Gino’s Blog

http://www.nfl.com/international/story?id=09000d5d8060d7b9&template=with-video&confirm=true

Oh Yes!!

I love how the British tanks all have a tea-making component attached, pure genius. 

Audrey Gillan
Monday April 7, 2003
The Guardian

I’ve just come home from seeing Beowulf at my local Cineworld and I was lucky enough to see it in 3D. It cost £2 more than seeing it in 2D but it’s worth every penny and more.

Firstly, let’s get the film out of the way. The film is good with a great storyline and characters, well worth seeing in 2D.

Right, now onto the 3D. On walking into the cinema we were told we had to wait outside while they cleaned the theater. It seems that the 3D effects had shocked people so much that they’d jerked/flinched and thrown popcorn all over the place.

The technology has now improved and some of you may have heard me ranting about this in the past. The old Blue and Red glasses are out and the new tech uses polarised light to do new tricks.

This means that the glasses you wear are colourless so there’s no colour distortion like there used to be. Also you can tilt your head or sit where you like and it won’t affect the 3D visuals (used to be a problem in blue/red tech)

The film is 3D throughout the entire film (not just in certain “put on your glasses now” sections like in Superman). The film uses the effect so well that as I left the cinema I felt like real life was a little bit flat.

The film is full of sweeping landscapes, open halls and caverns and you can feel the 3D all the time. I don’t want to say any more or I’ll give too much away but I just want to point out one thing. There is a scene where a character is walking in the foreground with a sword in hand and I was watching the action in the background when I noticed that the sword had gone blurry and doubled “how annoying” I thought “the 3D has gone wrong there” until I looked at the sword and it focused and combined into one image and then it hit me (not literally, but most of the stuff in the film felt like it was about to hit you, there are scenes where the whole cinema flinches). Just like in real life if I focus on the background the foreground gets blurred, if I focus on the foreground the background gets blurred! no longer is the focus determined by the cameraman but by where you want to look.

So what I’m saying is, if you think you’d like it go and watch Beowulf. If your local cinema happens to be showing it in 3D, go watch it even if you don’t think you’d like it because it’s worth it. And for the ladies, you get the see a lot of muscles.

oh and for the guys, Angelina Jolie Naked!

ok folks here’s a quick one for you, I’m now making a driving playlist for my car. What songs would you include in the Ultimate Driving Album?

I passed my driving test today! haha I am now finally a qualified driver so hopefully I will start being able to return all those lifts many of you have given me over the years! I’ll be buzzing around cardiff and sheffield in my little dark blue micra soon enough.

G.

Right, so it’s 3pm and I’m with my brother at Paddington train station waiting to meet Mo to go see the NFL game at Wembley later that day. Unfortunately my brother was unable to get tickets but Mo and I paid through the nose to get ours off Ebay and having now been there, done that and already bought the T-shirt I can honestly say that it was worth it….and some!

 Firstly I’d just like to say that I am very impressed with the facilities at Wembley Stadium. We walked from Wembley Park tube station (about 10 minutes) queued up for no more than 30 seconds, had our tickets checked, a quick frisk from security (I didn’t mind, they were only doing their job) and walked straight to our seats. There was no queing at all! Thousands of people all trying to get into the same place and no queues! There was that many turnstiles. They also had toilets outside the stadium for those who couldn’t wait! how well planned was that!

So anyway, more excited than a fat kid at easter (I’d know), Mo and I walked through the entrance to our seats to the sounds of “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns ‘n’ Roses which just added to the excitement! The soundtrack through the day was just brilliant, mainly half the best classic rock I have on my iPod.

 The seats were, of course, well designed so even short-arses like myself had a clear view of the field. Our seats were fantastic (high and to the side) so we could see the team formations and yardage gains.

So before the game starts there was a quick Pre-game show where the band The Feeling played some songs but more importantly the Miami Dolphins Cheerleading squad were dancing along to the music  (more of them later) and some nifty special props.

This was followed by an american R&B/Soul singer Jocelyn Brown singing the American National anthem. I was very proud the pre-dominantly English crowd because everyone stood in silence out of respect and cheered so loud I couldn’t hear Mo shouting something at me. She sang brilliantly and I’ve never heard a rendition of the american national anthem sound so good. At this point we were supposed to have Russel Watson stand up and sing our national anthem but of course he was taken ill recently and was unable to attend so we had the winner of “Britains Got Talent” Paul Potts instead and to be fair to him he did rather well.

