Making the Movie Filmmaking tips, resources, reviews, news and links.

Apple Blinks

My brief thoughts on Apple's announcement...

The new "hockey puck" AppleTV has an A4 processor but the same old interface. With the "Magic Trackpad" (I refuse to not put quotes around that) and this hardware, having iOS with apps on a TV was perfectly possible. That fact that they didn't pull the trigger means Apple probably blinked when challenged by companies like Comcast or Verizon, with whom they will supposedly soon sell iPhones.

So the war I foresaw is postponed... for now. And AppleTV is still just a hobby. Or a, as I call it, a stinker. A tough sell against something with more and better content like the Roku HD Player.

ALSO NOTE: I updated the "How I Would Remake Variety" post after having lunch with Variety.com editor Chris Krewson.

Maya Indie Film Series Reviews: Backyard and Solo Quiero Caminar

I'm always very excited to see a distributor taking different approach to bringing independent film to theaters. The Maya Indie Film Series is a traveling roadshow of seven independent films that is touring eight US cities, starting a few days ago here in LA as well as San Diego and San Jose. The movies all appear to have Hispanic connections - although Maya only describes them as "diverse." In any case, you'll see a diverse group of marquee actors in the trailer for the films -- Martin Sheen, Diego Luna, Ray Liotta, Michelle Rodriguez, Ana De La Reguera and Jimmy Smits.

Kat Feldman is the pseudonym of a very talented writer/director friend with a background in Spanish-language cinema. I asked her to check out some films from the Maya Indie Film Series. From the seven films, my friend chose Backyard and Solo Quiero Caminar. You can read more about the other five films in the series on the Maya Indie website. Enjoy, JO

* * *

BACKYARD
Director: Carlos Carrera
Writer: Sabina Berman
Cast: Jimmy Smits, Ana de la Reguera, Joaquín Cosio

A warning to all women who watch this film: this may be one of the most single terrifying cinema experiences you will undergo in your lifetime. “Backyard” is set in the border town of Juarez, Mexico, where, since 1993, hundreds of women have been found brutally raped and murdered; their bodies dumped out like trash in the desert. Although this situation has garnered media attention for years, to this day these “femicides” continue.

The film begins as Police Captain Bianca Bravo, played by skilled actress Ana de La Reguera (Nacho Libre), arrives in Juarez and is tasked with investigating these gruesome murders. As she delves deeper into the case, she starts to realize the very system that she is a part of is corrupt. Eventually, she’s forced to take matters into her own hands in a gripping scene where the inimitable Jimmy Smits makes a rousing cameo appearance.

Carlos Carrera (The Crime of Father Amaro) does a great job eliciting powerful, captivating performances from his talented cast. However, the film spends a long portion of its narrative attempting to cover all the known facts and theories about the murders, causing the story to feel diffuse and convoluted. This is unfortunate, because when the film sticks to the beautifully written parallel narratives of the police captain and the young native girl from Cintalapa (played by the astounding first time actress, Asur Zagada), it makes for compelling, enjoyable cinema.

Overall, this film delivers a strong exposé about the horrific situation in Juarez and is well worth watching; just be prepared for a painful ride that leaves you absolutely appalled that this is happening in our very own “backyard.”

Remaining playtimes in Los Angeles at the Mann Chinese 6 Theatres: Tuesday, August 31 at 12:10pm; Wednesday, September 1 at 2:30pm; Thursday, September 2 at 5:15pm

SOLO QUIERO CAMINAR
Writer/Director: Agustín Díaz Yanes
Cast: Diego Luna, José Maria Yazpik, Elena Anaya, Victoria Abril

Solo Quiero Caminar can be grouped alongside other classic female gang action flicks like Set it Off or Bandidas. Four sexy skilled Spanish female robbers take on the ultimate heist, robbing one of the most notoriously violent drug traffickers in Mexico. A side plot of this heist is that they are taking revenge on behalf of one of their gang members who was put into a coma by the drug trafficker.

The action sequences are well-directed and the performances are solid. Diego Luna does an excellent job of making a cold-blooded killer a sympathetic lover of women and children, much like Jean Reno in The Professional. The robbery sequences in which the women invent unique tools to infiltrate various safes are as fun as any Mission Impossible flick. However, strong performances and enjoyable action aside, the story is convoluted with so many different plot twists that it’s easy to completely lose sense of what is happening. It often feels like we’re jumping too far ahead in time and essential connective scenes are missing throughout. It’s hard to connect to our femme heroes because we never really get a sense of who they are. Despite this, it’s a pleasing action flick with a clearly talented director.

The remaining Los Angeles Mann's 6 Chinese playtimes for Solo Quiero Caminar Tuesday, August 31 at 7:30pm; Wednesday, September 1 at 9:45pm.

Indie Filmmakers, Hold On To Those Streaming Rights!

If you're independent film producer, now is probably not the time to sign exclusive deals for streaming rights. You might just be sitting on a goldmine. Let me explain...

If you've been following the rumbles, it seems Apple is going to be announcing a set-top box that will run iOS, the same operating system that's on iPhones and iPads. The one with the apps. Netflix app. Hulu app. (UPDATE: This prediction turned out to be premature, although the hardware is ready for it any time Apple decides to grow a pair.)

Likewise, we already know Google is teaming with Sony, Logitech and Intel to integrate it's own streaming content interface into televisions, cable boxes and Blu-ray players.

The cable companies, meanwhile, have the warchests they've been building up from the virtual monopolies the government continues to allow, so long as the campaign contributions continue.

I don't know how it's going to all shake out, but I do believe it will be akin to trench fighting: one massive media meatgrinder. Google and Apple are two of the deepest-pocketed media companies post-financial-crisis, and companies like Netflix that want to play ball on their new fields have already indicated a willingness to pay big money for major content. Cable companies rightly view this as the shot across the bow in a fight for their lives. Why would a consumer pay for cable TV and internet, when the internet has everything the TV has? Why buy a bundle of channels just to get Discovery when you can buy the Discovery Channel app a la carte? (There are reasons, but they aren't apparent to consumers.) The cable companies and TV networks are right where the recording industry was ten years ago, but they are determined not to make the same mistakes and have already begun making moves to adapt. (Hulu is their most successful gambit thus far.)

The survivors in the coming armageddon will probably be the companies that offer a broad selection of content at a low price early on, because a marginal lead in subscriber numbers, through network effects, can over time lead to decisive victories.

