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Inception, The Social Network, TS3 Get Oscar Noms
Among the Best Picture nominations this year are Inception, The Social Network and Toy Story 3. In addition to TS3, the Animation category has How to Train Your Dragon and The Illusionist. Also getting a nod in documentary was Exit Through the Gift Shop, which is worth your time if you are into that sort of thing. You'll have to wait a month to find out who the winners are... and to find out what the stars will wear on the red carpet. Or to play the Oscar speech drinking game.
the King's Speech. I think most people here will relate to it.
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Maybe I'm just getting old, but I haven't been very interested in most of the Oscar films in years. Every now and then I'll see a movie that really impresses me, but they almost never get Oscar nom's (occasionally they'll get Independent Spirit nominations). But some of my favorite movies/TV shows of the last decade never got any attention at all from any of these awards shows. Session 9 was the best horror film of the decade and never got any attention from any award show. Did Firefly or Battlestar Galactica ever win an Emmy? Nope.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Slashdotters really need to learn to use stty properly.
As a fan of animation and kid's movies, I think How to Train Your Dragon was hugely underrated. It is one of those movies that even a 2 year old can sit through and comprehend, which is a rarity for a full-length movie. But the subtlety of the characters is great and the emotions were well acted and realistic. The main character also appeals to the inner geek. There is certainly nothing mind-blowing in it, and the CG is average. But if you like this style of movie and have never seen it I highly recommend it.
[Most Hollywood Action Flicks] are logically inconsistent, and the action sequences were just a bunch of guys shooting each other with mundane guns.
FTFY
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I haven't watched the Oscars in a long time but that actually looks to me like the AA version of a drinking game.
English is not this
I would give anything for Netflix to get the mother fucking clue, already. I can't tell you how many times I have clicked the "DO NOT FUCKING RECOMMEND THIS PIECE OF SHIT TO ME" button and yet it keeps popping up EVERY time as a suggestion. I said I didn't give a shit about this Banksy fucktard yesterday and I still don't care about him today. STOP SUGGESTING IT TO ME!
The only thing even nearly as annoying is how it keeps suggesting fucking stand up comedy films to me. Comedians are boring assholes. How many times do I have to vote down comedian films before you figure me out, you shitty fucking algorithm! GAAAAR!
The movie was good, but John Powell's score to How to Train Your Dragon was phenomenal. Almost year later and it still gives me goosebumps to hear it. I don't expect it to win Best Score (Inception and The Social Network are just too popular), but it certainly deserves it.
It's a fantastic film -- I'd recommended it to anyone, even if they're not "into that kind of thing" (by which I assume, street art).
But let's not assume too much about its veracity, eh?
Sitting around and giving answers to minor questions isn't entertaining. Half of my friends complained there was too much plot and not enough action, and the other half complained it was mindless action with not enough plot. Trying to strike a good balance is always tricky.
They didn't explain how the pager was reached. We're assuming the computer powering the grid had ZERO connection to any other computer, phone line or data line. Yet this is the most important project in Flynn's life. You're saying he didn't replicate data or do backups somehwere? There was probably one connection to the outside world that they weren't aware of most of the time. And it took them ages to find that connection, or figure out how to do anything with it. We're talking about an ancient computer on a custom OS interacting with the rest of the world. This is a minute detail. Does this destroy the viewing experience of the movie?
Why was the son pointed out? Because they're planning sequels.
What was the Big Lebowski talk? What specifically are you talking about? Are you asking why Flynn was a bit of a hippy, then you missed the overall message of the movie.
The first movie was akin to Star Wars, rebels fighting against this evil empire of sorts. That wasn't the case here. This was Flynn struggling to come to terms with his own creation, and why the pursuit of perfection isn't always a good idea. Obsession with the big picture means losing sight of everything else.
Flynn was afraid to do anything initially, and really he was right. He could accept that he and his son was trapped, or he could risk releasing an army on the real world. In the big picture, not taking that risk is the way to go. But it makes for a boring movie, so we have the brash son to push the story along.
The fact that it was a special lightcycle is the reason that people identified Flynn Jr.
As for consulting any computer scientists, the movie is consistent with its own universe. Programs in the grid have personalities, despite being programs. They represent the people who programmed them. Tron is a representative of Alan for instance. This isn't realistic, but reality is boring.
Who says the drunken hobo wasn't a zombie process? He lost his parent thread (job) and is unemployed, siphoning away resources while sitting there and doing nothing.
Who says the nightclub wasn't a repreesntation of Flynn's playlist?
If Flynn can fix anything immediately, then he is God. He is never in danger and there is no dramatic tension. They establish when he fixes Qora, that it is difficult for him to do so, and that it takes time.
Learn how to spell Lebowski and weak, then come back with your next round of pointless criticisms that have little to nothing to do with whether or not the film was entertaining or meaningful.
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I haven't seen Black Swan or The King's Speech yet. Let's assume most of the movies nominated were worth all the buzz. That doesn't change the fact that Inception is a masterfully crafted movie.
The beginning of the movie is chaotic with no explanation, and Nolan very slowly unravels his tale while interspersing action sequences without making them feel obligatory. He also edits between multiple layers cleanly. He tells a complex story without overt exposition. This is far harder than most people realize. He gets great performances from a number of actors, and pushes the visual barrier as well.
In the age of CGI and mammoth budgets, finding a way to show people something on film they've never seen is becoming harder and harder.
If that wasn't one of the five best directing perforances this year, then I don't know what to say.
For my money, Nolan is one of the best directors working today (along with Aranofsky, Boyle, Soderberg, and Spielberg) and this may have been his finest movie to date, and his most impressive directing work specifically.
