The US-led mission in Afghanistan is coming to an end this year, with allied forces withdrawing from the country's fractious Helmand Province earlier this week.

With coalition troops leaving Afghanistan to meet their withdrawal deadline this calendar year, there's no better time to watch Ben Anderson's 2013 documentary: "This Is What Winning Looks Like".

The British producer spent six years in the country, capturing a damning picture of both the Afghan National Army and the US-led coalition's efforts to train it.

Rampant corruption, illiteracy, technical incompetence, and a Taliban threat indistinguishable from provincial civilians are only a few of the problems stacked against the prospect of the Afghan state's meeting success by western standards. It's a reminder of the uncertainty that lies ahead for the country, and the failure of the US to fulfill many of its major goals.

The documentary takes its title from the words of American General John Allen in February 2013, on his last day as head of NATO forces in Afghanistan. Allen's words were meant to inspire. The documentary adopts them with dark irony.

At a patrol base, US soldiers discover that Afghan troops have been detaining four men in a makeshift prison of stacked sandbags. An interpreter translates their version of the facts ...

... but confronted about the illegal detention, an Afghan soldier puts his foot down, and the Americans see little choice but to back off in response. A US soldier later tells one of his comrades: "Just wait, I don't want to piss them off. It's their show." The whole episode is just one example of a lack of communication and differing standards between the Afghan and US militaries.

Imagine the rollercoasters: cinema's king of whimsy, Wes Anderson, is planning to build a theme park with musical collaborator Mark Mothersbaugh.

Mothersbaugh, who also fronts the band Devo and is a visual artist, has scored four of Anderson's most iconic films: his debut feature Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.

In the foreword to his new art book published this week, Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia, Anderson wrote that he hoped to work with Mothersbaugh on a new project entirely.

"I hope to soon secure the means to commission the construction of an important and sizeable theme park to be conceived and designed entirely by Mark Mothersbaugh," Anderson said. "For 40 years he has set about creating a body of work which amounts to his own Magic Kingdom, where the visitor is amused and frightened, often simultaneously."

Anderson's work has already ventured outside the cinema, with a book, The Wes Anderson Collection, released last year.

His most recent film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, which starred Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton, was his biggest live-action success in the UK to date, reaching number one at the box office.

In his five-star review of the film, Telegraph film critic Tim Robey said, "Anderson doesn’t milk nostalgia, in the misty-eyed old Hollywood mode, but turns it on its head. We find ourselves situated in a roomy and delectable vision of the past, feeling oddly nostalgic for the present."
While Anderson states the creative design will be wholly Mothersbaugh's, we must surely hold out for the inevitable Bill Murray cameo.

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When Chris Hemsworth first tried out for a role in Home and Away, he missed out, before going on to spend three years playing Kim Hyde in the Sydney-based beachside soapie.

The 31-year-old Melbourne-born actor, who grew up on cattle stations in the Northern Territory, left the show in 2007 to concentrate on movie acting and in 2011 became the superhero Thor in the Marvel Comics movie franchise.

Last night he was named 2014′s sexiest man alive by People magazine.

Showing typically Australian humour, Hemsworth said the first thing that went through his mind when told about the honour was “Good, but you’re a couple of years late. I hit my peak a few years ago. I’m in decline now, so I’m not sure I deserve it”.

The father of three, including eight-month-old twin boys, who’s married to Spanish actress and model Elsa Pataky, told People his wife thought it was “pretty funny” and he’d put the trophy on the mantelpiece to remind her in later as he went bald.

He also hoped it would get him out of domestic duties.

“I can just say to her, ‘Now remember, this is what the people think, so I don’t need to do the dishes anymore, I don’t need to change nappies. I’m above that. I’ve made it now.’ ” Hemsworth said.

Perhaps his concerns about household chores had something to do with the fact that People magazine got Hemsworth to read a vacuum cleaner manual as proof of how sexy it is. You can watch it here.

But Hemsworth no doubt confirmed his status with women all over the world when he declared that the sexiest person in the world was his wife.

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Movies about mathematicians are rare, the problem being that the real action is all in the head. At first sight, maths doesn't quite have the cinematic potential of a car chase or a romantic love story.

