WITH the Christmas turkey scarfed and the New Years fireworks on order, the clock is ticking on 2014 AD.
At the very least, 2015 AD cannot be as dark a year for newshounds. This was a year dominated by seemingly ever-lasting threads of negativity, and one that seemed to produce a new strand of doom every week. In many ways this was a busy year for the news media, with the dark places reached in 2013 somehow accentuated.
With high-profile plane crashes, deaths, sieges, invasions, wars and more going on, it was easy to pray for a lighter story to dissect the poison, or for a distraction of any sort.
January was perhaps the year's quietest month, even though it was hardly a great month for people who hate rain. After a very wet December, more rain led to widespread flooding in Southern England. January had a record month for rainfall in Southern England as Somerset became an extension of the Bristol Channel - a state it would reside within for a few weeks. The Thames region and other coastal areas also flooded, while other areas reported high precipitation.
Bigger problems befell Devon when a major coastal surge destroyed the main railway line from Plymouth and Cornwall to the rest of Britain, which was shut for 3 months while rebuilding happened.
Other stories also saw weather dominate, with the central areas of the USA hit by a polar vortex, -25 temperatures and snow. There was also bizarre piffle of the French President Francois Hollande having an affair, which led to awkward political discourse ahead of his trip to meet Obama.
Snow was initially the dominant story in February, as the Winter Olympics got underway in Sochi, Russia. This was a surprisingly more entertaining affair than expected, although given it was the most expensive Olympics of any kind, you would have expected as much.
Russia also became involved in one of the year's biggest event in this month, although Vladimir Putin has continued to play down the extent his nation is involved with Ukraine.
For several months, Ukraine had been gripped by protests after President Viktor Yanukovych turned his back on pro-Europe reform in favour of closer ties with Russia. Then in February, things exploded. Three days of riots in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and other major cities lead to depressing images of fire and sniping.
This led to the end of Yanukovych's government, and replacement by a new government. Concerns had arisen of potential Neo-Nazi involvement in the protests for change were prevalent, but hushed by the next development.
Concurrent to the more high profile anti-government protests were pro-Russian protests in Russian speaking territories in the South and East of Ukraine. This then led to major clashes in Crimea, which wanted to rejoin Russia 20-odd years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A bitter fight for the peninsula took place before a vote in March where Crimea declared independence from the rest of Ukraine. Russia is now in de facto but disputed control of the state, but as the year progressed it was not the only issue in the Russian speaking areas of Eastern Ukraine.
By now, however, another bleak story was filling March's airwaves. Early in the month, a routine Malaysian Airlines passenger flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing suddenly disappeared somewhere off the coast of Vietnam.
This spiralled into one of the year's biggest stories, with American news media in particular taking grim speculative interest in where the plane had ended up. A huge quantity of conspiracy theories were created in the wake of the disappearance, but so far, there has been no revelation, Aside from narrowing down the plane's location to the Indian Ocean a few thousand miles west of Australia's Western seaboard, no wreckage has yet been discovered.
By April, an already dark year was looking for some positivity. What duly turned up was two major disastrous events involving children in the same week. First, 276 schoolgirls and women were kidnapped from a remote Nigerian school by Islamic terrorist organisation Boko Haram, who would reappear throughout the year following a large number of terrorist killings.
The missing schoolgirls became the centre of the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign - one of many social media campaigns to take place in 2014. This campaign inspired many high profile figures to join, and many similarly high profile figures to voice snarky unhelpful disapproval. So far, 55 of the missing have returned, while Nigeria has had to retract an earlier statement they'd all been found.
Virtually the day after, South Korea had a tragedy of its own, when a passenger ferry capsized, taking 300 with it. There has been major calls for the death penalty to be used after a case that saw the deaths of mainly secondary school children.
After a uniformally bleak opening to the year, May turned out to be continuing the earlier threads mixed in with elections. India had the largest election in world history, as controversial Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi won the vote in a landslide.
The UK and other European nations were meanwhile voting in the European Parliament, where the biggest victor turned out to be apathy. Only 42.5% of Europe's population bothered to vote - a new record low.
Anti-EU parties were those who took most of votes, with UKIP and the French National Front taking the spoils, although so far their impact has been negligible.
2014 was a big year for UKIP, with the party winning its first two MPs later in the year after Conservative defectors, and Nigel Farage's status as a professional media-whore intensifying. But while 2014 saw it take a big leap that few other UK parties have managed, it still had a wide variety of public relations gaffes, and ended the year with mumblings of discontent towards Farage.
The other major British political parties all had terrible years. The Conservative Party had a dire year once more, capped off by George Osborne's Autumn Statement revealing that he had massively failed in his 2010 pledge to control Britain's borrowing, deficit and debt costs.
As a Prime Minister himself, David Cameron didn't have as bad a year as he had done in previous years, but his party were still lacking conviction. The defections to UKIP - a party primarily cultivated of hard-right ex-Tories - will have certainly hurt, The news that the UN has also announced the UK is to be the first country to be investigated for systemic violations of the rights of disabled people will certainly not help, while Iain Duncan-Smith has seemingly morphed into a public hate figure capable of only spouting gibberish rubbish.
Labour could well have established a commanding lead, and could've done were it not for the fact that Ed Miliband has some of the world's worst PR advisors. Throughout the year, the Leader of the Opposition was a walking PR disaster, which was perhaps capped off by his inexplicable failure to eat a bacon sandwich without looking strange.
As for the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg existed in a state perhaps worse than his hatred in 2011. He was ignored.
June saw the start of the 2014 World Cup, which was an unusual tournament. It had threatened at first to be overshadowed by protestations over the cost and workers deaths, and in the late finishing of stadium construction.
FIFA's ill-mannered affairs also offered an alternative distraction for those who don't like football. There has always been the whiff of corruption surrounding FIFA, and that has been more than a whiff since the bizarre decision in 2010 to hand Qatar a World Cup.
November's publishing of a corruption report that excused FIFA and the winning nations was a total mess, undermined on the day of publication when investigator Michael Garcia complained.
As for the football itself, host nation Brazil were ok but not good, and were perhaps lucky not to get injuries and/or play a big name team until the semi-finals. Then everything fell apart, with a near-paralysing injury to star forward Neymar and a ban for skipper Thiago Silva ruling them out of the semi-final with Germany.
The Germans tore Brazil apart in a display few football teams pull off in ordinarily games, nevermind a World Cup semi-final. At one point they were scoring every other minute, netting seven to break Brazil's dreams.
With previous champions Spain utterly insipid, and a number of other runners and riders underperforming, the Germans were deserved victors of their fifth World Cup.
The regular football season in England had been exciting, with an entertaining three way title duel between Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool providing one of the most exciting title fights in years. By contrast, Manchester United had a hideous 2013-14 campaign, as David Moyes transpired to be overawed.
In the end, the slip seen around the world from one S. Gerrard led to Man City taking the title, and Liverpool haven't recovered from the twin blow of that and selling Luis Suarez.
While the world was mainly intrigued by football, there was another long-reaching story breaking alongside in the regular news.
At the start of June, an Islamic militant group known as ISIL took Mosul, the second largest Iraqi city. Despite going under a number of brandings - ISIS, ISIL and Islamic State - they exploded in power across Iraq and Syria, with oil money and ransacked American military goods giving them previously unforeseen power.
Throughout the year, their power begun to develop, and with it pressure on the West to act. This pressure increased when ISIS begun to take and kill American, British and French hostages. As of December, Obama is yet to become the third in four consecutive American to deploy troops to Iraq, although support to the locals has been given.
As if that story wasn't enough to make the news more depressing than normal in July, more appalling news dominated. Another war between Israel and Gaza saw cities in Gaza virtually destroyed following a bitter conflict that left many appalled by the actions of both sides.
This seemingly interminable squabble never really looked like stopping, with several ceasefires folding almost immediately. All over the world, protests were held for Israel to stop its campaign, and with it a range of people calling them Anti-Semitic. By the time the campaign finished, the rebuilding bill for Gaza was estimated in the billions.
Meanwhile, after a few months in the background, Ukraine resurfaced in the headlines in horrific ways. The bombing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in the skies over Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine was a major global incident.
Nauseating footage emerged of Ukrainian fields scattered with pieces of plane and the belongings of those onboard.
It was very quickly declared that a missile caused the explosion, and that it the plane was mistaken for a troop carrier. But while that was established, the Ukrainian and Russian forces spent most of the rest of the year blaming the other side, while rebels picked through belongings and are believed to have made off with a lot of it while stopping air crash investigators from being let in.
As if that wasn't enough, July saw the Ebola crisis in Africa spiral into a major trans-national pandemic. An epidemic had been building throughout the year, as thousands of deaths from the disease were reported in three West African nations. In the summer, it spiralled out of control, with th nations running out of doctors. Unfairly, what tipped it into the Western news in September was the potential risk of European nations and America seeing similar pandemics as people from Doctors Without Borders returned home carrying the strain - a situation exacerbated by inept hospital staff in Texas letting a sufferer go free.
August is usually a quiet month where the world seems to take time off. But instead, this was an utterly hideous month that begun with the shooting of Michael Brown.
The shooting happened in Ferguson, Missouri, when unarmed 18-year-old black teenager Brown was shot seven times by local police officer Derren Wilson. This quickly led to things spiralling out of control, with the city hit by mass protests that turned violent and an utterly insane police response that an uninformed outsider could've mistaken for an invading army.
Throughout the year, the black community of the USA has protested perceived targeting by the American police, who have done little to help thaw relations by continuing to be seen to be doing so. November's failure to indict an officer who was caught on video putting Eric Garner into a chokehold before he died was particularly insulting. Violence and mass protests also accompanied a similar failure to indict over Brown, and a dark year in US history was seen as the race question appeared in an ugly manner. Unless you watch Fox News, where every attempt was made to put the protesters in the wrong.
For most of August, three stories dominated the news in the form of the Ferguson protests, ISIS and Ebola. They were then joined by an unwelcome fourth story in the form of the death of the much loved comedian and actor Robin Williams, who committed suicide in the middle of the month.
Williams was not the only much-admired celebrity to die in 2014, with fellow Oscar-winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman, comedian Joan Rivers, Jurassic Park star Richard Attenborough, actor Micky Rooney and actress Shirley Temple all taking their leave from the world. But Williams was one of the most poignant deaths of the year, with fans stunned by the suicide of one of Hollywood's most well loved actors.
The end of a dark August saw another major news story break in an unexpected way. For thousands of Twitter uses worldwide, one minute on August 31st saw Twitter timelines filled with the usual debates on the news and general inane stuff, and the next saw nude photographs of rich and famous actors spreading like wildfire. Or at least it was for me.
Known online as "The Fappening", this news item saw the private nude images of hundreds of famous women leaked onto the internet. It also led to vitriolic commentary, with a substantial amount of bile reserved for Reddit and 4Chan - the sites primarily responsible for the leaks.
Unfairly targeted was Actor-winning star Jennifer Lawrence, who seemed to be in every single one of the initially leaked photos, and who has since referred to the leaks as a sex crime.
This was in all a mostly terrible year for the internet, with the medium's creator Tim Berners-Lee later admitting he was unhappy at what his momentous creation had become. With the internet still problematic following the 2013 Snowden leaks, there were various scandals involving online posts before major concerns over privacy took to the fore when the celebrity nude leak occurred.
This would be exacerbated a few months later in a major debate for internet security and privacy at Sony. Until then, and previously on a more visible level, the tedious Gamergate scandal also broke in August. Initially breaking after the jilted boyfriend of video game developer Zoe Quinn claimed a previous relationship of hers with a male video game journalist had led to favourable reviews for one of her previous games, this very quickly spiralled into a debate on sexism in the video game fan community.
It was not a pretty sight. This was an ugly debate that raged for months in head-bangingly stupid fashion, and after a few years of renaissance, did as much to undermine video games as a succession of increasingly faulty new products (for instance, DriveClub, Assassin's Creed Unity and Halo all launched with major problems) and sub-par titles for high end new consoles did.
Most people supporting the use of the tag claim it begun as a debate of the ethics in games journalism, but the belligerent sexism and threats towards Quinn and other women in games destroyed any logic to this argument. It made for unedifying reading, and was just utterly detestable to trawl through.
Despite that, people wanted to use the internet for a positive at the end of August in the form of the Ice Bucket challenge, which arrived in the UK this time. This was a simple test of throwing a bucket of ice-filled water over your head and then donating to charity.
Even then, there was still a queuing up to knock the concept, be it debating the charity who was involved, how important the cause was, how many people actually donated out of how many participated, the mis-use of water - particularly debated in drought stricken areas - the idea of it being self-congratulatory, and the idea of it being a glorified wet T-shirt contest.
In saying that, if a portion of the £20-odd million raised helps cure motor neurone disease, it might not all be so bad.
September saw the very future of the United Kingdom then put under threat. For the year or so since it was announced, the Scottish Independence referendum was largely consigned to being a local issue. But with weeks to go before the big vote, the persistent message of the independence campaign and some very shoddy work by the pro-union campaign let the SNP-led independence campaign erode the advantage.
When some polls began to show advantage with the pro-independence camp, politicians of all hues flocked to Scotland to plead the case for pro-unionism. They were also joined by people from outside the UK seeking an example to support their own independence campaigns, with people from Flanders in Belgium, Catalonia in Spain and all sorts of other regions across Europe visiting to research things for their own campaigns.
Ultimately, a 10% victory was declared for the pro-union camp, who celebrated by having a riot in central Glasgow. Meanwhile, First Minister and SNP chair Alex Salmond resigned from his post in charge, and was jeered following the end of his independence dream, although he will be standing for election to Westminster in the next election. He may also have got his wish for more power for the SNP, with the pro-union vote coming with further devolution, and the SNP now trouncing Labour in Scottish polls.
While the newspapers were busy casting Alex Salmond as some kind of bogeyman, Apple users were venting their hatred at different Celtic bogeymen.
U2's 13th studio album Songs of Innocence is not going to be remembered as one of their best albums, but it will be remembered for one of the most interesting release strategies. Piggybacking on Apple's latest product launch/minimal ovepriced enhancement announcement, the Irish rockers released the album free on everyone's iTunes.
26 million worldwide downloads equals the total copies sold of U2's biggest selling album The Joshua Tree - which was released 27 years previously - but it didn't come without controversy. That impressive looking figure is still less than 5% of global iTunes customers, and as many as those who downloaded it complained about the album's forceful placement in their iTunes folders. It even got to the surreal and odd moment when Apple released a delete album button, although it doesn't seem to have worked.
The end of September saw protests become the order of the day, with wide scale protests against corruption in Mexico and Chinese enforced rule in Hong Kong.
The protests in Mexico were sparked off by the kidnapping of 43 students at a teacher's college, but with the nation still engrossed in a drug cartel war in the north of the country and political corruption, protests spread around Mexico. As yet, the victims have not been found, and at least one has been confirmed dead.
Known locally as the Umbrella Revolution, Hong Kong's protests enjoyed solidarity protests and support from outside the region. But China refused to back down, and a bitter peace has since broken out.
October was dominated by the jailing of Paralympic hero Oscar Pistorius.
The South African had been in and out of news cycles after the death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine's Day 2013. Pistorius always admitted he shot and killed Steenkamp, but denied murder.
After a long winded trial, he was ultimately found not guilty of murder, but guilty of culpable homicide, leading to his jailing for five years. Many called the sentence too lenient, and this includes the prosecution, who in 2015, will begin a challenge to get his sentence lengthened.
Elsewhere, the UK saw the end of a costly era as they exited Afghanistan. The closure of Camp Bastion and the airlifting away of thousands of British troops, supplies and equipment bought to an end the 13 years that the UK has spent in Afghanistan. This has led to plenty of pondering if the campaign in this country was really worth it, and in truth, nobody seems to have an answer.
November finally saw something positive happen, when a European Space Agency probe called Philae that spent ten years in flight landed on a comet 310 million miles away.
Unfortunately, the positivity from that was quickly eroded when it turned out the probe landed in the wrong place, leaving it to fall over and run out of battery power.
Meanwhile, the UK was busy taking an almost eager celebration of World War One to a newly uncomfortable level. A commemoration saw a sea of red ceramic poppies erected in the moat surrounding the Tower of London - one for each British person killed in the conflict.
It was roundly considered a success in raising tourist numbers and positive press reviews, yet it all felt oddly uncomfortable that national celebrations had been created out of the death of millions of people in a war that could have been avoided. In saying that, it was in better taste than the Sainsbury's Christmas advert using the WW1 Christmas Day truce to sell chocolate.
Traditionally, November is a busy month for the film industry, with marketing campaigns beginning for the big Christmas releases and pictures considered for the Oscars. The third Hunger Games movie and Interstellar proved giant autumn success stories, although sadly the highest grossing film of the year worldwide was one of its worst, as Michael Bay's hideous Transformers movies saw off the more entertaining Marvel stories and The Lego Movie to top the global cash pile.
One of Sony's biggest Christmas planned releases was The Interview - an action-comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco as two bumbling celebrity journalists who land an interview with Kim Jong-Un, and then are asked to assassinate him. When the trailer came out in July, North Korea had predictably not taken it to very well, with the kind of ranting and wailing that comes with their territory.
In a normal world, that would've been the end of it, and it would've no doubt attracted the audience that has made Rogen bafflingly successful. Then in November, Sony employees turned up in their office to find their computer network had completely died.
Things turned out to be more severe than a simple power outage. Soon, a group known as the Guardians of Peace that may or may not be affiliated to the North Koreans - nobody seems to know for sure - was releasing everything. Films, scripts, private details, thousands of largely catty e-mails, salary information and more was put all over the internet.
Drowned somewhat in the intense publication of e-mails was the more interesting debate about internet security and corporate cybercrime.
The world could have used a gentile December to end the year. What it got was yet more misery. It started off badly enough when the CIA in America released its much anticipated report into torture. This revealed the horrifying and nauseating extent to which torture was used at American bases across the world to find out information.
Repentance has not been the order of the day. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been in unrelenting support of the behaviour, while a litany of ex-CIA and former Attorney Generals have also been on American news television to justify a program that saw, among other things, waterboarding, "anal feeding" and chaining people to cold floors par for the course.
The role of the UK is believed to have been redacted, but state secrets were still making attention in the UK. For most of the year, rumours had been surfacing over a sex ring involving prominent British politicians and celebrities in the 1970s-90s. This has been a long running case to find answers for after the Jimmy Saville revelations, and seemed to have reached a big moment when Rolf Harris was jailed in the summer. But soon police begun to start finding credible witnesses and more claims that a child sex ring of the powerful had killed children that threatened to blab.
This could be a major story in the next few years, and many of the claims make for extremely uncomfortable reading. Whether or not anything will be uncovered remains to be seen on just how credible law enforcement can be.
Globally, things were still as bleak as ever, and were about to continue as miserably as the year had been. The enormous and horrific massacre of innocent schoolchildren at a military school in Afghanistan stunned the world, while the world was also shocked later in the same week by news of an Islamic terrorist taking hostages in a chocolate cafe in Sydney. The taker was later killed, along with two hostages.
The bleakness was still not done, after the terrible news two days before Christmas Day of a man driving a bin lorry suffering a heart attack and running over six people in the centre of Glasgow.
It can be safely said that after a huge year filled to bursting with shocking stories, the world will be glad to see the back of 2014. So what will 2015 bring?
The one definite in the UK is that May 2015 will bring a general election that looks extremely close to call. For the most part, polls have shown Labour enjoying a marginal polling advantage over the Conservative Party, but both have had their voting shares eaten up by UKIP and the SNP in their respective heartlands.
All that is certain is that the three big parties are losing support, with the Liberal Democrats in particular expected to have a painful election.
Beyond that, another unpredictable and tumultuous year is likely to be seen on the global stage. All that can be done now is to wait and see just how unpredictable and tumultuous it can be.
Still, a little positivity in the increasingly bleak global landscape wouldn't go amiss.
Sunday, 28 December 2014
Friday, 5 December 2014
Kasabian at Brixton Academy - Gig Review
WHERE do you go to after reaching the career peak?
This year has already been an exceptional one for Kasabian. They topped the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, headlined a hometown gig in Leicester to 50,000 people, and have had their fourth consecutive number one album. In all, its very good going.
Naturally, the way to go is to take your wares to the rest of the country, with the band embarking on an arena tour except for in London, where the band have chosen to do a five night residency at Brixton Academy. The band have played this venue at least once on every tour, so a biggest ever run here makes perfect sense.
Nevertheless, this could have had the air of an awkward occasion. On the tour's opening night in Glasgow, a "production error" meant that the backing screen showed the phrase "London is full of cunts" during a song. That presumably went down very nicely up in Scotland - and had it been kept, most likely everywhere else in the UK - but down in the capital, it could have reduced some of the buoyancy.
Could have, that is. London however is certainly in a forgiving mood from the word go. Night four of the five night stand begins - as the others did - with Tom Meighan and Sergio Pizzorno doing the first verse to new album opener bumblebee acoustic, before the rest of the band join in and get the crowd into a fabulously frenzied mayhem.
By now, you will almost certainly know the drill. Teased by the rhythm to Kanye West's Black Skinhead, there's a pulsing Shoot the Runner, and then the anthemic squawk of Underdog's guitar riff.
Disappointingly, Where Did All The Love Go is again preferred to the superior Fast Fuse, but there's little time to feel down. The rush of Days are Forgotten is a beefier version than the song that opened Kasabian's last appearance here in 2012, before recent single eez-eh blisters past in goofy singalongs, rave synths and Pizzorno running around the stage like a kid filled with sugar.
The counterpoint between Kasabian's co-frontmen is seen in all from dress - Meighan favours a black-and-white checkered blazer as part of a suit, while Pizzorno wears a t-shirt with "stickers" written on the front and a bushy felt fox tail - to singing style to even dancing on stage. But between them, they know how to give the audience a show, and encourage them to go nuts in response.
There's no sense of dulling down the expectations for the smaller room. If anything the concentrated energy feels like even more of a frenzy then in bigger spaces like the O2, and the singalongs as loud and punching through the night air.
Pizzorno's stint also includes time for a funky dance number, with a remix of Empire single Me Plus One providing a surprise highlight. This is then followed by the chill out songs of Thick as Thieves and a semi-acoustic Goodbye Kiss, which is perhaps the only time that the pace and power is relaxed.
