accies1874
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Posts posted by accies1874
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Think it was four or five years ago that Guardiola first teased us with the prospect of an Ederson penalty. You can only imagine the buzz I got when I saw him about to take it.
That was Bernardo Silva's fourth penalty for City and the third to go down the middle, Foden had hit two and both went to the goalkeeper's left (which was where Lunin went) and Kovacic had hit one (low to goalkeeper's right). Real Madrid had clearly done as much homework as me - or I work for them...
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Worst case scenario, I'd go with Ralston and Fraser as the RWB options. I suppose Johnston could be a "bring him along" selection if the squad size gets increased, but I've not been a huge fan of him from the admittedly little I've seen.
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Have the play-off dates been announced yet? Had a quick Google but nothing's coming up for our division.
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33. Mothers' Instinct - Cinema
Had the screening all to myself for this which made a fairly trashy film more enjoyable.
Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway are obviously two great actresses and they get given free rein in their lead performances as two friends and neighbours whose relationship turns sour after the death of Anne Hathaway's son. The whole thing is pretty schlocky which is reflected in their performances, but I suppose the challenge for them was to have fun with that tone while also having their ulterior motives bubbling underneath. Disappointingly, it's thin on the ground when it comes to those underlying tensions. What you see is mostly what you get, so things ultimately fizzle out a bit in the conclusion.
That's a shame as there are good things in the film. I know the Utopic American Suburb with a Dark Secret is overplayed at this point (though I still like it), but the costuming, production design and cinematography do a good job of depicting that setting. There's an artificiality to the pastel colours of the costumes or sets, something that also reflects the conflict between Celine and Alice.
It could have easily fallen into the Crazy Mother/Wife trope, but it's established in a pretty ham-fisted argument early on that the whole thing is about a loss of purpose when your environment forces you to exist as an extension of other people (your husband and son).
34. Close Your Eyes - Cinema
Almost three hours long, but I found it to be completely mesmerising, despite the fact that it's pretty much just the main character, Miguel, talking to other people. It loves its dialogue and performances and is happy for the audience to just drink them in.
I knew nothing about it going in, so I wondered at first if it was gonna be a mystery as it establishes that an actor went missing while shooting a film directed by Miguel, and starts with a scene from that film set in a 20th century country estate, however that setting is then replaced by a bus stop in modern day Madrid which encapsulates the film's perception of the past and present. Despite it being clear early on that how we access the past is gonna be a cornerstone of the story, it manages to take that idea in interesting directions across the near-3-hour runtime which also results in a lot of questions about identity too. Scenes fade black on a regular basis, almost like someone is closing their eyes to access a new memory.
Music is used incredibly sparingly, though, as is often the case with films light on score, the music played by the characters becomes more effective. That lack of score adds a sense of immersion to those dialogue scenes, making the Now feel even more genuine in a world full of artistry and entertainment.
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Yesterday was one of the best performances I've seen from him. It's just a shame he didn't take his chance to score, as he's apparently the Premier League player to take the most shots without a goal (according to the Totally Football Show on Thursday, anyway).
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I'd replace Williamson with Hewitt just so we can swap the worst hair with the best.
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Wouldn't be surprised if Norm MacDonald passed his cancer onto OJ when he died.
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31. Evil Does Not Exist - Cinema
Loved the opening as the camera tracks through a forest while pointing towards the sky with music that's epic, sombre and a tiny bit menacing. That then cuts out and is replaced by a brief moment of silence before the ugly sound of a chainsaw takes over. I reckon that set up the film's ideas brilliantly, but, as the title suggests, things aren't that black and white.
You'd be mistaken for thinking that the film is going for a single-minded take during the scene where the village's residents meet with the out-of-town representatives for those planning to build a glamping site in the forest. The representatives are clearly out of their depth, their answers are rehearsed and empty, and one of them, Takahashi, uses the microphone as a defence mechanism when fielding questions. There's a brilliant shot that frames all of the residents in the meeting up against Takahashi which could both be seen as threatening for him but also alludes to the absurdity of an outside individual being able to disrupt the lives of those embedded in society.
