Arsenal 1-3 Man United: Arsene’s Gunners Fail the Acid Test Once More

Prior to this clash with Manchester United, Arsenal fans would have been pretty content with the club’s performance this season. Elimination in the domestic cup competitions had been offset by a commendable league campaign and a comfortable passage to the Champions League knockout stages. When juxtaposed with last season’s less than stellar excursions, this season had been a rather large step in the right direction. And so today we were ready to measure how far this Arsenal side has come since the comprehensive defeat to Manchester United at the Emirates for the Champions League Semi-Final.

On the face of it all, with an identical scoreline, one could argue that Arsenal haven’t progressed at all. The first goal was the result of an individual error as in May (but this time it was also due to a sublime piece of skill) and the second killer goal was down to tactical naivety and the deserved punishment of a ruthless United counter-attack – also a feature of that semi-final. The crucial problem seemed to be that these players hadn’t learned the valuable lessons they were taught by their Mancunian counterparts in 2009. The urge to commit men forward was not balanced with a desire to cut out the sucker punch that inevitably followed. How many times does a defence need to be exposed before this team realizes that discipline is paramount against the big sides?

However, to suggest that Arsenal haven’t improved since last May is a long way from the truth. The 4-3-3 formation suits the side’s game far better and the extra experience the likes of Alexandre Song has accrued has been marked. Goals flow from midfield when they did not before and the addition of Thomas Vermaelen has given Arsenal a toughness in defence that was sorely lacking prior to the start of this season. But none of this changes the fact that Arsenal have been outclassed at home twice by their title rivals this season. This is partly due to the enforced absence of their strikers but also due to tactical errors and a gung-ho attitude that, while fantastic to watch, represents a gift to a top side with the wherewithal to unwrap it.

There is more to come from this Arsenal side. Their reaction to a defeat like this was outstanding following the drubbing by Chelsea in November. They will need to respond against the same opposition at Stamford Bridge if there really is anything left in Arsenal’s title challenge.

Roger Federer won his 16th Grand Slam title today; if ever there was an example of someone resolutely believing in what they do and their ability to emerge victorious, the Swiss is the man. Arsenal’s players need to believe and need to perform. They have to refuse to be beaten. If they accept defeat a week today, those title dreams will be going up in smoke once again.

The Future of Paid Content

With The Evening Standard now becoming a free newspaper, perhaps it is a good time to discuss paid content and where it is heading. The Standard is a newspaper filled with professional content and will continue to be so despite the lack of sales revenue. The paper’s parent company hopes that by offering the paper free of charge, the cheaper more tabloid style London Paper and London Lite will fade away into obscurity. Once the Standard effectively has a monopoly on London weeknight newspaper distribution, advertising revenues will rise and the paper can become self-sufficient without the need for traditional retail revenues.

Many industry observers are skeptical about the experiment and are concerned that advertising revenue alone will not be enough to pay for the costs associated with quality newspaper production. Other newspaper groups are not quite taking the same plunge yet, and Rupert Murdoch has made clear on several occasions his intention to charge for online content. But is this a workable scenario?

The Internet has changed the way we consume media forever. The music industry has already found out the harsh truth that people can find their products for free. And there is a suitable parallel to draw between the record industry and the publishing industry. The newspaper publisher, The Times, Guardian etc and the record company like BMI, are the means of distribution. What the internet has ensured is that eventually, the means of media distribution will become completely obsolete; that is to say that artists will be able to sell their music and merchandise themselves rather than having to have a record company distribute it for them. This is purely because of the lack of demand for the physical product and the rise in demand for the internet based file.

The same can be said for newspapers and books. The writer or journalist can offer their work online via their own sites or other online retailers as e-books for download to an E-reader (assuming these take off which is by no means a given as I’ll discuss in another post). By bypassing the traditional middlemen, the artist or writer or creator of content no longer has to sell the rights to their work and no longer requires a distributor; this maximizes their revenue in a way that the publishing and record industries would rather not think about.

