Ramblings of a Brit abroad

Well, that’s it then. Another season is pretty much over and the Gunners Silverware cupboard is once again looking pretty sparse. Not so long ago they were flying high with a good lead and looking like the team to beat.

Looking back there was one defining moment where it all came unraveled. Saturday 23rd February 2008 at around 3.03 pm. That was the moment a bone shattering tackle on Eduardo by Taylor of Birmingham freaked out the team to such an extent that including that game, Arsenal picked up just 8 points from the next 21 available. With Man U and Chelski only a few points back, you just cannot give up that kind numbers. As a young team, it was a shock to all around and you could see on the Arsenal players faces that they were shaken. Confidence is everything when you are chasing a title and they just seemed to lose it.

There are a few other factors which I think may have contributed to this seasons poor run in. The lack of a fit Van Persie has been obvious all season. Sure, Bendtner and Walcott will come good but they are not quite in RVP’s class as yet. Rosicky’s constant on-off fitness has also been a blow. Thank heavens for Fabregas and Flamini who held the midfield together as a near constant.

Speaking of Flamini, what is he thinking. Off to AC Milan as a free agent. I think I saw him called “FlaMoney” on one blog. At best, he will be a bit part player at Milan. He’ll drop down the pecking order for starts both at Milan and more than likely, France. He will regret leaving…. they all do…. one day.

So, to the future. Our young guns will go for it again next year. A year stronger and a year wiser. We need to strengthen. In the keeping department we should be OK. We need to bring in a world class central defender. Toure and Gallas are OK but Senderos has been found wanting on more than one occasion. Flamini will be missed but I am sure that one of several youngsters could fill the gap. Denilson looks a good prospect but maybe he needs to toughen up a bit.

No doubt Carlos Vela will be called back from his loan at Osasuna. He looks a great player and one for the future.

Maybe we also need one more proven goalscorer. I know the name of David Villa has been thrown into the ring but I think he’ll probably go to Madrid. Lets hope Eduardo recovers well and is available early in the new season.

One last thought. This season has gone very quickly, but I have still missed Challenge Lawro. Come on BBC, flash some of that outrageous license fee and get it up and running again “Bigger and Better” as promised.

Well, the first of the big summer blockbusters finally arrived last Friday so we made an opening day visit to Cobb Theaters in Lakeland, Florida. A full house. If there had been standing room, they could have sold that as well. The nice thing about our new Multiplex is that it is all stadium type seating so even if you have a basketball player in a hat in front of you, you still don’t have to miss any of the film. Anyway I digress.

Iron Man is the tale of Tony Stark ( Robert Downey Jr. ), an MIT graduate by the age of 15 and now the worlds foremost weapons developer and manufacturer. Whilst demonstrating his latest weapon in the desert in the Middle East, he is kidnapped and forced to build another weapon for terrorists. Needless to say, that is not what he does and the first Iron Man is created. Now, I don’t want to give anything away, but these are some nice twists in the plot, a little romantic interest with Miss Pepper Potts ( Gwyneth Paltrow ) and great performance by Jeff Bridges as Obidiah Stone, Stark’s No 2 at Stark industries. There is a nice little cameo for Director Jon Favreau, but the star of the film is the special effects. Downey is very believable in the role of Stark and no doubt Audi came up with some major cash as there are vehicles all over the place in the film.

If action / adventure is your bag, then I urge you to go and see this. Although I think it will look pretty good on the small screen when it eventually comes to DVD, the big screen with the Dolby sound system turned up loud definitely added something. I don’t think it will give anything away to say that Iron Man 2 will soon be in production. Oh yes, if you do go and see it, wait out the credits for the final scene. I couldn’t figure out why nobody was moving when the very long credits rolled, but one of the ushers tipped us off that it wasn’t quite finished. He was right !!!

Spend some cash and see this. Rating 8.5 out of 10

About 18 months ago, we bought some fruit and someone had told me that if you cut the top off a Pineapple, trim it so that there is no fruit left and stick it in the ground, in about 2 years it will produce fruit. Given our ability to kill plants almost instantly, we thought this would never happen. Wrong!!!, the picture shows our fledgling Pineapple which should be ripe in about 3 weeks as long as the birds don’t eat it. However, given that the plant will only bear fruit every 2 years, I don’t think we shall be relying on it as a regular food source. I think our next venture may be an Orange tree.

