Stuff and Things

"I hate tennis." - Andre Agassi  The sports autobiography. It is a tough nut to crack. They often find themselves falling somewhere between 'mildly disappointing' and 'woeful'. For further reading on the matter, there is a fantastically hilarious piece written by the great David Foster Wallace on why this appears to be the case (the appropriately titled 'How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart' ). The abbreviated conclusion is along the lines that what makes these people outstanding sportspeople is the same thing that hinders their ability to be in any way interesting when it comes to the topic of discussing their achievements - example "Then we won the Champions League, which was amazing".  However, up steps Andre Agassi with a frankly quite astonishing book about not only his career in terms of achievement but also the inner self required to reach such heights. From the opening chapter, which begins with his last victory at the US Open, you are ins...

Before we review this film, the elephant in the room needs to be addressed: This plot is absolutely preposterous . I mean, absolutely "let's all drop acid and think of the maddest thing imaginable and let John Milius direct it" level bonkers.  Now that is out of the way, we can begin.  World War 3. Will it ever happen? Has it already happened? Who's to say? Famed Hollywood lunatic John Milius certainly had an opinion on how it might happen and this film was his testament to that. I'll try and surmise appropriately but essentially a coalition of bad countries (Russia, Cuba, Germany, Nicaragua etc.) have seemingly formed an alliance and attacked the United States, thus causing the aforementioned WWIII. They do this by parachuting what appears to be a handful of non-athletic looking soldiers into a no-name town somewhere in the heart of the midwest. Residents of this town are routinely slaughtered and/or imprisoned and all hell breaks loose. Furthermore, this all hap...