The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Thursday, May 17

Hi, all!

Let’s get to it, since I’m starting it much later than I want to and still have many other things I need to do.

Ramble of the Day

A few weeks ago, my mom saw the trailer for Action Point, a movie directed by Tim Kirkby starring Johnny Knoxville. According to IMDb, it’s about a “daredevil [who] designs and operates his own theme park with his friends.” Here is said trailer.

Looks awful, right? My mom agreed, of course, but had a much stronger reaction. To be fairly honest with you all, she was insulted by this trailer. In the span of around two hours, she continued mentioned how “stupid” she found the concept of “the Grandpa movie,” scrunching up her face and being cut off by her children (myself included) before she could continue. The first time we cut her off, we were in agreement at how terrible it really seemed with additional commentary about Knoxville’s brand of films. However, the next time she mentioned it, we just kept talking about how much this movie trailer upset her. It was a little bit funny.

Eventually, though, I asked myself the question: What film offends me? I’d ask what movie trailer offends me, but I am not offended by movie trailers. With some help, I quickly came to an answer: La La Land.

I probably would have rambled about this movie if I was the Hoddle writer when I saw it last year. Thankfully, I’m starting to get less angry at the thought of it, but that movie infuriated me for several months. I will try to keep my complaints concise, but here they are in bullet form because I have convinced myself that is the way to limit myself.

• The characters are developed terribly. Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian is clearly an attempt to be charming, but comes of like the spiritual cousin of the annoying protagonist of director Damien Chazelle’s claim to fame film, Whiplash. Emma Stone’s Mia has little substance to her, has the same tropes every female character in her 20s has in Hollywood films, and sucks in all of Sebastian’s mansplaining without question.
• Every jazz expert on Planet Earth, it seems, has deemed self-proclaimed jazz savior Sebastian the absolute opposite of actual modern jazz musicians who want to see the genre bettered. It is very awkward to have to this guy spend the entire movie claiming he's an expert in it?
• There is nothing that is particularly likable or romantic about this love story, which is fine except when that’s the point of the movie.
• The only vaguely interesting part of the film in terms of plot and individual technical elements is when there’s friction between the two leads.
• Ryan Gosling cannot dance and is an unconvincing piano player.
• Emma Stone’s body language is very weird the entire time.
• Chazelle’s direction is strange. Several musical numbers look like they’re directed by commercials, while other parts look like he’s attempting to pay tribute to his favorite musicals by copying direction. This creates a very strange dynamic when he actually tries to do different and interesting things with the direction in later parts of the film that is not cohesive.
• Finally, the filmmakers went around claiming it was brave of them to attempt to make this film when there is nothing particularly brave about writing the love story of a heterosexual white couple in Hollywood even if you add song and dance to the formula.

I had more joy than I’d like to admit when those Oscars were taken out of their hands and given to the producers behind Moonlight, a film that more than deserved the prize. What a fate!

So, uh, that turned out longer than I expected. I hate this movie, and I bet I hate it more than my mom hates the Action Point trailer.

tl;dr: Do you want to talk about movies you despise?

Links of the Day

Sam Allardyce is out at Everton, and David Moyes no longer has a job at West Ham.

UEFA members are not happy with the plans to revamp the Club World Cup.

Elton John’s seven-year-old son has joined the Watford academy.

Today’s longer read: Chris Ballard catches up with Jurgen Klinsmann more than a year after being fired from his job with the U.S. men’s national team for Sports Illustrated