#like it establishes just how far jake would go to get andy back

[cheddar-the-dog]

b99 podcast episode 2:

relationship goals

@jake-and-ames and I have summarized what we think are the highlights of the second episode of the brooklyn nine-nine podcast. maybe those of you who can’t listen to the podcast for whatever reason can profit from it a bit

it’s under the cut because it’s quite long

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Part 1 with David Phillips, Tony Nahar, Dirk Blocker, Joel McKinnon Miller

a season that’s focussed on Ensemble rather than singular performances

not filmed on stage usually but practical locations (rooms with walls)

3 cameras and their crews —> “single camera” style but multiple cameras that open opportunities to cross-shoot scenes

MEJ plays in the B99 softball team

they have 35 background actors of which 90% were there since s1

Scully and Hitchcock almost never have full storylines and often have punchlines or chime in (requires timing)

S7 spoilers around minute 14 but I blanked out tbh

Episode 12 of Season 2 The Beach House is a very significant episode for the cast and crew

Beach House Cold Open is where Holt spilled soup on his pants and Andy only needed one take for him to go into Holt’s office and spill soup on his own pants

Whole episode was originally Boyle story and his divorce but they went ensemble because it didn’t work

the Amy-Drink-Scale and 6-Drink-Amy (aka Gina’s Sasquatch) is elaborated throughout the episode (not revealed though if there is a 7-Drink-Amy)

Boyle’s borderline creepy lines are discussed around Minute 25

they spent 2 days shooting on location in Malibu and some of the cast stayed overnight and got to know each other more (Andy, Joel, Joe, Melissa and Chelsea and her then boyfriend now husband Jordan Peele)

it was so far away that on the first day when their call time was 7 AM they started shooting at 10:30 AM and it was hot but they had to pretend it’s winter

“Scully is a quintessential rennesaince man” - Joel McKinnon Miller

The bubbles in the hot tub were silent

there were lots of alts and the cast and crew just had fun and tried making each other break and corpse the scene - especially Andre

they intentionally made Holt apologize as an example of how a boss can behave vs how he would be expected to behave (Jake apologizing to him)

Part 2: Stephanie Beatriz, Laura McCreary, Luke Del Tredici

relationships (friendships, romantic relationships, bromances and Rosas coming out)

Steph doesn’t get recognized on the streets because of voice and mannerisms

in the beginning it was more focused on the Rosa/Charles relationship than Jake/Amy because Jake needed a lot of character work before they could think about getting them together/ him more fitting to Amy

Jake/Amy: pacing but also they don’t know how long they have, there’s no opportunity to really plan years ahead - if they would’ve know how long they have they would’ve held back longer with the romance but they knew from the beginning that they’re endgame

they try to avoid making Amy only “the wife”

“RIP Cheddar Number 3” - Laura McCreary

Rosa/Charles: they had Charles pining over Rosa in the pilot and according to Luke you repeat a lot of storylines in the beginning of a series because you’re trying to figure out who these characters are but as the show grew older so did the writers and eventually they realized it felt very inappropriate to not take no for an answer (Luke describes it as a “mistake” to not resolve it sooner)

Steph felt like it was inappropriate early on but didn’t have the courage to go to the writers and tell them how she felt because she was scared of losing her job and she didn’t know how things worked in that particular workplace bc she originally is a theatre actress

Charles and Rosa remain friends though and their relationship grows stronger. So much so that Rosa comes out to him first which Steph loved a lot

MEJ is still waiting for the vow renewal of Holt and Kevin (he pitched another idea during that episode)

Boyle/Peralta: McCreary said that because Jake can’t really mess up at his job because of stakes and he’s not perfect they made him mess up a lot with Charles’ friendship (also the ladies but mainly Charles)

Rosa had a good amount of relationships

“She’s trying. I don’t know if she’s living it but she’s trying.” - Steph

Rosa/Adrian: very opposite characters and she described Jason abd Pimento respectively as loose canons. Mantzoukas also taught Steph how to relax more in scenes (she’s praising his improv skills a lot as well as “he’s like a thorough bred dressage horse but kinda like crazy” - Stephanie Beatriz)

Rosa/Marcus: first on screen relationship that the writers used to get a Rosa/Holt dynamic going

Steph played Rosa queer from the beginning (she built on talking about Tonya Harding being hot for example)

the coming out episode: Steph was involved in creating the 99th episode and the coming out of her character a lot - she wanted Rosa to use the word bisexual repeatedly and the language that was used is a lot of what she had to hear personally. She talks about bi-erasure as well

