accies1874

www.skysports.com/amp/football/news/11717/13037914/luton-manager-rob-edwards-say-police-investigating-an-alleged-racist-comment-towards-carlton-morris-during-sheffield-united-game I was waiting for this story to come out after watching the last 10 mins of the Sheffield United v Luton game. It was clear that something had been said to Morris.

65. Femme - Cinema Great performances from Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and George Mackay as the two components of a strange relationship: one of them wants revenge on the other, while their counterpart is using the relationship as a means of exploring his sexuality. That sums up what I found most interesting about the film as it essentially combines two different stories within one relationship and their diverging paths were fascinating to watch unfold. A desire for retribution combined with the optimistic hopes for a happy ending made it a strange experience - in order for them to get what they wanted, the other had to lose. That also relates to the power dynamics within a relationship, especially a gay one which includes a closeted dude. Considering that the first act from George Mackay’s character was to commit a homophobic assault, it’s testament to his characterisation that he was interesting enough to engage with for the rest of the film despite it very much being told through Nathan Stewart-Jarrett’s eyes. Not a traditional thriller, but the tension between the two characters kept me hooked throughout. 66. Leave the World Behind - Netflix This was the kind of film that, in fact, did not keep me engaged – whatsoever. It really should have as it’s all about presenting a scenario that invites the viewer to wonder what’s going on, but that felt really forced and really the only trick that the film had up its sleeve. It felt like a bad M. Night Shyamalan film where you’re just waiting to see what the bad twist is before shrugging your shoulders and moving on with your life, only remembering the time you wasted watching the film.

I absolutely agree, but let's leave it at that! I know your game all too well, my man.

A lot of people took against a poster's thread asking for Pie & Bovril's thoughts on rotten posters, so I thought I would start one to get some Christmas cheer going. It's simple - which posters do you think are great? Which threads do you think are great? Which posts do you think are great? What Was the Last Movie You Watched? is probably my most frequented thread while Tartan Army Ramblings, for all its faults, is fun for the discussion cycle between, leading up to and during international breaks. Disclaimer: This is a 100% Festive Spirit Zone, so no bad vibes are allowed.

"No Plan B" isn't true. We played a different system yesterday (which didn't work whatsoever) and some games have been won either after noticeable in-game changes (Kelty away, QotS away, Alloa at home) or pre-game (Annan away/QotS at home, Montrose away). Given how many goals we've scored/chances created from cutbacks this season, I think it's fair to say that that is a clear plan of Rankin's; usually overloading one side and either using someone like Barjonas, Smith or MacDonald to open the play up, or Barjonas, Longridge, Zanatta etc will link up on that overloaded side to then cut the ball back for someone in the middle. I don't really like how much I've defended Rankin this season as I still don't think he's good enough in the medium-term, however I do think he can get us promoted this season so I'm willing to see how he responds to this poor run of form.

I think back in March after his goals v Spain a few folk were saying that he'd wasted so much time at CB, but most of his performances in midfield before then left a lot to be desired.

The reported numbers were around that but apparently they weren't quite true. The Oné transfer is the only one where there's been a trustworthy figure quoted - around £200k which will have been the most out of the lot. We'll have since received more for Oné after he made his PL debut but I don't know how much more that will have been.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike Rankin, but some of this is either guesswork or just plain wrong.

Pep won a domestic treble using Zinchenko in that role. I don't think I've mentioned it before, but imo this neck of the woods has some of worst football opinions I've ever seen. Exhibit A:

Shimmer Lake's been on my Netflix list for a wee while, pretty much only because of the reverse chronology. It does sound like something I'd enjoy.

VAR really is just the pits isn't it? Spend all that time watching Ramsey's shirt getting pulled at least as much as he held onto Foderingham, then they recommend the ref to rule the goal. Plus Sheffield United had ample opportunity to just get rid of the ball.

I think this is the end of Scotland as we know it. A localised XL Bully apocalypse.

Thought Everton just about shaded it, but it was a pretty awful game. Onana's penalty was an absolute stinker, however Pickford's performance in the shootout to let three or four slip under him was really poor too.

