Ronaldo - The Diving Diva

His stumble, thumble and plop act has been laid on so thick that even if he was knocked out stone-cold with a well aimed fist to face, the referee would still roll his eyes, beckon him to stand up and trot off without itching his hand towards his card-residing pocket.

England vs Germany

Germany 4: England 1

England unleashed a full blown horror show on the defence front.
They might as well have paved a yellow brick road to their goalpost, laid out the 'make yourself at home' mat and personally beckoned the Germans to strut out on their turf freely.

Top 5 John Candy Films

John Candy: the horizontally-generous Mr Lovable who tickled the funny bone with one hand and plucked the heart strings with the other.

Oh, if only the oscar squad dropped their staunch anti-comedy regime.

1. Uncle Buck

Role: All round slob and lovable lug who is burdened with babysitting duties. Cue a full circle of domestic chaos, unorthodox parenting and teenage stropiness.

Crowning thespian moment: The psychotic stone-cold moments with sleazeball Bug.




2. Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Another little number by John Hughes. This time he set aside the high school dramas and spawned a life and strife comedy melodrama that struck on the finer chords of cinema goers.


Role: Slobbish, so-optimistic-it-hurts, accident-prone, loveable curtain ring salesman and the ying to Steve Martin’s tightly wound yang.

Crowning thespian moment: Steve Martin busts his fuse and spews out insults at John Candy. After a short silence John spurts out his feelings point blank. The tear-welled up eyes and understated acting is enough to melt the heart of an artichoke.

3. Stripes

Role: Chirpy loveable goofball army recruit who is donning the khaki to fight the flab and sidestep aggression courses.

Crowning thespian moment: The bunk poker game. Candy smooth talks a fellow recruit into dishing out the dollars.
Mr Vegas indeed.

4. Canadian Bacon

Michael Moore's political comedy about the american-canadian relations has grown on me like a fungus on a damp surface. Whether it rubs you in the right or wrong places depends mostly on your views of the land of stars and stripes. As with any political satire I'd prescribe watching it with a pinch of lightheartedness and not going out on a one-man personal crusade to be insulated by the content.

5. Spaceballs
Role: A spaceship residing half human-half dog. Beat that Al Pacino.

Guilty Pleasures

First on the agenda: low brow film pleasures....those guilt-ridden fests that cause any cookie-cuter cinephile to squirm and squander with distate. Sure, they're not exactly flying in the realms of high art, but hey, screw deepness. Screw meaning. Screw anything that would crimson the cheeks of an intellect with pride. I want cheap, bargain-bin entertainment. I want formulaic celluloid turd smeared onto every pixel of the screen.

80's action flicks
Genre conventions:

1. Steroid ladden actors with questionable thespian abilities. Commonly seen draped in leather jackets, american-badassery jeans and the quintessential white cotton oil-spillage vest.
2. Poofed up hair with its own gravitational orbit. A speckling of mullets. Permed-up hair that uses enough hairspray to make a sieve out of the ozone layer.
3. An exponentially increasing body count.
4. The eurotrash villain with a cheese-curdling accent, a disused warehouse hideaway and a blood-thirsy steroid-ladden aide to exchange punches with the disgruntled true-blue hero. The aide usually dies by falling into a barrel of sizzling liquid in the warehouse. The hero sighs and regurgitates some wry one-liner.
5. Weapons look like household appliances. Grenade launchers, flame throwers and uzis are the norm. Anything that fits into a holster doesn't cut it. Big balled heroes need big ass machinery.
6. A midly homoerotic male bonding session mid-film.
7. A video montage set to some middle-of-the-road soft-rock or synthesiser music.
8. A title that includes one or money of the following: 'Death' 'Action' 'Mission' 'Blood' 'Soldier' 'Kill'.
9. The poster involves a tango-tanned condom-full-of-walnuts action star grinding against his gun.
   

Childhood favourites

We've all been there. Decked out in the too-cute-to-boot superman pyjamas and fluffy animal slippers, armed with a strawberry slurpie in hand and bulging our eyes in front of the television screen to watch innocent, dreamy pulp smeared before us. We may have outgrown the superman pyjamas but not the films.

Killer animal flicks

A genre that is built on starry-eyed writers poking into an animal encyclopedia and turning any pug-faced creature into a human flesh guzzling beast.