Wednesday 27 January 2016

… Of the Week: 27th January – 3rd February 2016

Film of the Week:

The Internship

Exploring the topic of technology going from monologue to digital is not a new thing. Technology is continually developing, and will never stop. Books have made the leap to digital with the introduction of the Kindle, CDs are almost completely brought on iTunes, so you will always have them stored on your hard drive, on your phone or iPod so that you can listen to any music on the go, and, as this film explores, watches. At the beginning of the film, John Goodman’s character, who is uncredited, says that nobody wants a watch anymore as they now go for their phone instead. That is a fair point considering everyone that I know do check the time via their phone instead of a watch, but call me old fashioned, but I do still have a watch attached to my wrist. I have done for years and I don’t see myself taking it off… until it stops working for various reasons, but then I’ll just get a new one. Now, I know that watches aren’t dying out as rapidly as this film may first suggest – in fact they’re still going incredibly strong – but it is a prime example of how many pieces of technology have made the transition from monologue to digital.

On the other hand, the Apple Watch is a good example when it comes to keeping things the same, but totally different. You can do a lot of things with that watch: browse the internet, play music, send texts, and even tell the time. CDs aren’t technically going to go away entirely, neither are films for that matter, because they are finding other ways of adapting to the digital age.

The Internship focuses on two salesmen, Billy McMahon and Nick Campbell (played by Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson), whose careers have taken a hit as the digital age continuous to grow, and they find themselves out of a job. Before they realised this, however, they were trying to sell monologue watches. The company that they work for has been forced to close their doors because they are not doing as much business as they were before. So, what do they do? Well, they go and get another job. Sounds simple enough. But where? They are a couple of 40 something men who don’t have a clue how a computer works because they had no need to use one before, so all they can do is go somewhere else.

By having a brainwave, Billy gets them both a job interview at one of the leading companies in the world, Google. Obviously, for comedic effect they stumble through their interviews, play havoc with the system and try and talk their way through every test, but in the end they do come out on top. They have gone from someone who didn’t know a thing about computers to being potentially, expects. There are some good morals that the film portrays throughout that I’m sure you’ll be able to pick up on if you watch it.

As well as the society and moral side of the film, overall it is a funny and intelligent film with great writing, directing, and most importantly of all, acting. It does have a lot of technobabble throughout, but you learn about all that stuff as and when the characters do. As well as us learning about technology, the other characters are learning about the outside world as well. All they have to do is look up and see the wonders that is all around them. You could say that this has two stories running opposite one another: When one is learning about the digital age, the other is learning about the monologue age, which is a great way of saying that we need both ages to keep things balanced instead of unintentionally unknowingly becoming succumbed by the screen.

Of course, it’s hard to say how much of the film is actually artistic licensing when it comes to training to become an employee at Google, but that doesn’t matter as it adds to the comedic value and certain serious tones it has here and there.

And that is why I recommend this film to you this week.

You can view the IMDB page here:


TV Program of the Week

Legends of Tomorrow – Series 1 – Pilot: Part 1


First, there was the Arrow, then there was the Flash, and now we have Legends of Tomorrow. This show does depend on you needing to know who the characters are to fully understand exactly what is going on and why it is happening, but other than that this is an awesome show through and through, epic from the very beginning.

Rip Hunter (played by Arthur Darvill) is a Time Master who goes rogue to stop the evil immortal Vandal Savage. He assembles a team of heroes to travel in time with to stop Vandal from taking over the world.

That’s it. There is nothing else that I can say without spoiling it. This show is too awesome to give any more information away. Sure, the whole point of this article is to explain why I recommend this to you, but by saying that I can’t explain why because it would be giving any spoilers away is in itself, a recommendation, paradoxically speaking. You have to watch it for yourself.

