Doug Martsch and Brett Nelson of TUIW favorite Built to Spill have created a side project called The Electronic Anthology who just put out an EP of Built to Spill covers that are all 80sed out. We’re talking synths, drum machines, and Doug in spandex doing aerobics (maybe not that last one). The song titles are all anagrams of the original BtS songs, for example “Else” from Keep it Like a Secret becomes “Eels.” You can sample three songs on their MySpace or buy the whole thing from CD Baby or at future BtS shows.

(H/T to Popcandy)

It’s pretty good to see them owning up to a really disappointing season for the show, and to be honest, the tidbits they share about the next season has me excited for the show again. Without giving too much away, the two hinted (minor SPOILERS) that Marshall and Lilly will indeed start the process of having a baby, and more importantly, Ted will get a job designing the Goliath National Bank building and start moving closer to meeting The Mother. They’ll also be adding a new storytelling element, according to Bays: “In episode one, we begin a new framework for the show, in addition to the framework that exists, that will cast the mystery in a new light. Also create a new mystery that will expand the universe a bit.”

Intriguing! I’ve saved the best for last though. Thompson made the following pledge: “Can I make a promise? Ted will be absolutely undouchey this year.” I just breathed a sigh of relief. What about all of you? Are you willing to give HIMYM another shot after a rough year?

*Ed. Note: Can we come up with a name for HIMYM fans, in the same vein of Losties, Browncoats, or Gleeks? My leading contender is Suits. Any suggestions?

Tangledupinwires asks: Had Party Down managed another season, would we have seen Constance again? And we’ll add: How do you feel about its cancellation?
It makes me very sad, for several reasons. It’s one of those shows, just by the nature of the premise — catering, where people come and go so much — that they could have mined the improv comedy world of L.A. to come up with another cast of just as fabulous people, I think, to fill in for those who’ve left for fame and fortune.

Make sure you read the whole interview here.

The record isn’t long, but it has no need to be, filled with “ooohs” and “ahhhs,” plenty of confidence, and plenty of self doubt. It’s easy to call to attention the Wall of Sound heard on Crazy For You. Though the music lacks the dense layers of Phil Spector’s creation, the melodies, reverberations, and harmonies, not to mention Cosentino’s ability to go for vocal swoon to rock frontwoman, makes Crazy For You sound like a Ronnettes record, if the Ronnettes liked indie rock, smoked a lot of weed, and had a cat named Snacks. The album opener, “Boyfriend,” is almost a modern Spector track, where Cosentino pines for a boy she likes, but admits that his girlfriend is “prettier and skinnier” and went through college while she’s just a dropout that sits around waiting for him. Granted, it’s not exactly the pure vision of love of “Be My Baby,” but the song still sounds like its modern, hipster descendant.

What Cosentino lacks in lyrical dexterity she makes up for with wit. On “Goodbye,” she takes a goofy line like “I wish my cat could talk” and follows it with the internal conflict of, “I don’t love you, I don’t hate you/I don’t know how I feel.” The balance between the light and dark on the record is perfect, with the wit keeping the emotion in check and vice versa. The gorgeous “Our Deal,” heavily leans on the Phil Spector vibe, but instead of just singing about her man leaving, Cosentino sings, “When you leave me, you take away everything/You take all my money, you take all my weed.” There’s an emotional bent to it, but there’s also a frustration at having picked someone who will not only sneak out the morning after, but steal your money and drugs. It’s kind of funny, but also a little bit sad.

But all other things aside, Cosentino, along with multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno, have mastered the art of writing a concise, catchy pop song. The longest song on the record is a mere 3:01, giving due time to each infectious hook they could put together. The title track, in particular, will get stuck in your head after one listen, with its repeated ending of “Maybe I’m just crazy/Crazy for you baby.” They’re not just songs that have a summer novelty to them, but are just as fun in the cold dredges of winter. And after all, isn’t that what great songwriting is all about?