The latter directly leads into 2004's Club Foot, which still packs a powerful bassy thump. A re-worked version of Re-Wired, which has a new string intro and has a segment of Camaro's Word Up sung by Pizzorno, is an excellent follow-on.
The live set remains studded with excellent anthems, with a one-two of Empire and Fire - the latter of which features an extended reprise - closing up the main set in style.
Not that proceedings are finished. Barely two minutes elapse before the string section returns to play an extended intro to recent single stevie - accompanied by lasers. The rest of the band join in and do a good show, but the following blast of Vlad The Impaler is much better, with dirty guitars and thumping bass sending the room into a state of delirium.
Supplemented by guitar work from two of the Maccabees, L.S.F. brings down the show in rabble-rousing fashion, with a reprise and all, and the crowd goes home happy. Indeed, they still chant the refrain from the song heading out of the venue and into the cold South London air long after the last member has departed from the stage.
While this may not have had the best setlist or performance Kasabian have ever done, this is still an admirable show, with plenty of punching anthems to get the crowd going. There's also a good deal of sonic variation, some excellent use of the standard arena-rock tricks (screen, lasers, big box of lights, etc), and a sense that band and audience are both enjoying their side of the bargain.
The question now is this - "can they do it bigger?"
Assuming they avoid the UK festivals next year, perhaps one of the bigger outdoor places will be a calling. Lord knows they've got the catalogue of anthems, tricks and fans to pull it off, as this year has very nicely demonstrated.
4/5
Opening for the Leicestershire rockers are The Maccabees, who have previously headlined their own show in this room and indeed in larger places. Having spent most of the last year struggling their way through the creation of a new album, the newly-enlarged band play four new tracks as part of their set.
Surprisingly, these four turn out to be the better songs of their set, with a nice mixture of dark textures yet dance-y sounds. But perhaps not surprisingly, the crowd are more in tune with the old ones, with mid-set track Precious Time getting highlights. The band take a few songs to warm-up, and at times were overshadowed by their elaborate but entertaining light show, but they rise to the challenge and finish strongly, with a monstrous Pelican closing the night with gusto. They will certainly be back next year playing bigger rooms than this one.
This year has already been an exceptional one for Kasabian. They topped the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, headlined a hometown gig in Leicester to 50,000 people, and have had their fourth consecutive number one album. In all, its very good going.
Naturally, the way to go is to take your wares to the rest of the country, with the band embarking on an arena tour except for in London, where the band have chosen to do a five night residency at Brixton Academy. The band have played this venue at least once on every tour, so a biggest ever run here makes perfect sense.
Nevertheless, this could have had the air of an awkward occasion. On the tour's opening night in Glasgow, a "production error" meant that the backing screen showed the phrase "London is full of cunts" during a song. That presumably went down very nicely up in Scotland - and had it been kept, most likely everywhere else in the UK - but down in the capital, it could have reduced some of the buoyancy.
Could have, that is. London however is certainly in a forgiving mood from the word go. Night four of the five night stand begins - as the others did - with Tom Meighan and Sergio Pizzorno doing the first verse to new album opener bumblebee acoustic, before the rest of the band join in and get the crowd into a fabulously frenzied mayhem.
By now, you will almost certainly know the drill. Teased by the rhythm to Kanye West's Black Skinhead, there's a pulsing Shoot the Runner, and then the anthemic squawk of Underdog's guitar riff.
Disappointingly, Where Did All The Love Go is again preferred to the superior Fast Fuse, but there's little time to feel down. The rush of Days are Forgotten is a beefier version than the song that opened Kasabian's last appearance here in 2012, before recent single eez-eh blisters past in goofy singalongs, rave synths and Pizzorno running around the stage like a kid filled with sugar.
The counterpoint between Kasabian's co-frontmen is seen in all from dress - Meighan favours a black-and-white checkered blazer as part of a suit, while Pizzorno wears a t-shirt with "stickers" written on the front and a bushy felt fox tail - to singing style to even dancing on stage. But between them, they know how to give the audience a show, and encourage them to go nuts in response.
There's no sense of dulling down the expectations for the smaller room. If anything the concentrated energy feels like even more of a frenzy then in bigger spaces like the O2, and the singalongs as loud and punching through the night air.
Pizzorno's stint also includes time for a funky dance number, with a remix of Empire single Me Plus One providing a surprise highlight. This is then followed by the chill out songs of Thick as Thieves and a semi-acoustic Goodbye Kiss, which is perhaps the only time that the pace and power is relaxed.
The latter directly leads into 2004's Club Foot, which still packs a powerful bassy thump. A re-worked version of Re-Wired, which has a new string intro and has a segment of Camaro's Word Up sung by Pizzorno, is an excellent follow-on.
The live set remains studded with excellent anthems, with a one-two of Empire and Fire - the latter of which features an extended reprise - closing up the main set in style.
Not that proceedings are finished. Barely two minutes elapse before the string section returns to play an extended intro to recent single stevie - accompanied by lasers. The rest of the band join in and do a good show, but the following blast of Vlad The Impaler is much better, with dirty guitars and thumping bass sending the room into a state of delirium.
Supplemented by guitar work from two of the Maccabees, L.S.F. brings down the show in rabble-rousing fashion, with a reprise and all, and the crowd goes home happy. Indeed, they still chant the refrain from the song heading out of the venue and into the cold South London air long after the last member has departed from the stage.
While this may not have had the best setlist or performance Kasabian have ever done, this is still an admirable show, with plenty of punching anthems to get the crowd going. There's also a good deal of sonic variation, some excellent use of the standard arena-rock tricks (screen, lasers, big box of lights, etc), and a sense that band and audience are both enjoying their side of the bargain.
The question now is this - "can they do it bigger?"
Assuming they avoid the UK festivals next year, perhaps one of the bigger outdoor places will be a calling. Lord knows they've got the catalogue of anthems, tricks and fans to pull it off, as this year has very nicely demonstrated.
4/5
Opening for the Leicestershire rockers are The Maccabees, who have previously headlined their own show in this room and indeed in larger places. Having spent most of the last year struggling their way through the creation of a new album, the newly-enlarged band play four new tracks as part of their set.
Surprisingly, these four turn out to be the better songs of their set, with a nice mixture of dark textures yet dance-y sounds. But perhaps not surprisingly, the crowd are more in tune with the old ones, with mid-set track Precious Time getting highlights. The band take a few songs to warm-up, and at times were overshadowed by their elaborate but entertaining light show, but they rise to the challenge and finish strongly, with a monstrous Pelican closing the night with gusto. They will certainly be back next year playing bigger rooms than this one.
Thursday, 27 November 2014
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 - Film Review
WHEN is a film a film and when is a film a cash cow?
The recent trend for splitting the final book in fantasy sagas into two (see Harry Potter and Twilight) has become a real exercise of prolonging a franchise, and with it, the money for studios. Not that it needs too entirely. Young adult franchise controllers Lionsgate are raking in billions in profits as it is, and some source novels seem better placed for a 3 hour film rather than two different 2 hour plus affairs.
The final Hunger Games book nevertheless is going to be a double adaptation, with a second half coming out next year. This is of a slightly debatable point. While criticism that the book is the substantially poorer relation of the first two Hunger Games novels is unfair, it is a book that is very back-ended, and where almost all of the exciting stuff happens towards the end.
So what of Part 1, exactly?
It would be easy to say this is going to be a film on autopilot, but for a film franchise that is already one of the bleakest in modern cinema, this film ratchets up the bleakness to another level entirely.
In the first twenty minutes alone, we have episodes of a PTSD-riddled Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) trying to hide from the guards of her new home, covert emotional manipulation of said Everdeen by her new home's government, and a journey through the bombed out District 12 and all the burned out corpses in the middle of the main city.
When we last saw this franchise, the Hunger Games 75th anniversary had ended with Katniss blowing up the arena and getting lifted out to the previously-thought-to-be-destroyed District 13. The nation of Panem is now in open revolt against the totalitarian leader President Snow (the underused Donald Sutherland), and uncertain times are being faced.
To try and continue the revolt in a positive direction, Katniss is instructed to star in propaganda shorts to inspire the revolution. These are overseen by the comically morose Plutarch Heavensbee (the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman).
This is one of two ways that demonstrate this film's difference to the previous two. The first two movies in the Hunger Games franchise came of the "distraction by deadly sport" camp, as in Battle Royale (first film) and Rollerball (second one).
Mockingjay by contrast is two movies under one banner. One of these is a war film, as evidenced by the shots of cities and towns engaged in violent battle and in war against the controlling Capitol. The other is a film about media manipulation. Certainly, there are a few moments early on that do amuse when they seem to resemble a film casting session.
Overseeing the operation is slightly menacing new arrival President Coin of District 13 (Julianne Moore), who operates with an icy sheen that is directly implied to be a few degrees from the head of the bad guys.
It is easy to criticise this for being a $125million placeholder lacking action. But its also fair, as the action is fairly simple and distant. Barring the shot in the trailer where she blows up a plane with an explosive arrow, Katniss' ability to do action is very limited by the script, and the plot-driving action sequences are left to nameless rebels in the outer districts.
It doesn't do a lot to satisfy the pre-existing quibble that its trying to make a full length movie about the least interesting part of the book, albeit not quite to the extent that saw the relatively slim Hobbit book made into three bladder-tauntingly-long films.
There also is involvement for the Hunger Games' weakest arc, which is the Twilight rip-off love triangle involving Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and Gale (Liam Hemsworth). As ever, these scenes just don't feel like they belong in the same movie, although the scenes with Peeta are given an intriguing tragic complex through his trial-by-television and Ceasar Flickermann (Stanley Tucci) that is used to surprising effect in the final 15 minutes.
This film doesn't do enough to reach the highlights of the engrossing first movie, but after the oddly flat second one, this is a surprisingly decent film. It has a very nimble and extremely high calibre cast, including people that pop in and out more than they had in previous films (Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks' characters in particular).
As ever, the central strand rests on Lawrence to work wonders with Katniss. As ever, its slightly robbed of her inside emotions given this isn't first person, but she does do a lot with her role and remains good value as a central cornerstone of the movie.
There is also an intriguing set-piece where District 13 rebels try and rescue captured men of their side from a power-outaged Capitol, which is played extremely nicely.
This film may have, on another day, been condensed into an hour before the proper two hour grit of the finale. But on its own level, and if you choose to engage with it, then it works very nicely. There's certainly enough to admire, and its a good set-up for what will hopefully be a proper all-guns blazing climax next autumn.
3.5/5
The recent trend for splitting the final book in fantasy sagas into two (see Harry Potter and Twilight) has become a real exercise of prolonging a franchise, and with it, the money for studios. Not that it needs too entirely. Young adult franchise controllers Lionsgate are raking in billions in profits as it is, and some source novels seem better placed for a 3 hour film rather than two different 2 hour plus affairs.
The final Hunger Games book nevertheless is going to be a double adaptation, with a second half coming out next year. This is of a slightly debatable point. While criticism that the book is the substantially poorer relation of the first two Hunger Games novels is unfair, it is a book that is very back-ended, and where almost all of the exciting stuff happens towards the end.
So what of Part 1, exactly?
It would be easy to say this is going to be a film on autopilot, but for a film franchise that is already one of the bleakest in modern cinema, this film ratchets up the bleakness to another level entirely.
In the first twenty minutes alone, we have episodes of a PTSD-riddled Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) trying to hide from the guards of her new home, covert emotional manipulation of said Everdeen by her new home's government, and a journey through the bombed out District 12 and all the burned out corpses in the middle of the main city.
When we last saw this franchise, the Hunger Games 75th anniversary had ended with Katniss blowing up the arena and getting lifted out to the previously-thought-to-be-destroyed District 13. The nation of Panem is now in open revolt against the totalitarian leader President Snow (the underused Donald Sutherland), and uncertain times are being faced.
To try and continue the revolt in a positive direction, Katniss is instructed to star in propaganda shorts to inspire the revolution. These are overseen by the comically morose Plutarch Heavensbee (the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman).
This is one of two ways that demonstrate this film's difference to the previous two. The first two movies in the Hunger Games franchise came of the "distraction by deadly sport" camp, as in Battle Royale (first film) and Rollerball (second one).
Mockingjay by contrast is two movies under one banner. One of these is a war film, as evidenced by the shots of cities and towns engaged in violent battle and in war against the controlling Capitol. The other is a film about media manipulation. Certainly, there are a few moments early on that do amuse when they seem to resemble a film casting session.
Overseeing the operation is slightly menacing new arrival President Coin of District 13 (Julianne Moore), who operates with an icy sheen that is directly implied to be a few degrees from the head of the bad guys.
It is easy to criticise this for being a $125million placeholder lacking action. But its also fair, as the action is fairly simple and distant. Barring the shot in the trailer where she blows up a plane with an explosive arrow, Katniss' ability to do action is very limited by the script, and the plot-driving action sequences are left to nameless rebels in the outer districts.
It doesn't do a lot to satisfy the pre-existing quibble that its trying to make a full length movie about the least interesting part of the book, albeit not quite to the extent that saw the relatively slim Hobbit book made into three bladder-tauntingly-long films.
There also is involvement for the Hunger Games' weakest arc, which is the Twilight rip-off love triangle involving Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and Gale (Liam Hemsworth). As ever, these scenes just don't feel like they belong in the same movie, although the scenes with Peeta are given an intriguing tragic complex through his trial-by-television and Ceasar Flickermann (Stanley Tucci) that is used to surprising effect in the final 15 minutes.
This film doesn't do enough to reach the highlights of the engrossing first movie, but after the oddly flat second one, this is a surprisingly decent film. It has a very nimble and extremely high calibre cast, including people that pop in and out more than they had in previous films (Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks' characters in particular).
As ever, the central strand rests on Lawrence to work wonders with Katniss. As ever, its slightly robbed of her inside emotions given this isn't first person, but she does do a lot with her role and remains good value as a central cornerstone of the movie.
There is also an intriguing set-piece where District 13 rebels try and rescue captured men of their side from a power-outaged Capitol, which is played extremely nicely.
This film may have, on another day, been condensed into an hour before the proper two hour grit of the finale. But on its own level, and if you choose to engage with it, then it works very nicely. There's certainly enough to admire, and its a good set-up for what will hopefully be a proper all-guns blazing climax next autumn.
3.5/5
Thursday, 13 November 2014
Interstellar - Film Review
In the middle of the gallery Interstellar find, there is a planet targeted for exploration that orbits a supermassive black hole.
The sight is an ethereal and superbly calibrated construct of imagery, broadcasting this lone and fragile rock orbiting an enormous spectrum of light being sucked out of existence. But the name of the black hole is (almost) a byword for the film - Gargantua.
Gargantuan doesn't begin to describe Interstellar - although the film's name is similarly grandiose. At 2 hours and 45 minutes, this is a film to test even the most steely of bladders. It equally possesses an A-list cast, a director widely seen as revolutionary, some of the finest CGI effects money can buy, touts some impressive landscapes, and possesses masses of input from scientific luminaries.
Clearly, there is some high-level work put into this, which has led to a $165million budget - although it was initially budgeted for $10million more than that - and there is much for Paramount to bank on this being major success. In terms of being Oscar-nominated, it certainly will get at least nomination for its SFX work.
There is much to compare Interstellar to previous sci-fi epics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Metropolis, Star Wars, et all, but it begins with influences from documentaries of American history of the 1930's. Clips from 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl permeate the opening of the film, which is superimposed to a screen world a few decades in the future and existing within major problems.
The world has regressed to an agricultural society, with the human race put towards farming, even in spite of large numbers of crops being claimed by blight or dust storms, and some going extinct completely. Indeed, its just corn left to grow, and even that is dying.
Stuck in the dust and dirt is former NASA pilot and now farmer Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), who lives on a corn farm with his family and trying to combat the problem of humanity running out of its food supply.
Following the death of his wife, he lives with his wife's father, as well as two kids - one of whom, his daughter Murph, is complaining of a ghost living in her room. Through a few tricks, the ghost leads Cooper and Murph to the remnants of NASA.
With humanity now denying even the Apollo missions, the mission has been created in secret. Led by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and his excellent facial hair, this secret mission is all about finding humanity a new home. Cooper is sent to go out and help him solve an equation that can get humanity on a space station and off the dying Earth.
Before then, Cooper and Professor Brand's daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) lead a four-man and one sarcastic robot team to find a destination. To help with that, a mysterious wormhole has opened up just beyond the orbit of the planet Saturn, which will help the team go to some other far-away corner of the universe in an instant.
At this point, the film is overtaken by pain-staking explanations of science, including one explanation of how a wormhole works. Rather pointlessly, this is taken just as they are about to enter said wormhole, although you would have thought someone would have explained to Coop what a wormhole might be like before the final hour on the Earth side of the damn thing.
Many in the know have questioned the scientific credentials of this film, and how much the film tries to balance accuracy with entertainment. It is fair however to say this is not a perfect note-for-note cinematic interpretation of science, and it is perhaps unfair to ask it to be anything else to using real science ideas and creations as a launchpad for something more cinema-ready.
But for people with less knowledge, it can feel like being hit over the head with a big book of science-y sounding stuff at times, and throughout the piece, there are long sequences of explanation. Some is necessary. The idea of time dilation is a major factor, and it is played extremely proficiently, and indeed, serves as a key and engaging plot point for the middle and final parts of the movie.
But some of the science does toe the line for entertainment and wonder. Not that this is a bad thing. The proficiency of the visuals is excellent. Much of the space-bound sections of this movie take place in sumptuously detailed vistas, ranging from the surface of icy and rocky planets to black holes to collapsed vistas.
To his credit, director Christopher Nolan prefers real to CGI shots, which gives the planets a realness beyond the simple use of over drawn CGI that punctuates most sci-fi. This is particularly felt on the second planet, which was shot on location in Iceland and shows a myriad of beautiful, slippery glaciers. Plus even when it does GCI, there is no spectacle denial when confronted with a planet filled with nothing but water, and where hyper-gravity leads to 100ft-high tidal waves.
Yet for all its undeniable beauty, it feels laboured at times. At 2 hours 45 minutes, this is a herculean movie, and requires major force of will not to fall asleep during at times. This is not to fault the plot, which doesn't move at that slow a pace and kinda works when analysed in a straight line, but even then, a number of sequences could shortened, and one or two could even be removed.
This is not to fault the actors, who do their best even when the dialogue lurches into the unintentionally hilarious. McConaughey has enjoyed a revival in his fortunes in the last six years that led to an Best Actor Oscar earlier this year, and despite the odd tendency to murmur his vocals from time to time, he is an engaging presence. He and his sandy Carhartt jacket get a ton of screen time across this production, yet he doesn't feel like he's hogging the airtime.
Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine are also excellent on-screen presences, and provide a captivating fluid performance despite being lumpen with most of the faux-science jargon. There are other roles from A-listers that crop up later down the line - Jessica Chastain receives a credit on the film poster, but one other notable one does not. But they do excel when they appear, and give the film a lot of propulsion.
There is also a lovely background role for John Lithgow as the father-in-law to McConaughey's character, and during the opening 45-odd minutes where he appears with him on Earth, the duo bring a great sheen to roles of people who yearn for a time that promised more than the bleak Earth they reside upon.
But while there isn't flaw with actors, there is problems with the final 20 minutes. While experts like Neil deGrasse Tyson have provided something approaching a decent explanation for it, narratively speaking, it feels like a cop-out. Scientifically speaking, it also provides something unsatisfying, even if at least did possess some decent imagination in using it. Like the rest of the film, it looks good, and it also sees composer Hans Zimmer really turn things up to 11 on the church organ.
However, it feels like something approaching a cop out, and it feels like it wants to tie the film up in too neat a bow. It also takes a fair bit of the plausibility out of proceedings, and while it was perhaps fair for it to not be continually obedience to semi-realistic science, it ends on a bum note that dilutes the piece's rating.
In all, Interstellar is a puzzling film. There is a lot of information dotted throughout the plot, almost as a constant underneath to the action itself. To deny it is filled with spectacle is a fallacy, and certainly, in IMAX, it will be looking sumptuous.
There is also nothing wrong with the actors in the piece, but to say this isn't a film without flaws is to overlook the final act's narrative failure, and the clunkiness of the pace.
To say this is among Nolan's best work is to forget The Dark Knight and Inception, and its also not really among the best sci-fi films in the last 5 years, even in spite of the fact it enjoys some of the best visual treatments in that time. But nevertheless, its a thrill ride worth seeing, and there is enough in the movie to at least feel like you haven't wasted your ticket price getting through the screen doors.
Plus if it inspires a wave of trans-galactic explorers, it could be one of the most important films of all...
3/5
The sight is an ethereal and superbly calibrated construct of imagery, broadcasting this lone and fragile rock orbiting an enormous spectrum of light being sucked out of existence. But the name of the black hole is (almost) a byword for the film - Gargantua.
Gargantuan doesn't begin to describe Interstellar - although the film's name is similarly grandiose. At 2 hours and 45 minutes, this is a film to test even the most steely of bladders. It equally possesses an A-list cast, a director widely seen as revolutionary, some of the finest CGI effects money can buy, touts some impressive landscapes, and possesses masses of input from scientific luminaries.
Clearly, there is some high-level work put into this, which has led to a $165million budget - although it was initially budgeted for $10million more than that - and there is much for Paramount to bank on this being major success. In terms of being Oscar-nominated, it certainly will get at least nomination for its SFX work.
There is much to compare Interstellar to previous sci-fi epics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Metropolis, Star Wars, et all, but it begins with influences from documentaries of American history of the 1930's. Clips from 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl permeate the opening of the film, which is superimposed to a screen world a few decades in the future and existing within major problems.
The world has regressed to an agricultural society, with the human race put towards farming, even in spite of large numbers of crops being claimed by blight or dust storms, and some going extinct completely. Indeed, its just corn left to grow, and even that is dying.
Stuck in the dust and dirt is former NASA pilot and now farmer Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), who lives on a corn farm with his family and trying to combat the problem of humanity running out of its food supply.
Following the death of his wife, he lives with his wife's father, as well as two kids - one of whom, his daughter Murph, is complaining of a ghost living in her room. Through a few tricks, the ghost leads Cooper and Murph to the remnants of NASA.
With humanity now denying even the Apollo missions, the mission has been created in secret. Led by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and his excellent facial hair, this secret mission is all about finding humanity a new home. Cooper is sent to go out and help him solve an equation that can get humanity on a space station and off the dying Earth.
