in a movie trying to come to grips that he is in a movie and cannot do it because everything is real to him. Only the audience knows better, but we're on a layer of reality above the movie.

I can accept that it was "all a dream" of Nolan's, but not Cobb's. It's meta vs. movie logic.

Nolan is a fantastic director. I wish he was doing Warcraft. That would be... amusing.

I think you could argue that Fisher is a projection of Cobb's subconscious, and the inception is the team inserting an idea into the subconsious to come to terms with loss...  which is reflected by Leo consciously letting go of Mal a layer deeper, although Ariadne's derision of the plan (playing up the father at the cost of Fisher's opinion of his godfather) should be weighted against that.

Finding Saito is Cobb coming to terms and announcing that he is ready to live again.

Really, though, it's not a movie with a right answer.  Any interpretation I can think of has a pile of pros, but it also has a pile of contradictions. 

- Cobb is awake and a fugitive.  That means there are actually faceless corporate goons out to get him in Africa, and Saito mysteriously shows up at the right moment to save him.  And his kids are actually sitting in the same place, in the same position, in the same clothes, at the end of the movie.  The very idea of outlaw dream extractors working corporate espigionage angles seems... a little far fetched.  And it makes the timeline all screwy, since the kids couldn't have aged more than a year or two...  so Cobb's grand odyssesy is really a year or two real time?

- Cobb is stuck in a dream.  The Fisher plot then seems to make much less sense, if the rules we are told at the beginning of the movie are true.  It does better explain how Cobb's subconscious can project Mal into the dream when Fisher is supposed to be the one populating the dream with his subconscious.  It also better explains the Storm Trooper projections, when none of the team had any idea that extraction defenses had evolved to that point.

I find it easier to believe that Cobb's subconscious is projecting armed murderous thugs from his store of self-loathing and paranoia.  The fact that Cobb is conflicted about wishing harm on his "team" would explain why all the thugs (except for Mal) are so ineffective....  They miss because he doesn't really want his friends hurt.


I think you can choose whichever interpretation you want.  Both have major arguments for and against.  I'm not sold on the movie as allegory for film-making, though...  sure, there are parallels.  But that interpretation devalues the entire carefully constructed whole. 

The action parts weren't amazing, except for the rotating hallway section.  I think the point was to break up the flow, and spice up what would otherwise be a bunch of people talking at each other for 2 1/2 hours.  They didn't work well as action scenes, but they did work as palate cleansers to keep the audience engaged.  It's the same as a teacher stopping a lecture to ask the class questions about what has been covered. 

Speaking of Mal....

The actress who plays her is French, and the word "mal" is french for bad, evil, or ill.  Seems too easy that Mal is his evil or sickness that he has to purge.  Of course, it could be that anyone who actually knows "Mal" as a person is actually a projection...  while those that don't know Mal are actually part of the team sent in.  So Art and Micheal Caine are projections, while Ariadne (who asks who Mal is) isn't.

That would then have some implications on totems.  If Arthur is a projection, then totems may just be a crutch or creation of Cobb.  The only two dreamers we see with totems are Arthur and Cobb....  Ariadne makes one, but she makes a chess piece (which piece by the way?) and she shows it to Cobb.  It could just be a way of establishing a rapport.  The idea of a totem could be the crutch that Cobb uses to maintain that he isn't dreaming, and gives greater weight to the fact that his wife's most deeply held secret is the totem that he steals.  (Representing her belief in Limbo/dream's reality)

By stealing the totem, he assumed Mal's belief in the dream's reality which is why he is caught, and emphasizes the scene where he spins the totem while holding the gun.  By giving up the totem at the end of the film, he announces he's given up his belief in the dreams reality.

Edit:

Also, just because of the naming and the fact that he is miraclously restored to health, you have to wonder about parallels between Fischer and the Fisher King.

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Inception-Explained-Unraveling-The-Dream-Within-The-Dream-19615.html?loc=interstitialskip

Some good stuff in there. Especially someone noticing a detail about the wedding ring that Cobb was wearing and how it might indicate whether he's dreaming or not.

Are we giving up on spoilering sutff?  :awesome_for_real:

I work on the assumption most people see my avatar and a wall of text, and self-censor my posts out of existence.

He was channeling Agent Smith from the Matrix.

As for the "totems:"

Well, I didn't like the Matrix, so I dunno if that works.  :oh_i_see:

I did notice the movie length, largely because it is cruel to make a movie that long with a lot of water imagery near the end.  And I peed right before the movie, I swear.   :cry:

Wow this isn't my experience at all.  I started controlling my dreams when I was pretty young.  Background: I used to have nightmares where the family was going over a big bridge in the station wagon and somehow I ended up outside the car hanging onto the side of the bridge.  Eventually I had had enough of that crap and just let go... and floated in the fog.  After that, I had awareness of and gradually more and more control over my dreams. NONE of the "projections" ever turned hostile because I had awareness of the dream (or was manipulating the dream).

