News, Entertainment and Girl-on-Girl Culture

07.30.10

7.29.10

Review: Inception Hotwires But Doesn’t Quite Hijack Your Brain

Review: Inception Hotwires But Doesn’t Quite Hijack Your Brain

While Inception isn’t Christopher Nolan’s best film, it’s a taut psychological thriller that’s really only bogged down by its ambition to be all things to all summer moviegoers.

Editor’s Note: This review includes a few details that may be considered spoilers, depending on how uninformed you want to be when you see Inception.

Remember that brilliant, twisted scene in The Dark Knight when The Joker announces to those two ferries — one full of convicts, one full of civilians — that if one of the boats doesn’t blow the other one up, they’ll both explode in an hour?

Inception makes your brain feel like it did in that scene, but for almost the entire two-and-a-half-hour running time. Christopher Nolan’s latest mindf*ck, in characteristic fashion, digs up a and connects a series of these kinds of paradoxical scenarios, like some kind of subterranean, subconscious master-planned community. Unfortunately, Inception doesn’t fold up into itself as neatly as that bit of Nolan’s last Batman movie. But if you think a good trip to the theater should pay off on the drive home, you can chase all kinds of mind-bending ideas down their respective rabbit holes and see where you end up.

In the world of Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Cobb, a freelance dream-thief. He and his hand-picked team extract secrets from their marks by invading their dream worlds. But dream worlds aren’t always friendly places, and once you’re in someone’s mind, all sorts of Freudian shit can hit the fan. Stay in there too long or stir things up and a mark’s “projections” will hunt you relentlessly. And that’s hardly the half of it. In Cobb’s line of work, dreams can be strategically buried within other dreams, like metaphysical nesting dolls. Each subsequent dream builds on the foundation of the previous one, and some consequences echo through the layers so naturally its best to proceed with caution. Cobb is skilled so most jobs are as straightforward as shoplifting. Just in someone else’s brain.

“This forgettable setup is awfully pedestrian for a movie about the imagination, but it just lays the groundwork for what quickly unfolds into a sprawling, intricately imagined experience.”

And of course it’s business as usual until, in a disappointingly mundane setup, some ambiguously rich and powerful guy named Saito wants to shatter his rival’s empire. This involves getting into the dreams of the heir to the rival company and planting the seed that the company should be divvied up, which is dream “inception” rather than your usual crane machine style brainjacking (extraction). This sets the emotional stakes pretty low for the central dream heist, since the whole thing will immediately only benefit some dude’s stock portfolio and then hopefully Cobb, later, for reasons that aren’t initially clear. This forgettable setup is awfully pedestrian for a movie about the imagination, but it just lays the groundwork for what quickly unfolds into a sprawling, intricately imagined experience.

[Read More...]

7.29.10

Game Log: Final Fantasy XIII, Disc 1

Game Log: Final Fantasy XIII, Disc 1

Time to check back in with Final Fantasy XIII (and model through it), after a hiatus of epic proportion. I’m at about hour 10 and Lightning’s still sassy, but I did spot an alt-lifestyle haircut. Onward and upward! Or downward. I think Pulse is down.

I’ve finally made it back around to Final Fantasy XIII in my semi-epic queue of games to play. As a huge fan of the series, I thought I’d play it straight through, calling out sick and receiving my fluids intravenously as needed. Obviously that was not so, but yesterday I cracked down. Now that I’m through disc 1 (of 3), I thought I’d check in with some impressions, as I’m sure they’ll change radically over the course of the next two discs.

PARADIGM SHIFT:

The very beginning of the game was agonizing. It really was. A lot of unexplained jargon (Fal’Cie! L’Cie! Sanctum! Something!) flew around for a boringly linear few hours while I hit things and then they died. Now, at hour 10 or so, there’s still is nary a town or black mage in sight, but somewhere around the 4 or 5 hour mark, I think I started getting it. I found myself enjoying FFXIII, in spite of the heft of my emotional baggage, largely tied to nostalgia of games of yore. I desperately want to love Final Fantasy XIII. And while I don’t know how I’ll feel in the end, I can say that what I’m getting out of the game around the 10 hour mark is very, very different than a series loyalist would expect. But now that my expectations have shifted, I can enjoy it.

COMBAT’S WHERE IT’S AT:

The combat system really is the focus of FFXIII, just like the creators said. Now I get it. It’s a very dynamic, fast paced experience (well, for an RPG– It’s no FPS obviously) where rather than selecting individual spells, attacks and whatnot for each character, you instead select the role you want your team members to fulfill. Want a physical damage dealer and two healers? Check. Oh shit, now three seconds later (literally) you might want a mage, a buffer and a debuffer. Paradigm shift!

These roles all combine to form some cleverly named team assignments (DOUBLE DOSE! WAR & PEACE! RELENTLESS ASSAULT!), and you’ll shift these roles into team arrangements called paradigms constantly throughout battle. They shift very fluidly, and it does feel more like you’re directing the flow of the fight rather than nitpicking each and every turn based what-have-you. If that sounds easy, and like the game plays itself (it does for the first 2 hours or so), you’ve got the wrong idea.