Before then, Cooper and Professor Brand's daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) lead a four-man and one sarcastic robot team to find a destination. To help with that, a mysterious wormhole has opened up just beyond the orbit of the planet Saturn, which will help the team go to some other far-away corner of the universe in an instant.
At this point, the film is overtaken by pain-staking explanations of science, including one explanation of how a wormhole works. Rather pointlessly, this is taken just as they are about to enter said wormhole, although you would have thought someone would have explained to Coop what a wormhole might be like before the final hour on the Earth side of the damn thing.
Many in the know have questioned the scientific credentials of this film, and how much the film tries to balance accuracy with entertainment. It is fair however to say this is not a perfect note-for-note cinematic interpretation of science, and it is perhaps unfair to ask it to be anything else to using real science ideas and creations as a launchpad for something more cinema-ready.
But for people with less knowledge, it can feel like being hit over the head with a big book of science-y sounding stuff at times, and throughout the piece, there are long sequences of explanation. Some is necessary. The idea of time dilation is a major factor, and it is played extremely proficiently, and indeed, serves as a key and engaging plot point for the middle and final parts of the movie.
But some of the science does toe the line for entertainment and wonder. Not that this is a bad thing. The proficiency of the visuals is excellent. Much of the space-bound sections of this movie take place in sumptuously detailed vistas, ranging from the surface of icy and rocky planets to black holes to collapsed vistas.
To his credit, director Christopher Nolan prefers real to CGI shots, which gives the planets a realness beyond the simple use of over drawn CGI that punctuates most sci-fi. This is particularly felt on the second planet, which was shot on location in Iceland and shows a myriad of beautiful, slippery glaciers. Plus even when it does GCI, there is no spectacle denial when confronted with a planet filled with nothing but water, and where hyper-gravity leads to 100ft-high tidal waves.
Yet for all its undeniable beauty, it feels laboured at times. At 2 hours 45 minutes, this is a herculean movie, and requires major force of will not to fall asleep during at times. This is not to fault the plot, which doesn't move at that slow a pace and kinda works when analysed in a straight line, but even then, a number of sequences could shortened, and one or two could even be removed.
This is not to fault the actors, who do their best even when the dialogue lurches into the unintentionally hilarious. McConaughey has enjoyed a revival in his fortunes in the last six years that led to an Best Actor Oscar earlier this year, and despite the odd tendency to murmur his vocals from time to time, he is an engaging presence. He and his sandy Carhartt jacket get a ton of screen time across this production, yet he doesn't feel like he's hogging the airtime.
Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine are also excellent on-screen presences, and provide a captivating fluid performance despite being lumpen with most of the faux-science jargon. There are other roles from A-listers that crop up later down the line - Jessica Chastain receives a credit on the film poster, but one other notable one does not. But they do excel when they appear, and give the film a lot of propulsion.
There is also a lovely background role for John Lithgow as the father-in-law to McConaughey's character, and during the opening 45-odd minutes where he appears with him on Earth, the duo bring a great sheen to roles of people who yearn for a time that promised more than the bleak Earth they reside upon.
But while there isn't flaw with actors, there is problems with the final 20 minutes. While experts like Neil deGrasse Tyson have provided something approaching a decent explanation for it, narratively speaking, it feels like a cop-out. Scientifically speaking, it also provides something unsatisfying, even if at least did possess some decent imagination in using it. Like the rest of the film, it looks good, and it also sees composer Hans Zimmer really turn things up to 11 on the church organ.
However, it feels like something approaching a cop out, and it feels like it wants to tie the film up in too neat a bow. It also takes a fair bit of the plausibility out of proceedings, and while it was perhaps fair for it to not be continually obedience to semi-realistic science, it ends on a bum note that dilutes the piece's rating.
In all, Interstellar is a puzzling film. There is a lot of information dotted throughout the plot, almost as a constant underneath to the action itself. To deny it is filled with spectacle is a fallacy, and certainly, in IMAX, it will be looking sumptuous.
There is also nothing wrong with the actors in the piece, but to say this isn't a film without flaws is to overlook the final act's narrative failure, and the clunkiness of the pace.
To say this is among Nolan's best work is to forget The Dark Knight and Inception, and its also not really among the best sci-fi films in the last 5 years, even in spite of the fact it enjoys some of the best visual treatments in that time. But nevertheless, its a thrill ride worth seeing, and there is enough in the movie to at least feel like you haven't wasted your ticket price getting through the screen doors.
Plus if it inspires a wave of trans-galactic explorers, it could be one of the most important films of all...
3/5
Friday, 7 November 2014
Band of Skulls at Oxford O2 Academy - Gig Review
Things have been on a peculiar trajectory for Band of Skulls.
While third album Himalayan charted lower than its predecessor and hasn't produced something with the hit power as the previous two records, the band's live profile is still expanding. They were a big draw at festivals across Europe in the summer, and have also had experience down the years of supporting bands such as Muse, Queens of the Stone Age, The Black Keys, The Dead Weather and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.
The band's parade of hefty thumping rock has been enough to escalate their live profile, with the band now on a UK run-through of their biggest ever headline dates. With a sold out hometown gig at the Southampton Guildhall immediately after this one, and a largest ever headline show at the Hammersmith Apollo set to come, things are certainly looking big for the trio.
It would be easy to take it easy ahead of these big nights to take it easy, but ahead of a lively crowd, there is full-throttle rock from the off. Light of the Morning and Himalayan represent a punchy, hefty opening to the gig. But its 3rd song You're Not Pretty But You've Got It Going On that really gets the crowd moving and dancing, with the tantalising earworm of its spindly guitar enveloping the track.
Most of the sound is based on Emma Richardson's bass guitar, although one wonders about the mixing - while there's nothing wrong with the proficiency of her bass playing, it overpowers the guitar to a degree.
This is nevertheless a minor quibble. Russell Marsden and his army of guitars provides a nice array of riffing power that possesses the power to hypnotise and then bounce the crowd with an impressive proficiency.
Its easy from afar to deride a samey element to some of the songs, but the power and the force when faced with it in the live arena is still extremely pleasing. The title track from 2nd album Sweet Sour is a particularly beastly tune, as is Asleep At The Wheel.
The moment that really gets the crowd pumped and bouncing is a marvellous three-prong attack at the close of the main set, with Death by Diamonds and Pearls flowing excellently into The Devil Takes Care of His Own, and even nicer into breakthrough single I Know What I Am. This hit parade to close off the main set is especially delightful, and shows off the best part of the band's playing and writing styles.
Marsden says its a conclusion to the gig, but the band do return for a brief three song burst, which includes the evening's most chill song in the form subtler, more introspective Cold Fame. The blistering Hoochie Coochie and spindly Hollywood Bowl then bring curtain down in style.
In all, its a very pleasant endeavour in all. The power of Band of Skulls is mostly prevalent on the live circuit, which is part of the reason why they make for compelling opener for many of the biggest names in rock. On show here, it makes for a compelling presence, and in smaller rooms like the Oxford O2, it works excellently well.
4/5
Opening were Japanese acid-punk proposition Bo Ningen, whose attempts to make a first impression weren't helped by the first song sounding messy thanks to the poor mix. After taking a few songs to adjust to things, the impressively calibrated and perhaps slightly demented squawk begins to take shape. The final song takes things to bombastic levels, with the lead singer playing her bass virtually on the front row, while the guitarists pull shapes and the drummer layer on solo after solo. It ends superbly well, and certainly, the band eventually does enough to leave a positive mark on proceedings.
While third album Himalayan charted lower than its predecessor and hasn't produced something with the hit power as the previous two records, the band's live profile is still expanding. They were a big draw at festivals across Europe in the summer, and have also had experience down the years of supporting bands such as Muse, Queens of the Stone Age, The Black Keys, The Dead Weather and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.
The band's parade of hefty thumping rock has been enough to escalate their live profile, with the band now on a UK run-through of their biggest ever headline dates. With a sold out hometown gig at the Southampton Guildhall immediately after this one, and a largest ever headline show at the Hammersmith Apollo set to come, things are certainly looking big for the trio.
It would be easy to take it easy ahead of these big nights to take it easy, but ahead of a lively crowd, there is full-throttle rock from the off. Light of the Morning and Himalayan represent a punchy, hefty opening to the gig. But its 3rd song You're Not Pretty But You've Got It Going On that really gets the crowd moving and dancing, with the tantalising earworm of its spindly guitar enveloping the track.
Most of the sound is based on Emma Richardson's bass guitar, although one wonders about the mixing - while there's nothing wrong with the proficiency of her bass playing, it overpowers the guitar to a degree.
This is nevertheless a minor quibble. Russell Marsden and his army of guitars provides a nice array of riffing power that possesses the power to hypnotise and then bounce the crowd with an impressive proficiency.
Its easy from afar to deride a samey element to some of the songs, but the power and the force when faced with it in the live arena is still extremely pleasing. The title track from 2nd album Sweet Sour is a particularly beastly tune, as is Asleep At The Wheel.
The moment that really gets the crowd pumped and bouncing is a marvellous three-prong attack at the close of the main set, with Death by Diamonds and Pearls flowing excellently into The Devil Takes Care of His Own, and even nicer into breakthrough single I Know What I Am. This hit parade to close off the main set is especially delightful, and shows off the best part of the band's playing and writing styles.
Marsden says its a conclusion to the gig, but the band do return for a brief three song burst, which includes the evening's most chill song in the form subtler, more introspective Cold Fame. The blistering Hoochie Coochie and spindly Hollywood Bowl then bring curtain down in style.
In all, its a very pleasant endeavour in all. The power of Band of Skulls is mostly prevalent on the live circuit, which is part of the reason why they make for compelling opener for many of the biggest names in rock. On show here, it makes for a compelling presence, and in smaller rooms like the Oxford O2, it works excellently well.
4/5
Opening were Japanese acid-punk proposition Bo Ningen, whose attempts to make a first impression weren't helped by the first song sounding messy thanks to the poor mix. After taking a few songs to adjust to things, the impressively calibrated and perhaps slightly demented squawk begins to take shape. The final song takes things to bombastic levels, with the lead singer playing her bass virtually on the front row, while the guitarists pull shapes and the drummer layer on solo after solo. It ends superbly well, and certainly, the band eventually does enough to leave a positive mark on proceedings.
Wednesday, 29 October 2014
The Maze Runner - Film Review
IN the wake of the success of the Hunger Games franchise, the youth dystopia is now suddenly cool again.
TV's The 100 has been a worldwide success story, the Divergent movies looked to start a new franchise based on a completely insane pretence, The Giver gave Taylor Swift her acting break, and there is even the likelihood of the youth market finding Interstellar something worth viewing. This is all accompanied as well by the latest installment in the Hunger Games franchise, with the first part of final novel Mockingjay set to be released in November.
Arguably the biggest hype comes for the best-selling Maze Runner, which is based on a best selling series of novels by author James Dashner. With three books, two prequels - although one is currently being written for a 2016 release - and a large fanbase, many anticipate success.
Box office success is already assured - the film has already made enough to have more than its budget back - and its predominantly young cast is mostly signed up for the sequel next year, and most likely its own sequel in 2016.
The film starts with a sharp shock of a lift rising to the top containing a young man who has been in water. He rises into a green grassy square filled with similarly aged boys and surrounded by giant walls, beyond which lurks - as will be painstakingly explained later on - a maze filled with robotic spider-like creatures.
The central idea may work eventually, but it does sacrifice a lot of its early momentum in the opening moments to endless painstaking exposition. The first third is almost constant explanation of every single detail, and the momentum first generated in the panicky rise to this strange new world is lost.
The boy (Dylan O'Brien) wakes with total amnesia, although eventually remembers his name to be Thomas. He tries to integrate himself into this new societal order, but finds things a struggle, and also seems adept at trying to break through the societal structure.
Things quickly begin going awry, as the previously held societal order begins to break down. But even then, it all feels a bit slow despite the gentle raising of the stakes. As a result, despite the actors doing reasonably well with their dramatic rations, there is very little sense of jeopardy or momentum towards any end goal or game.
There are equally some predictable story tropes being trotted out. To bring out just one example, one of the things spouted is that "Nobody who has spent a night in the maze came out alive". You can already guess from there what will happen next.
Gradually, things reach some sort of climax, as the maze is further explored, explained and everything else. But then, when the finale is reached, things actually get interesting.
There is more explanation, as there seems to have been throughout, but at the business end, it provides a new and interesting sheen to proceedings, and is perhaps the thing that makes the most sense of this previously unfulfilling storyline. Christ knows it needed it, and almost in a surreal way, it seems to justify the need for a continuation, even after all the pedestrian sub-Hunger Games twaddle before it.
The final bit is certainly the most interesting portion of this enterprise, and seems to weight out some of what came before. There's nothing terribly bad about it, and there's certainly no fault of the actors involved, who do their best to breath life into the script. But it needed to possess a lot more about it in the initial period to make it stand out in the dystopian crowd.
Maybe the other works coming out in the next few weeks will have more about them to bring something fresh amidst the crowded dystopia field.
2/5
TV's The 100 has been a worldwide success story, the Divergent movies looked to start a new franchise based on a completely insane pretence, The Giver gave Taylor Swift her acting break, and there is even the likelihood of the youth market finding Interstellar something worth viewing. This is all accompanied as well by the latest installment in the Hunger Games franchise, with the first part of final novel Mockingjay set to be released in November.
Arguably the biggest hype comes for the best-selling Maze Runner, which is based on a best selling series of novels by author James Dashner. With three books, two prequels - although one is currently being written for a 2016 release - and a large fanbase, many anticipate success.
Box office success is already assured - the film has already made enough to have more than its budget back - and its predominantly young cast is mostly signed up for the sequel next year, and most likely its own sequel in 2016.
The film starts with a sharp shock of a lift rising to the top containing a young man who has been in water. He rises into a green grassy square filled with similarly aged boys and surrounded by giant walls, beyond which lurks - as will be painstakingly explained later on - a maze filled with robotic spider-like creatures.
The central idea may work eventually, but it does sacrifice a lot of its early momentum in the opening moments to endless painstaking exposition. The first third is almost constant explanation of every single detail, and the momentum first generated in the panicky rise to this strange new world is lost.
The boy (Dylan O'Brien) wakes with total amnesia, although eventually remembers his name to be Thomas. He tries to integrate himself into this new societal order, but finds things a struggle, and also seems adept at trying to break through the societal structure.
Things quickly begin going awry, as the previously held societal order begins to break down. But even then, it all feels a bit slow despite the gentle raising of the stakes. As a result, despite the actors doing reasonably well with their dramatic rations, there is very little sense of jeopardy or momentum towards any end goal or game.
There are equally some predictable story tropes being trotted out. To bring out just one example, one of the things spouted is that "Nobody who has spent a night in the maze came out alive". You can already guess from there what will happen next.
Gradually, things reach some sort of climax, as the maze is further explored, explained and everything else. But then, when the finale is reached, things actually get interesting.
There is more explanation, as there seems to have been throughout, but at the business end, it provides a new and interesting sheen to proceedings, and is perhaps the thing that makes the most sense of this previously unfulfilling storyline. Christ knows it needed it, and almost in a surreal way, it seems to justify the need for a continuation, even after all the pedestrian sub-Hunger Games twaddle before it.
The final bit is certainly the most interesting portion of this enterprise, and seems to weight out some of what came before. There's nothing terribly bad about it, and there's certainly no fault of the actors involved, who do their best to breath life into the script. But it needed to possess a lot more about it in the initial period to make it stand out in the dystopian crowd.
Maybe the other works coming out in the next few weeks will have more about them to bring something fresh amidst the crowded dystopia field.
2/5
Friday, 10 October 2014
Gone Girl - Film Review
When director David Fincher told the Guardian bad things happen in Gone Girl, he was hardly kidding.
The advance buzz trailed there was going to psychopathic touches to this movie. But then anyone who read the book would have know unpleasant things lurked on the pages, and were undoubtedly going to an interesting thing when made flesh.
Even so, its impressive with how much relish Fincher and his assembled cast are willing to go in creating a psychotic pantomime depicting a love undergoing studious dismantling.
The story created in the diary parallel to the main story is almost perfect. Boy meets girl at writer's party in February 2005, where they share a tender first kiss amidst a cloud of sugar in a bakery. Boy and girl get married two years later, and things are still going well in 2009 - two years into the marriage.
All of which runs concurrent to the start, where girl - Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) - has gone on the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary. Her husband and fellow now-failed writer Nick (Ben Affleck) is stunned and brings in the police to find her missing wife. And then the game of cat and mouse begins.
The concurrent narrative tells the movement of Dunnes from not knowing one another to being stuck in a collapsing marriage in an unwanted Missouri McMansion alongside the first week after she disappears.
Shot in 6K, it has a very hyper-real look, and even brings an impressive sheen and look to the desolate dying towns across America most people wouldn't look twice at. It also fully feels like you're watching a perfectly, studiously put together crime scene, almost like the scene at the start. An untouched, pristine nature right down to the newly broken shards littering the piece.
Nick starts off feeling surprisingly unruffled but panicky, and from there, things unravel quickly. The media latch onto his unruffled public persona as signs of sociopathy, the police begin to pick apart details at the crime scene, the police show confusion at how little he knows about her, and before long, he looks for all the world like he's staring into the abyss.
As the central character and co-narrator, in effect, Nick is the driving force in the first act as we move from the disappearance on. His character play isn't too far removed from the smug coaster Affleck was once characterised as in his early days, and he certainly provides us with a protagonist that is easy to be painted a a problem.
The merciless police with unconvincing Midwestern accents - led by Detective Boney (Kim Dickens and her near ubiquitous coffee cup) and Officer Gilpin (Patrick Fugit) - certainly have a perfectly poised interpretation at their fingers.
The supporting cast is therefore left with a narrative to flit in and out of. Amy's needy ex Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris) is not as likeable as he was in prose, but is still a nice performance of a man desperate to be the good guy. Meanwhile, attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry, in a long way from his Razzie nominated works) is a very capable supporting cast member.
Framing the proceedings frequently is cable TV host Ellen Abbott (Missi Pyle), who adds a wonderfully messed up framing air, urging the public towards the self-discovered "right answer".
Yet then the film changes tack, Amy storms into prominence. In the first act, she's simply the strung along inspiration for the Amazing Amy books her parents wrote almost as correcting facilities for their failing daughter. Then suddenly, she takes the film into a new direction with a twist that maybe easy to detect from afar - and if, like me, you'd read the book beforehand, you'll almost be counting down to its arrival - but nevertheless takes Pike towards an impressive calibrated change in both motivation and performance.
This brings up multiple layers of deceit and psychosis to a movie hardly short of it. This in many ways is a very psychotic pantomime, replete with some unwittingly laughable dialogue and even the overt prominence of Punch and Judy dolls, framed by television personalities and acting.
Certainly, there is a decent dissection of the idea of couples acting, and how much people are willing to go either to repair the initial behaviour or to re-add the layers.
This is not to say its a perfect movie. Some of the dialogue is fairly clunky when its not unintentionally hilarious. There's also a lack of subtlety in places. It is a more subtle read, not only fleshing out Amy's diary vignettes and her relationship with her correctional author parents, but also fully exploring every detail of every character. Some, by contrast, aren't given them here.
Perhaps one of the more crucial characters in the plot, for example, is given all of three scenes, and very little beyond a stereotype to work with.
In all, however, the narrative, plot points (despite editing by the screenwriting) and somewhat-believable characters are enough to keep the film together without feeling it might fall apart. It also has a brilliant cosmetic feeling captured by 6K cameras, and studiously nice performances fully played off in a world without a hero.
4/5
The advance buzz trailed there was going to psychopathic touches to this movie. But then anyone who read the book would have know unpleasant things lurked on the pages, and were undoubtedly going to an interesting thing when made flesh.
Even so, its impressive with how much relish Fincher and his assembled cast are willing to go in creating a psychotic pantomime depicting a love undergoing studious dismantling.
The story created in the diary parallel to the main story is almost perfect. Boy meets girl at writer's party in February 2005, where they share a tender first kiss amidst a cloud of sugar in a bakery. Boy and girl get married two years later, and things are still going well in 2009 - two years into the marriage.
All of which runs concurrent to the start, where girl - Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) - has gone on the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary. Her husband and fellow now-failed writer Nick (Ben Affleck) is stunned and brings in the police to find her missing wife. And then the game of cat and mouse begins.
The concurrent narrative tells the movement of Dunnes from not knowing one another to being stuck in a collapsing marriage in an unwanted Missouri McMansion alongside the first week after she disappears.
Shot in 6K, it has a very hyper-real look, and even brings an impressive sheen and look to the desolate dying towns across America most people wouldn't look twice at. It also fully feels like you're watching a perfectly, studiously put together crime scene, almost like the scene at the start. An untouched, pristine nature right down to the newly broken shards littering the piece.
Nick starts off feeling surprisingly unruffled but panicky, and from there, things unravel quickly. The media latch onto his unruffled public persona as signs of sociopathy, the police begin to pick apart details at the crime scene, the police show confusion at how little he knows about her, and before long, he looks for all the world like he's staring into the abyss.
As the central character and co-narrator, in effect, Nick is the driving force in the first act as we move from the disappearance on. His character play isn't too far removed from the smug coaster Affleck was once characterised as in his early days, and he certainly provides us with a protagonist that is easy to be painted a a problem.
The merciless police with unconvincing Midwestern accents - led by Detective Boney (Kim Dickens and her near ubiquitous coffee cup) and Officer Gilpin (Patrick Fugit) - certainly have a perfectly poised interpretation at their fingers.
The supporting cast is therefore left with a narrative to flit in and out of. Amy's needy ex Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris) is not as likeable as he was in prose, but is still a nice performance of a man desperate to be the good guy. Meanwhile, attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry, in a long way from his Razzie nominated works) is a very capable supporting cast member.
Framing the proceedings frequently is cable TV host Ellen Abbott (Missi Pyle), who adds a wonderfully messed up framing air, urging the public towards the self-discovered "right answer".
Yet then the film changes tack, Amy storms into prominence. In the first act, she's simply the strung along inspiration for the Amazing Amy books her parents wrote almost as correcting facilities for their failing daughter. Then suddenly, she takes the film into a new direction with a twist that maybe easy to detect from afar - and if, like me, you'd read the book beforehand, you'll almost be counting down to its arrival - but nevertheless takes Pike towards an impressive calibrated change in both motivation and performance.
