Quick Reviews: Zero Django

I have five movies to write about but the other three are 2013 releases, so I'm getting these two out of the way first. (By the way, I have a handful more 2012 releases to see, including a couple of Oscar Best Picture nominees, so I'm going to hold off on a best-of-2012 a bit.)

After watching Zero Dark Thirty, which tells a story -- not the story, as there are some details (including names) changed for various reasons -- of the USA's long but eventually successful manhunt for Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I was struck with two things that kind of bothered me a bit. And one of those things was not whether the film glorifies the torture used to obtain evidence. It clearly doesn't. It displays it quite graphically but it doesn't really take a side. The film centers around Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA officer with a dogged determination to solve the mystery of bin Laden's whereabouts, but she's such a mysterious character -- all we really know about her is she began her CIA career after high school -- that I thought it was difficult to understand her or identify with her. And while there may be artistic merit to the style of shooting the raid on bin Laden's compound, with jittery cameras work, with scenes either dark or seen through night-vision goggles, and no real "money shot" of the actual killing of bin Laden, it also blunts the emotional payoff a bit. It's a very good film but it seems a bit drained of passion. My grade: B-plus.

As for Django Unchained, it fits right into the Quentin Tarantino formula: lots of violence, lots of in-jokes, homages, music, cameos, etc. Where "Inglorious Basterds" was a revenge-on-Nazis fantasy, this one is all about revenge on slave traders and plantation owners. It's so...out there. A German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) who frees, then teams up with, Django (Jamie Foxx) to collect more bounties before rescuing Django's wife, now owned by plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio -- actually a nice change of pace for him, playing a villain instead of a hero). Of course, the plantation is called...wait for it...Candyland. It's just hard to take too seriously, which is fine, but at the same time I almost feel like Tarantino should do a romantic comedy or something, just to challenge himself. My grade: B-minus.

Wawa Hoagie Day 2012

Yum. Free hoagies.

Wawa Hoagie Day is one of the events in the Welcome America festival (which Wawa also sponsors). Every year they've had this I've missed it for various reasons. Finally, this year I made it.

They always hype it as "everyone gets a piece of a giant hoagie" -- this year, they claimed it was 4.5 tons. Actually, it's not one big hoagie. It's a ton of small ones. But who cares? Give me a free hoagie, a bag of chips and a bottled tea/fruit drink/water and you can call it whatever you want. And even with hordes of people, the lines moved very quickly. They had a very efficient operation.

And there was a patriotic/charitable aspect as well. Police, fire and military personnel participated in a hoagie-building contest, raising funds for various charities (and I think the hoagies they made were taken to places such as homeless shelters). The USO show troupe "Liberty Bells" performed. And there was a table set up where you could write a note of thanks to be included in care packages being sent to the troops overseas.

As always, since I've given up on trying to put the slideshow right into this blog, here's a link to the album. If you want to know what I wrote in my note to the troops, go look at the pictures.

My Week In Comics 4-27-11

I only bought two books, but one was huge. More on that shortly. First...

Batman Incorporated 5: I'm not quite sure what was going on in this book. Maybe I need to re-read the previous two, or maybe it's just getting ridiculous. I did enjoy the first meeting between the Bruce Wayne Batman and the new Batwoman, though. And she called him "sir." I thought it was weird, but I look at it as an outgrowth of her military training. She's dealt with the Dick Grayson Batman before, but with Batman, Inc. getting off the ground, it's obvious to her that the original Batman is the five-star general.

Action Comics 900: As befits such a milestone issue, this book contained 96 pages. A large chunk was devoted to the main stories, which have finally dovetailed -- the finale of "The Black Ring" and the continuation of the "Reign of Doomsday." And yes, the return of Doomsday was a Lex Luthor machination. The Luthor story, and his confrontation with Superman (hey, he's back in his own book!) after gaining godlike powers as a result of merging with the being that created the energy spheres, was superb. The "Doomsday" storyline, in which the captured Superboy, Steel, Supergirl, Cyborg-Superman and the Eradicator have been trapped in an endless maze of sorts, felt out of place. Two separate stories instead of one that swung back and forth between the two plotlines might have been better. The other mini-features in the book have their own charms, but one in particular made a splash in the news.

A Milestone Post, A Worthy Cause, An Important Day

Yesterday I noticed on my Blogger dashboard that my next post on this blog would be post number 500. I thought that such a milestone ought to be about something really important instead of the mostly trivial stuff I normally write about. I asked for suggestions on a Twitter/Facebook update. I got none. Fortunately, (insert name/title of your preferred deity or deities, or chalk it up to fate) provided inspiration today.

