EV editorials Sept 09 - Feb 10

One of the most fun things to do for EV when I was editor in chief was the editorial. I'm pleased that when the magazine changed to A5 size and my role to just the technical editing the last one turned out to be about love and how I came to Madrid. Was a nice note to finish on.

I thought it might be fun to see how they read as a chronological thread. Here's a wee look at Madrid from September 2009 to February 2010:

September

Start the dance

¡Bienvenidos! Welcome! And to our cover boys, Kaká and Cristiano Ronaldo, Bem-vindos, rapazes! Whether you’re new to or just getting back into the swing of the capital, you’ll be facing all Madrid can throw at you as it accelerates out of summer. And that’s where we come in – to help you get the most out of the experience. One of the more curious things you’ll come across, along with useless can-openers, old people who don’t like to queue and the unique Spanish talent for standing in your way, is what I call the ‘madrileño dance’. The ‘madrileño dance’ happens for the first three minutes after buying a copa. Alcoholic spirits are served in generous free-poured measures in tubular glasses, appropriately named tubos, filled with ice and accompanied by mixers in small glass bottles. Everything is perfect, except for the small catch that it’s not possible to fit the contents of your mixer bottle in your glass of liquor and ice. The ensuing three minutes after receiving your drink in a busy central Madrid bar consist of sipping barely diluted whisky, rum, gin or vodka, wincing, pouring some more coca cola or lemon into the glass and repeating from step one until the bottle is empty. Spilling drink over you as people lurch past you is par for the course at first, but soon you will have the dance down to a tee and be able to avoid spillage, have a conversation and, if you’re really good, smoke a cigarette at the same time. Only the true professional will learn to do the ‘dance’, have a conversation, smoke a cigarette and send a text message at the same time. For the rest of us, the most we can aspire to is the sip-wince-pour routine without ending up wearing our drink on our top. You’ll soon get the hang of it and you’ll find it’s as important a part of the night as the real dancing.
¡Salud!

October

Scary Madrid

Madrid isn’t a particularly spooky place, but here are five strange phenomena which seem to appear around the month of October.

The metro is taken over by ugly people, especially on line 5
This month, the filmstar looks and pearly-white smiles of the tanned Adonises and Aphrodites so prominent in the metro during the summer months begin to vanish. From mid-October to mid-May, you will notice your fellow metro passengers have an ever-increasing resemblance to Quasimodo. Their numbers are greatest before 9am (it is believed that some fear daylight), so those of us with the ill fortune of having to ride the early morning metro will be rubbing shoulders and hunchbacks with them on a daily basis. The cause is a mystery, but console yourself that there are worse horrors on the Cercanias trains.

Being infected with Swine Flu this winter is a nigh inevitability
Aside from the general displeasure of coming into close contact with the afore-mentioned Esmeralda-chasing ex-inhabitants of Notre Dame, the dirty old Swine Flu has gone pandemic and is as contagious as the viruses in all the zombie movies of recent times. However, avoiding the metro won’t spare you – Spanish notions of personal space will see to that. And even though Spanish Health Minister Trini Jiménez has ordered us all to sneeze into our armpits and to forgo greeting kisses, the Spanish habit of standing very close to people (compared to the distance most foreigners are accustomed to) will ensure transmission of the bug.
To demonstrate this, a study has shown that a group of eight Spanish friends who enter an empty bar of 100m2 will quickly arrange themselves so as to occupy a total surface area of less than 2m2. If you’re close enough to feel someone’s breath, you’re close enough to eat their germs.

All women over 50 have short hair
The sight of a middle-aged to elderly woman is not frightening in itself, granted. But when you come to realize that all the country’s women beyond a certain age have short hair, there must be something going on. Rumours abound of a machine in the back room of every hairdresser’s which processes every one of them. And a mind-controlling chip in their necks compels them to return each time their hair grows beyond a certain length.

You can’t say no to a night out
You begin to find it impossible to decline an invitation for drinks and dancing, regardless of the overdue assignments you have for university or tomorrow’s early start at work. This suppression of your willpower usually continues until after Christmas, though for some guiris, it becomes a terminal state.

You wake up at the other end of your metro line
Maybe this is just me, but you mysteriously slip into unconsciousness as you travel home on the first metro of the morning after having left a nightclub some time before six. You awaken, feeling sub-human and as if there were some strange hunching beginning to affect your back, only when a short-haired old woman sneezes in your face. A shower and a change of clothes doesn’t appear to rectify your dishevelled appearance, but you shuffle back onto the metro in the direction of your work.
Oh, what’s that? A sneeze? Must be an allergy or something.

