Book club: Blood Meridian discussion

So this is just a spot for the book club to discuss our latest read, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.  Post your thoughts or questions on the book in the comments section below.

And again, if you are not in the club but want to be, just let me know and I'll add you.

the end of football as we know it...

This Sunday's Super Bowl is the last guaranteed football game we'll ever see.  For now.  I'm pretty sure that even though resolving the collective bargaining agreement mess isn't going to be pretty, we'll have a fresh season come September.  (Maybe a couple of pre-season games get scratched, but who cares about those anyway?)  There's too much money at stake for all parties involved, and I think the NFL is smart enough to learn from the mistakes baseball made back in 1994 and is still paying for today.

But does that mean we want football back exactly the same?  Absolutely not.  So while we have the chance to debate these things, here's a few items for consideration:

1. The Tuck Rule - I have to mention this first because it cost the Jets a trip to the Super Bowl this season.  Well, not really.  The Jets taking too long to get themselves motivated was the biggest factor.  But it wasn't the only one.  When Mark Sanchez was hit in the second quarter of the AFC Championship Game, it was ruled a fumble on the field, which allowed Pittsburgh to return the ball for a defensive TD.    The points off that play represented the difference between victory and defeat for the Steelers. Just a week earlier, the tuck rule was used to reverse a call in the Chiefs-Raiders wildcard game, even though it seemed obvious in that play that Matt Cassel was not attempting a pass at all.  Not every forward arm motion is a pass, but cocking your arm back usually is.  So why is a backwards arm motion a potential fumble situation, but not a forward one?  This insanity has been a source of frustration since the spotlight first shone on it in the January 2002 Patriots-Raiders game.  Even Mike Pereira, former NFL Vice President of Officiating, thinks it's time for this rule to go.  That's an opinion no one should take lightly.  Solution?  You want to know when a ball has been passed? When it's left the quarterback's fingertips.  If you can knock it from his grasp before that? Fumble, plain and simple.
   
   
2. Coaches' challenges - I pointed this article out to friends last week, and to quote myself from then, "instead of the 2(+1) system they have now, [how about] teams only get one challenge, and they can keep reusing it as long as the challenge is always good?  It does create more pressure not to use it early, but I am ok with that. It pretty much creates pressure on using it at all. A team should only be challenging when they are sure something was wrong. The coaches won't be worried about using it early if they are confident it was a bad call that will be overturned. Which is different from the current system which basically gives them opportunities to challenge borderline calls just in the hopes that it would get overturned."  Solution? Well I pretty much just outlined that, I think.
   
   
3. The Pro Bowl - "Please, somebody put the Pro Bowl out of its misery."  That's how Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders put it on his Twitter account.  And he's right.  Mike Zanoni over at the Sterling Shakers agrees, saying there is nothing wrong with having no all-star game for football, especially when the risk of injury is greater for what is a meaningless game, and the lack of skills competitions makes the weekend anti-climactic.  Solution? The Senior Bowl.  This would be the perfect chance to highlight some of the names that are going to be showing up in the draft, and the players in that game actually have some incentive to give it all they've got - a big game on a nationwide stage could help boost their draft potential.  Plus, going from the Senior Bowl to the combines to the draft keeps attention on the NFL alive right through April.  Kill off the Pro Bowl and put the Senior Bowl in its place the week before the Super Bowl.
   
   
4. Subjective calls - What happened to you, Ed Hochuli? You used to be cool, man.  But lately it seems like your calls have become more and more uneven.  In that same Jets-Steelers championship game, you called Eric Smith for unnecessary roughness but did nothing about James Harrison's identical hit later in the game.  This after the questionable unnecessary roughness call a month earlier on Ndamukong Suh in the Bears-Lions game.  That Suh hit was with a forearm, and was nothing compared to Harrison's hit.  Maybe I am just more sensitive to Hochuli's calls ever since 2008, when he cost my Chargers a playoff spot in a game against the Broncos, but he needs to get a little more consistent.  When TMQ - the best football column out there - can call you out on three major mistakes in a championship game, something is obviously wrong. Solution?  A big slice of humble pie should do.  Which starts with me saying that right now, I personally think Mike Carey has supplanted Hochuli as the best ref in the game.  I know that won't cause Hochuli to lose any sleep, but it's a slippery slope, and then the next thing you know, he is the Danny Davis of the NFL.
   
   
5. Peter King - on the opposite end of the spectrum from TMQ, is King's MMQB.  While King can offer some interesting analysis (in between bits of fanboy fawning for Tom Brady), his column's segments confound the English language.  When you talk about Ten Things, stick to ten (or call it something else).  When item 10 is broken down into parts a.-m., you don't have ten things.  You have twenty-two.  Much like when you have Quote of the Week I, II, and III.  It can't be the Quote of the Week if there are three of them.  Could you not just call it Quotes of the Week?

In the end, football is still the best sport we have right now, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement.  Just as long as that doesn't include the Canadians.

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133 years of motion pictures has brought us to this.  They even get a Wilhelm scream in there.

I love that the robot seems to be designed as some love child between Kim Jong Il and Fireball from The Running Man:

more Hollywood machinations

I may try to come up with some sort of regular roundup of interesting movie news to post here.  I don't know how that will work yet, but I keep realizing there's a lot of stuff I want to share.  It will likely only be once a week - there are plenty of sites and blogs out there completely focused on these things that can offer every breaking bit of information or rumor, so there is no point in getting into that game.  They have sources anyway, so I'd just be ripping them off.  Instead I'll just use them as my sources so I can pass along what seems like the most interesting news.


