Ben Folds is awesome. I'd totally forgotten that for a moment. (via BB)
A Good Night for Vols Fans
So not only did Tennessee play a pretty decent game against SDSU, with the guys who needed to step up (Chism and Prince) stepping up, but Georgetown also got bounced by a 14 seed, which gives them a great shot at the Sweet 16.
Of course Ohio will be rabid to try and set up a Sweet 16 meeting with Ohio St., so that game is no gimme, and the hot 'n' cold Vols could just as easily have had only one good tourney game in them. But in what has probably been the worst year in school history when it comes to sports (a bad football year followed by Kiffin's departure, the basketball suspensions... at least the Lady Vols have bounced back from last season's swoon), a tourney win or two would be nice.
Of course Ohio will be rabid to try and set up a Sweet 16 meeting with Ohio St., so that game is no gimme, and the hot 'n' cold Vols could just as easily have had only one good tourney game in them. But in what has probably been the worst year in school history when it comes to sports (a bad football year followed by Kiffin's departure, the basketball suspensions... at least the Lady Vols have bounced back from last season's swoon), a tourney win or two would be nice.
Reading the Tea Leaves
Let's see... Kucinich has switched his vote. And Certified Village Idiot Dana Millbank has decided to pretend he was on the right side of history all along.
Yup, we're about to get health care reform. Huzzah!
Yup, we're about to get health care reform. Huzzah!
An Idle Thought
Secular Right pegs Romney's odds on winning the '12 Pub nom at 1 in 5 if health care reform flops, but 1 in 20 if it passes -- the thinking being that Romney's own, similar reform in Massachusetts would kill him during a primary campaign in which most Republican candidates would be pushing to kill HCR if they got into office.
As we saw last time out, with Moby Rush's retarded Operation Chaos idea and the GOS' pushback campaign to bolster Romney in Michigan, crossing over party lines to cause mischief is becoming less anathema. So if Romney is in trouble in the primaries, what would prevent him from throwing a Hail Mary, declaring himself to be the only Republican candidate willing to protect HCR, and hoping that enough Dems cross over to vote for him to ensure he gets the nomination?
I mean, it's not like anyone credible will be running against Obama, so Dem voters won't have much else to do but try something like this. Of course, they'd also have to be willing to take Romney at his word that he would keep HCR intact if he gets into office...
Hmm. On second thought, forget it. I've found the fatal flaw in the idea.
As we saw last time out, with Moby Rush's retarded Operation Chaos idea and the GOS' pushback campaign to bolster Romney in Michigan, crossing over party lines to cause mischief is becoming less anathema. So if Romney is in trouble in the primaries, what would prevent him from throwing a Hail Mary, declaring himself to be the only Republican candidate willing to protect HCR, and hoping that enough Dems cross over to vote for him to ensure he gets the nomination?
I mean, it's not like anyone credible will be running against Obama, so Dem voters won't have much else to do but try something like this. Of course, they'd also have to be willing to take Romney at his word that he would keep HCR intact if he gets into office...
Hmm. On second thought, forget it. I've found the fatal flaw in the idea.
Review: The Runaways
The Runaways (2010, directed by Floria Sigismondi)
Depending on who you talk to, the Runaways were either an interesting footnote in rock history, or one of the Most Important Band Ever. They certainly weren't the first chick rockers (Patti Smith and Suzi Quatro got there before they did) but they were the first all-girl band to actually make some legitimately awesome noise (despite being packaged as disposable sex kittens) and thus prove that girls could kick as much ass as boys. A biopic was pretty much inevitable; the only question was which generation of starlets would be the ones to portray them.
In the end, we got the Twilight generation. And that turns out not to be as tragic a bit of happenstance as it could have been.