But you're just a lowly independent filmmaker. You may only have one movie to sell. What can you do to get through this carnage?

Play one side against the other, on whatever scale you can leverage! You control a precious resource: content. The more you control, the better your position. As I've advocated, indie filmmakers need to start bundling their movies together into libraries. As a representative of a block of films (or just one film that is well-known) you have the ability to milk all sides for the streaming and other digital rights, and negotiate non-exclusive, short window contracts.

Netflix reportedly paid $32M to Relativity Media for a year's worth of non-exclusive streaming rights. What did Relativity have to offer? Charlie St. Cloud, Macgruber and, to be fair, some movies that were big hits, like 300. This is just for Netflix to offer these titles through Netflix. Non-exclusively, so Relativity is still free to rake in more cash from other streaming platforms.

This deal certainly points a way forward for large independent producers. But still, it's going to be a little while until Netflix has worked its way down the long tail to smaller independent producers. Now is the time to get positioned and, like a musician who owns her own masters, get rich by not selling out!

NBP Gold by Flickr user covilha used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

McNelly Goes Off on Film Festivals

Lucas McNelly, a #2wkfilm filmmaker, puts into words a lot of what I'm feeling about film festivals right now:

Here's the model. See if this makes sense to you.

Step 1: A person spends several thousand dollars and months, if not years, making a product.

Step 2: That product is then sent to some other body which, for a fee in the range of $30-$100, will consider it for inclusion. They get a lot of them, though, so there's a good chance they won't give it a full consideration. They might not even look at it. Either way, they keep the money. They will show something like 5% of them to their audience.

Step 3: Repeat the process 50-100 times.

Step 4: Congratulations! You've made the cut! What do you get? Money? No. Fame? Probably not. A chance to sell your product at the event? Maybe. Access to valuable lists of audience members? Not really.

--100 films: Festivals are dead. Long live festivals.

Currently making a film (Up Country) with $4000+ netted in a Kickstarter campaign, McNelly feels he's already gotten the interaction with audiences that festivals often promise but don't deliver:

We're interacting with audiences directly, which was really where the big value add-on was for festivals. We needed them to find an audience.

We don't need them for that anymore.

...

And I know what you're going to say, that you need my submission fees to stay in business. Too bad. Raise your own money. I did.

You can always start a Kickstarter campaign.

I've been following Up Country and several other film projects on Kickstarter. I'm not sure it's a more sustainable model than the old indie model. $4000 is barely enough to make a feature film, let alone pay a filmmaker's basic living expenses while making and promoting it. I'm betting McNelly plans to return to Kickstarter to raise post-production funds and maybe again for promotional funds. That's a lot of extra work that isn't filmmaking -- what economists call rent seeking.

I can see the Kickstarter audiences one is interacting with directly get just as ticked off as the filmmakers who feel like they keep paying festival entry fees for little dividend. I.e., Kickstarter filmmakers better not only complete the projects, but complete them in a way that satisfies the audience.

Anyway, Kickstarter hasn't been around long and it remains to be seen how it will evolve. Film festivals have no excuse. They are definitely a form of rent seeking, the equivalent of auctioning off a twenty-dollar bill - an auction where all the bidders lose their bids whether or not they win the $20.

McNelly is right. Such a system cannot be supported if filmmakers withdraw. It is the festivals that have audience support (or corporate sponsorship) that will survive. Let the ones who earn their bread from the toil of rejected filmmakers perish.

How I Would Remake Variety

UPDATE 8-26-10: I've been contacted by Chris Krewson, editor of Variety.com, with regard to this post. Miraculously, he did not seem to be offended. I'm looking forward to talking with Chris and others at Variety in the coming days and writing more about the future of entertainment news. Watch this space.

FURTHER UPDATE 8-30: In the week since I wrote this, Variety.com has changed the positioning of the "Subscribe" button and Weekly Variety has gone from 24 to 72 pages. (Twenty-eight pages are special feature sections, but the non-special sections do contain a good deal more business analysis articles.) I'd like to take credit for this change but clearly it was already in the works (and the Emmy ads didn't hurt).

YET FURTHER UPDATE 9-2: I met Chris Krewson for lunch today and discussed Variety's future plans. Full report at bottom.

Thin in More Ways than One

I've been reading Variety off and on since 2000. When I started, Variety was king of the pack, the chief source for entertainment business news, chockablock with great intel for everyone in the studio food chain. At first its insular jargon, V-speak, made it tough to understand, but now you'll find me dropping "tentpoles" and "helmers" in my own writing.

Right now I get weekly Variety -- not because I paid the stickershock price of $299/year, but because my sister was able to trade in some airline miles that were otherwise going to be expiring. Like most of Hollywood, I stopped reading Variety during the writer's strike because their coverage was terrible. In simply allowing WGA members to give their side, Nikke Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily (DHD) beat Variety and Hollywood Reporter six ways to Sunday -- and the readers haven't come back. The Reporter had a "tragic bloodletting" in 2008, slashing staff, and it remains to be seen whether the recent regime change will pull it out of what some call a "death spiral." And, while I was away, Weekly Variety got as thin as (or thinner than) Daily Variety used to be.

It's pathetic. And as I've been paging through it the last few weeks, what's even more pathetic is the thinness of the content. The articles just aren't that useful to someone in the movie business. It's like they took the wrong lesson away from the rise of DHD. Nikke Finke wears her biases on her sleeve and has been caught being spun by PR and studio factions, as anyone who is rushing a story will often be. It's not like she can't be beat. All it takes is something radical: old-fashioned reporting.

Anyway, rather than kvetch, I'll outline what I think would be an ideal entertainment business publication in this age of the internet.

The Base of Operations

So let's pretend Reed Elsevier has just made me captain of the Variety ship... Surprise: I think there's a lot about Variety that doesn't need to change. At 105 years old, Variety has survived a lot. There's a built-in robustness that has stood it in good stead. And it still means something as a brand. PR agents still compete to get their clients into the pages -- a sure sign of a pulse in this town. Its design and slanguage may be old, but lets not throw Benjamin Button out with the bathwater.

I don't think magazines benefit from radical redesigns. Newsweek signaled it was jumping the shark and giving up on excellence when it re-branded. Wired magazine is now laid out so unpredictably that it's difficult to tell what is an ad and what is content.

Better that designs evolve to suit function. First thing's first: A clear button on variety.com that you can click to subscribe. I had to glance through the page five times before I saw the subscribe button. It's on the right side, in a box that makes it look like an ad and jumbled with a bunch of other links. And once you click on it, there needs to be a compelling pitch as to why it is worth subscribing to.

