Stuff weekender 24/4/15
The films to watch, apps to download and things to do this weekend
Comic book fans assemble.
This weekend marks your first opportunity to watch The Avengers: Age Of Ultron, the sequel to the third-highest-grossing film ever. And if you want to venture into the Marvel universe without leaving your sofa, then you can catch X-Men: Days Of Future Past on Now TV.
Don’t worry, non-comic book fans – we’ve got you covered too. You can head over to London’s Design Museum to see the inventions that just might become the next big things, while audiophiles should have a listen to the great new Alabama Shakes album.
Have fun.
GAME TO DOWNLOAD: ALTO’S ADVENTURE
Like a combination of Canabalt and Whale Trail (with added llamas), Alto’s Adventure is a beautifully designed, one-button endless runner (well, snowboarder) that starts at the top of a procedurally generated mountain.
We assume there is no bottom, but in your quest to reach it you’ll jump chasms and do flips, day will turn to night, rain and snow will fall and you’ll be pursued by spooky elders. An elegantly simple throwback without any in-app purchases.
Stuff says ★★★★✩
5-MINUTE HACK: FINE-TUNE SPOTIFY
You’ve got Spotify Premium, hungry ears and a fine bottle of spare time. It’s a good start; now for the finishing touches:
1. To auto-generate playlists based on your mood, go to ‘app finder’ and install ‘Moodagent’. Here you can choose an atmosphere or even select the track you’d like to inform the mood of your playlist.
2. Like Spotify’s Radio function but still get frequent clangers? Go to getdenied.com and install the free trial Mac app. This will auto-skip songs you don’t like.
3. To explore the unloved tundra of Spotify songs that somehow have a play count of zero, head to forgotify.com. Your bravery might just be rewarded with a newfound love of Hungarian drone metal.
FILM TO WATCH: AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
Get ready to meet the Maximoff siblings Pietro and Wanda, both of whom come wielding some serious power in the follow-up to Avengers Assemble. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays the former, who in the Marvel universe is the fastest man in the world, while Elizabeth Olsen as his sister has some serious chaos and probability-manipulation powers.
They join the rest of the Avengers gang – Hulk, Captain America and of course Iron Man – as they battle a crazed artificial intelligence hellbent on killing off humanity. (But then aren’t they always? We live for the day when someone makes a film about a crazed AI hellbent on helping humanity create the perfect pizza and solving the problems of rush-hour traffic.)
Anyway, Avengers: Age Of Ultron is really rather good. We know this because we’ve seen it – and we suggest you take some time this weekend to do the same.
APP TO DOWNLOAD: ENLIGHT
With so many photo editing apps available to download on the app store, it’s hard to settle on one that will cover all of your needs. Enlight, however, ticks all the boxes.
It enables you to merge photos to create a double exposure effect, apply almost every filter under the sun and edit almost any specific aspect of the photo in question. Plus, the ability to save sessions then continue later is a real boon for the easily distracted. We can’t see why you’d look anywhere else for your mobile photo editing needs.
THE WEEK’S MUST-READS
Missed the big stories this week? These are the links you’re looking for:
Yes, there really is a giant Android robot urinating on the Apple logo in Google Maps
10 properly interesting apps for your new Apple Watch
Everything we know so far about the LG G4
YouTube at 10: The future of music playback and the death of magazines. Oh, and some videos
E3 2015: the games to look out for
EE’s just made what might be 2015’s best budget smartphone
Why it’s time to get pumped about HDR television
How to change politicians’ names on any website (and your Twitter feed)
Sony officially announces the Xperia Z4, but it’s staying in Japan for now
The Vector Luna smartwatch has a 30-day battery life and we love it
ALBUM TO LISTEN TO: SOUND & COLOUR
Alabama Shakes’ frontwoman Brittany Howard is a force of nature, filling the quartet’s debut album with a vocal wall of sound and marking them out as ones to watch. But truth be told, without Howard it probably wouldn’t have stood out much at all.
Sound & Color is a different beast: Howard’s still front and centre but the guitar solo-laden Gimme All Your Love and Black Keys-esque Future People show there’s a life for them beyond just being a vehicle for a big voice.
Stuff says ★★★★★
STREAMING NOW…
On Netflix: Star Trek: Into Darkness
You don’t have to be a Benedict Cumberbatch obsessive to enjoy the second Star Trek reboot – maybe you go all weak at the knees for Chris Pine instead? Alternatively, you could just enjoy the excellent on-screen clash between Pine’s brave and reckless Captain Kirk and Cumberbatch’s scheming, sinister Khan. Obsessive Tekkies may bristle at the all-action approach here – it doesn’t exactly major on subtlety – but the rest of us will be too busy enjoying the spectacle to worry about what they think.
On Amazon Prime: Suits Season 3
With the possible exception of Mad Men, Suits is the slickest, best dressed show to grace our TV screens in recent years. Gabriel Macht is outstanding as the smooth-talking, persuasive, well dressed Harvey Specter, a man who _really_ doesn’t like to lose. So think of him as the Don Draper of the courthouse.
Season three has now joined the first two on Amazon Prime, making this weekend the ideal time to introduce yourself to the show’s dramatic, intertwining storylines.
On Now TV: X-Men: Days of Future Past
DoFP is an odd beast, fitting chronologically between 2011’s period piece X-Men: First Class and 2006’s futuristic X-Men: The Last Stand, and flitting about between the ’70s and the 2220s. But while it might jump about in time, it’s a consistently excellent action flick, and probably the best in the franchise since the first couple.
You’ll be hard pushed to find a better action scene in a movie than that which takes place in the Pentagon kitchen here, while the excellent cast is a who’s who of modern movie icons: Fassbender! Jackman! Stewart! McKellen! Lawrence! Paquin! Oh, and Peter Dinklage, who proves he’s nothing if not versatile as he swaps the medieval tunics of Game Of Thrones’ scheming Tyrion Lannister for the sharp ’70s suits and bushy ‘tache of the scheming Bolivar Trask.
EVENT TO VISIT: DESIGNS OF THE YEAR 2015
The Designs Of The Year exhibition at London’s Design Museum is always well worth checking out, showcasing as it does the best of the beautiful and the most briliant of the creative.
Tech fans will be happy to see the likes of the BMW i8 and Tesla Model S featuring this year, alongside works from the worlds of fashion and architecture.
For those of you wondering what you’re looking at above, it’s One Central Park in Sydney: a major mixed-use urban renewal project which boasts vertical gardens as well as a heliostat that turns into LED artwork at night.
To see some more of designs from some of the brightest minds the world has to offer, head to the site to get tickets now.
ON TERRESTRIAL TV: PAUL
We might as well tell it like it is straight away: Paul is not quite in the same league as Shaun Of The Dead. It’s no Spaced or Hot Fuzz either. But once you’ve swallowed your disappointment you’ll be free to concentrate on the fact that it’s still a very decent sci-fi comedy starring Nick Frost and Simon Pegg and therefore better than about 99% of the fare on TV this weekend.
There, that wasn’t so bad was it?
Watch Paul at 9pm on Saturday (25th) on Channel 4
Kyle Pittman
Apprentice Web Producer 