I had just gotten on the bus that runs along Frankford Avenue near my house. There was a bit of a commotion. The driver commented to another passenger about being stuck in the outer lane. There were a few cars and vans driving along the other lane, moving more slowly than the rest of the traffic. As the bus driver finally managed to pass the clog, I noticed two vehicles in particular -- with a red, white and blue motif and a lot of text, with one word in the largest font standing out: GUMPATHON. In between them was a man in what seemed to be a wheelchair/bicycle hybrid. His legs were still -- it was his arms "pedaling" the handlebars that powered his ride. Curious, I jumped out of the bus a minute later, ahead of the caravan, and captured some video. (You don't hear sound because of the YouTube sound issue I previously ranted about, so you can't hear the man give me a shout in response to my thumbs-up gesture as he passed.)



So, what is the Gumpathon?

My iTunes American Music

As we wind down the July 4th celebration -- of course, tomorrow is the official government holiday since the actual holiday fell on a Sunday, here's a list of all the songs in my iTunes library with "America" in the title. (For a couple of songs I have multiple remixes, so I just took them off the list and left the original.) I wonder how many of these are really all that patriotic?

All American Girl - Melissa Etheridge
All American Girls - Sister Sledge
America - Jewel
America - Prince And The Revolution
America (I Love America) - Full Intention
America (I Love This Country) - The Simpsons
America Rules - The Simpsons
American Boy (Soulseekerz remix) - Estelle
American Flag - Morel
American Life - Madonna
American Music - The Pointer Sisters
American Pie - Madonna
American Triangle - Elton John 
An American Trilogy - Elvis Presley
God Bless The American Housewife - SHeDAISY
I Love America - Patrick Juvet
Kids In America - Kim Wilde
The King & Queen Of America - Eurythmics
Livin' In America - Donna Summer
Living In America - James Brown
New Year's-Americana Suite - Salsoul Orchestra
Which Way To America? - Living Colour
Young Americans - David Bowie

Memorial Day Thoughts

No one should dispute the importance of taking time on Memorial Day to think about our men and women in the armed forces, those whose lives have been lost in the past and those who currently risk their lives in serving our country. I certainly don't dispute that. However, cynic that I am, I can't help but wonder about some things...

• The fact that the policies of various adminstrations over the years have helped lead to the current quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan that are -- in addition to the cost in lives, the long-term effects on injured veterans, veterans who suffer from psychological traumas, and the stresses on their families -- continuing to bankrupt our budget at a time when more money is needed for so many crucial problems.

• That while everyone talks about our troops fighting for us, fighting so we can enjoy the freedoms we have, etc., so many of these people refuse to accept the idea that we all should enjoy these freedoms (such as the freedom to marry the person you love, regardless of gender) equally.

• That too many self-serving hypocritical politicians insist that the idea of openly gay and lesbian personnel is somehow harmful to the military, even though other nations have gotten over it, even though many former and current soldiers have gotten over it, even though most of the people in this country have gotten over it. The much-hyped "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal that is working its way through Congress isn't really a repeal -- it's a passing of the buck. There's a clause saying that it can't take effect until after a study is completed and after the president, the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all sign off on it. And what is there to prevent the next administration from trying to reverse the decision? Nothing, from what I've heard.

• And when I see things like Major League Baseball stopping in the middle of their games for a video tribute instead of having a pre-game ceremony, having "God Bless America" sung during the 7th-inning stretch, and having those players wear specially-designed caps (one example pictured) -- with those same caps now on sale for a lot more than most of the other caps they sell (while $1.00 per cap is going to charity, what about the rest of the markup?) -- I just feel like their patriotism is more a combination of jingoism and a marketing scheme.

But hey, I'm just cynical that way. Your mileage may vary.

Now Back To Your Hockey Season, Already In Progress

The Vancouver Olympics are over. The United States won the most medals overall but host Canada won the most gold medals, including the one they needed the most, the men's hockey gold. Team USA gave a great effort, coming from behind to tie the game on a goal by Zach Parise with 25 seconds left to force overtime, only to lose when -- ugh -- Sidney Crosby won it for the Canadians.

Despite the result, it was a great game, a great spectacle, and certainly can't hurt hockey's popularity in the USA. How much will it help? Honestly, I don't know. It's not like hockey is going to become our national pastime. And as great as hockey is in the Olympics, the NHL regular season can never live up to it.

Why? The talent is diluted among 30 teams. The 82-game schedule is bad enough, but when the league shuts down for the Olympics it's really condensed. There are more instances of teams playing on back-to-back nights or three times in four nights. It affects the quality of play. The teams have been sitting around for the better part of two weeks. And for the Olympians, those players could wear down from the extra games. For the Canadian players, having been forced into an elimination game, their "regular season" is now 89 games. And the travel will be worse in 2014, when the games will be held in Sochi, Russia instead of North America.

