INCEPTIONGATE - THE END

Lets just be clear about one thing, Dos started this war. He coined the term "Inceptiongate." I was getting sick of arguing about it too, but wanted to see it to the end. Well, at least to the end of the week. Dos is right though, I have no problem with him posting whatever he wants. Especially if I post weird videos of a guy singing at church and an old Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen video. Yeah, I actually posted those.

Next week will bring more interesting topics. Not that this week wasn't interesting. Perhaps just a little repetitive? I would like custody to be retained by both of us. We will go to blog counseling. Mediation. Whatever it takes. We do not want to let our loyal readers down. All one or two of you. So prepare yourselves for next weeks exciting journey!

Call and Response

I liked the word jazz song I heard and posted the lyrics. I thought they were interesting. If Doc can post videos, why can't I do this? I may have expressed disinterest in his Doritos commercial video, but I never expressed that I wished it was taken down, or that I was ashamed of it.

I still hate Inception. I thought we were moving past this. Why does Doc keep bringing it up?

I do like the Last Emperor. I was just tired of fighting about movies, when it is clear Doc and I have different tastes. He favors action and I favor substance.

My mom read the blog. She then commented on a post. I do not really understand this constant need of Doc to reveal to the blog things that are not a very big deal in the first place.

I, also, do not understand how this blog turned into a non-stop call and response fight. I thought we were purposely moving past the Inception fight for a reason. Doc, I have no problem playing the fight back and forth game. I just thought we were trying not to do this. Perhaps, if you want to do the fight back and forth thing, we should do some more controversial topics. The movie thing is starting to bore me a bit, to be honest. I kind of feel like Doc's last post was more serious than the Inception fight. Doc seems peeved. He also said that my post of lyrics to a song and the fact that I did not spend more than a few sentences on The Last Emperor, somehow, proved him right. Right about what? I do not get it.

Doc, I hope your next post explains all of this and the direction in which you think the blog should go in. I am a very lazy man, and if any of this leads to a blog split, I would like custody of this blog, so I do not have to create another one. Doc, as always, you have the floor to react to my comments. I am curious about what they will be.

Gentlemen. You can't fight in here. This is the War Room.

Well, we are at weeks end and Dos has proven again why Doc is always right. First off, what the fuck is the post below? I am ashamed that something with so many colors has found its way on to this page. I want to remove it, but I will respect Dos's co-ownership status in the blog and leave it be. Can we get an explanation why this is on the blog though Dos?

I believe deep down Dos loves Inception. He wrote a few long posts about it. He is just ashamed to admit it and just can't turn back at this point. I gave him a chance to argue about a movie he loves (The Last Emperor) and he didn't take the opportunity to write a well thought out post about something he claims to love. Perhaps he really doesn't even like it, but because it is in his DVD collection he has to defend it? I guess we will never know. You might have noticed there was one comment that The Last Emperor was a "beautiful" movie. Will this comment was written by Dos's mom. Having your mom fight your battles for you, eh Dos?