What is Variety for? "Variety is the best signal-to-noise entertainment industry news publication. Timely and accurate information you can count on to make big-dollar decisions." Sell it - but then back it up.

To that end, if Variety wants to be more than movies, i.e. to have coverage of television and theater because the studios also have fingers in those pies, then they need to seriously up their game on interactive entertainment. Video games are a bigger industry than movies, and Variety needs to start treating them that way. This is a big area where there's room for growth as well as analyzing content at the level of brands, rather than, say, breaking Harry Potter down into book, movie, trading card, action figure and Broadway musical form.

One of the best things about Variety has always been their reviews. First of all, they review every movie that runs in the major cities and at major festivals. Each review begins with a broad quality evaluation, and whether the reviewer feels that quality will impact box office. Then there's a plot summary, useful to all the development execs who are nervous the script they are developing is similar. Finally, there's an evaluation of the technical quality of the film, a great indicator for producers debating whether to hire that d.p. or art director.

I understand that cost is a factor, and that is (supposedly) why some of the more veteran reviewers were let go recently. But it's a broken system that prices out people with experience. And because of the risk of payola, there should be salaries and workloads that decrease the attractions of extracurricular activities. I don't want reviewers interviewing stars and writers and directors or running talkbacks after screenings. Any time a reviewer personally knows someone involved in a film, they should be required to recuse themselves from writing about it. Bottom line, if you can't live up to reviewing this massive number of films with the highest standards of fairness, then scale it back to a number of films you can.

Next, when the reviews for a film are published online, the web page should be like a combination of Wikipedia/IMDb. Even before Variety reviews a film, there should be a static page on variety.com with everything that the Variety staff knows about it, all organized in a consistent way so that people can find the particular information they are looking for (plot summary, cast list, box office breakdown).

Next, Variety needs to expose the fiction of "who won the box office?" and start making big headlines for ROI - return on investment. Most studios can market films well enough to bring out audiences in the first three weeks. But after that, if you believe the research by economist Art DeVany, is when box office actually signals quality. That's when you start getting a sense of whether a movie is going to be profitable.

Bland national news sources like USA Today already have the stupid chart of which film took in the most money at theaters, but this is meaningless from a business sense. Films are not all equal. Some cost orders of magnitude more than others; some are in ten theaters, some in three thousand; some had a huge marketing push, some are doing great solely on word of mouth.

Business reporters would be doing everyone a favor if they used a simple, transparent formula to factor everything in and then report who "won" the box office. If the 'Variety Weighted Box Office Chart' was reliably better at picking out which movies audiences are actually preferring, t.v. contracts might start getting based on them instead of raw box office dollars. Then studios wouldn't have to spend so much on ads in order to juice their box office, and everyone would win. The public would get a better clue about which movies are being preferred by audiences and the studios would be incentivized to make better movies -- or at least, ones that better serve audiences.

As far as the slanguage goes, there's nothing wrong to me with being playful with language and creating a sense of insularity. Variety's goal shouldn't be to have everyone in the world as a subscriber. Its goal should be to have everyone who makes tactical decisions in the entertainment business as a subscriber, and everyone who aspires to be one of those people.

The agencies already have their own slave-labor system with mail rooms and coverage farms. Junior agents get assigned to "cover" particular studios. There's no reason Variety can't have an army of low-paid but ambitious cub reporters who are covering the town. If you're tapped in, I guarantee you'll scoop a lot of blogs, get it from reliable sources, and without trying particularly hard. This town is lubricated with little leaks.

The Website is the Thing

Not that Variety needs to compete with the blogs. They can't ignore them -- sometimes major stories break there. But Variety should be content to nail down the story 100% before running it in the official print edition.

That presses the advantage a 105-year-old brand has, but I would take it a step further. Why not turn the tables on the blogs by having a section on the web, and maybe a small column, that reviews the buzz, gossip and rumors (while clearly identifying them as such). Having a team of reporters sifting the internet wheat from the chaff would be valuable. What a busy studio head needs is not the raw SlashFilm stream, but a concise report of what stories seem to have traction across the blogs and in the wider media.

Variety.com needs to be less like a newspaper page and more like a stock ticker. All the state-of-the-industry stats should be there at a glance. Top-sellers in books, video games, music, home video. Box office charts. Stock prices for the top conglomerates. Which stars are up on the IMDb star meter, which ones are down, with quick links where Variety's top analysts explain why. Everything along the current model of the Crix Pix box, where you can see at a glance how a movie is being reviewed - much more effective than what Rotten Tomatoes does.

And not only should every film have its own static page, every industry player should as well. Updated as soon as the information can be confirmed, before any longer story is even written. (Ex. Vince Vaughn confirmed cast in Ron Howard comedy The Dilemma.) Links to Studio Systems is a good start, but this should be more integrated into the whole ecosystem.

How many entertainment stories are no more than headlines? So why require reporters to write 500 words about them. It's a waste of everyone's time.

There should be a couple of experts who are watching these streams of facts and offering some in-depth analysis of the implications. I'm not talking about Peter Bart writing more-or-less the same state-of-the-industry column, I'm talking about something that is supported by meaningful quotes from executives and raw data.

For this, you probably only need Weekly Variety, maybe only Monthly as a print edition. Let's face it, besides a few dinos, everyone in this industry is online. Now is not the time to serve the troglodytes who aren't. By concentrating the news that is relevant only in short time-frames on the web, you can make the print edition much better in terms of signal-to-noise. Only the really essential coverage shows up here, and that's what you hide behind the online paywall.

Or not. It seems like even the Wall Street Journal can be accessed for free.

As long as winning an Oscar increases the prestige of the players and the pocketbooks of financiers, there will be a value in the For Your Consideration ads which pay the bills at Variety. But to keep getting those ad dollars, Variety needs to have a reason to be actually read. I'm sure there are great reporters who are still there, plugging away, wanting the time to write something deeper and more original than they are currently constrained from doing. This week's article on Netflix and streaming windows had some substance. (Not to brag, but I wrote about the shifting of distribution windows two months ago. I don't think my analysis is as good or as deep, but I'm a guy who writes something up in a few spare hours, so I don't buy that there isn't budget for more of this type of reporting.)

