Albonian Hustle

"Government Plumbers Must Do Their Best For Our People"

Welcome to a bonus Match Day special edition, thanks to having "the" plumbers in, and the day of work that has necessitated. Not sure what exactly they're doing, but they're making a lot of noise and talking about "the bizzies" a lot - and they've only been here ten minutes. Great bunch of lads.
There was space allocated for an intended summary of that Walter Mitty film which I was scheduled to see yesterday; however Woolton Picture House, praised here before Christmas sullied its stellar rating somewhat by changing its scheduling to a 'kids club' matinee screening of Frozen instead.

"Another much loved comedian, Lenny used to be good friends with a lot of the players back in the days of Laurie Cunningham and Cyrille Regis. More recently in his Chef sitcom-type-programme, he delivered a line along the lines "I'm 35...I like shopping, and sex...and I support West Bromwich Albion". Lenny also appeared in a drama documentary about a drugs rehab centre that ran a football team, based on a team from Glasgow but set in Dudley, presumably to incorporate Lenny and his accent. There's a fine line in it when Lenny's footballing ability is questioned, and he responds with "Oy, I had trials with the Albion, me". Glynis Wright, of Grorty Dick fame, claims that she once shared a car with Lenny on the way to an FA Cup game at Everton"

With a bit of space to fill, I’ve decided against a write-up of the general Woolton/Gatecare area (although a 'shout out' to The Black Bull, which was a highly commendable Sunday pub, replete with fireside seats) in favour of a bit more waffle via a reprieved feature, originally ruled-out due to the games within its remit not being a particularly noteworthy batch on this occaision.

Off to The Hawthorns tonight then, where my fine-toothcomb, eagle-eyed tactical insight is: I hope we change kit. By my calculations, previous visits there have produced this formula:

Change Kit P4 W3 L1
Blue P3 L3 (no goals scored)

So the 'key man' tonight could well be Jimmy Martin. I always wonder how teams do come to these decisions - and it must be said that there has been a recent influx of totally unnecessary kit changes in the last two seasons or so, so I presume there has been some regulatory easing in that department. I find it most disagreeable - Hull at Newcastle is one that sticks in my craw, changing to grey from orange against a team in black and white?

Pembridge was alright actually

Sunny spring of 2003 saw a 2-1 win for the black-clad Blues in a horrible scrappy game with three terrible goals - they went ahead through a Brent Hass penalty, we went ahead by half-time through Russell Hoult: in the first instance punching a corner into his own net, then missing a big hoof of a cross so that Rooney, in his first real run of starts, could cleverly set-up Kevin Campbell, in his last real run of starts, to poke home.

Arteta, on loan at the time, got booted everywhere in this one

The next encounter was at a similar time of the season two years later (when there are gaps like this, it’s because West Brom went down, obviously) by which time 'Super' Kev was lining up for the Baggies. I would have to admit to not really appreciating Campbell when he was at Everton, mainly down to not going during his initial burst of 9 goals in 8 games when he arrived on loan - but his overall record of 51 in 139 starts, in some down-right rank line-ups is pretty decent, it was just a shame we made the least-modern, most anti-soccernomics decision ever to give him a club-record five year deal when he was already turned 30 and had just come back from a very serious injury.

When you look at the decisions the board have made in more recent times, in a broad sense, they haven’t made many such glaring errors - in fact if you were a dispassionate observer, you might actually conclude that Bill Kenwright saw the over-sentimental mistake for what it was and reluctantly realised things had to be managed more ruthlessly in future.

Anyway, this game was horrible, one where we just didn’t turn up when a win would have virtually sealed 4th place, and lost 0-1 to a Zoltan Gera header.

Oh, shurrup Phil. And I bet Davies played really well in this one...

If that was bad, the follow-up 6 months or so later must qualify of one the nadirs of the whole Moyes era, an unaccountable 0-4 thrashing by a dreadful side who were comfortably relegated despite the morale boost of staying up at the end of 2004/05. After grinding out 3 solid results with one method, we decided to give that a good ol' shake up here to recall Kilbane and Bent and give a performance of utter ineptitude to go down to what was, at that point, our 14th loss in run of 19 disastrous games. Watched in a pub (not the Smugglers or Palatine) in Morecambe, amid undisguised glee and amusment from the locals to compound matters.