This brings up multiple layers of deceit and psychosis to a movie hardly short of it. This in many ways is a very psychotic pantomime, replete with some unwittingly laughable dialogue and even the overt prominence of Punch and Judy dolls, framed by television personalities and acting.
Certainly, there is a decent dissection of the idea of couples acting, and how much people are willing to go either to repair the initial behaviour or to re-add the layers.
This is not to say its a perfect movie. Some of the dialogue is fairly clunky when its not unintentionally hilarious. There's also a lack of subtlety in places. It is a more subtle read, not only fleshing out Amy's diary vignettes and her relationship with her correctional author parents, but also fully exploring every detail of every character. Some, by contrast, aren't given them here.
Perhaps one of the more crucial characters in the plot, for example, is given all of three scenes, and very little beyond a stereotype to work with.
In all, however, the narrative, plot points (despite editing by the screenwriting) and somewhat-believable characters are enough to keep the film together without feeling it might fall apart. It also has a brilliant cosmetic feeling captured by 6K cameras, and studiously nice performances fully played off in a world without a hero.
4/5
Monday, 29 September 2014
Family Guy/The Simpsons "The Simpsons Guy" - TV Review
With television critics lining up to say Family Guy and The Simpsons ain't as good as they used to be, it would have been easy for 'an event'.
A big gimmick, persay, where the two mediums could have attracted attention back upon themselves to bring in the ratings and insist they still had something to say. Family Guy has already tried that, with last year seeing the unnecessary killing of Brian Griffin.
When it was first announced Fox's two animated titans were going to fuse together for one comedy event, it was easy to sneer at it. Many say The Simpsons has not been of high quality since the turn of the century, while Family Guy has failed to reach its earlier heights since Seth MacFarlane's movie career has taken off. Granted, both still have the moments, but we are a long time after the show's respective heydays.
Yet after months of anticipation, engineered controversy, trails, deliberation of its merits and all that other stuff, the return of the two shows sees us presented with this for our amusement.
To understand The Simpsons Guy is to understand two things. Firstly, this is a Family Guy episode with Simpsons voice actors and characters guest starring. Secondly, this spends a lot of time riffing on imitation, which is an accusation Family Guy has frequently been guilty of, and which was once done by The Simpsons themselves in 1996's The Day The Violence Died.
That episode was a smartly done riff that evolved from the Itchy & Scratchy cartoons. This, by contrast, is an attempt to make a TV event.
It starts in fairly standard style. Peter Griffin becomes a newspaper cartoonist who very quickly offends the town's women, so after threats and brick throwing, the Griffins decide to skedaddle, which ultimately sees them get their car stolen from a petrol station on the outskirts of a town filled with yellow people.
This is duly the Griffins in Springfield moment, and the animation together is a very good blending together of the styles to make the Griffin family look like they could actually be there. As the two shows are animated and coloured differently - and not just in the yellow skin - there was enough to make it a challenge to make them look like they could exist alongside on screen, so the animators do get commendation for their part.
The bits in Springfield are largely centred on two pairings - Homer/Peter and Bart/Stewie. The Lisa/Meg pairing only gets two scenes, Marge/Lois are background characters, and there is one scene involving Chris and Brian walking/losing Santa's Little Helper, but the first two get priority, with the first one the main plot.
One criticism of the recent weaker series of Family Guy is the stupidly high number of Peter-centric episodes, which are easy enough to write and create plots for, but harder to make memorable jokes out of.
Its tricky to know if there's a standout gag that would stand up to the heavy duty repetition this will undoubtedly get on repeat channels, but there's enough amusing gags littered throughout. The Bart/Stewie stuff is perhaps the better of it, and may have made a more compelling piece harking back to the Simpson's roots.
After all, it is easy to forget that The Simpsons was, for its first few years, a show centered on Bart, while Family Guy's best episodes are usually focused around Stewie, and there was lots of amusing stuff dotted in the difference between Bart's pranks and Stewie's psychopathic tendencies.
Most of the episode is focused on Homer and Peter, and their pairing is really ramped up the further into the hour we progress. This leads to the big imitation set-piece, with the respective beers - Pawtucket Patriot Ale and Duff Beer - accused of imitation and lacking old quality, which leads to a trial and even a gag of Fred Flintstone as a judge.
This duly spawns that most used of Family Guy gags in the form of the Giant Chicken fight, which sees Homer and Peter spend a whopping eight minutes punching and walloping one another through Springfield. A multitude of characters and Simpsons references spin and out of the fight, including Otto, Ralph Wiggum, Kang and Kodos, Roger from American Dad, and the infamous Springfield Gorge tumble.
The overlong fight is the finalish gag of the whole show, and its an interesting composition when you analyse it as a whole.
There is certainly nothing to dispute such a crossover having taken place, and there are plenty of amusing gags. Certainly, its is absolutely the case that this is much better than anything in the last series of Family Guy, which was a stale regurgitation of much of the stuff that has been in its comic repertoire since the turn of the decade.
It would have been a bit more to see some Simpsons writers given more input. There is certainly some superficial involvement, but this is mainly a Family Guy episode that just happens to be in Springfield. A heavily advised episode that was signed off by Simpsons production staff and had some input from Matt Groening and co, but a Family Guy episode nevertheless.
In truth, it could've used the sleight of hand on the Simpsons side. Family Guy's writing is not as up to scratch as its MacFarlane stable mate and now former channel-mates at American Dad, and there are times when the fusing of writers could have pitched in some better material than standard rape and race material that Family Guy is beating into the ground.
By the time the credits go past, it is certain that there is no problem with the show's existence. There are amusing moments, it looks good and the whole thing does just about seem to work. But it could have provided some more full-on laughs, and maybe in the shows respective heydays it could have done, but here, it could've used some more full on laughs.
Maybe The Simpsons/Futurama crossover in November will provide some.
3.5/5
A big gimmick, persay, where the two mediums could have attracted attention back upon themselves to bring in the ratings and insist they still had something to say. Family Guy has already tried that, with last year seeing the unnecessary killing of Brian Griffin.
When it was first announced Fox's two animated titans were going to fuse together for one comedy event, it was easy to sneer at it. Many say The Simpsons has not been of high quality since the turn of the century, while Family Guy has failed to reach its earlier heights since Seth MacFarlane's movie career has taken off. Granted, both still have the moments, but we are a long time after the show's respective heydays.
Yet after months of anticipation, engineered controversy, trails, deliberation of its merits and all that other stuff, the return of the two shows sees us presented with this for our amusement.
To understand The Simpsons Guy is to understand two things. Firstly, this is a Family Guy episode with Simpsons voice actors and characters guest starring. Secondly, this spends a lot of time riffing on imitation, which is an accusation Family Guy has frequently been guilty of, and which was once done by The Simpsons themselves in 1996's The Day The Violence Died.
That episode was a smartly done riff that evolved from the Itchy & Scratchy cartoons. This, by contrast, is an attempt to make a TV event.
It starts in fairly standard style. Peter Griffin becomes a newspaper cartoonist who very quickly offends the town's women, so after threats and brick throwing, the Griffins decide to skedaddle, which ultimately sees them get their car stolen from a petrol station on the outskirts of a town filled with yellow people.
This is duly the Griffins in Springfield moment, and the animation together is a very good blending together of the styles to make the Griffin family look like they could actually be there. As the two shows are animated and coloured differently - and not just in the yellow skin - there was enough to make it a challenge to make them look like they could exist alongside on screen, so the animators do get commendation for their part.
The bits in Springfield are largely centred on two pairings - Homer/Peter and Bart/Stewie. The Lisa/Meg pairing only gets two scenes, Marge/Lois are background characters, and there is one scene involving Chris and Brian walking/losing Santa's Little Helper, but the first two get priority, with the first one the main plot.
One criticism of the recent weaker series of Family Guy is the stupidly high number of Peter-centric episodes, which are easy enough to write and create plots for, but harder to make memorable jokes out of.
Its tricky to know if there's a standout gag that would stand up to the heavy duty repetition this will undoubtedly get on repeat channels, but there's enough amusing gags littered throughout. The Bart/Stewie stuff is perhaps the better of it, and may have made a more compelling piece harking back to the Simpson's roots.
After all, it is easy to forget that The Simpsons was, for its first few years, a show centered on Bart, while Family Guy's best episodes are usually focused around Stewie, and there was lots of amusing stuff dotted in the difference between Bart's pranks and Stewie's psychopathic tendencies.
Most of the episode is focused on Homer and Peter, and their pairing is really ramped up the further into the hour we progress. This leads to the big imitation set-piece, with the respective beers - Pawtucket Patriot Ale and Duff Beer - accused of imitation and lacking old quality, which leads to a trial and even a gag of Fred Flintstone as a judge.
This duly spawns that most used of Family Guy gags in the form of the Giant Chicken fight, which sees Homer and Peter spend a whopping eight minutes punching and walloping one another through Springfield. A multitude of characters and Simpsons references spin and out of the fight, including Otto, Ralph Wiggum, Kang and Kodos, Roger from American Dad, and the infamous Springfield Gorge tumble.
The overlong fight is the finalish gag of the whole show, and its an interesting composition when you analyse it as a whole.
There is certainly nothing to dispute such a crossover having taken place, and there are plenty of amusing gags. Certainly, its is absolutely the case that this is much better than anything in the last series of Family Guy, which was a stale regurgitation of much of the stuff that has been in its comic repertoire since the turn of the decade.
It would have been a bit more to see some Simpsons writers given more input. There is certainly some superficial involvement, but this is mainly a Family Guy episode that just happens to be in Springfield. A heavily advised episode that was signed off by Simpsons production staff and had some input from Matt Groening and co, but a Family Guy episode nevertheless.
In truth, it could've used the sleight of hand on the Simpsons side. Family Guy's writing is not as up to scratch as its MacFarlane stable mate and now former channel-mates at American Dad, and there are times when the fusing of writers could have pitched in some better material than standard rape and race material that Family Guy is beating into the ground.
By the time the credits go past, it is certain that there is no problem with the show's existence. There are amusing moments, it looks good and the whole thing does just about seem to work. But it could have provided some more full-on laughs, and maybe in the shows respective heydays it could have done, but here, it could've used some more full on laughs.
Maybe The Simpsons/Futurama crossover in November will provide some.
3.5/5
Tuesday, 16 September 2014
Frank Turner at Cambridge Corn Exchange - Live Review
Where do you go after the biggest highs of your career? Small(ish) venues and new stuff, naturally.
Earlier this year, Frank Turner truly crashed into the pop/rock bigtime. Headline concerts at caverns like the O2 Arena in London and the Phones 4 U Arena in Manchester, bill-topping slots at several small regional festivals, even a win on Celebrity Mastermind - this has a huge year for the singer.
It could have been easy after that to take some time off, compose some new ditties and then head to the studios. But instead, a new material road-test has been commissioned, making stop overs in a wide variety of regional towns and cities.
This is Turner's first performance in Cambridge for 3 years - the last of which being at a church in 2011 - and the locals are in the mood for a good time from the off. They dance to opening duo Try This At Home and If Ever I Stray as if to make up for last time, while Turner belts his couplets from the stage.
In truth, the opening numbers are slightly hindered by sonic problems which will be an issue throughout the evening, but they get the standing crowd moshing and what is audible is certainly effective at getting the crowd off and running.
Four songs in comes our first gasp at new material, in the form of the sprightly uptempo Out of Breath - a song that could promise to be a big tune when the expected new record lands next year. Certainly, its the strongest of the five new ones premiered here.
Naturally, its the hits that the crowd are in town for. The Road and Reasons Not To Be An Idiot inspiring early dancing, while a combination of I Am Disappeared and The Way I Tend To Be inspires the biggest singalong of the opening of the concert.
In amongst this is a new track called Glorious You, which is one of many that is a work in progress, and is one of two to receive full live debuts at this show. The other full debutant is the first of Turner's 3 song acoustic set, and is entitled Silent Key, which is a tribute to a schoolteacher that was killed in the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in 1986.
The other acoustics are social media request - one of which from a couple in the audience who played it at their wedding - before some big guns. Wessex Boy inspires some singing to its gentile groove, before Photosynthesis gets the biggest sing-a-long of the entire night and even some joining in from a largely sedate balcony.
As the evening progresses, the sonic problems are beginning to come worse, with both electric and bass guitars having audio problems. This is biggest on the new song Josephine, which despite having the bones of a good track, is heavily reliant on a bass riff that the speakers don't seem to broadcast.
Not that the crowd are determined to let that stop them a good time. Recovery sees the band's sound technician lead the crowd through frenzied jumping, before Long Live the Queen - despite guitarist Ben Lloyd's lead riff being mute and Frank Turner's guitar stopping working - inspires a fine singalong to close the main set.
Naturally, the first end is not the end, and the band duly returned for another quartet of tunes. An acoustic song entitled The Angel Islington - which Turner described as a sequel to the downbeat Broken Piano on Tape Deck Heart - opens up the encore nicely.
A final trio closes off, culminating in a rampant singalong for I Still Believe and exhausted but delightful dancing for Four Simple Words to pull the certain down on Turner's 1,613th concert.
It wasn't the best show of Turner's career, with poor acoustics hindering the night's quality. But the new material is certainly hinting at promise to come, with recording expected of the new album after the band's tour is wrapped up in Cambridge's university rivals Oxford at the end of the month.
Alongside that, the crowd were loving all the immaculately crafted old stuff that has elevated Turner into bigger rooms than this one, and helped the enjoyment of the show beyond the limited sonic scape.
In all, it was a success, and more with any luck, further decent shows will follow when he returns with his new record next year.
3.5/5
Opening for Turner and his band were Minnesota duo Koo Koo Kanga Roo, who had previously opened for Turner in the United States. The duo are certainly different, having been described as "Beastie Boys meets Sesame Street", and providing merrily nonsensical tunes that began to work a charm on the Cambridge crowd as the evening progressed.
Things then progressed even more when the duo went into the crowd, creating a pit in the middle of the venue while they danced, and even ending the show by bringing out a kid's parachute over the crowd during the final tune. Its certainly a world away from conventional acts of almost every genre, but it worked in getting the crowd pumped up for the concert.
Earlier this year, Frank Turner truly crashed into the pop/rock bigtime. Headline concerts at caverns like the O2 Arena in London and the Phones 4 U Arena in Manchester, bill-topping slots at several small regional festivals, even a win on Celebrity Mastermind - this has a huge year for the singer.
It could have been easy after that to take some time off, compose some new ditties and then head to the studios. But instead, a new material road-test has been commissioned, making stop overs in a wide variety of regional towns and cities.
This is Turner's first performance in Cambridge for 3 years - the last of which being at a church in 2011 - and the locals are in the mood for a good time from the off. They dance to opening duo Try This At Home and If Ever I Stray as if to make up for last time, while Turner belts his couplets from the stage.
In truth, the opening numbers are slightly hindered by sonic problems which will be an issue throughout the evening, but they get the standing crowd moshing and what is audible is certainly effective at getting the crowd off and running.
Four songs in comes our first gasp at new material, in the form of the sprightly uptempo Out of Breath - a song that could promise to be a big tune when the expected new record lands next year. Certainly, its the strongest of the five new ones premiered here.
Naturally, its the hits that the crowd are in town for. The Road and Reasons Not To Be An Idiot inspiring early dancing, while a combination of I Am Disappeared and The Way I Tend To Be inspires the biggest singalong of the opening of the concert.
In amongst this is a new track called Glorious You, which is one of many that is a work in progress, and is one of two to receive full live debuts at this show. The other full debutant is the first of Turner's 3 song acoustic set, and is entitled Silent Key, which is a tribute to a schoolteacher that was killed in the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in 1986.
The other acoustics are social media request - one of which from a couple in the audience who played it at their wedding - before some big guns. Wessex Boy inspires some singing to its gentile groove, before Photosynthesis gets the biggest sing-a-long of the entire night and even some joining in from a largely sedate balcony.
As the evening progresses, the sonic problems are beginning to come worse, with both electric and bass guitars having audio problems. This is biggest on the new song Josephine, which despite having the bones of a good track, is heavily reliant on a bass riff that the speakers don't seem to broadcast.
Not that the crowd are determined to let that stop them a good time. Recovery sees the band's sound technician lead the crowd through frenzied jumping, before Long Live the Queen - despite guitarist Ben Lloyd's lead riff being mute and Frank Turner's guitar stopping working - inspires a fine singalong to close the main set.
Naturally, the first end is not the end, and the band duly returned for another quartet of tunes. An acoustic song entitled The Angel Islington - which Turner described as a sequel to the downbeat Broken Piano on Tape Deck Heart - opens up the encore nicely.
A final trio closes off, culminating in a rampant singalong for I Still Believe and exhausted but delightful dancing for Four Simple Words to pull the certain down on Turner's 1,613th concert.
It wasn't the best show of Turner's career, with poor acoustics hindering the night's quality. But the new material is certainly hinting at promise to come, with recording expected of the new album after the band's tour is wrapped up in Cambridge's university rivals Oxford at the end of the month.
Alongside that, the crowd were loving all the immaculately crafted old stuff that has elevated Turner into bigger rooms than this one, and helped the enjoyment of the show beyond the limited sonic scape.
In all, it was a success, and more with any luck, further decent shows will follow when he returns with his new record next year.
3.5/5
Opening for Turner and his band were Minnesota duo Koo Koo Kanga Roo, who had previously opened for Turner in the United States. The duo are certainly different, having been described as "Beastie Boys meets Sesame Street", and providing merrily nonsensical tunes that began to work a charm on the Cambridge crowd as the evening progressed.
Things then progressed even more when the duo went into the crowd, creating a pit in the middle of the venue while they danced, and even ending the show by bringing out a kid's parachute over the crowd during the final tune. Its certainly a world away from conventional acts of almost every genre, but it worked in getting the crowd pumped up for the concert.
Tuesday, 2 September 2014
New Season, Different Cast, Same Problem
Newcastle fans are at the best of times an easy bunch to rile up.
For many years since the arrival of Mike Ashley, there have been plenty of moments to rile fans - almost in the manner of a bull being waved a red (and blue) flag. Be it renaming the stadium after his own firm twice, the sacking of Chris Hughton, selling Andy Carroll 45 minutes before the transfer deadline in January 2011, underselling Yohan Cabaye, appointing Joe Kinnear twice, investing the bare minimum or presiding over relegation, the owner is clearly a problem issue.
His lapdog manager and cheap coaching staff is hardly a help either. Alan Pardew is in debt to the owner after his mind-bogglingly stupid headbutt at Hull in March - along with his alleged gambling debts - and as a result remains in charge, while a cheaply assembled coaching staff who clearly need a refresher in certain aspects toil beneath him.
Therein lies the issue of how a supposedly impressive summer has fallen flat in practice. It looked as though for once, things may have actually gone right. Nine new players went into St. James' Park, including World Cup players and other internationals.
But when you think about it further, the £39million spent on players is essentially the same money received for Yohan Cabaye and Mathieu Debuchy, who left for these combined fees to PSG and Arsenal respectively, with a little petty cash on top.
This means that for 2014, the club has a net spend of £5million, despite receiving over £80million for a top-half finish last season. Naturally, some of this will be going towards the club's wage bill, but there is no reason at all why this shouldn't have included a fee for another player, be it in attack or in defence - both areas the club looked light in coming to transfer deadline day.
We could have and should have bought in the new centre-half early, and its not as if some weren't available. But it appears Pardew wanted to maintain a centre back pairing of Fabricio Coloccini and Mike Williamson - a pairing which was so successful for opposition strikers during our depressing cycle of maulings at the end of last season.
Rather than strengthen this department, the board have inexplicably made it weaker. While Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa had difficult spells in black and white, his more technical defensive strategy would have made him a good long term replacement for Roma. Yet somehow, the limited Williamson and the embarrassing Steven Taylor are ahead of him.
We needed that new centre-half, but the only signing made there - Jamaal Lascelles - was immediately loaned back to Nottingham Forest, meaning any injury to one of our defenders and youngsters like Curtis Good and Remie Streete are being thrown in at the deep end. Maybe they will come good but its a bold gamble to take.
The lack of signing a new goalscorer is painstakingly problematic. Loic Remy was never going to stay on Tyneside, but the almost willful blindness is baffling. It puts a lot on players new to the country - so far, Emmanuel Riviere has led the line but has never once looked like scoring, Ayoze Perez shows promise but is only used sparingly and Facundo Ferreyra appears to have gone missing since his unveiling at the start of August.
It appears as though the club are expecting Papiss Cisse to immediately turn good again after he returns from injury in November - a bold anticipation given he has been dreadful for most of the last two seasons.
As if that wasn't enough, we then move onto the fans' biggest bone with the whole sorry shenanigans. That is Hatem Ben Arfa, who was sent out on loan to Hull City on deadline day.
The terms of the Premier League loan moves means that Ben Arfa won't be playing for the Tigers at St. James' Park and showing up what can only be described as a shaky defensive regiment. But for all his flaws, he is still a good player, and if he leads Hull to performances that keep them above the Toon for the 2014/15 campaign, then the calls of Pardew's incompetence will grow louder.
Ben Arfa has only joined the Tigers because of the fact that he fell out with Pardew, which also explains the unnecessary and perhaps even more damaging departure of Yanga-Mbiwa.
Not for the first time, Pardew blamed the fans for a bad result - this time, he blamed them for the concession of a 95th minute goal to draw against Crystal Palace. But against Palace its doubtful we deserved a win anyway.
Until the introduction of youngster Rolando Aarons, our attack was plodding and looked like it would never break through a six man defence Palace turned up with. Yohan Gouffran looked disinterested, Moussa Sissoko ran without product and the new trio of Remy Cabella, Siem de Jong and Riviere never looked in the game at all. Indeed, all our defensive and attacking running in midfield seemed to be left to Jack Colback, and while he may have been dubbed the Ginger Pirlo by fans after his England call-up this week, that is a lot of responsibility on one player's shoulders.
The failure in coaching in attack is becoming an epidemic. We have only scored in eight league games in 2014, and rarely look like scoring to boot. Some fans argue we send too many forward but its not the numbers as the pace. The team's ponderous attack wastes opportunities with ponderous slow-motion play, and the set-pieces remain by and large as woeful as ever.
