Very Short Reviews: Noah (2014) and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

09 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by percivalhenry in Very Short Review

We rented these movies this week, and they have a lot in common. Both are based on old stories (one somewhat older than the other) that didn’t particularly need to be made into movies. And while neither film is very good, at least one is interesting.

Noah, from Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), is wild, feverish mess. It imagines the story of the flood not as a gauzy allegory, but as a vivid, painful ordeal. Noah is the descendent of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, just 10 generations removed from Eden, and the world as filmed by Aronofsky looks about 300 years old: raw and strange. Angels still walk the earth, but they are encased in rock, a punishment from the vengeful Creator (You Know Who). The Creator also visits the dreams of Noah (Russell Crowe), who foresees the drowning of humanity, most of whom are the wicked descendents of the original Bad Man, Cain. Noah and his sons get to building the ark, and on the eve of the deluge, animals start showing up. Aronofsky skips the two-by-two procession of beasts that is the staple of children’s books, and in a few arresting sequences, shows thousands of critters slithering and shoving their way aboard. It’s when the men – led by their very evil king, Tubal Cain (Ray Winstone) – try to get on the boat does the action movie break out, and lots of smashing and explosions ensue. Crowe doesn’t exactly look like a semitic hero, but he broods furiously, particularly when he’s torn between his understanding of the Creator’s intent – that all men must die, his family included – and an unwillingness to sacrifice what he loves. Unfortunately, Aronofsky, or the studio heads, doesn’t think theological questioning is dramatic enough, so we get a distracting subplot about Tubal Cain tempting Noah’s son, and a predictable fight in the bowels of the ark. Along the way there’s lots of stilted dialogue, some impassioned urging from Noah’s wife (the strangely cast Jennifer Connelly) and a bland, passive performance from Emma Watson, the wife of Noah’s son upon whose pregnancy the fate of humanity rests. Hermione Granger never had days like these.

Noah is inconsistent and often clumsy, but at least Aronofsky has a vision. It’s hard to tell what Peter Jackson’s vision was for The Hobbit, aside from the most cynical. The movie picks up where the last one left off, with Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf aiding a troop of dwarves in their quest to reclaim their lost kingdom (and not coincidentally, the mountain of treasure left behind). While the second installment is somewhat brisker than the sluggish first, it suffers the same fatal flaws of bloat and lack of character development. We simply don’t have a reason to care about these people (if hobbit and dwarves are people) or their mission. Few of the dwarves ever develop a personality beyond caricature, Bilbo (Martin Freeman) has no discernible motivation and as other characters – elves, humans, orcs, were-bears – parachute in, the plot is stretched thinner and thinner. J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 book is a slight, diverting adventure, with none of the weight of his later Lord of the Rings. Jackson’s attempts to invest this story with significance fall flat and worse, undermine the power of his magnificent Rings trilogy. Anyone who watches all the movies in chronological order would be baffled by Gandalf’s slow realization that Sauron had returned in The Fellowship of the Ring, since he’d already confronted him two movies earlier in The Desolation of Smaug. The movie also suffers from the same action-movie affliction as Noah, with an extended sequence of dwarves in barrels rushing down a river seemingly designed with a theme-park ride in mind. It’s not all tedious – there are some well crafted sequences in the lair of Smaug the dragon – and Jackson again uses the New Zealand scenery to maximum effect. But when your mountains are more captivating than your characters, you have a problem.

Nobody Asked Me But … Here’s How to Fix Penalties in Football

01 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by percivalhenry in Nobody Asked Me But ..., Sports

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

football, soccer

(Since I’m blogging in London I’m calling it football, not soccer. Sorry, ‘merica).

(photo courtesy Clark Parker/TheTokyoFiles.com)

I was a (very) casual football fan for years but since moving to the U.K. three years ago, I’ve paid much closer attention to the sport. And while most of it is just fine, I’m troubled by the role played by penalties.

Penalties are highly entertaining and, because they’re awarded by the referee, incredibly arbitrary. Many penalties that should be called are not, and many are called that shouldn’t be. Players flop and dive with abandon, hoping to win one. It is not one of the game’s more attractive aspects.

The problem is the disproportionate role penalties can play, given their capricious nature. While an NBA referee will blow some calls, costing a team one or two points, they tend to get evened out in a game where both teams are likely to score in the hundreds. In the English Premier League last year, teams averaged a 2.7 goals a game (that’s a combined 2.7 goals) and more than 60 percent of the matches were decided by one goal (or were draws). In that context, penalties can, and often will, decide the outcome.

Penalties aren’t automatic (just ask Jason Puncheon) but they’re close: players convert on 85 percent of them, on average. That’s better than the NBA’s average free-throw rate.

Here’s how to fix it:

1, Let the punishment fit the crime

Penalty takers are so successful in part because of who takes them: very often the team’s best scorer. There’s no rule specifying who takes the penalty, so naturally the most gifted shooter lines up. This both pads the scoring statistics for strikers (bizarrely, the records don’t distinguish between earned goals and penalties) and undermines the whole logic of the punishment. If the penalty is an attempt to compensate teams for lost scoring opportunity, then shouldn’t the player who lost the chance take the shot? In other words, shouldn’t the punishment fit the crime?

A minimum fix to the problem of penalties would be to require the fouled player to take the shot. If he’s too injured to take it – unlikely, given that he may not have been touched in the first place – then he should come off the field for a substitute. It wouldn’t make a big dent in the success rate, but at least justice will be served. (The same logic applies to free kicks, as well.)

2, Move the penalty mark back two yards

Sports need to adapt to changing conditions, and can’t be too rooted to traditions. If baseball can raise and lower the pitchers mound, football can tinker with the penalty mark. Another two yards will give the keeper a fraction of a second longer to block the shot, and help even the odds. If that doesn’t work, move it back four yards.

3, Stop counting penalties in the scoring statistics

This is more of a philosophical point than remedy, but it would help remind fans (and the wildly celebrating players) that scoring a penalty kick isn’t the same as scoring a goal. A few weeks ago Wayne Rooney scored his 50th goal for England to become the nation’s all-time leader … on a penalty. It shouldn’t count. While the outcome of a walk is the same as a single (going back to baseball), they’re not the same and aren’t treated as such in the stats. Last year, Sergio Aguero of Manchester City won the Golden Boot with 26 goals. Only in the fine print does it say he scored five of them on penalties.

4, Institute retroactive red cards

This isn’t a new idea, but it’s a good one. To crack down on diving, football should institute a tribunal that examines video after the game. If a player is found faking a foul, he should be given a red card for his next match. (Some noble fans argue the game should be paused to assess the foul as they occur. You can sign their petition here). The NBA has a very mild version of this in place to clamp down on flopping. Stiff penalties for diving means there will be less of it, and referees, having more confidence that they’re making the right decisions, will be more likely to call the legitimate fouls. It may not reduce the number of penalties, but it will make them less arbitrary.