This doesn’t necessarily mean entire industries of people will no longer be in work. What it means is that their roles within those industries will change. Musicians and writers will no longer need distributors but they will need promoters and advertisers to maximize their chances of success.

Some journalists have suggested that paid journalism results in better quality content than blog content and free web based journalism. This may well be true in a lot of cases but there is some wonderful journalism out there that doesn’t belong to a national newspaper or paid content site. There is a lesson to be learned from The Evening Standard. That paper has just become free as it could no longer compete with the tabloid free evening papers. If national newspapers go the same way, expect readers to turn elsewhere or even worse for the newspapers, popular journalists will become aware of their worth and will offer their work independently for money.

James Murdoch has categorically stated that The Times will not be following any business model of ‘micro payments’ or payment for specific articles. It is the whole paper or nothing. This will probably go some way to ensuring that the newspaper will not be drawn into a catastrophic scenario in which the money of customers is directed towards single articles to the detriment of the rest of the paper. The task he will have on his hands is to present a reasonable pricing model that will be profitable for the company. A 24hour site usage payment has been mooted but a subscription option will surely follow.

Interesting times are afoot for the publishing and press industries. The Times is willing to expose itself and be the first to take the plunge into fee-paying waters. But whether or not it will succeed and pave the way for other national newspapers to follow suit with their online content remains to be seen.

Movies: Oscar Review 2009

As Oscar season begins in 2010, I thought I’d post the Fantasista review of last year’s Oscar ceremony to whet the appetite for the potential winners due to hit screens this month…

Oscar Review 2009

The Academy nearly always gives one or two awards to the wrong person or film, and this year’s gluttenous festival of self congratulation was no exception. Mickey Rourke may never better his performance in The Wrestler, but left Los Angeles empty handed. The pill must have been a even more bitter to swallow when faced with the realization that the eventual winner, Sean Penn, was awarded his second statue for little more than to make a political point. I have always liked Penn; he is an exceptional actor but I think his Oscar this time around for Milk, and even his first for Mystic River, do not represent the best performances of his illustrious career.

Alas, this is the trademark of the Oscars; Martin Scorsese finally scored ‘Best Director’ for The Departed. Not Raging Bull, Taxi Driver or the 1990 gangster epic Goodfellas. No doubt Rourke will (in a few years) receive the Oscar he should have won for a mediocre performance in a film no one will remember. What did Pacino win for? Scent of a Woman. Not The Godfather or Scarface. It is the way the Academy works so we may as well just bow to its hopelessly misdirected will.

I was pleasantly surprised to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button receive exactly what it deserved; technical awards and no more than that. Oscar whoring films like this need to be banished from the echelons of cinematic history rather than continually pick up unwarranted praise. Fincher’s latest effort was a laughably self-indulgent piece of Oscar bait.

I’m less bowled over by Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire than others. While I was happy to see it win when faced with the alternatives, I’m really not sure it is one of the all-time great movies. For a Western audience perhaps the film represents some insight into Indian culture and modern-day life, but surely ignorance of a given subject is hardly criteria for an award? The film itself, for me, while highly stylized with an attention to detail that should be commended, doesn’t quite have enough about it to garner the praise it has done. Perhaps the bar just wasn’t that high this year.

What really greates, however, is that this is a film made for a Western audience and therefore Mumbai is presented how said audience wants to see it; it ends as a Western audience wants it to end, rather than in the fashion that should be deemed dramatically correct. The sad thing is that the far superior (and Hindi produced) Taare Zameen Par, receives no recognition whatsoever. This is almost certainly because of the attitudes and wants of Western audiences when they see ‘foreign’ films like Slumdog Millionaire. This is a Hollywood film presented in the style of a Bollywood one; this is merely masquerading as a representation of a world cinema triumph.