You can view the IMDB page here:


Game of the Week

YGOPRO Automated Dueling System


Yu-Gi-Oh is a popular anime series that follows a boy named Yugi Moto and his friends as they save the world from evil forces. The series lasted for 5 series with a total of 224 episodes. Each series went bigger than the one before, which only drew us in even more. After the original series ended, there have been four main spin-offs since, Yu-Gi-Oh GX, Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds, Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal, and Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V. Each spin-off followed a new character, added new elements to the world as well as added new cards to the game. To defeat any evil that threatens to destroy the world, they must duel to see who is best, and when they duel, the play a card game which is full of Monsters, Spell, and Traps.

Branching off from the anime, the card game became a reality and is now one of the most popular card game in the world. If you haven’t heard of it, I unfortunately cannot explain how it works as it would take up several pages to do so. If you would like to know how Yu-Gi-Oh works, I will direct you to the Wikipedia page here:


YGOPRO is a great way to test out your latest deck for tournaments or just to have a casual game with your friends. Duelling Network is the number one place to go and duel, but it does have its problems and YGOPRO fixes those problems and that is why it is quickly becoming just as popular, if not the more preferred place to go and duel online. Whilst Duelling Network simulates playing the game as if you were doing so on an actual table top, because it is completely manual, the complexity of the game itself can lead to some confusions, especially if you are a beginner, which can ruin your experience of playing the game. YGOPRO on the other hand, is one hundred percent automated. Everything is done for you, which is a great way to learn how the game works, and not having to worry about if you are playing the wrong card as it simply won’t let you if the conditions aren’t met yet.

As well as duelling online with your friends, you can duel with the computer as well, which never lets up. It will always do what it can to stop you, and most of the time it will. It’s difficult and unrelenting, which is the perfect way to really get your teeth into the game and test out new decks. It has every single card in the entire game, and unlike most Yu-Gi-Oh games, you don’t have to work your way up from the beginning to unlock the more powerful cards, you will have the privilege of having every single card already for you to pick and add to your decks, which you can have an unlimited amount of as well. But the feature that won me over wasn’t having every card unlocked right from the word go, it was the fact that not only do you get every single card that is available in the game, but you also get to choose from any card that appeared in the anime as well. A couple of reasons why certain cards from the anime hasn’t been implemented into the real-world game yet is because they are either too powerful, broken, or (usually) both. With YGOPRO, you can get to have those cards in your deck and your opponent won’t know what hit them.

I might be a little over enthusiastic, but it is a great game. Actually, I lied, having anime-only cards wasn’t the feature that won me over. The feature that tempted me to go from Duelling Network to YGOPRO is the fact that it is totally and always will be FREE. There is a new update every month or two, which will give you all the latest cards that have been released, and new a new deck(s). I highly recommend you give this game a go.

You can download the game here:


Video of the Week

Suicide Squad – Official Trailer 1 (HD)


The trouble with trailers nowadays is that they give away far too much of the film. It practically tells the entire story of the film is two minutes, which isn’t the best way to get people to come see your film because they would have already seen it. Batman Vs Superman is the latest film to fall into this trap.

Refreshingly, the trailer for Suicide Squad didn’t do any of that. In the span of two and a half minutes, it gives away just enough to get you to want to see the film. Not only that, but the editing is what makes this trailer stand out among the rest, in my opinion. The entire trailer is perfectly sculptured around the song Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, beat by beat. This trailer does exactly what a trailer is supposed to do, advertise the film, not give all the major plot points away.

Now, it’s fair to say that it may fall into the other trap of the trailer being much better than the film, but personally, I don’t think that is going to be the case. The actors and actresses appear to be doing each character justice, especially Margot Robbie who plays Harley Quinn. Will Smith plays Deadshot, Cara Delevingue plays the Enchantress, and Jai Courtneu plays Captain Boomerang, among others. The Joker does make an appearance played by Jared Leto, who appears to be having a ball with the character.

Overall, I am going to go and see this film when it comes out on the 5th August. I may even do an article about it when it comes out. After all, how many times do you get to see the bad guys save the world.


You can watch the trailer here:


Thanks for reading
Antony Hudson
(TonyHadNouns)

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