Z/Web

Director: George Miller

For some reason I’d never seen this film, the first of the series. Terrific! Much smaller and better than the sequels, this has fast action and good shoot-em-up style, but with some thoughtful story-telling. Max is a cop who’s out for revenge after hoodlums murder his wife and child. Similar to Mel Gibson’s recent Payback, but not as clever.

Velez is one of my favorite Argentinian teams, simply because their goalkeeper, Chilavert, is so cool. In this game he started them off with a goal in just the second minute, when his free kick was blocked by the keeper but a teammate put the rebound away. Then San Lorezno’s keeper was red-carded, so they played down a man. Unfortunately, Velez never took advantage, so the game went down to the wire. With just minutes left, San Lorenzo peppered Chilavert with shots, but self-acclaimed “best goalkeeper in the world” proved his merit and stopped them all (including a couple jaw-droppers). Great game!

Finally, the Serie A is back! I love Italian soccer, though defense-minded Juventus isn’t my favorite team. They’ve been struggling in pre-season play, however, and promoted club Napoli went ahead with a goal towards the end of the first half. Juventus seemed to be struggling, but in the second half, Napoli was overconfident and didn’t attack, and soon Juve tied things up. Napoli fell apart then, and Juventus moved ahead with a goal by Del Piero, and the game finished 2-1 Juventus.

Light romance about a guy who’s so bad at proposing his girlfriend turns him down; then his grandfather dies and leaves him $100 million, but only on the condition that he gets married by his 30th birthday, which happens to be the next day. A few good lines, occasional biting satire, but generally silly and predictable, and not even that romantic. Harmless.

A word about the Olympic coverage. I’m a big Olympics fan, but I don’t remember watching much of Atlanta. This year, despite the lame delayed coverage and NBC’s ceaseless interruptions for commercials, I’ve watched a great deal more than usual. Why? It’s simple: for the first time, they showed Olympic soccer. At Atlanta, they didn’t televise any, mens or womens. As I watched Olympic soccer, I became more interested in the Olympics in general, and I ended up watching other events. NBC or whoever broadcasts the Olympics ought to remember that: part of what makes the Olympics interesting is the variety of sports, especially sports we don’t regularly get to see. I was really hoping I’d get to see table tennis coverage, but sadly none of that was shown. Many other events received on minimal coverage (such as highlight packages). Hopefully by the next Olympics we’ll be able to pick and choose the events we want to see on the Internet, and not have to rely upon an unreliable network.

Now, as to the coverage itself, it was pretty bad. In the past I enjoyed the bios of athletes and documentaries on the area, but that was because the event was live and there were delays and waiting periods. But this time, knowning the event had already happened 18 hours earlier, there was no excuse. The filler material was only thrown in to artificially increase the drama and milk the event for more commercials. Last night I recorded five hours of Olympic coverage and watched it in less than an hour by fast forwarding through all the nonsense. That’s insane.

Finally, a comment on the Internet. NBC doesn’t have a clue. They ceaseless promoted their lame website throughout the Olympics, but if you went to the website, what did you see? The final results before the action was televised! Now that’s just sheer stupidity. No wonder the ratings have been horrible.