So! Today I went and saw Inception again. I KNOW, I KNOW, WHATEVER, I DO WHAT I WANT.
Plus it was free because I had an old-ass coupon.
So anyway, the parts that I liked, but had to bear through gritted, angry teeth the first time were SO MUCH MORE enjoyable this time around, since I already knew I hated the ending and didn’t have to sit, waiting, knowing what was going to happen, but not being able to be CERTAIN, and the parts I didn’t like were… some were more tolerable (the snowscapades were still so incredibly idiotic, but they became almost transcendentally watchable in their idiocy) and others were still completely and utterly hateable in every way (that last shot, Mal, NO ONE MOVING THEIR FACE AT ALL).
The thing that was MOST frustrating was that, on the first viewing I was like, “Hey, there are some legit plot holes up in this motherfucker.” and on second watch it was like, “WAS ANYONE EVEN WATCHING THIS MOVIE AS IT WAS BEING MADE? WAS THERE EVEN A SCRIPT?!”
It was as though every time someone said, “Hey, Christopher Nolan, there’s this GLARING error in your story and it’s kind of ruining the pretty cool mythology that you are trying to build up in herrre,” Christopher Nolan was like, “I’M CHRISTOPHER NOLAN, SUCK MY DIIIIIIIIICK. MAKE THE SLO-MO GO SLOOOOOOWER. NO ONE WILL NOTICE. I AM BUSY FUCKING BATMAN. I AM THE GOD DAMN BATMAN. SLOOOOOOOOOOWER!” or some approximation of that.
And hey, man, I liked Transformers! And, awkward racism aside, I found the second one to be pretty watchable! It’s not like I am over here expecting some Citizen Kane or Vertigo master work up in my AMC. I just want movies to like, I don’t know, make sense beyond their first viewing.
I’m not even going to talk about the actual plot holes (Google that shit, son!) because I will just feel a lot of awkward, now passion-less rage again, instead I am going to, SHOCKER, talk about some shit I liked.
Like I said last time, I really dug the zero g ballet. I think a lot of the effects in the movie are sort of hokey and plastic looking, but the shift in gravity after everyone except Arthur has descended to the next level is incredibly cool. It looks like a practical effect as the world is tilting (the Fatboy Slim video wall crawling portion) and whether or not it is a practical effect, the fact that it looks like one delights me. The extended sequence beyond that is a little too long and a little too graceful, but I still think it’s good-looking enough to warrant some interest/credit.
The train blowing through the middle of Downtown L.A. scared the holy shit out of me both times I watched the movie. The sound mixing is perfect for it and even when I knew it was coming, it was startling.
Arthur and Eames’s banter and antagonism toward one another is fabulous. “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling” is the kind of smarmy charm that the movie would’ve been infinitely weaker without. Plus, more importantly, they both seem to really love their jobs. Cobb hates his skills because they’re all he has left, Ariadne is terrified of it, Saito and Yusuf play their roles willingly, but without a lot of joy. Arthur and Eames know what they’re good at and they’re more than willing to do it.
The initial kick (Cobb into the bathtub) is a great, lively use of ramping. Granted, it’s TOO SLOW and too long, but it changes speed in a way that looks really cool and helps the audience understand the difference in time between dream levels. It doesn’t serve that last purpose particularly well (it doesn’t when he overuses it through the rest of the movie either) but god damn if it don’t look cool for twenty seconds.
I kind of loved the crap out of Fischer. Cillian Murphy is the WEIRDEST LOOKING FAMOUS PERSON EVER, but he’s pretty damn good at under and over-selling shit in the right places. I don’t know, maybe I am just tricked by his weird face.
A visual motif with which I am down:
I am sure there were other instances of those Tetris-ish pieces showing up (Ariadne’s mazes, the paradox construction, Mal and Cobb building in limbo, etc.) but I really noticed the top and bottom ones here as directly referencing each other. Since I occasionally like to overthink things (I know that’s shocking, I KNOW.) I like to think that they’re subtle visual cues nodding to the completion of whatever “puzzle” Nolan was trying to draw. The first image is from Arthur and Cobb’s helicopter ride with Saito, the last is from Fischer’s safe room at the end. In the end, the puzzle is complete.
Draw what you want from that! Regardless of it’s intentions (or unintentions), I like the look. Especially in that last scene.
ANYWAY. What the hell is up with no one moving their face? Marion Cotillard looks like she’s made of wax and Joseph Gordon-Levitt talks like he’s got Bells Palsy. WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON IN THERE? Were they trying to make up for Leonardo DiCaprio’s constant fart-smelling face? DOES INCEPTION WORK LIKE BOTOX?