This particular exercise was for a WILD (wake induced lucid dream).  I slipped into trance and post-hypnogogia (after sleep but but before dreaming) I hit my "totem," became conscious, opened my eyes and popped out of my body.  Since this was my 1st time doing this it was fairly jarring, so my subconscious projected (basically my conscience) a strong voice gleaned from reality to essentially scream at me to get out.  It's a fairly common occurence for newb oneironauts... goes away soon for most after a few sessions.

Shamans speak of a similar occurence when slipping into trance via Peyote.  "Creatures" will pop into your head and try to compel you to leave, or in some cases try to force you to stay or do screwed up shit.   :why_so_serious:  Essentially is just your projected "conscience" trying to grab some control.  

First I'll say, I loved the movie. Now in to slight derail:

I actually had a fairly prolonged lucid dream last night, and I wonder if all the ideas this movie put in to my head helped to trigger it.

I've had a few over the years and always found them really fascinating. It's like you end up fighting against yourself to move the dream in the direction you want it to go. I can vivdly remember entering a room and deciding I wanted to close the door securly behind me. It was a room in a place from my childhood. The door in my dream was metal (obviously wasn't in reality) and I remember managing to swing it shut, only to find that the door wasn't as wide as the door frame - like a six inch gap. Apparently my subconcious had some issue with me closing that door.

So I pulled the handle sideways, stretching the door until it fit in to the frame. Dreams are fun.

Oddly, I also experienced the feeling of thinking I had woken from that dream when I really hadn't, and slipping in to a totally different dream. Shortly after I conciously realized that I was still dreaming, and it jolted me suddenly awake.

I was surprised that there wasn't any of this in the movie (other than when Ariadne manipulates Cobbs dream).  This shit happens all the time in my dreams.  Everything is very fluid (malleable).

They gave an in-movie reason - that the dreamer's defenses get alerted faster.

The out-of-movie-reason is probably so we can have this very discussion about what parts of it are a dream and what aren't.  If there were purple fire-breathing unicorns flying around a molten lava landscape in half the movie and the rest was a normal rainy city, it would be a little obvious.

Just FYI, it IS possible

If people are interested, there's a decent SA thread (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3310869) about lucid dreaming. It's one of those things I keep wanting to get around to trying, but never really do.

Bhodi, the best no-nosense, most contemporary instructional site for LD is www.lucidology.com.  This was formerly saltcube.com, then he went viral and had to go all infomercial.
If you follow his instructionals you will have great success with minimal effort, guaranteed.  Well worth the $10 for the 101 course and whatever else for the latter materials.

Currently he's the only guy really attacking the skill from a more combinative and practical viewpoint, rather then getting all holistic and new age like a lot of other authors.  His approach is very quick and mechanical.

So if I give this guy my email do I get any actual info or just a brochure and info about paying him $?

It's gotten all Art Bell up in this thread.

You'll get some tidbits of useful info., quite a good bit actually.  But, also info. about paying him of course  :oh_i_see:.  Hey, the man has to make money.  It's a better investment than buying most LD books out there I guarantee you that.

I am suspicious as hell of anyone who sells an indeterminate number of hazily priced "courses" and "materials" rather than putting what he knows into a book and letting you buy it.

Modern Snake Oil.

That's ok, I'm sure I can just torrent the all the courses if I want.   :why_so_serious:

That negative energy is really going to hamper your dream walking, sir.

Hmm.  I wonder if this is what I experience.  Usually it takes me forever to fall asleep, but occasionally I doze off, and I'll be between consciousness, and sleep, and I'll just jerk awake like I stopped breathing, and my brain had to jump start my body, or something.

Just curious, is it possible to unconsciously manipulate your dreams?  It's never something I've consciously tried to do, but I recall having manipulated the dream quite often.  Like rewinding an interaction with someone in my dream, or whatever.  It seems to be more common when I'm close to waking, where I'm in that weird "kinda awake, but still dreaming" state.

(most) All of his stuff is video material.  So you can either DL it or have it maiiled to you as a DVD.  A LOT of his stuff is free though, and then there's the forums.
He used to do all this in his free time and much of it was free, but then his popularity ballooned and just like everything else he had to commercialize and start spending more time on it.  Like I said, as someone who's spent LOTS of money on materials, his is the most worth it.


Manipulation is a conscious act, which of course is the whole point.  "Unsconscious manipulation" is just an instance where you've remembered you've dreamed and recall that your mind changed things on-the-fly...  which is not lucid dreaming and not consciousness.  Dreaming's main function is to prep. the mind via simulation, so unconscious "manipulation" is a necessity to make it work (the mind subtly alters dreams to test itself in varying situations), otherwise your mind/body would not be able to function properly when awake.

