Outcast: 'A Darkness Surrounds Him' Review

Robert Kirkman's latest show gets off to a flawed start.

Confirmed: John Boyega to Star in 'Pacific Rim 2'

Boyega joins the sequel hot off the success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Box Office: Ninja Turtles 2 Suffers in Anti-Sequel Summer

TMNT 2 is the latest sequel to bring in some disappointing numbers.

Review: Eye in the Sky

Gavin Hood's military drama is an impressive achievement.

Tuesday 21 August 2012

US Box Office Top 10: 21st August 2012

This week, the ultimate action hero team storm in at No. 1 in The Expendables 2. The movie made just under $30 million and knocks last week's No. 1, The Bourne Legacy, down one place to No. 2.

News broke this week that an all-female Expendables movie was being made. Find out who we'd cast in it here!


Other new entries this week are creepy kids film, Paranorman at No. 3 making $14 million. Followed by Whitney Houston's last movie, Sparkle at No. 5, and The Odd Life of Timothy Green at No. 7.

Total Recall re-enters the chart after a week out - the movie doesn't seem to have met expectations.

Here's the Top 10 in full:

1. (-) The Expendables 2 - $28.6 million
2. (1) The Bourne Legacy - $17.1 million
3. (-) Paranorman - $14.1 million
4. (2) The Campaign - $13.1 million
5. (-) Sparkle - $11.6 million
6. (3) The Dark Knight Rises - $11 million
7. (-) The Odd Life of Timothy Green - $10.8 million
8. (4) Hope Springs - $9.11 million
9. (5) Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days - $3.83 million
10. (-) Total Recall - $3.47 million

Be sure to come back next week for more box office news. In the meantime, here's a trailer for this week's new No. 1 - The Expendables 2:


UK Top 10 Games: 21st August 2012

This week Square Enix's Sleeping Dogs swooped in at No. 1. The title, once known as True Crime: Hong Kong, became a somewhat unexpected critical success - this and today's strong chart debut may see Sleeping Dogs become a new franchise for Square.


But Sleeping Dogs did have some competition in the form of New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS. Despite being released on just one platform, the game manages to debut just below Sleeping Dogs at No. 2. These two new entries knock last week's No. 1, London 2012: The Official Video Game down two places to No. 3.

There are no new entries this week, however Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 does re-enter the top 10 due to a price cut.

Here's the top 10 in full (All Formats, All Prices):

1. (-) Sleeping Dogs
2. (-) New Super Mario Bros. 2
3. (1) London 2012: The Official Video Game
4. (2) Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes
5. (3) Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games
6. (4) Batman: Arkham City
7. (5) The Amazing Spider-Man
8. (10) Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
9. (9) Dead Island: GOTY Edition
10. (20) Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7

That's all for this week, come back next week for more. In the meantime, here's a trailer for this week's new No. 1 - Sleeping Dogs:


Sunday 19 August 2012

10,000 Views and Counting!

Today TEN reached a new milestone! 10,000 LIFETIME VIEWS! That's a lot.


Thank you for being a visitor of TEN. Without you, this site just wouldn't function! It hasn't always been easy, but numbers don't lie.
Here's to another 10,000 visitors of TEN - Let's see if we can get there even faster this time.

1 year, 2 months, and 14 days is a tough time to beat....but I think we can do it....

5 Women We Want in the Female Expendables


Earlier this week some awesome news was announced - an all-female version of The Expendables is being written! I love a great female action hero, and so here are my picks of 5 actresses that would be awesome in the movie.

Sigourney Weaver

See Her in Action: The Alien Series

Let's start off with the big guns. Sigourney Weaver's character, Ripley, was arguably the first big female action hero. She was one strong woman and continued to show this through the Alien series. Since Alien finished she's been popping up in action films front, right and centre (see Abduction, Vantage Point, Avatar, The Cold Light of Day).

Then and Now: Weaver still likes a cool gun
What Part Would She Play?

The rest of the women on this list are younger than Weaver by a good few years, so in my female Expendables she would be the leader of the pack. She would perhaps be the high ranking military officer, with the rest of the list being a group of specially picked new recruits.

Milla Jovovich

See Her in Action: The Resident Evil Series

Milla Jovovich got her big action break in 2002 with the release of the first Resident Evil movie, playing the role of Alice. Since then she's been a lead in the entire series of Resi films as well as several other action and thriller movies, including: The Three Musketeers, The Fourth Kind, .45, and Ultraviolet among many others.