I enjoyed The Yak

We were in a similarly shaky pickle when West Brom next got round to getting promoted and we were the first visitors to the Hawthorns in 2008 when a dreadful summer of inactivity resulted in James Baxter and Jack Rodwell both starting. This was a really good win, the match swung by James Vaughan coming on as sub, which preceded nice goals from Osman and Yakubu in front of an enormous away support.

Dinyar just know that was going to happen?

Another end of season journey in 2011 ended in a really irritating but ultimately irrelevant 0-1 defeat, with Bilyaletdinov fairly surprisingly picking up his second (and sadly last) straight red card of his underwhelming, and personally upsetting to me, Everton tenure.

The morning after the Robert Redford room-clearing love-in

We then sneaked a truly abominable New Year's Day encounter (Heitinga and Neville were our central midfield) with a suitably scruffy snatched winner by Victor Anichebe. It doesn't look like Big Vic will be involved tonight (could have just guessed that, but having checked he hasn't appeared since 7th December) to add to his 1 goal in 10 appearances since his £6m move.

Goal. The other one, not by Long. 

Then last season, we lost 0-2 in what was a good game (we would have won if we'd scored first, and Fellaini missed a sitter before me-proclaimed Signing Of The Decade Shane Long scored up the other end). Having seen both that match and Liverpool get beat 0-3 there a couple of weeks beforehand, it wasn’t a surprise that they went on to have a decent season. But Steve Clarke's signings this summer seemed to be a pretty unsuccessful random bunch of picks (see above), although getting rid of him before the festive clutch of games seemed unwise.

The Jarg Rorfa? Pepe Mel (apparently)

All of which means we're in a similar situation to last season, when we went to Southampton on a Monday night, with them having just appointed a new snazzy foreign manager. We really struggled there, particularly first half, and were lucky to get a 0-0 out of it, albeit with some missed chances to get a goal later on. I have a slight niggle that we might be a bit off again tonight, and that we might try to be a bit too clever in trying to negotiate three very different away games in eight days. But, given the lack of goals threat from West Brom, I can see us being unconvincingly and tenuously in control throughout: nicking it 1-0, perhaps with a free-kick or penalty by Baines.

Poster everyone must have seen about 100 times already

This is one I did get to see without a family-friendly animation being hastily rescheduled to thwart my cinematic enjoyment and then pretentious review thereof. And enjoy it I most certainly did. And prattle on about I most certainly will.

One of the main things I was had in mind to say as a disclaimer on how much I liked this was that, even whilst finding it one of the best films of maybe the last five years or so, I didnt get overly caught up in the plot. That is because, to be honest, I tend not to: when we watch a box-set, I sometimes forget there is even the elemnt of ‘whodunit’ or possibilities over ‘what will happen next?’. I watch (and fro that matter, read books too) more in a mindset of ‘this is a good character’ and ‘thats a well crafted scene’, and get involved that way – more ‘how will they have x react to that happening?’ than ‘why has that just happened’.

So, it made a lot of sense when I saw this quote from the director David Russell, after Christian Bale warned him that allowing the actors to improvise so much in earlier scenes might cause problems with the story later on:

"Christian, I hate plots. I am all about characters, that's it."

Loves it the big fella

And the characters in American Hustle are exemplary, excellently written and watchable throughout. I found Bale’s Irving absolutely hilarious, although I’m not sure he was intended/written quite as comically In an odd way (as on the face of it there’s nowhere near the depth to the character) I think he put just as much into ‘being’ Irving as he did into his roles in American Psycho, The Mechanist etc.

Everything he does is totally believable (maybe his character, on a basic level, has done well to get into both Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams – although his wardrobe is outstanding, so...), with a highlight for me being when he’s loses himself and ends up artlessly and innocently caught-up in enjoying his unexpected night out and sing-along with the mayor and his mates.

