The Songs of Johnny Go

Henchgirl and I are clearly the minority in this negative opinion, and I've personally read the three words "INCEPTION was awesome" so often this past month that it's virtually a frickin' meme, so your mileage may vary.

I feel like this is a film that makes people feel like they can congratulate themselves for "getting it," whereas we just felt insulted that we were supposed to be surprised by where the film was going. Know what I mean?

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I would suggest that you're looking at this through the wrong lens.

To contradict

tamburlaine, I quite enjoyed the actors in spite of being a straight guy, and I also appreciated the slight frisson of philosophy and second-guessing that this film inspired, even though it did indeed wind up being fairly easy to follow, because like Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Nolan basically begins the film by saying, "You can't trust what I'm about to say," which makes the subsequent events tense even when the truth is being told (as it was through most of the film).

But that's all gravy, because what this film really is, as its trailer tag lines stated all along, is a heist caper. As much as it flashes with spectacle and teases with deeper implications - the metafictionality of Cobb's phantom-wife pointing out how much his "real life" resembles an overly dramatic paranoid delusion flew over a lot of folks' heads, even though it telegraphed the ambiguous ending with sledgehammer subtlety - ultimately, that was all window-dressing for the scam, and because we were already there alongside the con artists, we were already in on it, just as with any number of similar stories set outside of someone's subconscious.

I don't think the film was even trying to surprise people all that much with its conclusion, so much as it was requiring them to do some fun mental math to follow along toward a conclusion that many had already guessed at.

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Therein you have another fundamental problem: I don't like heist capers (much less con artists; I actually have a very strong personal distaste for con artists, to the point that I'm the one person in the world who doesn't enoy THE STING).

If I don't care about the characters, I don't care period, and none of the mechanics can make me give a damn about how they get to where I can already tell they're going from the start.

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I find certain con artist characters annoying if they're too unflappable or smugly self-satisfied, but I still harbor a fondness for the con in principle, to the point that one of my original character superheroes with whom I identify the most takes a perverse sort of pride in what a liar he is (of course, the fact that he says, "I'm an exceptional liar" could arguably be seen as ruining the effect, but he kind of delights in the perversity of making people wonder what the fuck is up with his head).

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I only like con artists when they're beaten and exposed, and even then, maybe I'm just too deeply afraid of being someone's mark, but I have a serious mad-on for people who abuse and manipulate the trust of others.

Also, just saw this and thought it would be relevant to our discussion:

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I hate that I am not the person who posted that. damn. That person is a fucking comedic genius.

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The fact that you so confidently assume that this is an intentional parody says a lot about the corners of the Internet that you haven't explored yet. :)

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You underestimate me.

I've just been there so far that I can what's real and what's comedy.

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There is nothing that's too absurd to be real rather than parody.

Every time I read an article from The Onion, my default assumption is that it will come true within a few years.

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Over the years, I've gotten really good at reading between the lines on what is written sarcastically and what is sincere. Much less on the internet is sincere than you think.

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... What the fuck.

Um, anyway. Regarding con artists, I suspect that you and I are each speaking to something primal in our respective childhoods.

Here's my cards on the table:

As a little kid who didn't fit neatly into any one educational category, I learned very quickly that most adults outside of my family were not to be trusted. I was diagnosed as learning disabled when I was very young, and when a later diagnosis said that I was actually an accelerated learner, during my early years of grade school, I could tell that the grown-ups who dealt with me would have preferred it if I was simply incapable of learning.

As such, I got a lot of adults telling me to do things, and then saying later, "I never told you to do that," to make me look and feel dumb for not following directions properly. This was how I learned to mimic others, because I wondered if there was something wrong with my memory, so the next time I had some grown-up lying to me about what he'd instructed me to do, I did such a dead-on impression of him, right down to the tilt of his head and the nasal pitch of his voice, that even his colleagues laughed out loud and said, "You MUST have said that!" Hearing him admit, with undeniable anger in his voice, that he must have been mistaken was the first time I ever heard an adult admit that they were wrong and I was right, and that spiteful sense of satisfaction has motivated me ever since.