60. Thanksgiving - Cinema Maybe the most undercooked film I’ve seen all year. It has all of the components necessary to make a really fun slasher – autumnal atmosphere, fairly brutal kills, social commentary, stupidly funny at points, hits the right tone – but the characters are so weak that none of the kills leave an impression and it rushes past all of its story beats. It’s fun enough, but everything past the opening section is a massive let-down. That set up all of the characters, the tone and even the blue and orange colour scheme which I really liked. The animalistic, ridiculous Black Friday shenanigans were brilliant fun to watch, although it feels about 10 years too late to take a shot at the chaos of Black Friday, but all of the promise of those moments fall to the wayside when the film becomes more focussed on maintaining a quick pace than creating something good. 61. Totem - Cinema I did this is a double feature with Thanksgiving and they’re so wildly different that Barbenheimer seem like a perfect marriage in comparison. This one takes place across one day: a man’s final birthday. It’s very rarely about him, though, as it’s more interested in the people who are going to be affected by the space that he’ll leave in their lives: his sisters, his wife and his daughter who’s the closest we get to a main character. It’s presented in 4:3 which is important as there are so many closeups of those aforementioned characters, and the frame captures them really nicely. There are closeups which seem like mid-shots due to how they cover other things within a scene. It’s all about these characters responding to the impending doom that we never get to see, all done in really interesting ways, particularly concerning what gets left behind beyond the grave. It builds slowly, but man, it really hit me when it got to the final shot of the wee girl which lingers and lingers, distorting the music and really giving off the impression that she’s coming to a realisation about the impacts of death – but also life! It’s very good and, embarrassingly, one that I’d have had no idea about if I wasn’t already in Glasgow to see the schlocky Thanksgiving. 62. Rotten in the Sun - MUBI In a film full of wild characters, this turns into a story about the guilt of a normal housekeeper who inadvertently plays a part in the death of the tenant. The rest of the film becomes an investigation into a mystery that the audience already knows the answer to, therefore it’s more about the paranoia that comes from seeing the story play out through the eyes of this innocent housekeeper. So Knives Out, but a bit shitter. 63. Earth Mama - Cinema 50th cinema trip of the year (which I then doubled up with the next film). I’d read a wee bit of buzz about this but didn’t really take note of when it was coming out, but I saw the trailer before The Eternal Daughter and that sold me on it as something I could really love. The film focuses on an pregnant black woman in poverty who’s trying to come to terms with the best course of action for what’s inside her, both literally and emotionally. It deals with ideas around motherhood that are as honest as they are heartbreaking, all told through an understated and unconventional protagonist. She’s quiet and, unlike some of the other characters, doesn’t get a spotlight to vent (those who do get some moving vignettes where they’re simply standing speaking to the camera), but that just made me feel all the more connected to her. It's reminiscent of a Sean Baker film as it depicts the kind of people who find themselves between the cracks of American society. That comparison is especially true of the cinematography which makes its impoverished setting look beautiful. I absolutely loved the score too; it occupies this space in the background of the film as pieces of grand and quite chaotic music trying to break through the quiet overall tone. The police and other authority figures are also background figures just heard or obscured, which I thought was an interesting way to make the audience aware of the jeopardy faced by the main character and her community while still keeping the focus on them. She also works in a sort of photography hall which has all sorts of different backgrounds to jazz up people’s photographs , something that I THINK reflects the concept of escape that’s prominent throughout the film, but that’s not something I’ve got my head around. 64. Fallen Leaves - Cinema This looks delightful – a real nostalgic kind of aesthetic with its grainy technicolour scenery. It initially reminded me of the look of a Rainer Werner Fassbinder film, but then that comparison became even more focused on just one of his films, Fear Eats the Soul, in terms of depicting these two romantically involved characters who are lost in the world. They seem like they shouldn’t be the focus of a film which just makes them all the sweeter. News of the Ukraine-Russia war is regularly played over the radio, giving off the impression that this couple are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things which added a deal of intimacy. It’s just this small story that the filmmakers chose to tell. Its style of humour was also similar to A Pigeon Sat on a Branch; it’s really funny but often in a deadpan way, and the rich supporting cast may only appear in one or two scenes but they still leave a laugh along the way. I’d probably call it a romantic comedy, but it’s not expressly comedic and it’s not very romantic – that’s what makes it so great.

I think that he deliberately wasn't shown as a master strategist in order to feed into the misplaced hubris, but I agree with everything else. I went with my dad who knows a hell of a lot more about Napoleon than I do (I just know he's a wee guy with a hat) and he enjoyed it a lot more than me.

He was excellent against Spain but otherwise I agree.

Couple of proper Forum Legends namechecked there.

You're talking about the guy who was out for five months after slipping on ice.

Losing Fulton (fractured arm), Martin (hamstring) and potentially Kilday is almost as bad as losing the game. Rankin leaves us so open defending transitions that we rely on the individual qualities of those three + McGowan to stop them, so it'll be interesting to see how we adapt: carry on with inferior players, or tweak things (esp on the ball) to make it harder for the opposition to bear down on our CBs with ease?

Don't quite know what to make of that game. We seemed happy to counter early on with O'Hara doing pretty well in that respect, but Tait replacing Martin resulted in us playing a bit more controlled football, even if it left the midfield horribly exposed. After that point we had plenty of the ball and a couple of decent chances, but ended up really struggling with Falkirk's press in the second half.

Happy birthday brother

He's had a couple of OK moments where he's burst past a left-back and fired in a cross to no one. I don't want to be down on an 18-year-old, especially one as promising as him, but I'm just not buying into Doakmania yet in the same way that I did with Gilmour.