Variety's biggest asset can be credibility. Credibility is long in building and quickly erased. Parroting the studio line during the inevitable guild negotiations is not the way to stay credible. The studios insiders know what what the economics are for both sides, and what is posturing. And on your average Hollywood news day, even the PR people know what the truth is behind their own hype. Which source do you think is going to get the most respect, the one that publishes the press release verbatim or the one cuts through the cant to the core of the matter? Let the praiseries peddle their wares to the blogs, and in the meantime, give the industry what it craves: actionable intelligence!

[Thanks to JC, GL, AC and others with whom I've discussed this over the past few months. And thanks to Variety for repeatedly asking for my opinion about what they should do to change. Sorry for not returning it in survey form.]

UPDATE 9-2-2010: Had a nice lunch today with Variety.com editor Chris Krewson. He's a very engaging, very sharp guy with a background in old-fashioned journalism, very energized by the chance to document the entertainment industry's bellwether transition to digital technologies. He told me this post has made the rounds at Variety and assured me that they were already working on some of the issues I identified above. Right now they have a website that was designed to be free -- and then had a paywall slapped on top -- and it is generated by a very cumbersome circa-2003 CMS (Content Management System). They are working on implementing a new, more-flexible CMS in the coming months. Variety's entire 100+ year archives will also soon go online.

I brought up the idea of doing A/B on headlines, like Huffington Post. (They write two headlines and see which one gets clicked on more in the first few minutes, which determines the final headline.) He said that this is not warranted with the scale of their traffic. Variety actually has the very comfortable position of not having to worry about raw internet traffic numbers, just about having the right traffic. Putting a paywall on the site hurt traffic, but boosted subscriptions by 10%.

On the subject of boosting subscriptions, I suggested that they market the tax-deductibility of a subscription to younger people in the industry (like me), who balk at the $299 number. What also occurs to me now is that that number could be made to look smaller by breaking it down into a monthly or weekly figure. I also suggested mini-subscriptions to text or email alerts -- say $1/month for alerts when there is an article about Lion's Gate -- perfect for people trying to cover specific studios or agencies. But these are marketing ideas to generate revenue. Variety doesn't need my help: unlike most print outlets, Crewson noted, Variety is still in the black.

It does not seem like Variety will be ditching the paywall any time soon, or marking some content specifically to be freely available on the web. We talked about how this limits any kind of wider conversation or interaction with the link economy of the web, something I think should be done, even if only as marketing to help convince people to pay for a subscription. Krewson noted that free Variety removed commenting, because most articles did not get comments, excepting those that were linked to by websites with chatty readerships, like Drudge Report. Is it okay for a paper not to have reader interaction? I suppose. But part of the value of an industry newsletter like Jason Calacanis' Jason Nation is the responses from power player readers. Of course, the irony that I was being socially engaged as a reader by having lunch with a Variety editor in person is not lost.

Social media is the buzzword du jour, but I'm skeptical of corporate Facebook Fan pages and Twitter accounts. Variety has both, of course. But are social media resources better invested in other areas? Would a cool HTML5 interactive interface for box office numbers drive more engagement than headline tweets?

Krewson assured me that, unlike Hollywood Reporter with its spreads on three years of Kathy Griffin red carpet dresses, Variety remains committed to real business news. And they remain committed to print publication for as long as it is profitable, which may be longer than I perhaps originally imagined. Another idea: Even when putting the news on paper goes away, sell framed versions of full-page Congratulations ads for people to treasure as keepsakes. Then you'll always be 'in print.'

Movie Reviews: Animal Kingdom and The Other Guys

Animal Kingdom

I wouldn't go so far as to call Animal Kingdom an Australian The Godfather, but I will say that this taut crime drama is a must-see for fans of the genre. Instead of calling it The Godfather, I'll call it The Grandmother. The central family of criminals in the story is ruled by Janine "Smurf" Cody (Jacki Weaver in a performance that has been attracting a lot of attention). She's always cooking for her "boys" - Pope, Baz, Craig and Darren - four men who are varying degrees of hoodlum.

Into this den of lions walks grandson Joshua Cody (James Frecheville). He's a cub, as detective Leckie (Guy Pearce), points out. "The weak survive when they are protected by the strong." But as the Cody family comes under attack from a zealous police unit, Joshua and his girlfriend Nicky (Laura Wheeler) find themselves caught up the desperate and deadly fracas.

The script was developed in a government-sponsored workshop and the film itself won the Grand Jury Prize this year at Sundance. Writer / director David Michôd, a member of the Blue Tongue collective of Australian filmmakers, unfolds the drama in a steady, sometimes dispassionate manner. The tension is built masterfully, and the queasy score by Antony Partos and Sam Petty deserves a good deal of credit for this.

Not only is Jacki Weaver as fascinatingly fun to watch as the buzz has been saying, the other acting performances are all stellar. Each of the men who play the Cody brothers creates a distinct character. James Frecheville's performance as Joshua is probably going to be the most dividing among audiences. I found his taciturn inscrutability to be spot-on for an awkward teenager, and the right tone for the story to work; others may find him almost a blank slate.

To be sure, the movie isn't perfect. I count a single use of voice-over in a film to be a venal sin; and as nicely as the tension is built, the movie often releases it anti-climactically, rushing the action scenes or skipping them altogether. There is a point at the end of the movie where -- without being spoiler-specific -- a cop points a gun at a character's head. The timeline at this point in the film seems confused, but one of my friends, JD, puzzled out that this scene takes place after the trial, and thus is a reaction to what the character said at the trial.

The cinematography, possibly in an attempt to feel gritty, often instead just looks dirty. I thought the movie was shot on video; but there were lots of credits for the DI, the digital intermediate, suggesting it was acquired on film at least. I guess they were trying to use a super-fast film stock and natural lighting to make the movie feel raw and real, which it does, although the highlights were often blown out and the color detail seemed crushed and muddy. The director and d.p. Adam Arkapaw do make great use of speed-ramping - there are several scenes that ramp seamlessly into slow motion. (You can see Michôd loves off-speed camera work from this short, "Crossbow".)

All in all, Animal Kingdom is one of my favorites this year. My mid-year ranking: (1. Agora, 2. Animal Kingdom, 3. Inception, 4. The Kids Are All Right, 5. The Girl Who Played with Fire)

The Other Guys

The Other Guys is very funny, and that's all the reason needed to recommend it.

