Your Guide to This Year's Movie Sequels

Spider-Man 3
Oh my god did this suck. I do plan to address how much it sucked in greater detail, I just can't be bothered right now.

28 Days Later
There was a fair bit of quality work that went into the original film, and I'll admit to liking Cillian Murphy, Christopher “don't call me Ian” Eccleston, and Brendan Gleeson quite a bit. It was a remarkable achievement to make a film like that for pennies, free from a lot of commercial restraints, and there were some flickering, brilliant moments, like Jim on his back catching sight of the plane, or wide-eyed Hannah's red dress disappearing into the dark. It was a bit too slow and this crashed me out of the film too often, which was full of long waits in between shit jumping out at you and too many endings, and the occasional homage to Romero felt more forced than meaningful. I have some reservations about continuing that into a new story with Robert Carlyle and some kid with a silly haircut, and wonder if Danny Boyle's really got anywhere farther to go with this story. On the other hand, Harold Perrineau was so fantastic as the narrator on “Oz”, and he so desperately tried to single-handedly lift Romeo + Juliet to be something worthwhile, so I may check it out at the dollar theater to see what he's up to in this movie.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
I don't care if I'm the only person who understood what was going on in Dead Man's Chest, I'm still claiming this movie is going to be an epic conclusion to the grandest tale ever based on a Disneyland ride. I will be running a review session for anybody who needs to catch up, reading list to be distributed later.

The Bourne Ultimatum
I was a big fan of The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, which are both fabulous espionage thrillers. The first two films obviously strained the limits of the emotional maturity of the audiences I saw them with, but the fact that they were made for adults is another reason I'm excited about The Bourne Ultimatum. I really enjoy Matt Damon as the poker faced Jason Bourne, because he's able to capture this split identity of the amnesiac blank canvas with some essential sense of character pushing up from underneath in his eyes and the occasional grin he allows himself. Julie Meadows is back for this one again, and in her brief appearance in The Bourne Supremacy is part of what's so captivating about our protagonist, we follow the sympathetic, tender amnesiac Bourne, but Julie Meadows with just a brief appearance captures the crippling terror he inspires in the people who actually know what he's capable of, and Joan Allen showed enough as an antagonist that I really want to see what happens when Bourne comes back after her. There are other fabulously talented people joining the series as well, including David Strathairn and the always remarkable Paddy Considine, who I raved about at length in Dead Man's Shoes, and that's certainly more than enough reason to see it.

Live Free or Die Hard
While I can't claim to have high hopes for this film, which brings back John McClane after a decade in the wilderness and twenty years of imitators taking the genre so far into excess and teaming him up with the “I'm a Mac” guy, I will still see it. There is some charm to Bruce Willis as the poor guy having a rough day getting tangled in the multi-layer plot of a German mastermind. It's a simple story, the guy who really just wants to sleep off the jetlag and hang-over tries to wrap his head around a horrible situation, and yet part of the fun is that nothing is actually quite what it initially seems. It's worth a chance, even though the other Die Hard film with nobody of the caliber of Alan Rickman, or Jeremy Irons to be delightfully mischievous, or Samuel L. Jackson as an irritated sidekick, turned out to be somewhat forgettable. That's what I would predict for Die Hard 4.0, but of course I'll have further information when I succumb to curiosity and see it anyways.

Shrek the Third
I loved the original Shrek, and while the sequel was a bit pedestrian, I did find some things to really enjoy about it. Mainly Puss'n'Boots, because an ex-girlfriend used to accuse me of manipulating her by making big watery lil' lost puppy dog eyes at her. So I'll see it, even if I'm not too excited about it.

Day Watch
Ночной дозор came out three years ago and became the highest grossing film in Russian cinema history, which given the rapid change in Russia's fortunes may have put it up against the suspiciously high receipts reported by the Brezhnev era Ministry of Information for Happy Worker Crushes Moose and Squirrel for Glory of Supreme Soviet. To see something like Nightwatch from the balcony of The Uptown was pretty cool, to see a mainstream success aimed at the video game generation but out of a really different film culture, all filmed in the real Moscow instead of the usual establishing shot of the Kremlin followed by scenes filmed in back alleys of Toronto with discarded Molson cans everywhere, eh. I was absolutely hooked, and I have to know how this horror epic ends... actually Nightwatch had me when they animated the subtitles as part of the film's overall sense of visual style, which used CGI and effects expertly to create this shocking intrusion of the supernatural into the dirty grind of everyday Moscow, with none of the excess of certain tedious superhero movies. So yeah, I'll be at Day Watch, along with anybody I can drag with me.