Considering that Million Dollar Baby won Oscars for near enough every aspect of it, I was surprised to see Clint Eastwood’s far superior and less heavy-handed Gran Torino pass by the Academy Awards like tumbleweed. Granted the themes and structure in the two films are uncannily similar, but Eastwood produced something fantastic here and it is a shame to see it go unrecognized.

In other news, Kate Winslet finally won her gold statue. And as you should know by now, she got it for the wrong film and in the wrong year. She should have won for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but this year has been rewarded with another typically Oscar-plated performance in The Reader. Her best performance this year was unquestionably Revolutionary Road. Heath Ledger deserved his statue for The Dark Knight; his tour de force as ‘The Joker’ this year was as exceptional a portrayal as I have seen for many, many years. It is only a shame that the snobbery of the Academy was at its usual level because Christopher Nolan and his film deserved far more recognition than it got. It transcended its genre and married critical appreciation with box office success in a way that no film has since Titanic.

Penelope Cruz in Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona was a supporting actress gong that could be seen coming from miles away. A previous award winner (so she must be good, they think), a romcom doesn’t usually get recognition but Woody Allen’s name changes everything. You see, this must mean it is a really good romcom and not just the template films you see every month. Marissa Tomei was more deserving in The Wrestler.

2008/09 was still a good year for films. Here’s hoping 2009/10 will be even better.

Movie Review: James Bond – Quantum of Solace

Many critics felt that the Bond franchise made great strides forward following the rebirth of the series with Casino Royale in 2006. While the film retained the charm intended for the series, it abandoned some of the stale elements and did a reasonably successful job of propelling 007 into the twenty-first century. If that film was deemed a winner, then Quantum of Solace can only represent a regression of sorts; make no mistake, the latest offering from MGM is a confused mess of a motion picture that does nothing to build on the progress made with the film’s prequel.

Expectations were undoubtedly high for this feature and even the most ardent fans will surely accept the disappointment that Quantum of Solace represents. The most frustrating point to be made is that the foundations for a great film were all in place from Casino Royale. Daniel Craig returns as Bond and appears comfortable in the role and his surroundings, delivering a performance full of vigour and gusto. Judy Dench returns as M, and Giancarlo Gianini as the Italian spy.

If Casino Royale was the rebirth equivalent of Batman Begins, then why wasn’t this the equivalent of Dark Knight in terms of building upon existing foundations? Firstly, the plot is very poorly put together and most if not all viewers will exit the cinema wondering what on earth it was all about. Secondly, some of the film just feels like moving through the Bond motions with no sense of spontaneity. One would have hoped that the franchise would have the courage to move beyond Bond girls arbitrarily placed in the film with no real purpose. Even M’s motherly quips to Bond are so tired and overdone that it all feels like we’re back to the Brosnan films all over again. The most damning flaw however is the lack of suspense. There is a feeling of inevitability about every action, no element of surprise and while this has become par for the course of the Bond franchise as a whole, Casino Royale at least had a sense that something different might happen. The Bond girl did not live, for example. Quantum of Solace reverts to type and feels like every other Bond film you’ve ever seen, except this time it follows a suspenseful film that changed the rules even just that little bit.

The directing is, for the most part, poor. MGM are clearly trying to emulate the Bourne series with quick cuts and action sequences that move at frantic pace. But this feels like a poor man’s Bourne, with none of the finesse or skill that made those pictures stand out. The result is that the action sequences here are hilariously over the top and hugely disorientating for viewers. I found myself turning away until the sequences were over.

There is one scene in this film that is criminally not expanded and it would have been a dramatic face-off that could have linked this film to the last one. Indeed, it is the scene that this film should have been building towards. Of course this one scene that viewers would have been looking forward to like the resolution to a cliff hanger is over in five seconds and I can only assume it was deemed unimportant to the film makers. This unbelievable lack of judgment is what compounds the problems of the film as a whole; it just seems like no one knows what they are doing.