It can be hard to predict the success of a band after a handful of singles and an LP, but Best Coast have potential to be around for a while as Cosentino’s songwriting continues to grow. Though early tracks like “Sun Was High (So Was I)” and “When I’m With You” remain incredibly catchy and fun to listen to, they lack the musical and emotional depth the songs of Crazy For You. Though it’s a debut LP, it still is a step up from everything she’d put out before. The last five years have been riddled with bands that put out promising singles or EPs, gain web notoriety, and then release a record that fails to match the quality of their previous work (see: Voxtrot), so there’s reason to believe that Best Coast might be around a little bit longer. But thought of the future aside, I’m content to sit back, relax, and enjoy Crazy For You in the late summer sun.

Michael’s Score: 81
Jonah’s Score: 82
TUiW Grade: A-

Mad Men starts its seasons with a slow, in-medias-res fade up. There’s usually no instigating incident to kick start the action nor is there some kind of introductory scene to summarize what the year will be about. Instead the first hour is about catching up on where these people have been over the last (in this case) 11 months and seeing what’s changed.

We start with someone asking “who is Don Draper” because it is Mad Men and of course that’s how the season starts. The man doing the asking is a reporter with Ad Age who can’t pry much out of the reserved Don. The idea of taking credit for the agency’s innovative Glo-Coat campaign offends Don’s humble and introverted sensibility, but being interviewed at all is dangerous for some with a secret like Don has (something further emphasized by the fact that the reporter lost his leg in Korea – the place where Dick Whitman became Don Draper).

But Don is not in the same position he used to be in. As the driving force behind Sterling Cooper Draper Price, he can no longer afford to be the genius in creative who lets everyone else worry about the business side nor can he be the mysterious cipher who is content to toil away in the background like he could at Sterling Cooper. He is not unlike the Jantzen executives who attempt to have it both ways by caving to the marketplace and selling a “two-piece bathing suit” but refuse to call it a bikini or agree to an advertising campaign that will sell it. Don wants to build a successful and innovative company but, at first, is unwilling to do what he must do in order to make that happen.

Working in closer quarters, for a more freewheeling, seat-of-your-pants kind of agency seems to generally be pretty good for everyone. Roger is back to his wise-cracking and energetic self (he also gets the line of the night, commenting that Ad Age couldn’t even afford to send a whole reporter) and Bert seems back to his old self, but what is really interesting is to see how Pete, Peggy, and Joan all appear to be thriving with their newfound responsibility. Pete brings in accounts, has no problems collaborating with Peggy and seems shockingly comfortable going to power lunches with Roger and Don. Joan finally has an office and the credit that she deserves for doing all the things she was doing at SC.

But its Peggy who seems to have changed the most over the past 11 months. She has a new haircut and good rapport with newbie Joey (incidentally the two of them are paying homage to Stan Freberg’s “John and Marsha;” Freberg himself was an innovative ad man). The close quarters of SCDP mean that there’s no time for the roundabout zigzagging that usually kept Peggy’s voice from being heard. She has the confidence to try a scheme like the ham stunt and the confidence to take Don’s inevitable abuse much better than in the past (she’s even comfortable enough to directly say to him what Roger, Bert, and Lane all tried to say and couldn’t get across).

Betty, meanwhile, provides a top-notch clip for her Bad Parent Hall of Fame highlight reel. At the Francis family dinner she childishly responds to Sally’s refusal to eat anything by stuffing a forkful of sweet potatoes in her face. It seems that the divorce and her new relationship with Henry have simply brought out Betty’s cruelty and selfishness even more. She treats Sally like more like they’re sisters than mother-daughter (and sometimes like Betty is the younger sister), basically ignores Bobby, and keeps the baby away from Don either as some kind of power trip or because it legitimately did not occur to her that Don might want to see him.