Hostel II
Okay, I've been known to watch some serious crap, but the original Hostel was really a chore. The hour of girls taking their tops off was apparently supposed to give me time to bond with the horny victims, but it really didn't. Apparently the sequel won't take so much time exploring the countryside before getting to the torture, and Quentin Tarantino has promised us this film will “delve deeper into the organization”, which actually sort of has to be more interesting than three dumbasses wandering about Amsterdam looking to score cheap weed and work up their nerve to approach prostitutes. The first one was like what you always get when somebody tries to make a Tarantino movie, an incredibly long set-up that Tarantino sustains with sharp dialogue, and the amateurs try to sustain by waving breasts in the audience's face while hissing “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” I may wait for the unrated DVD so I have the luxury of the fast-forward button, but mainly to see if I can squeeze out a humorous rant about it for the teeming masses that read this blog.

Ocean's 13
I really loved both Ocean's 11 and Oceans 12, because of the overall festive sense of style Steven Soderbergh invested them with, and I'm really looking forward to this one as well. And while being in an ensemble cast like this is really a game of inches, I'm anxious to see the contribution of Al Pacino, because it's been eight years since Any Given Sunday with nothing but the strangely unambiguous remake of Insomnia he did with Robin Williams and that topless version of The Merchant of Venice to tide me over. (I'm not even going to mention S1m0ne.) And if that's not enough it's got Eddie Izzard returning as Nagel, and sumo wrestler Akebono stamping out evil spirits, hopefully in the same scene.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Oh god no. Just no, no more. Yuck.

Surf's Up
This isn't a sequel actually, but I heard an anecdote about the trailer for this movie that amused me. When the surfing penguins appeared, all the small children in the theater, with one voice, all began to groan and cry out “No! Not more penguins!” Even the target audience, who are about the least discriminating consumers of film I can think of besides whoever is renting those Crazy Husband of the Week movies Ashley Judd kept doing, are exasperated with an approach to film production that seems more appropriate to McDonald's... if it sells, supersize it and throw in a toy. And seriously, I saw one of those Ashley Judd movies, the one where it's a taut, courtroom drama and then at her moment of triumph her husband turns into a maniac and tries to kill her.

Evan Almighty
I thought Bruce Almighty was hilarious, and the underlying theme, which obviously echoed Jim Carrey's own decision to take pride in being a comedic actor and quit trying to be something he wasn't, was kind of touching without being too on the nose. Steve Carell's speaking in tongues scene was worth the price of admission, and there is a reminder in how far we've come as a society in the casting of Morgan Freeman: a black man born in the South of the 1930's growing up to play the face of God in a mainstream, commercial film. So for Morgan Freeman and Steve Carell I'll give it a chance.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
These books really crept up in length over the course of the series, and by number four became too unwieldy to make into one film without some serious decisions about what to cut and by doing so, in what direction this would take the film creatively. So of course nobody bothered, and it ended up a mess of snippets of every single thread of the book, and couldn't be pieced together without reference to the original text. I would guess there's plenty of room to trim this one into a manageable story, and while they're at it they could trim their leading lady's eyebrow, since those kids really didn't age well and it's weird to look back and see how cute and fluffy they used to be. Well, no rush on this, then, since despite a grand sort of setting and story, thus far Harry Potter has looked about the same on the small screen as on the big one.

The Simpsons Movie
The TV show jumped the shark so long ago, this movie should be a washed up, tired old joke. The other possibility is that free from the grind of cranking out season after season, maybe Matt Groenig will step back from tediously winking at the fans every minute with incestuous internal references to go with a theme ripped from the headlines and take his last chance to do something memorable as a last hurrah for his over-marketed characters. Maybe this show has one more Marge vs the Monorail left in it, and maybe it can sustain its comedic premise for two hours, but there's definitely no way I'm going the opening weekend to sit with the over-laughers who have to register their approval of every in-joke.

Daddy Day Camp
While I am easily amused, I got my fill of fart and poopy jokes back in 4^th grade (and every time I go to Chicago) and I wouldn't be caught dead at this shit.

