Awesome Jess!

cinematical has an Inception rundown. Spoilers.

[link]

You know, I like Roger Ebert. And I understand that actual food isn't part of his life anymore.

But in his review of Toy Story 3 he identified the thing Mr. Potato Head uses to keep his appendages together as "an uncooked taco shell."

Maybe he's just unfamiliar with Mexican food?

Doesn't seem like a tortilla would be that exotic to him, though.

Maybe he's just unfamiliar with Mexican food?

Not likely, he lives in Chicago. It's not exactly a tiny backwater town with no ethnic food.

Also, the word "tortilla" is used onscreen, by the characters, about the food object in question.

Maybe he's trying to be funny? (I mean, technically, a taco shell is a cooked tortilla, right? Signed, I never really got into Mexican food.)

cinematical has an Inception rundown.

Ooh, I hadn't considered scenario #3, but I like it!

I'm reading the Salon recap/analysis and liking it. Particularly these bits:

"Inception." Is not. About dreams. Not real ones, anyway. The dreams in which much of the movie takes place are artificial constructs, rational, rectilinear simulacra designed to achieve specific ends. The dreamers are lucid, exercising conscious authority over its landscape, which means that the mercurial logic of dreams never has a chance to assert itself.

Is it convenient that the worlds the dreamers construct so closely resemble the landscape of a James Bond movie? Well, sure. Warner Bros. isn’t about to shell out $200 million for Nolan to make some arty thesis film. But it’s not merely commercial calculation that dictates the goal-oriented nature of what "Inception" calls dreams.

And most particularly this: But for me, it makes most sense as a movie about the shared dream of movies, those half-created, half-imagined worlds that are always co-creations of the filmmaker and her audience... If you read "Inception" as an analogue for filmmaking, then Fischer’s journey represents the artist breaking free from the influence of his artistic forbears, taking them apart and building something new from their component parts, and Cobb’s represents the creator freeing himself from the shackles of his own experience, gaining the ability to incorporate pieces of his personal history without being defined by it.

Yeah, I dig that whole piece. Pretty much exactly how I interpreted it and felt about it, with some added brain spiciness.

Just saw Inception. Going to go back and read all the whitefont! But first going to get some thoughts down - DH and I had some pretty different readings, which I always love coming out of a movie.

DH was convinced that the end is the real world, and that the non-falling top was tottering towards the end just so Nolan could leave some ambiguity there.

I disagree. The recurring theme of the 'old man, waiting to die alone' kind of convinced me that whole thing was Cobb's dream.

Now for whitefont!

cinematical has an Inception rundown. Spoilers.

After reading more about the IT WAS ALL A DREAM interpretation, I can see more of the appeal and how it can still be a good, rewarding story that way. I think it was in Cleolinda's journal someone brought up the fact that Fischer's emotional catharsis is fake: it's his subconscious creating a scenario where Daddy loved him. It may or may not have actually been true. Yet, that fake catharsis is still powerful and affecting for him. In the same way, if all of Cobb we see is a dream, if we never see the real Cobb, the dream-Cobb's story still has resonance in and of itself, which plays into the meta-commentary on movies.

I'm still sticking with my read, though. But I do love having a movie that generates such interesting discussion. I feel like there hasn't been one in a while.