Don’t have nightmares!

November

Don’t stay in

The clocks have gone back, the nights are getting darker and colder, but you can’t take refuge in bars and clubs every single night, can you? Some time you’re going to have to stay in, bite the bullet and watch some spectacularly bad Spanish TV.
Here are some of the horrors that await you:
Frustrating comedy/drama series invariably let down by either woeful script writing or embarrassingly poor acting (Or at least unable to maintain a good level in both script and acting for more than half a season)
Reality shows whose weekly gala programmes last about five hours (The good old reality show is a worldwide phenomenon, but following one here means committing one entire night out of your week)
Heavily politicized news broadcasts (When people trust newspapers more than TV news, there’s a problem)
Dreadful dubbing into Spanish of English-language films (In which it seems all children are voiced by the same woman doing a ‘Bart Simpson voice’)
Loud interminable commercial breaks with ads made by people who think we’re incredibly stupid (You can’t remember what you were watching anymore, but you can still hear, “Quiero hacer caca en el baño de Pablito” as you make a sandwich)
Gossip shows (My pick of the month)
The last time I visited my Spanish mother-in-law, she went to buy bread and came back after 50 minutes. The bakery is at the end of her street. “What a queue!” she said upon her return. “What a lie” we thought. We had had watched her intermittently through the kitchen window as she stopped each time she met someone she knew. She spent seven to ten minutes talking to each one. “What does she have to talk about for so long?” I asked my wife. It was gossip.
As gossiping is officially Spain’s national sport (dwarfing the number of those who follow football), it’s only right that it should have a significant presence on television. The number of these has snowballed since the emergence of private TV channels at the start of the ‘90s, taking over the morning programming, swallowing the old children’s TV afternoon/early evening slots and incredibly landing Saturday night prime time. Even Spanish Big Brother has it’s own spin-off gossip show.

These programmes do have some good things –

• they give gossip junkies a constant source of their drug
• they make gossiping a ‘victimless crime’ because celebrities aren’t real people with feelings who only exist for our amusement
• as there are only 153 people who still regularly follow bullfighting, top bullfighters wouldn’t get recognized walking down the street if it weren’t for these shows
• hairdressers, supermarket checkout assistants and not-so-successful models who sleep with bullfighters, footballers or actresses can get to be ‘celebrities’, go on these programmes and give other hairdressers, supermarket checkout assistants and not-so-successful models something to aspire to and give everyone else something to condescend
• the ultimate Spanish class – if you can understand everything as three panelists scream each other down simultaneously, you have surpassed many native speakers

What’s wrong with them then? If you have to ask…
You can vote for your own ‘favourite’ worst thing about Spanish TV on our new website. I’ll have to go now – Sálvame is on in a minute.

December

George of the concrete jungle

I’m convinced there are many and varied things each of us who lives here loves about Madrid. But since the cold and dark of winter set in, there are less reminders of the good and a tendency to slip into Bah Humbug mode about the negative. This isn’t altogether bad and I think it’s important to recognize that not all is perfect – to vent that pent up ire so we can purify and get into the Christmas spirit. I want you to think of the thing you hate most about Madrid and tell someone about it without holding back. Like a remake of A Christmas Carol where Ebenezer Scrooge lets out a long, primal scream and sobs into Bob Cratchett’s shoulder in the first week of December, before becoming reformed and jovial character, thus saving a protracted storyline of cruelty, recriminations and ghostly hallucinations to achieve redemption.

Think about it hard, though. Put on the spot, I’ll nearly always give a different answer. Asked a few months ago in a European Vibe video about Madrid loves and hates, I picked sharp-elbowed sardineras, unpleasant, squat, middle-aged women with an utter disrespect for politeness and accepted rules about queuing.
But after much thought, my number one hate is: obstacles that hurt.
Entrance turnstiles and exit gates that don’t open when they’re supposed to in the metro are a rare offender, but they’re worth a dead leg for a week when you take a femur-crunching blow, to the sniggers of other passengers and bored security guards. A far more constant threat are the iron bollards sprinkled liberally around the narrower streets in the centre of Madrid to separate where cars drive and people walk. The high concentration of these knee-high metal posts in areas like Huertas and Malasaña account for me picking up around 50 dents on each shin. One minute you’re walking along talking to your friends, the next you’re wincing in pain that drinking alcohol has done nothing to dull.

