Ginko

3 hours ago, Ingram85 said:

I think it's possible that you can over analyse a Bond film. Its just an action thriller film with cars, stunts, explosions and half naked bond & girl. Don't stress about it too much.

Absolutely.

Besides, Bond works for MI6 and thus operates abroad. He'd have to work for MI5 for domestic threats.

Only just noticed my custom nickname!

I love it!

Who's responsible? 

Follow him on Twitter and you'll figure it out.

Disagree with the whole 'players getting the basics wrong' thing. I think that's more prevalent due to there being a lack of sharpness due to preseason and that will start to improve a little.

However, I do think the lack of tactics and playing to our player's strengths shackles them, makes them uncomfortable and destroys their confidence to the extent that the basics start to suffer.

It's worrying that these things are being swept under the rug. I really don't see Bruce improving on this and I think he'll be sacked early on in the season. I just hope it's not too late to mount an automatic promotion charge by that point and that this is realised and Tony starts looking for a manager who knows this stuff.

1 hour ago, TRO said:

We agree on one thing..... it was poor.

I simply do not share your view its down to tactics and training in the context you put it.

let me explain:

If you do not have the player to play the role you want, it will affect your tactics.

If you ask a player to play a function and he is poor at it i.e constantly giving the ball away.....it will affect your tactics

I am simply saying that I do not believe Steve Bruce doesn't know what he is doing

If you are saying Steve Bruce has not got the specialist players to play the way he wants and that is partly down to him.....I would have to agree.

 

I understand your opinion and you may be right, but I think it's more a case of Bruce not setting the players up to play to their strengths whereas I feel you think it's more the players not working hard enough to implement his tactics.

It's probably closer to somewhere in the middle, but it's up to Bruce to fix things when they're not working and to try and get the best out of what he has. Bruce is also responsible for buying a number of these players, so if they're not right for his style of play, that's also on him.

For those reasons I feel he's most responsible and therefore he should go. I also think we have a more than decent squad that could do very well under a manager with a lick of tactical nous and common sense.

16 minutes ago, TRO said:

Maybe, just maybe......watching pre-season friendlies, is not a helpful exercise to discerning fans.

I know we are all anxious to see our team.....but perhaps the smart thing to do is to wait for the first league match.

I think most of us realise it's a preseason friendly and you should take those performances with a pinch of salt.

However, watching yesterday's game was like watching most of last season. We had some possession and passed it about the back nicely enough at times, but there's a severe lack of chances. I don't mean goals, though of course that's also true, I mean goal threats and attempts. With the players we have we should be carving teams open and always on the offensive. But we're not. We look clueless and that's down to tactics and training. 

Yes, it was a friendly and mainly for fitness, but it's just like he's trying the same things over and over again hoping they'll eventually click and they just aren't. There's no excuse for that kind of stubbornness. We can see it, why can't they?

I don't think he'll last three months personally, and nor should he if that's all he can serve up, and I can't see it improving anytime soon. I just hope Tony and co. have plans in place, though obviously looking at other managers when you already have one isn't exactly inspiring for the current incumbent.

See, I'm usually a stickler for a film needing to have an identity, so I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it if I didn't think Baby Driver knew what kind of a film it wanted to be. It's an action/heist film with a romance running through the middle and the occasional gag. It never tries to take itself seriously and I think that's pretty clear from the outset. It's not a musical, but it incorporates the music more directly into the film and uses it in imaginative ways.

Anyways, I saw Spider-Man: Homecoming last night. Was okay. I'm a big Spidey fan and I didn't dislike it, but it didn't really do much for me either. I can't think of any criticisms really, but I can't say I was all that wowed. I do like Tom Holland though and Keaton was a good villain.

War for the Planet of the Apes is up next. Love the first two films so hoping this will end it on a real high. I was a bit pissed off that the newest trailer I saw last night at Spider-Man seemed to show the entire film, though.

1 minute ago, Designer1 said:

Chinatown is **** brilliant.

I really wanted to like it. In many of the screenwriting books I've read it's hailed as the perfect script and story, but i just didn't love it like I knew I should.

2 minutes ago, BOF said:

You took my Baby Driver review as an insult?  Glowing, hardly, but insult?  No.

I wasn't being totally serious in all fairness, though I adored it so I guess any criticism, no matter how minor, is going to be viewed as an insult by me 

@BOF is in my bad books for insulting Baby Driver and Schindler's List within the same page 

Didn't find Schindler's List or Godfather I or II boring, quite the opposite in fact, but I did struggle through The Deer Hunter. Apocalypse Now is another one I tried in my youth and got bored, though I suspect I'd enjoy both AN and TDH a lot more if I watched them now.

I watched Chinatown a couple of years ago and still found it all a bit dull, though. I guess I'm not all that cultured.

The car we rented told us the limits but only when there was a road sign. Must be a chip in it as it changed as soon as we passed them. But the roads with no signs? The car didn't display them. To say I felt hard done by is an understatement.

Youre right about the limits changing a lot too. On the way back to the airport there was one stretch of road where there was no sign for a mile or so, then a sign for 70km/h and literally maybe twenty feet behind that, one for 60. There was absolutely nothing in between the two signs. 

So yesterday I got back from a few days in Poland to attend a friend's wedding. I was the driver of our group because one can't and the other two were too nervous. We got a rental car from the airport and off we went.

I was a bit nervous at first, first time driving abroad and in a country that drives on the right, plus the wedding was being held in the middle of nowhere in rural Poland. There's a general lack of road signs that tell you the speed limit over there, but I'd read up on the generally accepted national speed limits and was getting along fine enough.