Loosely based on the book ” Bringing Down the House” by Ben Mezrich, this is the tale of a bunch of M.I.T. students who take on Vegas at the Blackjack tables. Ben Campbell ( Jim Sturgess ) is a straight A student who needs to raise $300,000 to allow him to attend Harvard Medical School. He is recruited by his Maths professor, Micky Rosa ( Kevin Spacey ) to join his team of card counters who run weekend trips to Vegas. Whilst his initial interest is only to get his tuition money, greed and excitement take over blurring the lines between his life as a student and that of a high rolling weekend gambler. Add to this his smart and sexy teammate, Jill Taylor ( Kate Bosworth ) and he begins to loose control. Although counting cards isn’t illegal, the stakes are high and he attracts the attention of Casino Enforcer, Cole Williams ( Laurence Fishburne ).

This was a really enjoyable film and appeals to teens upwards. This I know as my 16 year old daughter also really liked the film. There were some very good performances from both the main players and from the supporting cast and it gives an outsider a really good view of what Vegas can do to people.

The screenplay is well written and has a very good twist at the end which I shan’t reveal as that would spoil it for you.

Oh well, I guess I’ll have to read the book now and play spot the difference.

Score 8/10

Much like Arsene Wenger, I refuse to concede the Premiership title. It is still there to be won. I would be the first to admit that after the Gunners 1-1 draw with Liverpool yesterday, things looked bleak, but then wouldn’t you know it, Boro went and upset the odds again. Annoying isn’t it. They just seem to raise their game when the big teams come to town.

As I see it, this weekend’s big winners were Chelsea who now sit only 3 points behind United and with Arsenal playing United next weekend and United still to go to Chelsea, this is far from over.

With all 3 teams still involved in Champions League stuff as well, this could be one of the best run ins in recent years.

Add to this an FA Cup final between Portsmouth and Cardiff, no wonder this is the greatest game on the planet.

Once again, thanks to those nice people at Netflix, we got to see another movie very soon after its DVD release here in the US.

Now, I quite fancied seeing this on the big screen, but as per usual, never got round to it so we spent yesterday evening in the company of Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd. He was joined by a large chunk of the “Harry Potter” gang, namely Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall. The story revolves around Benjamin Barker, a Barber ( Depp ) who is falsely transported to Australia by Judge Turpin ( Rickman ). He returns to London to gain revenge and reclaim his daughter. He sets up his Barber Shop above the Pie Shop owned by Mrs. Lovett ( Bonham Carter ) and a sinister partnership develops with Mrs. Lovett baking Todd’s victims into meat pies.

This film has Tim Burton written all over it. It is shot in a style similar to Sleepy Hollow which is a drained colour with certain dream sections shot in full colour. Depp gives a Oscar Nominated performance and has a good singing voice. Yes, this is, I believe, the first musical slasher movie. Whilst, I am not usually a fan of musicals, this was strangely watchable, although Mrs. Adams got a little tired of the amount of bloodshed and gave up about half way through. I would recommend this film to an adult audience and especially to those with a stronger constitution.

Watch out for a cameo by Sasha Baron Cohen ( Borat, Ali G ) as Signor Adolfo Pirelli, a character from Todd’s past who meets a particularly grisly end, as do most who cross his path.

Score 8/10

Thanks to the nice people at Netflix, we received a copy of “No Country for Old Men” on the day of it’s DVD release here in the US.

It is the story of a Vietnam Veteran, Llewelyn Moss ( Josh Brolin ) who stumbles across a gun battle in the desert with no survivors. There he discovers a massive haul of heroin and a trail of blood that leads to another body and 2 million dollars in cash. So he decides the best thing he can so is keep it. Big Mistake!!! Hot on his trail is Anton Chiguhr ( Javier Bardem ) in an Oscar winning role, as a psychopathic killer bent on retrieving the case of money by any means. Death and mayhem ensue with Chiguhr dispatching many of his victims with the aid of an air powered abattoir gun and a shotgun with a silencer.