The writers wanted to incorporate real life experiences into their show more to make it authentic and it was important to them to involve Steph and not just go for it because they had nobody who could speak for her specific experience

they emphasize the complexity of the characters and not just token diversity for brownie points. also different takes on classic masculinity tropes (a subject that repeats often also in Episode 1)

it’s meant to be a socially relevant show but they want to normalize the subjects they target and don’t make it 30 minutes of education and “here’s everything that’s wrong with x”

Terry/Sharon: a stable loving marriage between two black people

“Title of your sex tape” is a favorite joke, and since the series starts with established dynamics everyone in the squad is cool with joking about it/ it doesn’t feel inappropriate in their workplace because they’ve known each other for quite a long time

there’s a cut scene from the s6 finale where the vulture heard Jake say “title of your sex tape” and stole it to use himself which Jake in return hated more than anything he did, ever. And a similar instance (also a cut scene) where Hitchcock heard it and stole it as well

[that-shamrock-vibe]

Movie Review: Shazam! (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: This is my spoiler review for Shazam! released the weekend after the movie’s initial release on April 5 so if you haven’t yet seen the movie, go and see it and then come back and read on.

Characters:

Billy Batson/Shazam:

So let’s start with our main character(s) and I will start with Asher Angel’s Billy Batson because I can’t really talk about Zachary Levi’s Shazam without first talking about the origin of how he came to be.

As I said in my non-spoiler review, I thought Asher Angel got off to a very rocky start. I am guessing “Holy Moley” is Billy’s catchphrase because both he and Shazam said it quite a lot in this movie. However when the first words you hear the movie’s hero say are “Holy moley! It’s the boys in blue!” you do question what kind of movie this is.

I did like his actions of tricking the cops into that shop and locking them in so he could try and find a woman with the surname Batson in their car...but I just how it was executed from the dialogue to that very childish waving played a little bit too kid-like than Billy or Shazam are supposed to be.

Although the fact he is a kid in the foster system was very tastefully handled and didn’t detour away from the hard-hitting reality of what growing up in the system is like.

Similar to the 2009 movie Hotel for Dogs starring Emma Roberts and Jake T. Austin as brother and sister in the system and wanting to remain together no matter where they end up. Don Cheadle plays one of his better roles there as the social worker who like Andi Osho here is very realistic in saying “If you keep running away, eventually it will become impossible to place you”. Very well handled and I am impressed a movie this comedic and light goes there.

Now when Billy moves in with the foster family that houses the other kids of the Shazam! family, something about Asher’s performance really makes Billy fade away and the attention is focused on literally everyone else. I think the main problem for this movie will be Asher Angel because even in promotions it’s Zachary Levi and Jack Dylan Grazer doing the rounds.

I did like the growth of him accepting the foster family as his new family. He started off very cagey, was fixated on the idea he wasn’t going to stay there so didn’t want Darla to get attached which made her feel sad and how he didn’t join in with the family dinner tradition of “all hands in”.

But then when he finally tracked down his mother, which by the way I found interesting that Billy had gone I think from state to state or city to city yet somehow ended up in the same state or city as his mother all those years later, that realization that his mother is a waste of space and accepting that the foster family are his true family was touching.

This is, by a mile, my favourite performance of Zachary Levi’s. Shazam as a character in live-action was every bit as funny and child-like as I have seen him in animation.

That child-like wonder of discovering he had superpowers and learning how to deal with them was very good, the fact he appeared as an adult so could buy beer but still being a child not having a taste for it so swapped it out for candy and sugary drinks was very funny.

But then of course you have the line of “With great power comes great responsibility” which yes isn’t a Shazam or DC line but does come into effect as Shazam is using his lightning powers mainly to charge phones and put on a show, but when it comes to saving people he does go through that ordeal of not knowing what to do and simply succeeding by luck.

I thought the Shazam suit was very well realized despite what we have seen in promotions, I’m still not a fan of the cape and I like the comments about it in the movie. I think it’s either one of those things that works better in animation or the choice in design they went with for the movie just made it look like a bath towel but something didn’t translate well for me.

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I do not believe Shazam was ever called Shazam in this movie. I mean yes there was that great line in the climax of the film when Billy’s foster siblings became the Shazam family and Shazam himself instructed them on how to become them but rather than saying Shazam originally they said “Billy!” and so he said “No not my name, the name that turns me into this guy” it was funny.

Obviously they can’t use the character’s original name of Captain Marvel because 1) There is a small independent movie that just passed $1 Billion at the box office with the same name and of course the name is literally the name of DC’s rival studio.