Faces in the Jazzmatazz by Ken Nordine

What do they mean?
The faces, in the night,
looking, into the antique mirror, of jazz?
By what insistent instinct,
do we crowd the smoking dark?
And watch, with our sea shell ears,
the pounding truth, break against the huge
inchoate spirit of this biggest of the little cities.
And why do the stars of this spirits music,
Shine with such intensity?
Upon the double zero of our blinking eyes?
The questions multiple the mysteries.
Are we the face of get away from it all?
Have another drink baby! Live it up!
Lets have a ball .... before the great big all,
goes up in fire and brimstone.
Make mine a double and short on the soda,
clap hands in the reeling darkness
and play lusty animal with the
yeah, yeah, yeah, of drowning night.
You should have seen me when I stood on the table.
And the bouncer came with his tuxedo,
And the alcoholic air rocking with rolls of laughter after,
While the ghost of dixie land gone white are
crashing through the changes inside
Saints Go Marching In.
One for the road and hiccup home to hangover.
Are we this face?
Are we the face of get there, get there, get there?
Whose at the Blue Note? Whose at the Southerland?
Somebody's opening at the London house?
Grab a cab and seize upon the tock ticking, ticky tock.
Should I wear the mink?
Someone said something is happening at the Cloister Inn.
And the long lines form, in front of the revolving door,
of the spinning now, now, now.
Do I look all right? Keep the change,
I read in Down Beat,
and the smoke rises above above the hub-bub
as the cash register LP’s come alive.
Mr. & Mrs. Face, face up to an evening on the town,
Twelve conventioneers accompanied by a driving
rat ta ta tat become disciples of punch line pornography.
And expense accounts rise, in the falling jazz.
and a waiters feet hurt.
Something ends, and the applause begins.
This clapping reward is bridge for the blues.
Aren’t you glad you came? Aren’t you?
Are we this face?
Are we the face of I wonder, as I wander?
Looking with the look that little children have,
for that loving something?
For that joyous, what ever it is?
For that delightful, I don't know what next?
Tired of playing run sheepy run.
And Follow The Leader.
The game where looking for is looking for us.
And its called One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten Green Light.
A great big huge unbelievably infinitely big Go Sign
For the biggest of the Littlest sleep walking cities.
Where the dreamed we dream is just around,
the imagined nightmares corner.
Come on along to renaissance,
Which is anywhere you want it.
Hope swings eternal and that's where everything is
in the Jazzamatazz Chicago.
Don Quixote rides across the sprawl of us,
in a crazy movie called the Mid Westerner.
Gallops across jumping night
where everyone waits to see where the real action is.
And we strike our matches against old Chicago midnight against anywheres midnight.
Somewhere below the non-stop jets from New York to Hollywood
Hi stranger, are we this face?
All these faces and more and more we are.
And the Truth is right in front of us,
when our backs our turned.
So pick up your trumpet and play this.
Doomsday boys and girls of dust,
come blow your horn for Mr. Must.
Full circles roll in spiral down,
into the fright of the thinnest town.

- Ken Nordine (1959)

Bad Blog Post

I will respond to Doc only based on the movies I have seen. I like the Last Emperor. I found the film to be quite interesting and entertaining. However, there is not much violence and it is not a comedy, so I could see where Doc would not like it. Blade Runner was, indeed, incredibly boring. I think that there is more to Little Miss Sunshine than meets the eye. Some of the dialogue is loaded with interesting observations about modern family life. I enjoyed the movie and think it is, at least, original in parts. I think the point of the Rocky Horror Picture Show was not to be a good story. It is an homage to bad movies and how they can still be enjoyable, as well as other things. It achieves its goal here. Everything else I agree with Doc on.

Oh wait, that is not necessarily so. The Last Samurai. I HATE this movie. Never has a movie been so inaccurate on so many things. Most of this I can forgive if someone says, "well, it was an entertaining movie, back off." Except for the fact that the ending is bizarrely wrong. The ending of the movie insists that the samurai continued to flourish and as did the government in power at the time. In reality, Japan was attempting to make way to modernize and compete with the west for commercial interests, as well as a say in world politics. They, thus, repressed the samurai and the shogun was replaced with an emperor to make way for modernization. Man, what a dumb movie. What was the point of the movie now? Who knows? Glorification of violence probably.

Man, short post. Doc didn't really give me much to work with. What to write about now? I think coming out of Inceptiongate, I should find a movie Doc and I agree on to talk about. Eh, screw it.

Doc VS Overrated Movies

I believe the Inception debate has gone as far as it can. Dos and I will not be swayed one way or the other. I love it, he doesn't. He thinks it was overrated. I and almost the rest of the human population, do not. Now if I wanted to speak about a movie that was overrated and horrible, I would talk about The Last Emperor. Man, what a boring movie that was! I have nothing against historically factual movies as I find them interesting and entertaining. In fact, The Last Samurai* is one of my favorite movies! So that proves I have no problem with historically accurate movies.

