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Hello! Just back this minute from seeing the film. I have a few comments to make which may involve SPOILERS.

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Hmmm.

The short review is - what a load of disappointing and quite frankly tedious crap.

Oh Nolan why are you getting worse with each film? Who honestly thinks LDC is an actor with enough charisma to hold a film like this? He really wasn't enough for this role. Why the fuck does Nolan insist on having that thuddingly monotonous soundtrack pounding over virtually every single scene of dialogue? Why not give the actors some space instead of making it feel rushed and forcing them into layering soundbites for only the sake of exposition? Why not make this about the performances rather than worship the god of pacing? (it certainly didn't feel like 148 minutes I'll give him that).

Sorry, that girl he hires? Where was that maze she designed? Oh fuck that, we want a shortcut now. And why is Leo's dad (Michael Caine again for some reason) offering up students to do dodgy work? And what was she studying? Extraction 101? What world is this that dreams can be hacked in this way? This is never explained. Should we expect to see the flying cars out the window? Has cancer been eradicated in this world? How many other people are doing this shit?

And Leo with a bad case of dead wife syndrome (DWS). You know if you want to keep pulling that trick you might want to make it better than it was in Memento. Which is hard to do. Mainly because Guy Pearce is a better actor who makes you feel something about his character. Sympathy, disgust, shock, whatever. Something. LDC is like balsa wood in comparison.

But maybe I'm being too hard on Leo. Maybe the problem is with the script. I was surprised to find I had no problems following what was supposed to be a twisty, layered plot. I didn't see multiple plots criss-crossing and tying my mind up in knots - you want that? Try a James Ellroy novel. I still find Memento a mind-bending watch. The dream within a dream scenario is as hard to imagine as a box within another box. And here that's all that Nolan is concerned about. He loves the techie aspects of this. How does box C behave in box B. Oh B is jiggling about so C is getting all shook up. And do we get to care much about the inception itself? Nope. I thought this was a big missed opportunity to play the complex mind-games required to crack the subject. But in between explosions there wasn't much time for that.

Nolan has become a slightly more sophisticated version of the recent fanboy directors. But he's still thoroughly crass and obvious and doesn't have the talent to explore the spaces between what initially seem like promising ideas. But dreams? Hell, I enjoyed the more straightforward japes of Dreamcape and that was a long time ago.

But I am surprised that so many love this - I'd ask that you think about the characters. State what was memorable about them and what made them interesting. What did this film actually say that was of substance? Strip away the artifice and what are you actually left with?

I saw Total Recall, again, a few days ago. It was better than this.

Wow...this song is really quite old, although this particular version appears to be a newer mashup. It was originally released in 1972, and is indeed pure gibberish. The more I listen to it, the better I like it...even if it does only have one chord.

Little bits and pieces I found...the clearest blurb was at http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Prisencolinensinainciusol

While we have several different video versions (which led me to think this one's a mashup) best found at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1838

This discussion reminds me of the Science Life Cycle:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/ScienceNewsCycle.gif

Sad, but true.