Rush Hour 3
It's been too long. I think Jackie Chan has an unbelievable talent for comedy, and he and Chris Tucker are hilarious together. And there's proof it was shot on location in Paris since Roman Polanksi's in it, and he can't enter the United States without being arrested over that whole drugging and raping a 13-year old thing. But really, they sold me with this joke from the trailer:

“Lee, what did he just say?”
“I don't know, I think he was speaking French.”
“What the-- you're Asian, man, stop embarrassing yourself!”

Mr. Bean's Holiday
With the right material, Rowan Atkinson is one of the funniest performers I've ever seen, but too often he's under-used or gets an easy paycheck for acting like a goof (exceptions include the irritating shop assistant in Love, Actually, which was hilarious). His best role was as the various incarnations of Edmund Blackadder, and watching Blackadder II now it's hard to believe the biting sarcasm is coming from same guy who's been reprising the same two roles in a series of commercial films: the nervous priest from Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Mr. Bean. There is something remarkable about Mr. Bean though, in that Mr Atkinson takes what should be tiresome slapstick and does manage to make it into something truly funny. So I'll give him a chance in a Bean sequel.

Halloween
According to my sources, it was time for a fresh take on the character behind the Halloween series. I'm not sure what was missing, since the whole point is his faceless expression, devoid of human empathy. The whole film comes from a previous era in American horror films, focused on dread rather than gore, so I'm not sure Rob Zombie is the guy to bring out subtle nuances of meaning in the continuing story of Michael Meyers. It's also had a few fresh takes, like the killer Halloween masks, the psychic niece technodruid angle (or whatever the hell was going on) and the underwater reboot. Halloween H2O actually worked, and has some serious scares, because the gimmick was getting actors who'd actually been in a movie before, and not Busta Rhymes and whoever was doing Josh Hartnett at the time. So of course they ruined that too... at least Katee Sackhoff went on to better things. And it had a topless redhead with a stupid name (Daisy McCrackin). So despite Mr. Zombie's success with the disturbing yet memorable Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, I may wait for the DVD on this one.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets
I loved the first one. Partly because I couldn't believe Nicholas Cage was in a movie that looked as stupid as National Treasure did, and I love pleasant surprises. This one's got everybody back, plus Helen Mirren, and will feature not one, but two Coppolas (no relation). I wouldn't hold out high hopes of capturing the fun of the first film again, but considering how shitty the first one looked at first glance, I think they've earned the benefit of the doubt, so I'll go see it. Hopefully with the Captain there to give me another sidebar on American history.

His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass
This is not a sequel, but unless it makes no money, gets picketed by Christian groups who are still stinging , and fails to move any happy meal toys to boot, there will be sequels. I read about half the book, and was intrigued by the mysterious, supernatural goings on but ultimately the characters left me cold enough that I neglected to pick it up again and finish it. Some people rave about the series, and there was a successful stage play of some sort, while others say it's one man's tiresome ranting against the Catholic church. Which is not exactly contradictory, so I guess we'll see how the film version goes.

Examining my own evaluations, apparently I'm willing to see any piece of crap that makes it to the theater, and what I love most about films are the actors. At least it will be a while before they cast Spider-Man 4 and I have to make a judgment call on seeing it.