Now, there are tricks to unconsciously manipulate your dreams beyond what you speak of.  But, I wont go into that here. :why_so_serious:
(I feel the /rolleyes on me)

I had an experience like this this afternoon. I fell asleep and actually became lucid, except instead of being shocked awake, I was shocked awake into another dream in which I thought was reality. So I was essentially mad at myself for losing my lucidity in a separate dream. :uhrr:

Learn to do your reality checks right after waking, along with doing them periodically throughout the day.  If you dont have a sleep mask with a light, then make a totem like in the movie... one that will react oddly in a universe with bent physics.  Carry it with you and play with it regularly.  There are easier, more stealth ways to do the checks but I cant recall them off-hand aside from the simple act of looking into a mirror.  I believe doing intricate positions with your hands may work also.

That happens to me too.  Dirty trick for my subconscious to play IMO.

I've never experienced any hostility in lucid dreams.  As soon as I've realized I was in a dream, godmode kicked in, the dream's 'plot' more or less went on hold, and I just messed around until I woke up.  My ability to affect significant changes in the surroundings were somewhat limited, though.  I managed to make items appear, but that was about the extent of it.  And when I decided I wanted to wake up, I did, looked over to check my watch, and went back to sleep.  It wasn't until later that I realized that the watch had red glowing numbers like my alarm clock, opposed to the green numbers on my actual watch.  Stupid dream suckered me.

That was a good movie. Even if at the end there I was watching someone else play the Snow level from Call of Duty Modern Warfare II. I kept expecting someone called Soap to show up.

I also would think of such a technology existed, people wouldn't use it for mere training or stealing idea's, everyone would end up like Mal and stay in dreams forever.

If you want to spend the rest of your life in a joyous fantasy land while your body wastes away, you can just liquidate your assets and spend it all on meth.   :drill:

Not quite the same.  Being a meth head has a lot more negative side effects.  Perpetually being in a controlled dream would be very attractive to a lot of people.  It would be a downright epidemic.  People would stay in that condition until their bodies finally failed, and they'd never have to experience any of the privations of the real world as their life snuffed out.

If you could pay someone to keep your body alive and hooked up to all those magical sedatives, I'm sure you could pay someone to hook you up to some existing drug cocktail that would make your life seem blissful even as your teeth started falling out.

Or, if you've got nothing to live for in the real world and you're on a budget, take a big hit of some really happy drug, and then step in front of a train before it wears off.  You won't be conscious of anything that happens after that.

I'm sure that's a possibility, but jumping in front of a train is an active and messy thing, but dreaming to death not only has that romantic appeal but also won't cause as much a commotion.  Considering women traditionally suicide in a manner that doesn't disfigure and leaves a relatively attractive corpse, this would probably become their leading means of suicide.  Also the elderly, especially those who feel they're a burden upon the family.  Drugging out, while personally enjoyable I'm sure, still has a visible stigmata of causing trouble for those around you.  With the time extension and the limbo trap, holing up someplace for 3 or more days to starve to death while you're in a personal heaven is certainly going to cause some appeal. 

We've got people dying today because they're too hooked into MMO's or whatever game they're obsessively playing.   I don't see it as implausible that such a technology is excessively abused.

I want to point out that I'm not against such a technology, if it were possible to develop it, because of this.  There's a lot of good that can be achieved as well.  Imagine being able to go to school in your sleep, or for bedridden/paralyzed patients therapy.

I'm sure there'd be cases of abuse, but I think it'd only be among people who had nothing to live for to start with.  And I'd question how many of those would have the financial wherewithall or motivation to get it all set up, since it seems like you need help and training to do all that fancy dream shit, and the technology/drugs would probably be heavily regulated to boot.  

Most people actually do have concerns that go beyond diddling the pleasure centers of their own brains, which is why most of us don't sit around in drug-induced stupors all day.  That's all I'm saying.

That is true.  I seem to be taking for granted that this would be a common use technology, which is probably false.  I keep thinking back to the Ringworld books by Niven.  If I recall correctly they had guys who were addicted to some device which constantly stimulated the pleasure centers.  That's generally what I'm thinking about though without a world/culture that can support a large number of pleasure addicts.

I would however like to point out that one reason certain drugs are so highly addictive is because the high becomes more important than those other concerns.  A lot of us never bother with shit like that because we see the end product too frequently.

This movie was incredibly enjoyable to watch, it also reinforced by faith in Joseph Gordon-Levitt as an actor with stupid amounts of potential.

Man, late to the party, finally saw the movie, and more or less agree with everyone.

One thing on the totems that I picked up and didn't really see mentioned in the thread:

I just hope this isn't Nolan's high water mark.  He just keeps getting better and better.

This movie for me dispelled all notions of Gordon-Lewitt as that kid from 3rd Rock. I bet that is a massive compliment to him.

He hasn't been the kid from 3rd Rock since Brick IMO.  He was damn good in that.

I just want to add my recommendation to all the rest.  Easily the best movie since No Country for Old Men in my opinion.

The totem is a reality check, not a "who's in what dream check."  If it's someone ELSES totem than yah, it's conceivable it wouldnt help you, since your subconscious really isnt intimately linked with the object.


