altarflame (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
altarflame) wrote2010-08-16 03:45 pm
altarflame) wrote2010-08-16 03:45 pm
Entry tags:
Reviews - Inception, and Miami Pediatric Dentist
Inception:
I thought this movie took an amazing, mind-blowing concept and then dropped the ball with it. I realize this is going to scandalize some people on my friends' list, but throughout the whole thing I was overwhelmed with how shared dreaming and layers of consciousness are just such badass concepts to stick in a film, and it was totally unrealistic and overly Hollywood the way it was executed. Examples of what I mean :
-All of everyone's dreams took place on the streets of a big city, peoples' dream-worlds that they built after living in that plane for 50 years were a bunch of tall buildings and huge bridges. I think that maybe living in NYC most of her life![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eruv might not have felt this was weird, but to me it was totally bizarre. I've never had a single dream that featured riding in cab on a crowded city street or sitting in cafe on a crowded city street or, in my memory at least, had skyscrapers even on the horizon. I think most peoples' dreams - from the anecdotal evidence I have - happen inside rooms or houses, with some others being nature based and surely some being outside in a big city...but it's just SO SCREAMINGLY HOLLYWOOD to have that big city backdrop for action scenes. Felt really slick and veneer-like to me. By the 4th of 5th time it happened I was like, really? All urban dreaming all the time? Eye roll...
-Explosions and fight scenes, wtf? A couple would have made sense - the scene where the guys are fighting in a spinning room with no gravity, for instance, as the van rolls, are AMAZING! I can get behind that! But the neverending rain of bullets that lasts like 45 minutes was so excessively over the top that I couldn't even keep track of who was fighting who half the time as they switched back and forth. That everyone's dreams "break down" by things blowing up was also ridiculously Hollywood to me - I think things melting or becoming transparent would have been way more realistic, or at least should have been represented as options...who the hell has things start to explode into mushroom clouds or BOOM into a million pieces, as they realize they're dreaming?
-while I understand this economically, the fact that all the dream sharing and planting of ideas and hiding of secrets was about corporate takeover was astoundingly boring, to me. Can't we at least have some political intrigue or some scientific ideas that will rock the world or something that isn't just CEOs and heirs?
Anyway yeah, like I said, the ideas behind the film were groundbreaking and kept me there, but tons of gray concrete + car chases + explosions + gun fights + corporate takeover = not at all a movie I want to see. So it was a mixed bag for me that I thought could have went in a totally different and way more REALISTIC direction.
Like, if everyone's in there dreaming together, why aren't ALL of their subconscious minds effecting the reality they're existing in? No way in hell was Leo DiCaprio the only person there with some "issues". Also, I could not get past how unrealistic it was that there was nothing sexual mixed into peoples' deep psyches in the film...I understand there's a rating system and it couldn't have been a porno, but that is just such a deeply entwined part of what's going on down deep in peoples' heads that it was almost laughable to me that they left it completely out. Not just graphic sex scenes, either, I'm talking about imagery, memories, references...I mean especially the guy and his dead wife, how could that be missing?
Overall I thought they barely scratched the surface of something that could have went very deep.
South Florida Pediatric Dentists:
Dr Smitely at Main Street Smiles is amazing. Jake had a filling and an extraction last Tuesday and I sat in the room for it, and was so impressed. She is friendly and sing-songy to the kids, and does so many "extra" things - she kept all the scary instruments covered at all times, put sunglasses on him to block the harsh light from his eyes, and let him pick the color of his nitrous nosebulb to match his crocs. He was watching Ice Age as she went about her business, and because of how well she numbed his gums with gel first and came in from below at an angle, he never knew she was giving him novacaine shots. Or saw the syringe. It was so good.
She explained every single thing to him in a kid-friendly way before she did it - letting him feel the cleaner and the vaccum on his finger before she put them in his mouth, talking the whole time to him about what was going on. She also seemed to understand that he was ignoring her sometimes in a very obvious, conscious way as a coping mechanism. There were about 3 minutes during the filling when he started to freak a little just because there was SO MUCH in his mouth...but then that passed and he was alright again. The extraction part was like nothing, he was totally cool for that.
He got to pick two treasures and two stickers afterward, and she gave him his tooth in a tiny treasure box that we could take home and put under his pillow.