However, it then takes an interesting decision to show that Takahashi and his colleague Mayuzumi aren't just outsiders looking to disrupt the lives of the village people, they're individuals in their own right who have been hung out to dry by the corporate machine (their advisor speaks to them over video call to provide a further sense of detachment). We begin to learn more about them as people after such a frosty introduction which develops their characters while also still critiquing the developers. That extra layer is necessary to avoid it being too preachy.
There's a dreamlike feeling about the whole thing, but the ending is pretty damn abstract. I think it earned an ambiguous ending, but I'm still confused by it - slightly in a literal sense, certainly in a metaphorical sense.
32. Robot Dreams - Cinema
A lot of this reminded me of when I was at T in the Park and had a dream that I was at the campsite having a whale of a time only to wake up in a portaloo miles away from my tent. I felt you, Robot.
It's an animated Spanish film set in Manhattan, but there's no language barrier because there's no dialogue. There are no humans either. The main character is a dog named Dog who we first meet in its apartment eating a shit microwaved macaroni cheese. When it catches a glimpse of its pathetic reflection on the TV screen, it turns the TV on to be met with an advert that promises to cure loneliness - that cure is a robot named Robot. It's a film about loneliness, connection and longing, but, unlike All of Us Strangers, has a more hopeful overtly hopeful outlook due to the determination of Dog and Robot, plus the fact that it's purely platonic adds an interesting and arguably more universal dynamic.
The film starts quickly and maintains that pace. Ironically, that can at times make it feel like a bit of a drag. I wondered early on how they were going to fill the 100-minute runtime and that feeling never really left me, as while there is an overarching story with a goal - Robot gets stranded at the beach which is closed until the summer, so he and Dog need to reunite - structurally it can feel like a series of short films or episodes of a kids' TV show.
While Robot is stranded at the beach, it dreams of its escape which results in scenes that always start out entertaining but descend into melancholy. The film's set-pieces are inventive as are the use of all of the different animals that make up Manhattan, but the sense of longing and loneliness always punctuated the fun and I'll admit that it almost had me in tears at points. I probably laughed as much as I felt low, though, and the high point was a wonderfully absurd scene involving a laughing ice cream cone and a snowman bowling with his own head. That reminded me quite a bit of David Lynch's funnier absurd stuff and there are quite a few references to other films (and products, weirdly) which can feel a bit indulgent, though I do think there might be something else going on there in terms of escapism.
Why I think Robot Dreams works as a dialogue-free film where last year's No One Will Save You faltered a wee bit was because it felt a lot less contrived in a world filled with animals, robots and laughing ice cream cones. It never felt like a gimmick, and the film found inventive ways to get away from dialogue by taking different perspectives which served their own purpose.
I was really interested to see its resolution as it set up the kind of conflict that could be difficult to resolve in a satisfactory way, however I don't think that it quite stuck the landing despite the third act having me hooked up until that point. I felt a wee bit hollow after such a strong buildup to the conclusion. That said, I really loved how poignant and inventive I found it, so I'm more than happy to overlook its shortcomings. Messy but effective.
Finally, with it being set in Manhattan there are animated takes on landmarks as you'd expect. What I didn't expect to see was the Twin Towers, and I certainly didn't expect them to have a strategically placed cloud which had a striking resemblance to plumes of smoke emanating from one of the towers. Even stranger was the fact that the song September was playing at this point (as it does in many scenes) and I'm pretty sure that I could hear sirens in the background. Not quite sure what this was all about, but I hope it's not a Love, Actually situation in that it was trying to make a point about love and connection by using 9/11.
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30. Yannick - MUBI
A very good hour-long film set entirely in a theatre (well with one or two exterior shots) and specifically the seating area and stage where three actors are interrupted by one of the attendees, Yannick, who thinks that their play is shite. That anger is exacerbated by the fact that he's taken the day off from his seven-days-a-week job to see the production.
Yannick's a Travis Bickle-type character, clearly unstable and feels empowered to act in a way unfitting of social norms. Raphael Quenard captures that instability really well simply due to the way he laughs and stares down his fellow attendees while doing so. There's a dangerously volatile ego wrapped up in anger and frustration at society and that's mostly conveyed through his performance. Despite being set in the theatre, the film alludes to his past, including his failed relationship, which again adds to that Travis Bickle comparison in terms of being a man trying to vent at the world.