The problem for this, conspiring to make a thin squad even thinner and selling players for disagreeing with him rests with Pardew, who resembles a spent force on Tyneside. Some fans drew similarities between Saturday's 3-3 draw with Palace and a 3-3 draw with Wimbledon FC at the start of the 1999-00 season, which put huge pressure on then-manager Ruud Gullit, who was duly dismissed from the job after defeat in the Tyne-Wear Derby later that week that left the club marooned in the bottom 2
While Ashley's continual bare minimum spending approach continues to damage the squad, the situation is exacerbated by a man woefully inept at controlling and coaching his playing squad, and the sooner he goes, the better.
Sadly, Pardew is only two years into the albatross that is that eight year deal, and it would take an almost biblical lack of form to see the back of him. Unluckily for him, such a run is looming - Newcastle lost all four equivalent fixtures of their next four, and against all four opponents, displayed awful performances. A similar run here would leave the Toon bottom of the Premiership in the October international break, which would encourage even further fan dissent and then what?
This fatalism is perhaps the only way Pardew would be removed from office, but until then, we're going to have to hope for him to actually recall the tactics and harmony of the famous 5th place campaign rather than his plodding, stodgy, dreary anti-football adopted since.
This situation cannot continue as is and at some point, something is going to have to give.
For many years since the arrival of Mike Ashley, there have been plenty of moments to rile fans - almost in the manner of a bull being waved a red (and blue) flag. Be it renaming the stadium after his own firm twice, the sacking of Chris Hughton, selling Andy Carroll 45 minutes before the transfer deadline in January 2011, underselling Yohan Cabaye, appointing Joe Kinnear twice, investing the bare minimum or presiding over relegation, the owner is clearly a problem issue.
His lapdog manager and cheap coaching staff is hardly a help either. Alan Pardew is in debt to the owner after his mind-bogglingly stupid headbutt at Hull in March - along with his alleged gambling debts - and as a result remains in charge, while a cheaply assembled coaching staff who clearly need a refresher in certain aspects toil beneath him.
Therein lies the issue of how a supposedly impressive summer has fallen flat in practice. It looked as though for once, things may have actually gone right. Nine new players went into St. James' Park, including World Cup players and other internationals.
But when you think about it further, the £39million spent on players is essentially the same money received for Yohan Cabaye and Mathieu Debuchy, who left for these combined fees to PSG and Arsenal respectively, with a little petty cash on top.
This means that for 2014, the club has a net spend of £5million, despite receiving over £80million for a top-half finish last season. Naturally, some of this will be going towards the club's wage bill, but there is no reason at all why this shouldn't have included a fee for another player, be it in attack or in defence - both areas the club looked light in coming to transfer deadline day.
We could have and should have bought in the new centre-half early, and its not as if some weren't available. But it appears Pardew wanted to maintain a centre back pairing of Fabricio Coloccini and Mike Williamson - a pairing which was so successful for opposition strikers during our depressing cycle of maulings at the end of last season.
Rather than strengthen this department, the board have inexplicably made it weaker. While Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa had difficult spells in black and white, his more technical defensive strategy would have made him a good long term replacement for Roma. Yet somehow, the limited Williamson and the embarrassing Steven Taylor are ahead of him.
We needed that new centre-half, but the only signing made there - Jamaal Lascelles - was immediately loaned back to Nottingham Forest, meaning any injury to one of our defenders and youngsters like Curtis Good and Remie Streete are being thrown in at the deep end. Maybe they will come good but its a bold gamble to take.
The lack of signing a new goalscorer is painstakingly problematic. Loic Remy was never going to stay on Tyneside, but the almost willful blindness is baffling. It puts a lot on players new to the country - so far, Emmanuel Riviere has led the line but has never once looked like scoring, Ayoze Perez shows promise but is only used sparingly and Facundo Ferreyra appears to have gone missing since his unveiling at the start of August.
It appears as though the club are expecting Papiss Cisse to immediately turn good again after he returns from injury in November - a bold anticipation given he has been dreadful for most of the last two seasons.
As if that wasn't enough, we then move onto the fans' biggest bone with the whole sorry shenanigans. That is Hatem Ben Arfa, who was sent out on loan to Hull City on deadline day.
The terms of the Premier League loan moves means that Ben Arfa won't be playing for the Tigers at St. James' Park and showing up what can only be described as a shaky defensive regiment. But for all his flaws, he is still a good player, and if he leads Hull to performances that keep them above the Toon for the 2014/15 campaign, then the calls of Pardew's incompetence will grow louder.
Ben Arfa has only joined the Tigers because of the fact that he fell out with Pardew, which also explains the unnecessary and perhaps even more damaging departure of Yanga-Mbiwa.
Not for the first time, Pardew blamed the fans for a bad result - this time, he blamed them for the concession of a 95th minute goal to draw against Crystal Palace. But against Palace its doubtful we deserved a win anyway.
Until the introduction of youngster Rolando Aarons, our attack was plodding and looked like it would never break through a six man defence Palace turned up with. Yohan Gouffran looked disinterested, Moussa Sissoko ran without product and the new trio of Remy Cabella, Siem de Jong and Riviere never looked in the game at all. Indeed, all our defensive and attacking running in midfield seemed to be left to Jack Colback, and while he may have been dubbed the Ginger Pirlo by fans after his England call-up this week, that is a lot of responsibility on one player's shoulders.
The failure in coaching in attack is becoming an epidemic. We have only scored in eight league games in 2014, and rarely look like scoring to boot. Some fans argue we send too many forward but its not the numbers as the pace. The team's ponderous attack wastes opportunities with ponderous slow-motion play, and the set-pieces remain by and large as woeful as ever.
The problem for this, conspiring to make a thin squad even thinner and selling players for disagreeing with him rests with Pardew, who resembles a spent force on Tyneside. Some fans drew similarities between Saturday's 3-3 draw with Palace and a 3-3 draw with Wimbledon FC at the start of the 1999-00 season, which put huge pressure on then-manager Ruud Gullit, who was duly dismissed from the job after defeat in the Tyne-Wear Derby later that week that left the club marooned in the bottom 2
While Ashley's continual bare minimum spending approach continues to damage the squad, the situation is exacerbated by a man woefully inept at controlling and coaching his playing squad, and the sooner he goes, the better.
Sadly, Pardew is only two years into the albatross that is that eight year deal, and it would take an almost biblical lack of form to see the back of him. Unluckily for him, such a run is looming - Newcastle lost all four equivalent fixtures of their next four, and against all four opponents, displayed awful performances. A similar run here would leave the Toon bottom of the Premiership in the October international break, which would encourage even further fan dissent and then what?
This fatalism is perhaps the only way Pardew would be removed from office, but until then, we're going to have to hope for him to actually recall the tactics and harmony of the famous 5th place campaign rather than his plodding, stodgy, dreary anti-football adopted since.
This situation cannot continue as is and at some point, something is going to have to give.
Thursday, 28 August 2014
Let's Be Cops - Film Review
AT the start of Let’s Be Cops, there is a scene set in the boardroom of a video game developer.
In it, there are a number of developers taking a pitch on an idea from an underling who is trying to pitch a game based on patrol duties in the Los Angeles Police Department – like playing the right side of the law against Grand Theft Auto, if you will. But through various boardroom-type meddlers who think they know better, it somehow becomes Firefighters vs Zombies to become a cash-in on alleged popular styles and bring in sales by the boatload. There is even a stupidly naff display of it later on down the line – indeed, the games here look very much like they were made on software that would’ve been out of date when the PS2 was launched, nevermind the current super-gaming consoles.
One can’t help but wonder if similar bizarre antics and boardroom politics at 20th Century Fox resulted in this being spat out. Certainly, at face value, one can’t help but think a buddy pretend-cop movie starring two of Zooey Deschanel’s undercards on New Girl is an odd thing to wind up in the cinema.
Its also not been helped for its US release by its inadvertent timing – this film came out four days after the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri that has led to protest, riots and military-style police control, which has made international headlines. This also gives it an odd divorce from reality, as aside from one scene where our leads stumble across stolen SWAT team gear and heavy grade weaponry and toy with using it, there is little to glamorise the military side of the cops seen on the news for most of the last month.
Instead, we get a fairy straight-cut plot. We meet struggling game designer Justin (Damon Wayans Jr) and washed up college quarterback Ryan (Jake Johnson), who live in a small studio apartment in Los Angeles and are contemplating moving back to Ohio. Ahead of their university reunion, Justin makes the police film pitch with mannequins using police uniforms, and mistakenly thinking the reunion is a fancy dress party, the two turn up in them.
After embarrassing themselves at the party, they find the people on the LA streets respect them in their cop uniforms, leading to one of them deciding he likes the buzz and wants to keep on doing it. This leads through some fairly predictable troupes – the other cops mistaking them for real, the one who feels guilty and wants out but still uses it to get the woman he wants, the Russian gangsters they cross paths with frequently, the abuse of their fake power, and more.
Plot wise, its fairly by the numbers, but that was probably to be expected. There are funny films out there with plots you could write on the back of a post-it note. This, however, isn’t one. A lot of the humour feels weirdly flat, with some very tired racial, sexual and authority-baiting stereotypes passing for jokes. So much of the jokes feel phoned-in or done better by older films or TV, and after a while its hard to really care for what’s going on.
The film is not 100% without merit, but its an irritatingly dull watch and after a while, you really do wish that you were somewhere else.
1.5/5
In it, there are a number of developers taking a pitch on an idea from an underling who is trying to pitch a game based on patrol duties in the Los Angeles Police Department – like playing the right side of the law against Grand Theft Auto, if you will. But through various boardroom-type meddlers who think they know better, it somehow becomes Firefighters vs Zombies to become a cash-in on alleged popular styles and bring in sales by the boatload. There is even a stupidly naff display of it later on down the line – indeed, the games here look very much like they were made on software that would’ve been out of date when the PS2 was launched, nevermind the current super-gaming consoles.
One can’t help but wonder if similar bizarre antics and boardroom politics at 20th Century Fox resulted in this being spat out. Certainly, at face value, one can’t help but think a buddy pretend-cop movie starring two of Zooey Deschanel’s undercards on New Girl is an odd thing to wind up in the cinema.
Its also not been helped for its US release by its inadvertent timing – this film came out four days after the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri that has led to protest, riots and military-style police control, which has made international headlines. This also gives it an odd divorce from reality, as aside from one scene where our leads stumble across stolen SWAT team gear and heavy grade weaponry and toy with using it, there is little to glamorise the military side of the cops seen on the news for most of the last month.
Instead, we get a fairy straight-cut plot. We meet struggling game designer Justin (Damon Wayans Jr) and washed up college quarterback Ryan (Jake Johnson), who live in a small studio apartment in Los Angeles and are contemplating moving back to Ohio. Ahead of their university reunion, Justin makes the police film pitch with mannequins using police uniforms, and mistakenly thinking the reunion is a fancy dress party, the two turn up in them.
After embarrassing themselves at the party, they find the people on the LA streets respect them in their cop uniforms, leading to one of them deciding he likes the buzz and wants to keep on doing it. This leads through some fairly predictable troupes – the other cops mistaking them for real, the one who feels guilty and wants out but still uses it to get the woman he wants, the Russian gangsters they cross paths with frequently, the abuse of their fake power, and more.
Plot wise, its fairly by the numbers, but that was probably to be expected. There are funny films out there with plots you could write on the back of a post-it note. This, however, isn’t one. A lot of the humour feels weirdly flat, with some very tired racial, sexual and authority-baiting stereotypes passing for jokes. So much of the jokes feel phoned-in or done better by older films or TV, and after a while its hard to really care for what’s going on.
The film is not 100% without merit, but its an irritatingly dull watch and after a while, you really do wish that you were somewhere else.
1.5/5
Monday, 11 August 2014
Newcastle United 2014-15 Season Preview
Newcastle United are a tricky team to predict at the best of times, but last season was even more bizarre than usual.
Things looked bleak at the start of the 2013-14 season. The arrival of bumbling word-mangling former gaffer Joe Kinnear as Director of Football filled fans with dread, which grew as he failed to make a single permanent signing before the season.
Defeat in the Tyne-Wear Derby in October made fans panic even more that a relegation battle was looming. But then from seemingly nowhere, the seeds of a European challenge were sown with a string of victories. The high point was undoubtedly a first away win at Manchester United since 1972 and it looked for all the world like we were about to see success. Then, naturally, Mike Ashley cashed in Yohan Cabaye for £20million and everything fell apart.
Much has been written on everything that went wrong in the aftermath of Cabaye's departure in late January - not least on Alan Pardew's still-preposterous headbutt at Hull five weeks later. But despite that incident on Humberside and a horrible run of form that saw the team lose 14 in 20 Premier League outings, Pardew remains and surprisingly has been backed in the transer market.
Around £30million has been spent on new players to bolster a squad that was in mutinous mood and while rumoured targets like Loic Remy, Alexander Lacazette and Clement Grenier haven't signed, the club still looks a stronger prospect.
One thing that fans will not want to remember from this pre-season was the tragic news in mid-July of two Newcastle supporters being among those killed in the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in Eastern Ukraine. John Alder and Liam Sweeney were travelling to New Zealand for the team's pre-season tour in the Oceanic nation, and the sad news of their loss will be commemorated by a series of tributes ahead of the season-opening clash with Manchester City.
A few thoughts on the new campaign:
What Would Be A Great Season?: Not giving up halfway through, and instead having a season that doesn't give the club the air of falling to bits. Maybe even a European or silverware challenge if we're lucky.
What Would Be A Horrible Season?: The much vaunted new signings fail to adjust and lower mid-table - even relegation - become real problems.
What's The Likelier Outcome?: 10th place last season was probably about right for a squad that started well and ended poorly. While Champions League talk is extremely premature, there is space and talent there for a decent start.
Key Player: Siem de Jong. The new Newcastle number 10 is a four-time Eredivisie winner and has captained and scored for Ajax in the Champions League. The Premier League will be a jump but he is expected to be a focal point for the new attack, and if he does live up to his billing, he should be good.
Needs To Improve: Dreadful defending dogged the second-half of Newcastle's 2013-14 season, and nobody covered themselves in glory as the number of thrashings went up and up and up. Better defending is an absolute must.
Will Be Missed: The goals of Loic Remy kept Newcastle in the top half last season and an extra goalscorer is still needed. Mathieu Debuchy was also rated the league's best full back by WhoScored.com, and its important Daryl Janmaat hits the ground running.
Good That He's Still Here: Tim Krul's World Cup penalty shootout cameo did bring him to the world football stage in the most peculiar way. Despite speculation linking him with Barcelona and AC Milan, he remains on Tyneside and will remain important.
Why Is He Still Here: Many would say owner and manager, given last season felt like Mike Ashley only cared that Sports Direct and other brands were getting free billboards, and Alan Pardew was picking poor teams when he wasn't behaving like a total moron. In terms of players, the continued employment of Gabriel Obertan remains baffling - not least given he's gone ahead of the more gifted and useful Hatem Ben Arfa in the pecking order.
Incoming: This has been a surprisingly busy summer on Tyneside, with seven new signings. The biggest individual purchase is £12M French winger Remy Cabella, who moves from Montpellier after almost joining in January. Also joining him in attacking midfield is de Jong, who joins from Ajax for £6M. The same fee was also spent on Monaco striker Emmanuel Riviere, who has scored 3 times in pre-season. Spanish striker Ayoze Perez also joins to support the front line after signing from Tenerife, while Shakthar Donetsk's Facundo Ferreyra is on a season-long loan. The controversial signing of Sunderland's Jack Colback caused a few amusing escapades between the two fans, while Dutch full back Daryl Janmaat concludes the signings so far after joining from Feyernoord. Nottingham Forest duo Karl Darlow and Jamaal Lascelles will also move to Tyneside, although they will spend this season on loan with the Championship side. Surprisingly, even more are still expected.
Outgoing: Three strikers light is the main out, with Loic Remy and Luuk de Jong leaving after loan spells, and Shola Ameobi leaving after 14 years in the first team. There was also a departure for Mathieu Debuchy, with the full-back moving to London to join Arsenal. Dan Gosling and James Tavernier have left, while Sylvain Marveux is loaned out back to France. Despite Pardew's best efforts, Ben Arfa and Jonas Gutierrez are still here.
The Manager: After a difficult 2012-13, 2013-14 was even weirder for Pardew. The Newcastle manager had good runs of form that included a first win at Manchester United since 1972, then embarked on the single worst form of any Newcastle manager in the modern era. 14 defeats in 20 Premier League games, like he managed, is inexcusable and he needs to hit the ground running. Not swearing at opposing managers or headbutting opposition players would also help.
Something To Keep From Last Year: There was some evidence of an attempt at playing a more passing-oriented game at times last year. This ball control can be useful, and certainly its a start, but it needs refining and then having a potent menace added to it.
Something To Improve: Attacking movement and defensive positioning - particularly in times of injury or missing players. The loss of Cabaye coincided with the start of Ben Arfa's move to exile, which left a thuddingly dull attack, while the defence just fell to pieces. Rectifying both of these issues is most certainly required.
Pre-Season:
Oldham (A) 2-1 defeat
Sydney FC (in New Zealand) 4-0 win
Wellington Phoenix (A) 1-0 win
Sheffield Wednesday (A) 1-0 win
Malaga (in Germany) 3-1 defeat
Schalke 04 (A) 3-1 win
Huddersfield Town (A) 2-2 draw
Real Sociedad (H) 1-0 win
A Word On The New Kits: The new home strip, as has been the case for the last two seasons, was the last Premier League home strip to be unveiled, and this time feature an odd black triangle on the front. The shame is the kit actually would've looked nice without the triangle and the perennially unwanted Wonga.com logo. The away strip is a decent looking grey number with "NEWCASTLE UNITED FC" pinstripes, and a member's 4th strip was debuted during the home clash with Real Sociedad, consisting of a white shirt with a grey chevron. A third strip is as yet unconfirmed.
Personal Starting XI:
Krul - Janmaat, Yanga-Mbiwa, Coloccini, Santon - Tiote, Sissoko - Ben Arfa, de Jong, Cabella - Riviere/Ferreyra
Likely Starting XI:
Krul - Janmaat, Williamson, Coloccini, Haidara - Sissoko, Colback, Tiote, Cabella - de Jong, Gouffran
So, the all important final question...
Where Will We Finish?
The squad renovation and healing process from the depressing end to the 2013-14 season is in full swing. Talk of the Champions League from Pardew and some players is extremely premature and it will take a few years to create a squad ready for such a go. But at the very least, we should better last season's 10th place finish.
In a case of deja vu, Newcastle open the season with a clash with Manchester City. With any luck, there won't be a repeat of the goal disallowing incident that marred the home clash with the Citizens in January and everything that followed.
Beyond then is another 9 months and hopefully the Toon Army will receive the full quota of excitement, rather than a depressing streak replacing the last three and a half months.
The challenge is back on.
Things looked bleak at the start of the 2013-14 season. The arrival of bumbling word-mangling former gaffer Joe Kinnear as Director of Football filled fans with dread, which grew as he failed to make a single permanent signing before the season.
Defeat in the Tyne-Wear Derby in October made fans panic even more that a relegation battle was looming. But then from seemingly nowhere, the seeds of a European challenge were sown with a string of victories. The high point was undoubtedly a first away win at Manchester United since 1972 and it looked for all the world like we were about to see success. Then, naturally, Mike Ashley cashed in Yohan Cabaye for £20million and everything fell apart.
Much has been written on everything that went wrong in the aftermath of Cabaye's departure in late January - not least on Alan Pardew's still-preposterous headbutt at Hull five weeks later. But despite that incident on Humberside and a horrible run of form that saw the team lose 14 in 20 Premier League outings, Pardew remains and surprisingly has been backed in the transer market.
Around £30million has been spent on new players to bolster a squad that was in mutinous mood and while rumoured targets like Loic Remy, Alexander Lacazette and Clement Grenier haven't signed, the club still looks a stronger prospect.
One thing that fans will not want to remember from this pre-season was the tragic news in mid-July of two Newcastle supporters being among those killed in the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in Eastern Ukraine. John Alder and Liam Sweeney were travelling to New Zealand for the team's pre-season tour in the Oceanic nation, and the sad news of their loss will be commemorated by a series of tributes ahead of the season-opening clash with Manchester City.
A few thoughts on the new campaign:
What Would Be A Great Season?: Not giving up halfway through, and instead having a season that doesn't give the club the air of falling to bits. Maybe even a European or silverware challenge if we're lucky.
What Would Be A Horrible Season?: The much vaunted new signings fail to adjust and lower mid-table - even relegation - become real problems.
What's The Likelier Outcome?: 10th place last season was probably about right for a squad that started well and ended poorly. While Champions League talk is extremely premature, there is space and talent there for a decent start.
Key Player: Siem de Jong. The new Newcastle number 10 is a four-time Eredivisie winner and has captained and scored for Ajax in the Champions League. The Premier League will be a jump but he is expected to be a focal point for the new attack, and if he does live up to his billing, he should be good.
Needs To Improve: Dreadful defending dogged the second-half of Newcastle's 2013-14 season, and nobody covered themselves in glory as the number of thrashings went up and up and up. Better defending is an absolute must.
Will Be Missed: The goals of Loic Remy kept Newcastle in the top half last season and an extra goalscorer is still needed. Mathieu Debuchy was also rated the league's best full back by WhoScored.com, and its important Daryl Janmaat hits the ground running.
Good That He's Still Here: Tim Krul's World Cup penalty shootout cameo did bring him to the world football stage in the most peculiar way. Despite speculation linking him with Barcelona and AC Milan, he remains on Tyneside and will remain important.
Why Is He Still Here: Many would say owner and manager, given last season felt like Mike Ashley only cared that Sports Direct and other brands were getting free billboards, and Alan Pardew was picking poor teams when he wasn't behaving like a total moron. In terms of players, the continued employment of Gabriel Obertan remains baffling - not least given he's gone ahead of the more gifted and useful Hatem Ben Arfa in the pecking order.