The first half was one of the best performances I've seen from him and the second was very good, although he probably didn't see quite as much of the ball. Don't think this is true but it won't have been far off. ETA: Just watched his interview on TNT where they mentioned it too. He definitely shanked one out in the second half, but Adingra must have got a touch just before it went out of play.

He's been pretty bad in all of the Europa League games this season, so I don't think last night was necessarily a blip. I just think he's quite a bit off first team football at the moment.

Part one of a big backlog: 56. Anatomy of a Fall - Cinema A lot of interesting ideas and some great performances, but none of that translated to being an engaging film experience for me. It takes the private cracks of a fractious marriage and puts it on trial for all to see, which is a good idea to play with in theory but ultimately left me bored when it came to actually executing it. There are two scenes which genuinely had me gripped and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that they both took place in the moment rather than in a courtroom analysing the character. That analysis is the whole point of the Anatomy of a Fall, and the film has received universal acclaim so more power to them, but I honestly found it a complete slog. All I could think about during it was that I much preferred how Gone Girl and to a lesser extent Oppenheimer tackled similar concepts. 57. The Eternal Daughter - Cinema Absolutely loved the atmosphere with its pretty minimalist production design, overuse of a fog machine, the constant windy soundscape which blends into the score and its soft-focus cinematography. For a ghost story, it’s much more dreamlike than it is nightmarish. Tilda Swinton’s performances as both the mother and daughter are kind of offbeat, as her emotional reactions are very rarely conventional for some of the situations she finds herself in; the narrative doesn’t make an awful lot of sense with scenes often not flowing into one another; there’s also humour that’s borne out of that lack of logic, particularly from the female staff member who’s got great comic timing. It’s very much carried by the atmosphere and my constant intrigue into what the heck was going on. It’s made clear pretty early on that something isn’t quite right in this hotel, and thus not quite right in the mind of protagonist. There are thematic questions to be asked about why Joanna Hogg chose to cast Tilda Swinton as the mum and daughter, which is why I think it worked really well, despite finding both characters quite off-putting. The issues I’ve seen other people have with this choice are why I liked it so much. I absolutely haven’t worked it out yet, but the ending left a real impression on me. There’s one shot towards the end which made me consider a whole load of different emotions, initially positive but then quickly negative. Like with The Souvenir and particularly The Souvenir Part II, which are to some extent ghost stories themselves, it makes you wonder how much of what you see play out is reflective of Joanna Hogg’s own experiences. Not necessarily in a literal sense as it was in The Souvenir, more in terms of her emotional state. It reminded me a lot of why I loved Asteroid City, as I felt like I was watching the creator work out their own issues on screen in an engaging way. There’s still so much to unpack in terms of reality and the purpose behind it all in how it reflects the psyche of the protagonist. I think the answers are all there in plain sight which is why I’m so keen to watch it again (but didn't get the opportunity to), however it’s still an emotional, atmospheric piece after just one watch. Like another of my favourites from this year, Enys Men, it does feel like a dreamlike paranormal investigation released the public – it’s impressive to straddle the line between being something so fantastical and something realistic. 58. Saltburn - Cinema As soon as you meet Barry Keoghan’s character Oliver, you’ll have a pretty clear idea of his destination, but the journey to get to that point goes in strange directions which made it such an enjoyable experience. In fact, just as I felt that the story was creaking a wee bit, they chucked in the film’s biggest curveball. It does belong alongside the recent spate of anti-rich films, but it was fun seeing an English take on that, and the characters are either just cruel people pretending to be kind or kind people pretending to be cruel which creates a morally muddier environment – something that the final act exploits well imo, although it labours its point a wee bit too much and commits a pretty terrible sin of overexplaining. The Oxford setting is like some of the fantasy schools you see parodied but very rarely legitimately depicted, then Saltburn is a dreamlike summer haven - it's otherworldly. The only location we get in the film that doesn't feel like it's designed purely for the screen is a really nice house in a lovely middle class neighbourhood! These settings provide insight into Oliver’s warped sense of reality, which is fitting as the film is about loneliness as much as it's about class structures. It’s really funny at points too. Almost all of Rosamund Pike’s lines made me laugh, and Richard E Grant occupies his background role perfectly. Those two are the more typical characters in this kind of story, but they cracked me up quite a bit. All of the performers are great, but Barry Keoghan needs a role that isn’t a slimy character sometime soon; I know his face lends itself to those roles, but I wanna see how he carries something a bit more charismatic. 59. Napoleon - Cinema There’s a really tight comedy here that picks apart Napoleon’s ego, but I think that got lost in amongst all of the other stuff. The war scenes are impressive, especially the sound, but we’ve seen plenty of impressive war scenes these past few years, so they aren’t really enough for me anymore. That’s why I was interested in Napoleon’s absurdity more than anything, but I ended up confused by the whole thing.