Who is Looking Forward to Nolan's "Inception"?

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ouinon
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09 May 2010, 12:53 pm

It's due out on 16 July most places, but I live in France and it probably won't be out till August or later, but I am so looking forward to seeing it. This site has a really good trailer, the third, on its front page: http://www.nolanfans.com/ ( the "Trailer Three Launched Online" news piece ) :D

"Memento", one of Nolan's other films, is one of my favourites.



RockDrummer616
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09 May 2010, 3:53 pm

This will be the best movie of the summer. I've been following it for months, since before anyone knew anything about it. The cast looks amazing and I can't wait for it. Have you seen any of the posters? This one's my favorite:
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Also, have you seen "The Prestige"? Same director, also a great movie.


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ouinon
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10 May 2010, 7:39 am

Yes, I've seen "The Prestige", and it's not bad, pretty clever, and wonderfully weird, but it feels just a wee bit too "contrived" or something, though I still prefer it to his "Batman Begins" and "Dark Knight"; it's so much more complex and rich; plenty of material to chew on, interpret, analyse etc. :D

But my favourite of Nolan's films remains "Memento". I liked it first time round, a lot, and raved excitedly about it to people for a couple of weeks, ... then the glorious moment of insight ( at the end ) gradually faded leaving just the "puzzle"/cleverness and I began to think that it wasn't all that great ... until I watched it a second time, nearly a year later and ... boom! :D It's amazing.

I've seen all the posters for "Inception", I think; my favourite is actually the one with Dicaprio on his own up to his knees in water in the city which is rearing up above his head/in the background. Have you seen all the trailers then, if you've been following it? I think this latest one is the best.

I'm hoping that although the film doesn't seem to be trying for the same super original and powerful experiential effects of "Memento", ( the way in which we are constantly making sense of new data, how new data is manipulated/filtered, etc by our programming, chemical states etc ), which the backwards chronology of half the scenes "forces"/allows us to "see", it doesn't end up falling into the "Matrix" trap of too many relatively mindless action/fight scenes etc, ... because the idea "the mind is the scene of the crime" is so promising, so full of possible angles/"takes" on how we construct reality, how we represent reality, eg. how the process of transferring short term memory into long term memory which we know as dreaming constitutes a kind of key to our "maps" of the "territory", ( that which we only ever see/know indirectly through our representational systems, never directly ).

:lol I love films like these, like "Dark City" too, which feel like "my ( aspie? ;) ) head"! Totally brilliant. "The Prestige" is on very similar lines but seems to be too conscious of its message somehow, not quite "natural" enough about what we will do rather than, ( or if we can not ), accept or see reality; ie. the awful/"expensive"/overly-complicated/destructive stories we tell us ourselves.

Roll on August! ( or July 16 for the lucky people in the USA and UK ) :D

.



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12 May 2010, 4:41 pm

Nolan can do no wrong.

Here is its Wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception_(film)


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12 May 2010, 6:26 pm

Since Nolan has yet to make a movie that I don't consider "great", I'm definitely looking forward to this. Batman Begins is probably my favorite movie altogether.



JoshW
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05 Jun 2010, 6:58 pm

Definitely looking forward to this. Looks amazing!



Manolito_Mystiq
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06 Jun 2010, 5:06 am

It has the same mood as The Dark Knight. Hell, even the posters look the same.
I'm pretty sure, I'll check it out.



ouinon
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03 Jul 2010, 6:45 am

Not long now! :D Well, for people in the UK and USA anyway.

It comes out here, in France, on the 21st July, but doesn't come to our little local cinema which shows the original/undubbed version until the 27 August, so I think that I will wait until the end of August to see/hear it in english; it's never quite as "immediate"/"surrounding" when dubbed.

I keep consulting the Nolan fansite for news, clips, interviews etc, and it continues to look and sound amazing. http://www.nolanfans.com/
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03 Jul 2010, 3:45 pm

I already bought a ticket for opening day.


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ouinon
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05 Jul 2010, 7:42 am

Here's a review from a Croatian subtitle writer, translated by a friend of theirs and posted on both the Nolan Fans site and on imdb:

Quote:
No, not ''TDK'', or ''Begins''. Not ''Memento'', ''Prestige'' or ''Insomnia''. Capable in adapting others ideas, Nolan is with ''Inception'' for the first time (in a long time) what you call ''the auteur'' of his movie (after that great debut called ''Following''), he is a scriptwriter and director. And again, this time at his craftsman's peak, creative turmoil and storytelling all in once perfected as a single shape of purity, he is changing the very paradigm of movie storytelling.

The concept of ''Inception'' is extremely ambitious, at first sight - your typical hollywood ''high concept'' that very much succeeds in surpassing average moviegoer's mind, a cult (like ''Blade Runner'') or, even more so, all that, and then more like action-filled no-or-little brainer that underlines the need for greediness, for mindless action instead of focusing on what's right and what's fair - the story (like ''Total Recall''). No, ''Inception'' is none of those examples, this is not an adaptation of Phillip K. Dick, but at the same time this is ''the dickiest movie of them all'' - in smarts, in heart, in yearning. Totally filmic, purely thoughtful and presented in the very best pictures, it's a movie equivalent of P. K. Dick's prose: the high concept is known, but not explained. You are deep in it from the very start, when you watch it, you feel it right there - inside - thumping hard.