Incoming: This has been a surprisingly busy summer on Tyneside, with seven new signings. The biggest individual purchase is £12M French winger Remy Cabella, who moves from Montpellier after almost joining in January. Also joining him in attacking midfield is de Jong, who joins from Ajax for £6M. The same fee was also spent on Monaco striker Emmanuel Riviere, who has scored 3 times in pre-season. Spanish striker Ayoze Perez also joins to support the front line after signing from Tenerife, while Shakthar Donetsk's Facundo Ferreyra is on a season-long loan. The controversial signing of Sunderland's Jack Colback caused a few amusing escapades between the two fans, while Dutch full back Daryl Janmaat concludes the signings so far after joining from Feyernoord. Nottingham Forest duo Karl Darlow and Jamaal Lascelles will also move to Tyneside, although they will spend this season on loan with the Championship side. Surprisingly, even more are still expected.
Outgoing: Three strikers light is the main out, with Loic Remy and Luuk de Jong leaving after loan spells, and Shola Ameobi leaving after 14 years in the first team. There was also a departure for Mathieu Debuchy, with the full-back moving to London to join Arsenal. Dan Gosling and James Tavernier have left, while Sylvain Marveux is loaned out back to France. Despite Pardew's best efforts, Ben Arfa and Jonas Gutierrez are still here.
The Manager: After a difficult 2012-13, 2013-14 was even weirder for Pardew. The Newcastle manager had good runs of form that included a first win at Manchester United since 1972, then embarked on the single worst form of any Newcastle manager in the modern era. 14 defeats in 20 Premier League games, like he managed, is inexcusable and he needs to hit the ground running. Not swearing at opposing managers or headbutting opposition players would also help.
Something To Keep From Last Year: There was some evidence of an attempt at playing a more passing-oriented game at times last year. This ball control can be useful, and certainly its a start, but it needs refining and then having a potent menace added to it.
Something To Improve: Attacking movement and defensive positioning - particularly in times of injury or missing players. The loss of Cabaye coincided with the start of Ben Arfa's move to exile, which left a thuddingly dull attack, while the defence just fell to pieces. Rectifying both of these issues is most certainly required.
Pre-Season:
Oldham (A) 2-1 defeat
Sydney FC (in New Zealand) 4-0 win
Wellington Phoenix (A) 1-0 win
Sheffield Wednesday (A) 1-0 win
Malaga (in Germany) 3-1 defeat
Schalke 04 (A) 3-1 win
Huddersfield Town (A) 2-2 draw
Real Sociedad (H) 1-0 win
A Word On The New Kits: The new home strip, as has been the case for the last two seasons, was the last Premier League home strip to be unveiled, and this time feature an odd black triangle on the front. The shame is the kit actually would've looked nice without the triangle and the perennially unwanted Wonga.com logo. The away strip is a decent looking grey number with "NEWCASTLE UNITED FC" pinstripes, and a member's 4th strip was debuted during the home clash with Real Sociedad, consisting of a white shirt with a grey chevron. A third strip is as yet unconfirmed.
Personal Starting XI:
Krul - Janmaat, Yanga-Mbiwa, Coloccini, Santon - Tiote, Sissoko - Ben Arfa, de Jong, Cabella - Riviere/Ferreyra
Likely Starting XI:
Krul - Janmaat, Williamson, Coloccini, Haidara - Sissoko, Colback, Tiote, Cabella - de Jong, Gouffran
So, the all important final question...
Where Will We Finish?
The squad renovation and healing process from the depressing end to the 2013-14 season is in full swing. Talk of the Champions League from Pardew and some players is extremely premature and it will take a few years to create a squad ready for such a go. But at the very least, we should better last season's 10th place finish.
In a case of deja vu, Newcastle open the season with a clash with Manchester City. With any luck, there won't be a repeat of the goal disallowing incident that marred the home clash with the Citizens in January and everything that followed.
Beyond then is another 9 months and hopefully the Toon Army will receive the full quota of excitement, rather than a depressing streak replacing the last three and a half months.
The challenge is back on.
Saturday, 9 August 2014
Premier League 2014/15 Season Preview
After a season widely regarded as one of the Premier League's best ever, and then a World Cup widely regarded as the best ever, football returns on a high.
The anticipation for another stellar campaign is high after months of top quality football. Despite some notable departures, all the teams have been busy in this pre-season accumulating top quality new transfers, and it promises to be another exciting season.
All 20 teams come in at least all with hopes and dreams high, and now is the time fans can be dream of success before reality kicks-in next week. So... what can we expect from each of the 20 teams?
Arsenal
Last Season In Four Words: Led table then imploded
What Do They Want?: A title challenge. After breaking their nine year trophy drought and making their strongest title challenge since blowing the lead in 2010/11, Arsenal are now trying to cultivate a team capable of a title challenge. There are hints the squad is being cultivated for a proper tilt at a prize Arsenal last lifted in 2004.
Transfers: The biggest individual spending on one player in the Premier League so far is for Alexis Sanchez, who Arsenal have recruited for £35million. After Manchester City signed Bacary Sagna, Arsenal opted to buy two new right-backs, spending a total of £28M on Newcastle's Mathieu Debuchy and Southampton youngster Calum Chambers. Nice goalkeeper David Ospina has also joined as a replacement for Lukas Fabianski, who has joined Swansea, while Nicklas Bendtner has now made his long-overdue exit. Carl Jenkinson has joined West Ham on loan, while his fellow defender Thomas Vermaelen also looks set to leave, with Barcelona his likely destination.
Ones To Watch: Sanchez's arrival in England has been highly anticipated and Arsenal have high hopes that he can be a success in English football. Also hoped for highly is Mesut Ozil, who had a difficult first year in England after joining for £42M on deadline day last year. Aaron Ramsey's form last year also means big things are expected.
The Gaffer: Arsene Wenger reached 1000 games as Arsenal manager last season and celebrated by receiving a 6-0 thumping at Chelsea. But after ending Arsenal's nine year trophy drought, hopes are high he can rectify their wait for a first Premier League since 2004.
Prediction: A title challenge could be in line for Arsenal, but they still need additional options in defence, and if one of their first choice centre-back pairing gets injured, they will struggle. But a top 3 finish should be achievable.
Aston Villa
Last Season In Four Words: Survived relegation once again
What Do They Want?: Same expectation. Relegation would be catastrophic for an Aston Villa side that has been ever-present in the top flight since 1975, and despite owner Randy Lerner still looking for a way out after being unable to sell the club during the off-season, Lambert has to maintain Villa's Premier League status.
Transfers: After dallying with youth, Paul Lambert's purchasing so far has been for experience. Kieran Richardson and Phillipe Senderos will retain Premier League status after being released by relegated Fulham, while Joe Cole moves from West Ham. There's also returns to the fold for Alan Hutton and Darren Bent, who spent most of last season out on loan. Jordan Bowery, Marc Albrighton and Nathan Delfouenso make their exits, while Nicklas Helenius and Yacouba Sylla leave on loan.
Ones To Watch: With Christian Benteke out until November, Darren Bent faces a big season as he seeks to prove why Villa paid £24M for him in 2011. After patchy seasons last year, Andreas Weimann and Gabby Agbonlahor also have to step up, while Brad Guzan has to keep his form.
The Gaffer: After coming into frequent criticism last year, this is a big season for Paul Lambert, who is facing the challenge of a reluctant owner and lack of funding. Once again, Villa seem like they could be in for a struggle of a campaign, and many already have earmarked new assistant manager Roy Keane for the permanent job if things go awry.
Prediction: There's no bones about it - Villa are now a team that is going to struggle, and with uninspiring new signings and a manager nobody at the club likes, its going to be another difficult season. Villa fans just have to hope there's three teams worse than them.
Burnley
Last Season In Four Words: Deservedly secured surprise promotion
What Do They Want?: Survival. There is no other modus operandi for the Clarets as they return to the Premier League for the first time in five seasons.
Transfers: Securing Premier League experience is Burnley's priority, with Blackpool goalkeeper Matt Gilks, West Brom's Steven Reid and West Ham's Matt Taylor signed up. Stoke winger Michael Kightly moves to Turf Moor after a successful loan spell last season, while Middlesbrough striker Lukas Jutkiewicz and Bolton forward Marvin Sordell also make moves to Lancashire. Chris Baird, David Edgar and Junior Stanislas are among those who depart. Burnley have said more buys are desired, and certainly a thin midfield could use bulking up.
Ones To Watch: Burnley's success in getting to the league was built on the Championship's firmest defence and the extremely potent front-line combination of Danny Ings and Sam Vokes. The importance of both these groups maintaining their second tier form cannot be overstated, while whichever pick of Matt Gilks and Tom Heaton as their Premier League number one faces a busy year.
The Gaffer: Nicknamed the Ginger Mourinho by the Clarets' supporters, Sean Dyche is approaching his fourth season as a manager and his biggest challenge. Appropriately he kicks off against the actual Mourinho, which is as good a test as any, and Burnley fans will be hopeful he can deliver at the higher level.
Prediction: Burnley have been routinely given a "little club in big world" sheen since their promotion was confirmed and will hopefully shut up the press by beating a big name. But sadly, a small squad with little Premier League experience does have the air of one that will slink out of the league at the first attempt.
Chelsea
Last Season In Four Words: Special One not enough
What Do They Want?: The Premier League title. They got close last year, and had the best run out of the meetings of the top 6 clubs, but carelessly and frequently dropped points against teams fighting for survival.
Transfers: This has been a big scene change for Chelsea, with veterans Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole leaving after highly decorated spells with the club. One veteran, however, has come back into Chelsea, with Didier Drogba rejoining some 2 years after leaving. The big incomings are Cesc Fabregas and Diego Costa, who make huge money moves from La Liga. Costa's Atletico Madrid full back Filipe Luis has also moved from the Spanish champions to England. Samuel Eto'o has also departed, while PSG blew £50million on David Luiz - something his World Cup semi-final performance did little to justify. £28million has also been received for Romelu Lukaku, who has rejoined Everton, while Demba Ba has joined Besiktas.
Ones To Watch: Diego Costa will seek to bring to England the form from his La Liga splurge last year, and not his abject World Cup form that saw him drag down the World Champions. Its also a big year for Fabregas as he seeks to replace Lampard, while after spending 2 years on loan with Atletico, Thibaut Courtois could be a legitimate challenger for the number one goalkeeper spot.
The Gaffer: 2013/14 was a disappointment for Jose Mourinho, whose mind games hit overdrive but weren't backed up by success. Following that, Mourinho has to deliver something now and reward the rare stay of execution that Roman Abrahmovic has given a man who delivered a trophyless season.
Prediction: The bookies' favourites for the title are indeed Mourinho's boys and critical consensus is that it'll be a straight fight between them and Manchester City for the league title. It should be, and if Mourinho can iron out the tendency to give strugglers results, it should be theirs.
Crystal Palace
Last Season In Four Words: Pulis transformation extended stay
What Do They Want?: Its a job to know. The miraculous turnaround in form should, in theory, have heightened expectations for the Eagles, yet its also a feeling that they would be happy just to maintain Premier League survival.
Transfers: Compared to last season's scattergun high quantity summer transfer window, the incomings have been quite quiet. Three have come in, with Cardiff striker Fraizer Campbell the only one signing for a transfer fee. Experienced centre-back Brede Hangeland and young goalkeeper Chris Kettings are free signings. Jose Campana leaves on an undisclosed fee, while Jonathan Parr, Danny Gabbidon, Kagisho Dikgacoi, Dean Moxey and Aaron Wilbraham leave on free transfers.
Ones To Watch: After a season spent mostly injured, this is a big season for Glenn Murray, who was top scorer as Palace got promoted and who has fallen down the pecking order. Marouane Chamakh and the pacy Campbell should be good front runners with him, while Joel Ward had a brilliant first Premier League campaign and should impress again.
The Gaffer: The impressive turnaround last season means Tony Pulis has kept his enviable record of never being relegated, and also won a Manager of the Year award. Now the next step is presumably maintaining that score.
Prediction: A second consecutive top flight season is almost unheard of territory for a whole generation of Palace fans. But this vintage should be more than good enough to prolong this stay for another term.
Everton
Last Season In Four Words: Fitted in at top
What Do They Want?: Champions League football is the ultimate aim. Roberto Martinez even said so himself when he took over at Everton last year that the ultimate goal was to get the Toffees into the top 4 and they were very close to achieving it in year one. Anything below 5th would be seen as backwards, so Everton's goal is surely to challenge for the top four once again.
Transfers: The big ask for Everton's summer dealings was to replace last season's loan stars, but the good news for them was to sign two of them permanently. Gareth Barry's move on a free after his release by Manchester City was expected, but the Toffees then spent the big cash, with a club record £28million spent on securing Romelu Lukaku on a permanent deal. Gerard Deulofeu is not returning after his loan from Barcelona expired, but Everton have still strengthened their midfield, with Muhamed Besic moving to Goodison Park. Youngster Brendan Galloway also comes in, while Apostos Velious is the biggest name leaving.
Ones To Watch: After his impressive first year on Merseyside, Lukaku will seek to justify the faith shown in him to such a large degree. The same can also be said of Ross Barkley, who is already being talked of as the future of the England team after a dynamite season in 13-14. The bombing full-backs Seamus Coleman and Leighton Baines will also want to show more of their good form.
The Gaffer: Roberto Martinez has had a decent few seasons, be it several fine relegation escapes at Wigan before signing off with their first ever FA Cup trophy, and then coming close to getting Everton their first top 4 finish in almost a decade. He will want to continue this streak.
Prediction: The top 4 looks beyond Everton at present, but then it did a year ago so its hard to predict. At the very least they should get a top 6 place again and also look to challenge for silverware.
Hull City
Last Season In Four Words: Survived on early form
What Do They Want?: Avoid second season syndrome. Like Crystal Palace, Hull surpassed expectations significantly by surviving last year, but were largely poor in the second half of the campaign. As its a known idea that teams who end a season poorly can start the following season in similarly bad fashion, Hull have to avoid falling into this trap, and juggle the Europa League too.
Transfers: With Europa League on Hull's fixture list after their FA Cup runner-up position last year, strengthening was needed. So far, the midfield has received the bulk of Steve Bruce's attention, with Jake Livermore returning after a successful loan spell, Robert Snodgrass moving after being relegated with Norwich, and Tom Ince turning down Inter to sign on a free. Young defenders Harry Maguire and Andy Robertson also move to Humberside, while Matty Fyratt, Abdoulaye Faye and Robert Koren lead the outs.
Ones To Watch: The likely new widemen of Snodgrass and Ince are seeking to justify their faith, with the former falling out with fans at Norwich and the latter unable to make an impact at Crystal Palace during a loan spell last year. The jump to the top flight promises to be interesting for Maguire and Robertson, while the January-bought strikeforce of Shane Long and Nikica Jelavic really needs a scoring spree.
The Gaffer: Steve Bruce had arguably his best ever season last year and will be hoping more survival and a good European challenge can continue this renaissance he is having after his dismissal from Sunderland in 2011.
Prediction: Hull do have a squad capable of playing in the Premier League and once more should retain their status. As for Europe, they have a winnable tie with Lokeren but will most likely struggle in the group stage.
Leicester City
Last Season In Four Words: Promotion always looked certain
What Do They Want?: Like all promoted teams, the minimum is survival. This season will be a different vibe for the Foxes, who dominated the 2nd tier last year, and they have to be sure to be cut out for a season where they will not be in charge every week.
Transfers: Like Burnley, Leicester require Premier League experience. Brighton centre-half Matthew Upson and Aston Villa winger Matt Albrighton have had some Premier League experience, and could prove astute signings on freebies. A club record £7million has been spent on Brighton's Leonardo Ulloa, while Charlton keeper Ben Hamer and Manchester United youngsters Jack Barmby and Louis Rowley join on free transfers. Lloyd Dyer, Neil Danns, Sean St. Ledger and Paul Gallagher lead the outs.
Ones To Watch: After reportedly turning down Arsenal and AC Milan to extend his contract, Kasper Schmeichel is back in the top flight and the Foxes' custodian will seek to prove he shares his father's talents between the posts. The front duo of David Nugent and Jamie Vardy were impressive in getting Leicester into the top tier, while new signing Ulloa will need to get in and score to justify £7million worth of faith.
The Gaffer: Nigel Pearson is in his second spell as Leicester boss, and is now in the 3rd different tier he's managed the Foxes in. His only two Premier League games so far saw him pick up one point and a 6-0 hammering as Newcastle caretaker, but he has earned his chance.
Prediction: Leicester's run through to the top flight does give them hope and they certainly do look reasonably placed to give survival a real go. They should make it, but it won't be a comfortable journey.
Liverpool
Last Season In Four Words: A whisker from glory
What Do They Want?: If not the Premier League title, then at least another convincing run at it. The loss of Luis Suarez will no doubt hurt, but having come within one fatal slip by Gerrard of winning the title, the Reds will want another shot at the prize that has eluded them for 24 years.
Transfers: One year after a summer dominated by "will he leave, won't he" shenanigans, Liverpool finally let Luis Suarez go. Barcelona duly whacked out a reported £70million for him, despite the fact his latest bite means he won't play until November. With him gone, Liverpool duly begun signing up Southampton, with Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert and Dejan Lovren moving from Hampshire to Merseyside. Benfica's Lazar Markovic is their other major signing in attack, while Bayer Leverkusen defender Emre Can and Atletico Madrid full back Javier Manquilo also moves in. Belgian World Cup star Divorck Origi did sign but will stay at Lille on loan for a year, while Pepe Reina ends his 9 year association with the club and joins Bayern Munich.
Ones To Watch: With Suarez now gone, Daniel Sturridge faces a big season as line-leader. To his credit he did score in all but one of the games before Suarez returned last year, but he will now have to step up his contribution. A likely new attacking midfield trio of Lallana, Markovic and Raheem Sterling will excite fans - as will Phillipe Coutinho, who's still there - while Steven Gerrard has a big season after the traumatic end to the previous one and an awful World Cup.
The Gaffer: Brendan Rodgers has come a long way since being fired by Reading in 2009, but the former Chelsea youth coach is cutting his own in management. His first season of Champions League football will certainly be a big test.
Prediction: A title challenge may have come if Suarez hadn't decided to force through a transfer by biting opponents. As it is now, Champions League spots should be the goal, and Liverpool should keep them.
Manchester City
Last Season In Four Words: Won league through outscoring
What Do They Want?: More success. Be it retaining the title, retaining the Capital One Cup, lifting the FA Cup or even a first real go at the Champions League, Manchester City's project is now reaping rewards and it is likely owners, fans and staff would want more success.
Transfers: Unusually, Manchester City have been quite quiet on the transfer front. There is a free incoming unusually too, with Bacary Sagna moving for nothing from Arsenal. Equally surprising is the arrival of Frank Lampard, who joins on loan from New York City FC after his release by Chelsea and move to the Man City-owned US franchise. Malaga goalkeeper Willy Caballero and Porto midfielder Fernando are also incoming, while Jack Rodwell, Costel Pantillimon, Joleon Lescott and Gareth Barry all leave to join other Premier League outfits.
Ones To Watch: Yaya Toure is still in town after his bizarre birthday cake rant at the end of last season and may have to prove he's not sad at still being in town. Elsewhere, the usual suspects of Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko, Samir Nasri, David Silva and even Stefan Jovetic will be dangerous, while an intriguing battle for the number one goalkeeper slot beckons between Joe Hart and Caballero.
The Gaffer: Manuel Pellegrini's first English season was undoubtedly a success. A Premier League title and Capital One Cup certainly belied accusations he was an expert in failure after he failed to win trophies with Real Madrid, and he will look for more success next season.
Prediction: Only Chelsea and Manchester United have delivered back-to-back titles in the Premier League era, but Man City do have the squad to at least try. They will no doubt be among the title contenders come the final straight, and it will surely come down to their results against their rivals.
Manchester United
Last Season In Four Words: Moyes didn't work out
What Do They Want?: A return to the Champions League at the very least. What future Manchester United fans will presumably refer to as "the Moyes interlude" was a a damaging campaign that saw, for the first time in a generation, the Red Devils struggle. Louis van Gaal's first mission is at least to get the Red Devils back into the lucrative big league.
Transfers: The big news is that Ryan Giggs will no longer play for Manchester United, with the Welshman joining Louis van Gaal's backroom staff. On incomings, and like they did last year, Manchester United have been linked with bigger names than who they signed, but this time, they have actually bought before the season. Big money too, with Southampton full back Luke Shaw and Athletic Bilbao Ander Herrera joining for a combined fee of over £55million. Three of Fergusons multi-title winning defence in 2006-09 have left, with Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand leaving on frees, and Patrice Evra joining Juventus.
Ones To Watch: Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie formed an exciting pairing when the Red Devils won the league in 2012-13 but faltered last year. Both need to improve, while Juan Mata and Shiniji Kagawa will compete to be the main link man. Ashley Young had a good pre-season and will hope to carry this into the league season, while Luke Shaw will seek to justify his big bucks move.
The Gaffer: Virtually straight off the plane from leading Holland to 3rd at the World Cup, Louis van Gaal is a good pick to try and resurrect a team that hilariously failed. The Dutchman has won league titles in three European leagues and has even talked of winning one in England already.
Prediction: A title challenge is dreamed of after van Gaal's World Cup success, but they still don't have a title-winning defence or midfield. A return to the Champions League is the minimum, but they still feel like they need work done. Top five should at least be achieved.
Newcastle United
Last Season In Four Words: Hideously damaging second half
What Do They Want?: Less toxicity. The second half of the 2013/14 campaign was a bad time for Newcastle, be it the bizarre sight of manager Alan Pardew headbutting opponents, loss of form, arguments between players and more. Pardew has made words that the squad's buying policy is targeted at getting the club in the top four, but an improvement from 10th place would still be a start.
Transfers: After the inaction of 2013-14, Newcastle have been surprisingly busy. Three new midfielders have signed, with Sunderland's Jack Colback, Ajax captain Siem de Jong and Montpellier wideman Remy Cabella all incoming. Dutch full-back Daryl Janmaat is also incoming as a replacement for Mathieu Debuchy, who joined Arsenal, while Monaco striker Emannuel Riviere and Spanish young forward Ayoze Perez have also moved to Tyneside. There is also the loan signing of Facundo Ferreyra from Shakthar Donetsk, while Nottingham Forest duo Karl Darlow and Jamaal Lascelles have signed, but will be loaned back to Forest for this season. Shola Ameobi has left after 14 years on Tyneside, while Loic Remy has returned to QPR after a successful loan spell.
Ones To Watch: The attack will likely be lead by de Jong and Cabella in the advanced slots, while youngster Rolando Aarons has also impressed. The three new strikers will look to hit the ground running in a new country to replace Remy's goals, while after frequent thrashings, the defence needs to tighten up.