But The Imitation Game has approached it head on. The remarkable thing about the story it tells is that it is not just about the maths, that scarily incomprehensible abstraction.

It is a story so bizarre and intensely moving, you'd have trouble inventing it.

In 1936 a 24-year-old mathematician called Alan Turing wrote a paper on computable numbers. This paper contained something we now call "the Universal Turing Machine".

When working at Bletchley Park in World War II, the machine that Turing designed to crack the supposedly unbreakable German Enigma code: the Turing-Welchman Bombe, was a primitive prototype of the machine he imagined, and of the modern computer. It was not yet "universal", but it helped the Bletchley Park heroes – almost 10,000 of them – shorten World War II by at least two years.

This is the story at the centre of The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. It's a film that might finally be making Turing the household name he should be.

Imitation

Director Morten Tyldum set himself a hard task. There's the double hurdle of accurately portraying somebody's life, as well as making some sense of the mathematics at the heart of the film; to make it understandable, as well as doing it justice.

It is the scriptwriter Graham Moore who made the director's task doable. A degree of creative license is essential when making a film that is at once a biopic, an exploration of a key moment of history – and also has complex maths and computing at its heart. And so unsurprisingly, The Imitation Game is already being computed quite differently by individual movie goers and critics.

You might expect me, as a mathematician and Turing champion, to be its harshest critic. But actually it was Turing's mathematics that helped me understand and appreciate what the film makers are doing. Turing's mathematics splits information into increasing levels of complexity. This is mirrored in the case of the film where some historical details are added or changed to help us, the viewers, have more insight into the real story.

So for me, the beauty of the thing is that this kind of imitation is at the root of Graham Moore's fantastic script. It is present both in Turing's scientific focus and in his life as a gay man on "the autistic spectrum"– the latter nicely described by Morten Tyldum as "thinking different". For living and working mathematicians, it is the "neuro-typicals" who are "different".

This is beautifully shown in a moving scene in which Turing gives his team some apples after having been advised by Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) that they are more likely to help him in his plan if they like him. This is just part of Alan's personal imitation game.

This and more makes the film fabulously engrossing, a wonderful creative imitation of the world of Turing that we have left behind us. The brilliant creative team – director, score composer, and some wonderful actors – have astutely accepted that Turing's mentality has to be at the very centre of the film. The result is a youthful and creative engagement with the Turing story.

What didn't happen

There is a need for boldness when dramatising the hidden inner reality of Turing's amazing mental engagement with the machine and its meaning. To achieve this, the film imports various figures and elements into the story that don't quite fit the history. Soviet spy John Cairncross is teleported from a quite different hut into Turing's decrypting team at Bletchley Park, for example, something Turing historian Andrew Hodges has questioned publicly.

To me this made good sense. Using this dramatic device our appreciation of the sheer complexity, pain, and incomputability of the imitation game – and its necessity in wartime Europe – is enriched. Another example is the seeming arrogance and socially abrasiveness of Turing in some scenes; this time dramatically reflecting the undoubted isolating role of originality of thinking and mathematical rationality.

Did Alan ever give his team apples after being advised on the usefulness of being liked? Of course not, but it's a beautiful and truthful moment in the film. Our amusement is affectionate and – as Graham Moore will have intended – complex. Did Alan ever have a replica of the Bletchley Park Bombe in his final years in the house in Wilmslow, obsessed with the mysteries of the machine called Christopher? Obviously not. But he was busy probing other mysteries (something called morphogenesis), and was sad and isolated. And so that scene is a small but dramatically potent adjustment, one of the most poignant and complex moments of this moving and thought-provoking film.

It was not until a second viewing that I was fully adjusted to these shifts and additions. I just knew too much. I started out wanting an enormous amount of detail – like that present in the Andrew Hodges's biography, the inspiration for the film. And I wanted detail explained of the wide spectrum of scientific areas Turing brought his genius to.

But what eventually took hold, powerfully, was the depiction of a very real Turing – and an inner experience of his fundamental thinking on the mathematics, an admirable achievement.