However, if you want some further analysis with your comedy, there are a few things I can say. First of all, I love writer / director Adam McKay's approach to comedy. He takes a genre, say the sports movie with Talladega Nights, the family drama with Step Brothers or, well, I don't know what Anchorman is supposed to be -- but he takes the genre and does a comedy parody of it. On top of simple genre spoof plots, like a jazz standard, he has his band riff every moment to near-absurdity. It's a great formula, and it shows no sign of tiring, although I did think Talladega Nights was funnier.

As if McKay wasn't talented enough, The Other Guys shows him to be a very fine director of action scenes, at least those involving a degree of comic mayhem. But his superior sense of editing, composition and lighting to most comedic directors is, in some sense, wasted. You don't need the blockbuster studio budget to make a film as funny as The Other Guys, as McKay has proved before.

The end credits of the film contain some beautifully-animated infographics that clumsily try to make a non-comedic point. It doesn't belong. For one thing, having seen McKay improvise several times on the stage at Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater, I know he's more intelligent and sophisticated than these infographics bely with their implications that AIG bonuses and the Madoff ponzi scheme were peas in a pod. (The Madoff scheme is criminal: a malfunction of regulators and the greed-blindness of investors; the bailout of AIG and others financial companies is a logical and foreseeable response from a system where incentives have been misaligned and companies are encouraged to become "too big to fail". This is a similar fallacy to connecting the DC sniper shootings and the Anthrax attacks to the 9/11 attack - simply because they are contemporaneous does not make them indicative of some larger pattern.)

The good thing about the infographics and the plot elements to which they relate is that they indicate McKay perhaps has grander ambitions beyond simply making people laugh. I'd love to see a movie where he restricted himself only to comedy that comes from a very real sense of the characters, like a The Kids Are All Right and which had, thematically, a very personal ethical vision. In a way, I think this would be a better use of his talents than a kick-ass car chase.

Or not. As with the personal ethical vision of the classic movie Sullivan's Travels, a director who is great at escapist comedy should be content to continue making it and not attempt to freight his films with didactic moralizing. So Mr. McKay, please keep making Michael Keaton recite lyrics from TLC songs. Then shout "America!" and hit the gas.

The Life, Death and Ressurection of Colin Fitz

"In those days, I used to ride my motorcycle across America," says Robert Bella, without a jot of wistfulness. Those days were 1996. Dolly was a cloned sheep, eBay was a startup and DVDs had just been introduced... in Japan.

As he rode down the nation's open roads, Bella -- a sometime NYC actor, sometime valet in the Bronx -- had a vision. He would make an independent film. He would make an indie film and fill it with his actor friends from The Atlantic Theater Company, people like William H. Macy, John C. McGinley and Martha Plimpton. It would be "like Clerks, but with better acting."

The script was already in place. His friend and fellow valet, Tom Morrissey, had written a comedy about two rent-a-cops guarding the grave of a recently-deceased rock star, a sort of Waiting for Godot meets Spinal Tap. The name of the rocker, and the script: Colin Fitz.

And like the namesake of the film, a music god whose death no one will accept, the film would have a hell of life and an untimely demise.

In a way, the story of Colin Fitz is a typical one for an indie film. It's just that it isn't typical of the ones we hear. We only hear the success stories, not the almost-success stories. On the stage at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica last night, fourteen years later, Robert Bella paraphrases his mentor, David Mamet: 'You don't have to take advantage of your lucky break, you have to take advantage of all your lucky breaks.' Colin Fitz took advantage of hundreds of breaks, but it missed a few, and that was enough. It couldn't break through.

Thus, like so many indie films, it became a ghost haunting a filmmaker's life, a negative in a shoebox and a credit card bill for $100,000.

September 1996

With $150,000 borrowed from friend and family "investors," Bella and his crew camped for a rain-soaked two weeks in a Bronx graveyard and environs, shooting color 35mm (!), filming sometimes ten pages a night. He cut a video offline of the film and sent it out to festivals. Who should call first but none other than Geoff Gilmore.

"Geoff who?" Bella recalls saying.

"This is Geoff Gilmore, the Director of the Sundance Film Festival. We'd like to have your film. You'll need a 35mm print. You have one month."

There was no time to raise money from the investors; or they had no more to give. Thankfully, Bella had a plan. For years, he had been taking credit card companies up on their offers. He kept the cards in a little envelope and joked that they were "his independent film." Now it wasn't a joke. To make a print would cost $100,000. But it was a no-brainer. He'd go to Sundance, sell the film and pay it right back.

And he almost did. There was an offer on the film. It was too low to cover the additional finishing expenses and pay off investors. There was an offer to buy if it won the audience award at Sundance. It almost did. There was an offer to buy if William H. Macy won an Oscar for Fargo. He almost did.

And then, after a great run of festivals -- like the title character's popularity in Sweden, Colin Fitz seems to have been extraordinarily popular in Texas -- the film went away. No deal; plenty of debt.

Bella said his life was made miserable by the verbally-abusive calls from collection agencies. He lived out of a storage unit. He considered bankruptcy, but that would take away the one thing he couldn't part with: the original negative of the film. If he filed for bankruptcy, it would've become the property of his lenders.

"Part of me wished that it was a bad film. That I could've said, 'Here, take it.' But I knew audiences liked it. I knew it made them laugh. Roger Ebert told me he liked the film. Harry Knowles..."

There were other follow-up projects that never came to be. Four of them in the next six years. Bella was always one lucky break away.

Finally, about five years ago, Bella said he gave up being a professional artist. "I'll always be creative," he says, and talks about a screenplay he just wrote. But now he is content, he says, to help other filmmakers. For the past few years he has been working as a post-production supervisor in L.A., working on films like the Wes Craven-directed My Soul to Take. It's his "post-graduate" degree in film.

I get the sense that Robert Bella finally accepted the death of Colin Fitz, and once he did, the movie gave up being a ghost.

Colin Fitz Lives

I met Robert Bella in 2004, when he was teaching at the Atlantic and I was a fresh-faced NYU student. I didn't know the battles he had been through. I just knew he was a true independent filmmaker.

He directed short film I wrote -- ten pages, one cold night -- with an even hand and an implacable spirit. I took lots of notes. Here was someone I could emulate. Since I met him, I've run into many people who were students or acquaintances. They will all nod reverently at the mention of his name, "Ah, Bella. Hellava guy."

So it was with joy that I heard that 14 years since that vision on the motorcycle, after another round of favors -- this time from his friends in postproduction -- he was able to make a digital scan of the negative and make a print fit to be a deliverable, meaning to the specifications of distributors. The film was sold, it seems for a pittance. "I still have hopes that I'll be able to pay the investors back," he says. But it will finally be seen outside the festival circuit: IFC Films is distributing it Video On Demand through their Sundance Selects program.

