accies1874
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Posts posted by accies1874
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32 minutes ago, scottbamby said:
I simply cannot take a club who starts Jake Davidson seriously.
He was on the bench today bro
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"Game management" is a phrase that gets thrown about too often, but we really did a honking job of seeing that out.
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Think we've played OK. Found good positions in final third, some quality out wide and a threat from set-pieces (scoring from what looked like the same routine that Tumilty missed from the other night was v satisfying). Quite susceptible to counters and doing daft stuff in our box. Certainly wouldn't rule Alloa out yet.
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Expecting Alloa to start this game like they started the second half on Tuesday. Hopefully we're a bit more prepared for it this time.
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40. The Sweet East - Cinema
I think I liked this quite a bit, but I'm not actually sure how good it is. It had me hooked from the trailers, and what you see is what you get from that point of view, so it's just a case of whether or not you can tolerate that for 100 minutes. I can see why a lot of folk don't like it.
The cinematography, for example, might grate for some people as it has the retro look that we already see loads of, but the scrappiness of the image (especially when projected in 35mm) and shakiness of the camera made the film resemble a cheap indie movie akin to the 2000s mumblecore stuff - in fact, it might even be a send-up of some of them. Talia Ryder's Lillian appears to be the lost young woman who appears in so many of these stories, but as time goes on and she interacts with more of the weird characters, it becomes apparent that she's in more control of the situations she finds herself in than her transience suggests. It's almost like some of the guys she comes into contact with are trying to mould her into their love interest in their own story, however she's writing her own script that diverges from theirs. It's weird. The fact that Simon Rex and Jacob Elordi play a couple of the men brought to mind their roles in Red Rocket and Priscilla respectively, two films that depict toxic and controlling relationships.
There are very deliberate gaps in logic which, combined with the overall weirdness, results in a confusing, dreamlike experience, and it never really settles into any of its different destinations, however they contributed enough to the overall vibes that I was happy going along for the ride.
41. Challengers - Cinema
I think that tennis lends itself to these kinds of stories well, as singles is an individual sport that, more often than not, leads to a final that can be anticipated ahead of time due to the bracket. That means that you can create dramas between two competing characters who bring all of their issues into one big showdown. The film's relationships almost play like a tennis match, too, with 'success' being knocked back and forth between them, and one of its many inventive visual tricks is to have the camera occasionally go back and forth between characters in a conversation. Adding a third person, Zendaya, into a sport between two individuals makes for an engaging story with different power dynamics, insecurities and deception.
I was initially a bit sceptical about the script essentially being framed around the final between Art and Patrick, as I'd have thought that the showdown might have been more impactful if you'd experienced the weight of the flashbacks going into it, but chopping up the narrative made it so that the subtext of the match changes every time you return to it - something I enjoyed. Plus, five-set tennis matches are hella long, so it allows you to experience that while still keeping a solid pace. Speaking of pace, whenever that pulsing score kicked in, I couldn't help but smile. I might just listen to it on repeat for the rest of my days.
42. Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry - Cinema
The nation of Georgia tries to redeem itself in my eyes after my disastrous trip there last November.
This reminded me a lot of Aki Kurasmaki's films which by extension go back to Fear Eats the Soul. The overall feeling of loneliness plays a part in that, but also the colourful yet minimalist set design and shots that mundanely observe people doing mundane things. I haven't seen Elene Naveriani's other feature so can't say for certain, but while I thought that Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry was good in isolation, it is a bit too visually familiar when considering those other films.
Once I got over that and started to focus on the script and particularly Eka Chavleishvili's performance as Etero, I found enough to like. Chavleishvili wears the same expression throughout the film, but she still manages to carry a range of emotions behind her frown. Etero's a compelling character; somewhat a woman out of time as she tries to run an independent village shop while a shopping centre is being built next door, but she's also a bit of a maverick due to her rejection of marriage, children and relationships in favour of simply living the life she wants to live. Meanwhile, a near-death experiences wakens 'urges' within her that don't compute with her independence, so it was interesting watching somebody's body essentially working against their mind.
