Fuzzy Dunlop

Hundreds of Beavers, Strange Darling and The Zone of Interest were the 3 best films I saw last year, although I will never watch Zone of Interest ever again. I've been terrible with the award season films, the only one I've seen is Conclave. I really need to see The Brutalist.

Denis Law passed away today aged 84. My late grandfather was an avid United fan who worked in Manchester in the 60s and it didn't matter if it was Best, Charlton, Robson, Cantona or Keane, he'd have always maintained Law was the greatest. As much as he loved Eric, he'd scoff whenever he was referred to as the King because, in his eyes, there was only one King. He always said he was about 5ft nothing and 8 stone soaking wet but the bravest footballer he ever saw.

Back in the day the common pitch to studios was Die Hard on a boat, Die Hard on an oil rig, Die Hard on a whatever. After that, the talk was, dudes were going in and pitching Will Ferrell. Ice Skating, Will Ferrell. Nascar Driver and getting shit greenlit in an instant. Now it's basically just Statham. Construction worker. Someone kidnapped. Everyone dies. I have to say I'm here for it. I mean, I'm more here for Death of a Unicorn and Companion upcoming but that's neither here nor there.

Don't worry if you don't know who Robbie Williams is, you're not missing much, he's a knobhead. He released a swing cover album way back when featuring covers of Mack the Knife and Mr Bojangles and whatnot and one of the reviews quipped the release of such an atrocity was a sign the Mayans were right. I have no idea what that means but it sure sounded intelligent. Anyway, yeah, he's Corden-esque levels of bellend.

I also saw they gave Gareth fucking Southgate a knighthood for being a beige cardigan of a manager. The British honours system, ladies and gentlemen.

A team devoid of confidence who are piss easy to play against, full of players who either can't run, don't want to run or both in a league where pretty much every team in it is a good team who will outwork you? Yeah, it's going to be a long season. I was probably optimistic saying it'd be 27-nil to Liverpool. I mean they had Casemiro and Eriksen in midfield who are roughly 800 years old and play like they're older against that rottweiler Newcastle team? I'm no manager but even I would have said that had I've made a huge mistake written all over it. If he wasn't such dogshit I'd have felt bad for Zirkzee because literally any one of the players could have been taken off after about 4 minutes.

As a United fan, the result at Anfield next week will pretty much be 27-nil, right? Salah will get roughly 6 hat tricks. I mean Newcastle will almost certainly beat United tomorrow night and then I've never been more certain of Liverpool beating them and that'll be 6 (count them, SIX) league losses since Amorim took over as manager about 4 days ago.

I recall Jason Flemyng in some interview saying about how he and Townsend were told repeatedly don't do the voice in front of Connery, don't do the voice in front of Connery so, of course, first chance they got they did the voice in front of Connery. They'd sidle up to him and, in their best/worst Connery impression, start quoting the fucking Untouchables and whatnot - "They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way." It's definitely a film I'd like to have been a fly on the wall for on the set. Connery by that time was 417 years old and had checked out of film making, wanted to play golf all day and laughed all the way to the bank with the money they paid him. The director Stephen Norrington clashed with Connery, shall we say. He asked for another take of them walking down the road, Connery shouted "What? You want us to do that again?" and Norrington shouted back "for $18 million I don't think it's too much to ask for you to walk down a road" and then Connery beat him to death with the 5 iron I'm assuming he had in his hand during the shot. I may have made that last part up.

Mate of mine worked in a cinema when Into The Woods was released and, soon after the film started, a couple approached the ticket desk and asked for a refund because they didn't realise James Corden was in it. I have the image in my head of the two of them being late to the screening, making it to their seats after the opening credits had finished, sitting down with 2 large boxes of popcorn, 2 large drinks and maybe a bag of Revels, getting themselves settled in for the film but then Corden's big smug mug showing up on screen and the two of them loudly going OH FOR FUCKS SAKE and getting up and walking out. Anyway, ditto with the no time for musicals but, yeah, Bugsy Malone is great and Singin' in the Rain is unquestionably one of the greatest films ever made.

Probably late to the party but I'm not sure whose idea it was to cast John Cena as one of the 9 millions Faks in The Bear and I know it's received some online criticism (but then, what doesn't?) but I really quite liked it. It slightly threw me off for a split second Cena showing up but only for a split second and then I was all in on him being a Fak. Overall, Napkins maybe aside, it didn't quite reach the Fishes/Forks heights of the last season but then not much in the history of television would reach those heights but I still really liked it.

