

Inception - The movie, explained through C code - oscardelben
http://thechangelog.com/post/3463797919/inception-the-movie-explained-through-c-code

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dkersten
I don't really understand the buzz about Inception. I found it very easy to
follow and not all that exciting. Primer was a lot more mind bending and more
interesting to boot. Inception just felt like the actors were spending the
entire movie saying _"look at us! This is exciting! And confusing! Now be
confused!"_.

To each his own, didn't do it for me though.

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aperiodic
I don't understand people who claim it's a "mindfuck" movie. The plot is
pretty straightforward and self-consistent. What it is is an extremely well
put-together movie.

The runtime of that movie is 148 minutes-almost two and a half hours. Yet it
doesn't feel that long. It also manages to have three different groups of
characters doing separate things, without confusing the audience. The last
move I can recall trying to do that level of simultaneity was The Phantom
Menace, which failed horribly at that task. Therefore, I find Inception to be
a very interesting movie intellectually, because I think it's fun to think
about the techniques that Nolan uses to make a 2.5 hour, multithreaded movie
so entertaining.

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JshWright
One glaring inconsistency that tripped me up for most of the "climax" of the
movie was the amount of time Arthur had in "Level 2" while the van was
falling...

The bridge looked to be about 100 feet up when the van started falling. It
takes 2.5 seconds to fall 100 feet. So Arthur, who was one "level" down, would
have had 2.5x20 seconds to figure out what's going on... come up with a
plan... go back to the floor below to retrieve the charges... get back to the
floor where the team is... get them wrapped up and moved to the elevator...
set the charges... and finally detonate them. That took _way_ longer than 50
seconds.

Sadly, I actually did a little more research after the movie and found my
estimate was even a little generous. The bridge the van was falling off was
the Commodore Schuyler F. Heim Bridge in LA. Combining the published stats on
the bridge with a clip from the movie (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_4qc-
JYZPo#t=17s>) makes it look like the van only had ~80 feet to fall...

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jasonkester
Your explanation reminds me of an experience I had watching Bill & Ted's
Excellent Adventure with an old girlfriend's roomate.

About halfway through, he started making these little dismissive groans and
mumbling "no way" under his breath. They gained volume as the plot progressed
until finally he couldn't take it anymore:

"No way. There's just no way they could fit that many people into a phone
booth."

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Tycho
There's an official Inception game/app for iPhone. It purports to tap into
your dreams, if you leave it running while you sleep.

Basically it plays a little bit of music and sound effects, and also processes
external sounds and plays them backwards and stuff like that (it would pick up
on you talking in your sleep). It also uses the movement and light sensors to
go through different phases. There are different 'dreams' (basically sound
generation algorithms) that you unlock somehow by using the app. One thing
that bugs me though is, people always told me not to sleep with headphones on
in case you strangle yourself, and for this app that's pretty much required.

When they said Nolan was keen on making a groundbreaking game, I really wasn't
expecting _this_.

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mikeleeorg
When I can't sleep, I need to listen to music to sleep. My wife needs absolute
silence. So I always put on my headphones. I've been doing this for a few
months now and the most that's happened is I've pulled the earphones out of my
iPhone as I tossed & turned.

However, I don't think you can strangle yourself with headphones while you
sleep. I imagine the force needed to do it is stronger than what you'll face
from tossing & turning. I wasn't able to find any info on this anywhere either
though, so don't quote me on that - but it strikes me as unlikely, at least in
my own experience.

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jamesgeck0
The source code is located here[1]; for some reason it wasn't directly linked
to in the blog post.

1\. <https://github.com/karthick18/inception>

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steveklabnik
If you click the little cloud it takes you there. My bad, I forgot to include
it in the body of the post, fixing now.

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bitsai
Fascinating. Would love to see this done with other languages/concurrency
mechanisms, like Erlang actors, Clojure agents, etc.

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steveklabnik
I'll own up! I found this on HN yesterday:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2252909>