As a movie, the Runaways is fairly bland, which is a weird thing to say about a film that begins with a drop of menstrual blood hitting the sidewalk. It makes no effort whatsoever to distance itself from all the usual rock biopic stereotypes. Drugs! Tyrannical managers! More drugs! Big success in Japan! Drugs again! Shattered home lives! Still more drugs! Partly that adherence to cliche is due to the source material. The movie, while produced by Joan Jett, is based on Cherie Currie's autobiography, and Currie apparently saw her life in terms of those cliches. Sigismondi's direction, in her feature debut, doesn't help either. She makes no effort to get to the other side of those cliches, just presenting them at face value rather than using them to reflect on Currie's choices, or contrasting how Currie was handling the ride to how any of the other band members were. Sigismondi frankly seems more interested in shooting a music video for Cherry Bomb (which she does, awkwardly shoehorning it into the Japanese tour sequence) than she is in making her characters three-dimensional.
Really, though, most of the blame needs to be pinned on Dakota Fanning. She's simply not up to the task at hand. It's fine that she doesn't come across as a terribly dynamic frontwomen for the band, since Currie wasn't a terribly dynamic frontwoman in real life, but what doesn't work is her doe-eyed distance from the proceedings. She's trying to play it guarded and damaged, but she just comes off as disinterested. Currie is supposed to be the fallen star, the one who burned out and couldn't handle the fame, who didn't trust that she deserved the success: the mirror image of Joan Jett's 'born to be a rock star' balls-to-the-wall determination and drive. Instead Fanning just alternates between being kinda nervous, and kinda sleepy, and never once seems to be giddy from the heights, or bracing for the (to her) inevitable lows.
And Fanning's weak effort is a crying shame, because Kristen Stewart is a revelation as Joan Jett. She absolutely fucking nails it. I'm sure it helped to have Jett herself on set for reference purposes, but that doesn't downgrade the bravado of the performance. From the moment she appears on screen she's a nuclear missile homing in on rock and roll stardom, who isn't going to let any motherfucker stand in her way. While Fanning has the showier role in Currie, Stewart's got the tougher assignment. Currie is living a cliche rock lifestyle because she doesn't know any better; Jett's living it to prove that she can, and because she knows she has to in order to get what she wants. The self-awareness, and self-assurance, in Stewart's performance is amazing, and completely unpredicted by anything I've seen her do before. It's a performance that to an extent even saves the film. With a lesser actress in the role, the Runaways would have been a total train wreck, as opposed to the merely OK movie that it is. I'll even go a step further. Kristen Stewart does a better job of channeling Joan Jett here than Joaquin Phoenix did of channeling Johnny Cash in Walk the Line. She's that damn good.
About the only thing I can think to compare Stewart's performance to is Joseph Gordon-Levitt's in Mysterious Skin. I had zero expectations for either of them heading into their respective movies, and came out the other end strongly suspecting that they might in fact be among the best actors of their generation. Gordon-Levitt's proved me right on that assumption since; I can only hope Stewart shakes Bella out of her hair and gets a chance to do likewise.
There isn't much to say about the rest of the movie, because there isn't much else to the rest of the movie. Michael Shannon isn't good at all as the band's svengali Kim Fowley. At no point do his profanity-laced tirades and mind games rise above the level of comic relief, and they really needed to have some actual menace behind them given how they were supposed to be contributing to the band's disintegration. The rest of the gals barely gets any screen time, which is weird considering that a) Lita Ford was the band's guitarist and it's not like she disappeared off the face of the earth after the Runaways broke up, and b) they went to the trouble (WARNING: OBLIGATORY SPINAL TAP REFERENCE APPROACHING) of inventing a bassist for the band, cast Maeby from Arrested Development (Alia Shawkat) as said fictional bassist, and then gave her all of about three lines. I understand the thought process behind inventing a bassist, since in reality the Runaways blew through more bassists than Spinal Tap blew through drummers, but it just seems a wasted effort to go to all that trouble and not do anything with the character. Keir O'Donnell does deliver a fine Rodney Bingenheimer impression though, so that's something.