It must be hard rushing into a new relationship the way Betty and Henry have (with the added pressure of the divorce and the fact that there are already three children who need care and attention), but, even this early, it is clear the cracks are forming. Henry’s mother has no problems saying horrible thing about her new daughter-in-law and Henry seems to have started internalizing that. He spends most of the episode trying to hook up with Betty, like he’s trying to remind himself of what enchanted him about her to begin with. And whatever Betty thought would be different with Henry doesn’t seem to have quite materialized for her yet.

Don’s zinger to Henry (“believe me, everyone thinks this is temporary”) probably hit a little too close to home, but Don’s personal life isn’t in much better shape. His apartment is impersonal and a little old-fashioned, especially compared to the vibrant office he now works in. Mad Men is all about subverting expectations, but it didn’t take a great mind to predict that Don Draper: Single Man might not be the 1960s Entourage that some viewers wanted it to be. In an interview, Matt Weiner pointed out that, now that he’s once-again available, women would enter relationships with him with a different set of expectations. When he was married, there was clearly no future and therefore no need for extended courting; but now that Don is a bachelor the rules are different. In order to get what he wants – guilt-filled S&M sex without consequences – he will have to literally pay for it (getting slapped repeatedly by a hooker and then paying Peggy $300 for bail: most depressing Thanksgiving ever?).

Bethany seemed to really enjoy their date and sees Don as someone she could potentially keep seeing, but Don is not interested in all of that. Why doesn’t Don hook up with her? It seems like Don’s old tricks may not work on the slightly more liberated women of 1964, or at least in a context where he needs to make a real connection with another human. It is not unlike the newspaper situation (or the bikini situation): Don wants sex but he is unwilling to surrender his mysterious distance and actually open himself up to other people. Conditions have changed and Don is going to have to reconfigure his values if he wants to thrive.

So, in the end, he puts on a big public show of throwing out the Jantzen people after giving them a pitch that is very obviously not what they asked for. Don can’t afford to be the people making bikinis and refusing to do what it takes to sell them. So he schedules another interview and gives that reporter a carefully crafted, slightly embellished narrative: that of the creative genius who escaped his stifling Madison Avenue cage and struck out on his own. It’s a subtler version of the speech he gave to Peggy in “Shut the Door, Have a Seat” – something changed and the old ways of doing things aren’t satisfying anymore.

In many ways “Public Relations” is season three condensed down to an hour. Don realizes that he will need to be more open and different if he wants to build something. “Public Relations” ends with the hopeful promise of Don constructing a more successful and satisfying professional life – but he’s still a long ways away from restructuring the charred wreckage of his personal life. The same for Betty, whose trade of Don for Henry doesn’t seem to have made her any happier or satisfied. But pour one out for Sally Draper, not even a half-hearted present from her new grandmother can make up for a family holiday that is somehow even emptier and sadder than previous ones. Self-loathing, lying, alienation, and delusion: Mad Men’s back everyone!

Jonah’s Score: 75
TUIW Grade: B+

Bourne Series
Salt and every other recent spy series is heavily in debt to Matt Damon’s muscly ass-kicker, who brought a complexity to the spy genre it had never seen. As a spy with no memory of being a spy, Jason Bourne was the ultimate bad ass, the guy that could literally evade the entire CIA in his effort to find out who he was. With unmatchable action sequences and an intriguing mystery clouding the story, the three films ushered in a new era for spy movies.

North by Northwest
Before Connery introduced himself as 007, Cary Grant was Roger Thornhill, an ad executive mistaken for a spy hot on the tail of a well known smuggler. As Thronhill flees from the bad guys and the cops, he joins forces with the beautiful Eva Marie Saint, trying to find out the truth of what’s really going on. It’s one of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpieces, the perfect mixture of misdirection, sex, and naturally, suspense.

The Manchurian Candidate
Frank Sinatra turns in his finest performance ever as a soldier discovering a high reaching conspiracy to make a Soviet sleeper agent the President. One of the finest documents of Cold War paranoia and a crackerjack psychological thriller to boot, The Manchurian Candidate is just a great movie. Anyone for a little solitaire?