That also plays into the overarching conflict between artist and attendee. Yannick is a whack job, but you can kind of understand why someone so dissatisfied with life would want to find escape in art, so why not take it up with the artists when you think that your time is being wasted? Folk write scathing reviews on Letterboxd and harass actors/directors/writers on social media, so what's the difference between that and interrupting a play that you feel is a waste of your time and money and can actually affect change? Obviously there's a big difference as doing so ruins the experience of other people who could be responding differently to a subjective piece of art - which Yannick doesn't understand - plus there's a different power dynamic here with part-time performers that, again, Yannick can't quite grasp.
Shifting power dynamics are another interesting part of the film, especially when Yannick wields a gun which speaks to the idea of this uncharismatic guy getting people on side just because he's loud and dangerous. Once again, Quenard's performance sells these interactions perfectly. Another example of power dynamics is when the female actor offers sex to her co-performer if he can take down Yannick, as she doesn't have any money so can only offer sex. It's a funny interaction in a film laced with them, but I found it a lot more interesting than I did funny.
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Macheda-esque
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Ended up really enjoying the second half, mostly because the wind just made it a daft 45 minutes. The first half was brutal, but it was just a case of which team could make the most of having the wind behind them.
Delighted to finally get to see Latona play for the first team and already get an assist. Nice that Jamie Hamilton could finally get back too.
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29. The Origin of Evil - Cinema
You'll be reminded of a lot of other films (naming most of them would spoil the film's twists and turns, but its messaging isn't all that original), but the twisting narrative, early ambiguity and interesting characters more than make up for any lack of thematic originality. We first meet Stephane working at a fish packing factory before arranging to meet her estranged (and loaded) father at his lavish French mansion. A lavish mansion and a clash of class, it's not dissimilar to the Eat the Rich films that almost everyone is sick of now, but it very much feels like its own thing when it comes to execution.
There's a great deal of paranoia when Stephane is at the mansion, as the family she's walked into are suspicious of her, there are peering eyes from the stuffed animals dotted around, her father's granddaughter is a budding photographer who's always taking pictures, and the housemaid hides behind doors to listen in. Boundaries are pretty much non-existent. One of the very first scenes with family has them all sitting eating dinner, but rather than cutting between them having a conversation it instead splits the screen initially into three and then finally five - Stephane always remains in the centre screen though. Visual touches like these are sparse but effective. It can sometimes look quite bland but then hits you with a split screen or a funky zoom. There's also the overdone use of beiges/yellows and blues which I think relates to water and land (the fish packer, the family's boat, plus... other things) and whatever that represents. The split screen gives a sense of oppressiveness, like she is being bombarded by these mad people, but also allows us to focus on Laure Calamy's adaptable performance.
It's clear early on that she changes as a person depending on the different situations she finds finds herself in, which is initially endearing as you get a sense of her discomfort, but then you begin to wonder about her authenticity when questions start getting asked of her. Her father says at one point that "there's only one truth" and the film plays with that idea throughout, contrasting the truth in the minds of certain characters with the truth in the minds of others, and how their relationship with the truth changes throughout the film. It's really interesting to watch play out. While that sounds like it'll be very ambiguous - and it initially is - the big questions get answers and that made for some really fun reveals. It's one of those that had me smiling throughout just due to the playfulness of the narrative. Even the title, The Origin of Evil, sort of changes meaning as the plot progresses.
I would recommend seeing it with an audience because of the laughs and gasps, though the audience I saw it with were a bunch of annoying old folk. It also didn't help that Dune 2 was playing next door so, because Dune 2 is the loudest film of all time, there was a lot of thumping during this which I'm still not sure was coming from The Origin of Evil or Dune (though I could hazard a guess).
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Gonna be my first game since the 0-0 with Stirling Albion. Fully expecting the weather to make it a miserable experience.