What takes the biscuit, however, are the skinny trees in troughs which blight pavements around the city. As if negotiating your way past the painfully slow walkers weren’t enough, the presence of these perpetually rubbish and dogshit-filled troughs adds the risk of falling in and doing yourself a mischief to your Madrid pedestrian experience. I’m speaking as someone who knows. Two Christmasses ago I was out for a meal and a night out. On a lengthy walk between the restaurant and our next bar of choice, I lost my friends after a foiled attempt to illegally urinate in a (quiet, I thought) corner of a garage. As I looked around for them near the Glorieta de San Bernando, a sudden wave of agony went through the right side of my body.
I thought I’d had a stroke.
As I peeled myself off the tree, I realized I’d stepped in a trough. Nobody seemed to see, but my friends had a good laugh while I mopped my bloody head in the bar.

Watch out for the trees. Merry Christmas!

January

Walk like a madrileño

Welcome back to Madrid, the Mighty Bear, La Sagrada Hostia de la madre que le parió (Luc’s resolution #1 – swear more in Spanish). I must say, you’re looking nice and fat – overdo it on the turkey, did we? (Luc’s resolution #2 – offend more people). But you also looked pleased to be back here, and, let’s face it, Madrid is much better than wherever you’re from despite its faults (Luc’s resolution #3 – adopt a more Madrid-centric view of the world).
We’re all about the resolutions this year. For most people, they’re a couple of half-arsed attempts to quit smoking or join a gym (Luc’s resolution #4 – quit smoking definitively). Others apply reverse psychology in light of repeated failed attempts to achieve their goals, promising to drink more and do no exercise (Luc’s resolution #5 – drink more). But, to help you with some more effective and original New Year’s resolutions, we’ve got a series of articles with suggestions for reaching your goals in 2010 (Luc’s resolution #6 – Give EV writers more licence to boss the readership around).
Adam Ciotkowski’s profile of Arctic Monkeys (page 8) reminds us not to miss one of the biggest nights of the year for indie fans in Madrid (Luc’s resolution #7 – buy tickets for concerts before they sell out). Susana López gives us ten tips for improving our Spanish (page 10) and sends us for a hot, warm and cold bath in Spain’s best hammams, while Ryan Craggs brings us ten of the best places to visit (page 12) within easy reach of Madrid. Garreth Nunn sets us on the track of finding a Spanish football club to support (page 20) and explains how he ended up becoming an Atlético Madrid fan (Luc’s resolution #8 – take more advantage of having two great football clubs on your doorstep, though watching them in a bar reinforces resolution #5). Matt Johnson offers up his comprehensive list of resolutions for 2010 (page 25), including some kamikaze skating in Madrid (Luc’s resolution #9 – know your limits, remember humiliation at roller-disco in 1991).
There’s a whole lot more in here, so get stuck in. I’m off to re-enact the video for The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony in the centre of Madrid. Could be messy (Luc’s resolution #10 – the pavement is yours, take no prisoners).

February

Como la trucha al trucho

This issue of EV being a Valentine’s special and also marking two years for me as editor got me thinking – in all this time, I’ve never explained how I came to live in Madrid.
If you ask people and make a point of counting, a surprisingly high proportion of English speakers in Madrid came to live here because of love.
I hold my hand up, too.

It was June 2005. At the time home for me was the east of France and the company I worked for had sent me to Madrid on a project for a month. In Madrid, Shakira and Alejandro Sanz singing La Tortura were on the radio, thousands of volunteering madrileños were carrying the largest flag ever constructed through the streets for the city’s 2012 Olympic bid candidacy celebration, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was filling the cinemas and a packet of Lucky Strike was 2.20€.
It’s funny what things jump out at you when you arrive in a new place – here, the mass of greasy chicken bones and serviettes you wade through in bar where the tapas are good, the shock of city centre prostitution-in-your-face the first time you see the girls of Montera, the extreme dryness of the air which turns bread to toast in 15 seconds and leaves you with dried blood in your nostrils in the morning.

My room, above the Bajos de Argüelles, was too hot to sleep in with the window closed and too noisy (from the student nightclubs below) to sleep in with it open. Joining in and going out was the only option for self-preservation. Despite trying to keep my mind on cold beer rather than hot women, I did meet the girl and the rest of my stay was as curly as her hair. We parted promising only to meet up for a short holiday in Scotland (take the, ehm, heat out of the situation). But three months later, I was on a plane from Geneva to Madrid, and this time I didn’t have a return ticket.