The Last Emperor was slow, boring and there were no characters I cared about. Honestly, I was just hoping everyone would be assassinated so the movie would end. I make a point to never stop a movie. Once I start it, I always see it to the end. The Last Emperor was one of the hardest movies I ever had to get through. The best way to sum up the movie is from a quote in the New York Times by Vincent Canby:

The Last Emperor is like an elegant travel brochure. It piques the curiosity. One wants to go. Ultimately it's a let-down.

Another quote from Rita Kempley of The Washington Post:

We need more than elegant parallels and lavish production values. We need tension, characterization, drama.

She said it better than I could. The biggest problem with the movie was that there was ZERO tension or drama. I just didn't give a shit about anything going on the whole time. The story is much more interesting than it was portrayed in the movie.

I am sure a lot of our readers never saw or even heard of The Last Emperor. So lets get more modern. A more recent overrated movie I had trouble getting through was Scott Pilgrim VS The World. Was this movie supposed to be a comedy? Comic book action film? Drama? Video game come to life? I have no fucking idea. It started off good enough, but as it went on, I just wanted him to battle the evil exes, defeat them, get the girl and for the movie to be over with already. It was just incredibly boring. If it was supposed to be a comedy, it just wasn't very funny. There were a few chuckles here and there, but that was it.

Another problem I had with the movie is I am sick of Michael Cera playing the same awkward teen over and over again. He needs to take a break from movies for a while and then come back with something completely different. And, catch 22, once he started fighting the evil exes I didn't find him believable as an action star. So he has already screwed himself and will forever be stuck playing those types of roles.

Some other movies that are completely overrated and a brief reason why:

Blade Runner - Slow pacing. Boring. Read the book, way more entertaining.

Little Miss Sunshine - Good for one viewing. Nothing more than an interesting road trip movie. Not very original.

Rocky Horror Picture Show - Weirdness overshadows the story. You are nothing without a good story.

Avatar - One of the most overrated movies of all time. Generic story. Too much hype on 3D and effects.

Scarface - It is good, don't get me wrong. But it is way too long and does not seem very believable. If you want to watch a great gangster movie with Pacino, watch The Godfather. Unless you are a rapper (Y'all are obsessed with this)

The Departed - While good, not as great as you are led to believe. Unbelievable plot and overly long.

Children of Men - Very cliched. Interesting plot, but overall more of a mess than anything.

I'm sure there is a lot of other overrated crap out there, but those are the ones that come to mind right now. If anyone wants to chime in on what they think is overrated feel free!

* I am aware The Last Samurai is no where near accurate, but damn, what a great movie.

And Now a Musical Interlude: Blue Rondo à la Turk

While I am fully aware of the fact that no one reads this blog, and that the 3184blog is experiencing a crisis like no other, I would like to take a moment out for an interlude and to try to sell you something. I would like to sell you a song. It is free or, depending on you morals, 99 cents. If there are profits, they do not go to me. So, please understand that my goal here is not financial gain. My goal doesn't even have to do with today. It has to do with something down the line. Something that will happen to you later. It has probably already happened to you, but it will happen to you again and maybe next time this will make it easier. I was walking today, a bit stressed for various unnecessary reasons, and the day was rather nice to be honest. Furthermore, my stresses were nothing of great concern. They were something I built up too much in my head. However, I did not see any of that. All I saw was complaining. I saw myself complaining about idiotic notions that had no influence on anything I was doing.

Now, it has upset me that I have yet to mention music yet, at all, in this blog. I do think that music is rather important, perhaps more important than movies. You probably see where I am going with this, so I will cut to the chase. Yes, the song cheered me up and made me realize how annoying and moany I can be. But I don't want you to think that this was just any song. This was a special song. This was Dave Brubeck's

Blue Rondo à la Turk

Now, comes the hard sell. There are no words. The song has no words. Even worse, for those less adventurous among us, it is a jazz song. Ugh I could hear you moaning. You know, I knew you would be like this. That's why I did the big cheesy intro. But give us a chance here. I don't want to poorly describe the song, as it is impossible to describe a song as it is. I want to convince you to get the song. I don't want you to listen to it on youtube. You will not give it a chance. I just want you to get the song somehow. You don't even have to listen to it. Just get it, put it on your computer, ipod or whatever. Don't think about it after you have done this. Don't even listen to it. Just put it somewhere and forget about. The best thing about this song is that it is just going to come to you at the right time. When it does, you will listen to it, all the way through. It will help you, I swear it will. Just do it. I am begging you here. Get the song and the rest will work out itself. I promise.