The Gaffer: Alan Pardew's position was on shaky ground after the Newcastle manager's moment of brain-dead idiocy when he headbutted a Hull City player last season. To the dismay of some fans, he remains in charge and needs to justify both that faith and the spending spree very quickly.
Prediction: As much as they want a return to the top 4, that will probably be beyond Newcastle for this season. But a tilt at the top six or a cup is not beyond the Magpies, and they should at least avoid weekly thrashings as they were getting at the end of the previous campaign.
Queens Park Rangers
Last Season In Four Words: Grabbed last gasp promotion
What Do They Want?: Not to crash and burn. QPR's last Premier League season was an unmitigated disaster on every level, and having almost screwed up promotion despite leading the way in the 2nd tier for the first third of the campaign, QPR could use a boring, slow season.
Transfers: It looked as though QPR may not have learned their lesson from their last Premier League escapade when Rio Ferdinand made a move for big wages to Loftus Road. In a different line of signing, the Hoops signed Steven Caulker from Cardiff City, with his teammate Jordan Mutch then following him from South Wales. Full-back Mauricio Isla also moves to West London, on a year long from Juventus. Yossi Benayoun signalled his move back to Israel with a Twitter spat with Joey Barton over the Israel/Gaza conflict, while Stephan MBia, Esteban Granero, Andy Johnson and Aaron Hughes are also among the exits.
Ones To Watch: Ferdinand has to justify the faith with the kind of defensive performance that made him a 6 time Premier League champion with Manchester United. Caulker alongside should be a robust pairing. The return of Loic Remy after a year on loan at Newcastle and his failed move to Liverpool should provide goals.
The Gaffer: Harry Redknapp has said he would have retired if QPR had failed to win promotion last year. Having now made it back to the top flight, some of the form that led him to almost getting the England job might help the West Londoners.
Prediction: QPR's last two seasons as a top flight club have involved relegation battles and QPR will almost certainly be there once more, but they should have more than enough to ensure they're not on the wrong side of the relegation zone in May.
Southampton
Last Season In Four Words: Fuelled by young fire
What Do They Want?: The avoidance of a catastrophic regression is the must, but that will not be easy. Southampton's out door has been substantially busier than the in door, and much work is needed to ensure this doesn't spill over into a catastrophic tumble down the table.
Transfers: This has been a brutal summer for Saints fans, with Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert, Dejan Lovren, Luke Shaw and Calum Chambers all making big money exits, along with manager Mauricio Pochettino, and many more linked with exits. Dani Osvaldo has left on loan, but despite heavy speculation, Morgan Schneiderlin and Jay Rodriguez remain. Feyernood striker Graziano Pelle and Twente midfielder Dusan Tadic have been Ronald Koeman's first signings in Hampshire since being appointed, while Chelsea's Ryan Bertrand and Inter Milan midfielder Saphir Taider join on loan, but more is clearly required. Celtic goalkeeper Fraser Forster is likely to be next after a fee was agreed.
Ones To Watch: This could be a big season for Gaston Ramirez, who was Southampton's record signing when they returned to the top flight in 2012 and has spent most of his time behind Adam Lallana in the pecking order. James Ward-Prowse will also be a key man for this new Saints team, while Tadic and Pelle have to adjust quickly.
The Gaffer: Ronald Koeman has had a hit-and-miss career, with trophy wins in some places counteracted by relegation dogfights in others. But the man famous for his free-kicks as a player could be a decent choice by the currently unloved Saints owners.
Prediction: There will be a tumble from last season's 8th position, as the team is missing many of the talents that got them up to such a strong position. But while some bookmakers have been overly keen to slash their relegation odds, they will most likely be midtable.
Stoke City
Last Season In Four Words: Looked better than ever
What Do They Want?: A continuation. Its easy to forget Stoke were in a relegation battle as recently as February, but their impressive form saw them soar into a record high points total as Mark Hughes' structural blueprint clicked. Now the goal is to ensure their second half form in 2013/14 continues.
Transfers: The biggest name and perhaps most surprising signing in the Potteries is Bojan, with the former Barcelona striker joining on a free and leading to fanciful rumours Ronaldinho might follow him in. Former Manchester United striker Mame Biriam Diouf, Sunderland's Phil Bardsley and Fulham's Steve Sidwell are also free signings. Slovakian defender Dionatan Teixera is Stoke's only paid-for signing so far, while Michael Kightly and Matthew Etherington make their exits.
Ones To Watch: A new strikeforce of Diouf and Bojan has great potential and does hint to life after Peter Crouch, although he should still chip in with a few goals. Mauro Arnautovic and Peter Odemwingie will look to continue their form last year, as will Asmir Begovic, who once again impressed in goal and even scored one last year.
The Gaffer: Mark Hughes was a controversial appointment last year following his failure at QPR, but turned things around. Now, he will seek to build up a team that is starting to show signs of potential.
Prediction: Top half is what Stoke got last year and they certainly have potential to maintain and perhaps even improve on last year's 9th spot. Whether they do is one for fate to decide.
Sunderland
Last Season In Four Words: Miracle kept them up
What Do They Want?: A slightly more boring season. Two chaotic relegation battles have seen them go through 3 managers, several dozen players and bizarre episodes of form. After all, last year its easy to forget they failed to win between a 3-0 thrashing of Newcastle on their turf and ending Jose Mourinho's unbeaten home run as Chelsea boss, and then winning at Manchester United for good measure. So something a bit less insane might help relax the fans.
Transfers: Like a number of other Premier League clubs, free has been the order of the day so far, although more are expected. The Black Cats have signed Wigan's Jordi Gomez, Man City goalkeeper Costel Pantilimon and the West Brom full back Billy Jones on frees, while Santiago Vergini rejoins on loan. The big signing is Manchester City midfielder Jack Rodwell, while Chelsea full-back Patrick van Aanholt is the only other paid-for player. Keiren Westwood, Carlos Cuellar, Andrea Dossena, Phil Bardsley and Craig Gardner leave on frees, while no transfer fee was exchanged in the controversial transfer of Jack Colback, who became the first player in 22 years to directly move from Sunderland to Newcastle.
Ones To Watch: So far, Fabio Borini has yet to make his loan move from Liverpool permanent, which puts pressure on Connor Wickham to continue his scoring form at the end of last season. Gomez will also be likely to chip in with a few strikes of his own, while at the back, Vito Mannone will once again be called upon to keep the rearguard area as concession-free as possible.
The Gaffer: Gus Poyet said he now believes in miracles after Sunderland survived from a seemingly impossible position last season. Having achieved that and a Capital One Cup final, his goal now is to avoid yet another relegation dogfight.
Prediction: As much as Sunderland want to avoid being a club always involved at the wrong end, their lack of fire-power and of improvements to their defence means more struggle is likely. But they should again pull through.
Swansea City
Last Season In Four Words: Rockier than previous years
What Do They Want?: A less depressing campaign. For the first time in a long time, Swansea had a difficult campaign, with reports of players fighting each other being leaked around the time of Michael Laudrup's departure. Garry Monk has so far won only 4 Premier League games, but the atmosphere does look better, and they should be less toxic in atmosphere, which can only be a good thing.
Transfers: Some bigger names have flown the coop this summer, with Michu joining Napoli on loan and Michel Vorm and Ben Davies both moving to Spurs. The slightly less high-profile names of David N'Gog, Leroy Lita and Alejandro Pozuelo have also left. There have been incomings, with the biggest that of Gylfi Sigurdsson, who returns two years after a successful loan spell in South Wales. Also signing are Marseille winger Jefferson Montero, Arsenal goalkeeper Lukas Fabianski, Bafetimibi Gomis of Lyon, and highly rated Scottish youngster Stephen Kingsley. There is also a return for Marvin Emnes, who was on loan for the second half of last season at the Welsh club.
Ones To Watch: Wilfred Bony remains in South Wales after a prolific first year and rumours of a move to Liverpool. The Welsh side will be hoping he doesn't fall to second season syndrome like Michu did. The likes of Sigurdsson, Montero, Jonathan de Guzman, Pablo Hernandez and Nathan Dyer will be very handy supply lines, while Fabianski will look to ensure Vorm is not missed.
The Gaffer: Centre-back Garry Monk has long been anticipated as a future Swans manager after playing for the Welsh club in all 4 tiers, but was thrown in at the deep end after Laudrup was sacked. Now a bit more used to top tier management, he will be hoping to go places.
Prediction: With no Europa League distraction and a diluting of the club's Spanish clique, Swansea should be in line for a less divisive campaign, and should provide football closer to their 2012-13 high than the lull of last season.
Tottenham Hotspur
Last Season In Four Words: Wasted the Bale money
What Do They Want?: Champions League football remains the goal of the Spurs' fans. Failing that, a trophy should also work. At the very least, improvements are expected on last season, which saw the North Londoners lose all their games against the top 4 and claimed two unpopular managers (albeit for differing reasons).
Transfers: Unlike last year, Spurs have been quite frugal. Highly rated youth defender Eric Dier is a very decent signing at £4million, while the club have also bought in Swansea duo Michel Vorm and Ben Davies, in a deal that sends Gylfi Sigurdsson to South Wales. Jake Livermore and Gomes also make their exits.
Ones To Watch: Emannuel Adebayor had a season of two-halves, and will be hoping to show form closer to the more successful second half. Harry Kane also begun to score towards the end of last season and will be hopeful of impressing. Christian Eriksen will look to maintain his playmaking form of last year, while Erik Lamela faces a big season after a dreadful first year in England.
The Gaffer: Mauricio Pochettino certainly has a number of admirers after his impressive year and a half stint at Southampton. Now in the ball park of much bigger cash, the man who perhaps preceded Southampton's mass exodus has to figure out a way to reach the Champions League.
Prediction: Spurs still feel short of quality players for a legitimate top 4 challenge. Pochettino is perhaps better off looking to challenge for silverware, be it in the Europa League or in the cups, but a top 6 finish is still a minimum and possible.
West Bromwich Albion
Last Season In Four Words: Three worse teams existed
What Do They Want?: A significantly less depressing season than the previous one.
Transfers: The biggest incoming is that of a club record transfer, with £10million striker Brown Ideye moving from Dynamo Kiev to the West Midlands. Full-backs Jason Davidson and Sebastian Pocognoli are the club's other paid-for signings, while Craig Gardner, Joelon Lescott and Chris Baird arrive on free transfers, and Andre Wisdom and Christian Gamboa join on loans. Steven Reid, Liam Ridgewell, Billy Jones, Diego Lugano and Zoltan Gera all make their exits on frees, while George Thorne rejoins Derby after being on loan there last season.
Ones To Watch: Much is expected of club record signing Ideye, although visa issues and Irvine's comments of "never seeing him play" before signing him haven't really helped. Saido Berahino was the club's top scorer last year and may wind up having to be a line leader, while Ben Foster is set to a have busy year marshalling a new build defence. He will certainly hope Lescott still has something in the tank.
The Gaffer: Alan Irvine was a controversial appointment amongst Baggies fans, considering his only first team jobs so far have been sub-par stints at Preston and Sheffield Wednesday. Whether or not he has the chops to succeed as a Premier League manager makes him an unknown quantity, and one that could still backfire.
Prediction: West Brom had a difficult year in 2013-14 filled with all manner of unhelpful chaos. This will be quieter, but it has the air of finality, with a squad full of untested players and in a kit that looks nothing like a West Brom one should very much giving off the feeling of a team set to go down.
West Ham United
Last Season In Four Words: Survived, but not happily
What Do They Want?: Its not exactly certain. West Ham are a club with a tradition for making things unnecessarily difficult for themselves and already have striker problems, with injuries and World Cup based exhaustion not helping. All fans would certainly love to avoid more relegation worries.
Transfers: To compensate for Andy Carroll being injured yet again, West Ham have spent big cash on strikers, with Ecuadorian international Enner Valencia and one time Birmingham striker Mauro Zarate coming in. Defenders Carl Jenkinson, Aaron Cresswell and Cheikhou Zouyate also move to East London, while highly rated youngster Diego Poyet moves across the capital from Charlton. Joe Cole, Matt Taylor, Jack Collison, Jordan Spence and George McCartney leave for nothing.
Ones To Watch: After a decent World Cup and links with other teams, Valencia will look to show he can cut it in Europe. He will likely vie for places with Carlton Cole, who is still on board. Adrian became something of a cult hero last season, and will look to remain the Hammers' first choice goalkeeper, while captain Kevin Nolan will look to show the form that saw him score five times in February rather than the side that earned two red cards either side of Christmas.
The Gaffer: Sam Allardyce remains a controversial and largely hated figure at Upton Park, with some rumours even indicating he could be fired before the big kick-off.
Prediction: Mid-table is something that Sam Allardyce is proficient at, even with the odd dose of mild relegation peril. Mid-table is also something that West Ham will be come the end of the campaign.
The anticipation amongst fans that these teams can meet their biggest aspirational goals however remains high, and next week begins the exciting journey where we see who will fulfill their maximum potential to light up the 2014-15 Premier League season. Bring it on.
The anticipation for another stellar campaign is high after months of top quality football. Despite some notable departures, all the teams have been busy in this pre-season accumulating top quality new transfers, and it promises to be another exciting season.
All 20 teams come in at least all with hopes and dreams high, and now is the time fans can be dream of success before reality kicks-in next week. So... what can we expect from each of the 20 teams?
Arsenal
Last Season In Four Words: Led table then imploded
What Do They Want?: A title challenge. After breaking their nine year trophy drought and making their strongest title challenge since blowing the lead in 2010/11, Arsenal are now trying to cultivate a team capable of a title challenge. There are hints the squad is being cultivated for a proper tilt at a prize Arsenal last lifted in 2004.
Transfers: The biggest individual spending on one player in the Premier League so far is for Alexis Sanchez, who Arsenal have recruited for £35million. After Manchester City signed Bacary Sagna, Arsenal opted to buy two new right-backs, spending a total of £28M on Newcastle's Mathieu Debuchy and Southampton youngster Calum Chambers. Nice goalkeeper David Ospina has also joined as a replacement for Lukas Fabianski, who has joined Swansea, while Nicklas Bendtner has now made his long-overdue exit. Carl Jenkinson has joined West Ham on loan, while his fellow defender Thomas Vermaelen also looks set to leave, with Barcelona his likely destination.
Ones To Watch: Sanchez's arrival in England has been highly anticipated and Arsenal have high hopes that he can be a success in English football. Also hoped for highly is Mesut Ozil, who had a difficult first year in England after joining for £42M on deadline day last year. Aaron Ramsey's form last year also means big things are expected.
The Gaffer: Arsene Wenger reached 1000 games as Arsenal manager last season and celebrated by receiving a 6-0 thumping at Chelsea. But after ending Arsenal's nine year trophy drought, hopes are high he can rectify their wait for a first Premier League since 2004.
Prediction: A title challenge could be in line for Arsenal, but they still need additional options in defence, and if one of their first choice centre-back pairing gets injured, they will struggle. But a top 3 finish should be achievable.
Aston Villa
Last Season In Four Words: Survived relegation once again
What Do They Want?: Same expectation. Relegation would be catastrophic for an Aston Villa side that has been ever-present in the top flight since 1975, and despite owner Randy Lerner still looking for a way out after being unable to sell the club during the off-season, Lambert has to maintain Villa's Premier League status.
Transfers: After dallying with youth, Paul Lambert's purchasing so far has been for experience. Kieran Richardson and Phillipe Senderos will retain Premier League status after being released by relegated Fulham, while Joe Cole moves from West Ham. There's also returns to the fold for Alan Hutton and Darren Bent, who spent most of last season out on loan. Jordan Bowery, Marc Albrighton and Nathan Delfouenso make their exits, while Nicklas Helenius and Yacouba Sylla leave on loan.
Ones To Watch: With Christian Benteke out until November, Darren Bent faces a big season as he seeks to prove why Villa paid £24M for him in 2011. After patchy seasons last year, Andreas Weimann and Gabby Agbonlahor also have to step up, while Brad Guzan has to keep his form.
The Gaffer: After coming into frequent criticism last year, this is a big season for Paul Lambert, who is facing the challenge of a reluctant owner and lack of funding. Once again, Villa seem like they could be in for a struggle of a campaign, and many already have earmarked new assistant manager Roy Keane for the permanent job if things go awry.
Prediction: There's no bones about it - Villa are now a team that is going to struggle, and with uninspiring new signings and a manager nobody at the club likes, its going to be another difficult season. Villa fans just have to hope there's three teams worse than them.
Burnley
Last Season In Four Words: Deservedly secured surprise promotion
What Do They Want?: Survival. There is no other modus operandi for the Clarets as they return to the Premier League for the first time in five seasons.
Transfers: Securing Premier League experience is Burnley's priority, with Blackpool goalkeeper Matt Gilks, West Brom's Steven Reid and West Ham's Matt Taylor signed up. Stoke winger Michael Kightly moves to Turf Moor after a successful loan spell last season, while Middlesbrough striker Lukas Jutkiewicz and Bolton forward Marvin Sordell also make moves to Lancashire. Chris Baird, David Edgar and Junior Stanislas are among those who depart. Burnley have said more buys are desired, and certainly a thin midfield could use bulking up.
Ones To Watch: Burnley's success in getting to the league was built on the Championship's firmest defence and the extremely potent front-line combination of Danny Ings and Sam Vokes. The importance of both these groups maintaining their second tier form cannot be overstated, while whichever pick of Matt Gilks and Tom Heaton as their Premier League number one faces a busy year.
The Gaffer: Nicknamed the Ginger Mourinho by the Clarets' supporters, Sean Dyche is approaching his fourth season as a manager and his biggest challenge. Appropriately he kicks off against the actual Mourinho, which is as good a test as any, and Burnley fans will be hopeful he can deliver at the higher level.
Prediction: Burnley have been routinely given a "little club in big world" sheen since their promotion was confirmed and will hopefully shut up the press by beating a big name. But sadly, a small squad with little Premier League experience does have the air of one that will slink out of the league at the first attempt.
Chelsea
Last Season In Four Words: Special One not enough
What Do They Want?: The Premier League title. They got close last year, and had the best run out of the meetings of the top 6 clubs, but carelessly and frequently dropped points against teams fighting for survival.
Transfers: This has been a big scene change for Chelsea, with veterans Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole leaving after highly decorated spells with the club. One veteran, however, has come back into Chelsea, with Didier Drogba rejoining some 2 years after leaving. The big incomings are Cesc Fabregas and Diego Costa, who make huge money moves from La Liga. Costa's Atletico Madrid full back Filipe Luis has also moved from the Spanish champions to England. Samuel Eto'o has also departed, while PSG blew £50million on David Luiz - something his World Cup semi-final performance did little to justify. £28million has also been received for Romelu Lukaku, who has rejoined Everton, while Demba Ba has joined Besiktas.
Ones To Watch: Diego Costa will seek to bring to England the form from his La Liga splurge last year, and not his abject World Cup form that saw him drag down the World Champions. Its also a big year for Fabregas as he seeks to replace Lampard, while after spending 2 years on loan with Atletico, Thibaut Courtois could be a legitimate challenger for the number one goalkeeper spot.
The Gaffer: 2013/14 was a disappointment for Jose Mourinho, whose mind games hit overdrive but weren't backed up by success. Following that, Mourinho has to deliver something now and reward the rare stay of execution that Roman Abrahmovic has given a man who delivered a trophyless season.
Prediction: The bookies' favourites for the title are indeed Mourinho's boys and critical consensus is that it'll be a straight fight between them and Manchester City for the league title. It should be, and if Mourinho can iron out the tendency to give strugglers results, it should be theirs.
Crystal Palace
Last Season In Four Words: Pulis transformation extended stay
What Do They Want?: Its a job to know. The miraculous turnaround in form should, in theory, have heightened expectations for the Eagles, yet its also a feeling that they would be happy just to maintain Premier League survival.
Transfers: Compared to last season's scattergun high quantity summer transfer window, the incomings have been quite quiet. Three have come in, with Cardiff striker Fraizer Campbell the only one signing for a transfer fee. Experienced centre-back Brede Hangeland and young goalkeeper Chris Kettings are free signings. Jose Campana leaves on an undisclosed fee, while Jonathan Parr, Danny Gabbidon, Kagisho Dikgacoi, Dean Moxey and Aaron Wilbraham leave on free transfers.
Ones To Watch: After a season spent mostly injured, this is a big season for Glenn Murray, who was top scorer as Palace got promoted and who has fallen down the pecking order. Marouane Chamakh and the pacy Campbell should be good front runners with him, while Joel Ward had a brilliant first Premier League campaign and should impress again.
The Gaffer: The impressive turnaround last season means Tony Pulis has kept his enviable record of never being relegated, and also won a Manager of the Year award. Now the next step is presumably maintaining that score.
Prediction: A second consecutive top flight season is almost unheard of territory for a whole generation of Palace fans. But this vintage should be more than good enough to prolong this stay for another term.
Everton
Last Season In Four Words: Fitted in at top
What Do They Want?: Champions League football is the ultimate aim. Roberto Martinez even said so himself when he took over at Everton last year that the ultimate goal was to get the Toffees into the top 4 and they were very close to achieving it in year one. Anything below 5th would be seen as backwards, so Everton's goal is surely to challenge for the top four once again.
Transfers: The big ask for Everton's summer dealings was to replace last season's loan stars, but the good news for them was to sign two of them permanently. Gareth Barry's move on a free after his release by Manchester City was expected, but the Toffees then spent the big cash, with a club record £28million spent on securing Romelu Lukaku on a permanent deal. Gerard Deulofeu is not returning after his loan from Barcelona expired, but Everton have still strengthened their midfield, with Muhamed Besic moving to Goodison Park. Youngster Brendan Galloway also comes in, while Apostos Velious is the biggest name leaving.
Ones To Watch: After his impressive first year on Merseyside, Lukaku will seek to justify the faith shown in him to such a large degree. The same can also be said of Ross Barkley, who is already being talked of as the future of the England team after a dynamite season in 13-14. The bombing full-backs Seamus Coleman and Leighton Baines will also want to show more of their good form.
The Gaffer: Roberto Martinez has had a decent few seasons, be it several fine relegation escapes at Wigan before signing off with their first ever FA Cup trophy, and then coming close to getting Everton their first top 4 finish in almost a decade. He will want to continue this streak.