Basically put, the Runaways is just all right. Stewart's performance aside, it's nothing special. It isn't daring enough to be more than a formulaic rock biopic, but despite all the teenage drug use and the brief lesbian scene between Stewart and Fanning (c'mon, you knew it would be in there... did you really need me to tell you about it?) it also isn't entertainingly trashy enough to be a legendary Gaggle of Starlets flick. It may, in fact, be the exact midpoint between I'm Not There and Satisfaction.
If it ends up doing for Kristen Stewart what the band itself did for Joan Jett though -- make her realize what she wants and what she's good at, and helps her get there -- then it'll all have been worth it.
Depending on who you talk to, the Runaways were either an interesting footnote in rock history, or one of the Most Important Band Ever. They certainly weren't the first chick rockers (Patti Smith and Suzi Quatro got there before they did) but they were the first all-girl band to actually make some legitimately awesome noise (despite being packaged as disposable sex kittens) and thus prove that girls could kick as much ass as boys. A biopic was pretty much inevitable; the only question was which generation of starlets would be the ones to portray them.
In the end, we got the Twilight generation. And that turns out not to be as tragic a bit of happenstance as it could have been.
As a movie, the Runaways is fairly bland, which is a weird thing to say about a film that begins with a drop of menstrual blood hitting the sidewalk. It makes no effort whatsoever to distance itself from all the usual rock biopic stereotypes. Drugs! Tyrannical managers! More drugs! Big success in Japan! Drugs again! Shattered home lives! Still more drugs! Partly that adherence to cliche is due to the source material. The movie, while produced by Joan Jett, is based on Cherie Currie's autobiography, and Currie apparently saw her life in terms of those cliches. Sigismondi's direction, in her feature debut, doesn't help either. She makes no effort to get to the other side of those cliches, just presenting them at face value rather than using them to reflect on Currie's choices, or contrasting how Currie was handling the ride to how any of the other band members were. Sigismondi frankly seems more interested in shooting a music video for Cherry Bomb (which she does, awkwardly shoehorning it into the Japanese tour sequence) than she is in making her characters three-dimensional.
Really, though, most of the blame needs to be pinned on Dakota Fanning. She's simply not up to the task at hand. It's fine that she doesn't come across as a terribly dynamic frontwomen for the band, since Currie wasn't a terribly dynamic frontwoman in real life, but what doesn't work is her doe-eyed distance from the proceedings. She's trying to play it guarded and damaged, but she just comes off as disinterested. Currie is supposed to be the fallen star, the one who burned out and couldn't handle the fame, who didn't trust that she deserved the success: the mirror image of Joan Jett's 'born to be a rock star' balls-to-the-wall determination and drive. Instead Fanning just alternates between being kinda nervous, and kinda sleepy, and never once seems to be giddy from the heights, or bracing for the (to her) inevitable lows.
And Fanning's weak effort is a crying shame, because Kristen Stewart is a revelation as Joan Jett. She absolutely fucking nails it. I'm sure it helped to have Jett herself on set for reference purposes, but that doesn't downgrade the bravado of the performance. From the moment she appears on screen she's a nuclear missile homing in on rock and roll stardom, who isn't going to let any motherfucker stand in her way. While Fanning has the showier role in Currie, Stewart's got the tougher assignment. Currie is living a cliche rock lifestyle because she doesn't know any better; Jett's living it to prove that she can, and because she knows she has to in order to get what she wants. The self-awareness, and self-assurance, in Stewart's performance is amazing, and completely unpredicted by anything I've seen her do before. It's a performance that to an extent even saves the film. With a lesser actress in the role, the Runaways would have been a total train wreck, as opposed to the merely OK movie that it is. I'll even go a step further. Kristen Stewart does a better job of channeling Joan Jett here than Joaquin Phoenix did of channeling Johnny Cash in Walk the Line. She's that damn good.
About the only thing I can think to compare Stewart's performance to is Joseph Gordon-Levitt's in Mysterious Skin. I had zero expectations for either of them heading into their respective movies, and came out the other end strongly suspecting that they might in fact be among the best actors of their generation. Gordon-Levitt's proved me right on that assumption since; I can only hope Stewart shakes Bella out of her hair and gets a chance to do likewise.