None of this makes any sense to you I'm sure, don't worry it will someday.

Did he just quote American Beauty? Remember the bag scene, that was cheesy looking back. Or was it meaningful? Discuss. Oh, before you discuss get the song.

I now take you back to the Inception fight. This was a nice interlude, eh? Much better than that dumb movie....

12 Angry Remarks (well, one is positive....the first one)

1. I Love 12 Angry Men, now that is a meaningful movie.

2. Sexist

3. How is me using someone else's review admitting defeat?

4. Doc did put a lot of effort into his previous post. He should be commended for that. However, as I stated in my last post, he just showed that the movie was complex. He did not show that it was smart or meaningful.

5. My joke was that because he responded with so many words, I would respond with the fewest to show that more words do not equal a better argument. I am not syaing it was a good joke. I am just saying I don't know why posting it here was so revealing.

6. I am sick about talking about inception, the movie is so bad it does not deserve this much thought or time, and I did just copy a review I agreed with and posted it on to the blog. At no point did I deny this.

7. In doing so, that was an dirty easy trick. I used someone else's words to express my own and it took much faster than writing an entry of my own. Agian, I admitted this.

8. I, indeed, still dislike the film and did take the easy way out using someone else's review.

9. What truth did Doc reveal that I did not admit in my previous post?

10. I already came back from Doc's post as he did not bring anything novel to the debate.

11. I am not waiting for Doc to do anything, I am responding quickly to his lack of accusations. All he did was repeat things that were already abundantly clear.

12. Inception is a meaningless film that is walking around pretending it is smart and meaningful. It had a needlessly complex plot to give the feeling that it is about something when it isn't. The point of all the complexity is to have some really cool action scenes. To say the film is about loss or anything serious is a ridiculous argument because the film spends most of its time on action. It does not have a lot of interesting dialogue, plot or do anything to make the audience think. The story is clearly explained out for you. The audience is not allowed to judge the characters, action or philosophy of the film. The director tells the audience what to feel and when to feel it. I do not enjoy being a sheep. Some people do. I am not saying that some people do not enjoy this film, but they should admit why they enjoy it. It has some cool action scenes. I was planing on coming to the blog today and find some way to give Doc the win. I am tired of talking about Inception and I was planning on coming on here and saying I concede to Doc because...and make up a loop hole for Doc to easily get out of and have the win. However, Doc's previous post, which claims to be so revealing and novel is just like the film Inception. It acts like it is giving out important information when in fact, it isn't. It is just empty for these numbered reasons you are reading now. I could not let this stand. I had to be honest, even at the risk of talking about this dumb movie some more. To sum up, I did take the easy way out by posting someone else's words. This is not worng in itself, as I admitted it, and it was just a lazy thing to do. However, I still agree with all those words I have posted and Doc has in no way proved that Inception is anything but a complex action film. Now, here is what I want. I want Doc to write a post saying "Inception is nothing more than a complex action film that I happen to enjoy because I think action films are really entertaining. It is not meaningful, challenging or intellectually stimulating. It does not have to be, it is just entertainment." That is an argument I will accept. I'll make this easy for you Doc. Just copy and paste the quote into your next post. You do not have to write anything else. Then I will start a new topic of debate and everything will go back to normal. Until then, the world waits....

I do mind. The Dude minds. This will not stand. This aggression will not stand, man.

First off, yeaok, I am gonna take a review by a woman seriously. Come on! The post below is basically Dos admitting defeat. This is as close to an admittance of being wrong as we are gonna get from him. Further proof comes from a string of texts he sent me just a little while ago. I would like to share them with you, our loyal readers, so you can see the type of man you are dealing with. You might not like what you see, but it is my duty to share it.

