Another month and it's another entry into the book club. It's only a small month for the month just gone however, but that doesn't mean that the book I read wasn't good. It was quite the opposite in fact, anyway, enough of this opening paragraph, let's get on with the review!
Paper Lion: Confessions Of A Last String Quarterback By George Plimpton Admittedly, I don't know a lot about American Football. I only really got into the sport properly towards the end of last year and the first game I watched the full way through was the Super Bowl just gone played between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. Despite initially going longer than I thought it would (this is probably down to the performance from Shakira and Jennifer Lopez which at the time left me thinking if my sleep deprived mind was just imagining Shakira summoning the magic conch shell whilst she performed.) I thoroughly enjoyed the game and since then I've enjoyed learning about this sport. This is where Paper Lion comes in, just before lockdown, a trip to Waterstones saw me buying three books, one was Paper Lion and after initial reservations about if I'd really enjoy this book I read it and oh boy, it's a bloody good book. George Plimpton was a journalist who did some pretty ground breaking things in the search of getting a story. Before joining the Detroit Lions in Spring Training, Plimpton pitched in the 1960 Baseball All-Star game in the attempt to answer the question if a normal, everyday man could compete in the world of competitive sports. After the success of that excursion, Plimpton decided to ask the same question once again but this time in the world of American Football. Plimpton takes the reader through the initial phases of trying to find a team that would humour him and let him do some quarterbacking. After initially being turned down by teams like the Baltimore Colts and The New York Jets, Plimpton finds a team who will take him on in the Detroit Lions. Joining the Lions for Spring Training, Plimpton is put through the ringer as he adapts to the world of professional American Football. The way Plimpton really manages to humanise these figures who are usually seen as larger than life characters. Getting to know players like Night Train Lane and especially the rookie Lucien Reeburg is fascinating. Issues like Racism in the locker room are handled with the upmost importance and care and you really do feel for these players as the book goes on. Paper Lion is a great look into the early 60's world of American Football and the way Plimpton manages to weave a narrative throughout this hyper competitive world of pro football is compelling. Even if you don't know a lot about American Football, give this book a read! Rating: 4/5
0 Comments
I remember when I first heard about Fighting With My Family, the biographical 'light hearted' look into the early career of WWE's Paige and her family, and thinking "this film sounds insane." It's not particularly the subject of the film that I found mental, it was who was attached to it. Directed, produced and written by Stephen Merchant (who also has a small role in the film) sounded mad enough but then you see that none other than Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson also produced and basically bankrolled the project just further adds to the madness. But we're not done yet, let's take a quick look at the cast shall we? The protagonist of this film is played by none other than Florence Pugh who after this went on to star in the Swedish set Uni trip gone badly wrong jaunt Midsommar alongside starring in Greta Gerwig's adaptation of seminal novel Little Women. Bolstering up the supporting cast is Lena Headey, fresh off finishing her stint as Cersei Lannister in everyone's favourite medieval romcom Game Of Thrones, playing Paige's mother Sweet Saraya Knight with Paige's father being played by none other than Nick Frost. It's a real mish mash of eyebrow raising appointments and despite it being labelled as a 'comedy' this film is far, far away from your laugh out loud easy to watch comedy. I'd go as far as to say this is one of the most depressing comedies I think I've ever seen, so, enough build up let's dive into this Ken Loachian film all about the Knight family in Norwich.