Overall it wasn't a great tournament but the right team won it. Had England won it they'd be the most dull team to win it since Greece trolled the fuck out of 2004 by one nilling their way to winning the whole thing. Scrapped their way through a pretty shite group, barely beat Slovakia, beat the Swiss on penalties, played well for an hour against the Dutch which was the sum total of them playing well in all 7 matches and then got beat by a proper team. I'm not entirely sure how a team with so many good players can play so shit but I guess we can just blame their absolute beige cardigan of a manager.

Yeah, Gemstones is fucking great. Judy Gemstone is legit one of the all time funniest TV characters and Walton Goggins has been in about 500 things but he's always going to be Baby Billy to me.

The Baby Billy's Bible Bonkers scene (''running the church...and running around'') is the best TV scene of the year, with the possible exception of Richie singing Love Story in The Bear (I'm totally not getting involved in the discussion of whether Carmy could have got locked in that walk in or not). I had legit not seen Edi Patterson in anything before I watched Gemstones but she's just one of those actors that every line delivery and facial expression is hilarious. You just know it takes about 50 takes to get through some of the scenes on that show with people corpsing so much.

I've recently started re-watching Arrested Development (well, the original 3 seasons anyways) and there's a chance it might be the greatest sitcom ever made. Jessica Walters is fucking tremendous, she's one of those actors that every line and facial expression is funny.

So, ah, yeah Sisu fucking RULES. It's about a mean as fuck old Finnish dude who kills a bunch of Nazis. That's it, that's the review. I mean, what more do you need? I also watched John Wick 4. It was John Wick but 3 hours long with repetitive boring fight scenes and completely po-faced and weirdly dull.

I watched Shrinking, I didn't notice too many people talking about it but I liked the fuck out of it. Harrison Ford plays good curmudgeon but likable old fuck (who'd a thunk?) and I'm pretty sure Liz and Derek (as in, the fucking GREAT Christa Miller and Ted McGinley) are my wife's all time favourite TV couple. The show is what it is; it's by the Ted Lasso dudes and, yeah, I like it.

This is Going to Hurt is one of the best TV shows of the last 5 or 10 years and is both a testament to the good people of the NHS and a horrible indictment of a broken system that has been allowed to prevail in a Tory led government and is a TV show which is both simultaneously hilarious and heart breaking. I watched it recently for the first time and it is fucking GREAT.

So, yeah, I re-watched Glengarry Glen Ross on Amazon just because I figured what the fuck, why not. Some of the homophobic insults and shit stick out like a sore thumb but it holds up so fucking well. I mean, Jack Lemmon's performance? Holy fucking shit, you're talking about one of the all time great film performances in history; the desperation of that character oozes out of Lemmon in every fucking scene, it's fucking palpable. But then I looked it up and see Pacino was nominated for the Oscar for doing an average I'M AL PACINO AND I DELIVER EVERY LINE LIKE THIS performance but Lemmon didn't get a look in? I also watched Cocaine Bear. I mean, it was a bear on cocaine and, yet, it didn't go anywhere near as ridiculous as I wanted it to.

Even more ridiculous were the - and there's no other way of putting this - orgasmic sex noises playing in the BBC studio from a phone which sounded like the ringtone Larry fucking Flynt would have had while Lineker, Paul Ince and Danny Murphy desperately tried to stay straight faced throughout. We were treated to the surreal and hilarious sight of Danny Murphy talking about Lopetegui's attacking football while trying to talk over what sounded like a full blown orgy was happening followed by a face of thunder from Murphy after Lineker joked it was him making the noises. Anyway, someone is getting fired and we've already had the best television moment of the year and it's only January.

I'm not a big gamer, I've never played the game although I had obviously heard of it because I'm a human being who lives on planet Earth but I'm pretty much as 'unsullied' as they come when it comes to this and I fucking loved the first episode. Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, HBO, the dude who wrote probably the best piece of television of the 21st century in Chernobyl? Yeah, I'm all in on this.

England there, getting their scapegoats in as usual.

The ball from Kane's penalty just landed in my front garden. Jordan Pickford couldn't reach Tchouameni's shot with his tiny ickle T-Rex arms. Allez Les Bleus!

For a pensioner Pepe took that header well. He must be 83 years old, I think the fucker played centre back in the Eusebio 1966 World Cup team, no doubt engaging in shithousery on Bobby Charlton in the semi final.

McCoist getting more and more exacerbated by South Korea's defending to the point he could barely form words combined with his absolute joy at some of Brazil's attacking has been so fucking good. Now Roy Keane just said he's never seen so much dancing in his life and it's just like watching Strictly. Tremendous entertainment to be had all round.

Lads, I think Brazil may have arrived. I've asked Santa Claus to please, please, please, please, please let me have a Brazil/Argentina semi final.