Unlike in international play, fighting is not only condoned, it's practically encouraged. (By the way, we saw hard hitting throughout the Olympics without one single fight. Any rationale for the allowance of fights in the NHL is, frankly, shot to hell...wait, what's that noise? Why, it's a bunch of angry Flyers fans marching to my door demanding my head on a platter for that comment! Here, I got a picture of them...)

Speaking of those Flyers, they were on a four-game winning streak a couple of weeks ago. They won two huge home-and-home sets, first rallying from a pair of 2-0 deficits to beat New Jersey twice, and then taking two more from Montreal, one of the teams in the Eastern Conference playoff morass. That momentum came to a screeching halt thanks to the league's shutdown. Sure, it might be regained, but the Flyers have had enough trouble being consistent without a two-week vacation thrust upon them. And Mike Richards and Chris Pronger are two of those Team Canada guys who got no rest, with Pronger being 35 years old. That's not good for the Flyers.

The NHL derives little real benefit from stopping for the Olympics. It's great for Olympic hockey but not for the NHL. There may be a ratings increase but it won't be huge, and it won't be enough to get the league a better TV contract. As I stated above, it affects the quality of play, it disrupts the season. It could work if the league cut back the schedule during Olympic years -- or, better, cut the schedule every year -- but the league won't be willing to give up the revenue from those games and the players won't want reduced salaries as a result.

A final decision hasn't been made as to whether NHL players will participate in the 2014 Olympics. The players want to play, the league isn't fully committed. If I had my way, they wouldn't go, but since when do I get my way in these matters?

USA Beats Canada: I Guess "Tarzan Boy" Works After All

In my previous post I made light of one of the choices on the pregame musical playlist of Patrick Kane from the USA Olympic Men's Hockey team (and the Chicago Blackhawks). "'Tarzan Boy'? Really?" I wrote. I find it hard to be inspired with lyrics like these:

Jungle life/We're living in the open
All alone/Like Tarzan Boy
Hide and seek/We play along while rushing
Cross the forest
Monkey business/On a sunny afternoon

But hey, that's just me. It seems to work for Patrick Kane. And the United States team came away tonight with a surprising 5-3 victory over Team Canada -- in Vancouver, making it essentially a road game for the USA -- in the final preliminary game of the Olympic hockey tournament. The USA hadn't beaten Canada in a game at the Olympics since 1960. That year, the USA went on to win a surprise gold medal at Squaw Valley. Twenty years later came the "Miracle on Ice" win over the powerful Soviet Union at Lake Placid that led to another gold.

It's now 50 and 30 years later, respectively, and although these Olympics aren't in the United States they are on the same continent, so perhaps Team USA is due, if not destined to win gold. The win over Canada certainly makes their path easier -- they get an extra day of rest before the quartefinals, while Canada will have to play Germany to get into the quarters, and then are likely to play Russia in the quarterfinal game. Thus, team USA will only have to face one of these two in order to win gold.

The Canadians outshot the Americans* 45-22 but USA goalie Ryan Miller was superb while Canada goalie Martin Brodeur was, well, not. Miller and the USA held on under relentless pressure after a Sidney Crosby goal got Canada within 4-3 with 3:09 left, until Ryan Kesler (at left) scored an empty-net goal with 45 seconds to go. (Ironically, Kesler plays for the Vancouver Canucks so he was a visiting player on his home ice, and Canucks fans have to be conflicted.) Watching those minutes between the Crosby and Kesler goals, I half-expected Canada to tie the game. It was that intense.

*Yes, I'm fully aware that Canadians are technically also Americans, since we're all part of North America.

The thing is, while there's still a talent gap between Canada and the USA, it's not as wide as it used to be. So this isn't like those 1980 and 1960 teams (especially with the NHL players involved). What team USA did tonight was limit their mistakes and capitalize on those made by Canada. Do that, and get quality goaltending as Miller provided, and any game is winnable. So tonight's win is a surprise, but not too much of one.

So team USA wins and I've made my peace with "Tarzan Boy" as inspiration, but I have no idea what the deal is with this picture of Kesler:

My iTunes Shuffle Baker's Dozen 2-21-10

Just a few minutes away from the USA-Canada Olympic hockey game. Consider this a warm-up playlist, although not quite the same as Team USA's Patrick Kane. ("Tarzan Boy"? Really? I love the song but I don't know that it would be on my list of songs to get me psyched for a big game.)