I had fun with the character and I genuinely look forward to seeing where this character goes next.

Dr. Sivana:

Mark Strong finally comes good as a supervillain and I could not be happier for him. I really like this actor, I think he is an incredible working actor just trying to have that one breakthrough role that grabs audience attention and I believe Dr. Sivana is that role.

I enjoyed the movie starting with his origin, because of course behind every great superhero is a great supervillain, and Mark Strong as Dr. Sivana is a fantastic supervillain.

His father being John Glover was a very nice surprise for me both as a Smallville fan and just a John Glover fan in general. Yes he played a kind of Frankenstein-esk villain in Batman and Robin but his turn as Lionel Luthor in Smallville and even Sylar’s father in Heroes were two great roles for the character. Also he is the voice of The Riddler in Batman: The Animated Series so he clearly has a lot of weight at DC.

When young Thad goes to Shazam’s lair and is tempted by the seven deadly sins before being banished by Shazam, I thought it was a great precursor for what is to come.

I loved how from being a child he dedicated his life to finding his way back to the lair to obtain the power and that took I think 44/45 years, if we’re talking “present day” when it’s clearly Christmas in April, was dedication and I loved how in this instance it wasn’t the villain created because of the hero.

Being empowered by the Seven Deadly Sins, who by the way the promotional trail kept really secret. I mean I didn’t know about the Seven Deadly Enemies of Man from the comics but obviously even atheists know about the seven deadly sins and portraying them in these rather creative demon styles was a lot of fun.

I also found it brilliant that he never released the seventh deadly sin Envy until he had no choice because if all seven left him he would simply be mortal and vulnerable, I thought at one point he was going to mutate into Envy because of how he was envious he wasn’t worthy of the power of Shazam yet a child was but I was wrong.

Dr. Sivana, as I said in my non-spoiler review, is the best supervillain portrayal since Heath Ledger’s Joker. This guy was dark, brutal and was not afraid to kill or threaten anybody - Man, woman, child, elderly, infant...anybody!

Mark Strong could have very easily gone down the Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor in Superman Returns route particularly when he had the foster siblings hostage at their house but he was still scary and threatening.

He never broke character either, there was never one moment where he was a goofy villain or let himself play to the goofiness of the hero. The best laugh he got was in the Deadpool-like scene where he and Shazam were in the air...very far away from each other and Sivana was threatening Shazam but Shazam couldn’t hear him yet he was still talking. Yet it was never played as Sivana being incompetent or goofy as he was still menacing.

Foster Family/Shazam! Family:

Alright so I am going to go through the foster kids in order of my favourites still but just to talk about them as a whole, I thought once again this was a great example of diversity within a comic-book movie. To play up the fact that a foster family can be made up of different ethnicities was another realistic touch in portraying how the foster system works.

Darla Dudley:

Darla was my favourite out of the kids and Faithe Herman is the breakout star of this movie. She was cute for a start, this girl was adorable, you could easily see why she was picked for fostering/adoption because she is that cute.

However, she is a great example of looks being deceiving because this girl may be cute but she is sassy and she knows how to work a room. From keeping the secret that Billy is Shazam to playing up the little sister angle. Her reaction when the other kids found out that Billy was Shazam was great because she was so giddy that she didn’t spill the secret it was just so adorable.

When she was gifted her superpowers and became an adult, I thought Meegan Good kept up Faithe Herman’s cuteness but plussed it into the vision of what Darla sees herself being as an adult. She had the same kind of look and had a side-ponytail curl rather than bunches, her power, because each kid was granted one of Shazam’s powers while he as Billy has all of them, was the Speed of Mercury and it was great to see a female speedster in the movies, because at the moment they’re all on the small screen and mainly on The Flash with the Flash Family.

I look forward to seeing how Darla progresses as a character and, to be honest, care about her more than Billy at this point.

Freddy Freeman:

Jack Dylan Grazer was basically as good here as he was as Ritchie in It but the difference is the genre because while in a horror setting it is all very intense and, as someone who isn’t a horror fan myself, I am always on the edge of my seat that there isn’t really time to convey a lighter performance, here Freddy was simply a comic-book geek and I found that very relatable.

I loved the fact that it was either every day or every other scene that Freddy had a different logo t-shirt from the Justice League members and the main heroes so far established in the DCEU, even Wonder Woman which I found to be very forward-thinking of the director to have a guy wear a Wonder Woman t-shirt.

The only thing I didn’t like about Freddy was the fact he became almost a user and exploiter when it came to Billy’s newfound powers and apparent celebrity status.