All those former students and friends who nod reverently -- they were there at the Aero last night. So was David Mamet and William H. Macy. The packed house laughed uproariously at the film, newly-christened Colin Fitz Lives!, and applauded the filmmaker who says, when asked if he would do it all again...

"In a second. In a second."

MORE:
Sundance Selects Page
Netflix page
IndieWire article by Robert Bella

Note: The quotations in this article are from my notes of the talkback Robert Bella gave after the screening. I tried to be as accurate as I could, but they are not verbatim.

Movie Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

To what can I compare Scott Pilgrim vs. The World? Shall I compare it to director Edgar Wright's previous efforts? It is neither as funny and warm as Shaun of the Dead nor as funny and gruesome as Hot Fuzz.

Visually, it makes brilliant use of the vocabulary of not-so-much comic books (that we've seen many times before), but video games. The Beach and Speed Racer are its forefathers. But it takes, as Sin City and 300 did with graphic novels, the metaphor to another level.

In fact, the film, written by Wright and Michael Bacall based on the comic book by Brian Lee O'Malley, is premised upon the metaphor of levels. As the tagline goes, to date cool chick Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) must defeat her seven evil exes. Each evil ex is like a boss, with his or her own special unrealistic brand of powers; each one leaves a pile of coins on the floor when defeated.

As whiz-bang cool as the visuals are during Scott Pilgrim's battles, the fight scenes are the dullest part of the film. I much preferred the snappy banter between the young comedian cast -- Scott's bandmates, his rebound girlfriend Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), his gabby sister (Anna Kendrick) -- to the action scenes, even if they did feature some memorable cameos from the likes of Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman & Cera's former t.v.-girlfriend Mae Whitman.

While Kieran Culkin was quite funny as Scott's "gay roommate," I'm a bit sick of these hipster comic book movies' adolescent glee in exploiting homophobia for laughs. (See also Kick Ass.)

If you haven't seen the trailer, there may be enough plot to the film to surprise you. If not, I guess your enjoyment will revolve around how much you like Michael Cera's sad-sack line deliveries and Wright's visual cleverness. While I enjoyed them greatly, the film never got its tongue out of its cheek enough to deliver any emotional connection. Cera's Scott is kind of a self-interested jerk; and I didn't get the sense that Winstead's Ramona cared very much about him either.

If I had to compare Scott Pilgrim to another film, I guess I'd pick the Jean-Luc Goddard-directed Breathless. It's about two young people in love, and features extreme editorial editorializing. Which is not to say that Scott Pilgrim has the heart to become a classic in the same way. Next time, Edgar, less graphics, more story. The script simply runs out of quarters: Game Over.

Inception Explained (Spoilers)

As I promised when I reviewed the movie last week, I went back for a second viewing to test out some theories that I had. What follows is an analysis and explanation of the plot of Inception based on two viewings, some research and discussions with friends who have seen the movie (including one who has seen it thrice).

Do I Really Want It Explained?

Before I get into it all -- fair warning! Spoilers ahead. In fact, nothing but spoilers ahead. If you haven't seen the movie yet, why not? You really should see it before it gets spoofed and spoiled too much by everyone else.

And let me also just warn you that this analysis is going to be a pretty straightforward reading of the film. That's not to say other readings aren't 'supported by the text,' as it were, but this is the one I personally believe is best supported. If you are one of those types who prefers to have your opinion untainted, read no further. UPDATE: For a more complete breakdown of the film beat by beat, see this one at thestorydepartment.

Before The Explanation

First of all, I charged in the review that the way the opening scenes abruptly cut into each other was needlessly confusing. On second viewing, these scenes are not at all confusing. It's fairly clear that the opening scene, between old Saito and Cobb, is a conventional "start at the end" teaser, as with Fight Club or Sunset Boulevard and that the bulk of the film is its flashback.

This is not, however, apparent to a first-time viewer, who recognizes that the ages of the men have changed and not the location. I know I assumed this was just how dreams were going to skip around in the film. So, yes, a bit needlessly confusing. Add to that Mal showing up -- and disappearing -- before we really know who she is, and I can see why the movie has been disorienting people. The good news is that audiences haven't seemed to mind, so I guess I'll just cop to being a film snob in thinking this was going to alienate 'Movieplex Mike.'

Ariadne as Extractor

I also seem to have over-reached the opposite direction in thinking perhaps there was a further game Nolan was playing outside of the scenes we see. I wasn't alone in thinking the character development was poor for Ellen Page's character, an audience-surrogate if there ever was one. Why, after all, does she keep pushing for Cobb to confront his wife? The best explanation I could come up with is that she herself is an extractor, perhaps Mal in disguise, and that Cobb is her mark. I wasn't alone in this, either.

Unfortunately, this theory just isn't supported by the movie. What the movie calls the 'real world' is established twice by Leo spinning the top and it falling over -- once in the hotel room after the failed job on Saito, right before Arther (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt) enters; an almost time after testing the Chemist's wares in Mombasa; the second time, my memory is hazy, but I think it followed the dream which Ariadne invaded.

Mal's line in Limbo, where she questions a reality where he is chased around the globe by faceless corporations who are much like subconscious security definitely does explicitly raise the possibility that what the film presents as reality isn't. But I think the spinning top is Christopher Nolan's way of dismissing this idea.

You could still have this theory, or a similar one involving Saito or Arthur or Michael Caine's Miles as the true extractor. It's just that the film gives no clues that directly point to this. The only real question that Nolan explicitly leaves for the audience to decide is whether the top falls after it cuts to black at the end (and the movie audience screams).

So, Was The Happy Ending All a Dream?

There actually is no answer to this -- sorry if this sounds like a cop out -- unless there's a clue I've missed. Some have said you can hear the sound of the top falling over after the credits start. This would indicate that, yes, it truly is a happy ending.

Alternately, I thought perhaps we were supposed to believe that because we do not see Cobb go back through each dream layer -- he goes directly from Limbo to the plane -- that the happy ending was a false self-deceptive dream. After a second viewing, it doesn't seem like this is what Nolan intended. The only strange thing is that the dialogue between Cobb and Old Saito is different the second time around, with them taking each others lines.

