Film Review: Pandorica

My girlfriend and I went to see new film Pandorica last night. You may or may not have heard of Pandorica, just in case you haven't it's a relatively small budget British film, billed as a post apocalyptic "Future Reset", staring Marc Zammit, Jade-Fenix Hobday, Adam Bond, Luke D'Silva, Laura Marie Howard and Bentley Kalu. The film was directed by Tom Paton, who's experience in directing has been mostly with music videos, but he decided to extend his talent to feature films.

Filmed primarily in Billericay in Essex, with additional scenes filmed in the Lake District, British actors, British director and British crew, this film is a truly independent British film. One of the refreshing parts of the film, trying not to give too much away, was the fact there was a very strong female lead character, which is lacking in a lot of high budget Hollywood made films, a female character that doesn't rely on a strong male character or romance in one way or another is a great feature of the film. The fact that the actresses involved in the film aren't experienced in acting, this being their first acting roles, but did a fantastic job portraying their characters.

Set in the future when reliance on technology has ended, remote civilisations survived and returned to simpler ways, in one tribe, three young adults were chosen to take the trial to become the next leader of the tribe, under the supervision of the currently leader, only one will leave the forest as the leader. In a way the film has a Hunger Games meets Vikings feel to it, Tom did a great job in directing the small group of actors on a small budget and on a short time scale. The actors themselves also did a great job, bringing the less advanced future to life. The cinematography of the film was great too, brilliant close action shots, amazing aerial shots and medium distance shots brought the atmosphere of a much bigger budget movie. Interest never waned either, the script (written by director, Tom) kept the viewer interested and always wanting to know what was going to happen next, which can happen on some movies.

Seeing the credits at the end, it was clear that not too many people were involved in the production of the movie. If you bother to stay to the end of the credits, you'll notice on Hollywood produced movies, the list of crew is seemingly never ending, with large groups of people responsible for each part of the movie, whether it be filming, music, special effects, location staff, etc, but with Pandorica, there was probably less people involved in the production of the whole movie than just one aspect of a Hollywood movie, proving you don't need millions of pounds budgets and hundreds (or thousands) of people involved to produce a good quality movie, which keeps you interested from start to finish. So a very big well done to all the cast and crew of the film.

The film is definitely worth the watch and definitely worth the money paid to go to see at the cinema and buy on DVD or Blu-Ray. I will admit it was a slightly surreal experience watching a film with a proportion of the cast and crew in the cinema, watching it with you, who stayed for a Q&A at the end of the movie. If you want to pre-order the DVD or Blu-Ray, go to: https://thefilmlabel.myshopify.com/ watch the film online now at Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.pandoricamovie.com/ and go to Twitter and follow: @PandoricaMovie , @TPAKproductions and @zammit_marc. The film listing is also on IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5131914/

A 10 out of 10 rated must see movie.

Product Review: HP Pavilion x2 10-054na Hybrid Tablet

Hi there, I recently purchased a new HP tablet to replace my old Tesco Hudl. I wanted a new tablet because the Hudl was starting to get annoying, apps were crashing and it was very slow, plus I never really got on with the Android operating system.

So, my new tablet had to have an operating system other than Android, so all or most Samsung and Sony tablets were out of the question and not too expensive either, so iPads were out of the question too, although I could have got a refurbished iPad Mini for £179 from Amazon, but it still seemed a lot of money for a refurbed 7 inch tablet and the iPad version of iOS is too similar to the iPhone I have, despite the compatibility novelty. So what were my options? Windows seemed to be the only operating system to go for, but what brand of tablet should I go for. There were plenty of relatively unknown brands to go for, so I was a bit dubious about those. In the end, I looked for known brands, a lot of which offered Android tablets, which I wanted to avoid, and those which offered Windows were generally £200+, so I looked at refurbs, and decided to buy a refurbished HP Pavilion x2 10-054na.

HP have always been a good brand, I've had HP printers for ages and thought it was a good brand to go for. While refurbished, the 10 inch tablet came with a purpose built detachable keyboard which had a built in track pad, which I'm currently using to write this blog, with the keyboard attached, it effectively turns the tablet into a mini laptop. An Intel Atom quad core processor, 2Gb of RAM, 32Gb storage, Bang & Olufson stereo speakers, a full size USB 2 socket, a USB C socket, HDMI out socket, MicroSD socket for expandable storage and the obligatory audio out socket, so it's really well equipped, all for £129. Pre-installed version of Windows was 8.1, but with the currently free upgrades to Windows 10, I upgraded straight away.

Good thing about Windows is that it's the full Home version of Windows that you get on a normal laptop, so you can use and install all your usual Windows compatible programs and apps, which is great but the down side is that when using the tablet in tablet mode, it can be a bit fiddly when using the touch screen, but it's easy enough when using the track pad. There are apps which are easy to use in tablet mode, but full Windows programs are better used with the keyboard in place and the tablet in laptop mode, but are still usable in tablet mode, using the touch screen rather than the trackpad and using the touch screen keyboard.