I get Freddy uses a crutch and gets bullied for it, but I don’t see why that means he automatically say “I know the superhero” without at least asking Billy if it was okay first.

To then make a fool of both him and Shazam while he’s putting on that lightning show was stupid and selfish both because it makes it hard for Shazam to present himself as a reliable superhero but also how exactly do you explain Freddy having such a relationship with Shazam that he feels confident in just calling him out like that.

My funniest moment from Freddy was in that, now overplayed, convenience store scene where you had those thugs come in and Freddy convince Shazam to stand up to them while he’s recording it and, after the discovery that his suit is at least bulletproof, Freddy saying “We need to try the head”...the fact Freddy is essentially directing a robbery is quite funny.

When Freddy became Adam Brody, admittedly I at first did not recognize him. I know Adam Brody TV guest appearances from over 10 years ago so I guess puberty hit or something but he both looked and sounded completely different.

Other Three:

The other three kids really blend into the background for me with maybe one or two moments to shine yet they never do.

Eugene had a funny introduction of being a gamer nerd who, when his dad tells him it’s night said “When did it become night?”. Again I can relate to that.

Pedro had an interesting line of dialogue when the kids came out of the strip club after Shazam teleports them all there and he says “It’s not really for me”, which is either just Pedro not being a meatheaded hetero and trying to be more mature but also could be a sign the character will be an LGBT character.

Mary, was bland as bran flakes. She had one interesting scene, surprisingly in the trailer, where Shazam saves her and she mentions something about college but that is never mentioned again.

Overall I do like this group of kids for what they represent, but I hope the sequel does develop them further and give them something more to do.

Worlds of DC:

Alright so because the Worlds of DC has seemingly been taken literal here, as I do not see Shazam! as a movie really fitting in with the likes of Wonder Woman or Aquaman and rather in it’s own world within the DC Movies. Having said  that, I am open for the movies going forward to prove me wrong.

Post-Credits Scenes:

This is where I get completely lost and had to do further research because the mid-credits scene saw a now depowered Dr. Sivana...so glad they didn’t kill him off...incarcerated. But then we have this weird caterpillar thing somehow talking to him through a voice box about conquering the seven realms.

It did lead to intruge for me, as I said was curious who the bug was and knew he had been in the movie at the start in the Rock of Eternity but then broke out later.

Apparently his name is Mister Mind and he is a Venusian worm with powerful mental abilities including mind control and hypnosis.

It’s a little bit of a hard-sell when the rest of the movie was so dark, particularly to have Dr. Sivana go from such a brilliant villain to possibly just a puppet, but we shall see.

The very end-credits scene is again a bit of a throwaway but it is Freddy and Shazam testing more of Shazam’s powers, this time seeing if he could control fish which Shazam says is a stupid and useless power but Freddy makes a brilliant in-universe joke to the fact Aquaman did that with style in his movie. Maybe alluding to the fact that this world is separate to the rest...I don’t know.

Overall I rate this movie a solid 8/10, I had a lot of fun with it, I thought Mark Strong and Faithe Herman were definitely my MVPs of the movie and I thought Zachary Levi did a great job at being him but also trying to level up as he was in a mainstream superhero movie.

So that’s my spoiler review of Shazam! What did you guys think? Share your comments and check out more DC Movie Reviews as well as other Movie Reviews and posts.

[write-stuff-for-life-blog]

Review: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

NOTE: I actually saw this movie in theaters but since it’s DVD release was yesterday I figured I’d post my review of it here. I might ramble on for several paragraphs in these reviews, especially if I feel strongly about something, so I’ll try and make it a point to post a short rating at the top as well as a more in depth one at the end.

NOTE THE SECOND: I don’t usually care about spoilers in these reviews so read at your own risk.

1 out of 5 stars. Only watch on Netflix if you exhaust all your other options.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is written by Colin Trevorrow (previous writer and director of the last entry in the franchise) and Derek Connolly and was directed by J.A. Bayona. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard reprise their roles as Owen Grady and Claire Dearing respectively and are sent back to Isla Nublar by Jon Hammond’s previously never mentioned before former partner billionaire Ben Lockwood played by a James Cromwell who can barely bother to keep his eyes open throughout the movie. I, in fact, share that same sentiment.

Usually in these reviews I try to touch on all the aspects of said medium: visuals, camera work, writing, directing, acting, etc. But this review is going to focus mainly on the writing and acting because both are so atrocious all the other aspects are inconsequential. 

