nan | 楠木

Super 8 generally garnered favorable reviews, and may be the most interesting blockbuster film this summer so far, but it’s still a far cry from the heights of E.T. or Close Encounters of a Third Kind, two films by producer Steven Spielberg that have often been quoted in reviews. JJ Abrams deserves credit for the retro style, and the first half of the film feels very much like Stand By Me and other films which focused on a an excellent ensemble of children characters; but as the film racks up its pace in the second and third act, the plot loses most of its character and becomes a rather routine affair. There are expected close calls, major plot revelations (some which were obvious much earlier), and an ending obviously inspired / influenced by the two Spielberg films aforementioned.

This is not to say that Super 8 is unsatisfying as a film – it is an enjoyable affair, and probably offers much more depth than most of the other blockbuster titles this summer – it’s just that, for a while, based on the Twitter chatter, I had built up much higher expectations for Messrs. Abrams and Spielberg. If only the whole film was as entertaining as the little gem hidden during the ending credits.

3月19日，周六。

早上，睡眼惺忪地起来，并且，在5点左右被马路对面的清真寺大喇叭清晨祷告广播吵醒。

到青年旅社的餐厅吃了早饭。后来的行程中，早饭大抵都是这个风格的，不知道是土耳其当地的民风，还是仅仅旅游业形成的习俗——切片的面包，黄油、奶酪、蜂蜜、草莓果酱四种配料，煮鸡蛋，黄瓜、番茄等鲜蔬，麦片、牛奶，苹果茶、红茶或咖啡。很简单的设定，主要围绕面包充饥，但也饶有口感。

吃完早饭，溜溜达达地向圣索菲亚大教堂出发。那里离我们的旅社只有约莫一两公里，很是便捷。我们是在教堂的西北，沿着皇宫的城墙跟，便到了这条小巷，直通向教堂的背面。

Alley towards Hagia Sophia

在正门，到处都是导游个体户，以及各种食品小贩，譬如这些卖栗子的。他们的做法并不把栗子做得很面，而是仍有些清脆的口感，不过并没有什么特别的味道，不若在国内常吃的板栗好吃。

Chestnut vendors

圣索菲亚大教堂，在六世纪建成后的千年里，都一直是世界上最大的教堂。1453年苏丹默罕默德二世攻陷君士坦丁堡，随后将其改为清真寺。而到了上世纪三十年代，土耳其共和国创立后，将该建筑“去宗教化”，自此，这里仅是一个历史文物，而不再是穆斯林信徒祷告的场所。这座教堂曲折的历史，其实也是伊斯坦堡整个城市的写照，这里是东罗马帝国（拜占庭）的首都，也颇具讽刺地在第四次十字军东征中被席卷（大概可视作罗马天主教与东正教之间的冲突）；在历史很长的时间里，这里似乎都是欧洲人守卫中亚通往欧洲的陆路大门；但1453年沦陷后，这里在随后的近五百年里又是源自东方的奥斯曼帝国的首都；随着文艺复兴、航海发现、工业革命，西欧逐渐兴起，直至到了十九世纪的奥斯曼帝国日渐衰败，并日益向往西方文明，于是这座城市的近代史里又多了许多西欧风格的建筑。

Hagia Sophia

——来土耳其之前，好友Yang向我推荐了土耳其作家Orhan Pamuk的《Istanbul: Memories and the City》。Pamuk 2006年拿了诺贝尔文学奖，是土耳其最畅销的作家；这本书是其自传体的童年生活回忆。我未读过他其它的作品，尤其那些给他带来盛名的小说，因此，读这本书纯粹是为了要找到某种旅行的心态。这是本时而非常晦涩的书（我至今也只读了一半左右），因为Pamuk会大段大段地去点评其他的土耳其文豪，以及历史上的诸多艺术家，而这些人以及他比较的学派、风格对我来说都是闻所未闻；但，这本书从始至终谈及的一种土耳其国民的忧郁感，我多少有了些领会，并在伊斯坦堡有了初步的观察。土耳其语，这个词是hüzün，一个直译为melancholy，但照Pamuk的说法又远远比“忧郁”要复杂。