You can have the keyboard attached backwards and use it as a stand of tuck it in behind the tablet, but it seems a bit heavy as a tablet with the keyboard attached like this, and in laptop mode, it can be a little uncomfortable on your legs if you're used to using a full sized laptop. But in fairness if that bothers you, spend a bit more money and get a full sized laptop instead. Needless to say, as it's a tablet, it doesn't come with a CD or DVD drive built in either, but again, if that's something that bothers you, get a laptop, although, you could, if you wanted to, buy an external CD/DVD drive, as it can plug into the USB socket on the side of the tablet.

The general use of Windows seems very seamless so far, the use of the solid state memory as opposed to a hard disk might have something to do with that, I currently have a 32Gb microSD card in the expansion socket, but I have a 128Gb card on order, which I have been told (by HP themselves) will work, so plenty of storage once that's in, playback of YouTube videos seems very good too and loading of videos on the onboard storage or from the microSD is good and the sound quality is good.

Overall, my opinions of this tablet is very good. I am very pleased with my new purchase and should get plenty of use out of this tablet.

Here's a few pictures of it:

London Midland, Coventry Arena and The Half Arsed Advertising Campaign

Many, many people will be used to me complaining about another Train Operating Company (TOC) namely, Abellio Greater Anglia. But now, it's the turn of London Midland. While London Midland's Class 350 trains (4 carriage electric multiple units (EMUs)) are generally clean and tidy, when I've used them, the Class 350 trains can't use the line I want to complain about, as the line in question hasn't been electrified yet. The train generally used for that line is a Class 153 single carriage diesel multiple unit (DMU), occasionally two of them together at weekends.

The line I'm talking about, if you haven't already guessed is the Coventry to Nuneaton line. With stations on it as follows:

Coventry -- Coventry Arena -- Bedworth -- Bermuda Park -- Nuneaton

Coventry is on one branch of the West Coast Mainline and Nuneaton is on another branch of it, both branches are electrified, but the bit of rail in the middle isn't. But I won't keep banging on about that, the reason I am writing this blog post is the fact that Coventry Arena station and Bermuda Park station have recently been opened and the reason Coventry Arena was opened, right between Ricoh Arena and Arena Park Retail Park was to serve those places. But, alas, London Midland turned around and said they couldn't reasonably serve Coventry City FC and Wasps RFC home matches as the single carriage Class 153 they use on the line could only hold around 75 people and they couldn't get their hands on any other trains that could reasonably accommodate the football or rugby fans, so Coventry Arena station would close before and after matches. Kinda defeating the object of opening the station before they've even started. They're excuse was that they didn't have any spare DMU's and if they swapped DMU's around with other services, they'd have to cancel or short form other services.

So after several months and people (mainly me) complaining, London Midland, with the help of Wasps managed to arrange a couple of trial charter services for two Wasps games at the end of February and beginning of March. Great, we thought, sat in wonderment as to how they managed it and where they'd got a train from. Low and behold they got a couple of diesel locos borrowed from a freight train company and a rack of 6 carriages, which looked as though they were Anglia's cast off's, quite possibly the carriages that Abellio Greater Anglia couldn't be bothered with and if Abellio don't want them, you've got to wonder how bad they are.

But not only did they use carriages that might fall apart at any minute, they didn't stop the train at Bedworth or Bermuda Park, so if you were using either of these stations, you had to use train with an inadequate number of seats to get there, or go to Nuneaton or Coventry and get the charter train from there. They also decided to only advertise the charter service on Twitter and on their website, and I'll point out now that not everyone uses Twitter and a lot of people wouldn't have thought to check their website, given this, you'd have thought the boffins at London Midland's head office would have thought to get posters done up to put at stations, telling people about the trial charter services, but no, this idea passed them by. And rather than charging the usual fares, London Midland decided to charge more and offer people a free drink, WHAT!?! Really!?! Do you think people going to and from rugby matches need a free drink?

Combine missing out two of the stations, not advertising the services properly and charging higher fares and giving people free drinks, they didn't get a lot of bums of seats and then decided that carrying on the service wasn't "commercially viable". Yeah, there's a reason for that London Midland, read this blog and you'll find out why. I will grant that Bedworth and Bermuda Park stations can only accommodate 3 or 4 carriages at their platforms, but if they informed passengers, the passengers wanting to use these stations could used which ever carriages were going to be at the platforms, passengers generally aren't stupid, they could figure it out. Guys, if Abellio can figure that one out on their Witham to Braintree line when using 12 carriage trains during rush hour, I'm sure you guys can too (FYI: train station platforms between Witham and Braintree can only accommodate 8 carriages).

And another thing, if you can put ticket machines at Coventry Arena and Bermuda Park, put them in at Bedworth too, not trusting the people of Bedworth to buy tickets before joining the train is mildly insulting. Thanks....