I hated Inception. I think Michelle Collins has a brief hate-view here that I agree with, but there’s not enough rage. I also liked this one a lot and which I found by googling “I hated Inception,” which I think is going to become part of my daily internet routine.
Obviously I am neither the first nor last to say it, but that last shot of the movie is infuriating. That god damn spinning top. That spinning top is not just a signal for Dom Cobb’s stasis in the dream world, but it’s a symbol of an entire sect of movie-making and movie-going that stupidly believes that a twist ending or an unhappy ending makes a smart movie. NEWSFLASH: it doesn’t.
When Cobb tells Ariadne about the continuously spinning top in the beginning (that’s what, thirty minutes in?) I went, “Oh, it’s going to end on the still spinning top, GOD DAMN IT, M. NIGHT CHRISTOPHER NOLAN.” and I got irritated enough to consider walking out. 1. Because I KNEW he was going to pull some bullshit (I DO NOT TRUST CHRISTOPHER NOLAN AT ALL). 2. Because that’s some serious bullshit. 3. BECAUSE YOU SHOULDN’T BE ABLE TO DO THAT. EVER. But I thought, “No, man, don’t be that guy! Don’t walk out! This might still be cool!”
IT FUCKING WASN’T and I spent the rest of the time: hoping it wouldn’t end that way, hating Marion Cotillard (if there’s one thing Christopher Nolan really sucks at, it’s writing female characters. Dude has some Issues.), trying to remember things I actually liked so I could talk about those parts with people who actually liked it, getting irritated at how hard it was trying to be smart and edgy, staring at Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy and Ellen Page, wishing Batman would swoop in and kill everyone, resenting Christopher Nolan for having a career (even though I fucking LOVE The Prestige), wishing M. Night Shyamalan had never made The Sixth Sense, hoping for more Michael Caine, thinking about walking out, thinking about Harry Potter, thinking about how irritating hypnic jerks are, wanting to see Ellen Page topless, wishing I was watching Mysterious Skin or reruns of Third Rock From the Sun, wondering what I would use as my totem, thinking about a totem dildo, and wondering if catering served nothing but beans because it always looks like Leonardo DiCaprio is smelling a fart.
The ending is more than just frustrating though, it’s shitty. I’m not just talking about the people who think sad or twisted endings make movies instantly smart or good. Those people are the cause, I’m just talking about the symptom, about the FIVE MINUTES out of TWO AND A HALF HOURS at the end of the movie that negated every emotional or narrative connection the viewer has made with the story.
The spinning top marks irrefutably that at least some portion of the preceding events have been a dream (And it does, you would be hard pressed to convince me otherwise. He wakes up on the plane, clearly unaware of how he got there and then the top keeps spinning. Even if it wobbles, the viewer never gets the drop. There’s no getting around it.) Nolan is telling the audience that they must now disregard EVERYTHING THEY JUST WATCHED. They can speculate about which parts were real and which were not, where the lines drew and how it was shaped and that speculation can be fun and engaging and take a movie to an additional level, but that’s not how Inception feels.
Inception feels like Christopher Nolan jerked me off (and badly at that) for TWO AND A HALF HOURS then took a dump on my chest with the last shot and said, “Fuck you, thanks for the money, eat that shit.”
TWO AND A HALF HOURS.
I even stayed through the credits (I always do, but still.) LITERALLY CROSSING MY FINGERS that there would be a tag where the top fell. Fuck, god damn, I would’ve ejaculated mountain streams on the AMC carpet! I would have eaten Christopher Nolan’s shit.
But no. I found only more rage.
I won’t go into the rest of the movie’s failures — and oh are there many, characterization, effects, writing, dialogue, that god damn snowscapades bullshit where everyone is Alpine skiing from DANGER — because the ending is so god awful that I am willing to let everything else go.
In summary: there was some cool imagery — I was very, very into the concept and the way the dreamscape could be manipulated, even though it looked terrible 60% of the time, a couple of badass scenes — I thought the zero G sequence with Joseph Gordon-Levitt was the best part of the entire movie, and a totally bullshit ending.
Further: neither a “twist” nor an unhappy ending make a movie good.
Now I’m going to go have a lie down and think about the sequel I would write where Michael Caine orchestrated the dream world in order to give his son-in-law some peace and hope that in the inevitable nap-dream that will follow, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy will like to drink and smoke and tell dirty jokes.
Inspired by this nostalgic-seizure inducing post by the oft-hilarious Kevin Babbles, I am compelled to talk about the ridiculous summer playlist I put together this year.
It’s like… 70% flashback 90s/00s music (mostly rap, hip hop, and pop), 10% awful dance music, 10% indie bullshit, and 10% newer but still outdated rap and hip hop.
