Inception ripped off a Scrooge McDuck comic

So did Raiders of the Lost Arc

So did Raiders of the Lost Arc

The best part is that the odds are pretty good Spielberg read that comic as a kid.

At least Spielberg had the good sense to rip off a Carl Barks story.

So did Raiders of the Lost Arc

1. I rather like that typo.
2. Things I learned just this week: my former FAC apparently used to fund a cultural arm, which was intended to... I'm not really sure. Promote Bible awareness in entertainment media? Distract attention from the rest of the organisation? Anyway, funding was ceased after said cultural arm filed a lawsuit against Spielberg and Lucas for supposedly ripping off the plot for Raiders of the Lost Ark from them. The lawsuit went nowhere, and it seems finally someone in the church hierarchy started asking why they were financing this kind of activity.

My fellow incepted fiends: [link] Lovely prequel that is now my fanon. Cobb/Mal/Arthur, Arthur/Eames. amyth sent me the link and I love it to death.

Cute parody of the trailer for "The Social Network": [link]

Ha, that was great!

Why does Professor X need the freaking mind reading thingie to find Rogue a few miles down the damn road? hve Stormy-pooh fly on over and have a look see. Jeebus.

But I still love this movie like woah.

I finally saw Inception again, and I still love it. This time, I paid attention to how great the score was (similar to my second viewing of Sherlock Holmes ), and I just marveled at how well crafted the film is. I identified a few bits here and there that could have been cut to shave a few minutes off the running time, but I didn't think they were too extraneous. I also appreciated just how badass the zero-G fight scenes are, especially the first one where the van is spinning and Arthur is climbing all around the hallway and then gets thrown into the hotel room and tosses the guy from the wall onto the bed and so on. The camera hardly cuts away!! It's just amazing.

I also noticed some elements that fit into the Movie About Movies view of the film. For instance, the scene where Cobb talks about whittling down the idea to a simple, positive form to evoke the most catharsis seemed like an obvious reference to filmmaking and the message you want to impart to the audience. And it struck me that Mal may represent the biases and prejudices that audiences bring to a film, the way Cobb subconsciously brings her into the shared dream experience. She's the audience's emotional baggage that will color their viewing of the movie.

And now for the Big Questions:

I paid as much attention as I could, and Cobb definitely wears his wedding ring in the dreams but not in the real world. And in the final scenes, you DO get at least three very quick glimpses of his left hand, and I'm pretty sure he's not wearing it.

Pete, the music in the final scene is not the Edith Piaf-inspired score. That comes during the credits, though. What's awesome, though, is that you can hear the Piaf become the score in the scene with the synchronized kicks. It practically morphs right in front of your ears.

As for your question regarding the dialogue between Mal and Cobb during the Fischer reconciliation scene, there is none, as smonster said, but I think you're referring to the scene right before, which is Mal trying to convince Cobb to choose her and stay in limbo. And during those scenes, I was strongly reminded of Sean's theory that it's all Mal's dream.

Ariadne's totem is a bishop. I did see the groove at the top, bishop-style, though it's a very quick glance.

I paid as much attention as I could to the children's goddamn clothes, and before the final scene, we actually see them in at least two different outfits. They are definitely wearing different clothes on the beach playing with Mal in Cobb's subconscious. But are they wearing different clothes in the final scene than they are in the first scene? It was hard to tell with James, but I THINK Philippa is wearing something different. She's still wearing a pink dress, but either the dress is slightly different, or she's wearing it over a white shirt when she wasn't in the memories.

God, just wait till the DVD comes out and people screencap the shit out of this movie.