Green Lantern - ** ¼

Sparkle Sparkle Sparkle.

Bang.

Zoom.

Ryan Reynolds is very pretty.

He has many muscles.

Blake Lively's pretty too.

I’ve seen her naked on the internet.

Things go fast. Things go boom.

Things go ooooooo.

. . . . Yup. That’s really all I’ve got.

I wish I had more to share, but that’s really it.

I enjoyed the movie fine. I never had the urge to throw anything at the screen or go into seizures, which is a plus. My car was still in the parking lot when the movie was done.

Mostly, I’ll remember this movie like I remember that time I went to an oxygen bar in the mall – as an experience you do once, just to see what it’s like, because you know it’s a bit of rip off.

You go in expecting to be mildly content at best and you are throughout, so when the effects wear off moments after it’s over you aren’t very bothered by it. The décor is mildly pleasant, so you feel decently relaxed. Nothing offends you, so the time passes and ends and you move on with your life. In fact, neither the pleasure nor the disappointment is ever so great as to make the experience memorable in any way, so when it ends all that is left is a vague memory of having done it, possibly with the after-glow of not having been particularly upset.

Sometimes being filled with air is enough.

Not for 3D prices. Heavens no.

But for an afternoon matinee in the rain: why not?

Places and Times Where it is Terrible to Sneeze

I really hate allergies. Had them all my life. Now that summer is upon us, they're finally beginning to ease, which made me ask the question:

What is the worst place and time to sneeze?

- During a knife fight

- While landing a plane

- While jumping from a plane

- While landing after jumping from a plane

- During a Mexican Standoff

- While Snorkling

- While performing surgery

- During your wedding kiss

- During a blowjob (applies to both parties)

- While covered in bees

- While juggling chainsaws

- At the dentist

- At the climax of sex

- While farting

- While eating Fruity Pebbles (Anachronism! No one eats these)

- During a kegstand (this may be impossible)

- While swallowing a sword

- While charming a cobra

- While murdering someone in their sleep

Shaq-Fu No More: the Rise of Tout

15 All-Star Games. 4 rings. 3 Finals MVPs. 3 All-Star MVPs. 2 NBA Scoring titles. 1 League MVP. 28,596 points. Rookie of the year. Deputy US Marshall. 8 movies. 4 rap albums.

Today we cut the cake on the final days of Shaquille O’Neal. Two days ago Shaq, the man with more nicknames than an Apatow movie, officially retired after 19 years in the NBA. Through Twitter. Actually, through a service I’ve never heard of before called “tout” that claims to allow live video uploading to twitter – a ridiculous idea, since Twitter is a microblogging service and blogs are definitively not live, but back to the point

That Shaq retired after almost two decades of play is not particularly surprising. He’s accomplished about everything a player can hope to accomplish in a career. He’s the 5th all time highest scorer. He’s got enough rings to fill a hand without doing the obnoxious thumb-ring thing. He’s been paid more during his career than any player in NBA history, has five kids and has plans to work as a sheriff or US Marshall now that his basketball career is over. He’s got a pretty good setup going. What makes it surprising is the twitter element. All of the greats eventually retire, but Shaq announced his retirement to his followers before he informed the Celtics, his employers, of his plan.

This is the second time in the last year that a major NBA star has announced their future through a social medium without telling their team first. The first was Lebron* taking his talents to South Beach. This event was widely criticized as one of the most arrogant and selfish actions undertaken by an athlete in recent memory. People hate him for it.

Shaq: not so much.

Admittedly, there are major differences between these two events that on the surface must seem very important: Lebron was the league MVP the year he left Cleveland while Shaq was pretty old; Lebron still had over a decade of playing time left in his career while Shaq was pretty old; Lebron, a native of Ohio, was betraying his roots while Shaq was pretty old; there were lots of reasons. None of them are actually important in the big picture.

The importance of this twitter/tout/interwebs announcement is not that Shaq is retiring or even that people are more tolerant of Shaq biting his digital thumb** at Boston than they are of Lebron snubbing Cleveland. This announcement is important because it signals an official turning point in the way athletes manage themselves, a revelatory moment where athletes have crested the system and reached a world where they don’t have to play by the rules anymore. As long as players keep winning, the people will support them. The magical game of PR and marketing has just become a solo-enterprise.

This isn’t the beginning of a trend either. This has been coming for a while. Celebrities like Ashton Kutcher have created entire careers out of twitter marketing. Blogs have become television shows (albeit short-lived ones). Politicians have risen and fallen through posted soundbytes and unfortunate underwear photos.The first great breakout of this idea in the sports world though was almost ten years ago, when four words spoken during a press conference became a bigger story than the championship that had just ended: “We’re talking about practice.”