Three Days of the Condor
Robert Redford is the anti-Bond – a desk jockey with a boring job – who gets embroiled in something much larger than he can fathom. Three Days of the Condor doesn’t hold up great today, but it is still a taut thriller and a great reflection of how, in the wake of Watergate, America’s paranoia turned inward.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Chuck Barris’s memoir posited that in between stints hosting forgettable game shows, he killed people for the CIA. This outlandish premise is treated with appropriate goofiness by first time director George Clooney and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (who supposedly clashed during production). Clooney’s style isn’t quite as assured here as in his follow-up (Good Night and Good Luck), but the film is carried by Kaufman’s zippy writing and a breakout performance by Sam Rockwell.

Burn After Reading
A far better deconstruction of spy movies and a biting satire of the Top Secret America that’s being aired out in the Washington Post this week, Burn After Reading utilizes an over-serious score and austere Washington settings as the backdrop for a ridiculous, farce. Burn After Reading was divisive at the time of its release, but detractors should revisit the film; in addition to being positively hilarious it seems absolutely prescient in light of what the Washington Post just dug up.

Sneakers
Phil Alden Robinson’s follow-up to Field of Dreams has been more or less forgotten, which is a pity because the movie is a highly entertaining diversion. Robert Redford plays a hacker/fugitive who leads a team of security specialists that get mixed up in some dangerous stuff. Set in the uncertain days following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sneakers channels the nostalgia that permeated Field of Dreams while trading the tear-jerking for fun spy stuff.

Land of Talk – “Swift Coin” [Link]

Pavement closes the festival

TUiW hit the 2010 Pitchfork Music Festival this past weekend, and for those that couldn’t make it out, here’s our blow by blow recap:

Friday
Arriving a little late at the festival, the first act I saw was Robyn, who brought a high energy set to the early evening of Day 1. Armed with a band that consisted of two keyboard/synth players and two drummers, Robyn started the dance party with chart-climbing single “Dancing On My Own,” but sadly left out her American breakthrough single, “Show Me Love.”

Broken Social Scene

Broken Social Scene followed, packing the stage as usual with 4-5 guitarists at once. The only downside of the set was Lisa Lobsinger, filling the role occasionally filed by Feist, Emily Haines, or Amy Millan. Lobsinger has a great voice, and “All to All” is one of my favorite tracks on Forgiveness Rock Record, but Lobsinger hardly swayed as she sang and brought little energy to the high energy band. Her bandmates however brought the fire, especially with closer “Meet Me in the Basement,” their instrumental “anthem” as Kevin Drew called it. Closing out the day were indie rock stallwarts Modest Mouse, who took to the stage with “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes” and largely played some of their deeper cuts alongside singles “Dashboard” and “Satellite Skin.” Issac Brock screamed and shared knowledge with the crowd, but it was during Modest Mouse that the first signs of Pitchfork’s poor stage setups started to show. Anyone to the side or too far past the sound tent had a hard time hearing any of the banter, and the music was garbled. All this aside though, the band put on a great show.

Saturday
Opening the day were Free Energy, the James Murphy-produced outfit that genuinely seemed overjoyed to be playing at the festival. The band bounced their way through the impossibly catchy “Free Energy” and “Bang Pop,” and most definitely won over a slew of new fans. Real Estate was a great early choice, with their gentle rocking floating through the oppressive heat before Delorean brought up the energy level with a frantic set that at times evoked M83, if M83 were huge U2 fans. They were followed by one of Saturday’s best acts, Titus Andronicus,