We start off with Zak Knight (Paige's older brother, played here by Jack Lowden) watching everyone's favourite WWE PPV King Of The Ring 2002. Just as he gets really excited about big Dwayne winning the WWE(F) championship, his little sister Saraya (Pugh) changes the channel to another real classic of the time in Charmed which, according to my research and by research I mean I've just had a quick skim of the wiki page, is all about three sisters who use their power as witches to defend people from demons and warlocks whilst trying to maintain normal lives in San Francisco. Sounds great I'm sure you'll agree anyway, back to the film. After having a little scrap over what goes on the telly, Zak and Saraya's parents enter and encourage them to execute sleeper holds and wrist locks better. After watching them scrap, Rick (Frost) books the two siblings in a match against one another at their next wrestling show with Saraya initially reluctant to wrestle her brother so I suppose to make her feel better about fighting her brother, they make him dress up as the Pink Ranger from Power Rangers? It's a peculiar choice and it isn't ever really explained why or where Zak or his parents get the costume from, he just wears it. Anyway, Saraya wins the bout and we transition to 8 years into the future with Saraya now 18 and going under the ring name of Britani Knight and her brother Zak Zodiac with the brother and sister managing to beat their parents in a tag team match. This is when we truly begin to see the first sprouts of Loachism in the film. We follow around Zak and Saraya as they pick up young people from around their neighbourhood who are portrayed as outcasts that see wrestling as a way to escape from the prospect of getting involved in activities like drug dealing. Rick has been trying to get his kids try outs for WWE and after many no's or simple blanking, WWE trainer Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn) calls back to tell Rick Zak and Saraya have got try outs when the WWE next comes to the 02 Arena in London. Could both of the Knight children get to the promised land of WWE? The answer is no. Only one of the Knight children was signed at the end of the try out and it wasn't Zak, despite him impressing Morgan with his finishing move, Saraya was signed and was asked to change her name due to WWE 'already having another Britani' she changed it to Paige (who is a character in Charmed apparently). Despite initially threatening to pull out of being signed unless her brother was also brought to 'The NXT' (ahem) Zak talked her down and Paige reluctantly agreed to go to Florida. After leaving for 'The NXT', Zak on the other hand was struggling to come to terms with the fact that he wasn't signed to the fed and had begun to become distant to his girlfriend and newborn baby with Zak simply freezing and leaving his baby to cry instead of tending to it. Paige on the other hand was struggling to adjust to WWE's style of entertainment with the inexperience of fellow trainees Jeri-Lynn, Kirsten and Maddison eventually leading to Paige retaliating after a botch from one of the girls led to Paige slapping her. Morgan intervenes and tells Paige to apologise to the girl she slapped. Paige reluctantly does so and we cut back to Zak who pleads with Morgan to be signed to NXT. Morgan tells Zak that he will probably never be signed to WWE due to his lack of polish. This leads to Zak further spiralling into depression (this is a comedy remember). Paige phones home to find out her parents have been selling merchandise with her face on it without her consent. Paige's parents also reveal that Paige has been booked in a match against her brother over the Christmas period (I wonder if they told Paige's employers about this match?) Before Christmas though, Paige makes her NXT debut at a live event in a fatal four way match against Jeri-Lynn, Kirsten and Maddison. Despite her less ring polished trainees getting over with their pre match promos, Paige can't do the same and is booed out of the building by the fans. Deciding that she needs to change to fit in, Paige dyes her hair blonde and wears fake tan in an attempt to appeal more to what she believes that WWE want in their female talent. An obstacle course on the beach however sees Paige finish last and whilst travelling back to the Performance Centre Paige sees Jeri-Lynn, Maddison and Kirsten gossiping, believing they are talking about her, Paige snaps and confronts the trio. Paige has read the room wrong however and it turns out that the three women were discussing Kirsten being away from her daughter who she wants to provide a better life for. After a heart to heart with coach Morgan, Paige returns home for Christmas with the intent of telling her family that she has decided to leave WWE and return home. Before her match against her brother at the Christmas event, Paige asks Zak to help her tell their parents about her decision to leave WWE. Zak agrees but his anger overcomes in and he go's off script during the match and defeats his sister with a tombstone piledriver much to the chagrin of the siblings parents. Zak pushes his sister to tell their parents that she's quitting which breaks Paige's fathers heart. Zak continues his path of self destruction with the family finding him assaulting bystanders in a pub brawl (again, this is a comedy). After following his brother once he storms off, Paige reveals that Morgan did not sign Zak due to him probably being used as enhancement talent if they did sign him. She also convinces him that he can continue to do good without WWE and that the training that he does with the local youth allows him to make his own impact on the world. Zak convinces Paige to not give up on their shared dream and she returns to Florida after Christmas with her hair back to it's original colour and no spray tan whatsoever. Paige improves herself both in and out of the ring making peace with her fellow trainees and encouraging them to become better. Zak begins to turn his life around and starts up his training of the local youths again. Morgan brings his trainees to Wrestlemania 30 where she bumps into Netflix's own The Big Show and YouTube star Sheamus who do some bland comedy. She is eventually lead into a private room where she has a one on one meeting with Dwayne (GET YOU MINDS OUT OF THE GUTTER) Dwayne tells Paige that she will be debuting on RAW the next night and that she will be facing Divas champion AJ Lee in a title match. The following night, Paige debuts on RAW with her initial nervousness being settled after she calls her brother and he delivers a rousing speech that gives her the confidence to go out a face AJ Lee (played here by Zelina Vega). Paige eventually overcomes Lee and finishes her off with her brothers signature move. Paige becomes the youngest Divas champion in WWE history, Zak continues to train the young people of Norwich at his fathers ring with the blind lad that he trains becoming a wrestler and