*CAUTION: This review contains spoilers for Now You See Me. If you haven't seen it and wish to do so, proceed with caution.*
Of all the stage craft in existence, the acts who have it hardest to gain credibility are the magicians.
People are far too eager to poke holes into magic tricks and find out how they're going on while they're being conveyed. While there is some success with the Penn and Teller shows and the recent rise of Dynamo: Magician Impossible, a lot of magic is generally sneered at.
Maybe this is why somebody decided its time for a film where the magicians are ready to bite back.
The premise of Now You See Me is of four street magicians performing a bank job. Sounds tempting enough, and with its role-call of A-list names it sounds like it could be even bigger. The film has already trumped the diabolical-looking After Earth in the ratings but is it all show?
We are introduced to magic troupe The Four Horsemen, who are formed of street performers - J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) and Mermitt McKinney (Woody Harrelson). They are summoned by a mysterious benefactor's tarot cards to New York City and shown an intricate scheme with motives unclear.
One year later and the gang are playing a huge show in Las Vegas. At the climax of their Vegas show, they decide to rob a bank with the help of a man in the audience chosen at random using ping pong balls. The man says his local bank is one in Paris but no bother - the magicians bring him up on to, before transporting him back to the arena. Bought back with him are some 3.2 million Euros, which are jettisoned across the crowd.
The crowd is delighted - as you would be if you got a random 50 Euro haul - but the FBI are not quite so enthusiastic. Agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is partnered up with Interpol agent Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent) to investigate the magic troupe.
Unfortunately a trigger word renders the man that was 'teleported' useless and the magicians don't prove much help beyond "it was magic", so they're let go. More help is offered by ex-magician-turned-whistleblower Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), who deduced the money had been stolen from the Parisian bank a while before and elaborate smoke and mirrors were used to deceive everyone into thinking it was stolen in real time.
And therein lies one of the flaws of the film, much like magic. As it happens it is easy to get swept away in what is pure spectacle. Hell, if you were in the arena enjoying the show when suddenly a man snapped his fingers and let it rain money on your head, it would be amazing.
But when you de-construct it, it just gives it the feel of a standard heist movie. There's the various marks and the unwitting central con who gives it the central momentum.
It also begins one of the traits of the film - the endless attempts at twists and turns, that attempt to be clever but by-and-large are a bit hit-and-miss. Some of what they're attempting works and has a smooth big picture but there's a fair few moments of clutter that don't help the show's smoothness.
Anyway, after Vegas, the show rolls east to New Orleans. Here, the team pull their next assortment of tricks before they conclude with the biggest one of all. The shows in Vegas and the Big Easy have been bankrolled by insurance multi-millionaire Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine), and as a climax of the show they steal roughly $140million from them and distribute it to their crowd, who were all victims of denied or reduced insurance claims with Tressler Insurance.
Tressler had previously tried to get Bradley off his back but now decided to utilise him as the key to reclaim the cash back.
This leads to the FBI seemingly gaining some ground but soon enough they duly lose it, as although a car chase seemingly claims one of the Horsemen, they lose track as a safe full of stolen money is revealed to be a hoax.
And then, just as it seems they have the now-Three Horsemen cornered at their final gig on Five Pointz in Queens, they lose them again.
No revelations how but it is more of the same problem. The cast are clearly enjoying themselves and it is a remarkable deception that is spectacle in its own way without resorting to blowing up a skyscraper or four, which is a refreshing change. But the plausibility of it all is a bit of a mental stretch.
The end of the film is also a strange one. It shows how easy it can be to get lost in the vision, as it requires fairly heavy-duty explanation and knot-tying to tie the entire film together. So although it all checks out by it's fairly over-the-top rules, the long explanation is a bit of a mega-delay that takes a while to truly click.
So although its a charming and entertaining piece of film, the big reveal as to how it all come together has a lot of loose fits that results in some of the magic is kinda lost.
3/5
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Tuesday, 23 July 2013
The World's End - Film Review
*CAUTION: This review contains spoilers for The World's End. If you haven't seen it and wish to do so, proceed with caution.*
The work of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright has a certain fondness for drinking establishments.
The pub has previously been used as the escape from tedium (various episodes of Spaced), the preferred refuge from zombie attack (Shaun of the Dead) and the place to shelter and conceive of a scheme to defeat a troupe of murdering loons (Hot Fuzz).
Here, the pub is the scene for two activities - the place to try and reconcile fragmented friendships, and equally, the place to stumble across and hide from evil creatures.
The story begins with the prologue of a night 5 young men celebrated the end of their school years in 1990 by taking on the quest of The Golden Mile - 12 pubs in their anonymous hometown of Newton Haven. In the end they called it quits after 9 with one of them laid by the wayside.
Some 23 years on and the gang are being bought back together, albeit not without some difficulty due to the events of the intervening years.
The driving force is former head boy Gary King (Pegg), who has become a washed up late 30-something. He leaves his therapy session in search of his old friends - Peter (Eddie Marsan), Oliver (Martin Freeman), Steven (Paddy Considine) and Andrew (Frost) - to try and actually complete The Golden Mile.
Although it takes persuasion - a lot of it in the case of Andrew, who got shot of Gary after an incident a few years after the night in question - the gang is re-united ahead of the trip.
Gary returns - in a vintage Ford Cortina that has been rebuilt - and collects his chums from the train station before driving to their town to begin the quest.
The problems quickly mount, starting with the "Starbuckisation", if you will, of the pubs. Fitting with modern day pubs, they all look alike. A surprising amount of pubs look and feel same as ever - indeed it takes a few before there's any change, and even then they have the same teak.
There's also the fragile dischord, which is played mainly for the bleak feel of friends falling apart rather than the comic effect. There's a few laughs hither and thither to keep things entertaining though, but it is mainly for the serious stakes.
At this point, it feels like a different place from the real thing. Oddly, Gary at times seems to resemble the villain from Men in Black 3, but years honing his acting on all manner of things means Pegg is approaching this in form and continues the streak. Frost is also doing well in his role, and it takes an interesting turn in pitting them as opposites rather than as friends at the start.
Its tricky to see what, if anything, can unite them. But then a force that binds them rocks up a few pubs down, just after Gary has been shunned by Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), who was his one-night stand on the original Golden Mile day.
Here, a slightly-intoxicated Gary gets aggravated at a teen in the toilets has been ignoring him when a fight breaks out. The teen is superhuman, and it takes limb severing to defeat it. However this exposes the fact that the teen has blue ink instead of blood and a robotic anatomy.
Soon the gang has to fight the teen's friends - and the original one's headless, armless body. Surviving that, they decide the best thing to do is to carry on. Originally leaving was the plan but with Andrew deciding to jump back onto the booze wagon after 16 years teetotal by downing 5 vodka shots, they decide sticking around is the plan.