Love steamrollered all – even an ideological feud over whether it’s acceptable to leave the toilet seat up (which went on for a couple of months before I finally ceded in a trade off for an end to excessive numbers of mousse/face cream/perfume/girl stuff bottles around the bathroom basin area).

Madrid is a great place to be in love and to fall in love. But if you’re not into that kind of thing, the rugby’s on page 20.

Countdown to South Africa

Group A

South Africa

South Africa appear a strong bet to become the first World Cup hosts not to qualify from the group stage and the task which lies before coach Carlos Alberto Parreira is an altogether different one from the

ultimately glorious World Cup campaign he guided Brazil through in the USA 16 years ago. Bafana Bafana (the South African national side’s nickname meaning ‘The Boys, The Boys’) went into the draw as the lowest ranked team in the competition (although they since leapfrogged North Korea

in December’s FIFA World Rankings) crossing their fingers, toes and anything else they could in hope of a kind draw. They didn’t get one, however, and their hopes may hinge on intimidating the little Mexicans with their physical strength and Uruguay and France with the noise of the home crowd. They unluckily missed out on qualifying from the group stage in

South Korea eight years ago based on goals scored records, but the current crop of players

measure up unfavourably to the class of ’02 and South African fans will rely more on hope than belief.

Mexico

Mexico recovered from Sven-Goran Eriksson’s disastrous spell in charge of the national team to qualify with relative comfort and they will feel more than capable of reaching the second round for the fifth consecutive World Cup after seeing their group on paper. One of the most skilful teams in the tournament, Mexico should provide plenty of entertainment, although they aren’t the same proposition as four years ago (when it took a Maxi Rodríguez wonder goal to eliminate them) and look susceptible to being bullied out of their attractive football by more physical sides.

Uruguay

Having blown the opportunity to secure automatic qualification on home soil and make things difficult for Argentina (allowing Maradona to keep his job and order his critics to “Suck it”), Uruguay got to the World Cup the hard way by squeezing past Costa Rica. Last season’s La Liga

Pichichi (top goalscorer), Diego Forlán, commands worldwide respect, but a lack of true

quality throughout the squad will leave few expecting the South Americans to progress. The ‘Orientals’ will be happy to be underestimated and will hope to exploit the weaknesses of their first-round rivals.

France

The fortune of the draw for the French adds insult to injury for many an aggrieved Ireland fan. Domenech might as well have changed his first name to Under-fire-France-coach-Raymond a few years ago, but he found it hard to hide his glee at being handed such an easy group (and an easy passage to the quarter finals should they avoid Argentina in the next round) despite his insistence that meeting the tournament hosts would be an almighty test. The French media have labelled it an “open group”, which could be interpreted to mean France will top the pool without breaking sweat if they can somehow play as a coherent unit. Those who are dismissive

of Les Bleus should beware, they’ve always played best when the expectations are low – the fans on their back and a heavily-criticized manager was what they had in 1998.

Group B

Argentina

A group of great players, who somehow constitute a whole weaker than the sum of its parts, led by a manager whose job hangs by a thread – Argentina enter the World Cup with the same problem as France. There is a dose of déjà vu for Maradona, who faced both Greece and Nigeria in the group stage of USA ’94; his final World Cup as a player, which ended prematurely in disgrace when he tested positive for a banned substance. His maniacal goal celebration against the Greeks sparked the suspicions that were confirmed days later. I’ll always remember that the pharmacy where I was doing work experience at the time let me print myself out a novelty prescription saying, “Ephedrine, take one capsule twice a day” with the patient made out as “Diego Armando Maradona”. The Argentines should most definitely

not need drugs to progress this time against below-par opposition and Ballon d’Or winner Leo Messi is likely to have the chance to shine against the big guns.

Nigeria

Nigeria crept into the World Cup at the expense of Tunisia on the last day of qualifying. After an injury time winner in their penultimate match kept them in contention, they had to win in Kenya and hope Tunisia didn’t in Mozambique. They got their wish as their Maghrebi rivals crashed, while Nigerian captain (for the night) Obafemi Martins’ goal nine minutes from time sealed the great escape to this summer’s party in South Africa. They have a good enough squad to reach the second round, but not much more than that.

South Korea

South Korea’s (or Korea Republic’s) expectations in their eighth World Cup Finals are firmly on the ground and there can surely be no repeat of their Guus Hiddink-inspired fourth place at home in 2002. Under the captaincy of Manchester United’s Park Ji-Sung, the South Koreans might be able to spoil either Nigeria or Greece’s tournament, but to upset them both would be a big ask.