——这似乎是一种与生俱来的忧郁，源自帝国的式微与时代的变迁。奥斯曼曾经是非常强势的横跨欧亚大陆的帝国，占领了长期为欧洲文明中心之一的君士坦丁堡并将其转化为伊斯坦堡。在城市里，到处看到的都是曾经昌盛的遗迹，它们不容置疑地似乎要捍卫自己的光荣与尊严，但同时又无可奈何地传达着时代的错位感。土耳其人无比为自己的国家与民族自豪，但同时他们也确可以看到曾经的辉煌与现实的反差。照Pamuk说，他们乃至潜意识里十分被此吸引——于是便有了这淡淡但有无处不在的hüzün。

The dome of Hagia Sophia

圣索菲亚大教堂的圆顶，千百年来为世人所称道。教堂的长廊亦气势雄厚。可惜的是，东正教时代的很多壁画已经无处可寻，这部分是由于1453年之后穆斯林信徒对教堂的改造所致，另外也有年久失修的影响。

Passages inside Hagia Sophia

伊斯坦堡的另一个特点，乃至土耳其的整个特点，就是到处都是流浪猫。皇宫，清真寺，罗马古城遗迹，他们无处不在。这些猫看起来个个营养不错，气定神闲，似乎才是这些所在真正的主人，而我们只不过是匆匆过客。

Cat at Hagia Sophia entrance

从教堂参观出来，不觉就中午了，于是在附近随便找了个馆子，也算是在土耳其第一次吃烤肉。我的最大印象是，土耳其物价没有我期望的低，跟美国的价格基本相当。午饭后，溜达到附近的Cistern Basilica（地下宫殿），这里曾被用作当年东罗马皇室的供水系统。维基百科上说，第二部007电影，From Russia With Love(我的影评在这里)，也曾用这里作为场景，但那个片段我已经不记得了。

Cistern Basilica

随后，到与圣索菲亚大教堂遥相呼应的Blue Mosque，是十七世纪的苏丹兴建的要与圣索菲亚攀比的清真寺。

Blue Mosque

Blue Mosque interior

（一边贴这些照片，一边还是抱怨天公不作美，那几天采光实在是不好）

再随后，我们去了远近文明的Grand Bazaar，一个比秀水更秀水的地方，我只能用“把十个秀水拼在一个街区”来直接形容。里面大抵也是所有你能想象到的商品都可以找到，不过，最吸引我们一行的当属土耳其特色的灯饰，实在是风情万种。

Inside the Grand Bazaar

Lights

是夜，我们过桥去Beyoğlu区，在一家欧式餐厅着实奢侈了一把；而后，在热闹的Nevizade酒吧区小酌一二。伊斯坦堡的夜生活之热闹，令人称奇，在狭窄的小巷里，每一家餐厅都是满座，好客的店主们用民族乐器与客人载歌载舞。当然，另一个我们注意到的现象便是，似乎男人比女人多出了许多，我隐隐觉得这只是我们的错觉，但也许是受穆斯林的种种约束所致。——我遥记得当年在印度尼西亚，夜店里的穆斯林姑娘如何戴着头巾跳嘻哈，可惜在土耳其我们并没有光顾夜店，于是，也就无缘做一番比较。

（待续）

前记

3月18-27，我与几位好友在土耳其度过了难忘的春假旅行。我挣扎了许久试图为游记想出一个有创意的名字，然而最终未能免俗，借用了周传雄的一首歌名，《蓝色土耳其》。（题外话：中文关于土耳其的歌曲，我能想到的仅有周杰伦的《伊斯坦堡》，和周传雄的《蓝色土耳其》，都不是我非常喜爱的歌曲，而周杰伦的MV更是移花接木地用了希腊的场景做背景，令人啼笑皆非。）

说起这次旅行，缘起大约是JY与JT的计划，二人起初打算去加勒比海，之后目的地改为哥伦比亚，再之后神奇地变成了土耳其。我则是与JC吃饭时得到邀请。照我的本意，春假大抵还是会去Tahoe滑雪（毕竟买了季票，还没有充分利用），不过，心里一直渴望着一次远行，所以很轻易地就动摇了并买了机票。

在出发前的一桩事便荡气回肠，大抵是这次旅行极佳的写照——我确定“入团”的那天，离出发仅有三周时间，而签证需要在洛杉矶的领事馆获得。土耳其领事馆的签证官底气十足地在电话里说“来得及”，我便寄出了材料。飞机是3月17日，周四晚上八点——之前的周末，JC告诉我说她拿到了签证。我们是同一天奇出的材料，因此，当周一毫无音讯时，我便心虚了起来。领事馆只有下午接受电话咨询，但签证官并不在；周二再打，好歹联系上了，被告知材料仍在领事馆，签证官说会马上给我寄出，并给了我在邮政系统里的追踪号码。

于是开始“刷机”去找追踪号码，周二、周三都没有在系统里出现，心里开始做最坏的打算；周三再度骚扰签证官，他告诉我肯定寄出来了，让我等。这无济于事，幸好我知道这个特快是保证两天内寄到，所以心里仅存的希望便是，周四早上一大早收到。

周四凌晨，再度刷机，惊喜地发现了查询信息，包裹终于在系统里了，并且已经到了伯克利。心里一块石头落地。早上十点半，有人敲门，护照在上飞机前10个小时终于拿到了。

下午5点，和JY/JT会合，一同坐BART地铁去旧金山国际机场。我们的飞机在苏黎世中转，后续的航班晚点了一个小时，于是我们到达伊斯坦堡（我知道，中文正确的名字大约是伊斯坦布尔，不过伊斯坦堡更有些古典韵味与风情）时已经是晚上十一点。打车从机场到我们住的青年旅社，花了40里拉（大约25美元）。路上的夜景，起初平淡无奇，只是一栋栋住宅楼与高速公路（若说是中国某地，也不奇怪）；然而，当我们驶入老城区，一座座清真寺在夜灯的打造下气势磅礴，而狭窄的小巷则混合着欧洲风情。开过一片餐馆密集的街道，深夜仍是歌舞升平（大约是周五晚上的缘故）。我顿时多了许多期待。

终于到达旅社，与已经抵达的JC/RW会师，交谈甚欢，不过大家不约而同地决定早早入睡（假若两点还可以算早的话）。我一如既往倒头便睡着了，对来晨迫不及待。

（待续）

Hours before the Academy Awards this year, I saw The Fighter in San Francisco. I’m really glad I saw it – it’s a delightful film of genuine emotions and the source material is multi-faceted with plenty of food for thought.

The film stars Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale, as brothers Micky and Dicky. They come from a extended dysfunctional family with low income and low education. Their only prospect is their talent for boxing, first displayed by the elder Dicky, who unfortunately squandered his career to a drug addiction, leaving Micky as the only person in the family that’s apparently generating income. And Micky seems to have his best years behind him, being poorly managed by his mom and Dicky, and suffering a string of losses. His life seems to take a turn for the better when he meets Charlene, a local bartender who has also squandered most of her life away but who desperately wants a change. Under her influence, Micky breaks away from his family’s grip and starts looking out for himself; meanwhile, Dicky finds himself in prison. The rest of the story follows the tensions and drama of Micky trying to revive his career while also keeping his family together.

Micky is the type of role that Mark Wahlberg could play in his sleep, and the actor is evidently very at ease. It’s a decent performance through and through, and he is well supported by two Best Supporting Academy Awards in Christian Bale and Melissa Leo. Bale again demonstrates great versatility and range in his acting, while Leo deftly portrays the emotionally fragile and incompetent mom who tries to run the family.

Boxing, or “violent” sports in general (e.g. American Football), always make for great movie material, as the sport itself becomes a natural metaphor for the struggles outside the sports-arena. In the case of boxing films, which seem to be particularly popular, this is often cliché. What separates a great boxing film (say, Million Dollar Baby or Raging Bull, and perhaps the original Rocky) from a good / average boxing film (e.g. The Hurricane, Cinderella Man) is often how un-formulaic the film is in leveraging the sports-as-life metaphor (and obviously how original / creative the script is). It is not surprising that the main characters of all the above mentioned boxing films are struggling economically in life, since boxing (in terms of people who actually do the sport) is rooted in the lower socio-economic class to begin with. Therefore social inequality and topics such as racism are naturally found in the narratives, but the better films (in my opinion) skillfully layer these topics into the narrative, as opposed to making them the center of the narrative (nothing wrong with this by the way, just that this is more likely to result in clichéd scenarios). The Fighter is blessed in that it is first and foremost a story of brotherly love, and only second a story about the dysfunctional lives of the poor. This gives it richness and depth.

8/10

习惯了一个人去那家艺术院线的影院看电影，每次都是稀稀落落的只有几个人，没想到《黑天鹅》那场却几乎是爆满。于是对片子又多了些许的期待。

我未曾看过影评人士谈这部电影常提到的其它几部讲芭蕾的电影（主要是1948年的The Red Shoes），所以不能够横向比较。关于那些与David Lynch、David Cronenberg的比较，我倒是的确看懂了一些。我自己的感觉是，Aronofosky坚持了自己一惯的表现手法，那就是把美的东西撕裂粉碎，以毫不隐晦的方式直击观众的神经。《黑天鹅》在这个层面上，与Aronofosky的前作《梦之安魂曲》和《摔跤王》并没有什么区别。

我想我很喜欢《黑天鹅》的原因，是其选材。它描述的是演艺人对“戏”的追求，这一向是我极其感兴趣的选题。剧情并不出人意料，追求完美的芭蕾舞演员Nina，在走向艺术巅峰的路上逐渐将戏里戏外混为一体，进而几近精神失常，最终以生命演绎了最完美的天鹅湖。某些剧情元素也是可以预见的，譬如说片中一场同性恋戏，之前已经有了足够多的暗示。还有那些常规的惊悚片手法（突然的音乐、声音，快速的画面剪切），略显低级但是还好没有影响电影主线。瑕不掩瑜，尽管《黑天鹅》有上述的“俗套”，但Natalie Portman全身心的投入，以及剧本巧妙地将戏与现实的结合，还有电影精湛的摄影与制作价值（美工、音乐），使得这依然是本年度最好看的电影之一。

走出电影院，我想起的是蔡琴的那首《给电影人的情书》，其实那首歌的歌词大约已包含了我对《黑天鹅》的全部感受：

多少人爱你遗留银幕的风采

多少人爱你遗世独立的姿态

你永远的童真 赤子的心态

孤芳自赏的无奈

谁明白你细心隐藏的悲哀

谁了解你褪色脸上的缅怀

你天衣无缝的潇洒 心底的害怕

慢慢渗出了苍白

你苦苦地追求永恒

生活却颠簸 无常 遗憾

你傻傻地追求完美

却一直给误会 给伤害 给放弃 给责备

何悲 何爱 何必去愁与苦

何必笑骂恨与爱

人间不过是你寄身之处

银河里才是你灵魂的徜徉地

人间不过是你无形的梦

偶然留下的梦 尘世梦

以身外身 做梦银亮色的梦

以身外身 做梦中梦

Oliver Stone’s original Wall Street, that seminal film about finance in the crazy 80s, remains the definitive main-stream Hollywood film on Wall Street, and gave aspiring investment bankers a real “role model” in Gordon Gecko. So it’s not surprising that 20 years later, when the world has gone through another financial crisis (and a much more severe one than the 87 stock crash), Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas pair up again to show Gordon Gecko’s second act. Unfortunately, the end result is a muddled effort, and in the words of my friend, a film that “never really took off”.

