Batman and cricket

Wiseman has been looking at my monthly website stats, and has pointed out that his page is the most popular of the character pages. I would reply that this is because I haven’t put anyone interesting on there yet, but it seems a little harsh.

Had an extensive cinematographic experience this week. That is, I watched two DVDs – following up Batman Begins on Monday night with Blue (as in Trois Couleurs: Bleu) on Tuesday. I was expecting to enjoy the latter more, ambitiously fancying myself as one of the cognoscenti in these matters, and occasionally in the past having found arthouse cinema (what little I’ve seen of it) extremely enjoyable/moving/disturbing (Talk to Her, for example).

What actually happened was I found Batman Begins brilliant, and Blue just weird. I began to wonder if the experience was analogous to how a cup of coffee with my usual one sugar tastes somehow less sweet when drunk after munching my way through several pieces of chocolate cake.

Anyway, I have shelved my aspirations to join the cognoscenti for the moment, and can’t wait for the sequel to Batman Begins. There’s something very appealing about films which feature men with limitless money getting to build Bat Caves and cavort around a city in costume beating up baddies. With gadgets. I suspect this may be a bloke thing.

As I write, the England team are aboard a plane bound for Sydney, as the Ashes tour finally gets underway. I am beginning to fret about England’s chances in the series. It strikes me that their bowling unit, which was so devastating in the last series, is creaking at the seams. Steve Harmison, who can destroy the best batsmen in the world when it suits him, has been spraying his deliveries around like water from an unsecured hosepipe with the tap on full. Flintoff, who is as good as any bowler in the world (and better than most) on his day, hasn’t bowled an extended spell since the early summer. He got to bowl a few overs in India during England’s final game in the Champion’s Trophy, but that hardly counts for much, and unless he gets some serious overs in during England’s warmup games, he’s going to go into the First Test pretty rusty. Matthew Hoggard is not expected to prosper as much as he does under home conditions (truer pitches and a different make of cricket ball which will not swing as much). However, it’s worth remembering that some of his best performances in an England shirt have been overseas – in New Zealand, South Africa and India. And as Hoggy himself said only today – “At the end of the day, it’s just a red thing that you wang down the field and hope to land in the right areas.” Brilliant.

My own feeling is that Sajid Mahmood, until now a bit hot and cold, especially as regards accuracy, could be a revelation on fast bouncy Australian pitches. And Monty Panesar will, I think, be very effective. So all is not lost. Not yet, anyway. Plenty of time for more hand-wringing before 23 November, mind…

13 thoughts on “Batman and cricket”

  1. Batman was good wasn’t it? It’s good when Hollywood (by way of Blighty – thanks Chris Nolan) does comics justice. I can but hope that someone does an Alan Moore justice at some point. But I digress.

    The Batman sequel looks good and Batman has his enemy in the form of Heath Ledger as The Joker. If the film-makers go for a Frank Miller Joker as opposed to the cross dressing Goth that Tim Burton presented, it should be A Good Film.

    J

  2. Didn’t have you pegged as an Almodóvar fan. Hable Con Ella is one of my favourite films.

    oh, and just to live up to my profile, you’ve done it again with the wiseman link. It’s relative so it points to the wrong place if you’re not on the front page. You should really learn from your mistakes Andrew.

    also, that’s a pretty mean profile for the lovely Jenny. Yes she did something a bit naughty (maybe with a bit of prompting from me) but I don’t think she deserves that. After all you were able to delete the comment but she can’t change the profile. Maybe a profile for “Nice Jenny” would balance it up a bit.

  3. Yeah, yeah, the link. Didn’t work when I put in the full URL path initially. Now it does. Am considering avoiding links from the main text altogether…

  4. Quinn, reading your blog gives me an idea of how it must be for most people reading my blog. I read with interest all the stuff about your week, the movies you’ve watched, random blah blah blah stuff, all of which I love and then I just scroll straight through all the cricket stuff, none of which I understand. Repeat the last sentence for my blog but search and replace “cricket” with “mac”.

  5. Of course, now I feel I must add another comment after having read my newly added profile. Glad to see the last comment fitted the profile nicely.

  6. Alyn, I have no evidence to suggest you’re alone in your disinterest in my cricketing musings, I think they’re more for my benefit than anyone else’s really. And for the record, I love reading the geeky stuff on your blog. I daresay there are people who skim over it, but don’t let that stop you writing about it mate, I’m all agog

  7. Your stats acutally have my page as the singualry most popular page on your WHOLE site. Though I fear for my popularity should Friendly get his desired “photo oppertunity” published.

  8. So Wiseman’s page is the most popular on the WHOLE site?
    Bearing in mind what Andrew said, “I would reply that this is because I haven’t put anyone interesting on there yet, but it seems a little harsh.”, does that mean that he hasn’t put anything interesting on here yet? Or is that a little harsh?

  9. wow. Who’s the nasty one?! – Poor Jen.
    I think you should be fretting about England’s chances in the Ashes series. I also think you should be a little more concerned about how you’re going to afford all the zinc you’ll need to survive in the Australian sun watching all that cricket.

    Now.. as for Batman begins – I am curious as to whether you boys were also totally confused about where Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes’ character) was coming from in her final “we can’t be together” rant..?

    Jody – Heath Ledger as the Joker? -Ah Heath… yet another good thing about Australia. (psyching myself up for my return)

  10. Very pleased to read you have been watching french films – they are the best sort! 🙂 I spent many an evening last year doing just that – I called it “studying”

  11. Mr lesQuinn. Such good time is had when reading of your great exploits in the name of God, music, Empire Biscuits, Macs and Crochet. Sorry, Cricket.

    It’s a good thing you are going over to enjoy the Ashes. A very good thing. Good one, mate. (get used to that).

    So I do miss your chat and appreciate being able to get a dose of Quinn over the web.

    Thanks for being considerate and sharing your mental noodling with us.

    Now, any chance of a character page (:-|)?

  12. On a slight tangent, I’d recommend people go see Batman director Christopher Nolan’s new film “The Prestige”.

    Wonderful film-making for grown-ups.

    J

  13. oh yeah, the comment is meant to relate to the post topic…

    i agree that BatBegins is great. i hear the Msr Nolan’s “The Prestige”is good as well. not found/made time to see anything at the pics…since Episode III. That’s far too long.

    less than a week – packed yet?

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