Capitulation

In a weekend of cinnamon challenges, there were such high hopes for the men of Tottenham, and such a disappointment when it came to the (cinnamon) crunch. We did what we needed to do (and not much more, I admit, but - as Bobby said - what can you expect on a couple of hours' kip?) against another lame bunch, this time the Trotters. Positives - Pizzarro; Adam Johnson finding a bit of form; the fact that we can win without Kun or Merlin; refreshing attacking flair but (a little) more solidity at the back.

All we needed was a bit of spunk at White Hart Lane. Alas, it was not to be. Is Harry's head turned by the lure of England's Polish prefab? If not, are the players victims of Fergie's mind games, so believing it even though it isn't true? We'll never know, but despite a bright start and some decent pressure, Spurs never really looked threatening enough in front of goal.

A great deal of the talk I hear from City fans shows a kind of desperation for us to win. I read in the very authentic King of the Kippax about the disappointment over Liverpool winning the Carling Cup, which means that, with a place in Europe, they will have money to invest in new talent. This in turn will mean that they could be more of a threat to us next season in our quest for global dominance. I must admit that I find it hard to identify with this. Although I of course would love us to win the Premier League, winning everything is not my primary concern, and I certainly don't hope for a league as bad as (say) the Scottish one - now that Rangers are dead and buried - and now that there really is only one serious challenger for any honours. After all, where's the interest in that? Frustrating as it may be to schlep up to the Britannia stadium on a bleak Tuesday in February and lose by a single goal, when we feel as if we should be mixing it with the Catalans, that really is what the game is all about.

But if I start ranting about everything that's wrong with the game (Scholes, Henry - are there no young players coming through? Stupid short-sightedness and the sacking of managers after only a couple of games. England going in to a European Championship with no manager and no captain - the former having been sacked for backing the latter!) I don't know when I might stop. On we go then. Every game a must win, and whispers - now that our list of favourable fixtures is coming to an end, and with United's run-in now appearing far more manageable - that it will all come down to the derby game. I dread to think, I really do.

Hoo-grah

Lovely win for City yesterday. Smashing match and all.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. It's been a while, so apologies to those in my readership who are fans, but I am at last able to return to the Planet of the Apes theme, having watched the latest Hollywood offering over the weekend. I speak of course of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which explores the question of: how did it happen? How did Charlton Heston (my spellchecker returned 'charlatan' and 'festoon' for the great man's [irony btw] name, amusingly enough) return from his space trip to find the primates in charge?

I have checked the canon (as some of my readers will be well aware) and the original French novel posits that the ape-dominated society of the films was actually on a planet (near Betelgeuse) called Soror. There, the ancient human inhabitants used primates to carry out menial tasks for them, being eventually overthrown due to their greed and cruelty. A further twist then has it that the human who had discovered the Soror ape-controlled planet escapes to Earth, 700 years in his own future, only to find that the same thing has happened there and the primates reign supreme. As far as I can tell, not having actually read the novel, there is no attempt to explain how the apes could have risen up and defeated the superior humans. The latest 'reboot', as I have heard it tiresomely described, attempts to address this glaring gap.

Warning! There are spoilers after the picture, so don't read on if you want to watch the film.

The premise of RotPotA is that a brilliant young scientist is developing a cure for Alzheimer's Disease (ALZ-112), which he is testing on chimps. A terrible mishap with a rampaging super ape during his big presentation to the board means that he is fortunate to keep his job, but he nevertheless has his project stopped, and all of his lab chimps are ordered to be destroyed. However, one baby chimp (Caesar - son of the aforementioned super ape) survives and is smuggled out by the scientist, to live with him and his (Alzheimer's afflicted) father in suburbia.

At the same time, with his father's illness worsening by the moment (he at one point - shock horror! - shouts at his carer) the scientist decides to secretly give him the ALZ-112, with immediate and startling results. His faculties not only return, they actually greatly improve, in tandem with Caesar starting to display the cognitive abilities of a human child some years his senior, even though he is kept shut in the loft at all times (the chimp, not the father). The crucial moment comes when the power of ALZ-112 wanes, and the old man begins to deteriorate at an alarming rate. This forces the scientist to try a risky development of his formula, coming up with... ALZ-113! in order to circumvent the immune system attacks which are rendering the original drug ineffective. With yet-to-be-revealed dreadful consequences...

