Want to have Inception explained? I know just the website: "Inception-Explained.com." Using a massive scrolling graphic, London designer Matt Dempsey has designed a page that will take you step-by-step through the movie, running over all of the plot's dream-within-dream intricacies like an over-excited friend that cannot wait to tell you about Batman guy's new movie. Ideal for anyone left confused by Inception, or anyone who would like to see the film again but would rather stare at a colored dot than Leonardo DiCapario's goatee mirage. Begin your incepting at the link above.
- Production on Men in Black 3 has been pushed back to March 28 to allow for someone to sort out the script's apparently-troubled third act. So go ahead and be shitfaced this month, Rip Torn.
- The official subtitle of Sherlock Holmes 2 is "A Game of Shadows." No Dark of the Moon, that's for sure.
- Australian documentarian Philippe Mora has uncovered two 3-D Nazi propaganda films shot in 1936, one of which consists of "shots of sizzling bratwurst on a barbecue." So the same technology AND as compelling a plot as Avatar? HAH!
Time to place your less-cared-about category Oscar bets! The Academy has announced the shortlist of seven films still in contention for the Best Visual Effects award, and they are:
Alice in Wonderland (for all its 3-Ds)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (for its CGI magick)
Inception (for its convincing upside-down hallways)
Iron Man 2 (for its realistic Iron Men)
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (all those hearts)
Tron Legacy (good use of neon, most nearly-convincing young Jeff Bridges)
and Hereafter (for the stylish design of Matt Damon character's psychic website)
No Social Network, for its impressive douche-doubling? Surprising.
The final five nominees will be announced January 25, at which point the visual effects team behind Hereafter will be pretty let down.
Here's a video that appropriately time dilates the various dream levels so that they're all synced up in one split-screen thing that lasts about four-and-a-half minutes, and then everything makes sense.
Turns out making a third of Inception look like it was pulled out of a game of Call of Duty was no mistake: it was all a set-up for the Inception video game! Director C. Nolan told reporters in Rome:
"We are looking at doing is developing a videogame based on the world of the film, which has all kinds of ideas that you can't fit into a feature film. That's something we've been talking about and are looking at doing long term, in a couple of years."
I'm already practicing repeatedly pressing "A" to startle myself from entering a permanent dream state.
1. The Other Guys - $35.6 million. Fitting that a film about Leonardo DiCaprio in our dreams would be overtaken by a film about Mark Wahlberg, who will forever be in our dreams.
2. Inception - $18.6 million, meaning all those internet parodies can expect a bump in traffic as another couple million people now will understand what's happening with that top.
3. Step Up 3-D - $15.5 million, the worst box office yet for the entire Stepping Up series--and that includes the one they brazenly called Step Up 2 the Street, so that's really saying something.
4. Salt - $11.1 million. It turns out not everyone had already completely forgotten about this film's existence.
5. Dinner for Schmucks - $10.5 million. Soon, the phrase "Dinner for Schmucks" will return to meaning "filling up on breadsticks and salad so you can take an entire entree home from Olive Garden."
Leonardo DiCaprio & Friends may be the ones getting all the press and WTFs for their recent dream manipulations, but guess who was already extracting private information from dreams YEARS ago. That's right: as usual, it was popular avian sailor Donald Duck, Gyro Gearloose, and some criminal beagles who were at the cutting edge of convoluted sci-fi dream plots way back in 2002. As you can maybe read in the above panel, it turns out Uncle $crooge was at the receiving end of some classic Inception-style extraction eight years ago, back in this comic--and no one even wrote any lengthy articles about the deep meanings of it! For shame. But, I think RoboCop was around a bit before GizmoDuck ever started zipping around Duckburg, so how about we just call it even, guys?
Read the full Inception McDuck here, or download it as a PDF here.
(Good jobs to reddit people for solving this dreamcrime and providing so much evidence of it.)
1. Inception - $27.5 million, taking first place for the third week straight. Meaning "the guys who brought you Meet the Spartans" are probably already a month into writing Dream Movie.
2. Dinner for Schmucks - Steve Carell shouts his way to $23.3 million.
3. Salt - $19.3 million. New mohawks for all the Jolie/Pitt children!
4. Despicable Me - Steve Carell also does an unplaceable accent to $15.5 million.
5. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore - $12.5 million--a slim win over Zac Efron: Yachter/Ghost Whisperer. Children must not have appreciated the title's hilarious reference to James Bond/vaginas.
Soundtrack spoilers! Holy cats, guys, did you realize the big "Bum bum! Dreams!" part of Hans Zimmer's Inception score is largely Édith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”--the song used to jolt our dreammasters--slowed down? Just like how it would be in deeper dream levels! If you did realize that, congratulations on either having well-trained ears or watching the video earlier in the week. If not, watch the video now and mind-applaud how clever that is.
