haha, nope, it's just making the rounds. I would like to go there, tho.

You are now laughing for the next five minutes.

I was kinda hoping you guys would continue the talk about Tarantino's little universe when you started talking about the cop, but since you didn't bring it up, I guess I will - though maybe you bring it up in volume two, when Sam Jackson is actually talking:

There's a theory that would have you believe that Tarantino's films all exist in the same universe. They are all interconnected in some way. You have to exclude Jackie Brown from this, as that was based on a book and not set in his universe.

Do you guys put any stock into this theory? I mean, we know at least that Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction have to exist in the same universe, since there's a Vega brother in each film. I think it's safe to also assume that Kill Bill and Death Proof exist in the same universe, as the cop and his son show up in both. He uses the same brand names in his movies. Personally, I like the idea a lot, so until he comes out and says it's not so, or he does something that would definitely prevent that theory from working I'm gonna just go along with the notion that this is all one big universe and he's just showing us all how fucking awesome the universe in his head is.

Kon's films and that show he did have a lot of weird mental stuff going on. The main character in Perfect Blue is an actress in a show about herself being a murderer and then people start getting murdered in reality and it messes her head all up to where she can't keep the acting and the reality straight in her head. Paranoia Agent deals with a number of mental / social stigma but mostly in subplots...  i think...  It's been a while since I saw it and it seems to do the same thing in the last couple episodes that Paprika did in the final act.

I didn't really like Paprika all that much. I should try watching it again, tho. I think I was pretty drunk the first time I saw it. From what I remember, tho, it seems to do the opposite of what inception does. In a dream, anything and everything can happen. That's a really cool way to do it, but there's a danger of pulling stuff out of your ass whenever you need it. I can't remember enough of Paprika to say if that happened at all, tho. It was definitely surreal.

I think you guys are right. This film is really good, but if there had been a fresh set of eyes to come in and remove anything that wasn't really needed - combine the architect and the host, use dream physics more often, drop the subplot involving the guys who are after DiCaprio (the movie drops them as well, so... yeah...)and limit the amount of explainy bits in the movie, then go through the whole thing with a fine-tooth comb and add lots of cool touches that you'd only get on a second viewing, then yeah. Masterpiece.

The scene that bothers me a bit is the dream coffee scene. It's Cobb's dream and she's populating it, but when Cobb tells her it's a dream, none of her subconscious people react. They just sit there drinking their coffee. It would have been cooler if they had stopped and started looking at DiCaprio for a couple of shots and then he started blowing shit up.

The idea of a chase sequence where they start fucking with the architecture in order to escape, or the idea of needing to keep the guy from waking up, so they can't fuck with the dream too much is a much better explanation for the lack of cool dream shit than anything.

You guys talk for a while about the sequence where Ellen Page is changing shit left and right and Cobb's subconscious people aren't really reacting that strongly, and you point that out as a flaw in the film. I dunno, tho. I think maybe Cobb's subconscious is more trained to accept weird shit in dreams due to his job, the same way that some people's subconscious is trained to react more violently and militarily to weird shit in dreams.

But that said, I think what they SHOULD have done is gotten away with a ton of shit in the dream and had it be perfectly fine with the dreamer. When you're dreaming, absolutely crazy shit can happen and you take it in stride - including just teleporting to some random new location. The clash of reality and dreamworld is the thing that would kick you out, so the intruders not acting all weird and fitting in with the dream would be what fucks it all up. In that sense, I think your idea of the 'dreams' being more of a virtual reality rather than an actual dream is a better way to look at the movie.

The limbo thing is the biggest problem I have with the movie. Cobb and Juno go to limbo at the end to get Scarecrow. Juno kills Scarecrow and he goes up one level. Juno then kills herself and goes up one level. However, Cobb and Mal went to limbo and created a huge world there, and when they killed themselves they went all the way up. At the end of the film, Cobb and Ken Watanabi kill themselves and also go all the way up. The fact that limbo behaves however the plot needs it to behave is the only thing in the movie that breaks for me. I can forgive everything else. Perhaps there is something I'm missing, tho?

EDIT - NM, I think the reason they go all the way up is because there are no levels of dreams going on above them...  but if that's the case how did Cobb and Mal get to limbo in the first place? Hrmm...

I feel the same as Fixed, tho I will agree with the idea that other film makers need to stop ripping it off every time they want to make a dark sci-fi film.