Then, during an episode of dementia confusion (handled with a slightly uncomfortable, almost slapstick touch) Caesar loses his rag in defence of dear old dad, and attacks the next-door neighbour, biting the tip of his finger off. Despite the lipstick-y effect on his muzzle, it's never clear whether he swallows the tip or spits it out, but the neighbour is shown at the end of the film with a bandage on his digit. Caesar is not shot, but is taken to the animal refuge, and I am surprised that the state of California hasn't sued News Corporation for the ridiculous way in which the facility is portrayed. It is run by a sly and sadistic father (phoned in by Brian Cox) and sons group and houses about 300 chimps, one gorilla called Buck and an orangutan who is able to sign fluently thanks to his circus past (?!).

The upshot of it all is that Caesar nicks loads of ALZ-113 from the Gen-Sys lab (the brain-building effects of which can be passed on 'vertically') and up-skills his simian crew, while humans (notably, the next-door neighbour) exposed to the drug (now in handy smoke form!) start sneezing blood and dying horribly. Primate world domination, we can see, is not far away, requiring only a trip to New York, and a similar leap of faith in the audience's credulity, to close the circle.

The film is s-fx heavy, and some of the set pieces (especially the scene on the Golden Gate bridge) are quite entertaining - if more than faintly ludicrous, while the movement of the apes, as if they are superheroes or supernatural, rather grates. Caesar's face is too CGI, and he is less believable for that, although there was some genuine power in the moment of his first word - appropriately enough - NO! All in all, not a bad effort, even if not canon.

The Only Living Team

We are in the middle of the bursting of the Southsea bubble. Sorry...



After what can only be described as a routine victory over the Trotters, what more is there to say about the state of the game? On a day when Portsmouth were thrown a temporary lifeline before what appears to be certain doom, I remember a commentator saying at the Pompey game recently that City could be described as perhaps the only club in the Premier League who are not facing financial crisis. One could have reasonably riposted the 'prudent' Arsenal, I suppose, but with mine own eyes I have seen the pitiful state of affairs at Stadium Developments. I will say no more.

Poor Chester City, as we have heard, are on their last legs, having been docked 25 points for going into administration, sitting rank bottom of the Blue Square, and now suffering their players refusing to get on the team coach for an away game because they haven't been paid for months. Casting aside the fact that they might possibly fare better without their players, it's sobering to think that things have come to this pass. Having been out of work myself for a while now, I can only begin to imagine how the lads at such an outfit could possibly survive for any period of time. Neither are they (Chester City, I mean) alone. Cardiff and Southend have both been up before the money beak, and both granted a short-term stay of execution. We are all painfully aware of the situation at Liverpool, and even the mighty Rags - with all their successes (and this is surely what all the money is about?) of recent years - are but a hop and a skip away from melt-down. City are cocooned for the nonce of course, shielded by the money of the only solvent sovereign state (China has a good credit rating, which is not quite the same thing) in the world, but - for how long?

On the pitch, there's not a huge amount to cheer about - Adam Johnson excepted - and a team less toothless than Bolton (say, Hull City, for example) would certainly have turned us over. His goal aside, Adebayor looked fairly ordinary. No touch, little understanding of space around him, and far too easily dispossessed. Toure is a liability, far too slow and poor distribution. Zabaleta looked OK (for once) and De Jong was as determined as ever. Tevez continues to win my respect, but got just a touch lucky with the penalty. Bridge - very poor; Kompany - solid but lumpen; Barry - disappointing (as always - solid enough, but woefully lacking in imagination); SWP - kicked off the park; Given (unusually) - shaky; Vieira - poor (as expected) and inexplicable as to why he has been signed. Sylvinho didn't get enough of the game to be able to judge (especially from my vantage point of Iraq Goals, which kept freezing every 10 minutes - most notably, just before Tevez took the penalty and about 5 minutes before the final whistle, from where I couldn't be arsed trying to restart the stream) and the overall performance was something of a disappointment. But, a win's a win for all that, and it looks as if we should just about avoid relegation.

So, as they say up at the Deva, could be worse, eh?