I'm enjoying this thread btw.  Especially the ethical parts of tech.-assisted dreaming.  It's something I've grappled with lately in deciding on a few projects I've thought to start, since obviously it's pointless developing systems that'll quite obvious turn illegal.  I can assure you there are no current regulations against certain aspects of it, but there WOULD be if ever developed as in the movie.  The key is making the tech. as "lightweight" as possible, allowing the mind to do most of the work.  The govt. cant regulate your mind - yet.

I thought that was the whole point of "you can't show other people your totems".  Because of the dreamer knew how your totem worked, their subconscious could make it work that way in the dream and thus you wouldn't be able to know if you were in a dream or not.  However, the totem wouldn't work too well in your own dream because your subconscious knows how the totem works and could cause it to react how it should.   

The rule was to not let anyone TOUCH or HOLD the totem. They were pretty free (at least Cobb and Ariadne and Arhur) with showing their totems.

But I understood the reason they couldn't touch it was because they would understand the details of the totem and be able to replicate it in their dreams.

The focus was on the weight, and how it acted, which you can't get by simply seeing something. They go to a lot of trouble telling the audience specifically about weight issues. Arthur's weighted die. Only HE knows how much it weighs and how it rolls, feels. Some with Ariadne and her chess piece.

Right but my point is that if I subconsciously knew the weight of Arthur's die, I could recreate it in my dream (even if I don't mean to) and he would have no idea if he was in a dream or in reality.  To me, that seemed to be the reason you weren't supposed to let anyone play with another person's totem.

Cobb and Arthur's explanation of a totem as a sort of cryptographic "secret" completely falls apart with the spinning top totem that is proven to be "authentic" if it falls down.  I mean, who doesn't know that if you spin a top it will eventually fall down?

Right, play with. You said "show", originally. To me that is only visual to me, where you wouldn't know the weight of it. (part of this conversation is probably largely semantics.)

Ah yeah bad wording on my part :)

It is conceivable that a skilled enough dreamer COULD simulate a reality-check inside a dream, depending on how strong the check is.  A spinning top is tough to keep stable over a long period of time.  A weighted die is only effective if no one knows the number it should land on and how the die should move, but it's probably easier to manipulate than the top.  The chess piece I'd say is the easiest since the object is pretty uniform and easy enough to figure out how it should fall.

But again, it's long odds when you're up against someone who plays with their totem frequently throughout the day.  It'd be tough to fool them.  You'd have to replicate every subtle detail; look, feel, physics, etc.

I will say you can challenge YOURSELF to design totems and then try to recreate their behaviors as exact as possible once inside the dreamstate.  It's an interesting way to guage your progress.  For instance, build a chesspiece for real, play with it all day (for real), then initiate a WILD utilizing a different reality-check than the chesspiece (such as the mirror check, digital clock/time view, etc... all objects you'd have in your room).  Then try to make the chesspiece as exact as possible w/o kicking yourself out of the dream.  Once you master it, build something else.  Then try to capture all immediate objects near your sleep space.  Once you get good at that, move on to more original works and see how fooled you can make yourself.

The key here is doing exactly what a good architect does.  Create a world you cant tell the difference from.  The sole reason for this is to maintain dream stability, so you can play inside longer.  Then you can subtly manipulate w/o being kicked, therefore getting more accomplished (whatever that may be... porking Olivia Wilde on a white sand beach maybe??)  If you feel yourself losing control, shift your focus around to something else... then back again till you achieve desired results.  Over time you'll be able to focus on one object indefinitely.

Everything I read mentions to just use a digital clock of some sort as that seems to be hard to keep consistent in a dream. 

Personally I just want to figure out how to remember dreams more often.  I seem to forget my dreams before I even think to write it out or go over the dream in my head, or I wake up with only the memory of the concept of the dream but no recollection of the dream itself.

I'm going to Kenya in October and they prescribed me Malarone for malaria which apparently has the side effect of giving you crazy vivid dreams, so I intend to use that to my full advantage :grin:

The key to dream recall is interrupting your normal sleep cycles.  Wake yourself at odd hours then go back to sleep and then wake yourself frequently thereafter, and so on.
If you're looking to recall dreams during a truly normal sleep cycle, then the best way is to get a lot of sun during the day (melatonin is key), get plenty of exercise and so on.  Have a journal on your nightstand and try not to move or think about anything else once you awaken.  Over time you'll get better at it.  And yah, there are supplements you can take that'll help.

But honestly though, the best way to affect dream recall is to simply take total control.

This is going to sound stupid, because it is, but I did it this morning after waking up at 8 and then going back to sleep. I did my check and remembered I was dreaming, and so I started to fly through that cool city scape from Inception....yeah the one Ariadne turns in on itself. I then decided to shatter all the windows and send broken glass flying everywhere (I dont know why), at which point I forgot I was lucid, sliced myself apart with the falling broken glass, and spent the rest of my dream extracting glass shards from my wounds while Leonardo DiCaprio lectures me on being a bitch.