What Part Would She Play?

In the Resident Evil films particularly she's proven to be capable with not just guns, but also swords, machete's and all sorts of other more melee-type weapons. Therefore, I'd place her as a weapon expert, providing the team with alternatives to guns if and when the bullets run out.

Kate Beckinsale

See Her in Action: The Underworld Series, Total Recall (2012 Remake)

Kate Beckinsale became a big name in action in 2003 when the first film in the Underworld series was released. Since then she's starred in the other 3 films of the series' as well as other action roles in films such as: Total Recall (2012 Remake), Van Helsing, and Contraband.


What Part Would She Play?

With Beckinsale's Underworld series frequently being compared to Jovovich's, it would be great to see some  conflict between the two women. Perhaps they know each other from a previous mission, or were once good friends but now firm rivals. The film could see some cool fight scenes between the two before they reconcile and agree to work together to take down whatever threat it is that they face.

Angelina Jolie

See Her in Action: The Tomb Raider Series, Wanted, Salt

Angelina Jolie is perhaps the second most intimidating woman on this list (behind Weaver), while she's surprisingly (to me anyway) not the second-oldest - that title goes to Beckinsale - she has had more experience in action films than many of the others. She's had lead roles in the aforementioned Tomb Raider series, along with Wanted, Salt, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Gone in 60 Seconds, and many others.


What Part Would She Play?

As I said before, Jolie probably has more experience in the action genre then Beckinsale and Jovovich and so I'd place her as a second-in-command to Weaver. She'd have an edge on the battlefield due to her extra knowledge, and while she'd be difficult to get along with at first, would soon become more a part of the gang than a superior.

Michelle Rodriguez

See Her in Action: Resident Evil, Battle: Los Angeles, Fast & Furious

Michelle Rodriguez first came to my attention in the first Resident Evil film. She played a badass member of the SWAT team assigned to stop the Umbrella situation from getting out of hand, and was awesome at it. Since then she's made appearances in films such as Battle: Los Angeles, S.W.A.T, and Machete.


What Part Would She Play?

In her breakout performance in "Girlfight" Rodriguez proved she's not too bad with her fists as well as with weapons. I'd have her as an outsider to the group who's employs brutal hand-to-hand combat when up against the odds. By the end of the movie she will have been excepted into the group but her dark past may remain a mystery.

Those were my picks, but who would you like to see in a female Expendables team? Comment below!

Thursday 16 August 2012

UK Box Office Top 10: 15th August 2012

This week Ted and The Dark Knight Rises dominated the UK Box Office making millions of pounds more than the rest of the top 10. Literally.
Ted takes the top spot for the second week in a row making just over £3 million, with Batman settling for the No. 2 position with £2 million.
And, you can read our reviews of both of those movies! Click here for Ted, and Click here for TDKR!

At No. 3 this week is a new entry - Step Up 4: Miami Heat making just under £700,000. A respectable debut, but somewhat measly in comparison to the top 2 positions.


The only other new entry this week is British thriller, Offender which makes £74,000 and takes the No. 10 position.

Here's the top 10 in full:

1. (1) Ted - £3,174,766
2. (2) The Dark Knight Rises - £2,169,449
3. (-) Step Up 4: Miami Heat - £680,052
4. (3) Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days - £602,236
5. (6) Brave - £574,261
6. (4) Ice Age 4: Continental Drift - £532,353
7. (5) The Lorax - £375,710
8. (7) The Amazing Spider-Man - £199,304
9. (8) Magic Mike - £135,108
10. (-) Offender - £74,154


Here's a trailer for this week's No. 1 - Ted:


Wednesday 15 August 2012

Playstation Vita (Wi-Fi) Review

Sony's new handheld is a complete powerhouse. It has many functions, amazing graphical capability and is an intimidating rival to Nintendo's 3DS. I'm going to be going through every aspect of the Vita in this review, and hopefully give you everything you need to know. If I miss anything out, feel free to comment or ask questions. You can also tweet me @_thenetwork - Let's get started.

The Look and Feel of the Vita:

Getting your Vita out of the box for the first time is a very nice experience. The system is sleek shiny and just looks really nice. Once you've had your hands on it for while however, you'll notice the smudges. These can be wiped away with a cloth or the bottom of your T-Shirt, but they're still a little annoying.
This little problem aside though, the Vita is a very nice looking handheld. And it feels comfortable as well. While I felt the PSP got a little uncomfortable to hold after a while, the Vita can be played for long sessions and not get painful. While at first I found the system fairly heavy for a portable, after a month of owning it I can honestly say that it feels rather light, especially considering everything it can do.