Next up Martin Johnson showed up on the field as honorary captain to represent the Miami Dolphins in the coin toss and was cheered on to the field, John Terry showed up as honorary captain of the New York Giants and was booed quite viciously. I’m not sure if it was because of him or the fact that he was captain for the Giants in a stadium that was set up as a Dolphins home game. (The Dolphins gave up a home game in the states to play over here). Louis Hamilton also showed up and was cheered on too.

So, on to the game!

The game was really well played and it was fantastic to see such a high level of football being played right in front of me. I won’t go on and on about the game itself, you can watch the highlights for that. Throughout the game the cheerleaders were doing their stuff and they did a very good job!

In between plays and quarters they showed some videos on the big screens, the most entertaining of them was when a camera crew went around the players the day before and asked them if they knew some english terms, I.E. the dog and bone, or the tube.

As mentioned before the game was set up as Dolphins home game. Because of this everytime the Dolphins got a first down the announcer would say “And it’s another Miami Dolphins…” to which the crowd would respond “FIRST DOOOOOOOOOOWN!”

Hearing over 81,000 people shouting those words was a great moment and it happened plenty of times.

So, it’s the start of the second half and suddenly one of the ref’s begins to walk towards the centre of the field much to the confusion of the players and the audience. He then begins to remove his shirt. It’s at this point I do a quick count and notice that there are 8 officials on the field. There should only be 7. Surely enough by this time the guy has completely stripped off and is streaking across the field and doing press-ups by the time the real officials get to him. The americans (there were a few around us) have never seen anything like it…

The rest of the game went off without a hitch and I loved every minute of it.

 I’m really proud to say that I was there at a moment in history. It may not seem that important to those of you who don’t like the NFL but this was the first regular season game to be played outside of North America in NFL history and it was a big deal. I, of course, was wearing my ‘Brady’ Patriots shirt and it was fantastic to see almost everyone in the stadium wearing an NFL shirt of some type supporting every team I could think of.

We can only hope that the success of this game here and the brilliant response by the audience throught the entire game will encourage them to promote more NFL games in the UK. It was a brilliant day and I would happily do it again if the NFL ever come back the the UK. So roll on next season! and let’s hope it’s the Patriots playing at wembley next time

Ok folks, as some of you already know, this year is my final year of the teacher training course which means that I’ll be doing my school placements and today I found out that my first placement (which starts next week) is in Cardiff! This is good for me obviously because it means I can see my family for a few months and stuff but has meant that it’s been a busy day trying to organise everything!

Also my driving test is booked in sheffield in the near future, will have to sort that out…

I’m going to miss all you folks in Sheffield but I’ll be back at/near Christmas and my second placement in the spring should be in sheffield so I’ll be back full time by then.

Anyway that was just a bit of an update so you know where I am. It means I won’t be at archery or reenactment for a while and I won’t be playing any badminton either but I’ll do my best to catch up in 2008

 So, in all I’m probably heading back on tuesday. I hope to see you before then (or after if you’re in cardiff).

As a wise man once said: I’ll be back….

I had the BEST weekend!

So firstly Chris (flatmate), Steve (friend from home and archery) and Matt (Coursemate) all go to Fagans (the pub, see other post) for a great lunch and what a start to the day! This is followed by myself, Steve and Matt all heading to the Don Valley Stadium for the first day of BritBowl XXI which is all the finals of the BAFL (British American Football League). For those of you that don’t know, I like american football and support The New England Patriots in the NFL. Rarely do I get a chance to watch AF being played so I look forward to this event each year.

On saturday we paid £9 to see 2 games of football which in all meant we were at the stadium just over 7 hours. Not bad for £9! The games were great but I’m not going to describe them to you, if you like AF you’d have had a great weekend. Hell, even if you didn’t like it you would have after this!

Anyway on saturday it was the final games of the 2 lower divisions. Sunday was the final of the youth teams and then the final of the highest league in the BAFL and what a game it was! oh man sometimes you could hear the crashing of helmets from the stands! The whole crowd recoiling in pain themselves!

Not only that but the halftime show was good (including the Birmingham Blues Brothers!) but even better: real cheerleaders!

throughout the entire final game the cheerleaders were….leading the cheers and what a great job they did too! well done girls.

Anyway, I basically spent the entire weekend watching American Football live and it rocked! I thoroughly encourage you all to join me next year for Britbowl XXII, it was good last year, it was great this year and it’ll be absafreakingmazing next year!

Ben Dowell
Thursday September 13, 2007
MediaGuardian.co.uk