Showing a totally different side, he conveys Irving’s nervousness, caution and sense of being out of his depth and events running out of control in the back-room deal-making scene with Robert De Niro brilliantly (by hardly saying or doing anything other than look sweaty and worried).

Two top suits

And there is a scene near the end that made me howl ‘on me bill’ in the cinema, Bradley Cooper’s Richie character has eventually managed to book out a huge area of a hotel as the sting operation moves towards a climax. In a crucial stage for everyone, in an incredibly tense situation, Richie tells him excitedly “I’ve hired the whole top two floors! Can you believe that, two whole floors to ourselves?!” He replies “Really, two whole floors?” in the most dead-bat, balloon-bursting, ‘not arsed lad’ way.

What the whole movie put me most in mind of above all was a top-end WWE storyline. I’m sure pretty much every director would recoil from that in horror, but I mean it here as a big compliment. Partly that impression might have crystallised in my mind because there’s almost no actual sex scenes or violence in the film, despite both being key components, as was the case really even in the heyday of wrestling. At its most basic level: a couple of heels get caught up in a complicated situation with a babyface who has a good winning run and looks to have won over the girl, then gets screwed over at the end with a ‘they were in cahoots all along king!’ pay-off. Solid gimmick.

There’s also something similar – and hugely enjoyable - in the fact that everyone in this movie is clearly 100% acting – there’s no sense that they’re ‘using personal experience’ or anything- they’re doing quite OTT, bordering on unreal, characters and giving them everything they’ve got.

One scene, where Cooper is on the brink of capitulating fully and having sex with Amy Adams on her table, only to do a deep breath, ‘pull himself together’, think better of it and leave, particularly left that impression on me.

To be clear though, this is in some ways a much more substantial piece of work than I may have implied by that. At 138 mins, I could see why Cat said it was maybe a bit too long, as the storyline does dwindle and stagnate a bit in the middle – but I prefer that to bits being rushed through. If you’ve come up with these characters and got such good actors in to play them so believably, you may as well err on the side of indulgence rather than under-using them, in my opinion.

Again, winning attire

Obviously this is the same director as Silver Linings Playbook, which is another terrific film, and three of the actors are used in both.

It’s long been a watchword of min that I don’t like Bradley Cooper. These being the only two films I’ve seen him in, he is very good in both, playing fairly different personas and putting in interesting and believable performances. That said, I still can’t fully warm to him, and he’ll never be one where I think ‘oh, he’s in that, I’ll give it a go’, but he definitely adds to this one and provides a great counterpoint for Bale to seethe and fume at.

Smashing coat/hat combo

Although he’s only in one scene, it’s another appearance from de Niro in which he adds to instead of diminishing his oeuvre. The director seems to ‘get’ him : I was worried in SLP that he was going to get caught-up in a cringe-worthy last-second, sudden-death, drop-kick mega-score to win his bet – but he didn’t he came out on top in a refreshingly flat, no frills way. And here he brings a calmness and gravitas to the one scene he’s in which is enough to give it a totally different feel to the pop-culture, things going at crazy angles world outside that dingy backroom.

The New Statesman review, the only one I’d read before seeing the film, was a tad grudging and seemed to be saying it was a bit unsure what the actual point/meaning of the film was. It was right though in saying that Jennifer Lawrence’s casting as a crazy, stay at home wife who shakes things up unpredictably and dangerously every time she goes out is ‘inspired’. Apart from the first scene she’s in (saying things like ‘come to mommy’ to Bale, and it not ringing true at all) she’s absolutely dazzlingly brilliant.

In fact I think the NS, in describing parts of it as “delivered from the pages of a cheap pulp novel” and “in part caper comedy” it was on the same lines as I was with my wrestling comparison, but they were a bit less glad to find that overlap and a bit more unsure of whether it was a good thing. They wondered “But how real is American Hustle?” – I decided early on it was not real at all, but entirely the better for that and as pure entertainment thoroughly enjoyable throughout. 4/5