Monthly Archives: December 2012

General

What Would Happen if the NFL Eliminated Kickoffs?

As a big fan of Football, I’m sober enough to realize in these past few years this sport has reached something of a threshold moment.  Football, in its current incarnation, is actually relatively new, with the first SuperBowl held in 1967.  Back then, the players were often “part time” professionals and it was not uncommon to find them doing things like selling cars in the off-season to earn some extra cash.

But the sport grew and grew and grew, and as it did the money involved grew as well.  Player salaries skyrocketed and, suddenly, your average Football player no longer had to find alternative off-season work.  Instead, they had the freedom to devote their off season time to condition themselves even more.  Diets were improved and training exercises were perfected.  The money rewards meant more and more young people tried out for Football in High School and College, and thus the pool of talent was deeper, meaning there was more talent at the top.  In the end, the athletes on the field today are superior specimens of strength and speed versus the previous decades’ worth.  Jim Mandich, part of the legendary undefeated 1972 Dolphin team, himself said before his untimely passing that just about any modern Football team would not only defeat but smoke his beloved undefeated team of the past.  No question about it.

Unfortunately, with these stronger, faster, and more skilled athletes arises a big problem which the NFL is currently dealing with:  Injuries.  Specifically, head injuries.  For you see, when you have athletes conditioned to be their strongest and fastest running full speed into other athletes also conditioned to be their strongest and fastest, the one part of their body that one cannot condition to take physical punishment is the brain.  It seems silly to say, but let’s be clear:  There is no exercise out there that can make your brain somehow “stronger” or better capable of taking hits.  Almost any hits.  Sure, the helmets used in the NFL today are very high tech, but the reality is that the brain essentially “floats” on liquid within a person’s skull.  Running as fast as you can and abruptly being stopped by slamming into another player may send the brain against the skull wall.  Do so many, many times over a few years as a professional player and there is a likelihood your brain will sustain some kind of damage.

Because the league is relatively young, it is only now, with the passing of time, that an awareness of the types of injuries sustained over the long term to NFL players is being realized and is becoming an issue.  The league is being sued by former players who note that in the past they were ordered to play on despite concussions and other potentially -as well as actually- serious injuries sustained on the field.  I suspect the biggest worry about the NFL is that if these players of the past that are exhibiting signs of mental and physical problems related to injuries is just the tip of the iceberg.  What happens a little down the road when the current crops of much stronger and faster players drift into their old age?  Will we begin to see even more evidence of head and other trauma symptoms?

In recent years, the NFL has become more proactive and is trying to limit head on head hits as well as a host of penalties for hitting players that are particularly vulnerable to injury.  Some worry that the NFL will eventually become something akin to flag football.

The latest idea floated by the NFL is to do away with Kickoffs entirely.  What effect will doing so have on the game?  Brian Burke of Slate Magazine offers some fascinating analysis of just that:

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2012/12/roger_goodell_kickoff_ban_more_scoring_more_fumbles_and_other_potential.html

There is little more to add.  I still enjoy watching Football.  However, a small part of me realizes that this is a sport caught in transition.  What we may see of it in the next decade may be very different from what we’re witnessing today.

Movies

Safe House (2012) a (mildly) belated review

What’s worse:  (a) A low budget film featuring a cast of unknowns in what turns out to be a mediocre to poorly conceived action/adventure story or…

(b) A very big budget film featuring well established actors in what also turns out to be a mediocre to poorly conceived action/adventure story?

For me, (b) will always be worse.  In the case of (a) I tend to go easier on the people before or behind the cameras for I suspect they had to deal with more difficulties regarding creative choices…if only because of budgetary limitations.

But with films like Safe House, one comes away wondering what it was that drew all this talent and big money to make what turned out to be a very predictable and ultimately disappointingly mediocre film.  How predictable was Safe House?  Let me put it this way:  If you can’t figure out who the “real” bad guy is the very moment he first appears on the screen, you’re clearly a movie newbie.

The film’s plot goes like this:  Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is a young CIA agent stationed in South Africa whose job it is to sit bored for hour after hour at a secret CIA “safe house” and await any sort of “company” company.  He’s little more than a high tech housekeeper as he’s been at this obviously very boring job for a few months now and nothing has happened there.  In the brief glimpses we have of him, we’re to understand he’s itching to move up the CIA ranks.

Meanwhile, we’re introduced to Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), a renegade ex-CIA agent wanted for treason who appears in South Africa, contacts an ex-MI6 agent, and is given some kind of microchip with some kind of “explosive” information on it.  Before he can leave clean with his prize, he is assaulted by a mysterious group of killers and is forced to retreat into an American Embassy and admit who he is.  From there, he is cuffed and taken to, you guessed it, Weston’s safe house and soon all hell breaks loose and the young agent has to move the seasoned (and dangerous) ex-agent/traitor away from the killers.

The movie strives to be perhaps a more “serious” attempt at something along the lines of the Bourne films, but the action sequences never really resonate and, after the first fifteen or so minutes, the film falls into a groove and never really rises or falls below that level.  We move from one scene to the next and are never as invested in the characters or the situation as we should be.  Ultimately, the film climaxes in another safe house and the “real” bad guys -you know, the one’s you should have figured out a very long time ago- are revealed and…well… it doesn’t really amount to all that much.