that's us done. This is not a very funny comedy. As I have mentioned throughput this piece, it was a bit of a shock to see things like youth drug dealing and depression being dealt with in film that was marketed as a feelgood family comedy. I have to say though, just because it wasn't very funny doesn't mean that it wasn't very good and I think the performance of Jack Lowden as Zak Knight was very, very good. It was so good that I think a film focussing on the life of his character would have been just as good, if not better than this film. However there are strong performances scattered throughout this film and no one does a particularly bad job. I think it would have been interesting to see what the response would have been to the film had the marketing focused more on the social realist aspect of the film. All in all though, Fighting With My Family isn't a very good comedic film but what it lacks in comedic timing it more than makes up for in brilliant character development with the subjects of depression and overcoming the odds handled with surprising nuance. Overall, a very decent film. Rating: 3/5 Yes, you did read that title right. In the 1994 horror/drama classic(?) Brad Pitt, dressed as an 1790's Louisiana gentleman, goes to a party with fellow vampire Tom Cruise who turned Pitt into a vampire after Pitt almost killed himself whilst he mourned the death of his wife and unborn child (by the way, Cruise plays Lestat de Lioncourt and Pitt plays Louis de Pointe du Lac but during this review I will be using their real names instead) and after finding an older woman to feast on to drain lifeforce from, in what is perhaps what is one of the most unintentionally hilarious scenes of the past 30 years, Pitt decides to drain the lifeforce of the woman's dog alongside the woman herself with Cruise coming back to admonish Pitt for his behaviour whilst Pitt just sits there with a woman and dog in both of his hands. The film gets even more stranger from there. After breaking free from Cruise for a short time, Pitt wanders the streets of a district of New Orleans that is plague ridden, after hearing the weeps of a small child in a nearby house Pitt enters and sees a young Kirsten Dunst mourning the loss of her dying mother. After embracing Dunst and trying to comfort her, Pitt can no longer resist feeding off of rats and Bichon Friese and FEED ON A CHILD. Brad seems rightly troubled by what he did and then all of a sudden big Tom is there to mock Brad for killing a child. Tom does this by dancing with the recently deceased corpse of Dunst's mother as he celebrates Brad's first kill. Feeling guilty for killing the child, Pitt decides to bring Dunst back to life as a vampire and after reawakening her, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt become vampire parents to a young Kirsten Dunst in one of the weirdest three way partnerships in all of modern cinema.
Whilst Pitt loves Dunst as a daughter, Cruise is only interested in teaching her the ways of the vampire. Time goes by and whilst all three of them age psychologically, all three remain ageless much to the chagrin of Dunst who is still being treated as a child by Cruise, despite her mental age being much older than her appearance. After convincing Pitt that they need to leave Cruise, Dunst gets Cruise to drink from the body of a dead person and after poisoning Cruise Dunst then slits his throat and dump his body in a swamp. On the night the pair plan to leave for Europe, Cruise makes a comeback but after a short skirmish, Pitt burns down the home of Cruise that inadvertently cause a mass fire that burns down a fair chunk of New Orleans that Pitt and Dunst watch from their sailing boat as they go forth to new pastures of Europe. Travelling the world looking for fellow vampires, Pitt and Dunst eventually settle to a life of normality in Paris however, the calm is soon broken when whilst strolling the streets of the French capital one night, Pitt encounters Stephen Rea and Antonio Banderas who also turn out to be vampires. Invited to Banderas's coven, which doubles as a theatre where the vampires who live below put on shows for humans with the majority of the shows being about the vampires being vampires, Pitt decides that through the teachings of Banderas he will learn how to be a better vampire. Deciding to leave Dunst to become Banderas's companion, Dunst demands that Pitt turns a human woman to become her new companion in light of Pitt's decision. Pitt complies but the coven turn on Pitt and Dunst after realising that they murdered a fellow vampire in Cruise. Pitt is imprisoned in a metal coffin and placed behind a brick wall in scenes reminiscent of when Gordon the train is ostracised from his fellow trains in Thomas the Tank Engine, Dunst is placed in a well with her new companion with the two of them eventually are burnt to ash when sunlight touches them in the morning. Banderas eventually frees Pitt from his metal coffin and after setting the theatre on fire and killing Rea with a scythe in revenge. Banderas offers Pitt the chance to be his companion. Pitt refuses largely due to the fact that he knows Banderas could have saved Dunst but he didn't. and so Pitt leaves Banderas and begins to explore the planet alone. After returning to New Orleans, Pitt finds Cruise living as a recluse in a long abandoned mansion. Cruise pleads with Pitt to re-join him as his companion but Pitt refuses. The interview that has been ongoing throughout all of this is concluded by Pitt and after the interviewer voices his eagerness in becoming Pitt's new vampire buddy, Pitt lashes out at him furious that he appears to have learnt nothing from listening to his story of the hardships of being a vampire. after leaving the interviewer to flee. He eventually escapes and whilst listening to his tapes as he crosses the Golden Gate Bridge, the interviewer in attacked by a rejuvenated Cruise who feeds on the interviewer. Cruise begins to cruise in the interviewers car and offers him the chance to either become a vampire or die. We never hear the decision as the credits role and in one of the most bizarre scenes in the film, a long panning shot of the bay area of San Francisco is accompanied by a mash up of Cruise and Guns And Roses. In conclusion, Interview With A Vampire is an entertaining but at times quite slow film. The performances of Cruise and Pitt balance on the line between being serious and a little bit cheesy with Cruise living up to this more than Pitt does. Despite dragging somewhat towards the end, the film is worth seeing if you just want to see two of the most influential actors of the modern era either eat a dog or dance with the recently dead corpse of a young girl's mother. It's been a bit of a spooky scary month in the book club with two books centring around everyone's favourite vampire, no, not Brad Pitt and/or Tom Cruise, I'm talking about the big cheese, Count Dracula! So, let's sink our teeth into this month's book shall we?
