Blu-ray Review HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: Inception (5 Viewers)

[Sam Posten]

Inceptions score is second only to Devil for movies I saw this year. Sorry youdidnt like it, I absolutely loved it.

 

[AlexS2]

Inception score is definitely stunning imo.


And yeah, while it does completely overpower pretty much the entire movie, I think the score is the glue that holds the movie together in a way. There are scenes in the film that I probably would not have found remotely as effective were it not for Zimmer's bombastic score. In a way, it almost feels like Nolan's movie is supporting the score, rather than the other way around.

 

[Southpaw]

Agree with Sam and Alex. Loved every second of it. If I needed the aural cues, so be it. It doesn't take away from my enjoyment of it all.

 

[Doug Otte]

Originally Posted by Southpaw

Loved this movie when I saw it in a NYC theater over the summer and I love it even more now that I got to experience it in my own theater. The audio was so intense. Easily one of the best in my collection. Absolutely top shelf A/V quality.

Here's one question that I wondered upon second viewing....





Why didn't Fisher recognize Saito in his dream? Once Cobb told him it was a dream and he worked with him to get in the compound on the 3rd dream level, I wondered why he didn't recognize him. If he did, then Cobb's cover would have been blown. Saito is obviously a powerful wealthy businessman who was in a similar industry, which is why Saito hired Cobb to begin with. To destroy's Fisher's company.

Plot hole or some other explanation?



I thought about that after I saw it, but why wouldn't someone he knows be in his own dream?


Doug

 

[Brian Borst]

Originally Posted by music613

Inception: On the egregious misuse of music in a motion picture


As a professional composer who has also had a lifelong interest in “movie music” (Bernard Herrmann was a correspondent and teacher), I often find myself assaulted by what I will call “The Curse of John Williams.” Williams is a very gifted composer, both of film music and of concert works as well, but the wall-to-wall music film-score aesthetic which he brought back into fashion beginning with Star Wars in 1977 has long since morphed into the standard method whereby film composers approach their tasks under the fashion that says, in effect, “people are stupid and need aural cues at every possible moment to tell them what to think and how to feel.” Thus, especially in the realm of fantasy and science-fiction, we have an endless stream of film scores whose opening title to end title continuity leave me utterly exhausted, aurally fatigued by the incessant blather of overcooked, hyperventilating accompaniments whose minimalist compositional techniques have all but destroyed the effect of music in film.


Bernard Herrmann’s operating principal was “less is more” – an attitude developed during his pre-Hollywood years as a composer of scores for radio dramas. When he made the transition to film, his overriding sense of economy and brevity made his contributions to the various films he scored all the more effective precisely because they were not constant – because they were present only when the dramaturgical flow of the film required the additional aural element to complete the visual. Herrmann was one of the very first minimalist composers, long before John Adams, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and all the other minimalists came on the scene, indeed before minimalism was a definable musical technique. As we know, minimalism became an end in and of itself, and not a means to an end. Our current crop of Hollywood composers have largely if not entirely, it seems to me, bought into the utter and total corruption of Herrmann’s “less is more” and have turned it into “more less is more.”


The most recent, and for my money, egregious example of this is Hans Zimmer’s score for the Christopher Nolan film “Inception.” When I saw the film in its “live” environment, that is, in the movie house, Zimmer’s score, never for a minute approaching anything even remotely subtle or understated, was intrusive in a way that seemed to have crossed over into new territories of aural overkill. When I acquired the recently released BluRay version of the film, and then watched it on my home theater system, both my wife and I were overwhelmed by the sheer chutzpah, the noise level, the unceasing repetition, over and over and over again, of the same musical figures absolutely without development, extension or variation. The phenomenal clarity of both the visual and audio elements drove home the point that this score, for all its synthesized and “live” musical elements, was totally inappropriate both in terms of conception and execution. It was often impossible for us to hear dialogue clearly, even though the bluray realization places most all of the dialogue clearly in the center front channels. I cannot fathom Nolan’s approval of this kind of overkill. But I am reminded of the story Herrmann told about his adventures with William Friedkin when Friedkin asked him to score The Exorcist. Herrmann was, if nothing else, perhaps the single most original and imaginative film composer – and when he told Friedkin that he would use many French Horns in the score, Friedkin told him that he didn’t want anything French in the music! Utter stupidity and ignorance there for a certainty. Zimmer’s patented overkill strikes me as director Nolan’s equivalent.