While Safe House is certainly not a terrible film, it never engages or surprises.  It never rises above being another mediocre action film, in spite of the big budget and A-list cast.  What a disappointment.

Movies

10 Worst Movies of 2012…

…at least according to TIme magazine:

http://entertainment.time.com/2012/12/04/top-10-arts-lists/slide/one-for-the-money/

Of the movies in this list, I’ve seen a grand total of two of them, the romantic comedy/spy drama hybrid This Means War and the Disney mega-flop John Carter.  Frankly, I disagree with their inclusion in this list.  To me, both This Means War and John Carter were hardly “terrible” films and were hardly the worst movie experiences I had this year.

On the other hand, were either of the films “great”?

Absolutely not.

This Means War, to me, was a rather typical romantic comedy that benefited from a clever concept and the charisma of its four leads.  And I won’t lie:  There were times I grinned at the silliness presented on the screen and, yes, even managed a couple of laughs.  Would I see the film again?  No.  But having seen it once and suffered through some truly execrable romantic comedies, I can faithfully report I’ve seen much, much worse.

As for John Carter, there is no doubt the movie was a box-office train wreck of massive proportions.  No one wanted to see it despite boasting a huge budget and a director who had worked magic with Pixar animated films.  As with This Means War, though, I didn’t find John Carter to be the colossal catastrophe others proclaimed it was.

Was it a great film?  Absolutely not, though I suspect part of the problem modern audiences had with it lies in the sad fact that many of the ideas and concepts found in the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) have been copied and pirated by for so many years now that when John Carter finally was released, less aware viewers might have felt this film was a “rip off” of concepts found in other, more popular sci-fi films.  But that’s only part of the problem.  Another big issue was the terrible, terrible promotion of the film.  Well before the film was released potential audiences already sensed the movie was a bomb and, thus, a self-fulfilling prophecy was made.

Getting past those two big issues, though, gets us into what I feel is the movie’s ultimate main problem:  The lack of charisma between the two leads.  Unfortunately, the stars of this film never gave off the sexual sparks they should have to make the audience root for their romance overcoming the many obstacles thrown in their way.  The best of ERB’s writings, from Tarzan to the Martian novels, not only featured grand adventure but also a strong sense of sensuality/sexuality.  In John Carter, it seemed like the puritanical shadow of a chaste Disney was looking over the proceedings and making sure the two leads never got too hot and heavy.

Having said that, I reiterate: Time’s inclusion of this film in the “worst of” movie list seems wrong.  Certainly John Carter belongs in the “Biggest Financial Bombs” list of the year, but in spite of the lack of chemistry between the two leads, an overly familiar story, and horrific promotion, the movie itself was hardly a complete wreck, at least in my opinion.

Of the eight remaining films on the list, the only one I sorta/kinda want to see is Cloud Atlas.  Some critics absolutely loved the film while others loathed it.  I’m willing to give it a try when it reached home video.

As for the other seven films on the list, I doubt I’ll see any of them, at least based on plot summaries and trailers.  One of those films in particular, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, looked to me like a complete train wreck.  Another Disney film.  Go figure.

Movies

12 Movie Sequels You Probably Didn’t Know About

Fascinating (though they missed a couple of weird/forgotten ones) list about the above, movie sequels you may not know existed to popular films:

http://thefw.com/sequels-you-probably-didnt-know/?utm_source=zergnet.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zergnet_36441

Perhaps the most interesting of the bunch and maybe even the most surprising for those who didn’t know is the 1998 film Soldier featuring a great role and performance by Kurt Russell in what was ultimately a mediocre to poor film…that also happened to be a pseudo sequel to, of all things, the legendary Ridley Scott directed, Harrison Ford starring 1982 film Blade Runner!  Now, I say “pseudo” sequel because Soldier was set in the same “universe” as Blade Runner.  Otherwise, the film didn’t feature any of the same cast of characters (even played by different actors) that I’m aware of.  As mentioned in the entry, the script to Soldier was co-written by one of the writers of Blade Runner and they viewed the film as a “sidequel” to that more famous film.

As for films not on the list…One of the odder ones (and it is mentioned in the comments after the article itself) is Shock Treatment, the unsuccessful sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

While it may not be as well remembered today, one of the bigger hits of 1970 was the soap opera/tragic romance Love Story.  Today, it may be remembered more for featuring in a very small role the first screen appearance of Tommy Lee Jones, but this film was incredibly successful and, naturally, spawned a belated sequel.  That sequel, 1978’s Oliver’s Story, wasn’t anywhere near as well received.

One of the all time strangest sequels, at least in terms of casting, was the “sort of-kind of” sequel to 1972’s Robert Redford comic heist film The Hot Rock, 1974’s George C. Scott Bank Shot.  While the two movie characters played by Mr. Redford and Scott sport different names in the two films, they are in reality the same character based on Donald E. Westlake’s novels featuring the thief John Dortmunder.  I love both Robert Redford and George C. Scott, but to have them essentially play the same role in a two year span of time?  Weird choice!