I kid you not.

Better start working on your totem.

I had a dream a few nights ago in which I decided I was going to learn how to lucid dream.  So in my dream I went to sleep and into a dream that I knew was a dream, messed around a bit, woke up, and told people "hey cool it worked!"  Then I woke up from that dream and I was all  :ye_gods:.

The oddest dream I had to date was one where the dream was in text, like online forum text rather than printed paper text.  I read the dream rather than directly experiencing it, which was just weird.  Anyone who says you can't read in a dream or that you don't dream in color are full of shit, as I have both explicitly read things while dreaming, and explicitly seen things in color.  If my brain is lazy it will skimp on details; I won't so much read a book word by word as look at the page and know what it says, but there have been dreams where the actual words on the paper were significant, and I read them without any difficulty.

And I've had times when I've gotten kicked, that 'feels like you're falling and wake up flailing like an idiot' thing.  I don't really care for that, as it always comes with a burst of terror in that moment of ohshitI'mfalling.

If the only scene in your frame is text then I'd say that's normal.  But, reading text from a larger landscape is something else entirely.  Like, sitting in a park having a picnic while reading a paper.  It's likely the words on the paper will be gibberish and only come into focus when everything else is not.  Then likely, when everything else returns it'll be a different scene.  You'll then have to reform the scene from memory...  which you may or may not have.

I enjoyed it, but Memento, Batman and The Prestige were all better to me.  Enjoyed the ending, but I got a bit bored with the drawn out climax. 

Inception soundtrack created entirely from Edith Piaf song (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jul/29/inception-soundtrack-edith-piaf)

It's a good song.

The song also perfectly fits the movie. It's stuff like this that brilliant film making is all about, using one song as an entire soundtrack for a single dream. Seriously.

Finally saw the movie tonight, but I don't think I saw the same movie that most people apparently saw. I thought it was an awful mess. I felt like I was in that goddamn van, just falling, forever, enduring a lot of action but nothing really happening. Oh, hey, more people shooting at each other .... again. Yes, well this score is awfully subtle, I guess this stuff is exciting and important? The music sure sounds like this is some epic shit going down. Oh hey, more dream people to shoot at, now in the snow! These shootouts and fisticuffs had all the excitement and dramatic tension that you might find in some FPS level when you're replaying it for the tenth time. Why am I doing this? Just to pass the time I guess. Why do I care? Good question. This movie gave me no reason to care about any of its self-serious, overstuffed bullshit.

This.  You monster.

It was also cool due to the fact that Marion Cotillard played Edith Piaf in "La vie en rose" a few years back (really good movie even/especially for people like me who didn't even know who Edith Piaf was before watching the movie).

Fantastic movie.  I think it'll change film the way the first Matrix movie did.

Enjoyed this a lot, even more than I thought I would.   As for my own opinion about it, I think the end was a little bit of a cop out.  While I get the point of it, I don't think it actually added much, if anything, to the movie, and it felt like a blatant attempt to make people go:


When there was already plenty of more subtle reasons to suspect that in the first place.

I agree with this completely. The gravity fight was at least something new, and (like the van chase) there was some degree of concern that the person involved would fail to protect his unconscious friends. By the time we get to the snow goons, who cares? I never got to the edge of my seat. This has been a problem with ever Nolan film I've seen, though. He doesn't do risk and tension very well.

I've loved them anyway.

Okay sure... and it's nice that, unlike M. Night Shyamalan (or Orson Welles), Quentin Tarantino never cast himself in roles that demanded any more acting ability or charm than he could personally deliver. It's even nicer when he doesn't cast himself at all.

Purposeful bad filmmaking does not excuse bad filmmaking any more than purposeful poor writing excuses poor writing. There is no artistic reason not to satisfy the audience by implying danger, especially if there's an artistic reason for that danger to prove unreal. That the film's action scenes rarely surpass 'silly', and that they last long enough to inspire tedium, is a bug not a feature.

I cannot help thee with that

Look, if the action scenes were like your typical action flick, it'd break the movie.  THAT would be bad filmmaking. 

They didn't have to be typical... they just had to be fun to watch, like the gravity fight. The rest seemed perfunctory.

And that's exactly the way it'd happen in your mind.  "Perfunctory."  Repetitious.  Bland.  Over and over.  Even when "exciting" the moves will seem practiced and calculated or totally mishmashed; exactly why Arthur looked at times like an Agent and other times like a flailing fool.  Also why most of the projections were like automatons with sporadic moments of greatness.
 
The dreamspace rarely produces some John Woo movie in your mind.  That's not the way it works.  What YOU want is for the human subconscious to "on-the-fly" develop a fully fleshed out high-action sequence in perfect detail.  Yah, good luck with that.  Not gonna happen.