Titus Andronicus

who got the weekend’s first mosh pit going as they ripped through tracks from The Monitor and got the crowed to yell in unison “You’ll always be a loser!” from “The Future, Pt. 3.” The band got major props in my book for dedicating a song to a girl in attendance that they had heard had been in an accident and missed a prior show, a classy move. Unfortunately, the high of Titus Andronicus was followed with the low of Raekwon. Just after his DJ took the stage, technical problems hit, and the Wu Tang Clan member didn’t even hit the stage for another 10 minutes, where he was again slowed by technical glitches, that were followed up by a short, uninspired set that clearly had all of its energy drained from it. Over on the too small Balance Stage, the Smith Westerns put on a more than pleasant set in the shade that would have been better if the sound on the stage didn’t turn the vocals into an indecipherable mess. The smaller stage had a number of problems with, particularly that it was in a small space with limited ways in and out, but the poor sound system made it hard to hear anything if you weren’t positioned right at the sound tent. All of that was thrown out the window during Wolf Parade, who didn’t need banter to show they were clearly loving playing the festival. The band didn’t slow down at all, blasting songs from their superb Expo 86, as well as older cuts like “This Hearts On Fire” and “Soldier’s Grin.” The highlight however came with the monstrous “Kissing the Beehive” closing the set, sending the crowd into a tizzy. All of that excitement would then be immediately followed by the much dissed set by Panda Bear, which consisted mainly of Noah Lennox holding down a few keys on a synthesizer and yelping every now and then as crazy images played on the big screens. The epic scope of Person Pitch was nowhere to be found, and left me hoping that Tomboy sounds better on record than it did live. The night was closed with an epic set by LCD Soundsystem, helped in part by a crowd that was so ready to go nuts they started cheering when the giant disco ball was raised above the stage well before it started. Now, I’ve seen James Murphy and Co. a few times, but this was easily the best. Though the set lacked much of This Is Happening (only “Drunk Girls,” “Pow Pow,” and “I Can Change”), the crowd went absolutely nuts during a particularly pulsing rendition of our favorite song, “All My Friends.” Though few of the twentysomething hipsters can identify with a song about being an aging hipster, the song hit the right note, and created a frenzy of dancing and singing along that was a major highlight of the festival. Capping their set, the band played the chorus of “Empire State of Mind” before hitting the reprise of “New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down,” ending the day on a really high note.

Sunday

Best Coast

Kicking off my last day of the festival was Best Coast, a band was really excited to see. Bethany Cosentino led the trio through songs from the band’s early singles and EPs, before giving a taste of her forthcoming album Crazy For You, which sounded great. She also got in one of the best punchlines of the festival, joking, “You guys remember Woodstock in the 90s? This reminds me of that.” While Girls played a set that sounded pretty close to their record, Washed Out produced a great set of chillwave jams, but I personally had a hard time getting into a guy playing with his laptop, so it could have been better. Just as the sun went behind the clouds for a while, Beach House took the stage, bringing the soft sounds of Victoria Legrand’s voice and Alex Scally’s spiky guitar to a crowd that seemed more than happy to slowly nod their heads as they jammed along. Songs like “Walk in the Park” carry a little more power live, adding some extra punch to the Teen Dream tracks. Local Natives played to a huge crowd surrounding the tiny Balance Stage, bringing tracks from Gorilla Manor to life with their three part harmonies and thundering drums. Surfer Blood too played to a big crowd, bringing a little more rock with their now polished live act that didn’t disappoint. Next up came a phenomenal set by St. Vincent,

