Teacher:In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: Inception 
  
 'Inception' review: Leonardo DiCaprio and Christopher Nolan blow our minds 
  
 Moseley/Warner Bros. 'Inception' star Leonardo DiCaprio is about to blow your mind - not with the gun - in one of the best mind benders ever made. 
  
 When was the last time you had your mind blown by a movie? Because when "Inception" ends and the lights come up, you'll be sitting in your seat, staring at the screen, wondering what the hell just happened. 
  
 Of course, it won't be the first time director Christopher Nolan has shaken us out of the apathy that modern moviegoing induces. "Inception" blends the blockbuster enormity of his "Dark Knight" with the indie insights of "Memento" to create an all-encompassing experience that makes most other summer films seem mediocre. 
  
 Like "Memento," this is one you'll need to see several times, backwards and forwards, to fully grasp. And since part of the fun is Nolan's insistence on keeping us unmoored, you won't find any spoilers here. 
  
 But the basics are these: Leonardo DiCaprio is Dom Cobb, a futuristic thief who specializes in rifling through people's brains while they dream. Though this is not a job without risks, his new assignment is about to raise the stakes. 
  
 When a mysterious businessman (Ken Watanabe) asks Dom to change- rather than simply steal - the thoughts of a competitor (Cillian Murphy), Dom's colleagues (including Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page) balk. They'd have to travel deeper into the recesses of their target's subconscious, which poses extreme danger for everyone involved. But Dom has been a haunted man since his wife (Marion Cotillard) died, and this mission may be his best chance to find some peace. 
  
 No synopsis could possibly do justice to the complex universe Nolan fashions as we go deeper into each visually ornate, emotionally intricate dreamscape. Granted, not every element works perfectly; Cotillard's storyline feels underdeveloped, and the action could have been tightened up. But the ambition on display is so huge, and the filmmaking so intelligent, you'll emerge feeling as if you've just watched an entire season of the greatest sci-fi series never made. 
  
