Inception

Director Christopher Nolan once described Inception as a "sci-fi action thriller." SRSBZNZ is going to say that Nolan's latest movie is more like the tripped-out, cerebral lovechild of Ocean's 11 and Shutter Island. In other words, Inception completely defies categorization and is one of the few movies to make us realize that - hoshit! - we, the audience, are actually smart and we like intelligent movies!

For a brainy film, Inception's plot is surprisingly simple. Leo DiCaprio is a thief named Cobb who specializes in the art of infiltrating people's minds and stealing their ideas. All Cobb wants to do is go home, but he's a fugitive. Enter Saito, a sinister businessman played by Ken Watanabe, who presents Cobb with an offer he can't refuse: he can go home if he eliminates Saito's business rival by planting an idea in the latter's head (i.e. inception.) The Ocean's 11 bit comes when Cobb assembles the team to help him complete the job.

Inception is a fantastic ensemble piece and the cast is one of the main reasons why the film works at all. Movies based on complicated ideas tend to have a lot of exposition. Indeed, most of Cobb's dialogue involves pontificating about his job and the nature of dreams to the audience. In less skilled hands, this exposition-as-dialogue can kill characterization and plot development faster than an anvil falling on a piano. Nevertheless, Nolan and the cast actually get away with it. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Cobb's right hand man, Arthur, is a good example. From his perfectly slicked hair to his stoic manner, he radiates suavity and competence even when all he's doing is explaining what the hell is happening in the film. The actresses are also outstanding. Ellen Page, as the architectural wunderkind Ariadne, spends the first half of the movie listening to Cobb's lectures, and she still manages to imbue her character with toughness and intelligence.

Devotees of modern art and optical illusions will adore the sets, which range from a classy hotel to a fortress high in the mountains. And the film's soundtrack deserves a special mention. Nolan uses the song "Non, Je ne regrette rien" as a major plot point in the film. The classic number was sung by Edith Piaf, and fans of Marion Cotillard (who plays Cobb's wife) will know that the lovely actress portrayed Piaf in the movie La vie en rose. However, SRSBZNZ does have one gripe about the sound mixing. We like Hans Zimmer's scores as much as the next movie-goer, but whoever was in charge of sound decided to drown out half of the characters' words with overpowering music. It's annoying, to say the least.

As a last note, we personally loved the ending, even though its ambiguity left 90% of the theater's audience crying out in frustration. The director clearly scoffed at the idea that every movie has to have a definitive ending, and we love him for that.

SRSBZNZ gives Inception 3 out of 3 tribbles.

EDIT: SRSBZNZ would like to present a very astute observation made by our friend, Mahak. Regarding the adorable Joseph Gordon-Levitt, she said, "I was amazed that no matter how many times he spun in that hamster wheel of a corridor, his hair *never* moved. It was like MAGIC." Well, there you have it, folks. Forget everything we said in our review - Mahak's comment identifies the real reason why Inception is awesomesauce.

The Greatest Television Couple of All Time ... of ALL TIME!

  ... Okay, maybe we're exaggerating a bit. But we love Amy Pond. We love Rory Williams. It's pretty safe to say that when you put them together, it's MAGIC. Gah. They are our favorite. And yes, everything is our favorite, but still. We love them.

The newly-regenerated (and still a little zonked) Doctor meets Amy when she is seven years old and in the midst of a prayer for someone to come fix the crack in her wall. Shock of all shocks, it turns out to be a crack in space and time. The Doctor leaves "just for a few minutes - he'll be right back, he promises," and it turns out he's gone for twelve years. They - with assistance from Amy's boyfriend, Rory - save the world from the Atraxi, etc. etc, he leaves "just for a mo'" and comes back two years later, on the night before Amy's wedding, which she neglects to mention to him.

Stuff happens, Amy tries to seduce the Doctor, Doctor says, no, you love Rory, howzabout we bring him time-traveling with us?

Thus begins a spectacular partnership (can it be a partnership if there's 3 people involved? We're going to say yes) involving the Doctor, Amy, and Rory and their misadventures with fish from space, a weird dream of the Doctor's, those creepy lizard creatures who live at the center of the earth, and a bunch of other stuff that we will refrain from relating because it involves spoilers. Let's go back to Amy and Rory.


Why We Love Amy:
Besides admiring her badassery, we find Amy refreshing because - attempted makeout sesh notwithstanting - she's not in love with the Doctor. We know, we know: Donna Noble was also not in love with the Doctor. We found that refreshing, too, but it would have been weird for Donna to be in love with the Doctor. Given that the Doctor sort of saved Amy's life when she was like seven, we know how easy it would have been for the writers of this show to create some weird daddy-issues love story involving the two of them. We are so glad they didn't. She makes a conscious decision that she loves Rory more than she loves the Doctor, and we respect her for that.

Also, we are totes jealous of her Scottish accent, beautiful porcelain skin, and fantastic hair. That's what we were going for during those two years we dyed our hair red, but clearly there's nothing like the real thing. Basically, Karen Gillan is gorgeous.