At the next pub, Sam bumps into them while out with friends and is duly made aware of the conspiracy when her friends are revealed to also be robots, thus with another drunk brawl.
The film at this point has a series of drunk brawls punctuated by funny lines and monologues. The arrival at disco-pub The Mermaid sees an intricate explanation of the conspiracy that the town's inhabitants are plugged into a vast alien network, which is spread by contact with human skin so the network can replicate the target's body form.
Not-so-coincidentally, at this time, three high school lovers of the original troupe are kissing them, playing and dancing with them, swallowing Andrew's wedding rings in one bizarre example.
The next pub is The Beehive, which sees a familiar face to Bond and ABBA fans explain in a remarkably cool voice the benefits of membership. It could be enough to persuade somebody to join in, and Oliver is suspiciously sympathetic with this. However this is taken to the point where its revealed what was suspected - when both Oliver and the familiar are taken out, they are revealed to be robots too. Only problem is they're but two amongst about another thousand robots.
The choreography has been handed to Jackie Chan's fight scenes director, who does an admirable job in making the fights. Coupled with Edgar Wright's direction and it is delightful to watch, even if it takes on the swerving-fight look so many films seem to prefer despite it's aggravating disorientation.
One particular scene of note during the brawl in the Beehive sees Gary still trying to drink his fight even while robots are trying to beat the shit out of him. That seems to be a measure of the man - the man who wants to be forever young in the words of Alphaville, in a society where things don't work this way. It's almost something for sympathy, as well want to re-live our younger days but don't have the capability - physical or time - to do so.
Saying that, its a bit too man-babyish - a "maybe" as put in a later scene - which just makes him look like a loser. Everyone has to grow up sometimes, and all that.
Still being pursued, the crawl unofficially (i.e. Gary is the only one still taking part) rocks up to its final destination.
Gary and Andrew has a genuinely moving moment in and amidst a bar brawl, before stumbling upon the conspiracy.
The alien vision sounds charming, but unfortunately, three drunks are not the people to talk too about it. The aliens, indeed, probably could be better off just infiltrating the political offices and persuading/forcing humanity to go along this way. There's probably a film in this somewhere.
The end coda is definitely different, revelling almost in the changed surroundings, as well as finding the humour, not least with the well-placed mention of a certain frozen dairy treat also found in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.
This is not a film without some problems, not least given it does have a certain amount of indulgence in its sci-fi premises.
But on the whole, its still a delightful film, with funny moments, impressive action, good writing, an intriguing conspiracy idea and a well-formulated hangover so literally apocalyptic that it makes The Hangover movies look like a good night's sleep after a night in.
Its certainly impressive and if this is last orders for the Pegg-Frost-Wright team then its only fitting they've gone out with the best one of the lot.
4/5
The work of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright has a certain fondness for drinking establishments.
The pub has previously been used as the escape from tedium (various episodes of Spaced), the preferred refuge from zombie attack (Shaun of the Dead) and the place to shelter and conceive of a scheme to defeat a troupe of murdering loons (Hot Fuzz).
Here, the pub is the scene for two activities - the place to try and reconcile fragmented friendships, and equally, the place to stumble across and hide from evil creatures.
The story begins with the prologue of a night 5 young men celebrated the end of their school years in 1990 by taking on the quest of The Golden Mile - 12 pubs in their anonymous hometown of Newton Haven. In the end they called it quits after 9 with one of them laid by the wayside.
Some 23 years on and the gang are being bought back together, albeit not without some difficulty due to the events of the intervening years.
The driving force is former head boy Gary King (Pegg), who has become a washed up late 30-something. He leaves his therapy session in search of his old friends - Peter (Eddie Marsan), Oliver (Martin Freeman), Steven (Paddy Considine) and Andrew (Frost) - to try and actually complete The Golden Mile.
Although it takes persuasion - a lot of it in the case of Andrew, who got shot of Gary after an incident a few years after the night in question - the gang is re-united ahead of the trip.
Gary returns - in a vintage Ford Cortina that has been rebuilt - and collects his chums from the train station before driving to their town to begin the quest.
The problems quickly mount, starting with the "Starbuckisation", if you will, of the pubs. Fitting with modern day pubs, they all look alike. A surprising amount of pubs look and feel same as ever - indeed it takes a few before there's any change, and even then they have the same teak.
There's also the fragile dischord, which is played mainly for the bleak feel of friends falling apart rather than the comic effect. There's a few laughs hither and thither to keep things entertaining though, but it is mainly for the serious stakes.
At this point, it feels like a different place from the real thing. Oddly, Gary at times seems to resemble the villain from Men in Black 3, but years honing his acting on all manner of things means Pegg is approaching this in form and continues the streak. Frost is also doing well in his role, and it takes an interesting turn in pitting them as opposites rather than as friends at the start.
Its tricky to see what, if anything, can unite them. But then a force that binds them rocks up a few pubs down, just after Gary has been shunned by Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), who was his one-night stand on the original Golden Mile day.
Here, a slightly-intoxicated Gary gets aggravated at a teen in the toilets has been ignoring him when a fight breaks out. The teen is superhuman, and it takes limb severing to defeat it. However this exposes the fact that the teen has blue ink instead of blood and a robotic anatomy.
Soon the gang has to fight the teen's friends - and the original one's headless, armless body. Surviving that, they decide the best thing to do is to carry on. Originally leaving was the plan but with Andrew deciding to jump back onto the booze wagon after 16 years teetotal by downing 5 vodka shots, they decide sticking around is the plan.
At the next pub, Sam bumps into them while out with friends and is duly made aware of the conspiracy when her friends are revealed to also be robots, thus with another drunk brawl.
The film at this point has a series of drunk brawls punctuated by funny lines and monologues. The arrival at disco-pub The Mermaid sees an intricate explanation of the conspiracy that the town's inhabitants are plugged into a vast alien network, which is spread by contact with human skin so the network can replicate the target's body form.
Not-so-coincidentally, at this time, three high school lovers of the original troupe are kissing them, playing and dancing with them, swallowing Andrew's wedding rings in one bizarre example.
The next pub is The Beehive, which sees a familiar face to Bond and ABBA fans explain in a remarkably cool voice the benefits of membership. It could be enough to persuade somebody to join in, and Oliver is suspiciously sympathetic with this. However this is taken to the point where its revealed what was suspected - when both Oliver and the familiar are taken out, they are revealed to be robots too. Only problem is they're but two amongst about another thousand robots.
The choreography has been handed to Jackie Chan's fight scenes director, who does an admirable job in making the fights. Coupled with Edgar Wright's direction and it is delightful to watch, even if it takes on the swerving-fight look so many films seem to prefer despite it's aggravating disorientation.
One particular scene of note during the brawl in the Beehive sees Gary still trying to drink his fight even while robots are trying to beat the shit out of him. That seems to be a measure of the man - the man who wants to be forever young in the words of Alphaville, in a society where things don't work this way. It's almost something for sympathy, as well want to re-live our younger days but don't have the capability - physical or time - to do so.