I guess this is not a film for all experts. It's aimed at the many people who until now have known little or nothing of Turing and his unique contribution to our modern world. The directing and acting – especially from Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley – is outstanding. And the resulting learning experience is potentially universal. It's impossible to tell what will emerge from this cinematic playing out of such a poignantly adventurous Imitation Game.

S. Barry Cooper does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

SEE ALSO: 8 Reasons Discovery's Snake-Eats-Man-Alive Show Is A Terrible Idea

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One of America's elite special operations units was back in the spotlight when a SEAL claiming to be the "trigger man" who killed Osama bin Laden in May of 2011 decided to reveal his identity on a Fox News special last month.

A recent PBS documentary, "Navy SEALs - Their Untold Story," digs into the history of their predecessors during World War II, their first official operations in the Vietnam War, and their deployment in 21st century conflicts.

Along the way, former commandos tell the stories of some of the SEALs' most incredible covert operations.

There are only around 2,000 active Navy SEALs — and they endure maybe the hardest military training anywhere in the world.

A retired SEAL explains that during the rigorous training known as "hell week,""you stay up for 120 hours ... and you get about 3 or 4 hours sleep."

Here trainees swim with their hands bound behind their backs, a feat only excellent swimmers can pull off.

It's the end of an era.

UK mobile provider EE is doing away with "Orange Wednesdays," a mid-week cinema deal that's been a British institution for more than 10 years. 

The offer, which includes a free pizza and cinema ticket, ends in February 2015. 

A spokesperson at EE told Business Insider why the company is closing the curtain on its famous deal:

“Orange Wednesday launched over a decade ago and at its peak was a massive success and an iconic promotion. 

"After 10 great years our brand has changed and our customers’ viewing habits have also evolved so it’s time to move on. That’s why the final credits will roll for Orange Wednesdays at the end of February 2015. We’re working on new customer entertainment rewards and we’ll provide more detail soon.”

The current promotion grants anyone on the EE network (or anyone who texts a friend on it asking for their passcode) 2-4-1 cinema tickets every Wednesday, and the same deal on any PizzaExpress main meal — with the added bonus of free doughballs, don't forget. It was the perfect first, second, 250th date. All that's required is a text to "241" and it's Tom Hanks and Peroni time.

Understandably, people are getting emotional. One Twitter user called Claire even claimed the cut is "the worst thing that has ever happened to me". Here are some more reactions:   

EE says Orange Wednesdays has been in "significant decline." Apparently the offer just isn't that popular anymore. Indeed, the above Twitter comments suggest otherwise — but EE can't ignore its figures. 

A spokesperson mentioned that 10 years ago Orange Wednesdays was a "unique" promotion, but these days other networks offer similar deals. On O2 Priority Moments for example, customers can get 45% off cinema tickets on a certain day. 

Fans shouldn't despair completely though.

Money Saving Expert says the cinema deal might be taken over by comparison site Compare the Market. A spokesperson reportedly told the website that it is "exploring a mutually beneficial partnership with the cinema industry."

EE noted a new offer is going to replace Orange Wednesdays. We'll let you know when something is confirmed. 

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The news that EE is stopping its much-loved "Orange Wednesdays" deal — a two-for-one movie-plus-pizza offer including free doughballs— was met with utter sadness across the UK. 

People took to Twitter en masse yesterday to proclaim their grief at the idea of having to pay for a doughball on a Wednesday evening. "Orange Wednesdays" is trending on Twitter in the UK right now as a nation tries, tries, tries to find a way to heal and move on.

Wireless carrier EE has been running the promo, which entitles people to cinema tickets and PizzaExpress dinners, for 10 years but it's ending in February 2015. There has been a "significant decline" in people using it, EE tells Business Insider.

But there's hope.

Industry insiders say a new deal could be in the pipeline. A spokesperson for the finance product price comparison site Compare the Market says the company is in talks with cinema marketers over a new promotion.

Business Insider was told:

"We can confirm that we are currently exploring a mutually beneficial partnership with the cinema industry."

Nothing is confirmed and, importantly, there's no talk over the possible deal having anything to do with pizza.

But Orange Wednesdays might not be dead after all.

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Cary Elwes starred as Westley in the 1987 film "The Princess Bride." While at a White House function in 1998, President Clinton pulled Elwes aside to tell him what a big fan of the film he was. 

