I just watched Inception.

are you mad at the end?

I am, a little. Joe and I have made a choice. We're sticking with that.

What is your choice?

It fell.

the evidence provided by wardrobe (the clothes the children are wearing in his memories versus what they are wearing in the last scene) confirms your choice.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is pretty damn good. What the trailers don't make clear is that James Franco is not the main character: Caesar is. The human component is almost entirely irrelevant, and it's fascinating to watch him grow and learn and decide to do what he does. Even though you know where the movie is heading (it's right there in the title, after all), it doesn't make it any less interesting to watch. In fact, because you know where it's heading, you're in a continual state of anticipation, and, thankfully, the mayhem it leads up to is pretty fabulous.

Also, you've got to love a movie that destroys the human race in the credits.

P-C, yes. all over. And especially the credits. My thought was, well, they're setting up the next one nicely . I do love that Franco commits 110% to the role. No trace of irony or sarcasm there.

The kids are wearing different clothes. Similar, but not the same.

I had never caught Marlene Dietrich in "The Blue Angel" and it came into rotation on the free movies in my cable package. I won't take the time to comment on the movie at as a whole, but the beginning was really amazing. People talk about world building in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, but really every type of fiction implicitly builds a world, even if it is a faithful copy of a real period and location. The world building in "Blue Angel" ,set and actually filmed in Weimar Germany, is amazing.

We open with a dark city street, early morning before sunrise. A man is callously tossing chickens, mostly roosters in a cage for transport to market. They squawk and protest, but their fate is sealed. (Some explicit foreshadowing here.) Then we see a plain woman washing a window behind which is a poster advertising sexy Lola Lola. She strikes the same pose as Lola Lola in the poster, comparing herself for a moment.

Fade to interior shot where a made is clear stuff and serving breakfast. She mutters to herself "Cigar butts and books everywhere. Everything stinks," then calls in the Professor to breakfast. He sits down and begins to eat amid the stink, then whistles to a canary in a cage, which does not respond. He takes it out and sees that it is dead. Calls in the maid who takes it from him, throws it in the dustbin, saying "Oh well, its been a long time since it sang anyway". The Professor looks a bit perturbed, but not very, and goes back to eating his breakfast, without washing his hands from having touched the dead bird.

Fade to the classroom where students await the Professor, all male full of mischief. They scribble insults in the Professor's notebooks, pass around port, and squabble. The expressions on their faces and body language might be described as impish, but only in the original mean of "imp" full of petty, vicious and gleeful evil.

Then the Professor comes in and he bullies and humiliates the students. He starts by settling in and blowing his nose right at them (into a hanky but without turning his face) obviously the beginning of daily routine that reinforces immediately that they have to put up with rudeness from him. Then he humiliates a student for being unable to pronounce the English word "The" . (The Professor teaches English.)

OK, the above was long, but every detail helped establish not only a dark world, but a world that is dark in a particular way - filled with spite and petty malice. Everything described has established in a matter of minutes the world we are dealing with. It is the start of a classic film, but I think it is also a lesson in world building many science fiction and fantasy writers could learn from.