So it really all comes down to whether you are a glass-half-empty or a glass-half-full type of person, whether you believe Cobb reuniting with his kids is a dream or not. I'm a positive guy, so I'm going to believe that the wobbles of the top mean that it fell over shortly after the cut to black.

What about the rest of the plot?

It's genuinely easy to miss the small signposts that Nolan and his collaborators leave to follow the basic plot, nevermind all the crazy theories that can be piled on top. Here is my brief summary, reconstructed from memory, so please just leave any corrections in kind language in the comments...

The first scene is Cobb in Limbo, rescuing Saito, who died in the third level of the inception attempt against Fischer, Jr. (Cillian Murphy).

We then flashback to an extraction attempt against Saito. We are two levels deep. Arthur and Cobb are pretending to be consultants who can train him to defend against extractors. Unfortunately, Mal, as projected by Cobb's subconscious, shows up and tips off Saito and his "sub-security" - the militarized subconscious that defends against such extractions. Nevertheless, thanks to a sleight-of-hand switch of envelopes, Cobb does get to see some of Saito's secrets just as the dream collapses. But the documents have black censor lines, meaning Saito did not actually make his secrets vulnerable.

In the next dream level up, a fight ensues while an angry mob storms closer and closer to "Saito's love-nest" apartment. When Saito's face is slammed into the carpet, he realizes that he is not in his actual love-nest, he is in a dream version. This wrong detail is blamed on the architect, Nash (Lukas Haas).

The party breaks up on the train, with the minder for the top level of the dream, Tadashi, getting his pay from Cobb. When Saito wakes up, Cobb and presumably Arthur have already gotten off the bullet train in Tokyo.

Cobb in his hotel room that evening (next morning?) spins the top, the totem that was left behind for him by Mal the night she committed suicide. He sees flashes of this. He holds a gun to his head, ready to pull the trigger if the top doesn't stop spinning. (At this point in the movie, the audience has no idea that this is what this means.) He is interrupted by a phone call from his kids, James and Phillipa. Phillipa is older, and angry he has left. James still doesn't understand that their mother is dead. This suggests Cobb has not been on the run for long. A grandmother with a French accent ends the call, just as Cobb says he'll send presents with their grandfather, meaning he is already planning to visit Miles.

Arthur comes to the door and tells them the helicopter is ready. Once they get up there, they find it occupied by Saito and Nash, the failed architect, who apparently sold out where they were. Saito offers them the "satisfaction" of killing Nash, but they don't do it. Saito's goons drag Nash away, and imply that rival corporation Cobal (sp?) will kill him.

Saito reveals that he was testing Arthur and Cobb, and proposes a job requiring Inception. Cobb initially balks, but takes the job because he believes Saito has the power to fix the charges against him in the US, and clear his name from the accusation that he killed Mal. It is unclear why Arthur also does the job. (Before you bring it up, the theory that Arthur has a homosexual attraction to Cobb is weakened by the scene where Arthur asks Ariadne to kiss him as a distraction.)

Cobb risks extradition to visit his father (father-in-law?) Miles (Michael Caine) at the university where he teaches, to give him stuffed animal gifts for the grandchildren and to recruit one of his students to be the Architect in the con they will pull on Fischer.

Cobb trains Ariadne, who demonstrates some cleverness when she uses mirrors to create the illusion of a long walkway, then shatters them to reveal that same walkway. Ariadne also learns that Cobb cannot control his projection of Mal while in dreams.

While Ariadne carries on training with Arthur, he goes to Mombasa ("Cobal's back yard") to find Eames, a master Forger. After a street chase where he is rescued by Saito, and they all go visit Yusuf, the Chemist, who demonstrates that he can create the powerful tranquilizers necessary to get enough sleep time in the various dream levels.

The team plans the job, with Ariadne teaching everyone but Cobb the layouts of locations - since different people will be the Architect for each dream layer. Cobb does not want to know the solution to the mazes, because that would mean that Mal would know them too.

The con will take place on a plane from Sydney to Los Angeles. If it is successful, Saito will make one call and Cobb will be able to clear customs. Saito buys an airline and arranges for Fischer's private jet to have maintenance issues so that he'll have to take a regular flight. They begin the con, with Cobb and Eames using sleight-of-hand to steal Fischer's passport and subsequently drop the drug into his glass of water.

In the first layer of the dream, Yusuf is the architect and it is raining (thus the jokes that he should have peed before he went to sleep). They discover that Fischer's subconscious is militarized, meaning he has had training to defend against extraction. This will be used against him in the second layer with the "Mr. Charles" gambit.

Before going deeper, however, Cobb reveals to Ariadne the full backstory of what happened to Mal and why he knows inception is possible. When they were stuck in Limbo, she chose to forget that it was a dream, symbolized by her locking the top in the dollhouse. Cobb had to convince her that they needed to leave and planted the idea of "your world isn't real, death is the only escape" and their scene where they kill themselves on the train tracks provides the dialogue for her when she jumps from the hotel window in real life. This explains how a freight train ended up crashing through all those cars on a busy city street -- it was created by Cobb's subconscious.

There is a seeming discontinuity between Cobb's later assertion that he and Mal grew old together and their ages when they commit suicide. My best explanation is that you can be whatever age you want in a dream, and that they chose to be young at that moment. Saito, because he is unaware he is in Limbo until visited by Cobb, ages normally.

The next layer of the dream is the hotel and it is Arthur's dream. The reason the gravity is all funky, is that it is tracking exactly with the van driven by Yusuf. So when the van flips over 360 degrees, we get the awesome 360 degree hallway fight shot, and when the van is falling, the hotel has no gravity. This is bad, because Arthur can't do the "kick" as he planned, and must improvise using the explosives and the elevator shaft.

The third layer of the dream is controlled by Eames. He leads the security on a ski-bound goose chase while Fischer and Saito infiltrate the base. Hearing the music, the team realizes there's no time to do the normal route through the maze and they send Fischer and Saito through the ducts. Of course, if Cobb knows this route exists, so does his projection of Mal. Mal drops in and shoots Fischer, with Cobb unable to pull the trigger on her, confused as he is by his love for her. (But, he still shoots her anyway?)

There's some confusion about why Saito can't be revived by the electric paddles and Fischer, Jr. can. See the link at the end of this to get CinemaBlend's take. Anyway, Ariadne, for no established motivation, encourages Cobb to drop into Limbo and confront Mal while they "save" Fischer and Saito.