Greece

The glory of winning Euro 2004 ebbs ever further away for the Hellenics and only three or four players from that squad are likely to make the cut for Otto Rehhagel’s 23 in South Africa. Nevertheless, they remain a nuisance to play against and are dangerous from set pieces and crosses. They have three effective, if not glamorous, forwards in Fanis Gekas (European qualifying’s top scorer), Angelos Charisteas (match winner in the Euro 2004 final) and Georgios Samaras (of Celtic fame). Greece could get out of this group, but those of us looking for attractive football probably don’t want them to.

Group C

England

Fabio Capello has whipped his England squad into fine shape. The team’s play is virtually unrecognizable from the side that crashed out of European Championship qualifying two and a half years ago and much of that is owed to the confidence and discipline the Italian has instilled. England are favourites at odds of 7-1, top scorers in UEFA qualification despite not quite emulating Holland and

Spain’s 100% records. The traditional problems of the left side and how to accommodate their best players have been solved, but there are worries in areas where the English are usually strong. They lack real class in goal and there are question marks over who is good enough to partner John Terry in defence and Wayne Rooney upfront. Rio Ferdinand is favourite for the second centre back berth, but his form and fitness this season have been far from encouraging. There’s no doubt that Rooney is central to England’s hopes of winning the tournament – Capello must already be crossing his fingers for the Man Utd striker’s continuing fitness.

USA

Americans have every right to be more excited than ever before going into this World Cup. Should they emulate their exploits of 2002 and reach the quarter finals, it would be no shock this time. Their astounding performance in last summer’s Confederations Cup won them considerable respect and admiration around the world when they ended Spain’s 35- match world record unbeaten run and took a 2-0 lead into the interval against Brazil (although finally succumbing 3-2 to O Canarinho). Their incredible collective physical fitness makes up for their technical shortcomings on most occasions. Only England look like beating them in this group, but they will approach the opener in Rustenburg with no fear. Donovan for Golden Shoe?

Algeria

The team that deprived us of seeing the silky skills of the Egyptians have plenty of passion and their fans will be proud to watch them in their first World Cup for 24 years. Can they spring another upset like they did against the Pharaohs? In a word, no.

They have some decent players, like Wolfsburg’s Karim Ziani and Bochum’s Antar Yahia (matchwinner with that stunner in Sudan that sank Egypt), but not enough quality in their

squad to make a big impact, their only chance of points is if they play their very best and catch their opponents on an off day.

Slovenia

Russia didn’t heed the warnings to beware the Slovenes and the late away goal scored by Pecnik in Moscow came back to bite them after Slovenia won 1-0 in Maribor to level the aggregate score. They’ve left several decent sides by the wayside on their road to South Africa, but it’s hard to imagine them overcoming England or the USA. They just might get four points and that just might be enough to go through, but they’ve stretched their ‘just mights’ pretty far already.

Group D

Germany

Jogi Löw’s team, despite Russia keeping the pressure on until last September, qualified unbeaten and in convincing style. At 9-1, the bookmakers have placed the Nationalmannschaft at longer odds than England to win the tournament and, for me, they could be well worth a flutter. Miroslav Klose can still poke, head and bang them in and has always stepped up his game at major finals. Michael Ballack’s class and influence will be important, though he will have to exert that without his regular partner in crime – Torsten Frings, a mainstay of the German centre midfield for years, has already been told by Löw that he won’t be going to South Africa. The coach’s tactical nous has been hard to question over the last four years, but he will need his big players to be switched on right from the start after drawing one of the World Cup’s two ‘groups of death’.

Australia

The Socceroos can feel understandably aggrieved at their ill luck in landing such a difficult group, especially after their impressive maiden qualification from the Asian Football Confederation. Guus Hiddink’s reign as manager was a watershed moment for Australia and now, under another Dutch coach in Pim Verbeek, they’re a confident and respected outfit in international football. There are plenty of players who will be familiar to fans of the English Premier League, although with age creeping up on them it could be the last time we see the likes of Schwarzer, Neill, Cahill, Emerton, Kewell and Grella at a World Cup. They can qualify from this group, but they will have to treat each game like a final to do it.

Serbia

Serbia have put a long period of underachievement behind them and finally look as dangerous as they did at the 1998 World Cup. I fancy they could go as far as the semi finals after thumping their way through their group and dumping France into that infamous playoff. Radi Antic is vastly experienced, having managed Real Madrid, Barcelona and taken Atlético Madrid to a Spanish league title and Copa del Rey double (he still spends a lot of the year living in Madrid) and his guidance has been key in making Serbia a solid, consistent unit. They need Deki Stankovic fit to boss the midfield and create things if they’re going to do well.

