As you’ve probably heard, the visuals in this movie are amazing. Just like in Avatar, the visuals alone justify reason enough to see the movie. Again like Avatar, this movie’s major weakness is in its story. In fact, the fairytale type of story is barely there; it mainly exists just for Alice to have a primary goal.

Other than the visuals, a major strong point are the performances. Saying that Johnny Depp (as the Mad Hatter) is a good actor is a gross understatement. He is one of the greatest actors working today, and he shows it here.

Helena Bonham Carter gets laughs as the Red Queen, Alan Rickman’s voice work is immediately recognizable as the Caterpillar, and Stephen Fry adds another level of creepiness to the Chesire Cat. By contrast, Anne Hathaway and Crispin Glover seemed a bit dull in their roles. Also of note was how surprisingly good newcomer Mia Wasikowska was as Alice. She has a great screen presence and holds her own against the rest of the pros.

I’m a great fan of Tim Burton (the director) and most of his movies, but this one seemed to lack a certain heart, soul and excitement that needed to be there to make this film truly great. Visuals and acting can only do so much; without a strong story and high energy, this film sadly never reaches its full potential.

Well the Fantasy Football League has been running for a couple of months now and we have a pretty impressive 47 teams in there now.

Here is the current league table as of 12/10/08.

As you can see I’m doing rubbish sitting in a shameful 26th place although there are a fair few hundred more matches to be played this season so I can confident I can make the 100 odd points I’m behind the leaders back in no time….  It’s a marathon and not a sprint after all

I have to say hats off to the guys who are sitting up at the top of the league because that is some pretty impressive scoring although the rest of the league shouldn’t be too despondent because it is more than possible to pull 50 points back on the leaders in a weekend.

I do have prizes for the top three at the end of December and the top three at the end of the season although I’m trying to sort some sponsorship for some spot prizes as well…  This is proving to be easier said than done at the minute though but I ‘m  sure I’ll get something sorted.

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The Current Table

1	Mushy Peas	Adam Levy	60	60
2	eNiallators FC	Niall Walsh	57	57
3	Oakwood FC	Sam Kimish	56	56
4	Dark Crusaders	Lemuel Banton	51	51
5	Funky Monkeys	Sam Kimish	50	50
6	MANC-MANIACS	Paul Murray	46	46
7	ElMatador_TR	Kadir Koç	44	44
8	NatDOG F.C	Louie Gardner	43	43
9	Hodson’s Hotshot’s	Hotshot Hodson	41	41
10	Parsely United	Mila Samdub	38	38
10	MODS FC	Simon Smith	38	38
12	FluidFootball	Daniel Smart	34	34
13	Green & Blues	Dom Sharples	20	20

Starters This Weekend

So Mr Adam Levy is leading the charge at the minute with a solid 60 point opening weekend (well played mate).  I’ve made a decent enough start and am sitting nicely in 2nd place although I’ve been looking at my team and am thinking of a few things I’d like to change (I’m thinking Agbonlahor for Walcott maybe) but I’m sure they will do me proud come the end of the season :p

I’ll post a full breakdown of my team in the coming weeks once we have no more new starters because I wouldn’t wanna influence anybody haha Although last weekend Pepe Reina was my main man!

Signing Up

Right so to join head on over to http://fantasy.premierleague.com/ sign-up and then create your little squad. Once the squad has been created you can then enter our mini league using the code 826581-153513. If you want more information though have a look at the original post!

As well as us competing between ourselves I thought I could write a monthly post naming and shaming how we have gotten on that month, I’m sure the thousands of daily visitors to the site will be really interested to read how we have gotten on :p

The free one on the Premier League looks decent enough and enables us to have a thefootymanager.com mini league as well as enabling you to enter your team in other leagues with your mates and the main competition.

How it works

The jist of it is with a budget of £100 million, choose a squad of 15 players made up of:

• 2 Goalkeepers
• 5 Defenders
• 5 Midfielders
• 3 Forwards

No more than 3 players can be selected from a single team. The actual scoring etc is detailed over on the Premier League site.

I’ve created a league call thefootymanager.com which once you create a team you can enter the league using the code 826581-153513

Right so to join head on over to http://fantasy.premierleague.com/ sign-up and then create your little squad.  Once the squad has been created you can then enter our mini league using the code 826581-153513.

Prizes

Right even though it’s free I’m happy to fund a few prizes (well the adds on the site will) if we get enough people joining. I’m not sure what they will be just yet but i’ll update people once I get an idea of how many people are playing… The more people how play the better the prizes!

So come on everybody, get signed up and we’ll see how much we all know about real football

http://fantasy.premierleague.com/ and the league code is 826581-153513.

Game starts on 16/08/08!

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