In Limbo, we see what was "left there" by Mal and Cobb way back when. They designed the house they first lived in together, as well as many identical buildings. Cobb confronts Mal, Ariadne shoots Mal, she saves Fischer and jumps off the building in order to 'wake up,' leaving Cobb to find and save Saito.

Now we arrive back at the scene from the beginning, where Cobb washes up on the shore of the unconscious, seeking Saito. Presumably he kills Saito after Saito recognizes him, or Saito kills himself. Either way, they both wake up on the plane, and Saito makes the call that will lift his charges.

Stepping off the plane, Cobb is met by Miles, who takes him to see his kids for the first time in a long time (or a short time, since they don't appear to have aged). We get the payoff of seeing their faces, perpetually denied throughout the film. The camera pans to the totemic spinning-top on the table, which spins and spins before... we'll never know.

(See above for a discussion of the implications of this.)

Isn't it weird that Nolan wrote a movie about someone struggling with the guilt of inducing a suicide after the death of Heath Ledger?

Yeah, kinda. But I think this is a stretch. I hope Nolan doesn't blame himself for pushing Heath into a deep dark place for that performance. And, if he did, and this is his way of forgiving himself -- well, then it lead to great art.

What's that crazy French song all about?

This is a very famous song by French singer Edith Piaf, whom coincidentally Marion Cotillard portrayed in a biopic for which she won an Oscar. The title, "Non, je ne regrette rien" means, "No, I regret nothing." It's a song of defiance, like Sinatra's "My Way." The song has a long history with all kinds of associations, which you can read about on Wikipedia. Buy the song on Amazon.

My best guess is that Nolan chose it because it is a well-known song that has the right tonal qualities for the intentional ending of a dream. I doubt he would chose so central a song just as a joke reference to Cotillard's famous Piaf performance, but maybe he did want to take advantage of knowing audiences' subconscious associations.

UPDATE: Reader GU points out that the theme "I Regret Nothing" is the type idea one would want to plant in a friend's head who is dealing with guilt over something, say, his wife's death. This is hardly a smoking gun for the "all of it was a dream" theory, but it does seem like a good thematic reason for Nolan's choice of the song.

FURTHER UPDATE: YouTube user camiam321 demonstrates that the main theme of the film is a slowed-down version of "Non, je ne regrette rien."

What do all the names and numbers mean?

The names of the characters seem carefully chosen. I don't think they have any meaning that is actually important to enjoying the story, just sort of easter-egg type stuff. Some of these are wild guesses based on themes of design, architecture, chess and dreams; others, like Ariadne and Eames, I'm pretty sure of.

Ariadne - In Greek mythology, Ariadne is the princess of Minos who helps Theseus solve the Labyrinth and defeat the Minotaur. The thematic associations are pretty clear, although Inception's Ariadne is a maze-creator, not a maze solver. And she takes the lead in slaying the beast that is Mal.

Arthur - The most famous Arthur is King Arthur. If you really wanted to get conspiratorial, you could imagine that Arthur is actually in control of Cobb (see theory above) or that Arthur, because it sounds like Author, is the author of Cobb's reality. Other possible inspirations are mystery writer Robert Arthur or Eric Arthur, Canadian architect.

Browning - The poet Robert Browning is probably the most famous Browning. Maybe some scholars can point out if any of his poems feature dreaming. Almost certainly incidentally, there is a WWII admiral named Miles Browning, who, according to Wikipedia, is the grandfather of actor Chevy Chase.

Cobb - There was a Canadian architect named Andrew R. Cobb, and there is still living an American architect named Henry N. Cobb. I think more likely, if Nolan had anyone in mind, it was Stanley Cobb, a psychiatrist who was a good friend of Carl Jung.

Cobal (sp?) - This unseen corporation has a very comic book feel to it. The name sounds like "cabal" or "cobalt".

Eames - Charles and Ray Eames were famous husband-and-wife modern designers, just like Mal and Cobb are modernist designers in their shared dreams. While they are best known for their furniture, they also did architecture.

Fischer - Maurice Fischer and Maurice Fischer, Jr. run a large company that is based out of Sydney and seeks to control the "energy market." While I can't find a company that matches the description in the energy sector, Australian-American Rupert Murdoch of News Corp and his heirs certainly have some similarities. The name Fischer could be a reference to German architect Alfred Fischer or, more reaching further afield phonetically, the "Fisher of Souls" Jesus Christ or the "Fisher King" of Arthurian legend. Fischer also evokes famous chess player Bobby Fischer.

Nash - Possibly a reference to English architect John Nash or the schizophrenic mathematician of the same name.

Mal - Judging by this baby name website, Mal is a real French name, and my suspicion is that it is short for something like Malorie. Mal in French and Spanish means "bad" or "evil" and she certainly is the antagonist of Inception in many senses. Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) is the title of a famous book of poetry by Charles Baudelaire. Once again, I'll leave poetry experts to determine if there are any poems in the volume which may have inspired the character.

Miles - This could refer to British aircraft designer Frederick George Miles, or British chess player Tony Miles.

Saito - American audiences probably best recognize the name Saito as that of the Japanese colonel in Bridge on the River Kwai. There is also a Japanese psychologist named Tamaki Saito who researched people who withdrew from society.

Yusuf - This is the Arabic version of Joseph. In the Bible, Joseph is the human father (step-father?) of Jesus. In the Koran, Yusuf/Joseph is granted by God the power to interpret dreams.

528491 - These are the numbers that pop into Fischer, Jr's mind when the 'kidnappers' demand a safe combination at gunpoint. I heard rumors that these numbers show up earlier in the movie than this moment. They do show up as the number that the Blonde (Eames in diguise) leaves for Fischer, Jr. in the hotel dream, and as the numbers of the hotel rooms in which most of the action takes place (528 & 491). Presumably, they are the combination that Fischer, Jr. enters at the center of the ice fortress to view the 2001: A Space Odyssey homage.

No doubt some crazy theories are going to be advanced about these numbers being a cipher for something. And they could be. But a simple alphabetic substitution doesn't seem to fit. It's too short a string and the 1 and the 2 don't indicate digraphs. A ROT0 translation would be E-B-H-D-I-A, aka gibberish. More likely, these numbers or parts of them will be found in previous works by Nolan, just as one can find CRM 114 in the films of Kubrick, or A113 in PIXAR movies, or the number 42 throughout the works of Lewis Carroll.

That's all folks.

Hope you enjoyed this early reading of Inception. It's a dense, clever film and I'm sure more interesting things will emerge when we all get a chance to watch it on DVD.

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