Produced by Alex Kuzoian. Video courtesy of Associated Press.

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"MythBusters" cohost Adam Savage was left cold with the plot from "Interstellar." However, his knowledge of mechanics leads him to conclude that T.A.R.S. is the perfect robot. 

Produced by Justin Gmoser

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Cary Elwes acted alongside Andre the Giant in the 1987 film, The Princess Bride. In his new book, "As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride," Elwes recounts stories from the set of the film. He shares one of them here.

Produced by Alex Kuzoian. Video courtesy of Associated Press.

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea hates the currently scrapped Hollywood film that revolves around the assassination of its beloved leader, but the country has had a long love affair with cinema — of its own particular styling.

In the six decades since North Korea began to cultivate its own film industry, a South Korean director and his movie star wife have been kidnapped, a Godzilla-inspired monster movie has bombed at the box office in the South, American defectors have hammed it up in anti-U.S. propaganda films — and there has even been a foray into "girl power" cinema with the more recent "Comrade Kim Goes Flying."

The U.S. blames North Korea for the recent cyberattack on Sony Pictures, which produced "The Interview," and also for threats of terror attacks against U.S. movie theaters. Sony canceled the movie's release. North Korea has denied a role in the hacking, but also praised it as a "righteous deed."

Pyongyang began building its cinema industry in the 1950s as a wing of a propaganda machine meant to glorify the country's late founder, Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of current leader Kim Jong Un. The elder Kim once declared movies to be the most important tool to educate the masses, according to archive material maintained by the South Korean government.

North Korean moviemakers have since dabbled with science fiction, action and romantic comedy, but they're mostly expected to stoke public animosity against rivals Washington and Seoul, and to portray the Kim family as a fearless bastion against evil foreign imperialists.

North Korea's progress in filmmaking technology has been slow, especially when compared to a South Korean film industry that's the envy of Asia.

The country's relative isolation means North Korean filmmakers rarely get the opportunity to work with foreign artists. A notable exception was "Comrade Kim Goes Flying," a romantic comedy from 2012 about a young female coal miner who dreams of becoming a trapeze artist. The movie was co-produced with Western partners.

The 1980s were a heyday for North Korean movies. The current leader's father, Kim Jong Il, was an ardent movie buff and ensured generous funding for filmmakers.

When Kim soured on the quality of films produced by his countrymen, he ordered the abduction of South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his then-wife, actress Choi Eun-hee, in 1978, Shin said after he escaped the North in 1986.

Shin shook the North Korean movie scene with his entertainment-focused works. They included 1984's "Love, Love, My Love," responsible for the first on-screen kiss in North Korean films, and "Runaway," an action film released the same year that included an exploding train, according to a South Korean government website.

Shin and Choi managed to escape during a business trip to Vienna in 1986, a year after Shin completed "Pulgasari," a science-fiction film inspired by Japan's iconic "Godzilla" series. Pulgasari, which features an actor waddling around in a padded monster suit, flopped when it was released in South Korea in 2000 during a period of warmer relations between the rivals.

North Korea has long shown American characters in its movies as villains, sometimes played by North Koreans in makeup, but also by actual Americans who defected to the North in the 1960s. Four such Americans appeared together as evil capitalists and military officials in "Nameless Heroes," a 20-part propaganda film series filmed from 1979 to 1981, according to the South Korean government website.

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Over the next few weeks, Vulture will speak to the screenwriters behind 2014's most acclaimed movies about the scenes they found most difficult to crack. Which pivotal sequences underwent the biggest transformations on their way from script to screen?

Today, writer-director Damien Chazelle explains why the first scene of "Whiplash" sets up everything you need to know about the relationship between Andrew (Miles Teller) and his tyrannical music teacher Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). The scene is then excerpted below.

I knew I wanted to begin the movie with my main character drumming. I wanted it to be almost reductive: stick all the movie's main ingredients into the first few minutes. Drummer, music school, mean teacher. No beating around the bush. Cram the entire movie in miniature into the opening scene.

The upside was that, hopefully, I'd grab the audience's attention right away. (Always a worry given the pitch for this movie began with the words jazz drummer.) On the other hand, if the opening moments didn't land, I was in trouble.