 With "Inception," Nolan acknowledges that no one could create a movie as exciting, as unexpected, as startling as the dreams we invent for ourselves. But it's evident by now that he's never going to give up trying. ||||| Dreaming is life's great solitary adventure. Whatever pleasures or terrors the dream state provides, we experience them alone or not at all.But what if other people could literally invade our dreams, what if a technology existed that enabled interlopers to create and manipulate sleeping life with the goal of stealing our secret thoughts, or more unsettling still, implanting ideas in the deepest of subconscious states and making us believe they're our own?Welcome to the world of "Inception," written and directed by the masterful Christopher Nolan , a tremendously exciting science-fiction thriller that's as disturbing as it sounds. This is a popular entertainment with a knockout punch so intense and unnerving it'll have you worrying if it's safe to close your eyes at night.Having come up with the idea when he was 16, Nolan wrote the first draft of "Inception" eight years ago and in the interim his great success with "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight," not to mention the earlier "Memento," put him in a position to cast Leonardo DiCaprio and six other Oscar-nominated actors and spend a reported $160 million in a most daring way.For "Inception" is not only about the dream state, it often plays on screen in a dreamlike way, which means that it has the gift of being easier to follow than to explain. Specifics of the plot can be difficult to pin down, especially at first, and guessing moment to moment what will be happening next, or even if the characters are in a dream or in reality, is not always possible. But even while literal understanding can remain tantilizingly out of reach, you always intuitively understand what is going on and why.Helping in that understanding, and one of the film's most satisfying aspects, are its roots in old-fashioned genre entertainment, albeit genre amped up to warp speed. Besides its science-fiction theme, "Inception" also has strong film noir ties, easily recognizable elements like the femme fatale, doomed love and the protagonist's fateful decision to take on "one last job."That would be DiCaprio's Dom Cobb, a thief who specializes in what's called extraction, in taking secrets from the subconscious. Aided by Arthur (a fine Joseph Gordon-Levitt ), the trusted associate who is a whiz at the mechanics involved, Cobb is introduced in the middle of a dream involving Saito ( Ken Watanabe ), a wealthy Japanese businessman.That one last job is soon proposed by Saito, who asks Cobb if he is also able to do inception, the planting of ideas, a maneuver many people believe can't be done. Saito promises Cobb, who has a past which prevents him from returning to his children in America, the one thing he can't resist. If he takes on this one last job, if he agrees to practice inception on Robert Fischer ( Cillian Murphy ), the heir to a multibillion-dollar energy empire, he will be able to return home.In true movie fashion, Cobb has to round up a team to do the job. Aside from Arthur, he needs Eames, the forger (Tom Hardy), gifted at impersonating people inside dreams, and Yusuf, the chemist ( Dileep Rao ), who makes the compounds that put people under. And with the aid of his father-in-law Miles ( Michael Caine ), he meets Ariadne.Named after the mythological character who helped Theseus find his way out of the Minotaur's labyrinth, Ariadne is a young architect who is needed to create the subconscious landscapes in which the dreams will take place. As played by Ellen Page , adroitly cast for her youth, intelligence and earnestness, Ariadne is the team's last essential element.In addition to not knowing what they'll find inside Fischer's dream (believe me, there's plenty going on), Cobb and his team have to contend with a wild card: Mal, the untrustworthy femme fatale, a woman with deep and complicated ties to Cobb's past and someone who specializes in finding her way into dreams where she is not wanted.The selection of Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard as Mal typifies the care Nolan has taken to cast these thriller roles for emotional connection, a move which pays off in the scenes she shares with DiCaprio. In addition to the impeccably professional Batman veterans Caine and Murphy, the film is also on the money with the smaller roles, including Pete Postlethwaite as Fischer's ailing tycoon father and Tom Berenger as one of his key associates.The reason all these diverse elements successfully come together is Nolan's meticulous grasp of the details necessary to achieve his bravura ambitions. A filmmaker so committed he does his own second unit direction, Nolan is one of the few people, to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald on film mogul Monroe Stahr in "The Last Tycoon," "able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads."Because he's been so successful, Nolan, like Clint Eastwood , has been able to return again and again to the same creative team, which includes exceptional director of photography Wally Pfister, sharp-eyed editor Lee Smith and composer Hans Zimmer, whose propulsive score helps compel the action forward.Incapable of making even standard exposition look ordinary, Nolan is especially strong in creating the stunts, effects and out-of-the-ordinary elements whose believability characterizes this film as they did his previous Batman efforts.Shooting "Inception" in six countries, preferring to do elaborate stunts in camera whenever possible but expert at utilizing computer-generated effects when necessary, Nolan and his team (including production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin and stunt coordinator Tom Struthers) have come up with some unforgettable set pieces. As detailed in a thorough cover story in American Cinematographer magazine, the standout imagery includes: a 60-foot-long freight train that barrels down the middle of a city street, shot in the vicinity of 7th and Spring in downtown L.A. with a replica of the train engine placed on the chassis of an 18-wheel tractor-trailer; a 100-foot hotel corridor built so it could rotate through 360 degrees to mimic a zero-gravity experience; and a mind-altering CGI scene that has a Paris street roll up and over itself like it was some kind of a tapestry instead of a steel and concrete boulevard.His goal in doing all of this, Nolan told American Cinematographer, is a desire to always "be putting the audience into the experience," to create "what I like to call a 'tumbling forward' quality, where you're being pulled along into the action."Speaking of Paris, it's one measure of how wide-ranging Nolan's influences are that he used the classic Edith Piaf song "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" as a key plot element. The pleasure of "Inception" is not that Nolan, as the song says, regrets nothing, it's that he has forgotten nothing, expertly blending the best of traditional and modern filmmaking. If you're searching for smart and nervy popular entertainment, this is what it looks like. |||||
Student:
Inception, a "James Bond-on-acid" take on dreams and dreaming is being hailed as a sleek, psychedelic summer blockbuster that makes up in daring what it lacks in heart. The critics agree Inception is bound to capture your imagination—and maybe even blow your mind: Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: "Inception blends the blockbuster enormity of his Dark Knight with the indie insights of Memento." The result? A film that "makes most other summer films seem mediocre." Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: "This is a popular entertainment with a knockout punch so intense and unnerving it'll have you worrying if it's safe to close your eyes at night." Tom Long, Detroit News: "The most daring and original blockbuster of the year, as well as a visual tour de force. If it only had a heart." A.O. Scott, The New York Times: Inception "trades in crafty puzzles rather than profound mysteries, and gestures in the direction of mighty philosophical questions that Mr. Nolan is finally too tactful, too timid or perhaps just too busy to engage."