There isn't much to say about the rest of the movie, because there isn't much else to the rest of the movie. Michael Shannon isn't good at all as the band's svengali Kim Fowley. At no point do his profanity-laced tirades and mind games rise above the level of comic relief, and they really needed to have some actual menace behind them given how they were supposed to be contributing to the band's disintegration. The rest of the gals barely gets any screen time, which is weird considering that a) Lita Ford was the band's guitarist and it's not like she disappeared off the face of the earth after the Runaways broke up, and b) they went to the trouble (WARNING: OBLIGATORY SPINAL TAP REFERENCE APPROACHING) of inventing a bassist for the band, cast Maeby from Arrested Development (Alia Shawkat) as said fictional bassist, and then gave her all of about three lines. I understand the thought process behind inventing a bassist, since in reality the Runaways blew through more bassists than Spinal Tap blew through drummers, but it just seems a wasted effort to go to all that trouble and not do anything with the character. Keir O'Donnell does deliver a fine Rodney Bingenheimer impression though, so that's something.
Basically put, the Runaways is just all right. Stewart's performance aside, it's nothing special. It isn't daring enough to be more than a formulaic rock biopic, but despite all the teenage drug use and the brief lesbian scene between Stewart and Fanning (c'mon, you knew it would be in there... did you really need me to tell you about it?) it also isn't entertainingly trashy enough to be a legendary Gaggle of Starlets flick. It may, in fact, be the exact midpoint between I'm Not There and Satisfaction.
If it ends up doing for Kristen Stewart what the band itself did for Joan Jett though -- make her realize what she wants and what she's good at, and helps her get there -- then it'll all have been worth it.
Goddess Bless TCM
TCM was showing a bunch of awesomely cheesy '50s monster movies tonight, stuff like It Came From Beneath the Sea (where a giant octopus tears up the Golden Gate Bridge). Then at midnight came the clincher, a movie that I always forget just how good it until I'm actually watching it.
Them!
Now, I say this with all the love in my heart, but fuck Godzilla. Fuck him in his scaly rubbery ass. Them! is, without a doubt, the best monster movie ever made.
Want proof? OK. If you were going to make a list of the best modern monster movies, both Aliens and the Host would have to be right up there. And both of them quote Them! fairly explicitly. The scene where Ripley torches the egg chamber is straight out of the assault on the first nest in Them!, while the entire plot of the Host (kid trapped in sewer tunnels by giant monster) is a nod to Them!'s final act.
On top of that, you can't tell me William Peterson didn't base his insect-obsessed CSI character, at least in some small part, on Edmund Gwenn's alternately absent-minded and deadly serious performance in Them!
Forget its spawn though, The movie itself is just a cut above. The scene where the little girl is snapped out of her catatonia with a whiff of formic acid, that descent into the first nest, the destruction of the USS Viking... this is a monster movie that understands how to raise the stakes, and how to put the world in true jeopardy.
Plus, Gordon Douglas is one of those directors nobody ever thinks about but who was pretty consistently great. When you look over the list of films he directed he starts to look like Robert Wise's crazy cousin. You know that one Our Gang short that won an Oscar? Douglas directed it. Elvis' Follow That Dream? Douglas made that too. They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!, the underrated sequel to In The Heat of the Night? Douglas again.
Just a tremendous piece of work all around. If you're only going to see one '50s movie about giant creatures running amok, it should be Them!
Them!
Now, I say this with all the love in my heart, but fuck Godzilla. Fuck him in his scaly rubbery ass. Them! is, without a doubt, the best monster movie ever made.
Want proof? OK. If you were going to make a list of the best modern monster movies, both Aliens and the Host would have to be right up there. And both of them quote Them! fairly explicitly. The scene where Ripley torches the egg chamber is straight out of the assault on the first nest in Them!, while the entire plot of the Host (kid trapped in sewer tunnels by giant monster) is a nod to Them!'s final act.
