INCEPTION

Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard and Michael Caine

Eames: If we’re going to perform inception, then we’re going to need imagination.

I knew there was a good reason I fought so hard every night to hold on to my conscious mind and not let my unconscious mind take over.  I’ve got to make sure no pesky extractors get in there to steal my highly sought after secret thoughts.  More importantly, I’ve got to make sure that nobody gets in there and plants an idea that I would go on to believe is entirely my own upon waking up.  This latter assault is called INCEPTION and the extremely dangerous process involved in making it happen is the premise for Christopher Nolan’s film of the same name.  Nolan’s skill as a director gives him the tools to delve deep into the viewer’s mind but after waking up from the dreamlike state INCEPTION creates so delicately, it doesn’t feel like he left anything in there to hold on to.

In order for Nolan to sell INCEPTION, he has a lot of ideas to implant in the audience from the very beginning.  Leonardo Dicaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt play professional dreamers, men who, when connected to a fancy box that puts you right to sleep at the push of a button (where can I get this box?!), enter other people’s subconscious minds.  It’s way more complicated than that and INCEPTION does its best to ensure the audience understands its complex ideas.  To begin with, Nolan starts the action with Dicaprio and Gordon-Levitt in the middle of a mission.  This way we get to see first hand what their alternate reality is and it conveniently allows for explanation between characters indirectly aimed to help the audience situate itself.  Comparisons to THE MATRIX are not shocking to me.  Like that film, INCEPTION is a visual marvel that requires a lot of contextualization to get lost in.  And again, like that film, explanatory scenes that stop the action cold are necessary to keep everyone following.  THE MATRIX does one thing differently though – it makes it all about us at the same time so once we do get lost, we have just as much to lose.

Once everyone is on the same page, which takes almost half the film to accomplish, the real mission begins.  Inception, the concept of that is, is thought to be purely theoretical but Dicaprio is determined to make it a reality.  Dicaprio’s team, also including Ellen Page, Ken Wantanabe and the deliciously smarmy Tom Hardy, has been contracted to go deep into the mind of Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy), the heir to an internationally successful corporation.  Once they get deep enough, they must implant an idea that will trigger Fischer to want to dissolve the company when he wakes up.  As the leader of the team, and the dreamer who has been doing this the longest, Dicaprio’s personal issues, primarily the ones involving his secretive past with his wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), keep creeping into the collectively shared dreams.  Here, dreams and memories get easily confused and threaten to bring everything toppling down.  The corporate espionage angle though keeps the audience at a safe distance when we should all be able to draw upon the shared experience of getting lost in dreams.

Visually, there is no question that INCEPTION will have you dreaming of the fantastical sets and effects long after you’ve seen it.  As Nolan takes us deeper into dreams within dreams, he has total control over all the layers he has designed so deliberately one on top of the other.  He wows us with everything going on around us and grips us by making the success of the mission dependent upon a multitude of factors that must align perfectly within a very small window of time.  Considering how much work is involved in getting this deep and keeping all these layers balanced though, it seems odd that Nolan doesn’t appear to have any grander a purpose to achieving this feat other than proving he could.  In order for inception to work, to ensure the idea really sticks, the subject has to believe that the idea came from himself, like true inspiration.  Nolan burrows into the extreme depths of his subjects but leaves little to nothing insightful behind in the viewer to inspire us when we all wake up.

It's still a good time, mind you ...

3D Digital Graffiti Arrow Alphabet Colorful Bright Matrix

3D Digital Graffiti Arrow Alphabet Colorful Bright Matrix

3D Digital Graffiti Arrow Alphabet of color has a bright mixture of red yellow blue and white. Graffiti Arrow Alphabet This is the design of the creator of beautiful graffiti. Make art with it depends on ourselves. What is in our mind share in the making graffiti alphabet.seni graffiti alphabet full of bright colors is the one sought by young people who like to make graffiti alphabet arrow. make a dull wall graffiti art alphabet is a good thing. Because the person who was feeling faint view of the wall does not mean there is, after viewing the works of the creator graffiti alphabet sweet smile they can afford because it makes a new inspiration.

Example 3D Digital Graffiti Arrow bright colorful Alphabet: Alphabet Face Graffiti, Graffiti Alphabet, 3D Digital Graffiti Arrow Alphabet, 3D Digital Graffiti Alphabet, Digital Graffiti Alphabet, Alphabet Tips Graffiti, graffiti sketches, Tagging graffiti alphabet, graffiti hip hop , graffiti alphabet fonts, graffiti alphabet bombing, graffiti spray paint, graffiti alphabet creator, graffiti fonts.

SPEED RACER

Written and Directed by The Wachowski Brothers
Starring Emile Hirsch, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Fox and Christina Ricci


Mom: When I go to the races, I go to watch you make art. It’s beautiful and inspiring and everything that art should be.

A young Speed, as in Racer, sits at the back of his elementary school classroom, his foot practically tapping straight through the linoleum floor. It’s not just that he can’t sit still or focus on anything; it’s worse than that. He may be there in that room but this is in a purely physical sense of the word. Speed is beyond the snail pace of every day life and the majority of the people that shuffle their feet to and from here and there while draped in blandness. Speed knows he’s going to burn past everyone around him and he knows exactly how he’s going to do it. Why then does he have to sit here and wait to figure it all out when he already has? It’s as though the world is holding him back. Fire that starter gun already and get this race underway!