Part of the problem is the richness of material available. I myself have read two very interesting books on the 08 financial crisis, Too Big to Fail and The Big Short. These two books tell two sides of the same story – the former focuses on the deal-making and desperate negotiations during the eventful summer of 08; the latter focuses on the wise few who bet against the insanity of the market and won big, though philosophically they are also to blame for aggravating the situation. You can see glimpses of these books in Money Never Sleeps – especially two deal-brokering scenes at the New York Fed, which are essentially not-so-subtle references to the similar events around Lehman Brothers and later, AIG. But these snippets, while interesting, does not really tie together with the film’s main plot, and looks out of place – the film-makers are making explicit social commentary at the expense of the story, and the commentary is not really anything new. And then there’s the random clean-tech plot elements, which also are distracting and act as cheap plot devices (the central goal of Shia LaBeouf’s character, Moore, is to get $100MM funding for a nuclear fusion startup, and that’s what motivates the character).

What (almost) gets the film going is that Michael Douglas still commands the screen as Gordon Gecko. To some extent, Gecko twenty years later is even more fearsome than the powerful corporate raider he was in the 80s. He has lost most of what he had, and that makes him hungrier to claim it all back; and the years have just made him even more shrewd and cunning. But the allure of this character alone is not enough to rescue the whole film.

There are several references to the original film, starting from the same font used in the opening credits, to Charlie Sheen’s cameo (besides a few other original cast members’ cameos), to the same end-credit song. While there is nothing wrong per se with paying homage to the first film, to me they only felt as stark reminders of the difference in quality in the two films. The script is simply not at par, and often dissolves into disjoint populist diatribes at Wall Street greed; and the characters are really dumbed down – the one-dimensional good banker Zabel, who is Moore’s mentor and committed suicide when he couldn’t rescue his firm, is particularly unrealistic.

In sum – the plot is a botched product, and there’s little intelligent material in this unworthy sequel; Michael Douglas still shines, but the film only has some novelty value to fans of the original.

5/10

The Town is Ben Affleck’s gritty crime drama about an armed robbery gang from the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston. While the story is generic and formulaic, the film is very well executed and generates real emotions about its characters.

Affleck is Doug MacRay, the semi-mastermind of a gang of four; Jeremy Renner is James Coughlin, Doug’s childhood friend and the head of the gang. The gang takes on tough armed robbery leads, generated by a local mob boss who is a florist by day. On the right side of the law is Jon Hamm, who plays FBI agent Adam Frawley.

The more I think of it, the more The Town feels like a Boston remake of Michael Mann’s LA crime drama, Heat. While Heat was probably unnecessarily long at almost 3 hours, that did give it the luxury of significant side plots to grow the range of characters, and not just Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s respective lead roles. The Town is much more economical, running at just over 2 hours; that however also translates into very one-dimensional characters. MacRay is the one that the audience is meant to care about, the one that we desperately want to see a happy ending for; Coughlin is the crazy one that will mess up everything; and Frawley is the resourceful and relentless cop that will pull all strings (including of course intimidating the women in MacRay’s life) to stop the gang.

My other minor complaint is regarding the somewhat happy ending, which felt like a small cop-out (spoiler warning). Obviously it is not easy to kill off the central character, but to give him a happily ever after – that’s not very satisfying either, since he hasn’t paid his share of dues to justice and conveys the wrong message. Maybe I’m just looking for too much meaning in a genre film.

All that aside, this is a high quality production. The action scenes look realistic and dramatic (again, think Heat remake, set in Boston), and the narrative is well-paced and generally full of tension. A very enjoyable 2 hours indeed.

8/10

明天是实习最后一天，下周一就又开学了。不觉一惊，来美国已然一年又一个月了。
这一年啊。
还清晰的记得去年7月底刚到伯克利的境况。拖着两个大箱子从机场上地铁，再从地铁走到临时的旅馆。以及刚搬进公寓的那个周末，没有家具，只好把床单铺地板上对付了一晚上。
当然还有最开始一副欣欣然到哪里都可以走路的架势，凭着学生证的免费公交，着实压了不少马路。
一年后，生活规律了，代步的车也买了。心宽体胖，饶是夏天经常健身，体重相比去年八月，乃至今年一月再国内的那焦虑的一个月（当时那个忙啊），着实长了。在健身房里最爱做的动作就是大喘气的时候捏腰里的肉。
这个夏天蛮有收获的。时隔一年，再次步入工作岗位，新的环境，新的行业，是颇有些意气风发的。切身体会之后，一点都不难理解为什么硅谷有着如此旺盛的创新力——我所在的公司里，大约是可以找到任何一个国籍的人的，各种口音的英语都听得到，思想的火花在这样充实而多元化的环境里是极易得到的。
（在清华，常开玩笑说骑车随便不小心撞到个老爷子，都会是个教授；那是不是也可以说，在硅谷，开车你随便不小心蹭到一个二十来岁的年轻人，都会是个互联网起家的百万富翁？）
一想到马上要开学了，说实话还真是有点紧张。毕业后何去何从？其实从来没有停止过对这个问题的纠结。隐约觉得自己现在是有些意向的，但同时又不想轻易的把一些“门”关上。最有可能的结果，便是顺着潜意识里的意愿去发展，最后强迫自己放弃其它的选择。

WARNING: spoilers below, free flowing from my subconscious

It’s almost impossible for me not to like Inception, the sixth full-length feature film from director Christopher Nolan. His tastes for complex narratives and imaginative scenarios are a natural draw, and the the premise of Inception is in many ways so much grander than all his previous works.

As audiences have learnt from the trailers and posters, Inception is about the manipulation of dreams. The central character, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), specializes in stealing secrets from targets (“the mark”) through their dreams. For reasons later revealed, he cannot return to his family in the States because of criminal charges; his latest client, Saito (Ken Watanabe) promises to resolve this predicament if Cobb completes the mission – the caveat being, this mission is not about extraction (stealing secrets), but inception: planting an idea in the mark’s mind.

The film spends the first hour or so going through its complex rules of the game, as Cobb assembles an ensemble cast to support him: Ariadne (Ellen Page) is the architect, the person responsible for crafting the virtual world that the team and the mark will dream into; Eames (Tom Hardy) is the forger, and specializes in impersonating others to manipulate the mark; Yusuf (Dileep Rao) is the chemist, the person providing the drugs that allow the team to build multiple layers of dreams (dreams within dreams). And of course, there’s the dependable Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who is the point man, always right by Cobb’s side. The mark is Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy), the inheritor of a vast energy empire. Saito’s idea is to let Fischer willingly dismantle his father’s empire, hence the inception.

What really complicates things is the ever-presence of Cobb’s wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), in the dreams. The alternative narrative is therefore Cobb’s complex past, how his wife died, and why she is living in his subconscious. Mal threatens to sabotage Cobb’s plans, which as viewers can guess leads to an eventual confrontation during the film’s climactical moments.

Much like its layers of dreams, Inception shines on multiple layers. At the very foundation, the film’s imaginative premise (dreams can be shared, and therefore manipulated; numerous laws govern the dream world, e.g. what happens when you die, or how you can wake up, and how perception of time changes) opens up the space for wildly creative scenarios – the most typical example of this is the triple narratives that develop in parallel during the “dream within a dream within a dream” act. The montage jumps freely from one dream layer to another, while at the same time pumping up the intensity of the action, which forces the viewer to scramble to keep up with the pace.

At the next layer, the film’s semi-open ending leaves multiple interpretations available. It’s early days yet, but I have already formed three or four distinctively different versions of “what really happened”, thanks to some lively discussion on IMDB and elsewhere. I’m quite sure that in the near future movie fans will be intensely debating Inception in a manner similar to the discussions around The Matrix (how many Matrix solutions were there, back in the day?). Based on what the viewer judged to be “dream” and “reality”, it is very possible to build elaborate and contrary explanations to the plot. Without seeing the film a second time, I have to say that many of the theories currently floated seem plausible.

