Michael*

Thanks MD. My activity stream is certainly back in the land of the living, although it would appear that Instagram embeds are still an issue.

For a dude who basically makes films as a sideline, Nocturnal Animals and A Single Man are both pretty gosh-darned (pardon my language) impressive. The opening sequence of the former was an absolute showstopper.

I hadn't heard that. That's hilarious.

The latest episode was fantastic fun. I was never really sold on bringing back Boba, but this was genuinely good and it was nice to see the franchise's most overrated character (don't @ me ) actually get to do something cool. I'm thrilled for Temeura Morrison who may have been the only actor to escape AOTC with dignity intact, getting to rejoin the Wars universe in a vehicle that isn't completely dire.

I can bring to mind Sir Meggo being linked with us as far back as the Quinn-Phillips era, he always strikes me as one of those managers where you could stick a loudspeaker on the halfway line, play a sample of him shouting "hoof it to Big Chas" and results would be more or less the same. Thankfully never came to fruition, but who knows, law of averages and all that.

I know for me apathy has replaced anger lately, and as much I'm not a fan of this seemingly endless cycle of sacking managers it did look like Parkinson's time was up. There are a lot of mitigating factors for the mess we've found ourselves in but the stodgy, conservative football, hopeful punts from deep to no-one, stubbornness from the sidelines and all-too ready acceptance of unacceptable results were starting to border on torturous. Still, even with Parky now gone and the potential of a takeover progressing, that familiar sense of cautiousness and suspicion refuses to shift altogether. Some of the names linked sound like they could do a job, but I've a feeling that we might see a broader net cast this time and hopefully beyond the usual odds-on favourites. It's always fun though, despite having only presided over a handful of UAE Arabian Gulf League games since the mid 2000s, to see David O'Leary get a mention.

She's mint and I won't hear a word to the contrary.

Yeah, and I guess if the lifespan of this game is anything like The Witcher, a lot of those players might have already moved on by the time the fully-realised and definitive version arrives. At this point, I'm honestly not sure if I'll buy it early or wait and see what kind of plan there is for the expansions. I might even hang fire until the next-gen release, which presumably will have a round of patches too, drops in 2021.

It was interesting to hear that CDPR aren't aiming to release the optimised next-gen version until well into next year, but are releasing it for next-gen consoles via backward compatibility in December. I can't see it getting delayed again though, not when the game's already in the hands of retailers.

The thought occurs that either Respawn is getting too big too quickly, or perhaps that Fallen Order was kicked through the door about six months too early at EA's behest. After the opening sequence which felt very Star Wars, it became a really "gamey" experience to me. Ice slides, randomly placed ropes, platforms all over the place that bear no resemblance to real environments. It's a little weird, especially factoring in Respawn's previous track record of creating organic and very slick campaigns in things like Titanfall.

I always think it feels vaguely childish to even try and compare, apart from anything else, the advantage of wall-to-wall television coverage means that no-one would have seen as much of, say, Brazil 1970 as the current generation has of today's teams. Presumably Maradona's legend will only grow now, though. There's just something uniquely fascinating about him, precisely because his is such a compulsive blend of glory and controversy.

What a pleasure it's been this evening to spend an hour or so on YouTube looking at Diego Maradona's finest moments. The rest of the Napoli players singing his song in the changing rooms after winning the Serie A title (it's in the Asif Kapadia documentary as well) is my favourite.

Yeah, the chances of getting a sequel would have been far clearer by this point had the initial release not been delayed, but between that and Marvel's longstanding reticence to even commission a solo Widow story, I must confess my expectations aren't particularly high. The best case scenario is probably that there's scope for Florence Pugh to appear elsewhere in the MCU.

I know the boss is aware that people have been having issues, as to whether or not there's a timeframe for a solution, hopefully soon. Apologies, guys.

Yeah, not to say it doesn't work as entertaining, low-commitment viewing, I just think the show could be so much more than that. It doesn't necessarily need complicated plots or heavily serialised storytelling, it's really just crying out for better writing.

As much as episode length is neither a good nor bad thing in itself, I know for me the inconsistency of the running times has been a bit off-putting. Although it would have been much less of an issue had the season dropped all at once.

Slow, plodding and miserable with an underlying emotion chiming perfectly with the Scotland fans, just a pity Arab Strap never had the chance to write one. Hard to believe that the last time we had Scottish representation at a major tournament was 1998, though. The Brazilian corner where more or less everyone thought "I'll mark Ronaldo" and someone else scored is permanently imprinted on my brain.

Apologies for that. I'm hopeful that we'll have top men working on it soon. Top... men.

There I was predicting that the Scots would blow it after that late equaliser. The image of David Marshall waiting for the ref to approve his penalty save before going mental will stay with me forever, I think.

Also, no more giant spiders in Star Wars please. Or ideally, anywhere else.

The second episode didn't do much to reverse the apparent lack of interest in creating meaningful story arcs. It's unfortunate because this really could be a legitimately good show if they spent more time developing the plot and characters. The ingredients are all there, it just needs that little bit of vision.

Sorry for the delay everyone, presumably the activity stream issue is a recurrence of the problem we were experiencing not too terribly long ago. I've sounded the alarm in the mod cave.

My hope beforehand was for S2 to start marking its own territory a lot more so I sort of wish they hadn't gone back to Tatooine quite yet, although thankfully the opening episode was better than S1's paper-thin Tatooine one. The stuff with Amy Sedaris isn't altogether working. It's alright in small doses, but it feels at times like she's acting in a completely different show to everyone else.

Bartomeu's figurative mic drop on his way out of Barca was amusingly done, although the fact that he supports the plan to join a European Premier League will be a virtual guarantee now that most Culés are against it.