Inception

Welcome back me, thanks you. I am back on the blog train because I was recently struck by a piece of entertainment journalism that I found a tad self serving regarding the current number one movie in America, Inception. I was intrigued to the point where I wanted to flesh out an argument I had with myself and thought this the best place to do so.

Here is my review of Inception: It is a beautifully crafted film that that fully realizes the potential power of the moving image. That's it. I will only discuss more if I know you have seen the movie and therefore would not be stealing the wonder that the film brings upon its first unspoiled viewing.

Now to my point. Entertainment Weekly ran a cover story on Inception in issue #1113 dated July 30th of this year. Crazy you say? Not quite yet, but since the film was released the week before and Salt starring Angelina Jolie was the big film review in this issue the timing seemed a bit strange. Entertainment Weekly's general purpose (as I see it) is as a buzz generator. I await the spring, summer, fall and winter movie preview issues with great anticipation to know for sure that the seasons are about to change.

If EW were to run a cover story it would usually run the week of a film's release, so I thought, why a week after? The weeks previous cover had Ryan Reynolds as the Green Lantern & a review of Comic Con (good reason) but as I read the article I came away with the feeling that the article was mostly fluff. I am aware that EW is not known for its in depth exposes, but this was six pages without a real sense of purpose. The article even contains several insert antic-dotes whose purpose seems mostly to fill pages (one of them is titled: The Essential Christopher Nolan, which goes on to list every film he has directed except his first, the 1998 film The Following)

The article goes on to discuss how personal this project was for Nolan and how the emotion of the film was so important to him. Which didn't feel too out of place until its juxtaposition with the film review the week before. Where in her B+ review critic Lisa Schwarzbaum comments how "Only repeated exposure can clarify for each spectator not only what"s going on but also whether the emotional payoff deepens enough to warrant the arbitrary complexity of the game." and then reiterates that sentiment toward the end of the review, "the heart is far less engaged than the head for most of the show."

Another insert article was titled Seeing the Movie Again by Lisa Schwarzbaum. Where at the request of the director "...Nolan encouraged me to rereview it..." she gives a second shortened review of the film in which she maintains her original grade but offers several shifted opinions (my favorite of which was that the film was even less emotionally impact-full upon second viewing).

What does all of this mean? Maybe nothing, but I ask you to consider this, Entertainment Weekly is owned by Time Warner who is a parent company to Warner Bros, who produced and released Inception. So what are the chances of a billion dollar company using one of its most recognized brands to cross promote their hit film against its first big competition (Salt) who will be going after many of the same viewers that Inception will be chasing down in its second week. Pretty good I'm sure, especially considering that after this showdown the next two weekends have big comedies opening and whoever gets ahead this week will last longer and make more money attacking the same adult demographic until mid August.

Final weekend result, in its second week Inception outlasts Salt by almost seven million dollars. Inception $42,725,012 & Salt $36,011,243. I don't know what people expected after Inception's big opening weekend, but I doubt that many saw this coming a month ago.