Dracula - Bram Stoker It's the classic, the original, the first, the sayings for something being the first to do something go on and on but it's this novel that really started a fascination for people with things that the human mind shouldn't be able to understand. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula on the cusp of the 20th Century in a time when many things people thought were unthinkable and unattainable were in fact becoming things of fact. It's understandable then that people genuinely believed that somewhere in the middle of Eastern Europe there lived an eternal, shape shifting monster who made himself ageless by consuming the blood of a terrified populous that can only protect themselves via the means of garlic and religious paraphernalia. Reading it as a tech savvy (I use that term fairly loosely) 20 year old who has grown up with the rise of smartphone technology among other things I could definitely see why it left people feeling like someone in the shadows is watching them. The book takes the form of various diary entries alongside newspaper clippings which gives the novel a sense of realism. Stoker does manage to give the novel a creeping feeling of dread especially at the start of the novel when we follow Jonathan Harker as he enters Dracula's castle and realises that he has become a prisoner and his futile attempts to escape. The only real problem I have with the novel is the lack of conflict between some characters at times when something like that would have probably added something a little bit different to the novel. For instance, when Van Helsing tells Arthur, the husband of Lucy, that to make sure she is taken away from the control of Dracula and can finally rest in peace he will have to chop off her head and fill her mouth with garlic along with thrusting a stake through her heart. Arthur is understandably angry at the thought of a man he doesn't really know tells him to his face that he will behead his beloved wife but then just a few paragraphs later, Arthur is fine with Van Helsing beheading his wife and does not hold it against him for the rest of the novel. Yes, you could say that he allows him to do it for the greater good but, come on, there's not even a little bit of anger at this random killing your wife in a pretty gruesome way? Anyway, apart from that, Dracula is a fairly entertaining novel and is a good starting point for anyone wanting to get into the horror genre of fiction. Rating: 3.5/5 Dracul - Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker You've read the sequel, now read the long belated prequel to Bram Stoker's horror classic Dracula in the imaginatively named Dracul. Released in 2018, Dracul focuses on the story of a 21 year old Bram Stoker as we find him cooped up in Whitby Abbey with an two ungodly presences attempting to break into the room where he hides as he tries to stave them off until morning. If you ever wondered where Stoker got his inspiration for his seminal classic then this book is for you. Despite not sharing the same writing style as the original novel (due to the fact that language has evolved in the 120 or so years between this novel and its 'sequel') it does manage to hold tension between characters a little bit better than the first novel and despite it being over 500 pages long it did manage to keep me enraptured as the story delved deeper into the plight of the Stoker family and it's nanny. The shock twist of the story is pretty banal and is something that has been done a lot better in other novels and films but it adds some stakes to the end of a novel that portrays Dracula as something of a simp, albeit a very violent one. All in all, Dracul is a good addition to the Dracula franchise(?) and adds some backstory that is welcome although not really that necessary. Rating: 3.5/5 When Passengers was first announced, there was a lot of buzz about this movie, not only did it start two of the hottest stars in Hollywood at the time (and perhaps still to this day) in Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence but was also directed by Morten Tyldum who was coming into this film on the back of directing his first English language film. What was that film I hear you ask? It was only the 8 time Oscar nominated Alan Turing biographical drama The Imitation Game so it is safe to say that expectations were high when this film was announced. So how did a film that had so much going for it crash and burn so spectacularly? That is the question that this article will try and answer and along the way discuss how a man who condemned a fellow passenger to certain death somehow became the hero of this very messy film.