There is also some shameful advertising going on as well that is self-referential in its absurdity. If that was the intention then bravo, but it is so clumsy and ridiculous that it surely had to have been on purpose. I suppose the money is more important at this stage. This film is not awful; it can be embraced as disposable entertainment more than readily. But after a step forward for the series, viewers are entitled to more than is on offer here. Rumours abound that this was written while filming was going on; it certainly feels that way. This sort of Bond film might have been acceptable when there was no Bourne or Mission Impossible movies to contend with, but Bond has fallen some way behind, as sad as that is. What we’re left with here is a hollow motion picture that ultimately results in a highly unfulfilling cinematic experience.

GRADE: C-

Movie Review: Titanic (1997)

Titanic (1998)

Many critics have hailed this film as one of the best ever made, and if box office success is the yardstick by which we judge quality, then one has to submit to this money making behemoth of a movie. But thankfully this isn’t the case. Titanic does not deserve the praise it has received over the last 13 years. The film is three and a half hours too long and quite simply is not the shining beacon of cinematic glory that people would have us believe.

People must get out of the marketing bubble and view the film using the criteria one would use for any film. For example, let us examine the characterisation. In Titanic there is not one character that isn’t a cardboard cut-out. Rose is the upper-class girl who is engaged to the nasty upper-class man. She isn’t interested in money and therefore wants to be with the lower class boy who she ‘loves’. Blah blah blah. Jack and Rose know each other for around two days, and the build-up of their relationship is sickeningly melodramatic. They don’t really know much about one another and bond while spitting into the water together. How adorable.

There is a positive to note though: The film looks fantastic. There can be no qualms on the visual side of things, everything looks incredible. When you watch it, you have the feeling that you are watching something very real. It is a huge step forward in terms of special effects and has the same aura as watching Terminator 2 for the first time. The movie has a true epic feel, and the ship sinking is quite simply amazing. It is worth seeing purely for these feats alone, as only the most hardened of viewers will fail to be affected.

One laughable attempt at making the film artistic is the love-making scene in the back of car with Jack and Rose. How romantic. Seeing as this film is a 12 certificate, it will no doubt lure in millions of twelve year olds again and again, who will then proceed to proclaim indoctrinated, that ‘it is a really good film.’ In what could very well be labelled a one night stand, we see the steamy windows and the hand-print. I fail to see how after one day together this is seen as a love story. Thus seems more like Club 18-30 in Ibiza to me.

The acting in the feature is over-rated. Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio are nauseating in the extreme and have both done much better work elsewhere. There is no person in the world who wouldn’t be annoyed by the bland and personality-less character of Jack. The cinematography is very good, but the script leaves a lot to be desired. The relationship between Jack and Rose is not properly built and as they are so one-dimensional that the viewer shouldn’t care about them anyway. I know that 99% of the people who read this review will completely disagree with me, and that is the beauty of opinion and I respect it, but this has to be one of the most over-rated movies of all-time.

C +

The Footballing Decade

Footballing Achievement of the Decade – Arsenal’s unbeaten league campaign 2003-04

Winning trophies is the dream of every fan, but making history in the way Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal did in 2004 is in some way even more special. The fact that the professor was widely ridiculed for his belief that Arsenal could achieve this feat a season earlier exemplifies its magnitude. Unbeaten seasons had occurred before but not in the modern era and not with 38 games per campaign. The fact that not many pundits, players or fans would be bold enough to expect this achievement to take place again is a testament to what an incredible season it was for Arsenal in 2003-04.

Final of the decade – UEFA Champions League Final 2005: AC Milan 3-3 Liverpool (Liverpool win on penalties)

There can be no debate about the final of the decade. After the footballing masterclass on show from the Milanese in the first half of the Champions League Final in 2005, surely nobody could have predicted the astonishing comeback that was about to take place in Istanbul. Kaka and Andrea Pirlo had torn Liverpool a new one in the first half with Hernan Crespo bagging a brace of world class finishes. In a period of eleven minutes in the second half, Liverpool clawed the score back to 3-3 following goals from captain Steven Gerrard, Vladimir Smicer and a penalty from Xabi Alonso. There was an air of destiny about the whole experience that transcended football as a game and sport. When Jerzy Dudek evoked Bruce Grobellar’s ‘spaghetti legs’ in the penalty shoot-out after having the game of his life in the second half, we all knew that Liverpool were meant to win this one.