We let him eat all the ice cream (which turned out to be the entire half gallon box), yogurt (a 6 pack) and applesauce he wanted the rest of the day and he's looking forward to going back in a couple of weeks to get the other side of his mouth done.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
JUMP's Broadway Finale show at the Hammerstein Ballroom
IT WAS SO BADASS! I was thinking, ok, this isn't really gonna be a Broadway show, it's gonna be a kids' dance show that just happens to be on Broadway. And I was wrong. Anyway JUMP posted the opening number in a video on facebook that I wanted to share. This is all the JUMP National VIPs for 2010 and please keep in mind that this is something they choreographed and rehearsed completely during the ONE WEEK we were all in NYC for the event!
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=462781662844#!/video/video.php?v=462781662844
I thought this movie took an amazing, mind-blowing concept and then dropped the ball with it. I realize this is going to scandalize some people on my friends' list, but throughout the whole thing I was overwhelmed with how shared dreaming and layers of consciousness are just such badass concepts to stick in a film, and it was totally unrealistic and overly Hollywood the way it was executed. Examples of what I mean :
-All of everyone's dreams took place on the streets of a big city, peoples' dream-worlds that they built after living in that plane for 50 years were a bunch of tall buildings and huge bridges. I think that maybe living in NYC most of her life
eruv might not have felt this was weird, but to me it was totally bizarre. I've never had a single dream that featured riding in cab on a crowded city street or sitting in cafe on a crowded city street or, in my memory at least, had skyscrapers even on the horizon. I think most peoples' dreams - from the anecdotal evidence I have - happen inside rooms or houses, with some others being nature based and surely some being outside in a big city...but it's just SO SCREAMINGLY HOLLYWOOD to have that big city backdrop for action scenes. Felt really slick and veneer-like to me. By the 4th of 5th time it happened I was like, really? All urban dreaming all the time? Eye roll...-Explosions and fight scenes, wtf? A couple would have made sense - the scene where the guys are fighting in a spinning room with no gravity, for instance, as the van rolls, are AMAZING! I can get behind that! But the neverending rain of bullets that lasts like 45 minutes was so excessively over the top that I couldn't even keep track of who was fighting who half the time as they switched back and forth. That everyone's dreams "break down" by things blowing up was also ridiculously Hollywood to me - I think things melting or becoming transparent would have been way more realistic, or at least should have been represented as options...who the hell has things start to explode into mushroom clouds or BOOM into a million pieces, as they realize they're dreaming?
-while I understand this economically, the fact that all the dream sharing and planting of ideas and hiding of secrets was about corporate takeover was astoundingly boring, to me. Can't we at least have some political intrigue or some scientific ideas that will rock the world or something that isn't just CEOs and heirs?
Anyway yeah, like I said, the ideas behind the film were groundbreaking and kept me there, but tons of gray concrete + car chases + explosions + gun fights + corporate takeover = not at all a movie I want to see. So it was a mixed bag for me that I thought could have went in a totally different and way more REALISTIC direction.
Like, if everyone's in there dreaming together, why aren't ALL of their subconscious minds effecting the reality they're existing in? No way in hell was Leo DiCaprio the only person there with some "issues". Also, I could not get past how unrealistic it was that there was nothing sexual mixed into peoples' deep psyches in the film...I understand there's a rating system and it couldn't have been a porno, but that is just such a deeply entwined part of what's going on down deep in peoples' heads that it was almost laughable to me that they left it completely out. Not just graphic sex scenes, either, I'm talking about imagery, memories, references...I mean especially the guy and his dead wife, how could that be missing?
Overall I thought they barely scratched the surface of something that could have went very deep.
South Florida Pediatric Dentists:
Dr Smitely at Main Street Smiles is amazing. Jake had a filling and an extraction last Tuesday and I sat in the room for it, and was so impressed. She is friendly and sing-songy to the kids, and does so many "extra" things - she kept all the scary instruments covered at all times, put sunglasses on him to block the harsh light from his eyes, and let him pick the color of his nitrous nosebulb to match his crocs. He was watching Ice Age as she went about her business, and because of how well she numbed his gums with gel first and came in from below at an angle, he never knew she was giving him novacaine shots. Or saw the syringe. It was so good.