So a little bit of background on the film before we jump into the actual content. Passengers was actually first written as a script way back in 2007 with the original lead characters allegedly going to be played by Keanu Reeves and Emily Blunt with Reese Witherspoon and Rachael McAdams also allegedly attached to the film at one point. After 7 years in development hell, Sony Pictures Entertainment picked up the rights to the film and announced the involvement of Tyldum in early 2015 and the casting of Lawrence, Pratt, Michael Sheen and Laurence Fishburne were announced in February 2015 and January 2016. Filming began on September 15th 2015 and wrapped up on the 12th of February the following year. The film had a budget between $110 million - $150 million and had a box office return of around $303.1 million. Background finished, lets delve into this car crash of a plot. So we open up our film with a big spaceship called the Avalon which is carrying 5,000 colonists along with 258 crew members from Earth to the new Earth which is called, wait for it, Homestead 2. The journey to the new planet will take around 120 years so all 5,000 colonists are put into deep hibernation with the ship waking them up when they are 4 months away from arrival to the colonists new home. Unfortunately, something goes awry and the ship wakes up mechanical engineer James 'Jim' Preston (Pratt) 90 years before he should be awake. At first, Jim attempts to fix his pod and re - enter hibernation but when that fails and after striking up a friendship with robo - butler Arthur (Sheen) Jim spends a year enjoying the various activities that the ship has to offer. This includes the obligatory dance off scene along with Jim doing exercise. After all of this though, Jim begins to get lonely and begins to considers killing himself but before he does, he notices our second protagonist Aurora Lane (Lawrence) sleeping in her pod. Good ol' Jim becomes obsessed with Aurora going as far as to watching her personal diaries as to why she came onto the ship and reading her work. This is were the simp behaviour start, Jim convinces himself that he and Aurora would be perfect together. After a little bit of weighing up the possible consequences of his action (condemning someone to death) he releases Aurora and tells her that her pod malfunctioned. Aurora is understandably distraught at the thought of her early demise and attempts to re - enter hibernation. After unsuccessfully attempting this, Aurora decides to write a book about her experiences upon the Avalon. As the year rolls on, Jim and Aurora do grow closer (we again see this via another obligatory dance scene and Jim speaking Spanish to a robot, y'know, the good stuff) and they eventually fall in love. After all of this, Jim decides to propose to Aurora and reveals this to Arthur. However, Sheen can't keep his mouth shut and inadvertently reveals to Aurora that it wasn't a ship malfunction that released her from her slumber, it was in fact Jim. Upon learning this news, Aurora becomes understandably angry at Jim and in what perhaps is the strongest bit of the film, we watch as Aurora goes through the various stages of grief with her deciding to keep her distance from Jim because, y'know, he did condemn her to an early grave but ol' Jimbo does try to argue his case to Aurora by announcing his feelings for her over the PA system on the ship whilst she goes for a run. It's at this point however that we are introduced to our next character in the film in Laurence Fishburne's Chief Deck Officer Gus Mancuso. After he was also released from his pod early. Gus reveals to Aurora and Jim that the ship is suffering massive technical problems that if not tackled could lead to the destruction of the Avalon. Before our three hero's (I use the term 'hero' very loosely for our boy Jim) can tackle the problem, Gus finds out that he has a variety of medical issues in his body and just as quickly as he joined the party, he dies, and we're back to Jim and Aurora. After witnessing the death of Gus, Aurora and Jim put their differences aside and combine forces to fix the ship. After fixing various hull breaches, Jim and Aurora discover that the fusion reactor powering the ship has been critically damaged. Jim and Aurora do fix the module but the computer fails to vent the reactor which causes a massive fire. Jim has to enter the reactor to manually vent it while Aurora assists from with the reactor room. Jim successfully vents the reactor but in the aftermath is flung into deep space when his tether attaching him to the ship snaps. Fortunately for our resident simp, Aurora does admit that she is terrified of losing the man who sentenced her to an early grave and she ventures out of the ship to rescue him. After resuscitating Jim, the pair learn that the autodoc used to treat injuries can be used as a makeshift hibernation pod. The catch is that there is only room for one. Jim offers to put Aurora back into hibernation but our simp wins the day with Aurora instead choosing to live out her remaining days with Jim. Jim proposes, Aurora