I didn’t think the first Jurassic World (JW) was as great as it needed to be for a soft reboot / revival of such a beloved franchise but it did have several memorable moments. The leads were charming enough to make you forget that they lacked meaningful character arcs (Claire does have one but the movie doesn’t care about it that much) and the action in the second half of the film was pretty cool (specifically T-Rex and Raptor and Giant Alligator Thing vs. the Indominus Rex). So for the second go around I was hoping that the filmmakers would take the time to really get it right and do the franchise justice. My hopes were far too high.

The only two performances that were worth anything in Fallen Kingdom (FK) were the two returning leads, Pratt and Howard. Howard is a decent enough actress but I’ve never seen a performance from her that I really love and FK continues that trend. Claire does undergo a change from shrewd, cold businesswoman to animal rights activist and that does give some depth to her character but it happens off screen during the three years between JW and FK. It was a little jarring at first but I swallowed it better when the film took a minute to explain her motivations. Pratt was as Pratt as ever as Owen is exactly the same through this movie as he was when we first met him in JW. I fear there’s a real risk for Pratt here as it seems as though he’s becoming another Will Smith or Tom Cruise. He is varying degrees of his usual charming and charismatic self in whatever project he appears in. Owen is just Pratt but outdoorsy to the extreme. Star-Lord is just Pratt with his ego turned up to eleven. Andy from Parks and Rec is just Pratt as a dumb man-child. And I guess that’s fine. Plenty of stars have made careers doing the same but actors actually stretching themselves and challenging themselves to become someone else will always be more impressive.

One thing that annoys me about modern blockbusters are their tendencies to inject new secondary characters into each following installment while completely ignoring the B cast from the previous entry. In the original Jurassic trilogy it did make some sense to do that as each sequel followed the branching lives of Ian Malcolm and Allen Grant who, we can presume, never encounter one another again after the first film. But here there’s little justification for it. JW’s comic relief characters Lowery and Vivian, played by capable comedy actors Jake Johnson and Lauren Lapkus respectively, are nowhere to be seen in this movie. Instead we have Franklin Webb, a spazzy tech guy played by Justice Smith, and Zia Rodriguez, a ball busting veterinarian played by Daniella Pineda. I don’t have much to say about Pineda, she was decent enough and served her purpose, but Smith … Oh my God. I believe this guy will go down in history as the absolute worst character in any Jurassic movie ever. Yes, he is even worse than every child character in all of the movies combined. He does nothing for the movie other than to scream in a high pitched voice when something scares him. Everything scares him. It’s always played for laughs but the joke falls flat on its face every time. The movie thinks it’s funny for a grown man to shriek in terror and scream out loud the thing that’s scaring him. “Lava!” “T-Rex!” “Social interaction!” All right, I made up that last one but the character is so cliché he might as well have said it. And what’s more there is no reason for this character to be here. The movie wastes a fine opportunity to bring back JW’s Lowery who was also a tech guy. In fact it even makes sense for him to run with Claire in her animal rights activism as he was a huge fanboy for Jurassic Park. He had toy dinosaurs all over his work station, he loves them! And it makes even more sense for him to return to Isla Nublar because he was familiar with the park’s computer systems. Why isn’t he joining Claire? He was courageous and had some genuinely funny interactions with Vivian. He certainly would have been better than Spazzy McScreamy.

Speaking of trends let’s talk about the obligatory child character. Isabella Sermon makes her big screen debut as Maisie Lockwood, Ben Lockwood’s granddaughter. Of all the new additions to the franchise she’s the standout as her performance has a depth and range most child actors would struggle to convey. Now one thing about the Jurassic movies is that their child characters were usually pretty capable in some way or another. Hammond’s granddaughter in JP reboots the computer system. Malcolm’s daughter in Lost World is able to gymnastic a raptor to death (yeah it’s a dumb scene but she saves her dad). The teenager in JP3 survives Isla Sorna alone for eight weeks. And the brothers in JW are able to fix a derelict jeep and rescue themselves. FK started out following this trend of capable children with Maisie … until it abandons the idea so we can have a “monster creeping through a child’s bedroom” scene. This completely undermined her whole character. Up until then the movie had established her as smart and independent and capable as hell. She snuck into the secret lab, spied and hid from the bad guys, busted out of her room which she’d been locked in, and climbed atop buildings all secretly by herself without help from a single grown up. But the minute the new hybrid dinosaur goes after her, which she had seen several times before then, she immediately forgets how capable she is and hides under her bed sheets. This might be the most heinous example of bad writing in this whole movie. Mixed messages? Okay, fine. Forgettable action sequences? Whatever, that’s most of Hollywood anyway. But please, for the love of God, have consistent characters!