Security Theatre

I haven't protested being patted down every time I enter the Target Center or the Metrodome for the last several years. I have protested the women who carry their wallets in a suitcase under their arm and stop the line for several minutes as security inspects the three hairbrushes, entire make-up case, change of clothes and Winnie the Pooh blanket they thought they might need in case of extra innings. Ironically the many women I know who are actually serious people who do things on their own and actually pay for stuff don't carry a duffel bag for a purse, the ones who do don't even need ID since buying drinks is kind of a Honeydew thing. Or shoes, but I digress. I take terrorism in the modern world seriously, and never more so than at the Metrodome where typical poor Minnesota infrastructure design creates ripe conditions for mass panic and I believe that even a small event could lead to many people being trampled to death or falling over railings, and a stadium disaster worse than Heysel or Hillsborough. I have also noted before that when going to Twins games, my general anxiety is not centered around Osama bin Laden but rather the prospect of meeting that guy who rides the #14 bus with a machete. So after making it through security to last night's game, I sit down in my seat and start filling in the line-ups on my scorecard, when two things strike me as odd. One is that Kent Hrbek has been called out of retirement to bat clean-up for the ailing Twins, and the other is that the guy in front of me is shaving with a knife. The Hrbek thing was down to filling in the numbers from the wrong line-up and not realizing #14 was batting clean-up for the Black Sox, not the Twins. But bang-up #@&$'ing job to the security guys and ushers who hassle me all the time, but let this guy shave and pick his teeth with a knife in the seat in front of me. Did nobody besides me see Robert de Niro's knife-throwing, shaving his legs with a hunting knife antics in The Fan? Okay, I actually know the answer to that question. It was only a little knife, and I try not to treat tools as totems (hence my defense of the 2nd amendment), and really, even if this 65 year old man went on a killing spree, with A.J. Pierzynsk 50 feet away I wasn't going to be his first target, but I still wanted him to put it away, because it's bizarre behavior to shave and pick your teeth with a knife in public, and invites speculation on what other abnormal, antisocial behavior he's capable of.

The other piece of security theater that I came across after the game was a story on how the Mooninite Crisis in Boston has sparked federal legislation aimed at terror hoaxes. As any sensible person would expect, this is already illegal, so now the Senate is making it... more illegal I guess, with longer jail terms, but also allowing the government to file civil suits to recover the costs of dealing with hoaxes. Which sounds reasonable, because as I said about the Metrodome, creating a panic could be more dangerous than the predicate event. The odd thing is, especially if this is really in response to the Mooninite event, the government already showed they have the power to do that by getting twin $1m settlements for the city of Boston and Homeland Security, and just wants to broaden their powers to sue people for their own mistaken overreactions. To explain the Mooninite Crisis, first let me give a little perspective: the city of Boston once put down a traffic monitor, a rubber tube leading into a box chained to a lamppost, as seen all the time in major cities, and then another branch of the Boston government blew it up thinking it was a bomb, so they're maybe a little jumpy. Across ten American cities, an advertising firm started a guerrilla marketing campaign putting up blinking LED boards with images of Mooninites giving people the finger (think obscene Lite-Brite) to promote the film Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie for Theaters. In nine cities, nobody cared. In Boston, nobody cared for the first two weeks they were up, then somebody saw a blinking cartoon character giving them the finger from the underside of a bridge and thought Al Quaeda had abandoned secrecy and joined forces with the Cartoon Network. The firm already paid out $2m to reimburse Boston and DHS, and the guys who put these up (and put the footage of them putting the Mooninite LEDs up on Youtube, which to the best of my knowledge bomb-makers rarely do beforehand) are still facing criminal charges for Boston's overreaction, because now, presuming on other people's intelligence and emotional stability is illegal.

There is a line to be drawn, for instance the guys who tried to create a disturbance on a plane by doing everything short of violence to make people believe they were terrorists created a dangerous situation in a confined area, as well as seriously inconveniencing a lot of people and tying up security and airport infrastructure. The guy trying to intimidate me with his machete and tales of racial oppression before asking for money, he's also on the far side of the line, because he engaged with me repeatedly when I tried to brush him off. The guy with the knife at the game last night annoyed the crap out of me, but he and the Mooninite instigators don't deserve anything more than a warning to quit fucking around and scaring people, because when the little grey cells are turned to the problem instead of the tightening cardiac muscles, neither was setting out to cause a panic. If Metrodome security had dived over me without warning to tackle and taser Johnny Pocketknife last night, I'd have considered that more intrusive to my well-being than my solution: I went the passive-aggressive Minnesota way and made comments loud enough for him to hear about security theatre, patting me down but waving through the guy who shaves with a knife in public, and his embarrassed wife made him put his knife away.

Really, when even Saturday Night Live is poking holes in airport security, is it anything more than theatre? As SNL's TSA sketch pointed out, since the last successful suicide attack on an American plane involved multiple people, limiting everyone to three ounces of liquid is kind of pointless, since five people can combine theirs into a whole pint. In a nation founded on the will and principle of the common man to act in his own defense against tyranny, maybe it should be obvious by now that a vigilant, engaged, and rational public, and not DHS or the United States Coast Guard, is what has to protect us from the creeping, machete-wielding darkness. According to our government, we should particularly remain vigilant against the espionage poppy coins an oil-rich foreign power is planting on unsuspecting Americans, to track our people and spy on our way of life, especially when they're just a quick canoe trip across Lake of the Woods from coming to get us here in Minnesota. Just like the Cold War, our enemy comes stealthily clad in red, but this time instead of proffering a little red book this time it's a little red poppy on a coin, and a red maple leaf on a flag. Keep your powder dry and an eye on the North Star.