So, now that we've established the Rules... go back and watch the movie again and rethink your stance on the filmmaking quality.  The movie was fuckin ingeniously produced and directed for the exact reason that they lived within the rules of the mind the entire time while telling a great story.  And I'd say it's a lot more difficult choreographing flawed, yet believable sequences rather than just going for perfect action.

The way the dreamers always acted in the action scenes seemed a bit weird (not bad weird). They were very good at times, and my interpretation was that it was either it being a dream, or the way they visualise their actions in a dream. Something along those lines.

Even if the bland, repetitive action is a purposeful style (and I think you are being way too generous in that assessment, but whatever), it's still bland, repetitive action and it's not entertaining. Sure the zero-G fight was visually interesting, but that's as far as it went. It had the same core problem as the rest of the dream action - zero emotional investment in the outcome. First the fact that our crew is fighting ghosts takes away a lot of potential drama right there - there is no real antagonist. Secondly, why am I even rooting for the "heroes"? Why do I care what this businessman does with his company? Oh because I'm supposed to believe that this job is the only way Cobb can be with his kids again. Because he would somehow automatically be convicted of killing his wife if they ever tried him for it. Why am I supposed to care about Cobb and his kids? I never saw them together, never had the chance for any kind of emotional investment in that relationship. And I'm supposed to care about these people's welfare in the dream because they might drop into a "limbo" and be mentally stuck for years? I almost laughed when that came up, like, thirty seconds of expository dialogue to tell me I should care.

This movie is like an intricate, shiny machine that was built with care but has no actual function. I guess a certain kind of person just likes to watch the gears turn.

I think a lot of the blame for the action scene weirdness/blandness can be placed on the music.   I LIKE the soundtrack, but it was cranked way up in the mix and was sort of always thudding/droning away there instead of your typical action movie stuff.

Except the city chase in Mombasa - that had your normal movie music, and it seemed more exciting to me!

Anyway, if you doubt the music has such a big effect, imagine the Benny Hill Yakety Sax playing over the whole thing, and then think again.

Yeah, the music became almost comically overblown at times, it was really distracting.

I have (unconsciously) gone through phases in how I approached going to the movies.

0-18) Almost a complete lack disbelief, complete willingness to buy into whatever the movie wishes me to believe, strong desire to be engaged and immersed into the film.  Can watch nearly complete shit and find it entertaining.  The golden age of my movie-going experience, now that I think about it.
19-39) Small suspension of disbelief.  Increasing degree of smug discontent with film's lack of ability to draw me in.  Spend a significant amount of mental energy in trying to figure out where the plot twist was going to occur so as to prove to myself that I was smarter than the screen writer.  Can watch decent film and walk away feeling disappointed. The nadir of my movie going experience.

Eventually I asked myself, "are movies significantly worse then they were when I was young?".  The answer was, "no, actually they are quite a bit better, overall".  So then I asked myself, "Why am I wasting money trying to ruin my movie experience?"  Either I need to stop going to movies, or stop being so critical of movies - because I'm not being paid to be critical of movies, I'm paying to enjoy them.

40 till present) Concentrated suspension of disbelief.  Concentrated effort to not over-analyze plot, dialog, scene or acting ability.  A movie has crappy physics?  Let. it. go.

So, yeah, everything that you critique this movie about has validity.  If I had been trying to, I probably would have had a very similar experience to yours while watching this movie.  Instead, I feel like I got my moneys worth.   :grin:

Well said.   Inception was a good movie.  If some folks want to seek some deeper meaning then good for them.  Personally I don't find it all that compelling.

Now if his kids had turned around and they had Twilight Zone pig faces and the movie ends with him screaming in horror, then THAT would have rocked!

 

That's what I meant with my Quentin Tarantino comment: Rather than casting yourself in a paper-thin role anybody could perform, why not write a better role for a better actor? Rather than having long, repetitious, bland fight scenes over and over, why not cut most of them? They don't add tension, they don't demonstrate character traits, they don't establish the world any more capably than better scenes would. Even if the whole effect was purposeful, and like AcidCat I'm dubious, it's lousy film making to spend so much of the screen time on the film's least interesting aspect.

I loved Inception, but it's painfully imperfect.

Welp, now you want them to cut scenes or shorten them to aid in the flow of action?  How would this exactly be possible when the story is written in a strict timeline?  TIME is a major character in this movie, so fucking with it to satisfy people's attention spans isnt smart imo.  Unlike you, I appreciated the reasoning behind the "droning" music and action sequences, because I understood their purpose.  Had they cut it up, it would've fallen apart... on multiple levels (3+ of them actually).

Painful imperfection is more perfect.   :grin:

Shut up.

I understand exactly what you're saying, and I agree, I also generally am able to suspend disbelief and just enjoy a movie on its own terms. Sometimes however I just can't, something just doesn't work on a fundamental level and I can't really force myself to enjoy it, it's like that magic just doesn't happen. *shrug*

So, I've been gone a few days and have actually seen the movie twice more.

Both times with people who were seeing it for the first time. Both people loved it and both said they liked the tension.