On top of that, you can't tell me William Peterson didn't base his insect-obsessed CSI character, at least in some small part, on Edmund Gwenn's alternately absent-minded and deadly serious performance in Them!
Forget its spawn though, The movie itself is just a cut above. The scene where the little girl is snapped out of her catatonia with a whiff of formic acid, that descent into the first nest, the destruction of the USS Viking... this is a monster movie that understands how to raise the stakes, and how to put the world in true jeopardy.
Plus, Gordon Douglas is one of those directors nobody ever thinks about but who was pretty consistently great. When you look over the list of films he directed he starts to look like Robert Wise's crazy cousin. You know that one Our Gang short that won an Oscar? Douglas directed it. Elvis' Follow That Dream? Douglas made that too. They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!, the underrated sequel to In The Heat of the Night? Douglas again.
Just a tremendous piece of work all around. If you're only going to see one '50s movie about giant creatures running amok, it should be Them!
My Fake Baseball Team. Well, One Of Them.
The Rotowire baseball Staff Keeper League holds its auction tonight. I'm carrying over a very nice group of players:
3B - Evan Longoria $13 (signed through 2011)
SS - Hanley Ramirez $18 (signed through 2012)
CI - Garrett Jones $9
MI - Maicer Izturis $4
OF - Jayson Werth $27
OF - Nelson Cruz $8 (signed through 2011)
OF - Julio Borbon $3
P - Dan Haren $36
P - Justin Verlander $8 (last year of contract)
P - JA Happ $3
P - Scott Feldman $2
P - Ryan Franklin $5
P - Octavio Dotel $5
Minors - Mike Stanton, Flo
Minors - Neftali Soto, Cin
Minors - Matt Maloney, Cin
Minors - Michael Main, Tex
Minors - Tyler Robertson, Min
I've got $119 bucks to play with, which isn't actually that much (inflation has gone crazy in this league over the last few seasons... an elite bat like A-Rod, who is available this year, will probably go for about $60) but fortunately I don't have any pressing needs. Could use another big bat and some strikeouts, but other than that I'm pretty much set, and can just be patient during the auction and wait for relative bargains.
One thing I do need to try and score is some keepable starting pitching for next season. I had Chris Tillman in my minors last year, and Max Scherzer at a buck, but dealt them both to try and make what proved to be a futile run at the title (I did finish fourth, which at least put me in the money, but it still stings). Depending on how crazy the bidding is, that may put me in the Strasburg sweepstakes. Assuming he plus two other cheap young starters with a bit of upside cost me, say, $29, that leaves $90 for hitting: four $20-$25 players plus sundries, basically, or $30-$20-$20-$15, or thereabouts.
3B - Evan Longoria $13 (signed through 2011)
SS - Hanley Ramirez $18 (signed through 2012)
CI - Garrett Jones $9
MI - Maicer Izturis $4
OF - Jayson Werth $27
OF - Nelson Cruz $8 (signed through 2011)
OF - Julio Borbon $3
P - Dan Haren $36
P - Justin Verlander $8 (last year of contract)
P - JA Happ $3
P - Scott Feldman $2
P - Ryan Franklin $5
P - Octavio Dotel $5
Minors - Mike Stanton, Flo
Minors - Neftali Soto, Cin
Minors - Matt Maloney, Cin
Minors - Michael Main, Tex
Minors - Tyler Robertson, Min
I've got $119 bucks to play with, which isn't actually that much (inflation has gone crazy in this league over the last few seasons... an elite bat like A-Rod, who is available this year, will probably go for about $60) but fortunately I don't have any pressing needs. Could use another big bat and some strikeouts, but other than that I'm pretty much set, and can just be patient during the auction and wait for relative bargains.