accepts and no one will be seated as we fast forward eighty eight years later to see Oscar nominated actor Andy Garcia make the most of his maybe two minutes of screen time as he looks on in awe to see the ship has been overtaken by a forest that I assume Jim and Aurora tended. Cue credits and an Imagine Dragon's song and the thing that I took away from this film and the thing that I have learnt about being isolated someone who you like is that no matter what you do, be that take the life of your companion into your own hands, as long as you manage to vent the core reactor of a spaceship, everything will be fine and your companion will love you back. Passengers is a film that could have been great. The basic premise of it is very interesting and even writing this review of it I cant help but to think that this film was perhaps one or two decisions away from being a genuinely decent film. The performances of Pratt and Lawrence in particular are really quite good, you've just got to think what could have been if this film was just written competently. It's perhaps the biggest missed opportunity for a film in the past five years and that's a shame. Passengers is a film that should have been great, but unfortunately, flew too close to the sun and crashed and burned. Thank you for reading, I'll see you next time. After Harry Potter ended, questions were naturally asked about what the trio of headline actors would do next. After 10 years of playing the most famous child wizards of all time, what roles would wet their whistle? Emma Watson went on to films like The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, Noah and Beauty And The Beast. Rupert Grint starred in Postman Pat: The Movie along with stints in the theatre. So, what of the main man himself big HP? Well, Daniel Radcliffe started his post - Potter acting career with a starring role in the Hammer Films adaptation of The Woman In Black as a struggling young lawyer who ventures to the countryside to sort out the arrears of a recently deceased woman who's spirit still wanders around the nearby town as well as her house. It's a good watch and, at the time, was one of the highest grossing horror films to come out of Britain in a long time. After this relative success, Radcliffe went on to star in the film that this piece is all about. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you perhaps the horniest film about religion from the past 6 years that isn't a weird porn flick. Daniel Radcliffe is Ignatius Perrish in Horns.
Let's have a bit of background on the film before we dissect some scenes. Based on the 2010 novel that shares the same name, Horns was directed by Alexandre Aja who before this film was perhaps most notable for directing the remake of Wes Craven's 1977 horror cult classic The Hill's Have Eyes along with the not so cult classic Piranha 3D. Premiering at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, the film eventually released to the general public October 31st of the following year. With a box office turn out of just under $4 million and with a critical panning upon release (41% Rotten Tomatoes, 46 rating on Metacritic) it's fair to say the film perhaps didn't do as well as hoped but there are still some positives to be found within the film. Background finished, let's get onto the film. Our story follows Ignatius (Ig) played by Radcliffe in the aftermath of the murder of his girlfriend Merrin (Juno Temple). Despite protestations that he didn't murder his girlfriend nobody really seems to believe him and after a lab burnt down containing crucial evidence to prove his innocence things don't look too rosy for our boy Ig so after angrily drinking himself silly, he goes to the memorial of his dead girlfriend and proceeds to literally piss on her grave. This incident leads to Ig having a on night stand with a local barmaid and when he wakes up, he realises that he has grown horns overnight. After trying to get them removed and after seeing that his horns seem to be able to make people reveal their deepest darkest secrets and desires Ig decides to use his newfound power to try and solve the murder of his girlfriend. After discovering that a local waitress had been selling false stories to the press, Ig also learns how his brother had taken his girlfriend from the restaurant where Ig and Merrin had had a heated argument. Leaving her to wander into the woods, Ig's brother wakes up to find himself bloodied and with a rock covered in blood. It looks like Ig, who now has snakes, has found his killer and makes his brother overdose on drugs as a way of recompense. However, his brother is not the real killer, it's his lawyer and best friend who murdered Merrin. After discovering that Lee was wearing Merrin's cross necklace, Ig removes it and, now fully exposed to the power of the horns, Lee admits that he was in love with Merrin and was jealous of Ig and Merrin's relationship. After the argument between Ig and Merrin at the restaurant, Lee followed Merrin into the words and attempted to make a pass at Merrin. Merrin rejects Lee's advances