Controversy of the Decade

Controversy plagues football but this decade had an incident that took place in the most high profile game on the calendar – The World Cup Final in Berlin, 2006. The match itself had long carried a scoreline of 1-1 following a cheeky chipped Zidane penalty and a thumping header from Marco Materazzi to equalize. How fitting, then, that it was the same two players involved in a moment that will never be forgotten in the annals of footballing history. As with many items of history, we may never know exactly what happened between them but it is safe to assume that Zidane headbutted Materazzi following an insult to him or his family. The referee had not seen the incident and the suggestion is that the red card shown to the Frenchman was due to the referee’s assistant watching a replay on a television monitor; FIFA doesn’t allow such modern equipment to influence decisions in matches. That Zinedine Zidane, the greatest player of his generation, should be sent off in his final game as a professional footballer carried a poignancy that encapsulated everything about the Algerian-born midfielder; like so many, he was a flawed genius with a propensity for the extraordinary and the insane in equal measure. When Zidane departed the field in extra time with ten minutes remaining, the Italians started believing that it was their time to banish the memories of their penalty shoot-out final loss to Brazil in 1994 twelve years earlier.

Manager of the Decade – Jose Mourinho

Journalists in this country lap up the Special One because he is never short of content for them to help meet their deadlines. But in truth there is a petulance about Mourinho that stops him becoming universally endearing, shall we say. What isn’t debatable is his meteoric rise over the last decade that has seen him come from an unknown to a manager that has won all the major honors the club game has to offer. Pep Guardiola has just achieved a debut perfect season at Barcelona, but if we are talking about the decade as a whole, there can only be one victor in this category.

After winning the UEFA cup and Champions League in successive seasons with FC Porto, Mourinho joined Chelsea and won back-to-back Premier League titles while supplementing them with Carling Cup and FA Cup victories. Upon leaving Stamford Bridge he joined Internazionale and won Serie A in the first season of equal competition since the Calciopoli scandal of 2006. His style of football is less than altruistic, but his results this decade have been unquestionably outstanding.

Player of the Decade – Ronaldinho

He may have faded in the last couple of seasons but if I had to choose one stand-out player this decade it would have to be the Brazilian. He announced his arrival on the world scene in 2002 with that freekick against England in the quarter finals of the World Cup in Japan and South Korea. At the time everyone in this country took solace in the idea that it was a total fluke, but after watching Ronaldinho’s exploits over the rest of the decade, perhaps many observers felt they were a little disingenuous towards the man from Porto Alegre.

This blog is named after ‘fantasisti’ – magical players that make you dream. Make no mistake, Ronaldinho is a fantasista of the highest order; his improvised goal against Chelsea in the Champions League, his chip against Milan in the San Siro to set up Giuly and lead Barcelona to the Champions League final in 2006, his stunning goal against Real Madrid – all the work of a footballing genius and his ability was on display this decade more vividly than that of any other player in the world.

Goal of the Decade – UEFA Champions League Final 2002 – Zinedine Zidane against Bayer Leverkusen

There is always a discussion to be had regarding what criteria to use when judging what makes a goal great, but Zidane’s sublime volley in the Champions League Final in 2002 fulfills any element one might wish to throw at it. Firstly, the goal itself is of extraordinary quality; normal players cannot pull off what Zidane does, shaping his body and hitting the ball perfectly with his weaker foot into the top corner with the panache that only the best players possess. Secondly, it is in the biggest game in club football, the European Cup Final. Thirdly, it was scored by one of the all-time greats and it wasn’t a one-off, one in a million goal; Zinedine Zidane was capable of scoring in this kind of devastating fashion. This was a goal that was talked about for weeks afterwards and will be remembered for a very long time.