Now the villains. Ugh.

BD Wong returns as the dastardly Dr. Henry Wu, the mastermind genius behind the dinosaur cloning process, the I-Rex, and FK’s new hybrid the Indoraptor.  It would seem that in the three years since JW InGen and its parent company Masrani Global have cut Wu loose as he’s now partnered with a new financier Eli Mills played by Rafe Spall, the CEO / director / executor of Ben Lockwood’s … estate? Company? Trust fund? I don’t remember the movie specifying what Mills’ job was, only that he was another white collar villain (because we haven’t seen that before in a Jurassic movie). Toby Jones makes an appearance as Mr. Eversol, an auctioneer for the high rolling criminal underworld, and Ted Levine plays Ken Wheatley, the leader of a disposable mercenary force who has an odd fetish for collecting dinosaur teeth. And that is literally all there is to the villains. Each of them is cartoonishly shallow to the point that Wheatley is a parody of an archetype and all Dr. Wu needs is a mustache to twirl. True, the villains have never been that big of a deal in the Jurassic movies as the dinosaurs have always been the main attractions but not even Vincent D’Onofrio’s Hoskins from JW was this bad and in a movie full of weakly written characters he was the weakest link.

And let’s not forget the dinosaurs. They are there. Not as much as you’d like but they’re around. The big draw for Owen this time around is to save Blue, the only surviving raptor from the pack he raised and trained, from Isla Nublar’s impending volcanic eruption. FK plays this up as though Blue was always the equivalent of a loyal attack dog but it conveniently forgets that JW established her as a dog capable and willing to bite the hand that fed her. The scene from the previous movie in which Owen is in the raptor enclosure is a tense moment because he is under threat from all the raptors, Blue included. In fact when the I-Rex persuades them to go after the humans all the raptors focus in on Owen. There was that one moment when Owen pulls off Blue’s head camera at the end of JW but to rewrite the relationship as though she were a loyal golden retriever, I feel like that was not earned in the slightest. And the main attraction this time is the new hybrid, the Indoraptor, essentially a smaller version of the previous movie’s I-Rex. FK presents this abomination of genetic manipulation as an ultimate monster but it really just looks like rejected concept art of the I-Rex. Also the Indoraptor is only in half of the movie. The I-Rex in JW was a better monster because it was terrorizing the island for almost the whole runtime. Plus the I-Rex has some decent build up and a good reveal. Here, it feels like the movie couldn’t be bothered. “By the way, we made another hybrid dino. Here it is.” I did enjoy the return of more practical animatronics over every dino being CGI but if you saw the last film this one doesn’t have anything special for you in that regard.

Let’s talk about Trevorrow’s writing. It’s awful. Like a pile of hot rancid garbage awful. The biggest problem with JW is that it completely ignores the moral of the original. JP was a cautionary tale that proves whenever man tries to exert his will over nature he will lose and just because we can do something it doesn’t mean we should. It’s classic man vs. nature ending with man being humbled. JW said, “Hey look, we’re going to keep doing that ethically questionable thing most people believe we shouldn’t be doing and wield the power of a god with no regards to any possible consequences,” and gets upset when the monster it created wreaks havoc. But does FK finally learn that lesson and try to take the franchise somewhere new that doesn’t lead the characters into being idiots who keep going back to the island? Do Michael Bay’s Transformers movies understand subtlety?

More than ever this movie has dumb characters making dumb decisions that nobody with a brain can follow. The villains want to capture the dinos and auction them off to billionaire criminals because these crime lords want them for pharmaceutical reasons (but why though?), the ability to hunt one like a big game hunter (because we also haven’t seen that before), or for weaponization. Let’s touch on that last point. The villains justify it by saying animals have been used in combat scenarios for centuries when armies rode to battle on horses and elephants. And the movie might have had a point if either one of those transportation methods hadn’t become outdated before the fifties.

Now just for the sake of argument I’ll list off a few more examples for this movie’s case: K-9 units, bomb detecting dolphins, and pidgins have all historically been used by one military or another at various times. But here’s the common thread among all those examples: none of those animals are predisposed to ripping a man’s head off in a single bite. Why do you think it isn’t common practice for a military to use lions and tigers and bears? And let’s take a closer look at the proliferation of working dogs and horses. Could it be that thousands if not millions of years of closely co-existing with humans have made them predisposed towards not killing us on sight? What’s that called? Oh yeah. Domestication!