Ghana

Like fellow West Africans Ivory Coast, Ghana pulled a short straw in terms of opposition for the first round and I don’t expect them to repeat the success of 2006. Nevertheless, plenty of people are backing them to progress and it must be based on the excellent midfield partnership of Muntari and Essien. It was a strong statement of intention for the World Cup that they excused many first team players from last month’s African Cup of Nations in a bid to keep them fresh for the summer. They’re a very good side, I just don’t think they have enough class upfront to take them past their group rivals.

The second half of the World Cup group previews were continued by Garreth Nunn and you can find them here.

Film First: Invictus

If the South African football team watch this movie on the team
bus before their group matches at this summer’s FIFA World Cup, Mexico, Uruguay and France will have something to worry about.

So, has Clint Eastwood made South Africa’s
own sporting equivalent of Braveheart?


After the disappointment of Nelson Mandela not turning up to save the day and unite humans and ‘prawns’ in District 9, it should be a delight to see the real-life miracles achieved by the greatest African leader in reconciliation of the seemingly irreconcilable. Should be…
Mandela is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable characters of the twentieth century. Imprisoned for treason as a terrorist for 27 years by the white Afrikaner-dominated Apartheid regime, he was finally released in 1990 and the ban on his African National Congress party lifted after a long worldwide campaign and international pressure. What had been unthinkable just a few years previously came into being when Mandela was elected president after the first multi-racial elections in South Africa’s history. From 1994 to 1999, he led his country through its transition to full democracy, dismantled the apparatus of racial segregation without the bloodshed thought by most to be inevitable and became influential as an international mediator for peace.

A shining moment of Mandela’s new ‘Rainbow Nation’ was when he handed the World Cup trophy to the white-skinned Afrikaner captain of South Africa’s rugby team, François Pienaar. An unprecedented wave of unity swept through the country joining South Africans in jubilation at the Springboks’ triumph.

The journey was almost as fairy tale-like in sporting terms, too. The South African national rugby union side, known as the Springboks after the rapid little antelope indigenous to south-western Africa, had experienced their own period of isolation since the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement had established the Commonwealth nations’ boycott of sporting contact with South Africa under Apartheid. Apart from four heavily protested-against tours, the Springboks were frozen out of international rugby and excluded from the first two World Cups in 1987 and 1991. Despite having home advantage, South Africa were seeded ninth from a total of 16 teams and their chances were written off by most, the South African sports media being particularly critical of the team’s prospects. The story of triumph in the face of adversity and the uniting of the South African people in support and celebration of their team (considering the Springboks had always been a symbol of hate for black South Africans) would have appeared too ‘comic-book’ were it fiction, but it really happened and Clint Eastwood accepted the challenge of bringing the inspirational story to the big screen.

Eastwood’s dramatization begins with well-kitted up white school kids playing rugby on a lush turf pitch separated from a rabble of barefoot black children engaged in a chaotic game of football on waste ground by fences and a road. Both games are interrupted by the passing of the police escorted Nelson Mandela being released from prison. Some short exposition takes us into Mandela’s presidency and an international rugby match where the new president laments that black South Africans are supporting England against the Springboks.

When the Springbok name, emblem and colours are abolished by the National Sports Council for their connection to the Apartheid era, it’s only Mandela’s personal intervention and appeal to members that attains a reversal of the decision. “Our enemy is no longer the Afrikaner: they are our fellow South Africans … This is no time to celebrate petty revenge. This is the time to build our nation using every single brick available to us, even if that brick comes wrapped in green and gold.”
President Mandela invites Springboks captain François Pienaar to tea, where he talks to the rugby player about leadership. Pienaar later comes to realize the president believes success in the World Cup could be a unique opportunity to unite the peoples of South Africa.

So far unsubstantiated internet claims have been doing the rounds for the last few months that the poem Invictus was never passed to Pienaar by Mandela and that it was in fact an extract from the Theodore Roosevelt speech, The Man In The Arena, which the president gave to the rugby captain. Whether it was the Henley poem, the President Teddy speech or simply Mandela’s or Pienaar’s own words that gave the Springboks an edge of inspiration, one seems appropriate for the great man and the other applies rather well to Clint Eastwood’s efforts.

Invictus fits Mandela’s personal struggle:

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.”