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3 hours ago, JustOneCornetto said:
I must get round to watching Dune 1 & 2. I do like the Lynch original but admit it is flawed but in defence of his version listen to DL in this short interview
He's got more than enough credit in the bank for me to not blame him too much. Also it's fun seeing a creator actually talking so openly about their issues with a film rather than post a tweet that quickly gets deleted.
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28. Dune: Part Two - Cinema
I'm a bit late to the party, but I didn't really like Part One an awful lot when it came it and that feeling remained when I watched it at home at the weekend, especially as it's a much lesser film on a smaller screen, so I wasn't all that enthusiastic about Part Two though I knew I had to give it a go on IMAX. I was mostly just happy to let the Cinema Experience wash over me. That experience is where most of its strengths lie, with the sound being particularly immersive as you feel every gunshot, explosion and rumble through the dunes. That was then turned on its head with the final fight as I'd become so accustomed to the mega sound design that its absence at the end grabbed my attention. For about two hours, I was enjoying the set-pieces and very little else, which wasn't awful considering there are plenty of them, but I just found it really hard to emotionally invest in... any of it. It's very melodramatic and seems to be all about inspiring awe. There was one touching moment that just had Chalamet and Zendaya doing a synchronised sand-walk which was a nice image that did away with a lot of the portentousness found in these films.
What I will say, though, is that I did actually begin to get interested in some of its ideas relating to fate and power, though I don't think that Chalamet can carry something so epic. I would be interested in watching it again just to scratch beneath the spectacle a wee bit, which I certainly couldn't have and still can't say about the first one. Like I said, though, it needs to be seen in a cinema (arguably in IMAX), so that desire to rewatch is slightly dampened.
It also conveys a sense of impending doom well, as it always felt like it was building towards something terrible happening, though that doesn't quite materialise as the ending still isn't satisfying and still sorta feels like an episode from a TV series, but I feel like I got more out of this one than I did the first. I also finally watched the Lynch film to the end for the first time, so I suppose I do have a greater admiration for the Villeneuve ones now as Lynch's is proper pants.
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Random and pointless piece of trivia that popped into my head last night but thought someone might appreciate: the Netherlands defeat was the first time we'd lost in the month of March since the Kazakhstan humiliation in 2019.
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1 hour ago, DrewDon said:
TOP TIP: If you find yourself struggling to join in with football chat in the pub tonight, just drop this in. Stamp your authority on the conversation.
Some of these guys don't help themselves, do they?
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2 hours ago, 2426255 said:
The deadline for the squad to be submitted to UEFA is the same day as Scotland play Finland. I just assumed the squad announcement will cover the friendlies and Euro-2024. Steve Clarke has repeatedly said that the squad will be picked in May and so I think that's what will happen.
I suppose we could technically call up say 30 or so players for the two friendlies and then reduce it for the deadline, assuming the deadline is after the Finland game. I can't really see that happening.
For the last Euros, it sounded like Clarke did have a few folk in reserve who he told to keep fit in case they're needed. Ferguson was definitely one of them. There's obviously no guarantee that he'll do the same this time, but I think it's more likely than him naming an expanded provisional squad.
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11 hours ago, DrewDon said:
Just something to cheer you all up after that.
I remember one of my friends in primary school hating Andy Gray because of this. I hope he's seen this video.
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Watching Bradley is just like watching Robertson when he was breaking into the Liverpool team. So much so that he even shanked a shot miles high and wide.
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Yip that's Man United for you
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I'd forgotten that he seemed to injure himself wiping out a Northern Ireland player in the second half. It's annoying considering he'd finally nailed down a starting spot in a good Premier League team, but we can only hope he gets a few games under his belt before the Euros.
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26. The Delinquents - Cinema
My thoughts on this are slightly clouded by the fact that I could feel a cold coming on over its 3+ hour runtime. It's long and it feels long, mostly because the film likes to linger in moments which is especially true in the second half.
It starts out like some classic crime capers (the score is proof of their influence on this film) with an everyday, boring man, Moran, living his boring white-collar job at the bank, but things take a turn when he steals a load of cash from his work and ropes in his colleague, Roman, to look after the money as Moran hands himself into jail ("three-and-a-half years in prison or 25 years working at the bank" is his reasoning). The rest of part one is what you'd expect - guilt and paranoia as the fallout from the robbery unfolds - but there's an intermission around 85 minutes in, after which the film changes course slightly.