Prediction: The top 4 looks beyond Everton at present, but then it did a year ago so its hard to predict. At the very least they should get a top 6 place again and also look to challenge for silverware.
Hull City
Last Season In Four Words: Survived on early form
What Do They Want?: Avoid second season syndrome. Like Crystal Palace, Hull surpassed expectations significantly by surviving last year, but were largely poor in the second half of the campaign. As its a known idea that teams who end a season poorly can start the following season in similarly bad fashion, Hull have to avoid falling into this trap, and juggle the Europa League too.
Transfers: With Europa League on Hull's fixture list after their FA Cup runner-up position last year, strengthening was needed. So far, the midfield has received the bulk of Steve Bruce's attention, with Jake Livermore returning after a successful loan spell, Robert Snodgrass moving after being relegated with Norwich, and Tom Ince turning down Inter to sign on a free. Young defenders Harry Maguire and Andy Robertson also move to Humberside, while Matty Fyratt, Abdoulaye Faye and Robert Koren lead the outs.
Ones To Watch: The likely new widemen of Snodgrass and Ince are seeking to justify their faith, with the former falling out with fans at Norwich and the latter unable to make an impact at Crystal Palace during a loan spell last year. The jump to the top flight promises to be interesting for Maguire and Robertson, while the January-bought strikeforce of Shane Long and Nikica Jelavic really needs a scoring spree.
The Gaffer: Steve Bruce had arguably his best ever season last year and will be hoping more survival and a good European challenge can continue this renaissance he is having after his dismissal from Sunderland in 2011.
Prediction: Hull do have a squad capable of playing in the Premier League and once more should retain their status. As for Europe, they have a winnable tie with Lokeren but will most likely struggle in the group stage.
Leicester City
Last Season In Four Words: Promotion always looked certain
What Do They Want?: Like all promoted teams, the minimum is survival. This season will be a different vibe for the Foxes, who dominated the 2nd tier last year, and they have to be sure to be cut out for a season where they will not be in charge every week.
Transfers: Like Burnley, Leicester require Premier League experience. Brighton centre-half Matthew Upson and Aston Villa winger Matt Albrighton have had some Premier League experience, and could prove astute signings on freebies. A club record £7million has been spent on Brighton's Leonardo Ulloa, while Charlton keeper Ben Hamer and Manchester United youngsters Jack Barmby and Louis Rowley join on free transfers. Lloyd Dyer, Neil Danns, Sean St. Ledger and Paul Gallagher lead the outs.
Ones To Watch: After reportedly turning down Arsenal and AC Milan to extend his contract, Kasper Schmeichel is back in the top flight and the Foxes' custodian will seek to prove he shares his father's talents between the posts. The front duo of David Nugent and Jamie Vardy were impressive in getting Leicester into the top tier, while new signing Ulloa will need to get in and score to justify £7million worth of faith.
The Gaffer: Nigel Pearson is in his second spell as Leicester boss, and is now in the 3rd different tier he's managed the Foxes in. His only two Premier League games so far saw him pick up one point and a 6-0 hammering as Newcastle caretaker, but he has earned his chance.
Prediction: Leicester's run through to the top flight does give them hope and they certainly do look reasonably placed to give survival a real go. They should make it, but it won't be a comfortable journey.
Liverpool
Last Season In Four Words: A whisker from glory
What Do They Want?: If not the Premier League title, then at least another convincing run at it. The loss of Luis Suarez will no doubt hurt, but having come within one fatal slip by Gerrard of winning the title, the Reds will want another shot at the prize that has eluded them for 24 years.
Transfers: One year after a summer dominated by "will he leave, won't he" shenanigans, Liverpool finally let Luis Suarez go. Barcelona duly whacked out a reported £70million for him, despite the fact his latest bite means he won't play until November. With him gone, Liverpool duly begun signing up Southampton, with Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert and Dejan Lovren moving from Hampshire to Merseyside. Benfica's Lazar Markovic is their other major signing in attack, while Bayer Leverkusen defender Emre Can and Atletico Madrid full back Javier Manquilo also moves in. Belgian World Cup star Divorck Origi did sign but will stay at Lille on loan for a year, while Pepe Reina ends his 9 year association with the club and joins Bayern Munich.
Ones To Watch: With Suarez now gone, Daniel Sturridge faces a big season as line-leader. To his credit he did score in all but one of the games before Suarez returned last year, but he will now have to step up his contribution. A likely new attacking midfield trio of Lallana, Markovic and Raheem Sterling will excite fans - as will Phillipe Coutinho, who's still there - while Steven Gerrard has a big season after the traumatic end to the previous one and an awful World Cup.
The Gaffer: Brendan Rodgers has come a long way since being fired by Reading in 2009, but the former Chelsea youth coach is cutting his own in management. His first season of Champions League football will certainly be a big test.
Prediction: A title challenge may have come if Suarez hadn't decided to force through a transfer by biting opponents. As it is now, Champions League spots should be the goal, and Liverpool should keep them.
Manchester City
Last Season In Four Words: Won league through outscoring
What Do They Want?: More success. Be it retaining the title, retaining the Capital One Cup, lifting the FA Cup or even a first real go at the Champions League, Manchester City's project is now reaping rewards and it is likely owners, fans and staff would want more success.
Transfers: Unusually, Manchester City have been quite quiet on the transfer front. There is a free incoming unusually too, with Bacary Sagna moving for nothing from Arsenal. Equally surprising is the arrival of Frank Lampard, who joins on loan from New York City FC after his release by Chelsea and move to the Man City-owned US franchise. Malaga goalkeeper Willy Caballero and Porto midfielder Fernando are also incoming, while Jack Rodwell, Costel Pantillimon, Joleon Lescott and Gareth Barry all leave to join other Premier League outfits.
Ones To Watch: Yaya Toure is still in town after his bizarre birthday cake rant at the end of last season and may have to prove he's not sad at still being in town. Elsewhere, the usual suspects of Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko, Samir Nasri, David Silva and even Stefan Jovetic will be dangerous, while an intriguing battle for the number one goalkeeper slot beckons between Joe Hart and Caballero.
The Gaffer: Manuel Pellegrini's first English season was undoubtedly a success. A Premier League title and Capital One Cup certainly belied accusations he was an expert in failure after he failed to win trophies with Real Madrid, and he will look for more success next season.
Prediction: Only Chelsea and Manchester United have delivered back-to-back titles in the Premier League era, but Man City do have the squad to at least try. They will no doubt be among the title contenders come the final straight, and it will surely come down to their results against their rivals.
Manchester United
Last Season In Four Words: Moyes didn't work out
What Do They Want?: A return to the Champions League at the very least. What future Manchester United fans will presumably refer to as "the Moyes interlude" was a a damaging campaign that saw, for the first time in a generation, the Red Devils struggle. Louis van Gaal's first mission is at least to get the Red Devils back into the lucrative big league.
Transfers: The big news is that Ryan Giggs will no longer play for Manchester United, with the Welshman joining Louis van Gaal's backroom staff. On incomings, and like they did last year, Manchester United have been linked with bigger names than who they signed, but this time, they have actually bought before the season. Big money too, with Southampton full back Luke Shaw and Athletic Bilbao Ander Herrera joining for a combined fee of over £55million. Three of Fergusons multi-title winning defence in 2006-09 have left, with Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand leaving on frees, and Patrice Evra joining Juventus.
Ones To Watch: Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie formed an exciting pairing when the Red Devils won the league in 2012-13 but faltered last year. Both need to improve, while Juan Mata and Shiniji Kagawa will compete to be the main link man. Ashley Young had a good pre-season and will hope to carry this into the league season, while Luke Shaw will seek to justify his big bucks move.
The Gaffer: Virtually straight off the plane from leading Holland to 3rd at the World Cup, Louis van Gaal is a good pick to try and resurrect a team that hilariously failed. The Dutchman has won league titles in three European leagues and has even talked of winning one in England already.
Prediction: A title challenge is dreamed of after van Gaal's World Cup success, but they still don't have a title-winning defence or midfield. A return to the Champions League is the minimum, but they still feel like they need work done. Top five should at least be achieved.
Newcastle United
Last Season In Four Words: Hideously damaging second half
What Do They Want?: Less toxicity. The second half of the 2013/14 campaign was a bad time for Newcastle, be it the bizarre sight of manager Alan Pardew headbutting opponents, loss of form, arguments between players and more. Pardew has made words that the squad's buying policy is targeted at getting the club in the top four, but an improvement from 10th place would still be a start.
Transfers: After the inaction of 2013-14, Newcastle have been surprisingly busy. Three new midfielders have signed, with Sunderland's Jack Colback, Ajax captain Siem de Jong and Montpellier wideman Remy Cabella all incoming. Dutch full-back Daryl Janmaat is also incoming as a replacement for Mathieu Debuchy, who joined Arsenal, while Monaco striker Emannuel Riviere and Spanish young forward Ayoze Perez have also moved to Tyneside. There is also the loan signing of Facundo Ferreyra from Shakthar Donetsk, while Nottingham Forest duo Karl Darlow and Jamaal Lascelles have signed, but will be loaned back to Forest for this season. Shola Ameobi has left after 14 years on Tyneside, while Loic Remy has returned to QPR after a successful loan spell.
Ones To Watch: The attack will likely be lead by de Jong and Cabella in the advanced slots, while youngster Rolando Aarons has also impressed. The three new strikers will look to hit the ground running in a new country to replace Remy's goals, while after frequent thrashings, the defence needs to tighten up.
The Gaffer: Alan Pardew's position was on shaky ground after the Newcastle manager's moment of brain-dead idiocy when he headbutted a Hull City player last season. To the dismay of some fans, he remains in charge and needs to justify both that faith and the spending spree very quickly.
Prediction: As much as they want a return to the top 4, that will probably be beyond Newcastle for this season. But a tilt at the top six or a cup is not beyond the Magpies, and they should at least avoid weekly thrashings as they were getting at the end of the previous campaign.
Queens Park Rangers
Last Season In Four Words: Grabbed last gasp promotion
What Do They Want?: Not to crash and burn. QPR's last Premier League season was an unmitigated disaster on every level, and having almost screwed up promotion despite leading the way in the 2nd tier for the first third of the campaign, QPR could use a boring, slow season.
Transfers: It looked as though QPR may not have learned their lesson from their last Premier League escapade when Rio Ferdinand made a move for big wages to Loftus Road. In a different line of signing, the Hoops signed Steven Caulker from Cardiff City, with his teammate Jordan Mutch then following him from South Wales. Full-back Mauricio Isla also moves to West London, on a year long from Juventus. Yossi Benayoun signalled his move back to Israel with a Twitter spat with Joey Barton over the Israel/Gaza conflict, while Stephan MBia, Esteban Granero, Andy Johnson and Aaron Hughes are also among the exits.
Ones To Watch: Ferdinand has to justify the faith with the kind of defensive performance that made him a 6 time Premier League champion with Manchester United. Caulker alongside should be a robust pairing. The return of Loic Remy after a year on loan at Newcastle and his failed move to Liverpool should provide goals.
The Gaffer: Harry Redknapp has said he would have retired if QPR had failed to win promotion last year. Having now made it back to the top flight, some of the form that led him to almost getting the England job might help the West Londoners.
Prediction: QPR's last two seasons as a top flight club have involved relegation battles and QPR will almost certainly be there once more, but they should have more than enough to ensure they're not on the wrong side of the relegation zone in May.
Southampton
Last Season In Four Words: Fuelled by young fire
What Do They Want?: The avoidance of a catastrophic regression is the must, but that will not be easy. Southampton's out door has been substantially busier than the in door, and much work is needed to ensure this doesn't spill over into a catastrophic tumble down the table.
Transfers: This has been a brutal summer for Saints fans, with Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert, Dejan Lovren, Luke Shaw and Calum Chambers all making big money exits, along with manager Mauricio Pochettino, and many more linked with exits. Dani Osvaldo has left on loan, but despite heavy speculation, Morgan Schneiderlin and Jay Rodriguez remain. Feyernood striker Graziano Pelle and Twente midfielder Dusan Tadic have been Ronald Koeman's first signings in Hampshire since being appointed, while Chelsea's Ryan Bertrand and Inter Milan midfielder Saphir Taider join on loan, but more is clearly required. Celtic goalkeeper Fraser Forster is likely to be next after a fee was agreed.
Ones To Watch: This could be a big season for Gaston Ramirez, who was Southampton's record signing when they returned to the top flight in 2012 and has spent most of his time behind Adam Lallana in the pecking order. James Ward-Prowse will also be a key man for this new Saints team, while Tadic and Pelle have to adjust quickly.
The Gaffer: Ronald Koeman has had a hit-and-miss career, with trophy wins in some places counteracted by relegation dogfights in others. But the man famous for his free-kicks as a player could be a decent choice by the currently unloved Saints owners.
Prediction: There will be a tumble from last season's 8th position, as the team is missing many of the talents that got them up to such a strong position. But while some bookmakers have been overly keen to slash their relegation odds, they will most likely be midtable.
Stoke City
Last Season In Four Words: Looked better than ever
What Do They Want?: A continuation. Its easy to forget Stoke were in a relegation battle as recently as February, but their impressive form saw them soar into a record high points total as Mark Hughes' structural blueprint clicked. Now the goal is to ensure their second half form in 2013/14 continues.
Transfers: The biggest name and perhaps most surprising signing in the Potteries is Bojan, with the former Barcelona striker joining on a free and leading to fanciful rumours Ronaldinho might follow him in. Former Manchester United striker Mame Biriam Diouf, Sunderland's Phil Bardsley and Fulham's Steve Sidwell are also free signings. Slovakian defender Dionatan Teixera is Stoke's only paid-for signing so far, while Michael Kightly and Matthew Etherington make their exits.
Ones To Watch: A new strikeforce of Diouf and Bojan has great potential and does hint to life after Peter Crouch, although he should still chip in with a few goals. Mauro Arnautovic and Peter Odemwingie will look to continue their form last year, as will Asmir Begovic, who once again impressed in goal and even scored one last year.
The Gaffer: Mark Hughes was a controversial appointment last year following his failure at QPR, but turned things around. Now, he will seek to build up a team that is starting to show signs of potential.
Prediction: Top half is what Stoke got last year and they certainly have potential to maintain and perhaps even improve on last year's 9th spot. Whether they do is one for fate to decide.
Sunderland
Last Season In Four Words: Miracle kept them up
What Do They Want?: A slightly more boring season. Two chaotic relegation battles have seen them go through 3 managers, several dozen players and bizarre episodes of form. After all, last year its easy to forget they failed to win between a 3-0 thrashing of Newcastle on their turf and ending Jose Mourinho's unbeaten home run as Chelsea boss, and then winning at Manchester United for good measure. So something a bit less insane might help relax the fans.
Transfers: Like a number of other Premier League clubs, free has been the order of the day so far, although more are expected. The Black Cats have signed Wigan's Jordi Gomez, Man City goalkeeper Costel Pantilimon and the West Brom full back Billy Jones on frees, while Santiago Vergini rejoins on loan. The big signing is Manchester City midfielder Jack Rodwell, while Chelsea full-back Patrick van Aanholt is the only other paid-for player. Keiren Westwood, Carlos Cuellar, Andrea Dossena, Phil Bardsley and Craig Gardner leave on frees, while no transfer fee was exchanged in the controversial transfer of Jack Colback, who became the first player in 22 years to directly move from Sunderland to Newcastle.
Ones To Watch: So far, Fabio Borini has yet to make his loan move from Liverpool permanent, which puts pressure on Connor Wickham to continue his scoring form at the end of last season. Gomez will also be likely to chip in with a few strikes of his own, while at the back, Vito Mannone will once again be called upon to keep the rearguard area as concession-free as possible.
The Gaffer: Gus Poyet said he now believes in miracles after Sunderland survived from a seemingly impossible position last season. Having achieved that and a Capital One Cup final, his goal now is to avoid yet another relegation dogfight.
Prediction: As much as Sunderland want to avoid being a club always involved at the wrong end, their lack of fire-power and of improvements to their defence means more struggle is likely. But they should again pull through.
Swansea City
Last Season In Four Words: Rockier than previous years
What Do They Want?: A less depressing campaign. For the first time in a long time, Swansea had a difficult campaign, with reports of players fighting each other being leaked around the time of Michael Laudrup's departure. Garry Monk has so far won only 4 Premier League games, but the atmosphere does look better, and they should be less toxic in atmosphere, which can only be a good thing.
Transfers: Some bigger names have flown the coop this summer, with Michu joining Napoli on loan and Michel Vorm and Ben Davies both moving to Spurs. The slightly less high-profile names of David N'Gog, Leroy Lita and Alejandro Pozuelo have also left. There have been incomings, with the biggest that of Gylfi Sigurdsson, who returns two years after a successful loan spell in South Wales. Also signing are Marseille winger Jefferson Montero, Arsenal goalkeeper Lukas Fabianski, Bafetimibi Gomis of Lyon, and highly rated Scottish youngster Stephen Kingsley. There is also a return for Marvin Emnes, who was on loan for the second half of last season at the Welsh club.
Ones To Watch: Wilfred Bony remains in South Wales after a prolific first year and rumours of a move to Liverpool. The Welsh side will be hoping he doesn't fall to second season syndrome like Michu did. The likes of Sigurdsson, Montero, Jonathan de Guzman, Pablo Hernandez and Nathan Dyer will be very handy supply lines, while Fabianski will look to ensure Vorm is not missed.
The Gaffer: Centre-back Garry Monk has long been anticipated as a future Swans manager after playing for the Welsh club in all 4 tiers, but was thrown in at the deep end after Laudrup was sacked. Now a bit more used to top tier management, he will be hoping to go places.
Prediction: With no Europa League distraction and a diluting of the club's Spanish clique, Swansea should be in line for a less divisive campaign, and should provide football closer to their 2012-13 high than the lull of last season.
Tottenham Hotspur
Last Season In Four Words: Wasted the Bale money
What Do They Want?: Champions League football remains the goal of the Spurs' fans. Failing that, a trophy should also work. At the very least, improvements are expected on last season, which saw the North Londoners lose all their games against the top 4 and claimed two unpopular managers (albeit for differing reasons).
Transfers: Unlike last year, Spurs have been quite frugal. Highly rated youth defender Eric Dier is a very decent signing at £4million, while the club have also bought in Swansea duo Michel Vorm and Ben Davies, in a deal that sends Gylfi Sigurdsson to South Wales. Jake Livermore and Gomes also make their exits.
Ones To Watch: Emannuel Adebayor had a season of two-halves, and will be hoping to show form closer to the more successful second half. Harry Kane also begun to score towards the end of last season and will be hopeful of impressing. Christian Eriksen will look to maintain his playmaking form of last year, while Erik Lamela faces a big season after a dreadful first year in England.
The Gaffer: Mauricio Pochettino certainly has a number of admirers after his impressive year and a half stint at Southampton. Now in the ball park of much bigger cash, the man who perhaps preceded Southampton's mass exodus has to figure out a way to reach the Champions League.
Prediction: Spurs still feel short of quality players for a legitimate top 4 challenge. Pochettino is perhaps better off looking to challenge for silverware, be it in the Europa League or in the cups, but a top 6 finish is still a minimum and possible.
West Bromwich Albion
Last Season In Four Words: Three worse teams existed
What Do They Want?: A significantly less depressing season than the previous one.
Transfers: The biggest incoming is that of a club record transfer, with £10million striker Brown Ideye moving from Dynamo Kiev to the West Midlands. Full-backs Jason Davidson and Sebastian Pocognoli are the club's other paid-for signings, while Craig Gardner, Joelon Lescott and Chris Baird arrive on free transfers, and Andre Wisdom and Christian Gamboa join on loans. Steven Reid, Liam Ridgewell, Billy Jones, Diego Lugano and Zoltan Gera all make their exits on frees, while George Thorne rejoins Derby after being on loan there last season.
Ones To Watch: Much is expected of club record signing Ideye, although visa issues and Irvine's comments of "never seeing him play" before signing him haven't really helped. Saido Berahino was the club's top scorer last year and may wind up having to be a line leader, while Ben Foster is set to a have busy year marshalling a new build defence. He will certainly hope Lescott still has something in the tank.
The Gaffer: Alan Irvine was a controversial appointment amongst Baggies fans, considering his only first team jobs so far have been sub-par stints at Preston and Sheffield Wednesday. Whether or not he has the chops to succeed as a Premier League manager makes him an unknown quantity, and one that could still backfire.
Prediction: West Brom had a difficult year in 2013-14 filled with all manner of unhelpful chaos. This will be quieter, but it has the air of finality, with a squad full of untested players and in a kit that looks nothing like a West Brom one should very much giving off the feeling of a team set to go down.
West Ham United
Last Season In Four Words: Survived, but not happily
What Do They Want?: Its not exactly certain. West Ham are a club with a tradition for making things unnecessarily difficult for themselves and already have striker problems, with injuries and World Cup based exhaustion not helping. All fans would certainly love to avoid more relegation worries.
Transfers: To compensate for Andy Carroll being injured yet again, West Ham have spent big cash on strikers, with Ecuadorian international Enner Valencia and one time Birmingham striker Mauro Zarate coming in. Defenders Carl Jenkinson, Aaron Cresswell and Cheikhou Zouyate also move to East London, while highly rated youngster Diego Poyet moves across the capital from Charlton. Joe Cole, Matt Taylor, Jack Collison, Jordan Spence and George McCartney leave for nothing.
Ones To Watch: After a decent World Cup and links with other teams, Valencia will look to show he can cut it in Europe. He will likely vie for places with Carlton Cole, who is still on board. Adrian became something of a cult hero last season, and will look to remain the Hammers' first choice goalkeeper, while captain Kevin Nolan will look to show the form that saw him score five times in February rather than the side that earned two red cards either side of Christmas.
The Gaffer: Sam Allardyce remains a controversial and largely hated figure at Upton Park, with some rumours even indicating he could be fired before the big kick-off.
Prediction: Mid-table is something that Sam Allardyce is proficient at, even with the odd dose of mild relegation peril. Mid-table is also something that West Ham will be come the end of the campaign.
The anticipation amongst fans that these teams can meet their biggest aspirational goals however remains high, and next week begins the exciting journey where we see who will fulfill their maximum potential to light up the 2014-15 Premier League season. Bring it on.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)