St. Vincent

who played all material from Actor with a tight backing band that brought the grandeur of the record into a smaller, but equally stunning sound. Annie Clark brought some of the best guitar work of the weekend to tracks like “Just the Same But Brand New” in a set that, while perhaps a bit too soft for its timeslot, was among the best of the weekend by far. Here We Go Magic impressed me quite a bit, bringing an energy I didn’t expect and getting the crowd moving through the hot afternoon. Everyone that wasn’t at Here We Go Magic was busy at Major Lazer, the Diplo-led crazy factory that featured Chinese dragons, ladder leaps, and a huge party. A Major Lazer show can really be described in so many ways, but its truthfully something that has to be seen for its total craziness be believed. Anyone that was wiped out by Major Lazer got a blast of the chillwave from Neon Indian, who brought a whole band together to groove through tacks like “Terminally Chill” for a big crowd. After Neon Indian, many people stuck around for noise duo Sleigh Bells, but with Neon Indian running over and technical delays, the band went on quite late, and apparently suffered through some sound issues, before finally breaking through and bringing the noise. Meanwhile, Big Boi led the crowd through songs from solo and Outkast repertoires, and even brought with him a crew of really awesome 10-and-under breakdancers. And then it was time for Pavement, the big draw of the weekend. With Drag City’s Rian Murphy offering a hilarious sequel to an act he used to do in Pavement’s heyday opening (highlighted by his claim that, “I’ve been listening to Pavement since 1991, so I’ve been waiting for this reunion for 20 years!”), the mood was frantic for the band, who shut down the festivals webcast under suspicious circumstances. The set was a little more uneven than their triumphant turn at Coachella, with songs like “Stop Breathin,” “Stereo,” and “The Hexx,” hitting perfectly, and others, such as “In The Mouth A Desert” and “Cut Your Hair” coming out sloppily. They still served as a fantastic closer for the weekend, which was laden with more bright spots than otherwise. Pitchfork puts on a great festival, with its small size, constant flow of sets, and high quality acts. If issues like the sound and size of the Balance Stage can get worked out, then there’s nothing to stop Pitchfork from being among the best festivals in the country.

While Michael was enjoying some authentic chillwave at the Pitchfork Music Festival, SOME OF US were stuck in Austin, enjoying all the heat of an outdoor music festival but none of the Civil War punk rock. But, as a nice consolation prize, Pitchfork was streaming sets from the festival on their website. And good stuff too: LCD Soundsystem, Big Boi, Modest Mouse, and the big Sunday headliner: Pavement. Pavement was definitely on the schedule of artists for the webcast (and still is).

Except that the Pavement set was never broadcast, apparently because at the last minute Pavement withdrew their permission. Was it technical issues? Contractual stuff? A desire to make people, you know, pay to see Pavement live? Greg Kot at the Chicago Tribune doesn’t think so:

Why was Pavement excluded? One band member has a beef with Pitchfork’s editorial department. The band’s longtime booking agent, David Viecelli, explained Monday that “one of the band members has some issues with (the Pitchfork e-zine), comments that were made (in past articles) that demeaned that person in the context of Pavement.”

So who had their feelings hurt by Pitchfork? Your first guess may have been enigmatic frontman Stephen Malkmus (who was apparently not in a great mood Sunday night), but Kot said its not him (and it wouldn’t have made much sense anyway since Michael points out that it would be pretty out of character for P4K to bash Malkmus). Instead, a quick look around The Mothership would seem to point to Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, whose new solo record came out last year and had, uh, lukewarm reception:

In the time since Pavement’s dissolution in 1999, Kannberg has stepped into the role of the frontman with mixed results. Despite the nod to George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass in its title, his debut as the leader of the Preston School of Industry did not reveal him to be an extraordinary songwriter obscured by the flash of his former partner, but rather just a serviceable author of amiable but not especially interesting indie rock

The central problem with the Preston School of Industry albums is that the very things that made Kannberg an effective foil for Malkmus also made him exhausting and dull as the focal point of a band. Whereas he was once the Milhouse Van Houten to Malkmus’ Bart Simpson, he had devolved into being an incoherent indie equivalent of Milhouse’s dad mewling “Can I Borrow a Feeling?”

His style may shift, but Kannberg remains an unambitious songwriter and underwhelming frontman. It could just be that he’s the type of person who best thrives as a second banana. Then again, maybe all he needs is a foil of his own.

We don’t know its Spiral Stairs, but we’re just saying he might have a little empathy for Chris Bosh and an axe to grind with Pitchfork editorial. If you have more information on this developing story, e-mail us at tangledupinwires [at] gmail [dot] come

[Additional, Very Journalistic Reporting by Michael Warshauer.]