Roman's guilt and paranoia become too much, so he hides the money in the countryside which is where part one ends and two begins. The whole film's about freedom, demonstrated by the "three-and a half years or 25 years" line, and the second part is mostly about lingering in that freedom. There are interruptions, but they tend to contrast the freedom that Maron and Roman feel in the country away from their white collar jobs in the city, almost like an art house Office Space - a film that was certainly on my mind when watching the bank's politics following the robbery. It also reminded me of a film from a couple of years ago that no one saw called Memoria in which Tilda Swinton absconds to the Colombian countryside, as both that and The Delinquents have a great appreciation for finding purpose in emptiness. I don't think The Delinquents' soundscape was impressive as something like that or Samsara from earlier this year, but the camerawork is really observational.
I wouldn't really recommend it at almost 200 minutes, even if I do love to wallow in existentialism, as I felt that its ideas went round in circles a bit at points which meant that it could be a bit of a drag in that second part, but it's absolutely fine. Also think that this was only the second time after the final Harry Potter film (which I saw in Portugal) that I've had an intermission at the cinema. I could see the benefits of it as a way of letting the audience know that they're moving into something a bit different, and it made the start of part two a bit more impactful for me, but it was still quite a strange experience.
27. Late Night with the Devil - Cinema
Starring That Guy You Recognise From A Bunch of Supporting Roles (But Don't Know His Name)!
In a sense, Late Night with the Devil has clearly been released too early in the year as it would've been a brilliant cinema trip on an October night given the fact it takes place on Halloween, but it actually scratched an itch by being a hella entertaining hour-and-a-half on Good Friday afternoon. That suggests it's fluff, which I don't think it is, but it's undoubtedly entertaining.
It commits to its premise of being a broadcast of a late night 70s talk show (with occasional black and white sections during 'ad breaks') in pretty much every technical aspect, but also due to the ambiguity that surrounds the 'legitimacy' of the events that are taking place on the show. It's a Halloween-themed talk show desperate for ratings with special guests of a medium, a sceptic, a doctor and a girl who might be possessed. The cynical part of the viewer will usually side with the sceptic, but there'll be another part that wants to believe that there really is some funny shit going down, and that speaks to perhaps the main theme of the film: exploitation.
It's similar to Jordan Peele's Nope in terms of being a comment on what depths people will plumb to succeed, with a specific focus on exploiting others. I also got Scream vibes from the fact that it holds a mirror up to the audience, making us question what we look for from entertainment. The whole premise of it being a 'broadcast' makes us the viewers tuning into this trashy, exploitative talk show. There's also a meta quality from the separation of fiction and reality that I'm kinda struggling to articulate but comes from how audiences get excited by fear and even more so when there's authenticity to the source of fear. YouTube videos of people's traumas have millions of views, including the tapes of Anneliese Michel's exorcisms (something that was at the forefront of my mind while watching this), and it's interesting to consider why that's the case. This film doesn't really delve into that - it instead focuses on David Dastmalchian's character's drive to succeed - but it at the very least got me thinking about it.
A part of me actually would've been more interested if they did away with the black and white scenes filling in the blanks and just showed the 'broadcast'. I think that would've brought an interesting challenge as to how to weave necessary information into televised interactions, and all of the ambiguity would have been retained. That's somewhat minor though and perhaps me just wanting something completely different.
The ending also lost me initially, despite it being the kind of ending I tend to like in horror, but it drew me back in with a fun twist that tied it up thematically. Tbh the film just had me hooked and is a lot of fun. Despite some gruesome moments, it's by and large a crowd pleaser. It knows what it's doing tonally, too, as it had me smiling at some of the more horrific things, though I wouldn't necessarily label it a horror-comedy.
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Definitely both. I still remember the dread I felt in the cinema when things started getting very nasty in the first half, then the admiration when I realised it was veering off in a completely different direction (and why it was doing so).
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Champions league 2023/24.
in Misc Other Fitba Chat
Posted
Are BBC journalists reading my posts?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/68845131