England out of Euro 2008
In the not to so distant past England finally seemed to be on the path to its best days of football. Two 3-0 nil victories at home, and Russia to face on the road. Expectations were high. But Guus Hiddink seemed to have not read the script and put ice cold water from Volga on the flaming manes of the English Lions. All was lost. Surely, a team that had grounded the mighty English would beat the poor Israeli’s. But over the last decade and a half, Israel has shown the world that talent and resources really do not count for too much if you have heart. And thus, England’s destiny was back in its own hands; draw with Croatia, the group leaders, and go merrily singing, dancing and drinking beer to Switzerland.
But on this fateful day, Mclaren had a fit of amnesia or something and promptly forgot that if Gerrard and Lampard played together they seem more like petulant children arguing about their playing positions rather than actually playing. The excellent Gareth Barry, who had combined brilliantly with Gerrard in the centre of the midfield in the last few matches, suddenly did not know where to pass. Of course, the flying wingers, ‘am-better-than-Becham-SWP and ‘can-play-on-the-left-Joe Cole did add to the mess, with the latter marginally better than the former. Which is not saying much! The defence ravaged by injuries and suspensions was playing together for the first time and if combined with the one-match old goal keeper seemed a recipe for leaking goals.Why England on their home ground would play 4-5-1 (or was it 4-3-3), I failed entirely to understand. Of course, Mclaren could illuminate us on that. Or maybe he will point to the fact that England scored 2 goals and that they gave away 3 was just bad luck due to defensive injuries.
England actually does have very decent players. None of their players are truly world class, in the league of a Kaka or Zidane (no, really no, Gerrard, Lampard & Rooney do not fall in the same category) but most of them are in the better-than-average category. What they needed is a coach who understands their strengths and designs his strategy on it. Football has gone well past the days when you put your best players on the pitch and expected that they deliver. One needs to have a plan and keep refining it over time. With players having limited period with the national team to train these strategies cannot be conjured overnight and perfected. Sadly, Mclaren never seemed to have one.
Hopefully, after this defeat we will see the hugely inflated egos of the English players shriveling as if they were dipped into liquid nitrogen or something and the reams of paper wasted on elucidating the talents of Lampard, Gerrard and co kept to a minimum. Thats really is not wishing for a lot, rather than something like England qualify for Euro 2008, is it?
Hopscotch - Ronald Neame
The only thing that propels me to see every movie by a Tom, Dick, and Harry is that once in a while, by sheer chance on basis of the large numbers involved, I get my hands on one these classic masterpieces that people seem to have forgotten. After a week of seeing what I very generously term “action flicks with hot chicks” (now that I think of it this topic in itself deserves a blog post), Hopscotch was a reminder that you don’t need to make a few hundred cars to blow up and a few million bullets to be fired to make a good spy movie. Yes, The Bourne Ultimatum does give you that nice adrenaline rush as Matt Damon runs through world capitals like he runs through his list of girlfriends or something but it does get boring after a time. Movies like Hopscotch though you could see anytime.
The idea that spies are this set of nasty people, more like machines and rather indestructible too, is what comes when you read much too many Ludlum or Follett novels. On the other hand, if you are fan of the early Forsyth or the Le Carre (minus their moodiness) protagonists you would see spies as rather smart people who more than anything else have dollops of black humor poured on them and are rather nihilistic since they do the job not for the love of some flag or something but because they are good at it. Miles Kendig portrayed immaculately by Walter Matthau is one such spy. And he is taken off the field by his I-really-want-to-punch-you-on-the-face boss Myerson and decides to teach the entire agency a lesson. The old dog then proceeds to run rings around them before publishing a book of his memoirs. And yes there is romance with an old flame and the evil Russian as well, who seems to enjoy the game of his friend as much as his American boss hates it.
In his Criterion Collection essay Bruce Eder says
Ronald Neame’s Hopscotch has the distinction of being the only “feel-good” realistic spy film ever made. As the movie walks a fine line between serious drama and satirical comedy, and between topicality and escapism, it beguiles the viewer with its sophistication and complexity. The most surprising aspect of Hopscotch, however, may not be how well it walks that tightrope, but that its makers accomplished this balancing act in an era that saw the spy movie genre reduced to tales of relentless despair.
Add to this a touch of tongue-in-cheek Brit humor and you have a perfect cocktail. But seriously, don’t take his or my word for it. Go and watch it.
And now we have targetted spamming …
This is just so weird that I have to abandon my blogging stupor and write about this. Today, I saw three comments on this blog; a number beyond my imagination.
But all of them turned to be on one post: the rather spare review I had written sometime back of the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. Given the content of the books I am not surprised that there is a campaign against them by the established church. And with a well publicized movie in the wings (and I heard of the books from the trailers shown before Spiderman III) a larger number of people are going to be exposed to it. Hence, the ongoing war to the movies and the books has shifted to the internet.
All that aside, clearly the comments on my post were spam. They all sounded the same, lacked a single coherently strung thought and were posted on the same day at very similar times. But the wondrous thing was narrowness of the spam attack or that the excellent Akismet spam catcher failed to catch it. To the casual reader, they might even look like genuine comments so pertinent are they to the theme of the post.
And suddenly, I shudder at the thought of a future where with considerable amount of my personal information on public domain I will be subjected these inane but outwardly pertinent messages.