Me, After Watching Inception

As an oblique tribute to the bravura final hour of Christopher Nolan’s Inception (we’re off to a pretentious start, aren’t we), this review will unfold across three separate planes of consciousness. First, we’ll take a brief look at the film for those of you who have not seen and it and want to stay as in the dark about the movie as possible (me on Friday). Then I’ll go a little more in-depth but avoid giving away anything major. Finally, there’ll be a section for you to read after you’ve seen the movie. So, with that in mind, let’s take a heavy sedative, plug into some kind of weird briefcase, and get going.

ALMOST TOTALLY SPOILER-FREE

In short, Inception is worth seeing. It is sophisticated and smart but not alienatingly so. The film draws you into a world that is both completely foreign yet totally immersive and it does so slowly and piece by piece. Inception won’t hold your hand, but it knows how strange it is and the vast majority of the running time is devoted to somehow explaining new elements of its world. This makes sense since, even for the characters, what they’re doing is somewhat new and very experimental. Even leaving aside the eye-popping special effects, it is a ridiculously fun movie to watch and puzzle out. And yet I’m concerned that the puzzle is all there is to Inception. It is a brainy movie, to be sure, but Nolan’s cold, logical distance is especially pronounced here and it may not serve the material. And yet, I go back and forth on it, since the world is so imaginative and the filmmaking is so assured, that I’m not even 100 percent sure I missed that emotional connection. Either way, Inception is a film that deserves your time and money as soon as possible. Now, I’m going to talk about the movie in less vague terms, but there still won’t be any major spoilers.

SOME SPOILERS BUT NOTHING MAJOR

Inception is really a high-concept heist film set within the architecture of the mind. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a thief who breaks into people’s minds when they’re asleep and then steals their secrets. However, he is haunted by past tragedy and wanted for an (at first) undisclosed crime that prevents him from going home and seeing his children. A very powerful man (Ken Watanabe) offers him a chance at a clean record and a trip home in exchange for one last heist. But instead of stealing an idea, DiCaprio and his team (including Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Tom Hardy) must go deep into the mind of their mark to plant an idea: a process called inception.

Nolan wisely keeps the film grounded in the tropes and structure of the heist film, which means no matter how weird the science fiction gets you still have some idea of what’s going on. But he also methodically takes his time in explaining the rules and concepts of entering and manipulating dreams. On the one hand, this should be totally inert storytelling; literally 65-70% of the movie is exposition. And yet, it works for two reasons. First, Nolan provides candy-coating for all the exposition with some truly mind-blowing visuals. If you’ve seen the previews, you know we’re talking about matter exploding, city blocks folding on top of each other, and crumbling cityscapes. But also, this is just a fascinating world to explore and the ideas he’s playing with are so cool that it is just fascinating to see how they work. The movie knows its audience is smart, but it also wants us to understand what’s going on, so it is willing to take its time to make sure we understand what we need to know.

But the heist structure and general braininess is also emotionally isolating. Except for DiCaprio, everyone is playing archetypes, which doesn’t leave them with a lot of room for creating individuals. DiCaprio’s relationship with his dead wife, played by Marion Cotillard, is meant to provide that but except for the first scene, where Cotillard is playing more of a film noir femme fatale type character, their scenes together never totally work. The end should have been more impactful than it was, but I’m not sure if it was a weakness of the characters, the writing, or myself. Maybe there’s just so much other stuff going on that is so amazing that those scenes slowed me down too much.

Also, for a film set almost entirely in the subconscious, there are an awful lot of rules and order. This is the most common complaint about the film: that the dreams don’t feel very dreamlike. I definitely saw that in the snow-base setting that comes up at the end, but it also sort of makes sense since I think part of what the team is trying to do is impose some sort of order onto something as chaotic as dreaming. One of the ideas Nolan is playing with here is the mental border between reason and emotion and whether it is possible to keep them separate or turn one against the other.