40 Years Back/Come - Röyksopp
Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones
Missing (CL McSpadden Unreleased Powerhouse Mix) - Everything But The Girl
Someday We'll Be Together - Diana Ross and the Supremes
Phone Sex (Do You Want Me Tonight?) - Sandra Bernhard
The Very Thought Of You - Lisa Stansfield
I Can't Decide - Scissor Sisters
Anytime - Brian McKnight
Strangelove - Depeche Mode
A Fool Is Born Everyday - Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam
Brother, Brother - Carole King
The Lady's Got Potential - Antonio Banderas (Evita - Complete Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Love Foolosophy - Jamiroquai

Another reason Canada rules, USA drools

There's a free preview of the NHL Center Ice game package. Until October 24th I've got 14 channels showing out-of-market NHL games. When there aren't too many games, they'll carry both teams' feeds. Tonight there's only one game: Columbus at Vancouver. So I'm watching the Vancouver feed, and during a commercial break there's an ad for the local lottery. In British Columbia (and perhaps other Canadian provinces as well), local residents can play the lottery online. They can play the usual daily number games and the national Lotto (think Powerball or MegaMillions), plus Keno, "Pacific Hold-em" Poker and even sports betting. And they can do it all online.

Try playing a lottery number online in Pennsylvania. Buy a Powerball ticket online? Not here. As for sports betting, well, as David Letterman said the other night, do you feel like a little story?

This year the state of Delaware announced a plan to begin single-game wagering on sports. The Delaware Park racetrack and slots parlor spent lots of money to open up a sports book like those in Las Vegas casinos. A federal law passed in 1992 banning sports gambling exempted Delaware because, in 1976, they ran a game in which you could place parlay bets -- meaning, you had to pick winners in at least 3 games -- on NFL games. It was such a failure that they ended the game within a year.

The major pro sports leagues and the NCAA filed lawsuits to stop Delaware's sports betting, and a Federal appeals court put a halt to Delaware's plan. The court ruled that the law states that the exemption is limited to the parlay betting game previously run by the state, and no other type of sports wagering. So the state (which was depending on revenue from sports betting to help balance the budget) and the racetrack (which now has a sports book that's practically useless) are screwed. They did go ahead with a new version of the game they tried in 1976. I doubt it will be much more successful than the old one.

It's the NFL's stance that is particularly hypocritical. Football wouldn't be as popular without the betting (both legal and illegal) that revolves around the sport. The point spreads are widely available, even on shows by the TV networks carrying NFL games. The multitude of betting odds given on the Super Bowl -- even extending to things like the length of the national anthem -- give the game even more hype than it gets on its own. If the league is so concerned with gambling, why is ESPN and NBC and Fox allowed to hype the point spreads on their shows and websites? Why doesn't the NFL try and get a law passed to shut down the Vegas sports books?

Whether it's sports betting and buying lottery tickets online or including a public option in health care reform, the question is the same: if Canada can do it, why can't the United States of America do it?

Oh, those crazy Canadians!

Here's a YouTube video of Adam Lambert, "American Idol" runner-up, having a sex toy thrown at him while singing Led Zeppelin at the Idol tour show in Hamilton, Ontario. Forward to the 2:10 mark if you don't want to listen to the entire song:



See, this is what happens when we Americans try to spread culture amongst the savages in foreign lands. Keep "American Idol" in America, dammit!

I could be on ESPN someday!

Earlier today I turned on the TV to watch the baseball game of the week on Fox, but before I got to it I found something on ESPN called "The Border Battle." Apparently it was the first-ever game between teams of what the announcers described as "elite players" from the USA and Canada...in men's slow-pitch softball! I don't know how these players were determined to be elite, but now I have something to shoot for in my own softball career.

The game was played in Oklahoma City at the ASA (Amateur Softball Association) Hall of Fame Complex, in between games of an event called the World Cup of Softball, featuring some of the top women's fast-pitch teams. So the field they were playing on, unlike the adequate-at-best fields in Fairmount Park that the City of Brotherly Love Softball League uses, was pristine and had an outfield fence. Thus, in the men's game they had a rule that a team can hit no more than 10 home runs in a game. After that, any balls hit over the fence are considered outs.

When I turned on the game, Canada had a 16-8 lead going into the bottom of the fourth. The USA then sent 21 batters to the plate and scored 17 runs, to move ahead 25-16. However, by that point in the game they were already up to 9 homers, and the announcers were worried that too many of those home runs had one or no runner on base when they were hit. With the 10-homer limit it's considered wise to hit as many as 3-run bombs or grand slams as possible.

However, it turned out not to matter as Canada was retired in order in the 5th, and team USA scored some more, threatening to hit the 15-run lead required for the game to end under a mercy rule. The USA eventually got its 10th homer and one ball over the fence for an out after that, but were able to finish off a 30-23 win.

I was surprised to see slow-pitch softball on ESPN, but at least it's a sport, sort of, instead of yet another poker show.