Salon.com > Inception

“The Dark Knight Rises” and the art of the teaser poster

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:05:00 +0000

Today the Web is buzzing about just one image. It's a pretty cool picture -- looking up at a crumbing city skyline that is falling away into the shape of a bat -- but without knowing the context of the photo, most people would be left wondering why the Internet is in an uproar over the pic.

Of course, the teaser poster for Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" (the second of its kind, after the Bane photo) is obvious to anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last year. Teaser posters, which often come out way ahead of the film itself, can be self-explanatory, or totally baffling. They're like puzzle pieces leading up to the movie itself, and with the hyper-aware Web culture that grabs on to every leak and spoiler, they can be used to raise a film's buzz to a near-deafening screech.

Famous movies as described by their IMDb keywords

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:01:00 +0000

IMDb.com is a great resource for any movie buff. From providing little-known trivia about your favorite films and shows to confirming official release dates and production information, the site is about as comprehensive as Wikipedia for cinephiles.

And also like Wikipedia, the site has sections that can be edited by the populace, in this case meaning anyone with an IMDb Contributor Account. Besides writing reviews and updating information on their favorite cinematic topics, anyone willing to go through the submission process can add to and edit sections like production details, trivia and my personal favorite, "keywords."

Pervs and thieves on the Internet: A Hollywood history

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 22:30:00 +0000

Ever since Sandra Bullock's paranoid whine, circa 1995 -- "They're watching me on the Internet!" -- digital culture has served as an all-purpose boogeyman for filmmakers. Even beyond the fact that with a computer (according to Hollywood) you can find anyone or anything within seconds, download state secrets ("I'm in!"), and launch another country's nuclear weapons, the Internet in movies has become a lazy shorthand for describing everything that's dangerous about modern communication and Today's Young People. That was a whole lot more understandable 16 years ago, when the Web seemed to many ordinary citizens like a mysterious and powerful Terra Incognita, than it does in 2011, when most people use the Internet every day as a combination of newspaper, mailbox, Yellow Pages and Sears catalog.

The twisted, stupid brilliance of “Sucker Punch”

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 01:01:00 +0000

Zack Snyder's "Sucker Punch" is like the Nietzschean Superman of CGI action movies. It's so far beyond good and evil as to make its morality irrelevant, and to undermine any verdicts you might render about its meaning or quality. A ridiculously ambitious and perhaps fatally flawed mashup of ideas, themes and influences, it's more like a Quentin Tarantino movie -- or more like the platonic ideal of a Tarantino movie -- than any movie Tarantino has ever personally made. I can't be sure whether it's brilliant or idiotic, although I'm pretty confident it's both, and not always in different places or at different moments.

This movie is going to be vehemently attacked as brain-damaged garbage that exemplifies everything that's wrong with today's filmmaking and today's audiences. It's also going to be vigorously defended as a subversive action-movie masterpiece that offers a big middle finger to Hollywood convention, audience expectations, and anybody and everybody who would rather watch "The King's Speech." People on both sides will be partly right and partly wrong. Here's where I come down: "Sucker Punch" doesn't all work by a long shot, but it confirms my sense that Snyder belongs near the top of a very short list of directors who are trying to reinvent a personal, auteurist vision of cinema at the most commercial, mass-market, attention-disordered end of the spectrum.

71 movie spoilers in one supercut

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:19:00 +0000

Supercuts are videos that take a bunch of other media (usually famous movies or TV shows) and mashes them together under a common theme, like the supercut of grossest movie kisses and sweetest make-out moments from television that we posted on Valentine's Day. Basically, supercuts are the visual equivalent of a Girl Talk song, and they can range in concepts from famous last words in film to every time someone on a reality show has said "I'm not here to make friends."

Inception in 60 seconds, the best version

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:26:00 +0000

The internet loves to take sophisticated cultural products and simplify them. The 60-second movie is a relatively popular format -- perhaps inspired by the old series of Hollywood Video radio promos that condensed "Lord of the Rings" (and others) down to a minute. "Jaws," "Hamlet," "Harry Potter" -- they've all been done and all been done fairly poorly.

“Unknown”: The thriller “Inception” wishes it could be

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 02:01:00 +0000

What do you get when you combine an A-minus cast that seems almost randomly assembled; an identity-loss plot that Mixmasters bits of "Inception," "Memento," "Salt" and perhaps a half-dozen other movies; wintry Berlin locations; and a little-known Spanish director who is arguably most famous for making a horror film with Paris Hilton? To my enormous surprise, what you get in "Unknown" is a stylish and muscular thriller with some nifty twists and turns, a wicked sense of humor, several terrific performances and not one or even two but three of the best car chases in recent action-flick history. All of which, I guess, illustrates William Goldman's famous maxim of the movie business, which can equally be applied to the world in general: Nobody knows anything.

Early Oscar odds: “Inception” vs. “Social Network”

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:01:00 +0000

Question: Is it too unbearably early to begin thinking about the annual winter circus that is Oscar season? Answer: Never! Or at least not after the Gotham Independent Film Awards nominations, the unofficial starting gun of award-mania, have gotten us started.

Let me save your comment-typin' fingers a workout and stipulate the following: No, the Oscars are no indication of quality, historically speaking; yes, the best films of the year (whether by my standards or yours) are often overlooked; and yes, covering movies by focusing overmuch on the Oscar race resembles the horse-race coverage of American politics and signifies the downfall of journalism in particular and civilization in general. But you want to know about it anyway, so let's move on. (Check out my Movie List for an utterly subjective and totally non-market-driven ranking of the year's best and worst movies.)