Saying that, its a bit too man-babyish - a "maybe" as put in a later scene - which just makes him look like a loser. Everyone has to grow up sometimes, and all that.
Still being pursued, the crawl unofficially (i.e. Gary is the only one still taking part) rocks up to its final destination.
Gary and Andrew has a genuinely moving moment in and amidst a bar brawl, before stumbling upon the conspiracy.
The alien vision sounds charming, but unfortunately, three drunks are not the people to talk too about it. The aliens, indeed, probably could be better off just infiltrating the political offices and persuading/forcing humanity to go along this way. There's probably a film in this somewhere.
The end coda is definitely different, revelling almost in the changed surroundings, as well as finding the humour, not least with the well-placed mention of a certain frozen dairy treat also found in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.
This is not a film without some problems, not least given it does have a certain amount of indulgence in its sci-fi premises.
But on the whole, its still a delightful film, with funny moments, impressive action, good writing, an intriguing conspiracy idea and a well-formulated hangover so literally apocalyptic that it makes The Hangover movies look like a good night's sleep after a night in.
Its certainly impressive and if this is last orders for the Pegg-Frost-Wright team then its only fitting they've gone out with the best one of the lot.
4/5
Friday, 19 July 2013
More Fun In The Toon Army Sun...
One can forgive some Newcastle fans that have said "we've had enough" in the last few months.
There is only so much agitation and humiliation some fans can take before you just tire of the whole sorry saga and try to avoid it as much as you can.
Some fans would never dream of this scenario, but at times it is hard not to just stop and wonder.
The appointment of Joe Kinnear has hurtled back into the dark ages of the mid-2000s, when the club were making the back page headlines every week for the wrong reasons.
Even by the club standards, the fallout has hit almost unprecedented proportions. One resignation, one transfer blocked, one man nearly leaving, one man now favourite to be fired and five mispronunciations is insane.
And all this before the latest farce that already threatens to de-rail Newcastle's season before a ball has even been kicked.
It is certainly unhelpful the only communication from the club is offers for increasingly tacky merchandise - garden gnomes, anyone? - rather than any news of a signing or the latest farce.
The Wonga.com mess could be seen coming from miles away. The company are possibly one of the most universally despised organisations in financial and corporate history, with an unbelievable APR rate - though anyone borrowing money for a year is asking for trouble with those rates - and underhand tactics.
They are seen as legal loan sharks, but in a time of high unemployment and the minimum wage no longer being sustainable to live on, they are getting high custom.
Against a backdrop of moral outrage and similar deals with payday lenders being turned down by Sheffield Wednesday and Bolton, Newcastle will wear Wonga.com-branded shirts for the 2013/14 season and beyond.
Promoting these is a position that can feel uncomfortable - in fact, a number of fans are refusing to buy Wonga-branded Toon shirts on this principle. Of course, such a position isn't helped by the fact the league is a cornucopia of bent sponsors - hell, the kit is made by Puma, who have a negative environmental and employment record, and for the Barclays Premier League, named after the bank most recently in trouble for manipulating food, energy and interest rate markets.
But Wonga's fairly nauseating image is a watermark. It also seems to be a mark in player-club relations.
The recent transfer policy led by Graham Carr has seen a number of Muslim players come in, and certain things teams rely on for advertising - gambling, drinking - are debatable, although Muslim players aren't asked to promote these firms in events.
One of these is the Toon's Number 9 hero - Senegal international Papiss Cisse. Although season 2012-13 was not a great campaign for him due to Demba Ba getting the front spot before his move to Chelsea and several missed sitters after Ba left, he remains a vital player and got several key goals for the club.
When the Wonga deal was announced last October, there was speculations the club's Muslim players - Hatem Ben Arfa, Cheick Tiote and Moussa Sissoko are also Muslims - would be uncomfortable promoting Wonga.
But while the other 3 content enough to continue playing without commenting, Cisse has held firm, with reports his continued bickering over the Wonga deal has led to him being left on Tyneside while the rest of the first team squad travels to Portugal for their training camp.
The conjecture has been allowed to ferment because of the remarkable silence the club has maintained. The club has made no comment despite being approached by a variety of media sources, while the player is also saying nothing.
The silence has allowed all manner of comment to exist. It has certainly allowed the newspapers - all following the same line - and Twitter to dominate speculation. Twitter is not a reliable source for following an information thread due to the conflicting information.
If you believe everything on Twitter, Cisse is late from international duty, injured, wants more money, is a hypocrite that regularly goes drinking and gambling, had a bust-up with Pardew, wants to leave, wants to stay, is being forced out and everything else in-between.
This could mean one of anything. But it all spells PR disaster for the club. If they are allowing themselves to be seen as forcing out a player for being morally opposed to their sponsors then it will allow people to paint the club as bigoted.
Of course, if the club does announce the team are picking Wonga over a Muslim player then they deserve what's coming to them.
Admittedly, Cisse has not done himself many favours amid rumours he is seeking to double his £40,000-a-week wages - more than double the national annual salary in one week - or being spotted in casinos and bars engaging in the non-Islam activities of gambling and drinking.
But in this instance, he has a point. Wonga are an organisation who, above all overs, are nauseating ethics that a mafia loan shark would be proud of, and the fact they are associated with a brand with as much support as the Magpies is uncomfortable.
It adds to the sense that, before the season has even begun, things on Tyneside are already spiralling out of control.
A lack of signings is certainly not helping the mood. The club really do need players added to the squad - the sooner the better - but while the neighbours have already begun renovating their team of shirkers with gusto, we're standing still.
A number of fans are fearful of relegation, although the likelihood of that should be miniscule with a squad that contains an array of talented players. The worry however is that they continue to be used incorrectly by a manager who is in an organisational structure that does not bode well for the constructive operation of the football team.
The line from ex-Toon pros has been "nothing surprises you about Newcastle United" and the club certainly seems to blunder it's way through making decisions to the point anything can happen.
But this is almost unprecedented territory. If you'd asked someone at the start of the 2012/13 season that after spending £40M on transfer fees, agent and sign-on fees and finishing 16th, we'd have JFK return, Llambias go, players being left behind over sponsorship deals and the whole club falling to bits, you'd have sounded like a nutter.
Next season is a strange conjunction. On the one hand the half-season introduction to Premier League life for January's signings could help them grow into great players, but on the other it remains to be seen how many of the old guard will still be here, and who will be in charge of them.
At some point there should hopefully be clarity. But until then, the Toon seem doomed to wander like a dehydrated sunburnt husk in the all-encompassing heat. And there's not an after-sun bottle or ice cream van in sight...
There is only so much agitation and humiliation some fans can take before you just tire of the whole sorry saga and try to avoid it as much as you can.
Some fans would never dream of this scenario, but at times it is hard not to just stop and wonder.
