El Niche Cache
August, 26, 2020
The Niche Cast Podcast
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Reading Menu
Kiwi-NRL Encyclopedia: NRLW + NRL Grand Final Previews (NRL)
The Premmy Files – We’ve Got Draws (Football)
The Wildcard’s NFL Picks - Week 7 (NFL)
2020/21 Plunket Shield: Early Round Tahi Notes (Cricket)
2020/21 Plunket Shield: Lower Order Hundies! (Round Tahi) (Cricket)
2020/21 Plunket Shield: Opening Openers (Round Tahi) (Cricket)
27fm Sounds of Aotearoa: Mid October 2020 (Music)
Scotty’s Word
Melbourne Storm are NRL Champions … again.
Hum-dinger of a game that saw Penrith Panthers come back in the second half, but the Storm were and are too classy. I’ll whip up some yarns over the next few days and for now I’m pondering the point of the Junior Kiwis as Jarome Luai (Panthers) and Moeaki Fotuaika (Titans) were 2017 Junior Kiwis and have both been selected in either Origin squad.
I’ve got fewer issues with Junior Kiwis representing Tonga or Samoa, but to jump from Junior Kiwis then straight into Origin is a waste of NZRL resource. And it’s NZRL who have created this kerfuffle as they have welcomed anyone with a slither of Aotearoa eligibility into Junior Kiwis footy, with that slither not enough to lure them into Aotearoa Kiwis footy. Right now, the Junior Kiwis is a team that provides talent to Aotearoa, Tonga, Samoa and Australia.
A slice of Jack Goodhue…
I had to cut out this Jack Goodhue bit from last Friday’s email, so here are three snaps of Goodhue’s involvement early in the All Blacks vs Wallabies Test at Eden Park. The first two snaps show Goodhue with support players around him to compress the defence, then a big pass wide (left, then right) and I reckon both were meant to hit Beauden Barrett; compress the D, get Barrett out wide in space…
Same shape, just different sides of the field and in both instances Richie Mounga is a player in support of Goodhue - Goodhue’s low key distributing. Goodhue also made 27 tackles with 1 missed tackle across the two Bledisloe Test and snared 2 try assists. All of this, along with the tough stuff and I’m eager to see what impact Goodhue has over the next few games, what level he can hit.
Robert Whittaker vs Israel Adesanya seems likely.
Plenty of UFC funk from yesterday’s event headlined by Khabib Nurmagomedov winning and retiring. For kiwi sports fans though, Whittaker won his fight against Jared Cannonier and Adesanya had picked out Cannonier as his next opponent - but Whittaker won. Key thing here is that the first Whittaker vs Adesanya fight had the largest crowd of any UFC event, ever and while UFC folk want Adesanya to fight bigger names (USA guys), Whittaker vs Adesanya has already been massive and should surpass that now that Whittaker’s tracking nicely.
Here are some (impressive) stats from Whittaker’s two wins since losing to Adesanya…
vs Darren Till
Whittaker: 69/157 sig strikes, 1 knockdown, 2/13 takedowns.
Till: 41/99 sig strikes.
vs Jared Cannonier
Whittaker: 69/151 sig strikes, 1 knockdown, 0/2 takedowns.
Cannonier: 53/89 sig strikes.
This interview with Eugene Bareman from Combat TV was dropped this morning with plenty of CKB information - peep the boxing ring in the background where Junior Fa is doing his prep…
Wildcard’s Notebook
Mate, how good is Brandon Smith?
So... here’s a hilariously odd sports moment for ya from the NFL games this morning...
The Falcons are down by two very late in the game against the Lions, but are driving. They just got a first down ten yards out and are looking to wind down the clock to hit a game-winning chip shot field goal as time expires. Detroit has no timeouts left, literally all the Falcons have to do is let the clock tick away, take their last timeout with a couple seconds left, and pop that sucker over for the win.
But Todd Gurley charges forward too hard and in busting a couple tackles he loses awareness of where he is and then accidentally scores a touchdown. Like, he tried to stop himself but couldn’t. An accidental touchdown. It was extremely funny.
You don’t normally see the defensive players signalling touchdown and celebrating conceding like that. But that was the only way that the Lions were getting back into it. Since the touchdown was scored with a minute still left to play that gave them the chance to get the ball back and have a chance to respond. Which... they did. Matt Stafford led the Lions downfield, Kenny Golladay made a tough catch eleven yards out with about nine seconds left... there was then some typical NFL refereeing weirdness about how much time should be left on the clock after they decided to review the play after Detroit had already rushed up and spiked the ball (to stop the clock) with three seconds left. But they got their final play, Stafford hit his man for the touchdown, and then even after they added 15 yards to the point-after attempt for some taunting celebrations Matt Prater still drilled it for the extra point and the win. All while Todd Gurley watched on in shock from the sideline. Again, it’s not often you see any sport where the defensive team celebrates conceding the score while the attacking crew react to taking the late lead with disappointment. Sports, aye? Gotta love it.
By the way, as that was happening the Titans missed a potential game-winning field goal that would have capped a brilliant comeback against the Steelers and the Browns stormed down the field in the last minute to score the winning touchdown despite having gone behind inside the two-minute warning in a back and forth one against the Bengals. Three incredible finishes all within minutes of each other... and in my NFL Picks this week I’d tipped all three of those winning teams. Not sure if that’s skill or luck but I’ll take it, the picks have been coming in very strong this year – get amongst. At the time of writing I’d be second equal on ESPN’s expert panel... bloody amateurs, that lot.