I had nothing else up my sleeve: The movie was this scene. It was the scary teacher going after the scared student. The subsequent 100 minutes of the movie are just a replay of this same scene, in different guises.

I like movies that do that — establish a theme right away, then perform a series of variations on that theme. To me it's a very musical way of approaching storytelling.

I reworked the scene to make sure it was as clearly articulated as possible. The first pass was seven pages; I got it down to five, then four, then finally three. It was about squeezing everything I needed — the setting, the tone, the introduction of the movie's protagonist and antagonist, the immediate conflict — into as little time as I could manage. Then, when we shot it, my editor and I wound up trimming a few more lines of dialogue.

A bigger challenge than tightening the scene wound up being, how do you make Fletcher, the teacher, scary? He hasn't screamed yet. He hasn't done anything physical. But we have to feel his power, and his ability to inspire fear, right from these early moments. I found keeping his language simple and stark was helpful. He is the epitome of no-bullshit. And he has poise, whereas Andrew, the main character, just flails. The aborted double-time swing becomes the key to their entire relationship: Andrew trying and failing to live up to the standard Fletcher has set for him — and Fletcher turning the whole thing into a joke, but still a joke that stings.

Along those lines, the place-setting title card at the end of the scene felt like a nice punch line to me. Welcome to school.

SEE ALSO: 14 movies to see this winter

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - In the escalating battle of big data vs. human experts, score another win for numbers.

The most accurate predictions of which movies the U.S. Library of Congress will deem "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" are not the views of critics or fans but a simple algorithm applied to a database, according to a study published on Monday.

The crucial data, scientists reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are what the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) calls "Connections" - films, television episodes and other works that allude to an earlier movie.

For 15,425 films in IMDB.com examined in the study, the measure that was most predictive of which made it into the Library of Congress's National Film Registry, which honors "significant" movies, was the number of references to it by other films released many years later.

The 1972 classic "The Godfather," for instance, is referred to by 1,323 films and television episodes, which as recently as 2014 quoted the "offer he can't refuse" line, referred to the famous horse-head scene, or played the theme music, for instance. "Godfather" made the registry in 1990.

The number of references to a film more than 25 years after its release was a nearly infallible predictor of whether it would make the registry, topping 91 percent accuracy, said applied mathematician and study author Max Wasserman of Northwestern University.

Critics' judgments, Oscar wins, and box-office numbers did not come close.

Films are nominated for the registry by the public and chosen by the Librarian of Congress in consultation with a board of experts including critics, academics, directors, screenwriters and other industry insiders.

By the 25-year-lag rule, the 1971 box-office disappointment "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" should be in the registry: IMDb lists 52 long-lag citations to it, the 37th most in the Northwestern analysis.

In December, six months after the scientists submitted their paper, the Library added "Willy Wonka" to the list of 650 cinematic immortals, just as the research predicted.

"Experts have biases that can affect how they evaluate things," said physicist and co-author Luis A.N. Amaral of Northwestern. "Automated, objective methods don't suffer from that. It may hurt our pride, but they can perform as well as or better than experts."

Other movies identified by the Northwestern algorithm as likely to make the Registry include "Dumbo,""Spartacus" and "The Shining."

Of course, humans are not entirely superfluous: flesh-and-blood creators must decide to refer to an earlier gem in order to establish the crucial IMDb "connections."

(Reporting by Sharon Begley; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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A cool video has emerged of amateur filmmakers recreating Hollywood-inspired special effects.

The footage, shot by a young filmmaking group called 'Scrape the Sky' in Nancy, France, shows the viewer how to reproduce classic movie effects on a tight budget.

Produced by Jason Gaines. Video courtesy of Associated Press.

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The trailer for the upcoming 20th Century Fox film "Hitman: Agent 47" is out. The movie is about a genetically engineered assassin and includes all the explosions, guns, and fights to fill your action movie needs. It's a reboot of the 2007 film "Hitman".

"Hitman: Agent 47" will be released next summer.

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The "Fifty Shades of Grey" movie made $81.7 million on its opening weekend, making it the most successful Presidents Day weekend debut in history and one of the biggest debuts for an R-rated movie. 