What else helps the Vita stay comfortable is the well placed buttons and joysticks, which make it feel natural - basically like using a PS3 controller except with better placed triggers. And the touchscreen/pad are also easy to use during gameplay sessions, but I'll talk about them a bit later.

The Camera(s)

Much like every portable now days, the Vita comes with it's own camera - a front and rear one. These were a nice addition and great for pictures and video when your messing around with friends, or playing with Vita's AR Cards and other augmented reality games. However, if you want a high quality, HD camera then you might want to look elsewhere. The Vita's camera does the job, but probably won't satisfy aspiring photographers.

Screen/Touchscreen/Touchpad

The Vita's screen is beautiful. It's capable of some breathtaking graphics (see next section), and the touchscreen and touchpad open up some creative opportunities for game developers. Whether they'll make the most of these opportunities is another thing entirely.
The touchscreen is multi-touch, and on the whole is very responsive. There are times in games like Uncharted: Golden Abyss where the touchscreen lets you down - but these are rare, and in general the screen is very reliable.
The touchpad also works well, but takes some getting used to. Also, while it has been put to work on some of the Vita's minigame collections such as Little Deviants, and Frobisher Says, I'm not sure if there's much actual use for it.


And while the screen looks sleek when playing indoors, if you play outside in the sun - you can barely see anything. This is annoying, but can be helped by turning up the brightness. But of course that will cost you some battery life (which I'll talk about later).

Graphics

The Vita's graphics are possibly it's biggest selling point - and for good reason. The graphics are undeniably impressive, delivering near console experiences when on the move. Games like Uncharted and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 are particularly impressive. If you buy into the Vita for the graphics, I doubt you'll be disappointed. But such a powerful system, can't possibly have good battery life, can it?


Battery Life

Well, yes and no. The Vita's battery life isn't going to amaze anyone. At 3-5 hours (depending on the brightness setting), it isn't incredible. But, when you think about the graphics along with the other things the Vita offers (see below), it really isn't that bad. While it would be nice to have a little longer, I found that the 5 hours was more than enough for my gaming on the go.
The Vita takes around 2 hours to fully charge, which is a fairly normal time frame and fairly similar to the 3DS.

Other Functions

Like most handhelds nowadays, the Vita doesn't just game. Here's a few of the other functions and apps available on Vita.

Music: Putting music onto your Vita is refreshingly easy and the playback is good. It may never replace your iPod, but if you just want to bring one device out with you rather than numerous - it does the job.

Video: You can also watch videos on your iPod. Be it by renting or buying the latest releases over the PSN Store or adding the videos from your computer onto your Vita. Like with the music, videos are fairly easy to add to the system and play well.

Browser: The Vita's browser is quite fast, but not very powerful. If your looking for a browser that uses flash, look elsewhere (however, the free YouTube app may fill that gap in functionality). But it does do the job, running fairly smoothly even with multiple tabs open, however it has crashed on me once or twice.

YouTube: Speaking of the YouTube app, the app is another worthy edition to the list of the Vita's functions. The app is again fairly basic you can sign into your account, but your account only. If you want to switch accounts then hard luck, you can't do it. There's also no option to view YouTube channels, or any advanced search options - but I shouldn't be too negative, because the YouTube App is probably the one I use most out of all these functions. If you want to view your subscriptions latest videos it's a very handy app to have, even if there are some buffering problems every now and then.

Facebook: The Facebook app in my opinion is the weakest of the Vita's app library. In a time where smartphone's have very functional apps for your social media accounts, the Vita's version feels very primitive.  It also doesn't help that it's incredibly slow.

There are also other apps such as Twitter, and Skype.

Games Library (as of Summer 2012):

Considering that the Vita is still very early in it's life, it's games library really isn't that bad. It's hard to deny that there haven't been a huge amount of releases in the last few weeks, but there have been quite a few gems already released including: Rayman Origins, Wipeout 2048, Uncharted, Metal Gear, Gravity Rush and Lumines as well as downloadable titles such as Plants vs. Zombies and Super Stardust Delta among many others.


And, currently the outlook looks good with Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, LittleBigPlanet, and Playstation All-Stars all set for release by the end of the year.