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8 hours ago, craigkillie said:
Morgan was also called up for the rainy win over San Marino at Hampden - I think it might even have been on the day of the game after Snodgrass pulled out.Yip. A rare occasion of someone getting called up just because they were down the road. He was called up for the next squad against Cyprus and Kazakhstan too.
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The ending to the Leverkusen game was a really bizarre situation. They were in the driving seat to make a European final but were clearly desperate to keep their unbeaten run going, so they ended up looking like the side who needed to score to go through. Making the final almost seemed secondary to them extending their run.
I'd probably prefer Atalanta to win it but they're both sound imo.
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Villa seemed to have turned to shit of late so they'll have to do something really special to turn it around - I can't see it.
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The only surprising thing about the comeback was that they actually deserved it. They're obviously c***s, albeit less so now that Ronaldo's no longer there, but I think I've now accepted their place in football as just being The Team That Wins.
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11 hours ago, stepek 4 tellys said:
We’ll only lose Martin if someone buys him as he is still under contract for next season.
There have been a few rumours about him leaving, and that he might have a break in his contract if we don't go up.
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We could be losing Martin, Davidson and Hewitt (and Latona) in the summer, so he might get an opportunity in midfield at the start of next season.
@Jan Vojáček what kind of midfield role has he been playing? In a two? Deepest in a three?
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8 hours ago, printer said:
Was surprised and pleased to see him go off. Assumed he was tired and maybe being saved for Saturday.
I thought it was his poorest game all season, though he deserves the benefit of the doubt given how little football he's played in 2024.
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Pretty good 45 from us imo. Martin's uncharacteristically losing out a bit too often in the middle and Longridge is forcing Kilday to cover more times than I'd like, but other than that it's been a solid half.
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50 minutes ago, Otis Blue said:
Keep reading this stuff from Accies fans - what exactly do you expect?
We heard this all the time when we were in the Premiership. It was nonsense then too.
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Alloa not having Brian Rice as their manager automatically makes them better than they were last season. From the three times I've seen them this season, I'd say that they've been the better team against us over the piece.
Rankin tends to get something out of the players on these big occasions (with the notable exception of the Falkirk games), but that's not always enough to succeed. Sometimes his starting tactics let him down like against Hearts in the cup last season, sometimes it's his in-game decisions like closing out the play-off v Airdrie, or sometimes ill-discipline like Kilday's tackle against Raith this season. I really liked what I saw of Alloa back in February, so I think our press is gonna need to be spot on in these games - it often isn't under Rankin.
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On 05/05/2024 at 10:32, Scotty Tunbridge said:
That was enjoyable aside from the obvious pre-match scripting of finishing with 11 academy players on the park. Do Kelty have a case for match fixing because of that? Not for me to say, but yes.
Good to see Hastie finally do something but I think the sign him up chants are a bit premature.
Hopefully nothing serious for Longridge as I’d much rather him ahead of Hendrie in the upcoming meaningful games.
Maybe George Cairns put money on it to help with these cash flow issues we keep hearing about?
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Definitely think Morgan's at his best when playing through the middle off a striker (or two in the case of today). I was worried he was gonna start at RB or RWB, but he did really well behind Winter and Kirk.
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Of all the u18 regulars, Neeson would've been towards the bottom of the list for expected debutants. I'd have even had Preston, who's on the bench, ahead of him.
Hopefully Black and Latona are injured as otherwise they should've been in the squad.
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I saw The Force Awakens in 3D as it was the only showing we could get into for free. Other than Avatar 2, I don't think I've even seen it being presented as an option anymore.
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3 minutes ago, Bainsfordbairn said:
As a club, why would you allow a newspaper to break your stories?
Depending on how close you are to the local rag, you might give them advance notice of a story and tell them you're going live at 1700 so they can release the story at the same time as you.
But letting them break your stories? That's just totally tinpot. If I worked in your media department I would be raging.