She explained every single thing to him in a kid-friendly way before she did it - letting him feel the cleaner and the vaccum on his finger before she put them in his mouth, talking the whole time to him about what was going on. She also seemed to understand that he was ignoring her sometimes in a very obvious, conscious way as a coping mechanism. There were about 3 minutes during the filling when he started to freak a little just because there was SO MUCH in his mouth...but then that passed and he was alright again. The extraction part was like nothing, he was totally cool for that.
He got to pick two treasures and two stickers afterward, and she gave him his tooth in a tiny treasure box that we could take home and put under his pillow.
We let him eat all the ice cream (which turned out to be the entire half gallon box), yogurt (a 6 pack) and applesauce he wanted the rest of the day and he's looking forward to going back in a couple of weeks to get the other side of his mouth done.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
JUMP's Broadway Finale show at the Hammerstein Ballroom
IT WAS SO BADASS! I was thinking, ok, this isn't really gonna be a Broadway show, it's gonna be a kids' dance show that just happens to be on Broadway. And I was wrong. Anyway JUMP posted the opening number in a video on facebook that I wanted to share. This is all the JUMP National VIPs for 2010 and please keep in mind that this is something they choreographed and rehearsed completely during the ONE WEEK we were all in NYC for the event!
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=462781662844#!/video/video.php?v=462781662844
no subject
also, they are architecture students...so building cities was what she was learning to do...which is why cobb started there with her and then she started doing it too.
there was a snow level...and kaito's dream in the beginning took place in his very asian styled home/hideout..and his apartment in the city.
i agree about the anti-gravity fight scene...so compelling. i had to like...remind myself to breathe a LOT during that second level.
and also about the endless pursuit of his projections and their frickin guns...wtheck! how did they know to keep fighting chasing even though he had already been taken to a deeper dream?
the point is that this wasn't 'freestyle dreaming'
as for what he and she created in limbo...he actually talks about why they made what they did. how they wanted to live in a house, but stay in the city, etc. and they spent a lot of time on the beach...and then kaito was back in his element at the very end...but the gun...was that the same gun from before he died?
i thought it was pretty awesome
no subject
That makes sense for the specific dream in that guy's head, but not the practice dreams... The bit about them being architects makes sense all around, though, and you're also right in your examples of non-urban settings. I saw it like two weeks ago and am just getting around to reviewing so it's not all still clear in my mind.
riding unicorns and making out w/ each other, i think he might have caught on a bit
ROFL - true enough.
While I know it wasn't freestyle dreaming...since Leo's guy had big issues, they kept popping up spontaneously. It's hard for me to imagine that Leo's guy is really the only one that had any big issues. I think most people do.
I know they explained a lot about why they built what they built in limbo...though I think your explanation just now made it click more for me than the movie did so make of that what you will...
Part of my problem is that I had heard some serious GUSHING CRAZY REVIEWS, like people saying "this is my favorite movie of all time, it blew my mind and I'll see it at least twice more". So I went in there with some sky high expectations.
Another part is just my own personal tastes...knowing the premise of the movie, I wanted something very different myself and that doesn't really have anything to do with plotholes on their part, just opinion, I guess.
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i really liked how much i was thinking afterwards. a movie hasnt done that to me in a long time.
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I hope we can still be friends.
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I wanted to see a movie about shared dreams and implanted ideas, but I did not want it to feature gun fights or explosions. I wanted something deeply psych related and/or trippy, and I got more typical Hollywood bs, except with a plotline I can get behind rather than one that would never get me in the theater like most.
Perhaps this is related in part to how you thought little of the trailer (but loved the movie) and I loved the trailer (but was eh on the movie); it was promising something that wasn't quite what it delivered.
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Possibly relevant: Two couples and one individual left in the middle of it in the half-full theater where we saw it. As a large portion of my hometown does not have a native grasp of english, I am wondering if it was just impossible for people with even a mild language barrier to follow at all.
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This is partially because I don't think movies are worth the time it takes to watch them in general; I have to be really interested to invest and have been known to walk out or away from the tv because it's "only pretty interesting, which isn't good enough". I could say this is because I have so much pressing business competing for my time, but I'll drop 2 hours on a book or the internet without blinking so obviously that isn't it.
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The exception is well deserved violence that is sweet retribution; that I can get behind. Justice with a capital J that makes you stand up and go "That's RIGHT your fucking head got cut off, BITCH!!!!" But if the only emotion involved is suspense I feel like it's torture to have to watch(/read).
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