There's no track of endless philosophical babbling we've seen in ''Matrix'' (second and third part - he means , there's no playing with designer glass coolness of those movies, the movie itself is cool - effortlessly. And yet, ''Matrix'' is the last movie before ''Inception'' that dared touching that sacred concept of 'I'', ''Mind'', ''Perception'' and ''Thought'', all mixed in one big hollywood picture. People didn't get one thing: it was all about Morpheus and his tellings, it's about what ''we'' did, not ''them''...later on, someone pointed to robots and said - there's your enemy, right there. So it turned out to be good vs. evil story and, we all know - that didn't turn well with sequels.

In ''Inception'', Nolan is not making that same mistake. There are no villains. There's this job, interested parties, great unknown space of human consciousness, awareness, subjective experience and traumas that lie somewhere ahead - our internal spaces, epic vastness of uncertainty that promises more dangers than any villain out there. Nolan is a genius because even those dangers are not presented in a clear way. Drama is here, inside the character (like Euripid masterfully did it, many, many years ago)...only this time - literally. There are no villains. Magnificent strike for a man who presented us the most memorable villain in a long time.

Stories from the perspective of modern philosophy will be told, there's no mistake there, but not by me. The only thing you need to know right now is this, once you start watching it, very closely and from the very first second, you will imediately know one thing: this is smart. Visually, story-wise; intrigue and drama and tragedy are all there...and redemption.

Nolan's movies were always like a puzzle. Escherian poster for ''Inception'' is just like that, just like the movie itself: dream/reality, consciousness/subconsciousness, active decision/passive listening, the very core of a human being. Enigma of this proportion is already implanted in each and every one of us, the thing is - Nolan made it architectualy relevant - you believe it, he really made a miracle.

Leonardo Di Caprio is possibly one half of this movie. He looks and acts like a movie version of Chis Nolan. With ''The Departed'', ''Revolutionary Road'' and ''Shutter Island'' (recently), he willingly decided to be the very best out there, and here, guess - he is. Like a derivative version of all these previous characters, you really care for Dom Cobb. You might as well say Di Caprio is co-author of ''Inception'', he's that good.

Pfister's visuals are, as usual, stunning, photography is kind of watery, eteric, fluid, with Guy Hendrix Dyas ( scenography - last time seen in ''Kingdom of the Crystal skull'') doing the props and design and all these things you see behind your beloved characters. Visual effects - well, you think you know what they can do these days? Think again and think fast. ''Inception'' is dreamily, effortlessly grinning in the face of gravity and mother physics. Every single movie out there will not prepare you for this. I will not even try to explain what kind of dreaded montage some people needed to overcome in some sequences, but there is not one second wasted I can tell you. Ok, Hans Zimmer is still doing his usual partiture...thingie, but he's doing it good so you won't mind (he's not much of a Zimmer fan Still, music is the only dot that is not perfected like the rest of the parts - the only thing that says: ok, this is brilliant, but not ''best movie of all time'' brilliant.

None the less, he belongs there - with the very best. Christopher Nolan achieved, after 114 years of movie art, something that was considered impossible (at least when you look at those recent summer disasters) - he changed the way we perceive storytelling. The way we absorb and thoroughly think and cannot sleep after one long night in cinema. With ''Inception'', he did it bravely - he shot his masterpiece.


:D Aaaargghhh ... I can't wait!



Magritte
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05 Jul 2010, 9:11 am

I'm not.

I find Nolan to be overrated.



ouinon
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05 Jul 2010, 9:38 am

Magritte wrote:
I'm not. I find Nolan to be overrated.

Would you say this about all of his films, or just about certain ones in particular?

I would totally agree that "The Dark Knight" is overrated. I couldn't even be bothered to finish watching it a second time recently ( I got as far as the preparation for the Hong Kong heist ); without the suspense of a first viewing to pull me along I found it boring/heavily tedious and strangely clunky. And "Batman Begins" was an okay action film, but I was not impressed because I was comparing it with Burton's "Batman Returns" which I love.

"Memento" on the other hand felt fantastic on first viewing, a feeling that lasted for several days, but then faded, and it began to seem less and less impressive, "glib" and "clever clever" in the most superficial and even nihilistic way, such that I also decided that it had been overrated ... until I watched it again ... and realised/rediscovered the profound/inspired brilliance of it that my memory of the clever twists had increasingly obscured over time.

"The Prestige" was a disappointment the first time I saw it, expecting something like "Memento", and I still think that it is fundamentally flawed in some way, as if Nolan tried to cram too much "message", too tightly, into a story, ( rather than the story and message being seamlessly one and the same as in "Memento" ), so it "creaks" slightly. But I have found it more rewarding on second viewing, making it, like "Memento", a valued "member" of my film collection.