Couple sneaky ones for ya here...
Right, now I believe I suggested on Friday that I’d serve up a movie corner today so let’s do that. Outside of the NRL Grand Final there wasn’t a heap of sports on during prime time hours this weekend so I managed to churn through a quartet of 2020 releases, all of which hit Recommendability Factors of ‘Yes’.
Borat Subsequent MovieFilm
Not even really sure what to say here, I was so pumped for Borat 2 and it didn’t disappoint at all. It’s Sacha Baron Cohen so if you’re not keen on his particular brand of shock-filled comedy then you’re not gonna rate this one either but for those of us who adore what SBC brings to the table this is... I don’t wanna say a modern classic or anything tacky like that but, for real, the more I think back on it the more I love it. The reviews have been mixed, as you’d expect, and a lot of them seem to fall back on the idea that this age and time doesn’t really leave any shock value to work with when the hidden prejudices that stunned us from Borat and Da Ali G Show back in the day are now openly accepted in the White House. I get the point there... and I have thoughts on that too but I might watch the film again later in the week and write a full-length review to work through that one.
What I will say is that I, personally, found Borat 2 to be hilarious. No scene passes by without laughter. Some work better than others but all of them work to some degree... and the last twenty-odd minutes is brilliantly savage as ol’ SBC turns the screws. Just like the first film, there’s a sneaky deep heart to the movie as Borat and daughter Tutar slowly bond and overcome their preconceptions – and one of the main things to know if you haven’t seen it yet is that while Borat is the main character, the film really belongs to Tutar. It’s actress Maria Bakalova who takes the lead on most of the film’s most shocking moments (almost all of them in fact) and she’s so damn good. Not too many people on this planet can keep up with Sacha Baron Cohen in that envoronment. Don’t really wanna say too much else because I reckon it’s best watched with minimal preparation (the extracurricular build-ups for the Rudy Guiliani & Mike Pence scenes are a tad distracting) and also because, yeah, I’m gonna write more about it later. But first impressions were outstanding.
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Aaron Sorkin’s latest and another film starring Sacha Baron Cohen – who kinda brilliantly portrays counter-culture icon Abbie Hoffman here (the accent goes in and out but the rest of it is flawless, he’s so good). Based on a true historical story of hippie revolution and government retribution after anti-war protests became riots in 1968 Chicago, you can look up how it all really went down but maybe do that afterwards because the film sets the scene so thrillingly with a Spike Lee-esque open interspersed with archival footage before stopping just short of the apparent event itself and skipping forward to the courtroom where the rest of the tale is told as the trial unfolds, piecing together the details of the night of the riot as it does. It quickly becomes clear that this trial is rigged against the defendants in ways that are sometimes subtle and sometimes shockingly overt (shout out Bobby Seale). The result is a genuinely fantastic film that finds tension in all these clever ways and manages to both tell a fifty-year old story and also reflect some very contemporary ideas without compromising in either direction. I thought it was superb.
Rebecca
Ben Wheatley does Daphne Du Maurier is an automatic yes for me, though apparently not for too many others as the reception’s been colder than the new Mrs De Winter’s own at Manderley. Unfairly too, I reckon. It’s a weird one because this film was done legendarily by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940 and the main critical point seems to be: why even bother? As if movies aren’t constantly being remade way quicker than every eighty years. It does feel a tad unnecessary to be fair (and I groaned so hard at the final lines which were outrageously tacky and out of sync with the rest of it) but that’s not really judging the film on its own merits, is it?
So here are those merits. The performances are all really good (especially Kristin Scott Thomas, the only one who really adds anything to the Hitchcock performances) and Wheatley seems to be having a lot of fun behind the camera working with a genuine budget. As a result Rebecca (2020 version) is a really beautiful film. Gorgeous in fact. It’s elegantly designed and cast and filmed and everything else (except that final voiceover) and I’d argue it’s probably a more faithful adaptation of DDM’s book than Alfie’s one was – although I was a bit surprised that someone with Wheatley’s horror chops chose to almost entirely ignore the gothic haunting aspects of the tale and play it as a straight romantic thriller. For those who haven’t seen the Hitch film or read the book, this new version will probably land smoother. But I still really enjoyed it.
The Personal History of David Copperfield
Similar story here with this delightful Armando Ianucci rendition of a Charles Dickens classic where having just read the book I found it hard to get past the ways in which the film diverted from the text. Obviously I was expecting that, pretty hard to fit 750 pages into two hours so naturally there was a heap of stuff ignored or glanced over or merged in with other storylines... though the movie always stays true to the heart of the novel. Not a literal adaptation but a vibe adaptation. And most importantly it keeps the irrepressible humour of the book in tact.
The colour blind casting gets a lot of chat but it has to be said that the reason it works so well is that these characters are so perfectly cast from top to bottom of the credits – like, it’s the movies, man, you can cast whoever the hell you want in any role as long as they can pull off the essence of the character and there’s not a single person here who doesn’t which is kinda a marvel. Very funny, very enjoyable, very endearing... with most of the intermittent tragedy of the book excluded... the film also has some pretty interesting things to say about the nature of storytelling which take it into some meta-textual areas (like with Dora – but no spoilers here). Good yarns.