Below the cut, Zimmer himself responds, telling us that we're jerks for not realizing it sooner.
Christopher Nolan's Inception left a lot of people with some questions. Is Leonardo DiCaprio still in a dream at the end? Does it matter, or should the only reality that matters be the one you're experiencing? Does the entire film take place in a dream as part of a convoluted metaphor about filmmaking? This infographic will answer none of those questions. But if you were grandma, confused by the basic idea of the First-Person Shooter Snow Level taking place a dream-level below Hotel World, hopefully this will clarify some things. No clue why Yusuf's icon has a glowing crotch. Just another Inception mystery to ponder.
1. Inception - $43.5 million, putting the film's total gross at over $143 million--more than Grown Ups has made! But if you knew how very little more, you'd still be depressed.
2. Salt - $36.5 million. It just hardly seems worth paying attention to Angelina Jolie if she isn't naked or legally adopting something.
3. Despicable Me - $24.1 million, officially making this film "The New Shrek" in terms of making a lot of money and having a comedian do a funny accent for an hour-and-a-half.
4. The Sorcerer's Apprentice - $9.7 million; still completely unprofitable and nearing Next in the ranking of films starring Nicolas Cage that I'll forget happened.
5. Toy Story 3 - $9 million. Let's add a new something-whimsical to the Pixar campus!
The perfect thing to show your friend who won't shut up about if that top was wobbling (spoilers!), Inception actor Dileep Rao--who played the sedative specialist van-driving guy--has done his best to provide his understanding of the rules and complexities of the film in this thorough question and answer session. At last, we have the full story from probably the sixth or seventh person you'd want explaining this thing.
The box office got incepted so hard this weekend. Here's your top five:
1. Inception - $60.4 million. And people said you couldn't make money on a complex film based on dreaming and constant gunfire.
2. Despicable Me - $32.7 million, pretty much guaranteeing that those little yellow guys will get a primetime sitcom in CBS's fall lineup.
3. The Sorcerer's Apprentice - $17.3 million. It turns out people would still rather enjoy this tale with Mickey and music than Nicolas Cage and the nasally voice of Jay Baruchel.
4. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - $13.5 million, and a few million more people who now have an actual, informed opinion on the Edward/Jacob debate.
5. Toy Story 3 - $11.7 million, because your kid still insisted on seeing this even though you pointed out to him that he saw that the last four weeks straight--and wouldn't you like to try something else out, champ? No, no, don't cry. Toy Story 3 it is.
Why sit at home drinking alone when you can drink in the dark surrounded by others, getting drunk on some whiskey you surreptitiously drained into a fountain Pepsi? Here are some new films you could see that would allow just such a fantasy excursion:
Inception Director: Christopher Nolan Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page Good if you want to see: just what this thing is about, because if you don't see it this weekend, some asshole (me) is going to tell you. I hear it's a good'n.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice Director: Jon Turteltaub Starring: Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina Good if you want to see: She's Out of My League and Nicolas Cage in his little outfit and hair doing magic, some of which involves sports cars--just as Goethe intended.
Valhalla Rising Director: Nicolas Winding Refn Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, Maarten Stevenson, Stewart Porter Good if you want to see: the villain from Casino Royale as a one-eyed warrior killing so many guys.
Standing Ovation Director: Stewart Raffill Starring: Al Sapienza, Jeana Zettler Good if you want to see: some kind of awful movie about girls in a music video competition that looks like what I imagine it feels like to be injected with pure Disney Channel.
Good news if you like films not being terrible: early word is Inceptions is a really good movie, everyone. Screenings for Christopher Nolan's sci-fi thriller--which has, with Scott Pilgrim, been sharing the title of Only Big Summer Film Left That Looks Worth Anything for a while now--have started, and critics are already saying it's clever, brilliant, a masterpiece, hyperbole, etc. Yay! Finally, something that ends up actually being as good as you'd think it would be. I'm looking at you, Zesty Salsa Tortilla Combos.
One of a handful of remaining mainstream summer releases that look genuinely promising--or at the very least, challenging enough that they at least won't leave me in a catatonic rage--Christopher Nolan's Inception has a new trailer introducing the film's central characters and their roles, painting a fuller picture of what exactly "inception" is and explaining why me saying "This summer, I can't wait to get Incepted!" isn't grammatically correct after all.
Toy Story 3 clips perfectly matched with the audio for Christopher Nolan's Inception trailer? You wouldn't think it would work, nor that anyone would ever try to make that work, but ScreenRant's Mike Eisenberg did it. Show it to your kids to trick them into thinking the new Pixar sequel is going to be a real mindfuck.
I think it's like Star Trek holodecks, plus dreams, plus The Matrix, plus shots that make you think "I'm watching a THRILLER." But since it's directed by Christopher Nolan, for now I'll trust it won't make me as angry as that description does. Here's the new trailer:
