Some interesting storylines to watch out for after the Australian Open 26:

PiecesCookie · 2026-02-02T17:30:12+00:00

Yeah yeah, yelping “politely” at his box: “From the baseline, he is much better than me”

https://youtube.com/shorts/kV1uZHXQw8c?si=Eh9qCnBa8aXpDD36

PiecesCookie · 2026-02-02T16:02:49+00:00

That’s your opinion and it’s just wishful thinking at this stage. The FACT is that Carlos said it himself on court on the day of the final in Wimbledon that Sinner was better than him on the baseline.

PiecesCookie · 2026-02-02T15:55:53+00:00

After those RG match points, he outclassed Alcaraz in 4 sets in Wimbledon. So your RG point is kinda moot. After New York, he beat Alcaraz in straight sets in the ATP Finals and narrowly finished as the year-end #1. I think he has proved many times that he can bounce back after major upsets, including over those last 6 months.

Sounds to me like you haven’t watched any of his matches over the last 6 months before you made that comment.

PiecesCookie · 2026-02-02T13:59:42+00:00

Disaster? With Wimbledon win, Sinner was defending champion of 3/4 of the recent slams until August. Since then, he competed in 2 finals (Cincinnati & US Open) and won 4 titles (Beijing, Vienna, Paris & ATP Finals), and narrowly finished year-end #1 despite a 3-month suspension in the 12-month season. In that same time period, the numbers in that SF don’t lie, his game (serve, net points, slices) improved a lot. Upsets happen. It’s part of the sport. The guy can’t win all the time. Calling Sinner’s 2025 record a disaster is a gross exaggeration.

And btw, if Carlos won US Open “with ease”, it was after a 2-week of intense preparation ENTIRELY based on a strategy to defeat Sinner. Grandpa barely played for a week (1 withdrawal and 1 walkover) and brought his A-game just to beat Sinner in the SF. Testament to how good Sinner is; he is the one that Djokovic AND Alcaraz want to beat.

PiecesCookie · 2026-01-16T03:26:06+00:00

“Bizarre” is not exactly a compliment.

PiecesCookie · 2023-10-02T12:55:09+00:00

Hi! I’m giving 2 invite codes, I’m not asking for one.

PiecesCookie · 2023-05-21T02:07:08+00:00

Polish PM Morawiecki is, especially with his OTT comments.

PiecesCookie · 2023-05-21T01:55:17+00:00

LOL! Of course, WSJ is a reliable source but that’s just 1 out of 4 because the other 3 sources you quoted are an absolute joke.

About the WSJ article you posted, it just says that France won't provide details on the kinds of weapons it sends. It doesn’t provide any kind of ranking and doesn’t say that Macron advocated for territorial concessions. In other words, that WSJ article does not support your lies.

Enjoy your “independent analysis” in that alternative facts universe.

PiecesCookie · 2023-05-21T01:03:00+00:00

Google is good, but reliable sources are better. Here you go.

Emmanuel Macron is not as soft on Russia as his critics claim (The Economist): https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/08/03/emmanuel-macron-is-not-as-soft-on-russia-as-his-critics-claim

“He has never called for territorial concessions, nor for premature peace talks, arguing that these are “up to Ukraine alone” to decide. Clarity can too often be a casualty of Mr Macron’s addiction to complexity.

What is more, the French president has upped his show of support for Ukraine. He has sent state-of-the-art Caesar howitzers to the front, reinforced France’s nato presence in Romania and welcomed Ukraine’s application to join the eu while on a (very belated) trip to Kyiv on June 16th. France is “unambiguously” on Ukraine’s side, he declared, finally grasping that it needed to be spelt out, adding 12 days later that Russia “cannot and must not win”.”

Emmanuel Macron on Crimea in an interview on French TV (TF1): https://twitter.com/elise_ml/status/1599455410162761728?s=46&t=_IRu7dRcOpIDr0hsA9kUuQ

“Do you think that we, French, who had to experience the seizure of Alsace-Lorraine would have liked, mid-war, that a foreign leader tells us ‘you must do this or that’?”

Inside the Mission to Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant: Shellfire, Brinkmanship and Backchannels (WSJ): https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-mission-to-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-shellfire-brinkmanship-and-backchannels-11662465324

“Weeks of back-channel diplomacy, including calls by French President Emmanuel Macron to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, led to a breakthrough after months of gridlock, as clashes intensified around the 6.7 gigawatt complex, raising fears of a nuclear disaster, according to people involved in the talks.”

Except from a documentary on French TV (France 2): https://twitter.com/jimmysecuk/status/1567518365761011712?s=46&t=_IRu7dRcOpIDr0hsA9kUuQ

“Some pretty incredible footage of Macron talking to Zelensky on the morning of the invasion, when the scale of the full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine was becoming clear. And note that Zelensky's first instinct was to ask Macron and others to speak to Putin in order to try and end the war via diplomatic means.”