Piranhas 7 - 4 Black Sox

Now that was a hell of a game. Javier Vazquez kept the pirhanas at bay for seven innings, except for Justin Morneau's 2nd inning solo home run to put the Twins an early lead. (giddoumma)Boof Bonser threw five pretty good innings with one hiccup, Joe Crede's solo homer in the third that tied the game, coming up with seven strike-outs, four in a row over two innings. The pitchers really controlled the game and nobody could get anything going until I stepped out in the top of the sixth for a leak and a cheeseburger. (Not at the same time, I shudder just from seeing guys rest their beverages on top of the communal trough in the Humptydome bathroom.) Then I came back and found all hell broke had broken loose on Boof. As best as I can put it together, after giving up a lead-off double to Darrin Erstad, Boof fielded a ball hit by Pablo Ozuna and chose to throw to third to head off Erstad. Sensible, but unfortunately he tossed it well past third into the Twins bullpen, and while Ozuna went to second on a fielder's choice, Erstad went wee wee wee all the way home, and three straight singles to left field drove in a couple more runs, giving the Black Sox a 4-1 lead against the anemic Twins offense. Boof did finish another inning after that, and the Twins bullpen held the Sox scoreless from then on.

In the top of the 8th, a couple of brilliant defensive plays lit a spark in the bottom of the batting order, beginning with Nick Punto, who chased a fly ball down in foul territory, stepping into the Twins dug-out, and tripping on the top step, got a glove to the ball but had it bounce out, off his knee, but rolling forward Punto scooped the ball up before it hit the ground, to make the out. Jason Bartlett followed with a great play fielding a grounder from A.J. Pierzynski and stepping on second in time to cut off Jermaine Dye, before throwing to first to complete the double play. That sparked the piranhas' teeth gnashing, and catcher and not terribly fast guy Mike Redmond led off with another gutsy play, hitting a soft grounder to second base and then outran the throw from second. Then the previously dormant Punto and Bartlett started hitting and the piranhas started nipping their way around the bases, one or two at a time, until despite numerous pitching changes Redmond, Punto, and Bartlett all made it home and tied up the game. The Twins smothered the Black Sox for two more innings in what had suddenly became a nail-biter, as the piranhas continued to circle the Sox. The reigning American League MVP and proud son of Canada (but we try not to hold it against him) Justin Morneau came up to lead off the 9th, and the Sox intentionally walked him. Prudent, but as the big screen warns, Walks Will Haunt, and this would be a surprisingly dangerous stratagem for the Black Sox later in the inning. Jeff Cirillo attempted to bunt Morneau over to second and made a mess of it, firing his bunt straight back to Sox pitcher David Aardsma. Fortunately as the poet Virgil tells us, Piranhas Fortuna iuvat, and Aardsma bobbled the ball like a juggler at a children's birthday party, giving Morneau plenty of time to plod his way over to second. When Nick Punto came up, for reasons passing understanding, the Sox decided to walk him, and again, to my complete bafflement, managed to screw up what amounts to a game of catch between two professional baseball players, and Aardsma's errant, unobstructed toss to his own catcher allowed Morneau to lumber to third while Pierzynski shagged the ball. I found this extremely funny, because Morneau is about the least dangerous baserunner the Twins have, and Aardsma gave him first, second, and third, and left him poised 90 feet away from winning the game. Tragically, Bartlett couldn't get Morneau home and drop the tent on Aardsma's 9th inning one-man circus, and the game went into extra innings.