On a pure filmmaking level, Inception is pretty astounding, nowhere more so than its showy last hour, which is essentially one long, sustained cross-cutting sequence that mixes in a Roger Moore-era Bond-esque assault on a base, a car chase, and a zero-gravity fight all of which make perfect sense. As a storyteller, Nolan avoids any sort of “gotcha!” twist that would cheapen the film. There are many layers to the story and the film peels them all back in a way that is consistently surprising, but doesn’t require cheating or cheap twist-making. But ultimately I’m not sure if I totally understand what Nolan is trying to do here. My concern is that I do because if that is the case then Inception doesn’t really add up to much more than a thoroughly entertaining puzzle; a pleasure to solve but lacking the depth of ideas or humanity of Memento, The Prestige, or The Dark Knight.

But either way, I’d like to go a little further into the puzzle, so at this point, if you haven’t seen Inception, put down this article and save the rest for after the movie. Or better yet, close off this page, go see Inception immediately, and then return again later, thus increasing our page views. We blogger types take what we can get.

TOTAL, MOVIE RUINING SPOILERS FOLLOW. ABANDON HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE

Seriously, if you haven’t seen Inception, stop reading right now.

All right, so there’s a few things I want to talk about in a little more detail. First of all, the physics of the kick. To wake up from the dreams, they need to be dropped, and the further down they go the more they need to be simultaneously dropped. So why doesn’t Joseph Gordon Levitt wake up when the van hits the barrier? Shouldn’t that have been the kick for him? Or would he also have had to drop in the dream, because that doesn’t make a lot of sense either (in the first scene, for instance, Leonardo DiCaprio fell into water, then in the dream the room filled with water, and then he woke up). Since it was Gordon-Levitt’s dream, when the van hit the barrier why didn’t he feel like he was falling and then wake up?

Also, of all the awesome imagery, the one that still haunts me is the image of the top spinning and spinning in the safe (when DiCaprio explains what he did to Cotillard). That image, more than any of the more directly emotional stuff before or after it, is the climax of the film. That’s the moment where we understand what he did to her and he is so haunted. And sure there’s voiceover, but its really unnecessary, because just seeing the top spinning in the safe is enough. But the reason it is enough is because we understand its meaning thanks to the fact that the movie has done such a good job of explaining to us, piece-by-piece. Separated from the context of the movie, that shot means nothing. However, after learning about inception, extraction, dreamers, architects, and limbo, that shot is moving and poignant and sad and kind of mindblowing.

What about the very ending? It felt very rushed, didn’t it? By speeding through everyone waking up on the plane and Leo getting back to his kids, it definitely felt to me like an ending that was happy enough to satisfy people looking for a happy ending, but with enough wrong to undercut that idea. At least, that’s what I thought until we got to that killer last shot. In addition to calling back to the top spinning in the safe (and the other top spinning scenes too, but especially the one that’s all about planting the idea of whether or not our world is real) he ends it by cutting to black before we find out whether it toppled or not (although, that said, he could have kept that shot going for an hour and cut to black and it would still be possible for it to topple, right?). My guess: that by shooting themselves (instead of falling and activating the kick), Leo and Ken Watanabe send themselves down into a further dream level, one where they can each build their own happy ending. Either way, one of the greatest extra-cinematic moments ever was sitting in a crowded theater on opening weekend and hearing everyone around me groan or yell “no” or somehow viscerally react to the last shot.

I think that reaction is exactly right; the most satisfying ending is the ambiguous one. Because Inception is really about how elusive and unknowable the concept of reality is. In the end, no one can know for sure that their reality is “real,” totem or no. What matters about the last 15 minutes (or the whole thing for that matter) isn’t figuring out a theory about what was real (although that is fun). What matters is that we don’t know and we can never know. What about the fact the kids haven’t aged? What about the fact that DiCaprio is chased around by men in suits through a very dreamlike landscape in what was supposed to be the real world? How can we ever know what is real? More than making a heist film, a dream film, or a sci-fi film, Nolan has made a film that breaks into your mind and plants a simple idea: how can you ever know that your world is real. It is a film of ideas and ambition, and it can be enjoyed as a simple thrill ride or a more philosophical, thought-provoking work.

Jonah’s Score: 77
Michael’s Score: 94

TUIW Grade: A