We used to have directors that leaked signing stories all the time, but that was just to their mates, not the papers. And the club still ran all their own stories even if various "I want to look ITK" fans on facebook had told the world first.
Maybe because they know it'll get a negative reaction and want to have it filter through before the official announcement so that most folk let their initial anger out on Lanarkshire Live's post? Could also be so that it's already out there before we play a game tomorrow. Neither of these are compelling reasons, but trying to get into the mind of this club is a real challenge.
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Bizarre. Maitland did the same with Rice just before we were about to get relegated from the Premiership in an attempt to galvanise the club - something he later admitted was a mistake.
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Give gametime to the folk who need it, don't risk anyone with a niggle. I'm only going in the hope of seeing a debut or two.
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Sources say he's going on about Lynne Ramsay again...
You Were Never Really Here (2018) - Blu Ray
When I first saw You Were Never Really Here in the cinema back in 2018, it was one of those genuinely transformational cinema experiences. I remember the podcast I was listening to driving in, where I parked, the jackass who barged past me on the escalator (and then bizarrely had a proper Max Cady laugh at the ending), what I got for lunch and the classes I skipped at college to go see it. Friday afternoons were Shorthand and Scots Law – two subjects I was hopeless at – so I saw some pretty good film instead of facing my fears of those classes. The Breadwinner, Funny Cow and A Quiet Place were all good, but You Were Never Really Here was the one that had the biggest impact on me. I was disappointed that I couldn’t make either of the reruns in the past week, so I had to make do with fishing out my Blu Ray of it – a Blu Ray that gets fished out once a year (though funnily enough not the year where I reviewed every film I saw) and is a weird comfort film for me given it’s about a mentally broken man trying to rescue a sex trafficked girl.
This was the first time I’d watched it having also read the book, and that slightly increased my admiration for it. Lynne Ramsay took a pulpy 90-page book and turned it into an 80-minute masterclass in how to put the audience into the mind of a character. The first time I watched it, I don’t think I’d ever seen editing like it, certainly not in the cinema. The quick cuts to Joe’s traumatic past, to those he couldn’t save, which then inform the character we see in the film. It made for something incredibly exciting, unsettling and pertinent. The main thing that has stayed with me throughout the years, though, is how it shoots violence. I’ve never really had a proper grasp on why Ramsay chose to shoot Joe’s violent acts in detached ways – through CCTV footage, off-screen, reflected off a mirror – but this time around I think that the decision plays into the title. Joe’s someone who is haunted by his past so tries to erase himself from the present by leaving no trace of his actions. He’s a ghostlike figure, just missed by the camera in certain scenes or one where he disappears behind a car (not in a corny way), and tries to cope in this world by not forming connections with anyone other than his mother. That obscured violence could be a reflection of his ghostliness as he tries and ultimately fails to leave no trace of his actions, it could be a setup for a reveal towards the end, or it could be Lynne Ramsay telling the audience to remove themselves from the violence and focus on Joe’s motivations. Taxi Driver is an obvious comparison, but it wasn’t until this most recent watch that I was getting Eyes Wide Shut vibes. There’s a lurid conspiracy taking place underneath the surface of highrise office buildings, a governor’s mansion, a bodega, a simple hotel and even Joe’s unassuming childhood home – a conspiracy that the wider public isn’t aware of and never will be. It was Never Really Here.