Allen Iverson could do things on the court that nobody else could. He was a gymnast at the rim, our thug ballerina, and was so tough that NFL quarterbacks called him crazy. I remember watching him get spiked into the ground while he had a broken tailbone. He bounced twice, immediately got up and started running back down the court. He was that tough. He was the anti-hero, the street kid who almost went to jail instead of Georgetown, the first player to take the national stage with neck tattoos. He wasn’t part of any team or any establishment; he was The Answer. But he was also a business.

By choosing to openly stand for himself only, Iverson broke the rules. He stopped being a star within a team system and therefore couldn’t be properly promoted by team marketers. So he did it on his own. He held frequent press conferences after games where he spoke exactly what was on his mind, appeared on countless magazine covers promoting ideas, products and lifestyles that the NBA did not endorse and sold more shoes and jerseys than anyone dreamed possible. I haven’t played basketball since I was in 7th grade and even I have a pair of the AI3’s.

By standing apart from the system he became a symbol of rebellion for all of the kids who wanted to stand against the authorities in their lives. And we loved him for it.

Now, that mentality of all-for-moi-and-more-for-me openly pervades every aspect of the sports world. It’s largely why we’re in the middle of an NFL lockout and about to have an NBA lockout this fall. This mentality has not only become the norm, but we’ve developed technologies that encourage it. When a player can tweet thoughts and opinions about the game he’s playing from the sidelines, why do we need commentators? Most commentators are former players anyway. When players can hire personal accountants and business advisers to make financial decisions for them, why should those players consult their team owners and coaches about anything? When money has ceased to be a consideration, why should any player hesitate to go after whatever they want, loyalty be damned? No rings on these fingers means I don’t owe you squat (insert Beyoncé lyric here).

Athletes have always found ways to make names for themselves. One of our greatest heroes, Muhammad Ali, can attest to that. But at least he competed in a sport where he never had teammates or a city to let down. Players argue that they aren’t role models, that they’re professionals and we should judge them by what they do on the court or on the field only, but that’ll never be the case. We are how the public sees us, not what we do.

There isn’t really an ending to this article. I don’t think there could be. This rant is mostly just a series of observations, tipping points I’ve noticed that have led to a moment in time where, barely a year after one of the biggest stars in the NBA caused an uproar by making a public announcement without telling his team first, another of the biggest stars announces his retirement on twitter and the only public response is to ask, “what nickname should we give him now?”

We are on the edge of a world where personal choices mean more than community. Where what I want today means more than what you’ve believed in for years. And Shaq has just announced it through a program called tout.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* I still wish people would call Lebron LBJ
** If you don’t get this reference, do a google search for “do you bite your thumb, sir?” That’s why we have Google. I’m not going to explain it. Don’t be lazy.

Winter's Bone *** 1/2 (three and a half stars)

It doesn’t have to be pretty. It doesn’t have to be right. It just has to work and it has to get done.

Winter’s Bone is the grittiest, bravest movie I’ve seen all year. It is cruel, cold and unflinching in its portrayal of a poor, rugged family town and that steely approach to the world that is echoed in the faces of every member of that community. But this movie is about more than just suffering and kin: It’s about the strength it takes to do whatever is needed to survive, and that iron resolve is echoed and amplified in the performance of Jenifer Lawrence. The girl may only be twenty years old, but she’s turned in one of the best performances of the year and deserves every accolade she receives.

The story is a sad one: Ree Dolly, a young girl of seventeen, is raising her two younger siblings on her own. The boy is twelve and the girl is six. Their mother is mentally disabled and can no longer understand the world around her, let alone talk. Their father is a meth cooker out on bond and missing. No one is there to help. No one is there to care. Life is about getting through each day and fighting to not be hungry. Then a police officer comes by and informs Ree that her father’s bond was paid for by putting the house and land up as collateral. If he misses his court date, the house and land will be seized. With no other recourse and no one stepping up to help her save her family, Ree goes out through the community of her extended family to find out what happened to her father since his release.

It isn’t just the acting that affects you as you watch this movie though. It isn’t just the writing either. In the very heart of this film, surrounded by the courage of Ree and the love she has for her family, there is a sad acceptance that is impossible to ignore. It overwhelmed me, and as I put down my notepad and the credits began to roll I realized that I felt ashamed. I was ashamed because throughout the movie, even though I was drawn in by the story and impressed by the acting, I'd found myself again and again drifting away from the screen. I was ashamed because I understood that this turning away wasn’t a reaction to the quality of the movie, but rather an instinctive and conditioned response to how what I was seeing made me feel.