In the bottom of the 10th, the Piranhas would swarm again, Luis Castillo's lead-off double put the Sox in a terrible position, and they made pitching changes and walked Torii Hunter, which bizarrely set up a 2-out confrontation with Justin Morneau. I'm no baseball strategy expert, but walking Hunter, a really speedy baserunner, with one out guarantees that even if you catch Castillo on his way home, the Twins could still have a runner with jackrabbit speed who's crafty like ice is cold in scoring position with one out to go. (Er, it occurred to me the next morning after I wrote this that they were obviously setting up a double play on Cuddyer.) It also meant Morneau got back to the plate with quick runners at 1st and second, when they'd walked him earlier to avoid a Morneau walk-off home run. I jokingly told my dad we'd win by three, and what did take place was pretty incredible to see. Morneau hit about the most incredible home run I've seen in the dome. I've seen Kent Hrbek loft a ball so far into deep center field you couldn't see his swing until a squashed baseball plunked down in your nachos, with the crack of the bat echoing over the bleachers as an afterthought (okay, that makes no sense in terms of physics and it's less than half a second between the swing and the sound hitting the outfield, but don't interrupt my juvenile hero-worship and hyperbole) and I've seen Morneau and Jim Thome send balls soaring into right field, with the whole stadium watching the ball soar upwards for several seconds waiting for it to drop until it slowly dawns that oh my god it's really going to the upper deck, with some poor outfielder glumly staring up the right field wall as the cheapest seats in the house get the best souvenir. This wasn't like that... this was like a line drive into the upper deck, in half a second it was slapping into the hands of an ant-like hysterical fan right under the smiling face of Kirby Puckett and the championship banners of the '65, '87, and '91 Twins. People weren't even sure they'd seen it, and quizzed the people around them as to where the ball had gone. As the cheering throng flooded out into the streets, we found a huge storm had risen out of a warm evening and hard rain clattered on the plaza as if Morneau's three run, walk off homer rocketing out of the confines of the field had dared the heavens themselves, and outside purple lightning lit and tore the sky as Zeus himself raged at the daring stroke delivered by the shark amongst the piranhas. Okay so maybe there's no need to go all Byron, but it really was incredible, the ride from thinking it was impossible to grind out a win after Boof's stumble to the toothy piranha grins of Twins fans huddling in the doorways in the purple light of the storm. Piranhas, piranhas everywhere.

Regarding the Implications of the Champions League Final

Liverpool 1-0 Chelsea (4-1 on PKs)
Milan 3-0 Manchester United

It's all over but the crying, after Kaka and Clarence Seedorf ripped apart Manchester United's back line again to take Milan to another final.  There are some intriguing implications to these results, for the winners and the losers.  Tragically for Manchester United, their shot at a second treble is over, despite a lead in the league and the FA Cup final still ahead of them, so that's one epic storyline evaporated.  However, the FA Cup now doubles as the consolation tournament for the losers, since Manchester United will play Chelsea in the final that could have been.  The final that will take place between Liverpool and Milan is a rematch of the rather legendary 2005 final in Istanbul, where Milan took a first half lead and sent a dejected Liverpool squad to their locker room down 3-0.  Down there, they heard the thunderous singing of Liverpool supporters which could be heard all through the neighborhood, and rallied to come back and tie the game, winning on penalty kicks after a crazy Dr. Octopus inspired performance in goal by Jerzy Dudek.  So this could be a hell of a stomping by Milan, or another epic game, and I can't help but look forward to it.  The other implication of this result is that Liverpool have knocked Chelsea out of the big dance twice in the last three years, Man U has led them all year in the league, and unless they win the FA Cup final, the only silverware they'll get is from beating Arsenal's youths in the Mickey Mouse Cup.  The CL semi-final, FA Cup final, and second in the league is pretty good, but the celebrations and trophies the last few years fall well short of the level of Caligulan decadence Roman Abramovich seems to have been expecting from bringing his bulging briefcase of dodgy money into English football and making it rain.  Jose Mourinho, while he is an unbelievable asshole, obviously has some sense of talent and tactical acumen to have coached up Porto to a Champions League title, something he can't seem to do with Chelsea despite having more talent in one building than the Justice League of America.  Apparently it doesn't matter how much money you pour in if your mercenary team never passes to each other, and they all bunker down like they're afraid of the ball and hope for a lucky break... it's like the worst two recurrent themes of Dutch and Italian national team football rolled into one ugly display, to the point where I can't watch Chelsea play without fast-forwarding until a goal is scored and somebody has to come out of their own half.
  But that's just me.  And that Liverpool-Milan final looks like a lot of fun, especially since I feel like I haven't seen a CL final in two years (I honestly keep drawing a blank on who played in last year's final, then I look it up and repress it all over again).