We'd driven about three hours to my friend's little town and she'd arranged for her brother-in-law to meet us at the petrol station on the edge of town so we could follow him the rest of the way to the hotel as it was in the sticks and hard to find. So we meet him, nice, big, cheery German chap, very friendly and insanely impressive grasp of the English language. I notice he's driving a small truck with Team Honda Racing on the side just before he sets off with us in tow, four weary tourists.

My fear comes to pass; he's a petrolhead and despite knowing he was leading someone and we were foreigners who drive on the other side of the road, he drove about 30km/h over the speed limits, but then again it seems most Polish drivers do. They also have an interesting and widely accepted policy on overtaking that is frankly downright scary at times.

We near the hotel, just managing to keep up. I'm trying to slow him down by hanging back a bit so I don't get caught speeding. Well you know what happens next. Him and the other three or so cars in front of him are screaming round this road with a blind curve and a convenient little trail off to the right where two cops are waiting with a speed gun. They're all close together and I guess the cops don't have time to wave them down to nick them, but guess who comes round the corner next only to get caught doing 60km/h in a 40?

Thankfully one of the cops spoke English but I was tired and naturally worried about getting nicked in a foreign country. Apparently that road, which had no sign stating the limit and by my reading should have been at least a 70km/h limit, was a 40km/h. They fined me 100 zloti (about 20 quid which we split four ways so not too bad) and wrote me a ticket. I'm unsure on whether I'll hear anything from the DVLA regarding further punishment or points but the cops made no mention of it. Kept me delayed for half an hour and were unsympathetic to our plight though, the words removed.

Wedding and reception was bloody brill though! Didn't get caught on the way back either. Their Highway Code seems to be made up on the spot and Polish drivers are **** nuts.

1 hour ago, StefanAVFC said:

This Charlie Gard mess.

The whole situation is dire.

But **** me, the parents are intent on creating a media firestorm while their terminally ill son with zero chance of a normal life even with this experimental treatment. (that hasn't even been lab tested) 

They're also dragging GOSH's name through the mud while they continue this tirade.

The whole situation is cruel.

I do agree with what you say, and I'll also state I haven't read up much about this whole thing so I'm not very well informed, but in the case of the parents creating a media firestorm, do the ends not justify the means somewhat?

I'm not a parent, but I can imagine that any parent worth their salt would go to any lengths necessary in order to save their child's life. Is that not what they're doing?

Yup, Lafayette was the best. Shame, 39 is no age.

So, what can I say about Baby Driver?

Saw it earlier this week and I think it's one of the best films I've seen at the cinema. I loved everything about it. It's not just the awesome soundtrack but how it's implemented into the film and I came out wondering why more films don't do it. Perhaps they will now, obviously I'm talking about more mainstream films as opposed to musicals.

It was so much fun and super slick and the choreography of everything from the car chases and shoot outs to the simple scene where he goes to get coffee is just wonderfully done.

We all had massive grins on our faces throughout. The story was good and you knew right away that it wasn't taking itself totally seriously and that whilst the film is set in the real world, it's not meant to be totally grounded in reality. I thought the characters were pretty well developed despite not being very deep and the romance running through it was believable if a little fairytale, but who doesn't love a fairytale?

The actors all did a good turn, particularly Jamie Foxx and the young lad playing Baby who I'd never seen in anything before. The characters were colourful and the dialogue was punchy. I think I read somewhere that they matched the lines to the rhythm of the music to some extent, which if they did is brilliant. The little extra details and flourishes really make this a special cinematic experience.

I think my only very minor gripe with the story would be...

But aside from that? I was glued from start to finish and I came out of the cinema absolutely buzzing and it's rare that a film makes me feel that way. Seeing it again next week.

Pretty much the entire Baby Driver soundtrack.

I can't really believe we're even having this discussion to be honest.

It's a joke.

17 minutes ago, romavillan said:

Gazza was probably in the england squad when at Lazio?

I was going to post the same but he did specify last twenty years and he was only at Lazio until 1995, which is over twenty years ago now.

/pedant.

Seeing Baby Driver tonight. 

Haven't looked this forward to a film for quite some time. Hope it's as good as some of you lot are saying. I'm sure it will be, I bloody love Edgar Wright. Even Scott Pilgrim which I know divides a lot of people (though I am a fan of the source material admittedly).

Figured it was obvious that I meant it in the sense that it was relevant to the current topic of conversation... but obviously not to some.

Surprised this hasn't been mentioned or shared:

I've been in a similar position myself @Xann and if I'm honest, despite never making a move on the girl I was telling everyone I was just friends with, I knew I fancied her and I was playing the shoulder to cry on and putting the time in so it would pay off later.

It never did. The girl knew what was going on and to her credit after a number of months she even decided to stop spending so much time with me. She described it as 'having her cake and eating it' since between me and her boyfriend she had two halves of a successful relationship but she felt she was betraying him so she canned it with me. She didn't go about it well and we're no longer on speaking terms (her choice) but I'm over it. It was an unhealthy pseudo-relationship and whilst I got a lot of fun times out of it and we came close to giving in on occasion, we never did. It wasn't sustainable.

I'm not saying this is how your situation is, just that's what happened to me. Funnily enough I have been good friends with another girl for a couple of years now but we were just genuinely mates despite her being gorgeous and wonderful and us having a ton of stuff in common. Six months ago she broke up with her boyfriend of seven years and we've gotten a lot closer since. I'd be fibbing if I wasn't hopeful something will happen, but as I said, she was always off limits whilst she was with someone. Now it appears that it may turn into something I never even thought about and she may well be the just girl I've been looking for. She's damn near perfect.

Fingers crossed for the both of us.

Edit - Just realised you said you already had another half! Looks like you're being a genuine friend which renders my entire post pretty pointless. Oh well.

It annoys me that the idiot who uploaded the video titled it incorrectly.

2 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

You think so? In that case I reckon majority of people are racist.