ONWARD AND UPWARD:

So, onto Disc 2. Still can’t for the open-world exploration that I think I’ll hit in another 15 (oh my god, 15) hours. Or for Fang to finally join my party (hello alternative lifestyle haircut). But now that I’m enjoying the game, the story of Cocoon, Pulse and all this L’Cie nonsense is starting to make more sense now, after poring over the data logs for a little while. I could do with fewer cut scenes of Snow statutorily raping that irritating Serah girl (and her side ponytail– ew), but we’ll see what happens. If I put it down I may fall into the pits of moogle-less, overworld-less despair, so I’ll try to keep on truckin’. But hey, my characters are headed to a place called “Palumpolum”, so that probably can’t go wrong.

7.27.10

Highlights/Delights from San Diego Comic-Con 2010

Highlights/Delights from San Diego Comic-Con 2010

More zany stuff went down at San Diego Comic-Con 2010 than you can shake a stick at, but we’ll try to shake a stick anyway. Check out the new Scott Pilgrim movie, a queer comics panel, a Whedonite tidbit and (most importantly) our own Brandy Howard in an inexplicable chicken superhero costume!

SCOTT PILGRIM:

Some lucky con-goers sneaked a sneak preview of Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World as the film ramps up for its August 13th release date. It sounds like fans of Bryan Lee O’ Malley’s comic won’t be let down with lead awkward puppy-dog actor Michael Cera, or with the adaption itself. Comics Alliance’s observes that Scott Pilgrim‘s director manages the difficult process of balancing the comic book sensibility to film-friendliness ratio with aplomb:

“Edgar Wright gets it. And I don’t just mean that he gets “Scott Pilgrim”; he gets the relationship between comics and film, and how they’re two distinct media that each have their own strengths and weaknesses. There are plenty of sequences and sight gags that Wright lifts directly from the page, but others are modified, eliminated and replaced with things that make a better visual on the screen.”

[Read More...]

7.20.10

Top 11 Hottest, Gun-Totingest Women of Sci-Fi

Top 11 Hottest, Gun-Totingest Women of Sci-Fi

Inspired by Sigourney Weaver’s bald head, we’ve managed to narrow down our picks for the Top 11 Sci-Fi Babes to the best of the best. These are the smartest, toughest, gun-totingest sexbombs around.

When ladies in sci-fi movies and shows aren’t pegged down as eye-candy or arm-candy, they get to kick some serious ass and wield some even more serious firepower. And we’d like to honor these unsung sci-fi heroine hotties with our (sure to be contentious) Top 10. Enjoy!

1. Ellen Ripley

Alien saga (Sigourney Weaver)


[Read More...]

7.16.10

My HTC Droid Incredible: 6 Things I Absolutely Love

My HTC Droid Incredible: 6 Things I Absolutely Love

The HTC Droid Incredible is sure lucky it lives up to its name, because I think we can all admit it was a pretty dumb thing to call a phone. But hey, that’s water under the bridge. Because this phone is seriously amazing. Hear all about it from a recent dumbphone to smartphone convert, our very own Sarah.

You’ve heard more about the HTC Evo than you would ever have cared to, so we’re switching gears to discuss the HTC Droid Incredible. You might have trouble getting your paws on it, since the damn thing is back-ordered across America forever (just like Verizon’s Droid X will be, after its launch yesterday). But luckily, Sarah (our lovely Editor and recent Android convert) shoved a little old lady out of line to get her hands on the Incredible. And we’re glad she did! No regrets. Here are her impressions.

A month ago, I had a cute little slider phone from Sony Ericsson — a “dumb” phone, if you will. While it was awesome in that it survived THREE complete dunkings in various liquids, the features were obviously lacking. It had a one megapixel camera and could barely load the simplest of webpages. Obvs, the leap to a smartphone was a big one for me. It took me so long to make that jump because I also have a two-year-old iPod Touch, which satisfied my desire for an iPhone long enough for me to realize that what I really wanted was an Android phone.

And now that I have the Incredible, I couldn’t be happier about my choice. I never thought I would hear myself say “Thank god I didn’t get an iPhone,” but here we are. Without further exposition, here are my top 6 reasons why I f*cking love my HTC Incredible.


1. Google Integration

+

You know what’s fun? Gchatting while walking down the street. Yep, I am that asshole now. What was life like before? Bleak, probably. I realize that all Android phones — not just the Incredible — unleash the full, unbridled power of Google. Howevs, the native Google apps for almost every service make me so happy that I’m gonna talk about it anyway.

The calendar syncs with my Gcal, the phone book syncs with Google contacts (including everyone’s Gchat icons), and my email syncs seamlessly to my phone — no fiddling with forwarding or POP codes.

I’ve been a hardcore Apple geek for years now — just try and pry my Macbook from my hands & see what happens — but I have to say, I really like my life when Google runs it. Everything just WORKS. I kind of hope Google takes over the world so that I can stop having different login info on every site on the Internet. [Read More...]

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