Actualités

Doha, Nov 30 (Ians) Wales coach Robert Page insisted he was proud of his players despite a 3-0 defeat to England on Tuesday night, which sent them home from their first World Cup in 64 years with two defeats and a draw.

Wales were never really in the game that England won with two goals from Marcus Rashford and one from Phil Foden to give Page’s men a disappointing end.

“It’s an amazing performance from that group to get here,” Page said, reports Xinhua.

“I told everyone including the staff what an achievement it was to get here and the fans were amazing. We are frustrated that maybe we didn’t do all that we wanted, but we have had a taste of it and we want to experience it again,” said the coach.

Page admitted he was frustrated that England’s quick-fire goals undid his side’s good defensive work from the first half.

Doha (Qatar), Nov 27 (Ians) England right-back Kieran Trippier insisted on Sunday that his side wouldn’t underestimate Wales in their final Group B game in the FIFA World Cup.

England go into the match atop of the group with four points from two matches, while bottom side Wales still have a slight mathematical chance of making the next round. But more than anything, Robert Page’s side will look to recover their pride with a win against their neighbours and rivals.

That won’t be easy and the Welsh have not beaten England since a 1-0 win in the now-defunct Home International Championships in 1984, with England winning the last six meetings between the two teams — the last of which was a 3-0 friendly win in 2020.

However, despite those results and an apparent difference in class between the two squads, Trippier knows the significance of the match, reports Xinhua.

“The motivation...

Madrid, Nov 9 (Ians) A quick look at Group B implies that England should be the clear favourites to breeze through into the last-16 of the FIFA World Cup, and a possible three straight wins will allow Gareth Southgate’s side to gain confidence ahead of the knockout rounds.

However, any England fan will tell you it’s rarely as simple as that, with memories of their struggles in a group comprised of the United States, Algeria and Slovenia in 2010 coming to mind, and a look at other teams in the group also suggests things may not be as straightforward as they seem.

On paper, England have a better squad and record than Wales, the United States and Iran. They qualified for Qatar with no real problems and travel as the European Championship runners-up.

Southgate will build his team around striker and captain Harry Kane, and midfielders Declan Rice and Jude Bellingham.

Welsh actor Michael Sheen has been praised for a thunderous rallying call he gave on the panel of sports quiz programme A League of Their Own.

The Damned United star was asked to deliver a motivational speech for Robert Page’s Wales national football team, ahead of their World Cup clash with England.

Few were expecting what followed, however, with Sheen throwing himself completely into the task.

“I hear the voices singing. Speed your journey, bois bach [good heavens],” he said. “One nation, singing with one voice, a song of hope, a song of courage. A victory song that floats through the valleys, like a red mist, rolls over the mountain tops, like crimson thunder.

“A red storm is coming to the gates of Qatar. It crackles, with the spirit of ‘58 and Jimmy Murphy’s boys. It turns the pages of the history books and finds Rob’s page, waiting, still to be written.

The 2016 blu ray release of the Frankenstein and Wolf Man Legacy Collections was a moment of celebration for movie and monster lovers everywhere, bringing together all the golden age appearances of Frankenstein’s misbegotten creation and Larry Talbot’s hairy alter-ego. Universal Studios treated those dusty creature features to luminous restorations; from Bride of Frankenstein to She Wolf of London, these essential artifacts never looked less than impeccable and, at times, even ravishing. Colin Clive’s frenzied declaration, “It’s Alive!”, never felt more appropriate.

Now Universal has turned their attention to their other legendary franchise players, Dracula, the sharp-dressed but undead ladies’ man and Im-ho-tep, the cursed Egyptian priest who loved not wisely but too well.

Dracula: Complete Legacy Collection

Blu-ray

Universal Studios Home Entertainment

1931, ’36, ’43, ’44, ’45, ’48 / 449 min. / B&W / 1:33 / Street Date May 16, 2017

Starring: Actors: Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. , Boris Karloff, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello

Cinematography: Karl Freund,...

Blonde Ice

Written by Kenneth Gamet

Directed by Jack Bernhard

U.S.A., 1948

A wedding day is a joyous occasion to celebrate the unison between two people deeply in love with one another, ready and willing to spend the remainder of their lives together until death do them part. Claire Cummings’ (Leslie Brooks) understanding of what a wedding represents renounces most of those delightful thoughts, only retaining and applying the part about death. Claire is a vixen, a conniving, duplicitous witch who spends her energy on marrying wealthy, important people, only to concoct their demise shortly thereafter, reaping the benefits of fanciful wills in the process. Her matrimonial reunion to a powerful businessman in the film’s opening scene irks polite, clean-cut Les Burns (Robert Paige), with whom Claire to used to work at a newspaper. Deep down he loves Claire, naively unaware of her true intentions. When her hubby...

Deanna Durbin: Ephemeral fame (photo: Deanna Durbin in 1981) [See previous post: "Deanna Durbin: 'Sweet Monster.'"] Unlike Greta Garbo, whose mystique remained basically intact following her retirement in 1941, Deanna Durbin’s popularity faded away much like that of the vast majority of celebrities who were removed — or who chose to remove themselves — from public view. Despite the advent of home video and classic-movie cable channels, Durbin remains virtually unknown to the vast majority of those who weren’t around in her heyday in the ’30s and ’40s. Yet, although relatively few in number, she continues to have her ardent fans. There are a handful of websites devoted to Deanna Durbin and her film and recording careers, chiefly among them the appropriately titled "Deanna Durbin Devotees." Fade Out Charles David, Deanna Durbin’s husband of 48 years, died in March 1999, at the age of 92; Institut Pasteur medical researcher Peter H. David is their only son. Durbin also had a daughter,...

Deanna Durbin in the 1940s: From wholesome musicals to film noir sex worker (photo: Gene Kelly and Deanna Durbin cast against type in the un-Christmas-y Christmas Holiday) [See previous post: "Deanna Durbin Without Joe Pasternak: Adrift at Universal."] The Deanna Durbin vs. Universal dispute was settled in early 1942, when the actress was supposedly granted director and story approval. But things didn’t go all that smoothly from then on. There would be no loan-outs to the more opulent MGM, and Durbin would later complain that Universal refused to abide by her requests. Also, for the first time since her career skyrocketed in 1936, Durbin was absent from the screen for a whole year. The key reason there were no 1942 Deanna Durbin movies was the troubled production of her next star vehicle, The Amazing Mrs. Holliday, in which Durbin tries to smuggle Chinese orphans into the U.S., and which underwent not only various title changes, but also various directors and various script...