“Inception” outclasses “Schmucks” at box office

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 12:37:00 +0000

"Inception" is still kicking at the box office.

The mind-bending Warner Bros. thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio remained the No. 1 movie for the third-straight weekend with $27.5 million, bringing its total to $193.3 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. "Inception" edged out the weekend's new releases: "Dinner for Schmucks," "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" and "Charlie St. Cloud."

"'Inception' has seeped into the cultural zeitgeist," said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. "It's something that everyone is talking about right now. When a movie is able to do that and something just clicks, it becomes a national -- even an international -- discussion, and it's seemingly impervious to any of the newcomers."

"Dinner for Schmucks," the Paramount comedy starring Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, followed closely behind "Inception" with $23.3 million, while the Warner Bros. 3-D sequel "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" fetched $12.5 million in the No. 5 spot. "Charlie St. Cloud," the Universal Pictures drama starring Zac Efron, debuted at No. 6 with $12.1 million.

Everything you wanted to know about “Inception”

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:01:00 +0000

Even before it hit theaters on Friday, Christopher Nolan’s "Inception" was one of the year’s most talked-about movies, and one of its most argued-over. But before you can form an opinion, you need to know what’s going on, something even a few seasoned critics seem to be having trouble with.

Like Nolan’s breakthrough movie, "Memento," "Inception" is an elaborate, deliberately disorienting maze of interlocking time frames, only here the stakes are raised. Rather than challenging us to figure out what happened, "Inception" presents events that may not have happened at all. Set in the world of dreams, and dreams within dreams, the movie is the narrative equivalent of a set of Russian nesting dolls. Every time you think you’ve reached the center, Nolan pulls the film apart and shows us another world hiding within.

“Inception” earns dreamy reception with $60.4M

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:42:00 +0000

Leonardo DiCaprio and Christopher Nolan's "Inception" is anything but a sleeper as the thriller opened big with $60.4 million and a No. 1 finish at the weekend box office, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The Warner Bros. action tale about a team that sneaks into people's dreams is DiCaprio's biggest opening weekend, topping his previous best of $41.1 million for last winter's "Shutter Island."

"Inception" falls far short of director Christopher Nolan's best, though. Nolan is the man who directed the Batman blockbuster "The Dark Knight," which opened over the same weekend two years ago with a record $158.4 million.

Warner Bros. has carved out a niche with this particular mid-July weekend. The studio followed "The Dark Knight" with a $77.8 million opening for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" over the same weekend last year.

"We like this spot. Not to sound superstitious, but stay away from this weekend. I own it," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros.

The final "Harry Potter" movie debuts on the same weekend next summer. Warner plans to open Nolan's third "Batman" movie over that weekend two years from now, though Fellman said the studio could move it to an earlier date that summer.

Beyond “Inception”: Best on-screen dreams

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 01:01:00 +0000

Listen to the color of your dreams.

It is not living.

It is not living.

-- "Tomorrow Never Knows," The Beatles

We're about to enter dreamland by way of movies and TV -- a bit of terrain staked out grandiosely this weekend by Christopher Nolan's "Inception," a film that's been described as a heist thriller occurring in a man's subconscious. Since film language itself is modeled on dreams, there's no way a list built around this topic could hope to be comprehensive. And considering how peculiar dreams can be (no two people's are alike) it would be pointless to rank these titles in terms of how well they represent the deepest imaginative stirrings. (How many times have you watched a dream sequence in a film and complained, "I've never had a dream remotely like that," only to have a friend reply, "I have them all the time"?)

So consider this a list of notable (in some cases influential) films and TV shows about dreams: art that explores what dreams look and feel like, what they say about individuals and society, and perhaps most of all, their kinship to moving pictures, a medium that has been described as either truth or lies at 24 frames per second, depending on which auteur you ask. And as always, please share your own favorite titles in the "Comments" section. There's always room for one more dream.

“Valhalla Rising”: What to see instead of “Inception”

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:30:00 +0000

One of the reasons I had this week marked with a gold star on my 2010 movie calendar was of course Christopher Nolan's "Inception," no doubt the most newsworthy event of the Hollywood summer. Even more intriguingly, that auteurist labor of love -- and whether you like it or not, "Inception" is clearly that -- is opening opposite another one, eccentric Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn's hallucinatory Viking odyssey "Valhalla Rising."

This makes for an irresistible compare-and-contrast between two extraordinarily talented mid-career cinematic visionaries, starting of course with the fact that Nolan's movie will have 1,000 times the audience, at a very conservative estimate. (It could be 10,000 times, or 100,000.) "Inception" is largely set inside the world of dreams, which look like conventional Hollywood action movies. "Valhalla Rising" is set in the real world of medieval Britain and North America, at least nominally, but plays from beginning to end like a feverish nightmare.

“Inception”: A clunky, overblown disappointment

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:01:00 +0000

Director Christopher Nolan is such a master movie technician -- a combination of engineer, architect, game designer and God -- that it's startling to realize how constricted his vision is and how clumsily he tells stories. "Inception," Nolan's first film since his mega-googolplex hit with "The Dark Knight," and his first as a solo writer-director since the now-legendary puzzler "Memento" in 2000, is supposed to be a dreamscape movie. At one point, in fact, we travel with its central Scooby-gang of characters into a dream within a dream within a dream, and then into some deeper, still more unconscious, psychological limbo-state below that.