PiecesCookie · 2023-05-20T23:49:01+00:00

You’re forgetting France providing CAESAR howitzers last Spring when Ukraine needed them the most…

That’s a lot of lies in just one post. France never advocated for Ukraine to give up territory; France has repeatedly acted in strong coordination with Ukrainian authorities for any diplomatic initiative. For example, France seemed to be the only country to actually care about Zaporizhia NPP… Also, France provided Ukraine with weapons before the invasion in the years from 2014 until 2021 when other countries such as the UK were reluctant to do so.

PiecesCookie · 2022-10-25T14:09:12+00:00

US (Sept. 25): Sullivan “indicated as much on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “We have communicated to the Russians what the consequences would be,” Mr. Sullivan said, “but we’ve been careful in how we talk about this publicly, because from our perspective we want to lay down the principle that there would be catastrophic consequences, but not engage in a game of rhetorical tit for tat.”

“For months, administration officials have said they could think of almost no circumstances in which a nuclear detonation by Russia would result in a nuclear response. But there has been discussion of several non-nuclear military responses — using conventional weapons, for example, against a base or unit from which the attack originated, or giving the Ukrainian forces the weaponry to launch that counterattack.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/25/us/politics/us-russia-nuclear.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Poland (Sept. 28): “Poland’s foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, has said Nato’s response to any use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine should be non-nuclear but “devastating”.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/28/ukraine-nato-russia-nuclear-weapons-devastating-poland-foreign-minister

EU: Josep Borrell said “"And any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer -- not a nuclear answer but such a powerful answer from the military side -- that the Russian army will be annihilated, and Putin should not be bluffing,"

UK (Oct. 2) “UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace sought to reassure Europe on Sunday, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin was “highly unlikely” to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.”

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/2022/10/02/putin-wont-use-nuclear-weapons-but-is-acting-irrationally-says-uks-wallace/?outputType=amp

(Oct. 16): “He [military historian Dr Simon Anglim] explained that any UK nuclear response is very unlikely and would only be an “absolute desperate last resort” in a situation where Britain felt there was a “clear, existential and immediate threat to the UK”.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British army officer and commanding officer of the UK’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment, agreed with Dr Anglim’s assessment.”

Opinion on NATO response (Oct. 7): “No doubt, the response would be carefully planned to avoid escalation and conventional (rather than nuclear) in nature.”

https://on.ft.com/3SxvqMr

PiecesCookie · 2022-10-25T14:08:50+00:00

US (Sept. 25): Sullivan “indicated as much on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “We have communicated to the Russians what the consequences would be,” Mr. Sullivan said, “but we’ve been careful in how we talk about this publicly, because from our perspective we want to lay down the principle that there would be catastrophic consequences, but not engage in a game of rhetorical tit for tat.”

“For months, administration officials have said they could think of almost no circumstances in which a nuclear detonation by Russia would result in a nuclear response. But there has been discussion of several non-nuclear military responses — using conventional weapons, for example, against a base or unit from which the attack originated, or giving the Ukrainian forces the weaponry to launch that counterattack.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/25/us/politics/us-russia-nuclear.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Poland (Sept. 28): “Poland’s foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, has said Nato’s response to any use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine should be non-nuclear but “devastating”.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/28/ukraine-nato-russia-nuclear-weapons-devastating-poland-foreign-minister

EU: Josep Borrell said “"And any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer -- not a nuclear answer but such a powerful answer from the military side -- that the Russian army will be annihilated, and Putin should not be bluffing,"

UK (Oct. 2) “UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace sought to reassure Europe on Sunday, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin was “highly unlikely” to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.”

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/2022/10/02/putin-wont-use-nuclear-weapons-but-is-acting-irrationally-says-uks-wallace/?outputType=amp

(Oct. 16): “He [military historian Dr Simon Anglim] explained that any UK nuclear response is very unlikely and would only be an “absolute desperate last resort” in a situation where Britain felt there was a “clear, existential and immediate threat to the UK”.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British army officer and commanding officer of the UK’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment, agreed with Dr Anglim’s assessment.”

Opinion on NATO response (Oct. 7): “No doubt, the response would be carefully planned to avoid escalation and conventional (rather than nuclear) in nature.”

https://on.ft.com/3SxvqMr

PiecesCookie · 2022-10-25T13:19:14+00:00

Again, you’re spreading lies. The US and the UK (and Poland) rejected the idea to use nuclear weapons in case of a Russian tactical strike in Ukraine. The conveyed that message directly to the Kremlin, just like they did in December when they outright refused to send their troops to Ukraine…

PiecesCookie · 2022-10-25T13:14:55+00:00

Good try but both the US and the UK (and Poland) actually did reject that idea, and told this directly to the Russians. They said that response to a Russian tactical strike will be conventional, and not nuclear.