I didn't think much of "Insomnia" at all, and I don't understand people, like Peter Travers, who rate it above all of the other films.

But "Inception" appears to be about the same kind of thing which made "Memento" and "The Prestige" great, or at the very least good/excellent/worthwhile, and that is "models of reality", etc, a subject which I get the impression is one of Nolan's "special interests"! :lol
.



Free-Hinter-System
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07 Jul 2010, 11:20 pm

I am not a Nolan fan (being instead one of those people who think that his work in the past has mostly been pretentious and insubstantial -- I am tempted to bring in a Tarantino analogy but won't bother). Regardless, because of an interest in film I plan to see the picture (note that this is part of an admirable effort on my part to be level-headed ^^).



ouinon
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15 Jul 2010, 10:54 am

Roger Ebert has given it 4 stars! :D

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... /100719997

Roger_Ebert wrote:
"Inception" works for the viewer, in a way, like the world itself worked for Leonard, the hero of "Memento." We are always in the Now. We have made some notes while getting Here, but we are not quite sure where Here is. Yet matters of life, death and the heart are involved--oh, and those multi-national corporations, of course. And Nolan doesn't pause before using well-crafted scenes from spycraft or espionage, including a clever scheme on board a 747 (even explaining why it must be a 747).

The movies often seem to come from the recycling bin these days: Sequels, remakes, franchises. "Inception" does a difficult thing. It is wholly original, cut from new cloth, and yet structured with action movie basics so it feels like it makes more sense than (quite possibly) it does. I thought there was a hole in "Memento:" How does a man with short-term memory loss remember he has short-term memory loss? Maybe there's a hole in "Inception" too, but I can't find it.

The review thread at Nolan Fans has logged 205 reviews, 18 of them negative, and it has an 87% Fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 99 reviews, ( 13 negative ).

I'm glad to see that there is quite a range of opinion about it though, ( some quite virulently negative in amongst the more balanced and reasonably critical ) because that suggests that it presses buttons, is in some way challenging or appeals to a particular sort of person/mentality. I'd actually be a little worried if everyone seemed to get it, like it, etc, because am inclined to think that would be a sign of total banality.

Because I didn't think all that much of "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight", ( they're ok but not great IMO ), nor "Insomnia" ( maybe I didn't get it, but it felt as "dead"/burned out/blank as I do after several late nights! ) , I am not one of the unqualified Nolan Fans, but I love his explicit examinations/explorations of models of reality, ( a la "Dark City", "Brazil", "Avalon" by Oshi, "Matrix", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", "Synecdoche, New York", and similar films ); how we construct them, protect/defend them, experience them, get lost in them, escape from them into others, etc. And "Inception" is looking like one of those.

I think that one mistake some ( critical ) critics are making, ( though I admit I may be wrong; I haven't seen it yet ), is that they are taking the ostensible, advertised context of the film, "dreams", literally/at face value, and thinking it is about *night* dreams, rather than about the models that we live in every moment of our lives, and so are disappointed by the mostly/frequently very "rational"/ordered/*un*dreamlike nature of the environments portrayed, because *night* dreams are not like that.

Also I didn't find "The Prestige" very impressive first time round, but on seeing it again I began to *feel* the meaning of it, understand the implications of things better, and now think that it is brilliant, so it is possible that the negative reviews which complain about "Inception"'s coldness, lack of emotion, etc, are because they spent, as I did with "The Prestige", most of the film just trying to work things out rationally, find out "the secret", ( the way out of the "maze" in "Inception" ), etc, and emotions didn't get a look in, as in real life our struggles to live with/navigate by and in certain models of reality can numb us, alienate us. But I realise that the film may in fact suffer from that very problem itself, a fascination with the purely abstract, spectacular, etc such that no room for feeling very much.

Has anyone seen it yet? :D What do you think?



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15 Jul 2010, 12:59 pm

I'm looking forward to this a lot. I've liked all of Nolan's movies, and this one seems to smack a little bit of the psychological weirdness of one of my favourite films ever, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I've been avoiding reading reviews or watching trailers for it, which is something that I never do.

Normally when I'm interested in a film, video game or upcoming musical release, I scour the internet for every available piece of information about it, read forums about it, and think about it all the time. I wonder if that makes entertainment media one of my "special interests"?


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15 Jul 2010, 1:25 pm

Manolito_Mystiq wrote:
It has the same mood as The Dark Knight. Hell, even the posters look the same.
I'm pretty sure, I'll check it out.


well you got me curious so...

Inception was done by a company called Ignition Print:
http://www.impawards.com/designers/ignition_print.html

Dark Knight was done by BLT & Associates:
http://www.impawards.com/designers/blt_ ... iates.html
http://www.impawards.com/2008/dark_knight_ver4.html

they both have crazy awesome portfolios.


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