These have not been edited. The names have been changed to protect the guilty:

Dos: Haha u did put effort in it and i thnk the best way to respond for me is with as few words as possible lol - Received: 10:43PM, Feb 16

Dos: So sick of talking about ibception just copied a review and posted it - Received: 10:52PM, Feb 16

Dos: Fact and now i am using easy dirty tricks to win - Received: 10:55PM, Feb 16

Dos: Huh? i still dislike the film but admit i took the ez way out by using someones elses review - Received: 10:58PM, Feb 16

Well sir, your "easy dirty tricks" can only take you so far. Our readers deserve to know the truth. And the truth they shall get, courtesy of Doc! Your move Dos. Your move.

Will Dos be able to come back from this? Will he ignore it and start a new topic all together? Or will he wait for Doc to begin a new topic before him? Tune in tomorrow to find out. Same 3184 time. Same 3184 channel.

Crapception

Doc has certainly proved that the film is complex. Complexity does not prove intelligence or meaning. Inception stinks. But, you have heard enough from me and I am tired of saying things that are correct and hearing the response of "but it is really cool." Here is a reprint of a review from http://www.movieline.com/2010/07/review-is-inception-this-years-masterpiece-dream-on.php it is by Stephanie Zackarek and she hits the nail on the head:

If the career of Christopher Nolan is any indication, we’ve entered an era in which movies can no longer be great. They can only be awesome, which isn’t nearly the same thing.

In Inception, Nolan does the impossible, the unthinkable, the stupendous: He folds a mirror version of Paris back upon itself; he stages a fight sequence in a gravity-free hotel room; he sends a train plowing through a busy city street. Whatever you can dream, Nolan does it in Inception. Then he nestles those little dreams into even bigger dreams, and those bigger dreams into gargantuan dreams, going on into infinity, cubed. He stretches the boundaries of filmmaking so that it’s, like, not even filmmaking anymore, it’s just pure “OMG I gotta text my BFF right now” sensation.

Wouldn’t it have been easier just to make a movie?

But that urgent simplicity, that directness of focus, is beyond Nolan: Everything he does is forced and overthought, and Inception, far from being his ticket into hall-of-fame greatness, is a very expensive-looking, elephantine film whose myriad so-called complexities — of both the emotional and intellectual sort — add up to a kind of ADD tedium. This may be a movie about dreams, but there’s nothing dreamlike or evocative about it: Nolan doesn’t build or sustain a mood; all he does is twist the plot, under, over, and back upon itself, relying on Hans Zimmer’s sonic boom of a score to remind us when we should be excited or anxious or moved. It’s less directing than directing traffic.

Nolan’s aim, perhaps, is to keep us so confused we won’t dare question his genius. The movie opens with Leonardo DiCaprio being washed up on a beach somewhere — mysteriously, there are two little blond children cavorting around, though we can’t see their faces. Then some Japanese soldiers drag him into a menacing-looking seaside castle nearby. Then he sits down at a table, opposite some mysterious old guy, and proceeds to eat some gruel. What, you might ask, is going on here, as bits of runny porridge drip from the haggard-looking DiCaprio’s lips? You’re supposed to be perplexed — it’s all part of the movie’s puzzly-wuzzly structure.

Before long we learn that DiCaprio’s character is an “extractor,” meaning he’s a skilled craftsman who can enter others’ dreams to draw out valuable information, useful, particularly, in corporate espionage. His name is Dom Cobb — which is, I guess, better than being called Com Dobb — and not only does he have the ability to enter others’ dreams; he actually builds those dreams, with the help of his number-two man, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), plus an architect, who had better know what he or she is doing. The architect working for Cobb at the beginning of the movie (he’s played, all too briefly, by Lukas Haas) meets a bad end after installing the wrong kind of shag carpeting in an important dream. Perhaps these dreams need interior decorators, too, to prevent future faux pas, but let’s not get off-track.