At its most meta layer, Inception is brilliant in its exploration of consciousness and perception of reality. Just as The Matrix did over a decade ago, Inception challenges viewers to ponder on their perception of reality. Who is to say we are not living in an elaborate virtual world, whereas our physical beings are occupying a completely different world (or in the case of The Matrix, being used as batteries for the computer)? In Inception, the characters had personalized “totems” that helped them distinguish dream from reality – a small personal item that only the person knows about and carries around at all times, so that it is difficult to be manipulated and can serve as a “reality check” in the literal sense. But as the viewers find out during the open ending, these totems can be deceptive. Inception‘s discussion of the blurry line between dream and reality echoes some of the most basic metaphysical questions that mankind has pondered since time inmemorial – “what is being”? Does the world exist independent of the mind, or dependent on the mind?

As you can probably see, I’m clearly in love with this film. Perhaps Inception‘s greatest strength is its accessibility. It can be enjoyed as a mind-bending action thriller, where you take most of what was said by the characters as true, and perhaps just ponder a little bit on the ending. Or, you can dive in at the deep end and explore the endless possibilities of what it “really meant” – most of which I’m sure goes beyond Christopher Nolan’s original thinking, but the fact that it is open to interpretation is exactly the beauty of the construction. A film that will develop a rabid cult following and will be talked about for many years to come.

10/10

With Spain’s classy win over Portugal today, the match-ups for the quarter-finals are complete. Time to put down some predictions.

Quarter-finals

Uruguay – Ghana: Uruguay should take this one. Their strikers have looked dangerous throughout the tournament, while Ghana has not been really impressive. If Uruguay wins, it will be their first trip to the semis in 40 years – a mini revival for the two-time champions.

Brazil – Netherlands: this will be a tight one. The Dutch side posed serious threats to Brazil in both 94 (quarter-finals) and 98 (semi-finals), but lost both times. Brazil has been lethal in their efficiency, and will probably go through on goals from a few short bursts of samba football magic.

Argentina – Germany: probably the best match of the quarter-finals. The historical head-to-head statistics are slightly in Argentina’s favor I think; the bigger issue is whether this German side can fend off really talented technical teams, such as Argentina. Two years ago they were systematically outplayed by Spain in the Euro Cup final (very much like Portugal was today). My money is on Argentina.

Paraguay – Spain: Spain are the clear favorites here, though they should be wary of complacency. Their defense have not been too assuring, but they have only conceded two goals in four matches. Barring a huge upset, they should go through to the semi-finals.

Semi-finals (assuming my predictions)

Brazil – Uruguay: again Brazil are the favorites. Both teams are really familiar with each other. Uruguay needs to grasp every chance possible; if Brazil continues their form, they should go through to the final.

Argentina – Spain: Either Argentina or Germany would be a huge headache to Spain. If it is indeed Argentina, we should expect to see a very entertaining match of attacking football, with lots of opportunities at both ends. The two teams have not met in the world cup, and head-to-head records are tied. It will come down to sparks of brilliance from Messi versus his Barca team-mates Xavi and Iniesta. Really can’t predict – going with my personal favorite Spain here.

Final

Brazil – Spain: Brazil would be the favorites based on their current form and experience at this level of play, despite Spain being tipped overall favorites by bookies previously. And the head-to-head stats are also in Brazil’s favor. My biggest concern is the Spanish defense. If this match materializes, it could shape into one of the best finals in recent years. (Brazil – Argentina would be even more memorable, considering their huge rivalry.)

At any rate, this is perhaps Spain’s best chance in a while. Their squad is well-oiled and at the peak of their game, and they have the confidence of a team that has finally ended their perennial under-achieving streak by becoming European champions two years ago. They’ve never been to the World Cup final – this is their year to change that record.