Released in 2011, the first book became the fastest-selling novel written for adults of all time, and the three-part trilogy sold more than 100 million copies, putting it in the same class as the "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" series and making its author, E.L. James, over $90 million in one year.

This is quizzical, given that the critical consensus is that both the books and the movie are pretty terrible.

Why have so many people become obsessed with "Fifty Shades" in print and on the screen? 

To untangle that knot, we've gathered possible explanations from a range of reporters, critics, and academics: 

While appearing new and divisive, "Fifty Shades" is an old, beloved story.

If you cut away the light bondage, "Fifty Shades" is the same story as "Beauty and the Beast," which was originally a French fairy tale first published in 1756 before becoming a blockbuster Disney feature. 

So it's kinky, yet familiar. 

"Fifty Shades" fits "the time-honored trope: innocent girl falls for troubled man, endures his anti-social behavior out of belief in his ultimate goodness, and eventually teaches him to be a sociable, polite member of society,"writes blogger Joe Bunting. 

That same "tame-the-ruffian" plot has been endlessly re-fashioned, from "Pretty Woman" to "My Fair Lady" to "Taming of the Shrew" to "10 Things I Hate About You." 

New technology made the book accessible — and hideable.

"Fifty Shades" started as an e-book sensation, which may have helped give it an initial lift. 

"People who like to trace all new trends back to new technology have offered this explanation — that women who wouldn't be seen dead reading smut on the tube could read it on their Kindle, and this launched a whole world of sales,"argues Guardian columnist Zoe Williams. 

It did. While e-books usually account for 20% of Random House's sales, 50% of "Fifty Shades" sales were digital.

Anti-fans couldn't stop talking about it. 

People love to hate "Fifty Shades," argue British feminist lit scholars Sarah Harman and Bethan Jones in a 2013 article for the journal Sexualities, and that's a big reason that the series has swelled in popularity. 

"We suggest that 'Fifty Shades' has ... generated an ironic, even guilty, fandom in which readers and viewers bemoan the series' flaws, while enjoying (sometimes furtively) the texts," they write. 

In this way, "hate reading" the books is a way of deeply engaging with them, as well as telling everybody about your taste. While the haters might dismiss the books as "bad literature,""popular," and "drivel," they're still talking about the books with their friends — making everybody more curious about what's inside. 

It worked for the movie, too. MSNBC editor Adam Howard has said that "Fifty Shades" is a zeitgeist-capturing conversation-driver like another big 2015 release — "American Sniper."

"These are films that become events because of the 'controversy' they generate as well as their box office numbers (which becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy),"Howard writes. "They drive audiences into pro- or con- camps that often have little do with a film's merits and much more to do with what they represent for their fans or detractors."

The movie was incredibly well-timed.

Universal was originally going to release the "Fifty Shades" movie in October 2014, but saved it for the Valentine's Day and Presidents Day combo weekend, usually a time reserved for family-friendly romantic comedies. 

"Fifty Shades" is anything but family friendly. 

"The gamble paid off,"BoxOffice.com analyst Phil Contrino tells Variety."It flies in the face of what you'd expect to be released on that day. It's usually safe and non-offensive dramas and comedies."

The sex is good.

Most sex scenes in books are terrible, says Williams, the Guardian columnist. That's why the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award exists — for authors that describe sex with awkward metaphors and excruciatingly awkward sex scenes, which are often disconnected from the plot.

Then there's "Fifty Shades."

"James' sex scenes are not incidental; they are the meat of the plot, the crux of the conflict, the key to at least one of and possibly both the central characters," she says. "It is a sex book."

In this way, "Fifty Shades" captures something that serious fiction misses: sexuality. As New York Times critic A. O. Scott says, the novel "trashily" and "triumphantly" succeeded in being something that there's a proven market for: pornography. 

The film — in fitting snugly within the R-rating — is much less explicit than the book, but surprisingly relatable.

"The sex scenes are closer to actual sex between two people who like each other than almost anything I've ever seen in a theater,"writes Business Insider's Shane Ferro. "They're not even really that good, but they are better than the male-centric sexual cliché that Hollywood usually churns out."