The appointment of Joe Kinnear has hurtled back into the dark ages of the mid-2000s, when the club were making the back page headlines every week for the wrong reasons.
Even by the club standards, the fallout has hit almost unprecedented proportions. One resignation, one transfer blocked, one man nearly leaving, one man now favourite to be fired and five mispronunciations is insane.
And all this before the latest farce that already threatens to de-rail Newcastle's season before a ball has even been kicked.
It is certainly unhelpful the only communication from the club is offers for increasingly tacky merchandise - garden gnomes, anyone? - rather than any news of a signing or the latest farce.
The Wonga.com mess could be seen coming from miles away. The company are possibly one of the most universally despised organisations in financial and corporate history, with an unbelievable APR rate - though anyone borrowing money for a year is asking for trouble with those rates - and underhand tactics.
They are seen as legal loan sharks, but in a time of high unemployment and the minimum wage no longer being sustainable to live on, they are getting high custom.
Against a backdrop of moral outrage and similar deals with payday lenders being turned down by Sheffield Wednesday and Bolton, Newcastle will wear Wonga.com-branded shirts for the 2013/14 season and beyond.
Promoting these is a position that can feel uncomfortable - in fact, a number of fans are refusing to buy Wonga-branded Toon shirts on this principle. Of course, such a position isn't helped by the fact the league is a cornucopia of bent sponsors - hell, the kit is made by Puma, who have a negative environmental and employment record, and for the Barclays Premier League, named after the bank most recently in trouble for manipulating food, energy and interest rate markets.
But Wonga's fairly nauseating image is a watermark. It also seems to be a mark in player-club relations.
The recent transfer policy led by Graham Carr has seen a number of Muslim players come in, and certain things teams rely on for advertising - gambling, drinking - are debatable, although Muslim players aren't asked to promote these firms in events.
One of these is the Toon's Number 9 hero - Senegal international Papiss Cisse. Although season 2012-13 was not a great campaign for him due to Demba Ba getting the front spot before his move to Chelsea and several missed sitters after Ba left, he remains a vital player and got several key goals for the club.
When the Wonga deal was announced last October, there was speculations the club's Muslim players - Hatem Ben Arfa, Cheick Tiote and Moussa Sissoko are also Muslims - would be uncomfortable promoting Wonga.
But while the other 3 content enough to continue playing without commenting, Cisse has held firm, with reports his continued bickering over the Wonga deal has led to him being left on Tyneside while the rest of the first team squad travels to Portugal for their training camp.
The conjecture has been allowed to ferment because of the remarkable silence the club has maintained. The club has made no comment despite being approached by a variety of media sources, while the player is also saying nothing.
The silence has allowed all manner of comment to exist. It has certainly allowed the newspapers - all following the same line - and Twitter to dominate speculation. Twitter is not a reliable source for following an information thread due to the conflicting information.
If you believe everything on Twitter, Cisse is late from international duty, injured, wants more money, is a hypocrite that regularly goes drinking and gambling, had a bust-up with Pardew, wants to leave, wants to stay, is being forced out and everything else in-between.
This could mean one of anything. But it all spells PR disaster for the club. If they are allowing themselves to be seen as forcing out a player for being morally opposed to their sponsors then it will allow people to paint the club as bigoted.
Of course, if the club does announce the team are picking Wonga over a Muslim player then they deserve what's coming to them.
Admittedly, Cisse has not done himself many favours amid rumours he is seeking to double his £40,000-a-week wages - more than double the national annual salary in one week - or being spotted in casinos and bars engaging in the non-Islam activities of gambling and drinking.
But in this instance, he has a point. Wonga are an organisation who, above all overs, are nauseating ethics that a mafia loan shark would be proud of, and the fact they are associated with a brand with as much support as the Magpies is uncomfortable.
It adds to the sense that, before the season has even begun, things on Tyneside are already spiralling out of control.
A lack of signings is certainly not helping the mood. The club really do need players added to the squad - the sooner the better - but while the neighbours have already begun renovating their team of shirkers with gusto, we're standing still.
A number of fans are fearful of relegation, although the likelihood of that should be miniscule with a squad that contains an array of talented players. The worry however is that they continue to be used incorrectly by a manager who is in an organisational structure that does not bode well for the constructive operation of the football team.
The line from ex-Toon pros has been "nothing surprises you about Newcastle United" and the club certainly seems to blunder it's way through making decisions to the point anything can happen.
But this is almost unprecedented territory. If you'd asked someone at the start of the 2012/13 season that after spending £40M on transfer fees, agent and sign-on fees and finishing 16th, we'd have JFK return, Llambias go, players being left behind over sponsorship deals and the whole club falling to bits, you'd have sounded like a nutter.
Next season is a strange conjunction. On the one hand the half-season introduction to Premier League life for January's signings could help them grow into great players, but on the other it remains to be seen how many of the old guard will still be here, and who will be in charge of them.
At some point there should hopefully be clarity. But until then, the Toon seem doomed to wander like a dehydrated sunburnt husk in the all-encompassing heat. And there's not an after-sun bottle or ice cream van in sight...
Wednesday, 17 July 2013
Monster's University - Film Review
*CAUTION: This review contains spoilers for Monster's University. If you haven't seen it and wish to do so, proceed with caution.*
One of the biggest challenges of creating something seen as a masterpiece is how you're going to follow it up.
Disney-Pixar hit cinematic gold in 2002 with Monsters, Inc. The film is one of the company's highest rated feature releases and was seen as a film classic. Indeed, in preparation for this, the world has re-watched the film, declared it as "still amazing" and hoped and wished Pixar have pulled off one of the rarest things - a great one-two.
Its arguable that Toy Story - which expanded into a trilogy, no less - is the time Pixar hit cinematic gold on a repetitive scale. But with a sequel to the ridiculously successful Finding Nemo on the horizon, this is essentially the litmus test to see if Pixar can pull off another cinematic success story.
This essentially serves at the set-up to the original adventures. Mike and Sully are together at a university for scarers, who in the original film were the creatures that generated power for their world by travelling into the human world and scaring little kids.
Obviously, at the end of the original, we know scaring has been superceded as their means to generation by making kids laugh, which generates more electricity.
But anyway, in this set-up, Mike (Billy Crystal) has enrolled as a Scarer's Major at the university, after a field trip to Monsters, Inc at the start of the movie. He meets his room mate Randall (Steve Buscemi) and runs up happy to his first lectures.
This mood is not in any way soured by Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren) saying failure means the end of the road. In his first day, he meets Sully (John Goodman) who is the son of a big name scarer but is fairly slow. Hell, Sully wanders in after Hardscrabble's talk and has to borrow equipment.
The film is fairly straight-forward high school film with pranks, studying and stuff like this up until the moment their exam comes along, where both Sully - not enough preparation - and Mike - just not scary - fail the exam and leave. Obviously knocking over an important university memento did not help their stability.