Luckily, Cobb’s replacement architect, an earnest young student named Ariadne (Ellen Page), is more on the ball, and she senses that Cobb has some dark, painful secret buried deep in the basement of his subconscious. (Later, Nolan will show us an actual elevator going down into that basement, to reinforce the metaphor.) Cobb’s secret has something to do with those two little blond kids we keep seeing in his subconscious and his extremely pissed-off wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), who haunts his dreams dressed mostly in an assortment of evening gowns. Cobb’s personal trauma has become intertwined with his latest assignment: A onetime mark who has become an associate (or something — the relationship is never made clear), Saito (Ken Watanabe), has suggested that Cobb may find a way back to his wife and family, if only he can penetrate the dreams of a young man, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), who’s just inherited his father’s business empire.

That “way back” can be summed up in one word — Inception! — which is incanted again and again, like the name of a Calvin Klein perfume. (Every time Cobb hears it, his ears perk up like a Doberman’s.) Inception is even more pretentious and overstuffed than Nolan’s last picture, The Dark Knight, a feat I’d not have thought possible. It also shows the same lack of regard for visual logic. (I’m still waiting for someone to tell me how Heath Ledger’s Joker got off that building ledge, which is where we last saw him.)

But Nolan serves up great visuals, you say. Just look at that folded-up, upside-down Paris, all those fantastic slow-motion explosions, the way that van takes 1,762 seconds to veer off a bridge and into the water. It’s all so cool, right? But that’s not the same as arranging those images coherently so that the viewer always knows who’s coming from where, and why. In the movie’s climactic scene — or, rather, one of its numerous climactic dream-within-a-dream scenes — a character gets chased around a snowy mountain by guys with automatic weapons. Who are they, and where did they come from? There are other characters on that mountain, too, but we have no idea where they are, or what they’re doing in relation to one another.

Because Nolan can’t connect his visuals, he has to use words, and lots of them, to let us know what characters are doing and why we should care. Every scene is packed with helpful explanatory dialogue like “Killing him would just wake him up” and “Pain is in the mind.” “A closed loop will help you control the levels of the dream you create,” one character explains matter-of-factly to another, and she responds as if she’s just heard the music of the spheres. There’s more: “As we go deeper into Fischer, we’re also going deeper into you. And I’m not sure we’re going to like what we find.” (Don’t go in the basement.) You’ll find one instance of the ever-popular “Trust me — he’s hiding something, and we need to find out what it is.” I hope you’re not too shocked to learn that “She had herself declared sane by three different psychologists.” And last but not least, pay close attention to this pithy solution to a grave problem: “As soon as Arthur’s music kicks in, just revive him with the defibrillator.” Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?

When Nolan fears things might be getting a little slow, he pumps up the Zimmermusik, much of which sounds derivative of old James Bond scores, only bigger, louder and less melodic. This isn’t an actors’ movie: None of Nolan’s movies are — the most they demand are stunts and gimmicks, or at best a constipated expression that suggests a character is suffering deeply repressed pain. DiCaprio is pretty good at wearing that expression here, but he’s not called upon to do much else. And Levitt, a versatile performer who’s always interesting to watch, is completely wasted in a colorless role. Similarly, Page is required to do little more than blink her enormous eyes, like a carnival Kewpie. And Michael Caine’s appearance is so brief, he may as well be a mirage in this vast desert.

Inception is nice enough to look at; the DP is Wally Pfister, who frequently collaborates with Nolan, and he makes those Parisian streets, in particular, look very pretty and bright. But the deeper you get into the movie, the more its polished visual surface feels like a deception. Nearly every moment in Inception is so big, so fattened-up, that nothing has any weight; because every little thing is of the gravest importance, there’s nothing at stake. Nolan keeps the story whirring, all right — he’s the man behind the curtain, feverishly pushing levers and operating dials. He uses his figurative bullhorn to ask allegedly deep questions, like “What’s real, and what’s illusion?” (He’s the Doug Henning of filmmakers.) But although Inception gives the appearance of being a work of intelligence and complexity, it’s really just an ungodly tangle. There’s no elegance in Nolan’s vision, only sweat. He’s the dream architect who thinks he’s doing us a favor by giving us a shag rug.