SEE ALSO: Meet the author behind the steamy 'Fifty Shades Of Grey' phenomenon

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NOW WATCH: Learn what all the fuss is about — here's the regular guy's guide to 'Fifty Shades of Grey'

Today will be remembered for a long time to come: It's the last Wednesday, ever, where people in the UK can make use of Orange's (now EE) monumental deal to give customers on the network 2-4-1 cinema tickets. And let's not forget the buy one, get one free dinner at Pizza Express, too.

Every week, thousands (mainly students) would text "FILM" to 241 and descend on cinemas to make use of half-price tickets and the free doughballs Pizza Express provided with it's accompanying 2-4-1 promotion. Today, February 25, it's all going to happen for the last time.

Business Insider announced the deal was ending, after 10 golden years, back in December. The end of February was the noted culmination of the promotion, so we knew it was coming. But it's come around quickly. Naturally, many are now sad about the final Orange Wednesday and reliving some of their fondest memories on Twitter in a nostalgic haze.

One of the most popular memories is remembering that you had to be on the Orange network to make use of the offer. Of course, that was easily avoided — Wednesday afternoon would always be a flurry of texts from people on O2, Vodafone, and Three, all hoping one of their friends would send them the code.

People were incredibly emotional when EE announced the news. The company cited a "decline" in uptake as the major reason why. At the time, a spokesman told BI UK:

Orange Wednesday launched over a decade ago and at its peak was a massive success and an iconic promotion. After 10 great years our brand has changed and our customers’ viewing habits have also evolved so it’s time to move on. That’s why the final credits will roll for Orange Wednesdays at the end of February 2015. We’re working on new customer entertainment rewards and we’ll provide more detail soon.

There has been speculation around a renewal of the promotion from Money Saving Expert, but as yet, none of the rumours have come to fruition. For film fans, it remains a desolate time.

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NOW WATCH: Check out the explosive trailer for the action movie 'Hitman: Agent 47'

Fans of "District 9" will have no trouble recognizing Neill Blomkamp's footprint in "Chappie," the Canadian-South African director's third feature film about a titanium police droid that gains consciousness thanks to a big software update.

Blomkamp's style is felt in a story that bounces among unlikely heroes, richer humor than what you'd get in the often lowest-common denominator chuckles of a Marvel flick, and a plot line of stakes that just go up and up.

That's all very parallel to what we saw in Blomkamp's directorial debut in 2009's "District 9."

Despite some pretty negative reviews, and an underwhelming $13.3 million opening at the box office, "Chappie" is a movie that could easily be enjoyed a second time on the big screen.

A few plot details follow, but nothing too heavy in spoilers!

Once a ubiquitous member of the cop-robot force that helped rein in scary homicide rates in Johannesburg, Unit 022 is damaged and labeled fit for the scrapyard.

That's until his designer, an engineer named Deon (Dev Patel) who moonlights in Red Bull-fueled attempts at designing true AI, installs his latest software attempt into his head.

It works. Unit 022 becomes Chappie (voiced and motion-acted by Sharlto Copley), essentially a child with a hyper-capable body and a blistering learning pace. Vulture calls Chappie a robotic version of the widely-hated Jar Jar Binks. And sure, there's some validity in that — from the character's odd English and his bodily dimensions to his nervous traits.

But Chappie won't annoy you like Jar Jar did the masses of "Star Wars" fans. One early scene is actually pretty heart-wrenching, as Chappie is pushed into homelessness by stewards eager to toughen him up.

Unfortunately for him, Chappie is a hero lost among anti-heroes (balanced against a few villains). Chappie's malleability is used by a trio of bad but not totally rotten gangsters — they're in falsified debt to a ruthless warlord (Brandon Auret).

The gangsters are played by rap duo Die Antwoord's Yolandi Visser and Watkin Tudor Jones, alongside Jose Pablo Cantillo. Apparently the rappers weren't the easiest to get along with on the set. A South African publication reported on Jones' backseat directing, and heard from anonymous sources on the set that Blomkamp himself said "I don’t ever want to be in the same room as him again."

Too bad they won't work with Blomkamp again. Tudor Jones and Visser are a bright spot in a cast of more established names that don't stand out themselves.