A sample of the randomized, 467 song playlist:
Some of my favorites:
L’Trimm, “Cars with the Boom” — 1. I love how similar this video is to JJ Fad’s, “Supersonic” and how fucking awful and great they both are. I have way too many memories of hearing this song blasting from my sister’s bedroom growing up and hearing her and her friends laughing and talking about dudes and generally allowing me to grow into a hateful, resentment-filled pain in the ass. Bitches.
Vengaboys, “Boom Boom Boom Boom” — What horrifies me about this song is that I have this really distinct memory of singing and dancing to it at a slumber party at my house and I always though, “LOL SIXTH GRADE” until I looked it up and this didn’t come out until June of 1999. I was FOURTEEN. What the hell? My shame, let me show you it. Second, what the actual fuck is happening in this video, man? Gay cowboy! Blue lipstick! All those horrible outfits! Titties everywhere! Drunk bros! Ejaculatory champagne! Rampant lesbianism!
Come to think of it, that explains a lot about why I would have been into it at fourteen.
Sarai, “Ladies” — This is the EMBODIMENT of my trip to Las Vegas after high school graduation. I still remember rolling down the strip in my BFF’s dad’s Explorer Sport Trac SCREAMING this song at everyone on the street.
Like this.
Oh, to be eighteen. Additionally, watching this, I do not understand how I didn’t figure out I was a lesbot earlier. I MEAN, COME ON. Also, watching Sarai rap is like watching my BFF talk. We call her DJ Xis.
Khia, “K-Wang” — THIS WAS THE DANCE. I remember watching one of my BFFs (Bryce) teaching DJ Xis how to do this shit in front of the big screen TV in my living room. Their dance was closer to this version (although people are CRAZY adamant that this is NOT THE RIGHT DANCE in the comments) but they disabled embedding because the world hates me. Better version of this TERRIBLE SONG here.
Mr. C, “Cha Cha Slide” — I wasn’t going to embed this one because, seriously, line dance hip hop is so god damn terrible, but this is every dance I went to in high school. Gym full of uncoordinated white kids being led by all the black kids. Diversity at work, y’all. And the video is just spectacular.
Edvard Grieg, “In the Hall of the Mountain King (Techno Remix)” — Also a high school dance thing. Just a representative of the terrible, terrible techno remixes that plagues the late 90s/early 00s. See also: Tetris Techno Remix, Super Mario Bros. Theme Techno Remix (not the one of my youth, but close). I listened to a lot of god awful techno in the early days of mp3.com, OKAY. Don’t judge me.
Monifah, “Touch It” — Bringing the troops joy since 1998, girl.
Eminem, “Role Model” — Every white person I am friends with knows every word to this song. I don’t know what that means, but it’s nice to roll down all four windows of my 2010 Honda Insight and blare this motherfucker with a bunch of white girls in the car. Oh wait, awkward, I meant awkward.
So Molly Lewis wrote a blog about the closure/redesign of Star Tours and while I think it’s sweet and engaging and an example of all the things I love about blogs — memories! nostalgia! complainery! — it’s also the kind of thing that makes me sad.
I love Disneyland. I love it beyond the ability to put it into words. And I love Star Tours. I think Star Tours is one of the best rides Disneyland has ever or will ever see. I loved it before I had ever even seen a Star Wars movie. Like Molly Lewis, I know it by heart and I recite it when I ride it and I once had a joyful ride with a strange kid on it. (When Captain Rex said, “I’ve always wanted to do this,” this bright and happy kid yelled, “MEEEEEEEEE TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” My girlfriend and I have stolen his line ever since.)
But I’m not going to complain about the rehab or the changes or the podracing sequence or about George Lucas (even though I could, for days) or how Disney just can’t leave things alone because that’s not what Disneyland is about.
Watch out, I’m throwing down with a Walt Disney quote right here:
“Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.”
Maybe you and I hate the Star Wars prequels and all the too-noisy, hyperactive, CG scenes (and if you do, blame Steven Spielberg and Jurassic Park — no, really), but there is an entire generation of kids who loved them and a whole new generation who will ONLY know Star Wars in chronological order (this blows my mind, but as an entirely separate thing) and it’s their turn for the memories.
I hate that the Country Bear Jamboree is gone and it kills me that they took Mr. Toad’s out in Florida. I miss Circlevision sometimes, or more accurately, I miss getting dizzy staring upward for such long periods. I miss the Mary Blair murals in Tomorrowland and the PeopleMover. I miss the Fantasyland Autopia and how much fun it was to drive before I had to. Until VERY RECENTLY I missed the shit out of Captain EO. I miss Tom Sawyer Island when the settler’s cabin burned and there weren’t any pirates. I miss pre-Captain Jack Pirates of the Caribbean. Hell, I miss the Submarine Voyage and the parking lot. I even miss the Rocket Jets and the Skyway even though they both scared the living shit out of me.