and, angered by this, Lee proceeds to rape Merrin and then bludgeons her to death with the rock which he later plants on Ig's brother. A short fight between the two leads to Lee locking Ig in his car and setting it on fire. After driving his burning car into the river it is believed that Ig has died and Lee tells people that Ig admitted to the crime and committed suicide however, our boy Radder's is not dead and is in fact now just a very crispy boy and with his sights set on Lee, he first heads to Merrin's father who now believes that he didn't kill his daughter and gives him Merrin's lock box. Inside is a note from Merrin that addresses Ig. In the note, Merrin admits to knowing Ig was going to propose to her and the reason she rejected him was because she had terminal cancer and didn't want her impending demise to stop Ig from living his life. Newly emboldened by the power of Jesus, Ig confronts Lee at the site of Merrin's memorial and despite bringing back up, Lee admits he murdered Merrin he then murders the two police officer Ig brought with him and then proceeds to injure Ig's brother. Ig has seen enough and proceeds to go against Jesus and rips off the cross and becomes the devil. Lee does mortally wound Ig but Ig manages to kill Lee via telepathic snake. Dying in his brothers arms, Ig is reunited with Merrin in the afterlife with the two looking to live on in happiness in the afterlife. Well... What a weird film, the first half was pretty decent and did set up some intriguing plot threads for the second half of the film but then it just gets weird. It's not the fault of Radcliffe, far from it, he puts on a more than decent performance in the film and in some scenes really does manage to overcome the limitations of the script and show his acting chops. Dodgy accent aside, Radcliffe is very, very good it's just a shame that the film's second half undoes a lot of the good established in the first half. All in all, Horns is a very strange film. Radcliffe aside, I don't really see any reason to revisit it and on that note, I award Horns a 2/5 rating. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Oh my I've only gone and actually continued a series on this blog when I said I would! I don't want to pat my back too much because, despite having run this blog for just over three years, I've started writing series and then just left them at part one (that Mark Howard piece I did anyone?) but here we are! It's a little bit later than I would have expected and it doesn't have as many books in it as last month (spoiler: I only managed to read one book throughout February) but hey, I'm proud that I've continued something I said I would. Anyway, enough self back slapping, it's review time.
The Frying Pan Of Spain Author: Colin Millar So what exactly is 'The Frying Pan Of Spain'? Or rather, where is this frying pan and can I cook stuff in it? Unfortunately, it's not just a massive frying pan in the heartland of Spain (although, that'd be a decent tourist attraction for a country, 'come and look at our massive frying pan! It's the size of Morecambe and can be used to make gigantic pancakes!) but the frying pan that this book focuses on is located in the province of Andalusia and more specifically the region's capital of Seville. Located within the city are two footballing institutions that were part of the building blocks of Spanish football. These teams are Sevilla and Real Betis and Millar goes about examining the intertwined history of one of, if not the most heated, rivalries in Spain and how both clubs manged to go from regional dominance to competing on the biggest stage in Spanish football. Not only do you learn about defining events in both clubs histories like Sevilla's recent domination of cup competitions like the Europa League and the Copa Del Rey as well as the Betis teams of the late 80's - early 90's that despite only winning a Copa Del Rey are regarded as one of the finest teams in recent Spanish history but you also learn about the people who best define these clubs. The sad tale of Antonio Puerta and the madness of Manuel Ruiz De Lopera are just a flavour of a book that is rich with stories about people that have come to define both clubs and the city of Seville as a whole. All in all, The Frying Pan Of Spain is a fine tale of a city and a rivalry that doesn't get much airing or perhaps isn't as stylish as Spanish rivalries like El Clasico. But thanks to Millar, you really do get a feel and a taste for a rivalry that perhaps should be celebrated more outside the jurisdiction of Seville. A big thumbs up from me for this one. Rating: 4/5 Hello and welcome back, dear reader, to the FNRL: TB book club! Usually, I only open the doors to the club when Danny Hall writes a book about Sheffield United but he's not released one for maybe 5 months so until he publishes another, I've decided to do a monthly post (or maybe this'll be the only one, I'm not great at doing article series) centring about the books that I read in a month. To start the year, I managed to read 4 books so lets get cracking and review those books!