As the banjo music played over the credits, I understood that the true power of this film lies not within the frame, but without. When you see this world of work and hardened sadness, you can’t help but know the truth in it. You see the real stories glossed over on the news in the soot-strewn faces of the characters on screen and you understand that their lives are both real and lonely. That while many of us are fortunate enough to chase the American dream, there are far more who are thankful just to survive in any way they can.

It is easier to pretend that stories like this one aren’t around us every day. It is easier to walk away from a movie and feel happy about the world, to feel that life is good and we all live in a fair and just place. It is easier to ignore it when you find that you instinctively look aside when something upsets you. When we turn, we are reminded why turning away has become a part of our nature: because life is much easier when we don't see. For those of us with the luxury, how easy is it, and how common, to close our eyes to what we see and pretend that it’s all going to be OK. To go home at night and forget about the rest. This movie, at least for one night, makes you understand again that turning away doesn't change anything.

The Fighter *** (3 stars)

The Fighter – 3 stars

I don’t get the fascination with boxers. I don’t get it. I love an underdog story as much as anyone and I think boxing is an elegant sport that routinely gets a bad rap, but I still don’t get why every few years yet another underdog boxing movie comes around and makes everyone wet their pants talking about how good it is. I just don’t get it.

Yes, I liked Rocky. I liked Rocky more when Rocky was training or boxing than when he was talking, but I liked Rocky. I liked Raging Bull. It’s powerful, it’s raw: it’s vintage Scorsese. I even liked Girlfight and most of Million Dollar Baby, but there have been twenty movies in the last decade about underdog boxers. Twenty. That’s two movies a year. I just don’t see the point anymore.

All that being said, I enjoyed the Fighter. It was a well-made, well-directed story that I’ve seen 90% of nineteen times before during the last decade. Poor kid leads a hard life, becomes a boxer, can’t make the cut, then something changes and after a few small wins, then a big win, he/she gets a shot at the championship. Not a new idea. Not even particularly clever, but here they pull it off admirably by taking on the story from a different angle: by making the movie about boxing about family instead of boxing.

It’s an interesting idea that, with a lesser cast, would have failed. But it doesn’t. Wahlberg plays the central character of Micky Ward with a younger-brother shyness and innocence that makes him both likable and almost completely forgettable. Though this denies him the chance to make this movie his latest run at Oscar, it does allow him to not be the standout or even the focus of the film. Rather, it makes him the flagpole on which the rest of the cast is flown.

First, Amy Adams: she’s been charming in Enchanted, shyly innocent in Proof, irritating and narcissistic in Julie/Julia and even saccharine-cutesy in Leap Year, but she’s never before pulled off tough and proud. Here, everything you’ve come to expect from her other movies is gone. She’s rough, she’s blunt, she’s dominant, she’s great. It’s almost impossible to imagine her cursing and punching in another girl’s face after her turns as Amelia Earhart and Delysia Lafosse, but she fills the role with such confidence and ambition that I never questioned her authenticity. As Micky’s girlfriend Charlene, she’s perfect. If not for Christian Bale, she would have been the standout of the film.

But there was Christian Bale. And nobody was going to take the show from him.

Bale has always been a talented actor. Though now known by most as Batman, he’s played roles ranging from American Psycho to Newsies over an almost twenty-five year career and has almost always been believable (there was the disaster of John Connor, but we’re all working on erasing the existence of Terminator: Salvation from our memories anyway, so let’s not hold that one against him). He’s a chameleon of a man, one of the few actors in American history capable of both being a star unto himself and a character actor. Here though, Bale has outdone himself. He has not only created a character somehow both loathsome and lovable, but has transformed completely. Returning to his Machinist past, to play Dicky Eklund Bale has dropped down to a skin-and-bones physique that somehow still vibrates with energy and needs. He manages to make you forget that it’s him playing the role, and for a character actor there is no greater confirmation of a job well done. The job wasn’t an easy one either: Dicky is a former contender in the boxing world who grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, a true Irish blue collar neighborhood. a 40-year-old nothing who now lives in a haze of past dreams and dulled realities. He’s Micky’s older brother, his trainer, and a crack-addicted shadow of himself still obsessed with one match fourteen years past when he knocked down one of the greats. A match he didn’t even win. For the athletic, confident Welshman Bale, the transformation is complete and will earn him another nomination. Even if you don’t enjoy the movie, his performance alone is worth the price of a ticket.

There are other notable performances too, but the long and short of it is this: the movie isn’t anything particularly special, but the performances are. So go see the movie so that when Oscar time rolls around you’ll know why so many people from this one film were nominated.


One last note: If you do see the movie, let me know who you think the title refers to. Because I don’t think it refers to Micky at all.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Being out of the game for 19 months will make you rusty, but it’s not enough to keep you shut for good.

I missed this. It’s good to be back.