But part of loving Disneyland is loving what used to be there, remembering, knowing for sure and certain and 100% that it was better when you were young, when this was there and that wasn’t, before everything changed.
What we didn’t realize then, as kids, was that things were changing all around us, all the time, at Disneyland, at home, and in the world at large. But we were young and change is often incremental and we were too busy having fun and playing on the teetering rock on Tom Sawyer and listening to our parents talk about A tickets and E tickets and how you used to be able to ride a real live pack mule where Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is now and how it used to be different, simpler, better.
Molly Lewis’s nostalgia is right, her love is perfect, her adoration commendable and so fucking right on the nose for me it isn’t even funny, but she’s still wrong.
“Disney tends to function in the way that Apple and Facebook do by which I mean that they will decide to change things that absolutely did not need changing, and you’re only left to assume that it’s for your own good.”
Star Tours is almost twenty-four years old. It’s had an incredible run, thrilling and delighting and creating memories for thousands and thousands (millions?) of visitors, but up until the last week and one random summer day last year, I never once in my dozens of visits saw the queue for the Endor longer than ten or fifteen minutes, even on peak days and times. And while that’s a great thing for visitors, it’s a death knell for Disney. And while I’d rather believe Disney was revitalizing a ride for the guests, it all comes down to the dollar.
Regardless of their motives, Star Tours 2.0 promises to create brand new memories for the next set of Disney fans. And, god forbid, I someday have a child, I’ll be there with him or her, talking about how when I was a kid there was this pilot droid named Rex and how he’d taken us on his first flight…
I just started screwing around with film again (I don’t think I’d shot a single roll since my first quarter of college in 2003) and since 120 is SO EXPENSIVE for such hit-or-miss shots with the Holga, I thought, “Dang, I’ll buy twenty bucks of 35mm and dig out my Pentax!” So I did. And I shot a couple of rolls, including some old ass film that was buried with that Pentax! SCORE. And then I started wondering if Costco still developed film because it used to be super cheap! So I started googling. Then I came across that nutjob up there.
Like, look, man, I understand that your comfort bubble was busted wide open with the advent of digital cameras, but they’ve been around since like… 1991 basically. It’s 2010 now, CALM DOWN. If you are THIS UPSET about the idea of digital photography and the accompanying digital files, you should probably just quit the real world and live like a hermit. And if you are ALREADY living like a hermit, it’s time to give up the internet too.
1. Who is leaving all of their digital files on flash storage or SD or whatever? The majority of digital shots are at least getting moved to hard drives and shuffled forward through technological advances.
2. I love “DISPOSABLE SOCIETY”!! So much damnation in two words!
3. I had to google “basura” before I realized he was using the Spanish word for garbage. Dude misspelled so much shit in there, I could not even tell he was using another language.
4. “Now” we can just “click a button,” he says. What kind of fucked up camera rig has he been using all these years with his film? Does he Rube Goldberg every shot so that he can feel like he fucking earned that picture of his cat?
5. What the fuck is going to happen to our DISPOSABLE SOCIETY in 100 years that’s going to require we be DUG UP?
6. “IT TAKES NO MICROPROCESSOR TO INTERPRET, OTHER THAN THE ONE THAT EACH OF US HAS BEEN ENDOWED WITH BY THE CREATOR OF OUR BEINGS.” FILM IS BETTER BECAUSE MY GOD-BRAIN NEEDS NO COMPUTER TO SEEEEEEEE ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.
7. Dude? Is intense.
I can tell with 70-80% accuracy whether or not a picture is to my liking on my dSLR’s screen and if it isn’t, I pop off a few more, sometimes a couple dozen if it’s a hard shot. That luxury is basically non-existent with film unless you’re insanely wealthy. I am not, nor have I ever been, so I only shot the same thing twice if I was at least 90% sure that I’d just fucked up my first attempt and I’d still consider it pretty thoroughly, weighing whether I could really afford to waste the frame. I like film still because I like surprise. It’s FUN to pick up prints and flip through seeing what came out and what didn’t. THAT IS THE JOY OF FILM. The joy of digital is the joy of experimentation and repetition and adventure and trying new things.
Look, Patrick Lewis, I hate that every teenager with a Canon Rebel thinks they’re a photographer too, but that doesn’t mean I think Canon should be demonized for making it possible.
SOURCE!