Staff Picks – Week of October 7th, 2016

It’s Friday! You know what that means! It is time for our picks of the week! Each week a few of our crew share with you what has been keeping them entertained.  Don’t forget to check out the site to see if you missed anything this week. We always have new content for you to enjoy. If you are wondering what happened to the site this past Wednesday, I will tell you!  Neil Gaiman retweeted Stephanie Pouliotte’s review of his upcoming Dark Horse book, Troll Bridge, and everyone rushed to our site to read the review and knocked us out for a bit. We are sorry for the minor inconvenience, but at the same time, thank you for flooding us to check the review out!

We also have other reviews for Wonder Woman #7, The Bone Witch, Black #1, Lake of Fire #2, Moonshine #1, Cannibal #1 and many others for your reading pleasure so you can decide what is worth your money this week!   We have you covered with movies as well! Check out the reviews for Shin Godzilla, The Magnificent Seven and Presenting Princess Shaw. Amelia shares with us her horrifying Mixtape of the Month for October. We also have Halloween articles rolling in, make sure you check out the first part of Rhian’s Halloween Horror Fest and Amelia and Billy continue with their 31 Spooky Nights, where they watch and review a different horror movie a night. I’m out of breath! We have so much content! Stay awhile and check it out! Let me move on to our picks of the week!

Amelia’s Pick of the Week – My staff pick of the week is A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. I love this series of books so much. Lemony Snicket’s thirteen books recounting the constant tragedies endured by the Baudelaire siblings are clever, funny, and heartbreaking all at once. Snicket’s sardonic style is some of the best storytelling I’ve ever seen, regardless of the age group this was written for, and Brett Helquist’s illustrations that cap each chapter add to the unique charm of the series. I own all thirteen books and am currently in the middle of rereading them. Others of my generation will site Harry Potter as their favourite series, but A Series of Unfortunate Events will always be mine!

Rhian’s Pick of the Week – My Pick of the Week is a genre of film that has been in the papers a lot recently: Live Action. I’ve become slightly obsessed and maybe a tad bit over-excited for all the live-action films that are coming our way. Which ones am I most excited about? Well Bleach is being made into a live-action film!! If anyone wants to see images they are floating about on the internet somewhere. Also Disney is making a live-action version of Mulan, the best Disney princess! The live-action I’m really excited about though is Gintama. The cast looks absolutely perfect, especially Yuuya Yagira as Toshiro Hijikata!! I also found out this week that Takashi Miike is directing a live-action of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure!!! Of course there is also the live-action Lion King which I cannot wait to see and also, like everyone else I am very very excited to see Emma Watson as Belle. So many live-action films so little time!!!

Michael’s Pick of the Week – My pick this week is HBO’s new series, Westworld. It’s a re-imagining of the 1973 Michael Chrichton movie of the same name. I’ve been anticipating this show for a while. It’s been delayed for over a year due to some retooling behind the scenes, so I was also a little wary about the quality. The pilot episode completely blew me away. It helps that the cast is stacked (Evan Rachel Wood, Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Wright and Ed Harris all star in it) and the imagery is exactly what you’d expect from a ridiculously expensive HBO series. Westworld does a great job expanding on the ideas introduced in the film, even, in some cases, subverting them. I’m a sucker for a good robot morality tale, so I’m immediately drawn in. The western setting is just icing on the cake. I look forward to watching this series ever Sunday for the next nine weeks and, if the fantastic ratings hold, many more seasons afterwards. Definitely get in on this series on the ground floor.

David’s Pick of the Week – My pick of the week is FIFA 17 for the Xbox One.  I am a soccer junkie, I love the sport, I play the sport, I LIVE the sport! So each year, I look forward to the new release so I can spend numerous hours building up fantasy team to play other players online or play a manager career with my beloved Manchester United.  If you are a soccer fan, then you are going to love the game this year. First off, EA is using the Frostbite engine for the first time in this series and the game looks amazing! The players don’t look as cartoonish and are more realistic.  FIFA’s headline feature is The Journey, you take control of a young upcoming 17 year old talent and guide him through his career.  It’s an interesting mode that is fun but already I’m looking to the future series because surely this mode will be fine tuned in later versions to make it feel more complete.  The fan favorite, as well as my favorite, Ultimate Team is back. In Ultimate Team, you open virtual packs of cards to get players and goodies to build your own club.  You play games to win coins, so you can spend the coins on more packs of cards or take a trip to the Transfer Market and search out the specific players you want to buy.  You can sell your unwanted players as well.  You play through different divisions, higher divisions are more skilled players and based on your record, you are either promoted or demoted. It can get intense and it is fun building your team to have the exact chemistry so all the players gel on the pitch. If you love soccer/football, then you HAVE to pick this up.