Inception

[Variety of Cells]

This is kind of cool.  Someone's observation on the score of Inception and how it fits with the theme of slowing time in the film.

[Darth Macho]

...Making a big deal out of tricking Cillian Murphy into fighting his own subconscious only to abandon the concept once he hits the Snow Level is lame. When that happened he stopped being the dramatic conflict and Mal (a nonexistent antagonist) became the threat.

Did they abandon it? I'm not sure that they did - he was sent to distract his own subconscious, wasn't he? But, I think the threat was always Dicaprio's mind. That was established right at the start of the movie with Mal ratting them out, and then in the first level of Cillian's mind with the train etc etc...

Strip down the movie to its basic 'heist' formula... the point of the hotel level was to get the target to 'deactivate' the 'security system'. They make a big deal out of Cobb tricking the target into helping them steal from his own mind. Cut to the snow level, where none of that matters, the 'security system' is still going off... guns, chases, etc. So... abandoned plot thread?

...Trying to explain away Mal as a remnant of DiCaprio's guilty conscience doesn't work when for the entire movie her character is a murderous Freddy Krueger. And apparently she was a crazy bitch in real life, too, so there's no pathos for DiCaprio beyond emo-whining.

She wasn't crazy in real life until DiCaprio accidentally planted it in her mind. Also, all of the "people" that populate subconsciousnesses attack people in dreams, she just happens to be the strongest/main person from DiCaprio's subconscious.

Disagree. She wanted to live in a dream world forever and abandon her real-life children long before Cobb incepted the idea that suicide = happiness. Every single time she shows up in the movie, from flashbacks to dream sequences, she's a crazy bitch. Now, unreliable narrator could explain that (also filmmaker hates her character) but at some point an audience HAS NO CHOICE but to trust that a movie is not lying to them. So Mal was always crazy is the truth.

I'll add that the movie might break its own logic by including Mal as a figment of Cobb's subconscious. Only the target gets to use subconscious people in the dreams... the thieves can't just magic a train running through the middle of a street. It's the target's subconscious, a mind that is on guard against foreign intrusion like killer femme fatales with a grudge against a third party. Therefore having Mal show up doesn't work.

[Edward J Grug III]

Strip down the movie to its basic 'heist' formula... the point of the hotel level was to get the target to 'deactivate' the 'security system'. They make a big deal out of Cobb tricking the target into helping them steal from his own mind. Cut to the snow level, where none of that matters, the 'security system' is still going off... guns, chases, etc. So... abandoned plot thread?

Well, the first thing to remember is that they have to change plans entirely because the kick happened earlier than they anticipated it and they ran out of time. Second, I think a lot of that was actually just getting Cillian's character to trust them, and having him "break into" the vault, make the discovery himself and thus plant the inception.

Disagree. She wanted to live in a dream world forever and abandon her real-life children long before Cobb incepted the idea that suicide = happiness. Every single time she shows up in the movie, from flashbacks to dream sequences, she's a crazy bitch. Now, unreliable narrator could explain that (also filmmaker hates her character) but at some point an audience HAS NO CHOICE but to trust that a movie is not lying to them. So Mal was always crazy is the truth.

She wanted to live in the dream world (in fact they suggest that she forgot there even was a real world, though they also suggest that she did that deliberately) that doesn't make her a "crazy bitch" - it seems like kind of a natural reaction, to want to live in a dream world of your own construction - especially when next to no time is passing at all in the real world.

Also, as I said, all figments of the subconscious attacked the intruders - she just happened to be his main one. In fact, the argument could really be made that he is the crazy one - that it's his projections and nothing to do with her.

Plus he never implanted the idea that suicide = happiness - just the idea that it was all a dream. Unfortunately that caused her to believe reality was all a dream too.

I'll add that the movie might break its own logic by including Mal as a figment of Cobb's subconscious. Only the target gets to use subconscious people in the dreams... the thieves can't just magic a train running through the middle of a street. It's the target's subconscious, a mind that is on guard against foreign intrusion like killer femme fatales with a grudge against a third party. Therefore having Mal show up doesn't work.

I subscribe to the theory that the entire movie is a dream, every single shot takes place in his head - if you read these great articles, I think they put forward really strong arguments for that, which is supported by the fact that she was able to show up:

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

http://www.cinematical.com/2010/07/19/dissecting-inception-six-interpretations-and-five-plot-holes/

[Relaxing Dragon]

This is kind of cool.  Someone's observation on the score of Inception and how it fits with the theme of slowing time in the film.

I saw this earlier this week, it's pretty cool. Though it may not bode well for Zimmer: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/07/will_hans_zimmers_piaf-inspire.html

[Tripe]

Sigh, just when you think a film maker is a genius, you discover they're just ripping off old Disney comics

[Misty]

  Nothing's new under the sun.

[Edward J Grug III]

Heh! Awesome coincidence!

[Misty]

I know there's a ton of mashup trailers out there, but I thought this one was really well done. And since one of the articles you guys posted mentioned real tears when watching the movie UP, I thought it was a funny coincidence that I should stumble upon this today:

[TTYT]

Finally saw this movie. Great movie.

Though I will say don't buy the score on album. It's clever in how it was used, and works well in the film - but on album it's just a boring drone for like 45 minutes. I pray to god it doesn't get an Oscar nod (like how Marco Beltrami's well-done but still extremely ambient score for The Hurt Locker somehow got nominated last year...) John Powell's awesome score for How to Train Your Dragon is the one that deserves the next Oscar.

[Thrifty]

I don't understand the thing about being trapped in Limbo.

They get trapped there for 50 years, and get out when Dicaprio figures out they can just kill themselves, much like in every other dream state.  Why couldn't the Asian guy do the same thing?  Why did it take Dicaprio 50 years to figure that out?