And before someone goes screaming about the brilliance of the Cohen Brothers, or Clint Eastwood, or Polanski or anything like that, those guys can put together a fine drama. But their overall directorial acumen does pale compared to someone like Nolan.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I apologize if I wasn't clear. When I said, "If that wasn't one of the five best directing perforances this year..." I was referring to the fact that it didn't get nominated for Best Director.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Respectfully, I don't think you understood Inception... let me try to explain:
Inception opens with a shot of children building a castle on the beach. This is a biblical reference to Matthew 7.24 and the parable of the wise and foolish builders. The film closes when Cobb's real children tell us they are building a castle “on the cliff”. So we start and end with a biblical story about how getting to heaven requires faith in God. This encourages us to read Inception as an allegorical journey towards redemption through faith, not an action film. Having failed to “buy his way” to heaven, Cobb gets there by taking a “leap of faith”.
If you are confused by the spinning top or self-referential nature of the movie (films are also dreams, and who is to say what message the audience will find in the safe?), that's because you aren't thinking critically about what you saw. People who argue about the spinning top for instance miss the point. The ending of the film is a heaven sequence depicting Cobb’s reunion with God. We have the forgiveness of sins (immigration), the family reunion and the return to the heavenly garden. In order to get there Cobb simply needs to forgive himself (for his complicity in his wife's death) and sacrifice his own life to rescue Saito from limbo. The point of the spinning top is that Cobb ignores it -- he has faith.
One more paragraph because in case you still think that this is a stretch, consider that Michael Caine plays a master architect (creator). Or consider the scene where Cobb stops by Paris to ask his father for guidance. After being chided for his worldliness and corruption (“I never taught you to steal”), Cobb argues he is doing the best he can in a fallen world. But when he asks for help, help is given in the form of a woman whose mythological name suggests her role is guide Cobb out of the maze that is the mortal world (“all dreams are mazes”).
Given that the film has lines like "you have to die to wake-up" I don't think Nolan can be accused of subtly. But if he's made a film that goes over the heads of most filmgoers, it can only be because people have been trained out of having any expectations from movies by the very sorts of films you criticize. So whatever you want to say about Inception go ahead, but calling it a logically inconsistent film with mundane action sequences is about as far off-mark as you can get. This is a film about ideas (it doesn't always give answers -- where does Cobb get the "genesis" of the idea of salvation). If you watch it with the right mindset, I think you'll have a lot more fun and realize how much better it is than anything else released this year!
Lets be totally honest, if you made the exact same movie in an alternate universe where no one cared about facebook, the movie would have bombed. The /only/ reason that TSN did as well as it did wasn't because it was a great movie, but because every idiot facebook user went "lololololol lets go see that facebook movie"
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Not only are they available, but checking their main page, http://www.mattracks.com/ they are advertizing their role in Inception. I wonder which direction that relationship came from. Did the director want the tracks, or does Mattracks actively court films trying to get some product placement in there?
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
A man (Decaprio) gets on a plane, first class to america.
The movie starts with his really vivid dream about the other people in 1st class.
He wakes up, gets off the plane and goes home to his children.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
films are also dreams, and who is to say what message the audience will find in the safe?
I think your interpretation of the movie proves that point. I think that many of the things you've mentioned were not in the film for the reasons you state, but you've glued them together in a coherent form.
That's not a bad thing. Art isn't about the intent of the artist, it's about what the audience get out of it. Even if I disagree with aspects of your interpretation, I found it extremely interesting. I do have a singular problem with it:
People who argue about the spinning top for instance miss the point. The ending of the film is a heaven sequence depicting Cobb’s reunion with God. We have the forgiveness of sins (immigration), the family reunion and the return to the heavenly garden. In order to get there Cobb simply needs to forgive himself (for his complicity in his wife's death) and sacrifice his own life to rescue Saito from limbo. The point of the spinning top is that Cobb ignores it -- he has faith.
Cobb didn't put the spinning top down and walk away. He looked at his family, he let them go on ahead of him, then he spun the object on the table and stared intently at it. When he was satisfied that it would stop spinning, as it slowed down for a bit, that's when he walked away to join his family.
Here's the catch: he didn't actually wait for it to stop spinning completely. A small amount of hope was sufficient. It's less about faith and more about knowing that he could be happy there, whether it's real or not. Once he had enough room to accept the possibility that it was real, he didn't want to ruin it by finding out it's not. Ignorance is bliss. This really was the problem his wife had all along...she suspected the world she was living in wasn't real, but who cares? She was living a good life with someone she loved and he loved her back. Why even try to wake up from that?
For my money, Nolan is one of the best directors working today (along with Aranofsky, Boyle, Soderberg, and Spielberg) and this may have been his finest movie to date, and his most impressive directing work specifically.
For my money Christopher Nolan is the best director today, period.
He has a technical mastery of his art but never lets the technical get in the way of the story.
He is also equally adept at arthouse pictures (Following, Memento) and blockbusters (Batman, Inception).
I've been a huge fan since Memento and he hasn't disappointed yet.
Even his "weaker" movies are good. (Insomnia for example - which on a second viewing recently I actually enjoyed Pacino's performance more)
From my psychological perspective, Inception is a very amusing exploration of our unconscious, with a lot of metaphors that describe real psychological processes (taking some licenses, of course) The intervention of the real phenomenas and its effects in our dreams is a known phenomena, the water pouring into the dream when DiCaprio gets "the kick" in the bathtub is a beautiful representation of this effect. The "inception" of an idea, can be traced to the real life effect of planting false memories and later having cryptomnesia.