I don't believe in using deceit to manipulate those who are already at a disadvantage, but when you're going up against the big and powerful (and it's interesting that Nolan took such care to portray the Inception team's scam as accomplishing a greater societal good, by breaking up a potential monopoly of power), I consider such manipulation to be not only morally permissible, but almost obligatory, because those who lord it over others deserve to be humbled and brought low by scam artists.

Everybody admits that the world is unfair, but what few people want to acknowledge is that the world is unfair because it was CREATED to be unfair - the deck is stacked against you not just by RANDOM CHANCE, but because GOD HIMSELF (or whatever passes for such) has specifically set out to screw you, and as such, as long as you're EQUALIZING that on behalf of those who were born with bullseyes on their backs, then that's fair game.

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And as I said on my LJ, it says a lot about my own sexuality that the thing I find most surprising and offensive about this is ... Lionel Richie? I mean, seriously? You're going to take the time to recreate this surreal dreamscape in your personal ad, and then you're going to ruin that atmosphere by dropping Lionel Richie into it at the end? Who the fuck even does that, the pilot episode of Kidd Video notwithstanding?

Okay, granted, the sexual fetishizing of child molestation also kind of takes me out of the moment more than a bit, but still ... Lionel Richie?

In fact, you know what? I'm gonna post a Craigslist ad inviting all comers to a BDSM orgy modeled after The Matrix, and then, when they get there, THIS will be its fucking soundtrack:

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tamburlaine.livejournal.com

It wasn't as awesome as everyone is making it out to be. But I think people (read: girls) are the happiest at the fact that Joseph Gordon-Levitt turned out hot and that there is a subtexty gay relationship there with Eames (who was the best character, IMO, and definitely had the best acting to be done in a movie where that was not the emphasis by any means.)

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These girls clearly haven't seen BRICK yet, which is very much their loss.

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kingrockwell

Oh Brick, how I <3 thee.

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petrona.livejournal.com

Loved Brick!

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2sick2pray.livejournal.com

I loved the film. I figured out the "twist" that was coming pretty damn early but it's not a damn M. Night Shyamalan movie - it's not like the twist was the whole point.

Honestly, I come at it from the perspective of someone who's been pretty obsessed with lucid dreaming for awhile. I just really appreciated the depth with which they approached how dreams work and really enjoyed watching a movie all about that. Like the scene in the hotel where gravity suddenly goes away? That's one of the biggest struggles I dealt with when getting into lucid dreaming - as soon as I became aware of being in a dream, I couldn't stop my dream body from just floating up to the ceiling. The totems they used as their reality checks? I totally have reality checks that I use when in dreams to become aware of the dream state. Not an object that I carry all the time, but things like trying to read small print or a digital clock, or flicking a light switch etc. And not being able to remember how you got there is definitely one of the biggest clues.

So I just appreciated all of that stuff. I also appreciated that they made the ending debatable. A twist that can only be read one way is just a twist, but this ending was interesting because yeah, the top was spinning when the movie cut out, but it could have been about to drop at any moment. I like that he walked away before finding out. To Cobb it didn't really matter anymore what was real - he was where he wanted to be. To me that's the most interesting part about the ending - much more so than ZOMG IS HE STILL DREAMING???

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If dreams, lucid or otherwise, are of interest to you, I wholeheartedly recommend checking out AKIRA KUROSAWA'S DREAMS, one of the lesser-known films in the master's canon. It was the first one I saw, and it's why I fell in love with him since. I've never seen any other film before or since to so vividly capture the feeling and cadence of dreams and nightmares.

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Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon. The first time I ever saw a dream sequence in a movie that looked and felt like an actual dream.

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John, laughing at those sparkly vampires and those gay, fucking gay (and kinda date rapey) were-wolves is the only bit of entertainment I have had in a movie theatre all summer. I will hear no ill spoken of the funniest comedy series in years. Even if it doesn't seem to realize it's a comedy series.

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also, Chris Nolan sucks my balls even worse than the Robins.

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adaptor.livejournal.com

I'm with you. I enjoyed it, visually, but there were only three times the people felt alive to me. 1. Dream bigger 2. I thought it was worth a try. And 3. spontaneously redesigning Paris (which was just a fun few minutes of film).

Other than that and some visuals, zzzzzzzzzzz here too.

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