Whether we’re talking about fiction or not, training an animal that never co-existed with humans so it can become an attack animal is not a good idea any way you slice it. Any semi-intelligent person can recognize that there are way too many variables to take into account. Oh but what about Blue, I hear you asking. Owen proved that raptors can be trained with Blue. That may be true but one successful instance against a multitude of failures does not prove the concept. Sure the Polish Supply Brigade around WWII kept a bear named Wojtek that would carry their supplies for them but you don’t see cargo bears being implemented throughout the world’s militaries these days. Do you know why? Because they’re freaking bears! They could go in for a playful swipe and nick your carotid by accident you MORONS!

And that leads me to this movie’s message. Apparently FK believes these animals have as much right to life as any other endangered species. That’s the whole reason Claire wants to go back so she can save them. But the film is bookended with Jeff Goldblum reprising his role as Ian Malcolm speaking before a congressional committee on how much that is a bad idea. He argues that nature selected the dinos for extinction millions of years ago and bringing them back was a mistake. The volcano erupting and eradicating the clone dinos on Isla Nublar, he says, is nature’s way of correcting that mistake. So the film opens and closes arguing why protecting these creatures from a second extinction is the worst. And yet we spend most of the runtime doing exactly that.

Seriously?

Malcolm has always been the ultimate voice of reason in these movies and we as an audience are inclined to agree with him given the proof each movie provides for his argument. There are four previous films illustrating why bringing the Earth’s most dangerous predators back to life is a horrible idea. And now that nature wants to correct the mistake you’re going to defy that decision?

The film uses Maisie here to make this case. The dinos are technically clones and we learn that Maisie is a clone as well so now we’re using clone rights to justify saving the dinosaurs. It is a weak argument thrown in at the last moment. Arguing for conservation is good and all but how well are you going to side with that argument when the T-Rex is meandering through a neighborhood gobbling up pedestrians left and right? These animals have lived on an island their entire lives. Aside from T-Rex who visited San Diego in the 90s they have never seen a town. The only human made structures they are familiar with were the derelict park buildings that the movie shows them waltzing through all the time. Even our own real world wild animals don’t understand that they should stay away from human settlements, how well do you think Blue is going to do the first time she’s caught in the headlights? But apparently they have a right to live because they are just as alive as Maisie the clone is so let’s end the movie by releasing all these dangerous animals, most of which are as large as a rhino or elephant, into the American countryside.

Sure, forget about public safety. Forget that dinosaurs had their chance but nature selected them for extinction over sixty million years ago. Forget about all the indigenous plant and wildlife that is now under threat because you just loosed at least eleven different dinos onto the world. Forget about how their nesting habits might destroy the landscape like nutria in Louisiana. What was your motivation again? Conservation? Give me a break.

Honestly this movie makes me glad Trevorrow was fired from Star Wars Episode Nine. This proves that he has no clue what decent writing looks like and has no regard for what the original was trying to say. Just because he was given the opportunity to make these films doesn’t mean he should have.

 1 star out of 5

A forgettable and messy film that slowly meanders through the second and third act with no sense of purpose other than to say, “Ooooh look. It’s a dinosaur!” And it doesn’t even say that well.

[tkmedia]