On that topic, I wuld have to disagree with the assertion that Nolan doesn't do tension very well. You can't say "hey, here's all this tension" and then say "he doesn't do tension", first off.

Heh:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41488/Duck%20Tales%20Inception/inception_scrooge_mcduck_1-760x549.png)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41488/Duck%20Tales%20Inception/inception_scrooge_mcduck_2-760x542.png)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41488/Duck%20Tales%20Inception/inception_scrooge_mcduck_3-760x544.png)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41488/Duck%20Tales%20Inception/inception_scrooge_mcduck_4-760x537.png)

Inception: The Gathering (http://www.geekosystem.com/inception-magic-gathering-duel-decks/)

(http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/08/Ariadne-The-Architect.jpg) (http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/08/Sedated-Death.jpg)

(http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/08/NashFA.jpg) (http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/08/We-Need-To-Go-Deeper.jpg)

(http://i.imgur.com/JiPqw.jpg)

Wait...yeah...WTF!?

 :facepalm:

(http://www.forgetfoo.com/images/blog/calvin_hobbs__inception.jpg)

He didn't just want to "see his kids again" though.  He wants to live with them like a family again, and he couldn't until his name was cleared.  He couldn't settle down to live with his family in France since the cops would get him.  The only places where he could hang out for any significant amount of time are probably places you don't want to bring your kids to.

Thats true, and I still have to laugh when I see his face in the third picture.  :awesome_for_real:

I blame Fry

(http://www.arterimalaysia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/futurama_fry_looking_squint2.jpg)

I don't know how the US works, but I assume the grandmother has protective custody and might not want them to visit him?

Granny did seem pissed.

Also, extradition from France is a nightmare, per Mr. Cobb.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Inception
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M6dYiIbRKM&feature=player_embedded

Saw it this weekend, finally. One of the best movies I've ever seen. I think I mostly agree with the Chud.com guy - the whole goddamn thing was a dream. Leo either created all of it, including all the members of the team, as a way to finally deal with his grief and move on, or there really are extractors out there and in this case they were trying to extract his metaphysical ass out of the dream state he's in. There was no reality in the whole thing.

Chris Nolan may have displaced Fellini as my favorite director of all time.

I'll drink to that. *drinks*

I need more Inception parody pictures like Chris Walken needs cowbell.

My 2c is that Mal never existed, Leo created her during his time in limbo to deal with decades of solitude. Mal, the kids it's all fantasy and he can't let them go so some of his friends, possibly only michael cane, go inside his head to fix him.

Yup, my take too. The most dreamlike action appeared to happen in the "real world" sequences.

The theory only works if the I.P. was self-contained, and even then it increases the chance of its possibility. The prequel comic brings about more of a "this is how the world is" theory.

In all honesty, there isn't a correct answer. It is a template by which multiple answers are correct without further evidence. It was designed that way on purpose.

.

I finally saw this on the plane just now. It was about as good as I thought it would be.

I can understand why some of the people here liked it, but for me it was a bit boring and pointless. I didn't think the special effects had much novelty and I cared more about the rich kid, the asian ceo dude, and that guy from 500 days of Summer than any of the other characters.. which still wasn't that much.

Stalker (the russian one) is a much better movie for me, in a somewhat similar vein.

Just saw this. I put it on the same level as Pan's Labyrinth.

Something a shitload of people loved, something that looked cool in the trailers, and something that was boring as hell when I finally saw it. Nothing was spoiled as all the memes about it made no goddamn sense without seeing the movie. (The rest of the post has nothing to do with Del Toro, who I love outside of Pan's Labyrinth)

Just regular old Christopher Nolan doing regular old Christopher Nolan bullshit.

He's the M. Night Shyamalackadingdong of action.

Both wander aimlessly through a desert trying to recreate their first meaningful movie, being Sixth Sense and Memento. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice? You can't, you half-baked, over-hyped, under-qualified uncreative jackasses.

PS The movie was absolutely gorgeous. But if I want something absolutely gorgeous AND good, I'll just go watch some Kurosawa or something. Or hell, Stalker, as mentioned in the post above this one.

PPS Ellen Page is kinda adorable.

wb :awesome_for_real:

Had some edits to make. I hadn't insulted Nolan enough.

Needs more turtlenecks and berets

No surprise, but I disagree with what you said. Especially the part about Momento being Nolan's best work.

Fine, his Batman stuff is his best work but I don't really consider it his work. Much like I don't consider Spiderman 1 and 2 (THERE WAS NO 3) to be Sam Raimi movies.

I would argue that I think some writers/directors/artists can take a character/setting they did not create and put so much of their own stamp on it that it could definitely be considered their work. Just the Batman mythos, I could say that Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams as well as Frank Miller took something from other creators and made wholly original works that could stand on their own (except for Dark Knight Strikes Back - that was fucking godawful).

Agree with this. Also didnt see what the big deal was about Inception. It was like a bad boring Bond movie with parts of The Italian Job added in.