Johnny Greenwood’s score is another aspect of the You Were Never Really Here that remains incredible. There’s nothing melodic about it, you won’t choose to listen to it outside of the context of the film, but the fragmented nature of the music is a perfect insight into Joe’s mind. When he leaves the hotel room right at the start, you’re immediately aware of the character you’re about to spend the rest of the runtime with and the score plays a big part in that – though not the only part, as the opening also contains my favourite shot. Joe leaves the hotel room and goes downstairs to the lobby where it looks like we’ve gone to a POV shot, only the camera stops when it’s revealed that there are flashing blue lights outside. It then pans around to find Joe going off in another direction. That shot establishes that Joe and the camera won’t always be as one, it conveys his paranoia, and it lets us know that the police aren’t on his side. The opening scene has a few moments of visual storytelling like this (Joe opening a door then immediately closing it when someone walks past, going in one direction then changing direction when he’s disturbed), so given the fact that this was my introduction to Lynne Ramsay’s work in 2018, it’s really no wonder that I became so drawn to it. Like I said about We Need to Talk About Kevin, the mystery around her characters is always fascinating to me, and with Joe I’m interested in the irony of a man who saves people giving off the impression that he loathes existing. He can be brutal to his mum, but then we see him sharing a song with her; he shoots a man and aggravates the wounds, but then we see him holding the victim’s hand in his final moments. It’s a product of his broken mind which is a product of his traumatic past.
Just finally, the book did make sense of a short scene where Joe reads a book (not You Were Never Really Here) from the ending backwards and tears out some pages as he goes. I’d previously struggled to articulate my thoughts on this, but the YWNR book has a line about Joe’s planned suicide being his favourite story as it’s the only one he knows the ending to. Think that sums it up well – both that scene and his approach to life.
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38. High & Low - John Galliano - MUBI
My quest to watch more documentaries continues. I'm not all that bothered about this kind of fashion, but I saw the trailer and thought that it teased an interesting fall - the low of the title rather than the high.
It opens with the main cause of that low, a drunken antisemitic spiel, which somewhat recontextualises the rise you then watch. You understand the toll of fame and success, aware that he's hurtling towards a fall. That's pretty standard stuff and I didn't find John Galliano's story compelling enough to elevate the documentary above that, despite some interesting stuff bubbling underneath such as the idea of fashion as a form of defence or escape rather than self-expression. He's prominent as a talking head which is often shot in a way that frames him as a bit mad, like you're peering into the delusions of someone not quite there.
39. Immaculate - Cinema
I might have liked this more if I hadn't rewatched Rosemary's Baby last night. As it is, I didn't like Immaculate much at all. I suppose a subversion of Rosemary's Baby is the fact that the cult in that film are trying to birth the son of the devil, whereas in this they're trying to birth a new Jesus yet the outcome is the same - a paranoid horror movie. So let's talk about the horror elements of Immaculate.
Jumpscares! Rubbish. There are a couple of terrifically tense scenes in this, one in particular goes on for a while and was brilliantly done; big open sets where danger could lurk and complete silence except for some creaks from doors and floors and the crackle of a fire. The issue I had with this was that by the time it got to that scene it was already well-established that any moment of silence would end in an obnoxious and distracting loud bang, so rather than enjoying the tension of the scene, I was just waiting for that bang to happen. When it did, it wasn't even a threat to Sydney Sweeney's Cecilia, it was just a loud noise to startle the audience.
It's got an 18 rating, so you're fully expecting some blood and guts in this horror. And there's lots of blood and a fair bit of gore, but even I, who isn't great with 'injury detail', found that aspect completely toothless. It's either shot in a detached manner where I didn't feel the pain or the digital effects are so obvious that I just didn't care. There's been plenty of chat about the ending, which yeah it was definitely effective, but what's interesting to me is that it was effective without showing you the horror - all you see is the effect that it has on Sydney Sweeney.
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Alloa v Accies Groundhog Day Part One
in Scottish League 1 General Chatter
Posted
Today was a bit like watching us earlier in the season. We played some good football at points, and looked especially threatening out wide which resulted in two goals from cut-backs. There were some good individual performances from the likes of Henderson and Smith, but I'd say that Rankin deserves credit for how he set them up to attack.
However... we also saw that that kind of football continues to leave the defence extremely exposed in transition. When Martin, Kilday and Fulton are at their best then that's less of a worry because you're confident that they can defend counters, but we haven't had them for much of the season and Martin clearly still isn't 100% so it's a much less wise gameplan, especially when you're coming up against a side with quality like Alloa's. It's a huge reason for why we can't control games under Rankin.