They have the benefit of bringing their real-life physiques to the set, and even spray-paint a few decals from some of their albums onto Chappie's bodywork (not a bad product placement). The gangsters try to mold Chappie into an unbeatable asset for high crime, though Yolandi Visser's character is just as happy reading him a book at night.

Hugh Jackman plays Vincent Moore, a frustrated meathead smart enough to have engineered his own robotic weapon (the mind-controlled "Moose"), but not quite smart enough to see why Deon's versatile robots have performed better with the Johannesburg police's budget allocators. When he's not causing problems for Chappie and the gang, Jackman's character fumes at his desk, wringing his hands into a rugby ball.

Even Chappie's maker, Deon, doesn't have the best instincts as he's kept in thrall by the three gangsters, who in a limited way, have come to care for Chappie beyond his ability to pack muscle.

Here's a scene of them interacting with the robot:

Much of the film's humor arises from the dissonance between Chappie's unmatched ability to fight while remaining so child-like. Soon enough, the gangster's den starts to resemble an unlikely but recognizable, almost loving home for Chappie's accelerated boyhood.

Like any machine, he'll take order inputs to an extreme that humans would implicitly understand as not exactly what was meant.

Finally, "Chappie" keeps driving to greater and greater stakes. The gangsters might be in it for Chappie's criminal potential, but that's soon overtaken by the world-shifting implications of bona fide artificial intelligence — a machine that learns, feels, fears, and longs to survive. Just like the bumbling protagonist Blomkamp's hit "District 9," the characters in "Chappie" are lost in something a lot greater than them.

Overall, "Chappie" is a solid action flick with a plot spine strong enough to string together the gunshow set-pieces, which come quickly enough. Blomkamp keeps the same mind-blowing contrast between futuristic weaponry and gritty urban settings we enjoyed on our last tour of near-future Johannesburg with "District 9."

The ending raises a few questions — some of them on the nature of AI, others, less appealingly, about the plausibility of the last few scenes, which we won't spoil here.

Perhaps one of the biggest questions the film posits is what happens when AI is smart enough to do more than it was designed for?

It's a question a few films this year will focus on from British thriller "Ex Machina" to the highly-anticipated "Avengers" sequel.

At the very least, if you enjoyed "District 9"— quirks, action, plot and all — Blomkamp's latest won't disappoint.

Watch a trailer for the film below:

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Price comparison site Compare the Market has stepped in to save "Orange Wednesdays" and is going to offer 2-4-1 cinema tickets in the same way EE did for a decade.

The new scheme is called "Meerkat Movies" and works in a similar way, Digital Spy reports. (the Meerkats are what Compare the Market uses in its advertising campaigns.) 

EE (called Orange in the UK when it started the deal) used to give customers two cinema tickets for the price of one, and Pizza Express pizzas every Wednesday, to any customer who texted "FILM" to 241. EE announced it would be finishing the offer late last year and the final Orange Wednesday happened on February 25. Lots of people were emotional about the situation— Wednesday had become an unofficial cheap-date night for millions of Brits who enjoyed the promotion.

But all is not lost, because Compare the Market has now confirmed it will replace the deal. Business Insider first reported back in December that sources in the industry said the price comparison site was planning to salvage the film deal.

Instead of having a mobile phone contract with EE, however, people will now be able to qualify for discounted cinema tickets by purchasing a product on comparethemarket.com. Digital Spy says that tickets will be redeemable through a code on a new app, called "Meerkat Movies," on both iOS and Android. The movie nights will be available on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. 

Marketing director Mark Vile told Digital Spy: "This is the biggest step change for the brand since launching the Meerkat Toy Collection in 2011 and reinforces our commitment to rewarding our customers. Meerkat Movies opens up the exciting world of film for us and allows us to offer our customers the magic of movies for less every Tuesday and Wednesday for a whole year."

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NOW WATCH: This is what happens to your brain and body when you check your phone before bed

This incredible short film by director Paul Trillo shows a look at the infinite possibilities within the everyday. The film follows a day in the life of Vincent, "Subject X" and the many variations that exist throughout his universe.

Video courtesy of Paul Trillo

See more of Paul Trillo's work at paultrillo.com

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