The duo are re-sent to a significantly less exciting academic proposition but a wager with the dean means they have a challenge - win a Scarer's Olympics as part of a team, and they're let back in.
Unfortunately for them, the team they jumped into bed with are the fairly stereotypical outsider clique.
It's very Ivy League-style American university. It's a well realised but strange to relate to beyond this central American plot.
The plot is also a medley of fairly simple American university films, albeit given change-ups. But it does flow well from academic movie into a more sporting movie.
As its a kids movie, it's not exactly going to be a twisting-turning adventure. It's mainly designed to be a movie for kids, with a plot most people can work out fairly simply and which includes amusing moments. On the second front, it does well as there's are a number of funny gags for older members. Oddly, these aren't the ones in the trailer, which demonstrates either the strength in depth or the oversaturation of the film's advertising.
The sports movie side is fairly straight-forward. Mike and Sully initially rival each other but struggle to turn around the team at first, only for a stroke of luck - a disqualification, no less - to prevent disqualification, but this (eventually) inspires them to make a show of it.
A public humiliation involving glue, glitter and cuddly soft animals inspires them further and before long, they've reached the grand final against the frathouse and are able to win.
Or so they thought, given that it's revealed Sully manipulated the final test to get Mike to win the game and the championship.
This leads to the film's bigger left turn, and a wholly different atmospheric. The final few scenes are played a different pace to the rest of the movie, but make the most of this point and are the fresher pieces in the film. Plus it also pays off to the conclusion that ultimately creates the set-up to the world explored in the film known and loved.
The cast perform well to a free-form script. It provides a start of the dynamic from the original Monsters, Inc.
One thing it doesn't have though is the central element of Boo that made up a lot of the comedy and heart of the original. The lack of something like this is something to a detriment, as it means the film is without the emotional constant and conflicts that made the characters so compelling in the original.
The characters are still compelling, but there's a lot more of the "oh look at us, we're monsters" dynamic rather than the original's feeling. There is comic potential in this, and it does have a lot, plus it also uses enough of the standard classic comedy, but it's not the stone-cold classic all of us were perhaps hoping for.
At the end of it all, it stands up that this is not one of Pixar's best films. It's not in the same league as Up, or Toy Story 3, which are peerless films. But then it's not a clunker like the inexorably lengthened Cars franchise.
It lies somewhere in-between - a solid and delightfully entertaining piece of work, that should please the film's fanbase, if nothing else.
3/5
In typical Pixar fashion, a short film precedes the main feature. This piece is called "The Blue Umbrella", and is a short feature about two umbrellas who fall in love. It sounds and looks like something that wouldn't have been out of place in The Mighty Boosh.
It's fairly cliché and weird, but it serves as a mildly entertaining intro. Plus its also got some refreshing sonic touches.
One of the biggest challenges of creating something seen as a masterpiece is how you're going to follow it up.
Disney-Pixar hit cinematic gold in 2002 with Monsters, Inc. The film is one of the company's highest rated feature releases and was seen as a film classic. Indeed, in preparation for this, the world has re-watched the film, declared it as "still amazing" and hoped and wished Pixar have pulled off one of the rarest things - a great one-two.
Its arguable that Toy Story - which expanded into a trilogy, no less - is the time Pixar hit cinematic gold on a repetitive scale. But with a sequel to the ridiculously successful Finding Nemo on the horizon, this is essentially the litmus test to see if Pixar can pull off another cinematic success story.
This essentially serves at the set-up to the original adventures. Mike and Sully are together at a university for scarers, who in the original film were the creatures that generated power for their world by travelling into the human world and scaring little kids.
Obviously, at the end of the original, we know scaring has been superceded as their means to generation by making kids laugh, which generates more electricity.
But anyway, in this set-up, Mike (Billy Crystal) has enrolled as a Scarer's Major at the university, after a field trip to Monsters, Inc at the start of the movie. He meets his room mate Randall (Steve Buscemi) and runs up happy to his first lectures.
This mood is not in any way soured by Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren) saying failure means the end of the road. In his first day, he meets Sully (John Goodman) who is the son of a big name scarer but is fairly slow. Hell, Sully wanders in after Hardscrabble's talk and has to borrow equipment.
The film is fairly straight-forward high school film with pranks, studying and stuff like this up until the moment their exam comes along, where both Sully - not enough preparation - and Mike - just not scary - fail the exam and leave. Obviously knocking over an important university memento did not help their stability.
The duo are re-sent to a significantly less exciting academic proposition but a wager with the dean means they have a challenge - win a Scarer's Olympics as part of a team, and they're let back in.
Unfortunately for them, the team they jumped into bed with are the fairly stereotypical outsider clique.
It's very Ivy League-style American university. It's a well realised but strange to relate to beyond this central American plot.
The plot is also a medley of fairly simple American university films, albeit given change-ups. But it does flow well from academic movie into a more sporting movie.
As its a kids movie, it's not exactly going to be a twisting-turning adventure. It's mainly designed to be a movie for kids, with a plot most people can work out fairly simply and which includes amusing moments. On the second front, it does well as there's are a number of funny gags for older members. Oddly, these aren't the ones in the trailer, which demonstrates either the strength in depth or the oversaturation of the film's advertising.
The sports movie side is fairly straight-forward. Mike and Sully initially rival each other but struggle to turn around the team at first, only for a stroke of luck - a disqualification, no less - to prevent disqualification, but this (eventually) inspires them to make a show of it.
A public humiliation involving glue, glitter and cuddly soft animals inspires them further and before long, they've reached the grand final against the frathouse and are able to win.
Or so they thought, given that it's revealed Sully manipulated the final test to get Mike to win the game and the championship.
This leads to the film's bigger left turn, and a wholly different atmospheric. The final few scenes are played a different pace to the rest of the movie, but make the most of this point and are the fresher pieces in the film. Plus it also pays off to the conclusion that ultimately creates the set-up to the world explored in the film known and loved.
The cast perform well to a free-form script. It provides a start of the dynamic from the original Monsters, Inc.
One thing it doesn't have though is the central element of Boo that made up a lot of the comedy and heart of the original. The lack of something like this is something to a detriment, as it means the film is without the emotional constant and conflicts that made the characters so compelling in the original.
The characters are still compelling, but there's a lot more of the "oh look at us, we're monsters" dynamic rather than the original's feeling. There is comic potential in this, and it does have a lot, plus it also uses enough of the standard classic comedy, but it's not the stone-cold classic all of us were perhaps hoping for.
At the end of it all, it stands up that this is not one of Pixar's best films. It's not in the same league as Up, or Toy Story 3, which are peerless films. But then it's not a clunker like the inexorably lengthened Cars franchise.
It lies somewhere in-between - a solid and delightfully entertaining piece of work, that should please the film's fanbase, if nothing else.