While The Man In The Arena corresponds better to Eastwood on this occasion:

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming…”

The director who won Oscars for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby certainly has a good crack at this one, but the result is a good film, not a great film. Maybe some of the pacing and development of supporting characters and sub-plots are sacrificed to showcase Mandela as interpreted by Morgan Freeman. And, if this is the case, maybe it was worth it – Freeman is magnificent as Nelson Mandela. It’s almost as if he’s possessed by the soul of Mandela; I went into the film thinking each man is too well-known and too instantly-recognisable to suspend disbelief, yet later in the showing caught myself thinking, “Doesn’t Mandela look a lot like Morgan Freeman?”

Matt Damon is workmanlike as François Pienaar, doing everything asked of him, including the accent, very proficiently. Some will complain about a lack of a journey for the character, but how much more would there be to tell from Pienaar’s perspective without inventing a different story? No, what would have enriched the film for me would have been to see more of the character arc of the South African black and white communities, beyond that of Mandela’s security staff.

The other, perhaps more trivial-seeming yet important nevertheless, failure of the film to reach epic status is its score. An epic movie needs an epic soundtrack, but as far as music goes, Eastwood didn’t just drop the ball, he knocked it on and collapsed the resulting scrum (it’s shite).

Making a movie with action from a team sport is a minefield and there are many examples of films whose sporting action scenes detract credibility from them. However, and while they are not quite spectacular, the rugby scenes in Invictus are solid, exciting and are faithful to the laws of the game (maybe with one slight lapse when it appears that François Pienaar/Matt Damon [playing flanker] illegally handles the ball in the scrum). If we look at it as simply a sports movie, it is the best one for years… It just seems to me that the ingredients were there for something even more special.

Film First: Nine, Sherlock Holmes & The Men Who Stare At Goats

Nine

Rob Marshall, who brought Chicago to the big screen, directs this adaptation of the 1982 musical with an illustrious cast of Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren and Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas.
Guido Contini is a famous Italian film director tumbling into a mid-life crisis that plays havoc with his personal life and career. There are 10 days left until the shooting of his new movie begins and he has still not written the script. His wife (Cotillard), his mistress (Cruz), his starlet (Kidman), a fashion journalist (Hudson), his mother (Loren) and the prostitute who awakened his sexuality (Fergie) all pull him in different directions, while his costume designer (Dench) patches him together.

Day-Lewis is reliably excellent as the falling-apart director and Marion Cotillard is being touted for a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the upcoming Oscars. But while these two and Judi Dench excel as one would expect, it’s Penélope Cruz who makes a spectacular impact in her role, nailing funny, sexy and heartbroken. If there are any critics of her acting ability still out there, this performance must surely sweep their last leg from under them. Anyone says she’s not beautiful – please pay attention to her musical number. Fergie, with bigger humps and curves than we’re used to and looking great for it, puts a great shift in as a séductrice and with her vocal work.
Musicals normally make me want to kill myself and I enjoyed Marshall’s movie, so this is either not much like other musicals or it’s something quite special.

Sherlock Holmes

The mummy-daddy of all detective story franchises directed by Guy Ritchie with a six-packed and action-packed Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes? If you’re already thinking ‘no’, then leave this one well alone.

But if you think a Victorian-era James Bond mixed with Batman and Robin sounds ok, give it a whirl. In this interpretation, Holmes must prevent satanic cult leader Lord Blackwood as he rises from the dead from executing his devilish plan to take over the world. Downey’s Holmes is not only rougher around the edges but rougher right through, as happy skelping ruffians with his bare knuckles as solving mysteries. The edge is taken of this by camping up his relationship with Dr Watson with bags of bromantic banter. The casting of Jude Law as Holmes’ sidekick also raises eyebrows, but it was Ritchie’s intention to sex up the character. “I wanted a good-looking Watson. I didn’t want him to be subservient or inferior, but rather a bit of a hero with an equal partnership with Holmes. I believe that’s to a degree what Conan Doyle was really after” the director states. Personally, I thought Watson was meant to be an everyman who acted as a foil to Sherlock Holmes’ genius; a device for Conan Doyle to narrate and show off Holmes’ intellectual superiority as well as a companion. Still, Law brings a little more substance to the character than Watsons have had in previous screen adaptations.