Why We Love Rory:
Rory rolls with the punches. Wayyyyy back when the Doctor and Rose first got together, Mickey wussed out and was like, "No, he's dangerous, you're going to die, time travel is scary, DON'T GO!" While we understood that he was trying to keep Rose safe, and that he genuinely cared about her welfare, we were unimpressed. More than that, we felt sorry for him. We've already discussed how annoying it was to feel sorry for Martha Jones, and Mickey was no different. We wanted to give him a hug, but we also kind of wanted him to go away.

Anyways. The Doctor takes Amy and Rory to 17th-century Venice for some pre-wedding romantic time, and they run into vampire-fish from space. Rory's all like, "Okay, I guess it's time to fight some vampire-fish from space, whatevs." And, okay, there's a little bit of confusion and waffling, but that's it. For the rest of the time he spends traveling with them, Rory is totally cool.

... Admittedly, we also are pretty impressed with the scope of his love for Amy. Dude spends 2,000 years watching over her (okay, partial spoiler - our bad) to make sure she doesn't die. That's pretty sweet.

Image from The Ultimate Doctor Who Site.

Makeover!

SRSBZNZ was feeling a little caged-in by the lonely, picture-less Blogger template. While we're still using our Blogger friends' skeleton, we decided to make it just a little bit more our own.

You may recognize the picture of the Starship Enterprise from our Twitter. We put our extensive Photoshop skillz to use and created our very own banner with it. Blog-Twitter synergy at its finest. Also, we like that it's just a little bit cheesy. It ups the nerd factor.

Do you like our new look, or should we go back to white white white?

Eclipse ... of Our Brain Cells.

We don't even have anything to say about this movie. Just ... this.

This one is our favorite:

Image from here, obviously.

Not to be Confused With That One About the Blue People

Things The Internet Has Established:

1. Avatar: The Last Airbender is awesome.
2. The movie version, known as The Last Airbender on account of the aforementioned blue peepz, is less awesome. By a lot.
3. Hollywood and M. Night Shyamalan are racist for casting white people as Aang, Katara, and Sokka.

Our role here at SRSBZNZ is not to argue with the Internet about whether the cartoon or the movie is better (personally, we prefer the cartoon), or to provide you with diatribes on why the casting of this movie is or isn't racist (Hollywood in general, probably. This movie ... we're not entirely convinced). No. We are here to snark it up and to write about things that make us happy.

Enter the most badass television uncle ever, General Iroh.

Iroh, uncle to the not-so-evil Prince Zuko, accompanies his nephew on his journey to capture the avatar and regain his honor. In the series, Iroh enjoys tea, pai sho, and saying wise things that need to be deciphered. In the movie, we're sad to say, Iroh is Mr. Serious Business (not to be confused with SRSBZNZ, which is really much less serious). The Fire Nation views him as a failure for an unsuccessful siege at Ba Sing Se, the capital of the Earth Kingdom. 

We always feel bad for Uncle Iroh when Prince Zuko goes on one of his, "Must regain honor and make Daddy love me!" tangents and says that his uncle is a worthless loser who doesn't understand what's important. Like, OMG, Zuko, you are one seriously angsty teenager. But Uncle Iroh is wise and understands that Zuko will grow out of it. We're not even going to lie, we mostly feel bad for Uncle Iroh because sometimes we yell at our mom even though she's right. Basically, we're projecting. 

One of our favorite moments in the show, obviously, is when Zuko finally grows a pair and goes to tell his dad, Fire Lord Ozai, that he's deserting the Fire Nation and going to help the Avatar. Zuko proceeds to inform Fire Lord Ozai that he will go to Uncle Iroh and beg for forgiveness, because Uncle Iroh has been a better father than Ozai ever was.

Ozai: (I Think I'm Better Than Everyone Else Voice) "Your uncle? Well, perhaps he can pass down to you the ways of TEA and FAILURE." 

Allow us to share with you our reaction: BAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA

Few more hilarious angry lines have been uttered in our personal history of television watching. First of all, tea is made of win. Secondly, your butt is about to get TOTALLY SCHOOLED by the Avatar. Joke's on you, Fire Lord Ozai.

Our second favorite Dumbass Fire Nation Moment comes when Princess Azula, sister of Zuko, is betrayed by one of her friends, who happens to be Zuko's girlfriend. The betrayal occurs when Mai saves Zuko's life while Azula is trying to kill him. (Reason #23094872 you know this is a show intended for young adults. So much relationship drama! Yeesh.)

Mai: "You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you."

This is entertaining in and of itself, but wait! It gets better.

Azula: (Angry Child Voice) "No, YOU miscalculated! You should have feared ME more!"

Insert tantrum here. No, really. There is totally a tantrum after this exchange.