3/5
In typical Pixar fashion, a short film precedes the main feature. This piece is called "The Blue Umbrella", and is a short feature about two umbrellas who fall in love. It sounds and looks like something that wouldn't have been out of place in The Mighty Boosh.
It's fairly cliché and weird, but it serves as a mildly entertaining intro. Plus its also got some refreshing sonic touches.
Friday, 12 July 2013
Pacific Rim - Film Review
*CAUTION: This review contains spoilers for Pacific Rim. If you haven't seen it and wish to do so, proceed with caution.*
Do you ever get the feeling of being saturated by apocalypses?
A lot of this year's big film releases have been big sequences with vast destruction, with on-screen creatures destroying cities easier than they might go through the enormous servings of popcorn and soft drink bought from the concession stand.
Man of Steel was pinpointed as the nadir for the destroy-everything movie, with the final 45 minutes devoted to Superman and General Zod throwing skyscrapers at one another. But there's been other apocalypses, ranging from the colossal scenes in World War Z where zombies piled through cities, to Star Trek Into Darkness, where Benedict Cumberbatch crashed a spaceship into 23rd century San Francisco.
This is also not forgetting Oblivion and After Earth, which are set long after the apocalypse in desolate, human-free landscapes. Hell, one of this year's most successful comedies is This Is The End, where Seth Rogen and James Franco make pot and masturbation jokes to the backdrop of LA being swallowed by the Devil.
After all of this comes what has been trailed as the big daddy. The trailers for Pacific Rim have shown hugely ambitious sequences where monsters chomp their way through entire cities before fighting humungous human-controlled robots in the ocean and dark, rainy cities.
Epic stuff, yes, but its easy to feel apocalypse fatigue at this stage without even seeing the movie. So how does it fare?
The film has a sound premise. In the near future, a trans-dimensional rift opens deep beneath the Pacific Ocean. Out of this rift comes several kaiju - the fearsome monsters of Japanese film legend. They duly head to the big cities peppered on the Pacific Coastlines and wreck up the various places. The film has barely begun and already monsters are flattening the Golden Gate Bridge on one side of the Pacific and the Manila skyline on the other.
To combat this problem, a human race that doesn't quite want to be squished by kaiju set up Jaegers - huge robots about 25ft fall and controlled by two synced-up human pilots. A neural connection known as 'the drift' unites the two pilots, as the operation is too much for one human.
All before the opening titles comes the fact the Jaegers are able to repel the early onslaught and humanity begins to relax, but then the kaiju's A-squad begins to head for the portal. This is bad news for US Jaeger Gipsy Danger, with brothers team Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and Yancy Becket (Diego Klattenhoff) being defeated in a poor defence of Anchorage and Yancy killed.
5 years on from this crushing defeat and the kaiju are running riot. The world's governments have duly lost confidence in the Jaegers and have isolated them to a designated depot in Hong Kong Bay, with massive walls favoured instead. Indeed, the broken Raleigh is now a construction worker on a planned wall lining the North American Pacific Coastline.
Naturally, this coincides with a kaiju breaking through a giant wall around Sydney and Aussie Jaeger Striker Eureka is what stops it.
Raleigh is approached to return to the program to help it operate from its new base and figure out a way to end the war once and for all in his favour.
After this bang-bang-bang intro, the film sort of just... stops. The film runs into the sort of personal squabbles and training that is usually found in a sport movie, which is quite disappointingly cliché.
There's the fight between the old guy and the young contender (Chuck Hansen, played by Robert Kazinsky) and the arguments with a reasoned, semi-understanding big boss (Stacker Pentecost, played by Idris Elba).
Stacker is probably the best character. Idris Elba delivers each of his lines with a bombastic commitment and passion its hard not to get swept up in his speeches.
Some reviews have felt the characters are hard to relate to but they do offer some interesting scopes on the usual story-telling cliché within this dramatically different environment. Obviously, Raleigh - the main character by this stage - is going to feel fairly traumatised by the ordeal of having his brother killed while sharing his neural cortex.
Certainly, its an interesting issue for a film maker to look at the implications of sharing somebody's physical and neural senses, and its an intriguing way. This is a plus point.
Its also refreshing for a female character that is more than the equal of the main man, in the form of Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi). She is introduced as Stacker's helper but has a strange role, being depicted both as longing for Raleigh and then flooring him in combat. But its certainly a favourable comparison to Transformers, which just uses women in the similar way a pin-up calendar might.
Anyway, it has some plus points in its long development of character but not all of it works. There's a weird counter-balance in the form of two preposterously weird scientists - one a kaiju obsessive (Charlie Day) and one with a barely believable German accent (Burn Gorman, who has come a long way from Torchwood). It feels weirdly out of place - obviously a bit of light relief can go a long way but it just feels like it isn't right for this movie.
Although they eventually find a big and important revelation for their fight, their mannerisms just feel out of place and their roles lacked the humour to work properly.
The scenes between the CGI mega-squabbles drag on a little, but soon enough there is a scene of such description to wake everyone up. Literally. Amped-up by the cinema sound system, the noise generated during the battle sequences is deafeningly loud, to the point where it dwarves certain concerts. This acts a little to the film's detriment, as its hard to focus when your ears are being bombarded.
Not that its easy to lose focus, particularly when the battle sequences come along. The scope of the battle sequences is astounding. Guillermo del Toro has clearly put a lot into this film, given he has written and directed this, and that the Japanese fiction that inspired this like this.
The scope of both Jaegers and Kaiju is immense. They have been extremely well realised, down to the last pixel, and the battle sequences are gigantic. The scene of the Jaeger clobbering a Kaiju with a container ship being wealded like a baseball bat, for instance, is enormous but its hard not to be swept up in awe of it.
It also perfectly realises the horror of it - there's something almost mentally shocking about a scene when the Kaiju flattens half of the refugee bunker. This is a brief glimpse of what felt like a moment too far, where it threatens to go from big film to harrower.
Nevertheless the film is happy to carry along with its action. And boy does it. The action consistently pushes the scope all the way to the final showdown at the fissure, with battle scene after battle scene feeling impressive.
It feels more like a complete film in this style than other movies where you pay to watch cities being levelled by gigantic titans of both artificial and natural hues. Obviously, these scenes have had attention paid to them. Del Toro has obviously wanted to pay the biggest homage
Its certainly a lot more impressive than Transformers, which looked poor in the trailers - nevermind the actual film. Obviously its similar to it with the idea of giant robots fighting everything, but it feels a lot more delightful.
Nevertheless there's a few flaws that could have been ironed to make it a massive film. Obviously, it could partially be down to apocalypse fatigue and this makes no bounds. This is a huge film attempting to throw metal at metal.
But it still feels there's a little something missing that could catapult the film from being merely rather good to being a majestic example of the art.
It is still a film worth seeing on its battle sequences alone - and lets face it that is the principle reason most people will come - and it has better characters than what others have given it credit for, but something could well be there to give it a little bit more.