Book 1: Peter Crouch, I, Robot/How To Be A Footballer 2 Peter Crouch is a very tall man. I don't think that's a particularly shocking thing to write, especially in 2020, but when you see him in real life and not through a television screen seeing his 6ft 7in frame bumble around a football pitch is a mixture of both awe inspiring and hilarious at the same time. Anyway, enough about seeing a tall man do his job, what's his book like? I think the best way to describe this is that if you liked the first book, then you'll probably like this one. Crouch can be very funny as he recalls events about various topics such as corners and managers and at 272 pages long does not go on longer than it should. It's a solid book and is something that you'll probably read once, but never feel the urge to read again. Rating: 3/5 Book 2: Juan Mata, Suddenly A Footballer I was pretty sceptical at first about this book. I think writing an autobiography whilst still an active footballer could date whatever you write quite quickly but Mata's book does not follow the usual autobiography guideline of telling some stories and furthering the readers knowledge about a certain event but instead is more of Mata giving his opinion on certain topics within the world of football whilst sprinkling in some anecdotes about his life. At times the writing can be a little bit banal and cookie cutter but by and large, Mata's book is extremely entertaining and if you want an autobiography that takes a little bit of a twist on that format then this is the perfect book for you. Rating: 4/5 Book 3: Richard Ayoade, Ayoade On Top I don't know how many people reading this (and if you've got this far into the article then well done) have seen the film A View From The Top starring everyone's favourite candle seller Gwyneth Paltrow alongside the big green one from those superhero movies Mark Ruffalo. I, for one, haven't but someone who has is semi popular comedic actor Richard Ayoade and let me tell you, he really does love this early noughties sitcom. Ayoade manages to deftly analyse a film that has been left to rot to the annuls of time not because it's a largely forgettable film that I think even Paltrow and Ruffalo would struggle to recall if you asked them about it. Ayoade didn't forget though and if you like learning about the nuances of tiny soap made to look like Boeing 747's, then look no further than this book. Rating: 4/5 Book 4: Steven Scragg, A Tournament Frozen In Time: The Wonderful Randomness Of The European Cup Winners Cup The European Cup Winners Cup hasn't been an active competition in football since the late 90's when a final between Lazio and Real Mallorca said goodbye to a competition that in it's heyday saw teams like Wrexham and Magdeburg bloody the noses of some of the elite teams in Europe. Taking a whistle stop tour around some the teams and countries that influenced the countries the most, this book is simply unputdownable at times and even though some of the chapters could very well be sold off as books in their own right, the writing of Scragg really makes this book a worthwhile read. If you want to reminisce about a tournament that you watched growing up or simply want to learn about how KV Mechelen went about winning their only European trophy then give this book a try. Rating: 4/5 And that's that for my reviews of the books that I read in January! So far this month, I've only read one book so far so this article might not be as long this month. Until then, see you soon. Pitbull is a man that fascinates me. He must be one of the most confident men on the planet. When your able to call yourself "Mr Worldwide" you have to have some serious cojones. So I woke up this morning and the question hit me, could I beat Pitbull in a fight? Now the rules for this hypothetical fight would be that it would in a cage (I guess I just like cages?) And it would be 6 rounds with each round being two minutes in length. To break down this 'fight' even further, I've made a pro's and con's list as to how I think I'd beat Pitbull and how I think he'd beat me.
Pro's First up, Pitbull says that he got his name from the dog, the Pitbull is banned in Miami apparently, and that because of this fact he is "too stupid to lose". Now I think I could use this to my advantage in a fight against "Mr 305" especially in a controlled environment. If I could frustrate him and make get more and more fired up as the fight goes on, I think in could use that willingness to win against Pitbull and perhaps wear him out and get him in the later rounds. Another thing that I think I have on Pitbull is a height and reach advantage. After minutes upon minutes of research I found out that Pitbull is about 5ft 6in. Being 6ft 1in, that 7in height advantage seems crucial to me and means that he'd have to reach up a considerable distance to reach my head. Once again I did more in depth research (took me about a minute, not gonna lie) and found out the average reach for a man of Pitbull's height and a man of my height. So for Pitbull, the average reach is around 66in for me, it's 77in. Now, this, this is great, that 11in is what I believe is most crucial to me having a chance to beat the dale man. I could literally keep him at arms length as well as hitting him from a little bit further away! Con's Now it's time to look into how Pitbull would beat me in a fight. The first big worry is actually linked to a way that I think I would beat him and that's the fact that he won't back down from a fight and that he just won't stop. This worries me, I'm not going to lie. Pitbull may be short, but he seems to take good care of himself. Along with that, I feel like if I did land a flush blow on him, he'd just laugh it off and keep on coming. That, that is what scares me, Pitbull wouldn't stop. He'd just keep on coming. Pitbull has legitimately knocked someone out. With a single punch. The story goes that a guy at Pitbull's show was annoying him by making it rain. This annoyed Pitbull and he brought the guy on stage to show his fans who had been messing with him. This guy apparently rushed Pitbull and, whilst he was caught up in the moment, Pitbull knocked him out with a single punch. Again this scares me. If he could accidentally knock out a guy out in one punch, imagine what he could do when he was actually trying to knock a guy out. The last point sort of ties into this and that's the fact that Pitbull loves the fight. In contrast, I don't love the fight. I feel that Pitbull would fully embrace the fight that we would be having whilst I wouldn't really want to be there and definitely wouldn't embrace the fight. Conclusion In the answer to the question, would I be able to beat Pitbull in a fight?, I think the answer would be no. I think that Pitbull would be more up for it than myself and that the explosiveness that he has in his fists would be enough to knock me clean out. In the end, I think we've all learnt that you don't mess with a man called "Mr Worldwide". |
AuthorI'm John and this is what happens when I get bored. Archives
May 2020
Categories |