There’s a nice and dirty Victorian London, a good soundtrack and plenty of action for those who like it, but it’s not for fans of Conan Doyle’s work.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

Journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) goes to Iraq after his wife runs off with his one-armed editor. There he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who claims to be a psychic soldier for the US military, in a unit called the New Earth Army. He describes his group as “Jedi Warriors”, able to walk through walls and read minds, and later disclosing he can even stop a goat’s heart by simply staring at the animal. When Wilton learns that Cassady is to start a mission to find his missing ex-commander, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), he asks to follow the eccentric soldier. Wilton and Cassady find the now alcoholic ex-officer working for ‘evil genius’ Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), another former New Earth Army soldier, at a private research camp and Wilton’s adventure becomes weirder than he could ever have imagined.
Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and George Clooney (taking a break from his full time job selling coffee) are a promising cast for any movie. However, the film has garnered a mixture of positive and critical reviews, with some accusing fingers pointing at the directing and scriptwriting. Some of the criticism towards Grant Heslov’s directing seems a frustration due to expecting a more ‘Coen Brothers’ style. Heslov’s production company partner Clooney does perhaps come close in the hamming-up stakes to his role as Everett in the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? and his performance is undeniably excellent. I was happy with the other three co-stars, but if you expect Jeff Bridges to be The Dude from The Big Lebowski, Kevin Spacey to produce some American Beauty or Ewan McGregor to be anything but the straight man, you’ll be disappointed.
There are two ways of enjoying it: realize it actually isn’t all true and isn’t especially clever, or light up a spliff. If you want to learn something about psychic warfare, watch a documentary.

Film First: Bad Lieutenant & Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Nicolas Cage is an actor who divides people, but his latest incarnation as the more and more unhinged title role in Bad Lieutenant is more likely to reconcile those who enjoyed Cage Face/Off with fans of Cage Adaptation than anything else in his filmography. Despite taking its name and general premise from 1992’s Bad Lieutenant with Harvey Keitel as the wickedly immoral cop, Port of Call New Orleans’ director Werner Herzog maintains his film, “has nothing to do with it” and could never be considered a remake of its New York-based namesake.

Terrence McDonagh (Cage) starts as a good cop who is awarded for bravery during Hurricane Katrina and promoted to the rank of lieutenant. The spinal injury he sustains at this time, however, leaves him suffering from chronic back pain and he develops an addiction to his prescription painkillers. He abandons all sense of morality and plunges ever further into trouble as he starts ingesting any illegal drugs he can swipe or confiscate, claiming sexual favours, pulling his gun out at old dears, working up debts with dangerous people and mixing with gangsters. McDonagh’s visions of non-existent reptiles confirm our suspicions that we’re descending into a bad trip. But this bad trip is also a great journey for our antihero and watching McDonagh’s sins is so compelling that you’ll find it hard not to forgive Cage for some of his past cinematographic transgressions.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Animated kids’ movies have been all but been replaced in the 21st Century with animated kids’ movies that have enough adult references to make them fun for the accompanying adult. Inevitably, however, the rouse is shattered upon purchase of the DVD through the tendency of children to want to revisit their favourite movies at least twice every weekend. Nevertheless, this one has enough laughs, craziness and lampooning of disaster movies to have me braving a cinema full of Attention Deficit Disorder-suffering ten-year-olds (they’re all like that nowadays).

The hero of the story is Flint Lockwood, an inventor since childhood from a small island off the Atlantic Coast of the USA called Swallow Falls. His flawed inventions include spray-on shoes (good, but you can’t get them off), ratbirds (why?) and a monkey thought translator for his monkey, Steve (most of the time he thinks, “Steve!” and sometimes, “Gummy Bears!” – perhaps gives us an insight into what it would be like if we understood Chewbacca).

Flint’s breakthrough invention is a machine which turns water into food and, once it gets lodged in the clouds, it turns the island’s rain into cheeseburgers. Flint is immediately a celebrity and receives all manner of requests for different types of food, but he overloads the machine and things go wrong.

For me, the film was on for five stars until around 55 minutes when what could have been a fantasy adventure with real-world applicability turned into imposed, moralizing allegory for environmental destruction and climate change. Surreal that it was the voice of Mr T (as bouncy cop Officer Earl) who should speak the words, “It was all of our fault”. Where have we heard that before? Climate change? Credit crunch? Worldwide recession? Everyone’s fault, we’re all to blame. Yeah, am I watching CNN?
But it’s pointless to pick – if we did, the whole thing would come apart. I mean, the world-changing invention turns rain into food. So where it rains a lot, people get obese and where it doesn’t, Africa for example, people have nothing to eat. Revolutionary.

If I had kids, I’d turn it off after 55 minutes and tell them everyone died in the “Aporkalypse”. But I don’t, so I’ll happily watch the gorgeous animation and laugh at the funny bits, because there are plenty of them.