3/5
Do you ever get the feeling of being saturated by apocalypses?
A lot of this year's big film releases have been big sequences with vast destruction, with on-screen creatures destroying cities easier than they might go through the enormous servings of popcorn and soft drink bought from the concession stand.
Man of Steel was pinpointed as the nadir for the destroy-everything movie, with the final 45 minutes devoted to Superman and General Zod throwing skyscrapers at one another. But there's been other apocalypses, ranging from the colossal scenes in World War Z where zombies piled through cities, to Star Trek Into Darkness, where Benedict Cumberbatch crashed a spaceship into 23rd century San Francisco.
This is also not forgetting Oblivion and After Earth, which are set long after the apocalypse in desolate, human-free landscapes. Hell, one of this year's most successful comedies is This Is The End, where Seth Rogen and James Franco make pot and masturbation jokes to the backdrop of LA being swallowed by the Devil.
After all of this comes what has been trailed as the big daddy. The trailers for Pacific Rim have shown hugely ambitious sequences where monsters chomp their way through entire cities before fighting humungous human-controlled robots in the ocean and dark, rainy cities.
Epic stuff, yes, but its easy to feel apocalypse fatigue at this stage without even seeing the movie. So how does it fare?
The film has a sound premise. In the near future, a trans-dimensional rift opens deep beneath the Pacific Ocean. Out of this rift comes several kaiju - the fearsome monsters of Japanese film legend. They duly head to the big cities peppered on the Pacific Coastlines and wreck up the various places. The film has barely begun and already monsters are flattening the Golden Gate Bridge on one side of the Pacific and the Manila skyline on the other.
To combat this problem, a human race that doesn't quite want to be squished by kaiju set up Jaegers - huge robots about 25ft fall and controlled by two synced-up human pilots. A neural connection known as 'the drift' unites the two pilots, as the operation is too much for one human.
All before the opening titles comes the fact the Jaegers are able to repel the early onslaught and humanity begins to relax, but then the kaiju's A-squad begins to head for the portal. This is bad news for US Jaeger Gipsy Danger, with brothers team Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and Yancy Becket (Diego Klattenhoff) being defeated in a poor defence of Anchorage and Yancy killed.
5 years on from this crushing defeat and the kaiju are running riot. The world's governments have duly lost confidence in the Jaegers and have isolated them to a designated depot in Hong Kong Bay, with massive walls favoured instead. Indeed, the broken Raleigh is now a construction worker on a planned wall lining the North American Pacific Coastline.
Naturally, this coincides with a kaiju breaking through a giant wall around Sydney and Aussie Jaeger Striker Eureka is what stops it.
Raleigh is approached to return to the program to help it operate from its new base and figure out a way to end the war once and for all in his favour.
After this bang-bang-bang intro, the film sort of just... stops. The film runs into the sort of personal squabbles and training that is usually found in a sport movie, which is quite disappointingly cliché.
There's the fight between the old guy and the young contender (Chuck Hansen, played by Robert Kazinsky) and the arguments with a reasoned, semi-understanding big boss (Stacker Pentecost, played by Idris Elba).
Stacker is probably the best character. Idris Elba delivers each of his lines with a bombastic commitment and passion its hard not to get swept up in his speeches.
Some reviews have felt the characters are hard to relate to but they do offer some interesting scopes on the usual story-telling cliché within this dramatically different environment. Obviously, Raleigh - the main character by this stage - is going to feel fairly traumatised by the ordeal of having his brother killed while sharing his neural cortex.
Certainly, its an interesting issue for a film maker to look at the implications of sharing somebody's physical and neural senses, and its an intriguing way. This is a plus point.
Its also refreshing for a female character that is more than the equal of the main man, in the form of Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi). She is introduced as Stacker's helper but has a strange role, being depicted both as longing for Raleigh and then flooring him in combat. But its certainly a favourable comparison to Transformers, which just uses women in the similar way a pin-up calendar might.
Anyway, it has some plus points in its long development of character but not all of it works. There's a weird counter-balance in the form of two preposterously weird scientists - one a kaiju obsessive (Charlie Day) and one with a barely believable German accent (Burn Gorman, who has come a long way from Torchwood). It feels weirdly out of place - obviously a bit of light relief can go a long way but it just feels like it isn't right for this movie.
Although they eventually find a big and important revelation for their fight, their mannerisms just feel out of place and their roles lacked the humour to work properly.
The scenes between the CGI mega-squabbles drag on a little, but soon enough there is a scene of such description to wake everyone up. Literally. Amped-up by the cinema sound system, the noise generated during the battle sequences is deafeningly loud, to the point where it dwarves certain concerts. This acts a little to the film's detriment, as its hard to focus when your ears are being bombarded.
Not that its easy to lose focus, particularly when the battle sequences come along. The scope of the battle sequences is astounding. Guillermo del Toro has clearly put a lot into this film, given he has written and directed this, and that the Japanese fiction that inspired this like this.
The scope of both Jaegers and Kaiju is immense. They have been extremely well realised, down to the last pixel, and the battle sequences are gigantic. The scene of the Jaeger clobbering a Kaiju with a container ship being wealded like a baseball bat, for instance, is enormous but its hard not to be swept up in awe of it.
It also perfectly realises the horror of it - there's something almost mentally shocking about a scene when the Kaiju flattens half of the refugee bunker. This is a brief glimpse of what felt like a moment too far, where it threatens to go from big film to harrower.
Nevertheless the film is happy to carry along with its action. And boy does it. The action consistently pushes the scope all the way to the final showdown at the fissure, with battle scene after battle scene feeling impressive.
It feels more like a complete film in this style than other movies where you pay to watch cities being levelled by gigantic titans of both artificial and natural hues. Obviously, these scenes have had attention paid to them. Del Toro has obviously wanted to pay the biggest homage
Its certainly a lot more impressive than Transformers, which looked poor in the trailers - nevermind the actual film. Obviously its similar to it with the idea of giant robots fighting everything, but it feels a lot more delightful.
Nevertheless there's a few flaws that could have been ironed to make it a massive film. Obviously, it could partially be down to apocalypse fatigue and this makes no bounds. This is a huge film attempting to throw metal at metal.
But it still feels there's a little something missing that could catapult the film from being merely rather good to being a majestic example of the art.
It is still a film worth seeing on its battle sequences alone - and lets face it that is the principle reason most people will come - and it has better characters than what others have given it credit for, but something could well be there to give it a little bit more.
3/5
Tuesday, 9 July 2013
A Mess In Sky Blue
A sense of perspective is often what lends to the theory of a crisis.
If a team has been unilaterally successful, then a crisis is simply going a year without a trophy or the Champions League. This sense of hype is what leads to several trillion "Arsenal are in a crisis" articles.
But crisis station changes the further down the league system, where the trouble is of getting success and more the point of the club staying alive to experience anything.