In to the mix comes Sheriff Ed Tom Bell ( Tommy Lee Jones ) who tries to make some sense of the chaos going on around him in this small area of rural Texas, but with little success. All he discovers is bodies.
This is a stripped down crime thriller, expertly crafted by writers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen, with little in the way of camera tricks apart from some spectacular gore, a very strong plot line and great performances, most notably by Brolin and Bardem. The latter quite rightly won the Best Actor in a supporting Role at this year’s Oscars as he gives a performance of a man so detached from real life that he can decide whether someone lives or dies by the toss of a coin.

I would thoroughly recommend this film to anyone as long as the smaller kids are tucked up in bed. And if you tend to not like graphic murders with an awful lot of blood, then you probably shouldn’t watch it either.

Score 9/10

It would appear, as my 45th birthday looms large, that I have reached what it commonly called a certain age.

I gave my beard a trim this morning and noticed a quite unusual amount of grey on my chin. Added to this, I seem to be losing the ability to grow hair on the top of my head and instead have become extremely proficient at growing hair from both ears and nostrils.

I have also noticed when getting up in the morning that I have run a marathon during the night as this can be the only explanation for being so stiff and achy.

Does anyone know if there is a worldwide database of the e-mail addresses of men in their 40’s as the offers of pills for what is delicately termed E.D. here in the US, have accelerated at an alarming rate.

But what annoys me most of all is that nobody will believe that I am younger than my wife, Zoe, who is serenely approaching her 50th without a care in the world and still looking like a woman in her late 30’s.

So what do I have to look forward to? I am guessing that pretty soon the already poor eyesight will require glasses to help me read and no doubt, somebody will soon suggest that a prostate exam is in order. I refuse to have some quack remove hair from another part of my body and sew it to my head, and a syrup is definitely out of the question. So when the inevitable eventually happens I shall either shave it all off, or start wearing a lot of different hats.

So when you ask me next year how old I am, I am 39….. GOT IT!!!!!

I have created a new category on here purely to point out the stupid, banal and more often than not, pointless rubbish that the press come out with sometimes.

This weeks special prize goes to the Daily Mail who thought it both interesting and newsworthy to point out that Celine Dion took to the stage in Tokyo recently with hairy legs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=529448&in_page_id=1773

Now it wasn’t that Miss Dion is a particularly hairy person, far from it. It was the fact that particularly bright back-lighting made her look furry and this was apparently newsworthy.

Now I gave up buying printed news some time ago in favour of the free online version and is it any wonder. I shall be scouring the pages of the various tabloids in search of more gems of ludicrous reporting but for the moment I shall leave you with a quote.

“But despite the grooming oversight, she succeeded in wowing the crowd with a typically dazzling performance.”

I am pretty sure that her hairy legs ( and arms if you look closely ) were not her number one priority whilst earning several million bucks signing her little heart out!!!

At the start of today, the odds of both Manchester United and Chelsea being out of the FA Cup must have been huge.

Whilst United were at home, they were playing Portsmouth and would have been odds on favourites to take the tie handsomely. Unfortunately, Harry Redknapp has a habit of dumping United out of the Cup and he went and did it again today. By all accounts, United had the lions share of the game and could have had it wrapped up by half time, but missed chances and more heroics from David James kept Pompey in it. With the second half drawing to a close, Tomasz Kuszczak, on at half time for the injured Van de Saar, brought down Baros inside the area and was sent off for his trouble, although replays show he was not even close to being the last defender. Sulley Muntari dispatched the resulting penalty past stand in keeper Rio Ferdinand for Pompey to record a famous win. Apparently Sir Alex is not happy as only 4 minutes of stoppage time was played where his watch indicated 17 minutes according to one Darren Adams.

In the other game, Chelsea were even bigger favourites to beat Barnsley, although the Yorkshire team had already knocked out Liverpool in an earlier round. Again, the Premiership side had most of the ball but scores were level at half time. Chelsea fell to a sucker punch when a long ball was played into the box by Martin Devaney and Kayode Odejayi outjumped Cudicini in the Chelsea goal to power the header home. Chelsea laid siege to the Barnsley goal for the last 20 minutes but to no avail.

So 1-0 defeats for both Chelsea and United. Favourites for the cup now must be Portsmouth. It’ll be interesting to see what the semis throw up after tomorrows games.