Re: Inception vs. Paprika controversy , 開始対パプリカ論争

Yeah, I totally know how it feels having to deal w/ those engines. Anyway, new one @ http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2010/07/219074/inception-eye-catching-and-profound-usher-concert :

"...If you want some idea of how timid and businesslike Inception is in its human concerns (while very bold as a feat of engineering), see a film I suspect was on Nolan's list of homages here, Satoshi Kon's Paprika.

"That anime also involves a dream machine project run amok. But Kon, a true sensualist and surrealist, isn't afraid to imagine that people's minds contain something more than just chaste, greeting-card love, movie violence and conceptual chatter. Paprika is bursting at the seams with Japan's barely repressed pathologies, in the form of an insecure scientist who runs his hand under the elastic skin of the woman he can never seduce, then pops her like a balloon; or a parade of salarymen whose heads morph into cameras to take upskirt pictures of high school girls; or a giant naked toddler who feasts on a towering, soot-black demon—the avatar of a tyrannical patriarch character—until she grows into a bodacious giantess the size of Godzilla.

"In Paprika, Kon confronts his tormented society with visual poetry, not just a remix of tropes and set pieces. He goes deep, where Inception just talks of depth and darkness but, as a screen experience, sticks with glib pyrotechnics fit for a Superbowl commercial or an Usher concert. Like I said, film of the decade."

From http://www.lecinema.ca/critique/1870/ :

Inception et sa pincée de Paprika...

...Les adeptes de métafiction reconnaîtront également plusieurs thèmes récurrents du romancier japonais Yasutaka Tstusui, dont ceux de «Paprika» qui a été adapté dans une grandiose animation par le grand Satoshi Kon. Les fils dramatiques se ressemblent beaucoup et quelques scènes (celles dans l'ascenseur notamment) évoquent presque l'hommage, le clin d'œil appuyé...