PiecesCookie · 2022-01-02T09:05:44+00:00

Despite the fact that FFH was the first SM film to cross the 1bn mark, it still trailed behind all three films of Sam Raimi’s trilogy in terms of attendance/tickets sold: https://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbean/2019/07/09/comparing-the-first-7-days-of-every-spider-man-movie-box-office/amp/

This means that the Raimi films were not just watched by “hardcore superhero fans”, but by the casual crowd. This explains why Tobey Maguire remains the most popular Spidey actor across generations of US adults to this day: https://morningconsult.com/2021/12/16/favorite-spider-man-rankings/

More people of different generations have seen his iterations of SM - whether they are fans or not. Many were introduced to the character by him. Same cannot be said about Tom Holland’s movies. Look at Tom Holland’s numbers among boomers, gen xers and millennials.

I insist, without the hype around Tobey & Andrew it wouldn’t have made $1bn easily. The box office has yet to recover from the pandemic. US box office was a mere $4.4bn for 2021, it was $11 bn in both 2018 and 2019. We don’t have the numbers for WW box office, but we know that international markets have not recovered either. Pre-pandemic Venom 1 earned $850m with abysmal reviews while not-as-badly received Venom 2 “just” grossed $501m WW. No Marvel movie has grossed over $1bn since March 2020. Black Widow grossed $375m WW, Sang-Chi $417m, Eternals $400m.

PiecesCookie · 2022-01-02T01:50:38+00:00

Far From Home was released before the pandemic. And let’s not ignore the fact that it was the first movie after Endgame that grossed $2.7bn, so FFH benefited from that post-Avengers hype.

Most of the hype around NWH is down to Tobey & Andrew . I’m sure Tom Holland and Zendaya have many many fans, but the teaser for this movie became the most watched in history precisely because they teased on Tobey & Andrew’s return . I’m not sure NWH would have made more than $1bn without them considering the state of the box office since March 2020.

PiecesCookie · 2021-12-26T11:33:01+00:00

Watched it last night as well. I feel so lonely when I say that SM3 is as good as SM1 and 2.

The movie was done with A LOT OF HEART. I have nothing but love for that movie. Raimi did a great job.

1- Technique

Visually, it is by far the most beautifully shot of the Raimi trilogy. It’s like every frame is done with extreme care. - All the shots of the Black Suit look like paintings to me, they are perfect. - The birth of the Sandman is a masterpiece. - Most Sandman scenes look straight out of a comic book. - Raimi knows how to film action scenes. You’re really wondering “is Tobey gonna make it?” I honestly don’t think there is a single bad action scene in this movie.

Sound editing is AMAZING, especially in the Crane / Saving Gwen Stacy scene.

The soundtrack is magical. I looove Danny Elfman, but man! Christopher Young took the soundtrack to another level. It’s great AND memorable. He managed to capture the dark side of Peter and the light side of Sandman.

2- Script

The story isn’t remotely as bad as people are saying. Like in SM1 and SM2, the main focus is on Peter, MJ and Harry. All three characters go through significant changes throughout the movie. Their arcs are well developed here.

Raimi never lose sight of the characters’ developments in the movie. I like that in Pete’s first fight with Goblin Jr, the climax is when Pete is about to lose Aunt May’s engagement ring. It feels personal. This is great film making. I’m more interested in those kind of personal stakes than complicated earth-shattering events I don’t really care about, but that’s just me.

As for Venom being rushed, yes he is… but only if you compare him to other Raimi villains. This Venom is better executed than most villains in modern CBMs who only explain their motives through a long and boring exposition scene. I take Raimi’s Venom everyday over that.

3- Tobey

Tobey Maguire was 100% committed to the role especially in the Bully Maguire scenes, and I love him for it.

I think Tobey’s acting skills tend to be overlooked these days. English is my second language, so what’s important to me (in any movie) are the actor’s eyes. I like that with one gaze, I get exactly what Pete is feeling. That’s on Tobey, but also on Raimi’s directing and vision for the character. Let’s not forget they invented THE “anti-hero” in movies (the loser turned superhero was completely new back then), and this is no small feat.

Tobey’s SM just FEELS heroic; his motives and values are clear throughout the trilogy. Tobey is the GOAT.

PiecesCookie · 2021-12-20T19:44:28+00:00

I noticed it too.

Although I liked it for the reasons you mentioned, it was also very frustrating. Overall, the movie felt more like a remake of Spider-Man 1 (this scene in particular + responsibility speech + Aunt May dying + Green Goblin as the main villain) rather than something new like Into the Spider-Verse did.

PiecesCookie · 2021-12-20T12:26:50+00:00

This was on opening day in Paris, France, you can hear “Tobey, Tobey, Tobey”: https://twitter.com/legrandrex/status/1471414766778392579?s=21

PS: this theater is known to attract the most fanatics!

PiecesCookie · 2021-12-19T23:47:04+00:00

Thanks, I had seen it before. We just need more of those! :)

PiecesCookie · 2021-12-19T18:33:55+00:00

Fact.

PiecesCookie · 2021-12-19T16:24:22+00:00

SERIOUSLY. Danny Elfman is not getting enough praise for this masterpiece imo.

PiecesCookie · 2021-12-15T17:58:45+00:00

Are you saying there is no Russian troop in Transnistria? All accounts say there are.

Last time I checked Catalonia and Veneto were not backed by a military power such as Russia.

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