Z/Web

What a terrific game! I missed the first leg of this series as the schedule was changed at last minute, so I didn’t get to see Houston win their home match 2-0. Unfortunately, this second leg was at high-altitude in Mexico in front of a packed stadium of soccer-crazy home fans. Houston are still in pre-season (the new MLS season starts on Saturday) and rusty, while Pachuca is in mid-season and firing on all cylinders. Houston got off to a bad start, surrendering a goal just 3.5 minutes in; but the replay showed he goal was offside and shouldn’t have counted. That encouraged Pachuca who attacked even more, and by fifteen in Pachua were up 2-0 after Craig Waibel tripped a player in the box and the ref called a penalty kick. But Houston started playing better after that, holding off Pachuca until the second half, when Houston began to play much better and actually put together some attacking runs. When Ching and DeRossario combined to get the ball to an open Brian Mullan, he didn’t disappoint, scoring to give Houston the aggregate lead. But it was too much to hope for, as shortly thereafter, the ref gave Pachuca another penalty, this time on a phantom foul (there was no contact). But Houston came right back with a terrific headed goal from Ching, and as the clock wound down it really looked like Houston might advance to the finals. The Pachuca fans were crushed, but their team was resillient, keeping up the tremendous pressure and scoring with just a few minutes left in the game. Now it was 4-4 on aggregat (combined score between the two games). That led to 30 minutes of overtime and an exhausted Houston could hardly walk, let alone run. But somehow they kept in going and DeRo had probably the best chance of the entire game with a point-black header that was miraculously saved one-handed by the diving Pachuca keeper. Then more controversy as the ref didn’t blow the whistle at the overtime half-way mark, but allowed Pachuca one more opportunity on goal. As the Houston players dropped off, the player took a wild shot from long range. Everyone — even the Mexicans, I think — expected one of those “row Z” shots that miss the goal by a mile. Instead the rocket curled right into the top corner not even giving Houston keeper Zach Wells a chance. Wow. Nice game winner. Unfortunately Houston couldn’t score in the second half, though they had a couple chances and nearly tied it on a Ching header. In the end, I can’t say either team didn’t deserve to advance. This was a game worthy of the final.

Going in I figured this would either be really good or really, really bad. Given the sensational premise — the Old Testament plagues happening again — I figured there was no way it could be just mediocre. Well, the producers figured out a way. Oddly, though I wanted to totally hate this, I didn’t. Most likely that’s just the optimist in me seeing some potential. For instance, the main character’s a former ordained missionary who, after the loss of her family, has turned her back on God and is now a scientist who travels the world disproving miracles. Lots of potential there. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t really develop the idea, except during character setup and toward the end, when the woman has the expected “revelation.” I also liked some aspects of the conclusion — things are wrapped up to sort of make sense. But throughout the film things make so little sense that by the time the “mystery” is revealed you are long past caring. The real problem with the film is that, like so many pseudo religious films, it just makes up its own mythology, and like most invented mythology, it just sucks. It makes no sense and just feels fake. Real mythology is invented gradually, over a long period of time, and thus has a sense of truth at its core. In this case, after assaulting us with lectures on the Old Testaments ten plagues, the film suddenly pulls out some ridiculous “pre-Christ” prophecy (no source given, but hey, the priest’s got some medieval-looking books to read from). Even stupider, the “rational” scientist woman, who can’t explain away the plagues she’s investigating, suddenly accepts this prophecy as truth and is going to act on it. Crazy! Of course the film has more depths to plumb, so it goes further into idiocy by never really explaining the plagues. I mean, their source is revealed, but there’s little logic as to why plagues, in particular. Any other kind of supernatural phenomena would have worked just as well — except that wouldn’t have been a movie-selling gimmick. Okay, though it’s not the worst movie of all time, it’s pretty terrible and I wouldn’t recommend it to a lobotomized yak. But like I said, for some reason, I didn’t totally hate it. Very odd.