Price:

The price will be the big factor that holds most people back from buying a Vita. At £229.99 ($249 in the US), the Vita is an investment - add on the price of the necessary memory card and those all important games and things look even worse. Ultimately then, I can't make the decision for you. But, if you're a lover of handheld gaming with some extra cash laying around then the Vita might be for you.

THE VERDICT

The Playstation Vita is a very strong device. It plays games with console-quality graphics, has a lot of extra functions, and a beautiful feel to it. But the high price tag, and underwhelming battery life really means that the decision of whether or not to buy one, kind of depends on how much you love your handheld gaming. But whether you buy it or not, the fact remains that the Vita is one impressive handheld.


Monday 13 August 2012

US Box Office Top 10: 13th August 2012

After 3 weeks at No. 1, The Dark Knight Rises loses the top spot to this week's biggest release: The Bourne Legacy. The movie took in over $40 million and knocks The Dark Knight Rises down 2 places to No. 3, with another new release - comedy, The Campaign, starring Will Ferrell and Zack Galifianakis - taking the No. 2 spot.


The final new entry this week is another comedy, Hope Springs, starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. It made $15 million and comes in at a respectable No. 4.

Here's the Top 10 in full:

1. (-) The Bourne Legacy - $40.3 million
2. (-) The Campaign - $27.4 million
3. (1) The Dark Knight Rises - $19.5 million
4. (-) Hope Springs - $15.6 million
5. (3) Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days - $8.2 million
6. (2) Total Recall - $8.1 million
7. (4) Ice Age: Continental Drift - $6.75 million
8. (7) Ted - $3.29 million
9. (6) Step Up 4: Miami Heat - $2.85 million
10. (5) The Watch - $2.2 million

So there's your Top 10 this week. Don't forget to like our Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter to keep updated. Meanwhile, here's a trailer for this week's new No. 1 - The Bourne Legacy:


UK Top 10 Games: 13th August 2012

With the annual shortage of new games in full swing, this week's top 10 remains largely unchanged. Olympics fever is evidently still at large with London 2012: The Official Video Game at No. 1 for the third week. The rest of the top 4 also remains unchanged with Lego Batman 2, Mario & Sonic, and Batman: Arkham City all holding their places at No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 respectively.


There are no new entries in this week's chart, however Dead Island: GOTY Edition does manage to climb into the top 10 from its No. 12 position last week.

Here's the Top 10 in full:

UK Top 10 Games (All Formats, All Prices):

1. (1) London 2012: The Official Video Game
2. (2) LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes
3. (3) Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games
4. (4) Batman: Arkham City
5. (7) The Amazing Spider-Man
6. (5) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
7. (8) Battlefield 3
8. (6) Assassin's Creed: Revelations
9. (12) Dead Island: GOTY Edition
10. (9) Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

Thursday 9 August 2012

Ted Review

Ted is the latest creation from the mind of Seth Macfarlane - otherwise known as the creator of Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show and more. Ted is his first live-action movie - has he been able to carry his TV magic over to the big screen? For the most part, yes.


Ted is an entertaining comedy with plenty of funny moments, helped along by the excellent cast - many of which are Family Guy veterans. Mark Wahlberg is surprisingly likeable as John Bennett, and Mila Kunis is fun (as always) as Lori, John's long-term girlfriend. And then of course there's Ted, voiced by Macfarlane, it is he who delivers the majority of the funny moments. While it's hard to deny the character sounds almost exactly like Peter Griffin, that doesn't make him any less funny.

However, this being from the creator of Family Guy, you can imagine there might be a few jokes that just miss the mark, and unfortunately that does happen here. It's not a huge problem, but sometimes these less than funny moments drag on a little longer than I would have liked.

Something that should be praised though, is the way Ted is portrayed on the big screen. For a character that's completely computer-generated he looks very real, and is a surprisingly believable character.


The story behind Ted is a simple one. Ted is John's best friend, but a bad influence. John's girlfriend Lori is sick of their irresponsible behaviour and wants Ted to move out. It's a story that's been done before, and it's a shame they couldn't have gone for something a little more original - but that doesn't stop it from being entertaining and one of the best comedies of the Summer.

If your looking for a simple, funny movie, then Ted won't disappoint. It's got a great cast and a lot of funny moments, but there's no denying that the jokes are hit and miss and the plot is unoriginal. But in the end though, it's still a comedy worth seeing.