I think he's got a kidney stone. I showed up late to the show, tho, so I don't have all the details of what happened. The last we heard was that they were heading to the hospital. Someone else will have to fill in the details and such.

A Few Good Men is one of those movies that I've always meant to get around to watching, but haven't. So glad I decided to swing by the forum again tonight

Again, bored. Thought it would be neat to have DiF flavored smileys, but now that I think of it, it looks more like smurf themed smileys and they don't read that well. Oh well, just killed a half hour or so (I didn't make a smiley for that...)

If you do the Orson Welles clap, make it     : bravo :

Edit: tried to make them read better... Still too smurfy...

I think it was mentioned during one of the other shows that they'd have to tackle this one eventually just because it's one of those movies that you can either embrace it's weirdness and love it to death or you can't and you hate it with a passion. I haven't seen it, myself. It sounds like something I'd like, tho.

I just watched it. Amazing. I think people have really underestimated this film. It's a brilliant prosecution of the modern psyche. People are too self involved. We don't understand nature at all. The cardboard cutout CGI birds are a representation of man's ignorance of nature. The hippie Global Warming message-thumpers represent the way the average person looks at any sort of environmentalist.

Face it, as soon as anyone hears the words "Global Warming" they groan and roll their eyes as though it's gone out of fashion or something. Climate change was so 2003.

So you've got these shallow, mindless drones going about their daily grind, never really thinking too much about their environment or the planet. The 'protagonist' guy watches as the news talks about the death of polar bears, wildfires, mass bird deaths, etc and he's just sitting there eating a donut like it's no big deal. He may drive a hybrid, and he may buy some solar panels, but is he doing that because he gives a shit about the environment or because he's an upper middle-class douchebag following a trend? His lack of interest in anything outside his job and supermodel girlfriend tells me he's just following the herd.

They spend the first half of the movie just existing. We endure the monotony with them. Driving to work. Driving home. Walking to the car. Sitting in a meeting. Sitting at a cubicle. Having boring, shallow conversations. We even hear the same short musical cues over and over. Repetition and boredom. They see some dead birds on the beach and have no idea what to do. The birds look fake to us, but they may as well be aliens to them. They react as though the birds could explode at any second. Later they see some birds hovering on a tree. They again have an alien look to them, as though the characters have no clue as to what they're looking at. They have no appreciation for nature, and give these birds very puzzled looks.

When the birds finally do attack, they're destroying towns and gas stations. They're exploding and dive-bombing buildings. If you take this footage as being as exaggerated as the banality of the first half of the film, and as exaggerated as the way they view the message-thumping environmentalist characters, the scenes with the birds could very well just be their interpretation of some much simpler events, including perhaps some fantasies about how they're reacting to these events. Gunning down birds with an AK47? Seems like more of an overly-heroic fantasy formed in the mind of a guy who watches too much TV and movies. Perhaps there are some birds with some sort of disease, as the environmentalist is saying, and that these birds are indeed attacking people, but surely the explosions are things that they are fantasizing.

For example, the birds are exploding in the first shots, but then fail to do so again throughout the rest of the film. The characters don't see these events, so perhaps we are to interpret this as how the mass media might cover these events? Also, at a gas station scene, the pump only catches fire after they leave, meaning that the characters themselves could very well have been fantasizing that. I think this film may be a representation of the sort of mass hysteria the media can cause with their 'gotcha' style of reporting - their exaggerations and lies to make any mundane story seem like it could be the end of the world.

I give it 3/4 stars. I believe Armond White would agree.

I had one more thing to add to this thread a while back and didn't want to dredge up the topic just for this:

The only thing in the movie that had perplexed me was the story Ofelia tells to her unborn brother about the rose that could give eternal life. I couldn't figure out why it was in there, and then it dawned on me. The baby is the rose. I suppose you could look at the rose story as some kind of metaphor for life in general as well. People sought the rose because it gave eternal life, but the thorns gave instant death. But the two are inseparable. You can't have life without death, yeah? So maybe it's like a story about how dumb it is to want eternal life. Like, this Captain guy just wanted his name and memory to go on, yeah? So that's why he wanted the kid, but he obviously got stuck by a thorn instead.

I still don't know what all that crap ends up meaning, but there you go. I wonder if the face-smashing scene was a metaphor for alcoholism or something...