Just because I didn’t want the hundreds dozens of readers that check in on Monday not to have anything to read, here are a few thoughts gathered over the past week.
SPORTS
Tiger Woods is taking a beating for his performance at the British Open. Not for missing the cut, but for tossing a club and dropping an F bomb or two. ESPN’s million-dollar essayist, Rick Reilly, called out Tiger for being a poor sport.
It’s disrespectful to the game, disrespectful to those he plays with and disrespectful to the great players who built the game before him. Ever remember Jack Nicklaus doing it? Arnold Palmer? When Tom Watson was getting guillotined in that playoff to Stewart Cink, did you see him so much as spit? Only one great player ever threw clubs as a pro — Bobby Jones — and he stopped in his 20s when he realized how spoiled he looked.
Did they ever have two boom mics hovering over Jack and Arnie while they walked the course? Did they ever keep multiple camera crews on them for every pre-shot routine, green read, and walk down the fairway? I’m getting quite tired of the idea that athletes in the olden days didn’t do anything wrong, that they were just American heroes that played the game the right way. While I can’t speak about the guys that Reilly mentions, I can tell you that for as long as golf has been played competitively, and as long as there have been wayward tee shots, and missed birdie putts, clubs have been thrown. There just haven’t been millions of people to see them or million dollar writers getting paid to dissect them.
It’s not as if Tiger was chucking his 7-iron into a forest and dropping a nuclear holocaust of F-bombs on TV. I’d have been a little frustrated too, when thousands of people in the gallery, a dozen HD cameras, and millions of viewers at home watch my drive sail right into some thick rough and nobody can find it. Maybe Reilly was just pissed Tiger turned down his offer to be on his lame interview show Homecoming…
MOVIES
Quite a movie binge this past week, and I was very pleased with two in particular. Disney-Pixar’s Up was an incredible film. For a company that makes movies aimed at kids, there isn’t a more consistent performer in entertainment. With the exception of maybe Cars, I don’t have a single complaint about any of the movies that Pixar has made. Even more impressively, they’ve taken concepts that I initially was skeptical about and just knocked them out of the park. Ratatouille? Wall-E? Monsters, Inc? These guys are just masters at what they do.
You don’t need to have kids to see this movie…
Up is an incredible heart-warming and sometimes sad tale that will be nominated for Best Picture when Oscar season rolls around again. It’s ability to tell a complete life story and frame it in an utterly original way really captivated me. As a writer, watching them structure their story, advance time and plot, and still have a driving narrative is something that is really, really, really impressive. You could call this movie a cartoon, or you could call it a better version of Gran Torino. Worth the ten bucks, and the visual effects on the big screen are pretty incredible.
(500) Days of Summer should go on the mandatory list as well. The movie bills itself as “not another romantic comedy,” and it succeeds putting a wonderful twist on a very played out concept. Zooey Deschanel is enchanting and Joseph Gordon-Leavitt was very solid as a male lead. He even made me forget how much I hated 3rd Rock from the Sun.
Like a Cameron Crowe movie that isn’t Elizabethtown… You know, a good one.
With a tagline “Boy Meets Girl. Boy Falls in Love. Girl Doesnt,” this movie succeeds at being very “Coming of Age-y,” and navigates the very dangerous waters of love, being a grown up, and all the other stuff that either goes the way of Lloyd Dobler and excellent or the way of just about every movie the entire cast of Grey’s Anatomy has made — with the exception of Knocked Up and Old School. More impressively, the director, whose best credit was some music video stuff did a great job, and the composition of the script, by two young guys who are going to be making some serious dough for the next few years, was really, really cool… almost a modern, revised, dark twist on the vignettes that When Harry Met Sally used so effectively.
Final point: Transformers 2. How can anyone with a functioning brain like these movies? Two-and-a-half hours of CGI visual effects and a plot that’s dumber than most porno movies. I’ve got friends that just love this crap and it really makes me question their sanity. In Transformers 2, not only do cars turn into transformers, so do household appliances and just about anything else people can think of. What an epic waste of time…
THE WEDDING VIDEO
I can’t get enough of this thing.I’ve probably watched it a dozen times and every time I feel like a 13-year-old girl. I’m sure by this point, most of America has seen this, but it’s just so unbelievable that I recognize and sorta-kinda know some of these people, though I’m not sure that it makes it more interesting. The Today Show did an excellent piece on why people enjoy the video so much and they hit on something pertinent. The unbridled joy that’s taking place just puts a smile on your face, and the video does such an unbelievable job of clarifying the type of excitement, happiness, and future that relationships should have when people walk down the aisle, and this video does such a great job of expressing that.
FINALLY
Can you believe that NFL Training Camps open this week? If Favre-mania strikes Vikings Nation, this could be one of the more ridiculous seasons ever. As someone who like the Purple, and as someone who’s still trying to be a Notre Dame football fan, this year has the potential to be the greatest autumn ever, or one of the most depressing of my adult life. Add to the fact that my next birthday puts me into a very unsettling age bracket, and come October, I’m either going to be flying high, or mixing Jack Daniels with my OJ for breakfast.
Filed under: Golf, Misc., Movies Tagged: | 500 Days of Summer, Rick Reilly, Tiger Woods, Up, Wedding Dance Video
Zooey is hot.
Up was pretty badass, but seeing it in 3d was TOTALLY overrated.
You going to give us some NFL preseason analysis?
Where’s vick going to end up?
For some reason, I like San Francisco. Singletary is a good coach for him, and both QBs there are jokesters. I think that city would forgive him quicker and its about as far away from Georgia and Virginia as you can get.
Just saw The Hurt Locker and Funny People. Both good. You need to see ‘em…if you haven’t already.