For a few years, the league's crisis club has been Portsmouth, but with the South Coast seemingly in some degree of order, the big crisis club has to fall somewhere else. And indeed, it lies some 140 miles up the road from Pompey in Coventry City FC.
It's easy to feel some sympathy for the older generation of CCFC supporters, who, in the mid-90s, supported a team that was a byword for Premier League stability until their relegation in 2001.
But the last few years have seen the club disintegrate in spectacular fashion, and has hit new lows by moving away to a smaller ground some 40 minutes away.
Indeed, it all falls back to when the club almost collapsed during the construction of the Ricoh Arena, and had to have the stadium construction supported by Coventry City Council.
Fans debate the point of the move from Highfield Road - their ground for 106 years - to the Ricoh in 2005, where they moved to a stadium just 10,000 bigger at a time when they simply didn't need to. It only really would have been beneficial if Coventry City were still a Premier League club.
The club was (just) saved from administration in 2007 by an American hedge fund called SISU, but that 'saving' has turned out to be the opposite of history, as the club now finds itself in administration and now homeless following a dispute with the people who run the stadium.
The Ricoh Arena has gone down as a white elephant amongst Sky Blues supporters. Animosity even reached the point that some fans were devastated that a reported fire at the venue in May was just pyrotechnic testing by Muse ahead of a concert at the stadium.
At the same time, it is still in the city of Coventry. Which is infinitely preferable to the idea of having to leave the city to watch their team ply their trade.
Northampton Town's ground - their new home - is a significantly smaller venue unlikely to fit the demands of a full Ricoh crowd. However, as the venue is closer to selling out for concerts than it is for Sky Blues games, and a number of fans are unlikely to follow the team, the newly enlarged 10,000 stadium should manage. But it is an unholy mess that Coventry are even in such a position.
Even more remarkable - and downright idiotic - is the idea that Coventry's owners SISU should be allowed to buy the club back out of administration. In any logical world, the fact the owners have screwed the club up means they shouldn't be allowed back in, even in the disguise of a subsidiary or a new company.
Naturally, a SISU subsidiary called Otium Entertainment featuring three ex-SISU directors has bought the club and pushed through the relocation, as well as plans for a new stadium.
The Football League duly approved - reluctantly, but they still approved it - their move to share Sixfields with Northampton. This means a 32 mile move, removing the club from the community to a town where they will be more interested in the matters of their own team or simply hoping to see Coventry beat MK Dons. Unless MPs and supporter unrest can force an alternative, this paradigm looks like what things will be like for the next three seasons.
Quite exactly what the point of SISU building a new stadium when there already is a stadium where it would be cheaper just to pay the venue rent, and how much cash is in the owners to do anything, is a good series of question. It is also a series of questions they seem unwilling to answer, leaving helpless fans unstuck.
The dysfunctional mess of the last few years has spat out a pretty awful composition. The club now lies a broken, tattered mess run by irresponsible and gutless owners who do not have a clue what they are doing.
Where this leads is anyone's guess. It's too early to speculate about the idea Coventry may follow the lead of Wimbledon and move away, while it seems more and more unlikely they'll bury the hatchet with ACL and move back into the Ricoh Arena. But unless things improve, its likely the club could well fall out of existence altogether.
For a club that has been around for over 125 years, that really would be the real tragedy of this whole sorry fiasco.
If a team has been unilaterally successful, then a crisis is simply going a year without a trophy or the Champions League. This sense of hype is what leads to several trillion "Arsenal are in a crisis" articles.
But crisis station changes the further down the league system, where the trouble is of getting success and more the point of the club staying alive to experience anything.
For a few years, the league's crisis club has been Portsmouth, but with the South Coast seemingly in some degree of order, the big crisis club has to fall somewhere else. And indeed, it lies some 140 miles up the road from Pompey in Coventry City FC.
It's easy to feel some sympathy for the older generation of CCFC supporters, who, in the mid-90s, supported a team that was a byword for Premier League stability until their relegation in 2001.
But the last few years have seen the club disintegrate in spectacular fashion, and has hit new lows by moving away to a smaller ground some 40 minutes away.
Indeed, it all falls back to when the club almost collapsed during the construction of the Ricoh Arena, and had to have the stadium construction supported by Coventry City Council.
Fans debate the point of the move from Highfield Road - their ground for 106 years - to the Ricoh in 2005, where they moved to a stadium just 10,000 bigger at a time when they simply didn't need to. It only really would have been beneficial if Coventry City were still a Premier League club.
The club was (just) saved from administration in 2007 by an American hedge fund called SISU, but that 'saving' has turned out to be the opposite of history, as the club now finds itself in administration and now homeless following a dispute with the people who run the stadium.
The Ricoh Arena has gone down as a white elephant amongst Sky Blues supporters. Animosity even reached the point that some fans were devastated that a reported fire at the venue in May was just pyrotechnic testing by Muse ahead of a concert at the stadium.
At the same time, it is still in the city of Coventry. Which is infinitely preferable to the idea of having to leave the city to watch their team ply their trade.
Northampton Town's ground - their new home - is a significantly smaller venue unlikely to fit the demands of a full Ricoh crowd. However, as the venue is closer to selling out for concerts than it is for Sky Blues games, and a number of fans are unlikely to follow the team, the newly enlarged 10,000 stadium should manage. But it is an unholy mess that Coventry are even in such a position.
Even more remarkable - and downright idiotic - is the idea that Coventry's owners SISU should be allowed to buy the club back out of administration. In any logical world, the fact the owners have screwed the club up means they shouldn't be allowed back in, even in the disguise of a subsidiary or a new company.
Naturally, a SISU subsidiary called Otium Entertainment featuring three ex-SISU directors has bought the club and pushed through the relocation, as well as plans for a new stadium.
The Football League duly approved - reluctantly, but they still approved it - their move to share Sixfields with Northampton. This means a 32 mile move, removing the club from the community to a town where they will be more interested in the matters of their own team or simply hoping to see Coventry beat MK Dons. Unless MPs and supporter unrest can force an alternative, this paradigm looks like what things will be like for the next three seasons.
Quite exactly what the point of SISU building a new stadium when there already is a stadium where it would be cheaper just to pay the venue rent, and how much cash is in the owners to do anything, is a good series of question. It is also a series of questions they seem unwilling to answer, leaving helpless fans unstuck.
The dysfunctional mess of the last few years has spat out a pretty awful composition. The club now lies a broken, tattered mess run by irresponsible and gutless owners who do not have a clue what they are doing.
Where this leads is anyone's guess. It's too early to speculate about the idea Coventry may follow the lead of Wimbledon and move away, while it seems more and more unlikely they'll bury the hatchet with ACL and move back into the Ricoh Arena. But unless things improve, its likely the club could well fall out of existence altogether.
For a club that has been around for over 125 years, that really would be the real tragedy of this whole sorry fiasco.
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