I can't think of any Bond movie that is as boring as Inception.

Nolan's movies are good, not great.  They all seem to make me not want to re-watch them. 

But you have to give the guy credit for his ambition.  Memento, a movie told backwards and Inception, a dream within a dream within a dream. 

Inception wasn't a dream within a dream within a dream.

It was just a poorly edited action movie that happened to be gorgeous.

Silent Hill's ending did the same thing, but better. Yea, I went there, choke that down.

Ellen page is cute as fuck.

That said, I dug it more for the beauty of it as well. The story was bog standard though. The biggest kick I got was just noticing that their city of dreams was partially shot in my old neighborhood in Tokyo.

 The dream-within-a-dream bit isn't really interesting in terms of overarching plot.  However, it allows Inception's action scenes to correlate with subconscious states, identity construction/deconstruction, and meaning/purpose.  Placing action scenes inside the realm of the subconscious allows for alot of play regarding those themes. That fucking hit the spot for me.  Memento and The Prestige explore those themes as well, but I think Inception does it best.  Simply a fantastic, A+ movie, despite it being kind of pigeonholed into a 'summer action blockbuster' kind of deal.

Saw this a couple weeks ago. It was aight.
I tried putting it on during Xmas holiday, and my mom was all "So far, not interesting!" before they even finished up the first dream thing. So I turned it off and put in the WB animated Wonder Woman movie.  :drillf:

You people are broken. I've known this for awhile but some of your reactions to Inception only confirms it. It was a damn good, smart sci-fi movie.

ITT: Posters compare good, decent, even awesome movies to movies that never existed, yet were infinitely better and changed the world, or somthing.

Yes, this is a late reply...

Don't look at me.  I loved Inception.  Nolan for me is one of the top 5 directors working today.  In fact, I feel particularly blessed that even though most of 2010's movies sucked, I got new movies from Nolan, Aronofsky, the Coens, Danny Boyle, and to a lesser extent, David Fincher.  On average, 2010 wasn't really a great year for film, but I think the high points were really fucking strong.

The wife liked it a lot.

I just have a hard time admitting to myself the Leo somehow became a decent actor. (Or someone who has an amazing ability to pick roles.)

And I totally agree Ellen Page is cute.

Boring but visually interesting is a great way to describe the film.

Leo was always an OK actor, most of my hate was directed at the phenomenon that turned women into gibbering teenage masses over him.  Much like my hate for Twilight. (well, that and fucking sparkly emo vampires.)

Same reason guys hated Duran Duran in the 80's, because the girls liked them.

I hated their music.  AND the videos made me want to smack them and MTV. 

Come home from a night out at least half in the bag, grab something to eat, hoping to stare at Pat Benetar's ass while she sings whatever in that black jump suit or Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love girls and have to endure Duran Duran being... well, Duran Duran.   Like a hot needle in the eye.  Yeah, I guess I hate them.  And girls definitely had something to do with it, but not in the way that you implied.

Somehow now I'm remember the Safety Dance assholes as well.  REALLY hate them.

Safety Dance is like some weird-ass nightmare. I want to see a video of it slowed down to half speed, with Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams" playing under it.

I loved Duran Duran.

At least 'til the album after Notorious.

And as other people have said, Leo has always been a decent actor. Partially because of the roles he's chosen and partially just because, yeah he can actually act. Basketball Diaries was the shit.

First thing I saw Leo in was Romeo + Juliet by Baz Luhrman, an otherwise solid flick. But based on his performance in that, I didn't think he'd ever act again. I'm glad to see his career went forward.

I think his best has been "Catch Me If You Can" from 2002 with Tom Hanks.

The Departed gets a close second.

His performance in Shutter Island was also quite good.

He's quite interesting, he really doesn't make that many films, but where he does he makes great films in which he is the star, He has only made 17 films since the basketball diaries in 1995. Compared to actors of a similar age who have made more films (I generally used 1995 as the benchmark or nearest to): Ben Affleck (33), Matt Damon (~43), Mark Walhberg (24 since Basketball Diaries), Ethan Suplee (~37), Christian Bale (~26), Edward Norton (22). The actor who has done the closest number of films is Orlando Bloom (18), although the quality if his films, and the significance of his part in them does not compare to Leo.

He took a break from acting, I thought, to get away from the Titanic craze, then slowly reinserted himself into quality pieces. Also, probably can afford to be picky because of the money he made off Titanic?

He did Man in the Iron Mask and some other film I have never heard of (Celebrity) in 98, the year after Titanic. Man in the Iron Mask is a decent film and he's good in it. I'd say it's more the latter, he can pick and chose and given how highly he is regarded I'm guessing he tends to get the best scripts going. His track record suggests quality rather than quantity; he hasn't done any voiceover work for animation or video games (which I believe is more of money thing than artistic quality thing?).

He was also a big party guy in his youth, but I think he's slowed that side down and now considers what he wants to act in, rather than picking a film based on its shooting location.