Is this the end? Andy Murray’s emotional Australian Open defeat by Roberto Bautista Agut leaves tennis fans in limbo January 14, 2019 “If today was my last match, it was a brilliant way to finish.” That was how Andy Murray summed up an epic, gutsy and emotional contest with Roberto Bautista Agut at the Australian Open which left tennis fans in an enthralled yet slightly confused state. In the end Murray lost the five-set, first-round contest 6-4, [...]
Big brands doing big deals show the UK sports sponsorship industry remains in rude health January 14, 2019 January is typically the time to look forward, to forecast and predict what will happen in the coming year. To understand the state of the UK sponsorship industry, however, it’s more worthwhile to look at what happened in the months leading up to Christmas. Rewind to the week after Black Friday in December and big [...]
Spyro Reignited Trilogy review: The purple dragon with attitude is back January 14, 2019 Back in the late 1990s Spyro, the purple dragon with a bad boy attitude, aspired to be the next Mario or Sonic. Though he never reached the same heights of mascot fame, he was beloved by fans and has at least done enough to earn this remastered edition for nostalgia junkies. With the Spyro Reignited [...]
Fallout 76 review : Bethesda fails to cram multiplayer into the long-running RPG series January 14, 2019 Fallout 76, the latest in the long-running series of RPGs, is the answer to a question no-one was asking: what if it was multiplayer? In the new release, you play as a member of a nuclear bomb shelter sent out to reclaim post-apocalyptic America. You explore Appalachia (a reimagined West Virginia) and scavenge the wasteland [...]
Tottenham 0-1 Manchester United: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer shows tactical prowess as Marcus Rashford makes it six straight wins January 13, 2019 Talk of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s perfect start to life as Manchester United manager has tended to be accompanied by caveats. Easy run of fixtures. Class players. Made to look good by what preceded him. Barring the latter, none of those points hold true any more after a 1-0 win over Tottenham at Wembley which showed Solskjaer [...]
Arsenal’s slump in form is making Unai Emery’s omission of Mesut Ozil harder to justify January 13, 2019 Nothing fortifies a manager’s decision-making like wins, and when you are on a long unbeaten run you can do much as you please. Change formations week to week? Sure. Leave it late to take the points? No problem; never in doubt. Freeze out the club’s top earner, indeed one of the best paid players in [...]
Colette review: Keira Knightley and Dominic West’s chemistry zings in this saucy biographical tale of French author January 11, 2019 To the unassuming trailer-watcher, Colette looks like a turn-of-the-century version of Big Eyes, Tim Burton’s 2014 film about Walter Keane, the American artist who claimed his wife’s paintings as his own. Colette is married to Henry Gauthier-Villars, a similar entrepreneurial fraud who passes off her novels as his own, but this film manages to be [...]
The Front Runner film review: A near-classic political true story about a more naive time January 11, 2019 Hugh Jackman stars in the true story of Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman), charismatic favourite for the 1987 Democratic Presidential nomination. His squeaky clean demeanour is tarnished by accusations of an affair, prompting a national debate as to how much we need to know about our leaders. Shot in an almost documentary like fashion and making [...]
Andy Murray’s greatest hits: From ending Britain’s Wimbledon drought to championing equality and becoming a mentor January 11, 2019 As the lights on Sir Andy Murray's tennis career begin to flicker, the difficulty that Britain's next generation of tennis stars face to fill his shoes is more than apparent. It will surprise few who follow tennis that Murray has announced his intention to retire this year, but the press conference in which he declared [...]
The Upside film review: Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart battle a cliched and stereotype-heavy script in remake of The Intouchables January 11, 2019 The casting of Bryan Cranston as a quadriplegic billionaire has led to fierce debate about the portrayal of disabled people by able-bodied actors. This, however, feels like the least of The Upside’s problems, it being a deeply problematic story about a stuffy white billionaire teaching his young black protégée the wonders of opera and art, [...]