Like the news that Javier Bardem has been offered the part of Roland in the upcoming Dark Tower project.  I love the ambitiousness of the plan to bring the whole Dark Tower series to life through a mixture of movies and television, and it's about time Hollywood realized the potential of using these two mediums in tandem, rather than one as a source of material for the other (in either direction).  I haven't seen Biutiful yet but between his work in The Sea Inside and No Country for Old Men, I have no doubt that Bardem would be perfect for the role.


Perfection is not something I think of when I hear the name Elmo.  I am an old school Sesame Street guy - Grover, Oscar, Bert and Ernie, Big Bird.  When they introduced Elmo I had already moved on from Sesame Street, but the character always seemed too easy for me, with the baby voice and referring to himself in the third person.  The other characters had personalities.  Elmo just seemed too cutesy.  But I have to admit, I am curious to see Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey, which just premiered at Sundance.  I'll take any opportunity to get a behind the scenes look at anything Jim Henson-related.  I just wish they could've put the spotlight on one of the other characters.  Elmo gets enough attention as it is.  There doesn't seem to be a trailer yet, but here you can check out a quick interview with the film's creators.


Finally, I want to try to showcase at least one new trailer in these posts.  Robert Redford is a mixed bag as a director, but this looks like it has potential, and I am surprised the story has not been told on film before (that I am aware of).  Here's hoping it pays off when it's released in April...

Oscar nomination update

so how did I do on my predictions?  I did a pretty decent job on the number of awards the front-runners would be up for, starting with being right on the money with The King's Speech leading with 12 nominations.  Seems I didn't give enough credit to True Grit, which came in second with 10 (I didn't even have them in my top five), and too much credit to Inception and Black Swan, which I had pegged for 11 nominations each (they landed 8 and 5 respectively).  I had 9 predicted for The Social Network (it ended up with 8), and 8 for The Fighter (which ended up with 7), so overall not too bad.  I really expected Black Swan to score more technical nominations like costume design and art direction (Harry Potter? really?), and how did it not grab a screenplay nomination?

As for the category breakdowns, I have to give myself props for calling it 100% right for both Best Picture and Best Actress. (That's the first time I've called every Best Pic nomination correctly, even from when there were only five nominees.)  I think the biggest surprise overall is Javier Bardem getting a Best Actor nomination (no one was talking about Biutiful before today, but they will be now).  Jacki Weaver did manage to get in there for Animal Kingdom over Mila Kunis (another reason I was so off with Black Swan).  And it seems Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake did cancel each other out, but I have to say I am pleasantly surprised by the appearance of both Jeremy Renner and John Hawkes.  Renner was the best part of The Town (which, like I said yesterday, could easily be the 11th nominee for Best Picture) and even though I haven't seen Winter's Bone yet, John Hawkes is a fantastic actor - Deadwood, The Perfect Storm, Eastbound & Down, Me and You and Everyone We Know... he's been doing great stuff for awhile now.

And no Waiting for Superman for Best Documentary?  That's just shocking to me, though the list is full of great choices (I haven't seen Waste Land, but the others are all excellent.)

I'll do another list of my predicted winners right before the awards are handed out February 27th.  We'll see if I can outguess Roger Ebert.  Free junior Western bacon chee for everyone if I win.

Oscar nomination predictions

The nominations get announced tomorrow morning at 8:30am Eastern.  And while it was always more fun trying to predict the Best Picture nominees when the field was limited to five (I hate the 10-nominee field like Hook hates Pan), I still can't resist seeing how close I can get to the final tally.  So here's my list, followed by a few scattershot thoughts on the other major categories:


Best Picture:

1. Black Swan
2. Inception
3. The Social Network
4. The Fighter
5. The King's Speech
6. Toy Story 3
7. True Grit
8. 127 Hours
9. Winter's Bone
The Kids Are All Right

And not to hedge my bets, but I wouldn't be surprised if The Town sneaks in to that 9th or 10th spot.  (The top five would be my choices if this was 2009. Or 1945.  Or any year in between).  

Best Actor: Colin Firth is the front-runner to win it all for The King's Speech.  Expect to see James Franco, Mark Wahlberg, Jeff Bridges, and Jessie Eisenberg round out the category. (Dark horse: Ryan Gosling)

Best Actress: Natalie Portman is the most surefire bet you could make this year. But since there has to be other nominees, I'm expecting Annette Bening, Nicole Kidman (for Rabbit Hole), Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine), and Jennifer Lawrence.

Best Supporting Actor: I think Christian Bale leads the pack right now, but his temperament may come back to haunt him on Oscar night.  Geoffrey Rush will be nominated, Mark Ruffalo is likely, and I think Vincent Cassel has a decent shot.  Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake might cancel each other out, and give an opportunity to someone like Matt Damon.

Best Supporting Actress: I give the edge right now to Helena Bonham Carter, if only because Amy Adams and Melissa Leo may split votes between them.  All three will be nominated though, as well as Mila Kunis and Hallie Steinfeld.  I've heard people talk up Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom, but I think that movie will end up being too little-seen to get her enough votes.

Best Director: As Picture goes, so goes Director.  But there's not 10 nominees here, so who gets left out?  David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, and Tom Hooper are locks.  And since directors nominate directors, and the other DGA picks were Christopher Nolan and David O. Russell, I wouldn't bet against them.  Sorry, Coen brothers.

I'll stop there.  Dissecting the writing categories, effects, documentaries (expect Waiting For Superman and Inside Job) - see, I've got thoughts on them all but lunch hour is almost over.  So overall, I'm looking at The King's Speech to lead the pack with 12 nominations, Black Swan and Inception tied for second with 11, The Social Network with 9, and The Fighter with 8.  I'll look to update tomorrow to see how close I came.

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This could be the greatest film ever...