In addition to these hilarious moments of Fire Nation Dialogue Fail, the television series actually has a lot of genuinely funny moments. Having seen the movie first, it was difficult for us to transition into Saturday Morning Cartoon mode and enjoy the funny moments without being all like, "BUT THE AVATAR HAS TO SAVE THE WORLD WHY ARE THEY TRYING TO MAKE ME GIGGLE." Eventually, we got used to it, and ended up loving all the slapstick sidenotes in the cartoon. We have to say, however, that we totally support M. Night Shyamalan's decision to make the movie more serious. It is still a horrific adaptation of an awesome show, but all those slapstick cartoon moments would not translate well to live action. And you know we're always going to prefer the version that can be funny on purpose, and not just because it has no idea how awful it is. What we're trying to say is, waste your free time on the TV show instead of the movie. It's worth it just for Uncle Iroh.

Image from http://www.freewebs.com/zutarachick/iroh02.jpg.

So Good, But So Bad: "Doomsday"

 Our favorite episode of Doctor Who is the one called "Doomsday," wherein the Daleks and the Cybermen battle it out for control of the Earth.We cannot even describe the awesomeness of this battle. Two robotic species with mechanical voices, shouting "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" and "Delete! Delete!" as they shoot lasers at each other? Don't even get us started. It is amazing. It is hilarious. It is brilliant and full of things exploding. (Sidenote, gentlemen: We love explosions and spent all day watching the World Cup. Remind us why we're still single?)

Our least favorite episode of Doctor Who is the one called "Doomsday," wherein the Doctor and Rose Tyler are separated forever. We cannot even describe the sadness it causes. We, who never cry at movies or television shows, ever; we, who did not shed a single tear during Titanic, when everyone around us was sniffling and sobbing ... we tear up EVERY TIME we watch this episode. (Okay, maybe that's why we're still single. Who cries at science fiction?)

We think it's rather unfortunate that these two episodes are the same. On the one hand, it is PURE AWESOMENESS; on the other hand, it is the end of an era for Doctor Who. Rose Tyler is our faaaaavorite (although Amy Pond is definitely giving her a run for her money. Man, we love Amy Pond). The first episodes of Doctor Who we ever watched were from season 3, with Martha Jones. We loved Martha Jones ... until we met Rose. Martha's okay, we guess, but she's not Rose. Every episode involves her being clueless for, like, twenty very important minutes before she FINALLY figures out what's going on. And she's kind of whiny. Mostly, though, we just feel sorry for her because she so desperately wants the Doctor's love and he's all hung up on Rose (as we all are). So not only does the best episode of this show involve the end of Rose Tyler, it also signals the beginning of the Doctor's lackluster partnership/rebound with Martha. It totally kills the hilarious alien robot battle vibe.

And this episode had such potential.

Sidenote: Who wants to buy us those action figures?

Image from starstore.com.

For the Ladies: Tips on Purchasing Comics at a Con

SRSBZNZ is going to confess a secret. Recently, at Calgary's Comic and Entertainment Expo, we popped our comic book cherry by dropping hundreds of dollars on back issues. Even though we couldn't afford to buy a McDonald's Happy Meal at the end of the day, we were satisfied. The Canadian half of SRSBZNZ is now the proud owner of several first edition issues of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Plus, we managed to grab the latest Spidey graphic novel, featuring the most obvious superhero team-up in the world: Peter Parker and Barack Obama.

All bragging rights aside, we want to share a few things we learned from our experience at the Expo. We're not comic-book specialists, but girls, keep the following tips in mind when you're at your next Convention.

Tip #1: Bargain, bargain, bargain

We'll be honest: we've never haggled for anything in our lives. As good North American citizens, we follow the price tag and obediently fork over the necessary amount of money without question. However, buying comics at a convention has turned us into a C.H. - a Certified Haggler. You will be shocked, dear reader, at the amount of ruthlessness and sheer business acumen you possess when you want to own that first edition issue, but don't have enough money to cover $100. Bottom line: don't pay the amount on the price tag. However, you'll have an easier time bargaining if you're buying several issues simultaneously.

Tip #2: Be nice to the vendors.

While haggling is a "must" for purchasing comics at a convention, be polite. The sales people will be much more willing to give you a good price on the comics if you refrain from being the customer from hell. Moreover, society tends to think that we geeks lack social grace. What better setting to disprove that theory than a comic book convention?

Tip #3: Display your feminine charms.

Fact: places in which comic books can be found are special ecosystems in which all sorts of species thrive and exist. However, this ecosystem tends to lack a particular type of organism - i.e. humans of the female variety. Being a lady at a convention thus has many advantages. At the Expo, we met a Montreal vendor who kindly cut the purchase price for ten comics nearly to half, because he said that we were "nice," "pretty," and "smelled good." (The vendor later clarified that he wasn't hitting on us, because he was married. Nevertheless, he proceeded to ask us for the name of our perfume so he could buy it for his wife.) Bottom line: it pays to be a decent-looking girl in a comic book store. And there is nothing wrong with taking advantage of what your momma gave you.