Speed isn’t the only one itching to get out of his seat. As soon as the kaleidoscope of candy coating colors graces the screen, the mysterious and revolutionary directing team known as the Wachowski Brothers (separately they are Andy and Larry), busts their remake of the popular 1960’s Japanese anime, SPEED RACER, out of the gate and into the race. As the opening race erupts into an explosion of every bright color imaginable, it feels as though the Wachowski’s are floating above it all and magically weaving all the elements together – from the extreme close-up’s of wheels spinning to the character profiles wiping across the screen in transition – to create a new live action animation hybrid. The enthusiastic race crowd cheers with fervor as the now grown Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) cruises past the competition and asserts himself as a genuine talent. Speed is seemingly unstoppable. Only, when the dust settles and the feeling of being immersed in a video game you’ve never played before comes to a halt, you realize the Wachowski’s have gone on ahead without you.


SPEED RACER most certainly solidifies the Wachowki’s, the people who gave the world THE MATRIX – and nothing else since – as two of the most innovative filmmakers working today. Not only do they see things in a way that most of us only see in our dreams and forget once our eyes are open but they know how to put all the pieces together to make their visions a reality. The danger with being ahead of your time is that most everyone else is not. You run the risk then of creating something that may be genius in its own right but is rendered entirely meaningless if no one cares to bask in its glow. While the Wachowski’s strive to get every detail just right, a task that would have been near impossible if it weren’t for the talented cast, they slip off track without realizing. There seems to be more focus on orchestrating the elements that should amount to the appropriate level of fun instead of simple fun being had.


I don’t think the Wachowki’s are the problem though. They truly outdid themselves visually with SPEED RACER. In a time when so many animated films attempt to look as realistic as possible, they decided to go against the traffic and make reality look entirely animated. I think the problem is the content. Recreating a cheaply animated series from another country and another era may be impressive from a visual standpoint but the content itself can be just as hollow as it once was if the translation never moves past the point of literal. Without anything of true substantial value to sink your teeth into, you’re left with an abundance of sugar. While SPEED RACER is certainly sweet to start, your teeth may be slightly rotten by the time you cross the finish line.

THE INVASION

Written by Dave Kajganich
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel


Yorish: A veneer of civility hides our own self-interest. That is the nature of our world, yes?

When you live in a world where violence is the answer to so many conflicts and misunderstandings, manifesting itself as war or hate crimes or road rage, it is easy to see aggression as an instinctual human behaviour. We don’t like to acknowledge it as such but we certainly can’t pretend it isn’t there. In response, we humans do what we can to keep these impulses under control. Some of us meditate; some of us medicate. We strive to be better people and better people don’t give in to their anger. In Oliver Hirschbiegel’s THE INVASION (a remake of the 1956 classic, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS), a unique opportunity is given to humanity. You are first infected with an alien genetic code. Then, when you fall into REM sleep, your genetic code is reprogrammed. You wake up feeling refreshed and like yourself, with all your memories and knowledge in tact. There is just one tiny difference. There is no more hate. Only humanity rejects this opportunity despite all their previous efforts to accomplish exactly this. While this conundrum might make THE INVASION insightful, it certainly doesn’t make it necessary. After all, the original already made that point over fifty years ago.


I suppose the rational was to bring attention to all that we have in place today to help numb our senses. THE INVASION is determined to assert itself as a timely film while distancing itself from its B-movie roots. In the original, the alien epidemic makes its way to neighboring towns with farmers making their deliveries. Flash forward to 2007 and the disease is traveling the globe through contaminated e-bay purchases. Granted, times are more complicated than they used to be. Nicole Kidman’s Carol Bennell text messages her son, Oliver (Jackson Bond), to remind him to take his anti-anxiety medication before bed while he stays with his father for the first time after his parents’ divorce. Between all that, the portable video games and seemingly endless hours of television watching, there are plenty of ways to numb the senses. Perhaps Hirschbiegel wanted to modernize BODY SNATCHERS into a contemporary thriller to shake people up, to show that we all need a good smack in the face to wake ourselves from our trances. After all, if Carol Bennell is fighting her hardest to hold on to the spirit inside of her, why have we allowed our modern world, read aliens, to dull our potential? To make that point though, THE INVASION would have to actually be thrilling.


Aside from a few unexpected scares, THE INVASION is pretty low on chills. In fact, it often feels as though the film is having its own crisis of identity, bouncing back between a polished, intellectual suspense piece and an explosive, effects-heavy action flick. This might have something to do with the number of hands involved in the production. Hirshbiegel’s original cut was said to be tepid and drawn out. The producers, who had already sunk a lot of money into the film, called in bigger boys to tweak it here and there into something with a bit more pulse. The Wachowski Brothers (THE MATRIX) were brought in for rewrites and James McTeigue (V FOR VENDETTA) was hired to shoot new footage. Without seeing Hirschbiegel’s original product, it’s impossible to say for certain whether they helped or hurt the final version but THE INVASION’s visual aesthetic is probably the strongest thing it has going. Slick picture and sharp edits that play with time and space add a much-needed edge to a story that has been dulled by an air of self-importance. The final cut is well paced and smooth but the film’s salvation was clearly more important than creating meaning in humanity saving itself.


It’s funny when you think about. THE INVASION warns us of what might lie ahead if we continue to allow our modern conveniences to run and control our lives. If we would just think less about everything, than it wouldn’t bother us so much but the sacrifice is human development and progress. Yet, in order to actually enjoy THE INVASION, one has to do exactly that – stop fighting, shut off and allow the reprogramming to happen.