Now Zimmer is indeed a talented composer even as his scores have their characteristic bloated overstatement. But, with Inception, the score is so exaggerated and the presentation, especially in 7 channel bluray, so intrusive as to destroy what is otherwise a marvelously ingenious and engrossing film. I am not stupid. I don’t need the Wagnerian leit-motiv method pushed beyond the outer limits. I do not ever want music in a film to overwhelm absolutely every other element. And, I certainly don’t want to walk away from a film annoyed to the point of distraction by a score which shows not a whit of respect for the audience listening to it in the context for which it was composed.


I protest!

I don't entirely agree with you. You could argue that Williams was responsible for the 'wall to wall' approach, but you could also say that he was simply doing the job George Lucas asked him to do. It's pretty rare that a director simply tells a composer to write something and reports in a couple of weeks when it's finished. Composers need to follow the temp score that's already in place (preferably as close as possible) and need to alter their carefully written scores when the director decides to edit the sequence. As a composer yourself, you must know this.

As for Zimmer's approach, it's effective, and Zimmer knows it's effective and that's why he keeps using it. And so it becomes repetitive. I don't know whether it's plain lazy or brilliant, but it definitely works in the movie.

The way it was mixed in the movie was fine, I thought. It wasn't subtle, but that wasn't Christopher Nolan's intention. When the dreams fall apart, for example, everything goes weird. The sound effects become more intense, and so does the music.

I was happy that for once in a modern movie, the music could actually be heard. Most of the time these days it's buried too deep in the mix.


Oh, and Robb? Danny Elfman is repetitive? That's new to me. I'm a big fan of his work (so that probably makes me biased) but he continues to evolve his sound in interesting ways. Compare his Batman with, for example his Wanted score, while they have more or less the same style, they sound almost nothing alike.

 

[Will_B]

Looks as if the DVD in this set is not the same as the DVD that comes as a stand-alone, since the DVD that comes as a stand-alone has bonus features, which are not mentioned here?


In this review, it says the DVD has "DVD: Watch the feature presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic standard definition video and 384 kbps Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (English only). Subtitles in English SDH, French and Spanish." No mention of any special features on the DVD in the set.


But on the back of the stand-alone DVD, these features are listed: "Four Focus Points:
The Inception of Inception: Christopher Nolan shapes his unusual concepts for Inception
The Japanese Castle: The Dream Is Collapsing: Creating and destroying the castle set
Constructing Paradoxical Architecture: Designing the staircase to nowhere
The Freight Train: Constructing the street-faring freight train"


?

 

[Will_B]

~~ If anyone with the BluRay/DVD set can check to see if the DVD is bare bones or not, that would be appreciated.


My folks only have a DVD player, but I'd be tempted to get them the BluRay/DVD set as a nudge towards their upgrading to BluRay -- but I don't want them to say "darn, the DVD in this set only had the movie and no special features at all!".

 

[Steve Tannehill]

The DVD in the blu-ray/DVD combo pack is bare-bones. The only selection other than "Play Movie" is Languages/subtitle selections (English, French, Spanish).

 

[Will_B]

Ok thanks for the info.

 

[DaveF]

Got around to watching my Blu-ray this weekend. The movie is even better the second time through. I'm no longer desparately trying to track the basic concepts and was able to enjoy the movie as a whole.


But I'm disappointed with the "special features" disc, as it's worthless.

* 30 minutes of trailers. I like trailers, so that's cool. Except they're in stereo (pro-logic) and seem to have distorted audio on the "bwaaarm" horns.

* Hour-long, mediocre documentary on dreams. 15 minutes in and there's nothing about the movie. If I want a doc, I'll watch PBS or buy a doc. Waste of space.

* Animated graphic novel. Huh? I didn't watch it; it looked pointless. Nothing about the behind the scenes. Waste of space.

* Soundtrack. Huh? I've seen these over the years. I've never sat and listened to a soundtrack on a DVD / Blu-ray on my HT system. I don't know anyone who has. And it's not like they gave me the soundtrack to use in my iTunes library. Waste of space.

* Insomiac (?) thing: Click it...ten minutes of spinning icons and status bars later my blu-ray player is on a BD-Live page asking me for a name and password. Huh? Waste of space.

* Conceptual art: Slideshows on discs have always been painful, a spec-sheet checklist item for "special features" data dump. Waste of space.


Hopefully the main disc commentary makes up for it. (i've not had another 3 hrs to watch that yet)