One thing I do need to try and score is some keepable starting pitching for next season. I had Chris Tillman in my minors last year, and Max Scherzer at a buck, but dealt them both to try and make what proved to be a futile run at the title (I did finish fourth, which at least put me in the money, but it still stings). Depending on how crazy the bidding is, that may put me in the Strasburg sweepstakes. Assuming he plus two other cheap young starters with a bit of upside cost me, say, $29, that leaves $90 for hitting: four $20-$25 players plus sundries, basically, or $30-$20-$20-$15, or thereabouts.
If Only Malfeasance Had Consequences
It look like Liz Palpatine and Bill Kristol have finally done something too stupid for even their conservative colleagues to let go.
Now, in a sane media environment, those two human-shaped tumors would be publicly shamed and laughed off any television set on which they dared to present themselves as experts on any topic except blatant, self-aggrandizing falsehood. (Wait, make it three, as Marc Thiessen has decided to defend their indefensible crap, which I guess makes sense as 'defending the indefensible' is the one topic on which he's genuinely an expert.) None of those three should ever appear on a political show again, until it's to humiliate them by laughing at them and them sliming them You Can't Do That On Television-style when they tell an obvious lie.
But no. I'm sure this little tempest will pass on by and be forgotten, and they'll go back to being trotted out as respectable right wing voices by pseudo-journalists who care far less about truth than they do about ratings.
Feh. The "kill 'em all and let God sort it out" approach seems more logical every day.
Now, in a sane media environment, those two human-shaped tumors would be publicly shamed and laughed off any television set on which they dared to present themselves as experts on any topic except blatant, self-aggrandizing falsehood. (Wait, make it three, as Marc Thiessen has decided to defend their indefensible crap, which I guess makes sense as 'defending the indefensible' is the one topic on which he's genuinely an expert.) None of those three should ever appear on a political show again, until it's to humiliate them by laughing at them and them sliming them You Can't Do That On Television-style when they tell an obvious lie.
But no. I'm sure this little tempest will pass on by and be forgotten, and they'll go back to being trotted out as respectable right wing voices by pseudo-journalists who care far less about truth than they do about ratings.
Feh. The "kill 'em all and let God sort it out" approach seems more logical every day.
Worst Oscars Ever
Certainly the worst Oscars of my lifetime anyway. I'm not even referring to the choices for nominees and winners, which more and more seem to be aimed solely at disproving all that 'wisdom of crowds' bullshit.
I'm talking about the actual production of the show itself. From the technical glitch that prevented them from showing clips from the Best Cinematography noms, to the decision to cut people's speeches short but leave in all the cringe-worthy "hey, wow, you're great" speeches fellating the Best Actor/Actress nominees, to the Twilight whoring in a desperate attempt to get a younger demo watching the show, to the bizarre camera angles they used (the Stanley Tucci Cam, positioned right behind his head, was probably my favourite)... the whole thing was just bad. Martin and Baldwin were amusing at best. The dance number awkwardly attached to the Best Score noms was just plain sad, and this coming from a guy who unabashedly admits to being hooked on So You Think You Can Dance.
And the less said about using "I Am Woman" as Bigelow's send-off music, the better.
Just an inexcusably sloppy, poorly thought out train wreck all around.
I'm talking about the actual production of the show itself. From the technical glitch that prevented them from showing clips from the Best Cinematography noms, to the decision to cut people's speeches short but leave in all the cringe-worthy "hey, wow, you're great" speeches fellating the Best Actor/Actress nominees, to the Twilight whoring in a desperate attempt to get a younger demo watching the show, to the bizarre camera angles they used (the Stanley Tucci Cam, positioned right behind his head, was probably my favourite)... the whole thing was just bad. Martin and Baldwin were amusing at best. The dance number awkwardly attached to the Best Score noms was just plain sad, and this coming from a guy who unabashedly admits to being hooked on So You Think You Can Dance.
And the less said about using "I Am Woman" as Bigelow's send-off music, the better.
Just an inexcusably sloppy, poorly thought out train wreck all around.
Finally, A New Brain-Fracturing Ad
Way down at the bottom of the page, Schick's ad for hedge trimming has finally found a worthy successor. (h/t Overthinking It.)
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