2021 Fantasy RB Sleepers

With the lack of reliable tight ends in fantasy football, each year will see at least a few breakouts rise from the lower depths of the rankings to claim a top-12 fantasy finish. Last season, Robert Tonyan finished as the TE3 in standard and PPR formats. (Don’t pretend like you knew who Tonyan was coming into the season.) Remember Jared Cook charting a career year (TE5) in ‘18 at 31? If you need more evidence, we can go back further. See none other than Delanie Walker, then a long-time 49ers backup. In 2013, He signed a four-year deal with Tennessee for an average salary of 4.4 million dollars -- chump change for an NFL player. And what did he do with that opportunity? He became a reliable upper-tier fantasy starter for the next five seasons, finishing as high as TE2 in PPR formats. All of these players were barely on the sleeper radar, never mind highlighted on draft cheat sheets. So, now that it’s been established sleeper tight ends emerge every season, it’s important to figure out how to identify them. Sometimes, TEs set to see an expanded role in an offense, perhaps because another TE or key WR left or because a new offensive coordinator is in town, are prime sleeper targets. You could also look at TEs who got a QB upgrade in the offseason. New opportunities can yield new results -- even for old players.This year's list features Irv Smith Jr., Anthony Firkser, and Adam Trautman, all of whom figure to step into a more significant roles in their respective offenses. Blake Jarwin and O.J. Howard, who are more or less afterthoughts due to major injuries sustained last season, also merit watching as they try to bounce back. Someone like Cole Kmet isn't necessarily in a "new situation," but we still expect him to take a big leap forward in his sophomore season and overtake Jimmy Graham as Chicago's primary TE.If you're in a shallow league, most of these guys won't even be on your radar. It's more likely someone like Dallas Goedert, Tyler Higbee, or Jonnu Smith/Hunter Henry would be considered "sleepers," but for most leagues, the tight ends below are the players to target in the middle and late rounds. That's where these types of TEs will be patiently waiting to be claimed.That’s the beauty of the position -- many of these sleepers are still cheap! If they don’t plan out, your season isn’t lost. Even if you take a "good" starter earlier, it's still smart to take a flier on the sleeper tight end late. Remember, there are only a handful of players at the position who can be trusted every week, so giving yourself options makes sense. Javonte Williams, Broncos Williams will be competing with veteran Melvin Gordon for touches, but even if the talented rookie isn't starting in Week 1, he has more long-term potential because of his explosiveness. In his final season at North Carolina, Williams totaled 1,445 yards and 22 TDs while averaging 7.9 yards per touch. The Broncos offense has a lot of talent but also a lot of question marks. Williams can be a stabilizing force if the coaching staff lets him. It would be foolish to completely write off the 28-year-old Gordon, who posted 1,144 total yards, 4.6 yards/carry, and 10 TDs last year, but Denver drafted Williams early in the second round for a reason. Gus Edwards, Ravens Everyone is excited about JK Dobbins this year -- and deservedly so -- but don't sleep on Edwards. He's posted at least 700 yards and averaged at least 5.0 yards/carry in each of his three seasons, so you know he's going to produce on the ground. With Mark Ingram gone, his path to production is even more open. He might not crack double-digit receptions, but it wouldn't be a complete shock if Edwards wound up getting more touches than Dobbins and starred in the Ravens backfield. Either way, he's being undervalued in drafts. Consider Edwards more of a 1B to Dobbins' 1A than merely a traditional handcuff. Michael Carter, Jets Kmet is poised to take over the keys from Jimmy Graham at TE1 in the Bears offense. While Kmet didn't see a ton of volume last year (44 targets), he ranked fourth at the position in true catch rate at 94 percent. True catch rate is the total number of receptions divided by total number of catchable targets. With Andy Dalton or Justin Fields on the field, passing volume and catchable targets are likely to point upward. Chicago traded Anthony Miller to Houston, opening up more potential targets for Kmet. If Fields is as good as the Bears think he can be, Kmet may serve as a reliable target in an emerging offense. Phillip Lindsay, Texans David Johnson had a surprise bounce-back season last year, posting 1,005 total yards and eight TDs while averaging a career-high 4.7 yards/carry in 12 games. Even so, the Texans picked up Lindsay in the offseason, and fantasy owners shouldn't ignore him. Lindsay started his career with back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons before struggling in an injury-plagued 2020. Lindsay still has a career 4.8 yards/carry average, and despite his size (5-8 ,190 pounds), he's a tough inside runner. Johnson might begin the season as Houston's starter, but given his injury history and age (29), Lindsay could wind up outproducing him for the season. Don't let Lindsay fall too far behind Johnson in drafts. Jamaal Williams, Lions Williams was consistently solid in his four years with the Packers, but he rarely starred outside of the occasional good game. Now with Detroit, he'll once again work in a complementary role (behind D'Andre Swift), but the Lions have a strong offensive line and very little going for them in the receiving game. That should open up more opportunities for Williams, both as a runner and a pass-catcher. It will likely take a Swift injury for Williams to really go off, but he's capable of outproducing his ADP and being an every-week flex, at least in PPR formats. AJ Dillon, Packers When a guy is 6-0, 247 pounds and has both "Quadfather" and "Quadzilla" listed on hisPFR pageas nicknames, you want to give him your full attention. Dillon didn't playmuch as a third-string rookie last year, but he did average 5.3 yards/carry in limited action and went off in the one games where he did get significant touches, posting a 21-124-2 line in a Week 16 game against Tennessee. With Jamaal Williams gone, Dillon takes over the primary backup role to Aaron Jones, so he's primed for 120-plus carries. At last year's rate, that would yield around 700 rushing yards and a five-to-six TDs. The potential is there for more with the supremely talented Dillon even in a backup role,and if anything happens to Jones, look out. Dillon would immediately vie for top-10 consideration. Tony Pollard, Cowboys Pollard has played well in his first two seasons, averaging 4.8 yards/carry and showcasing solid receiving skills. When Ezekiel Elliott out in Week 15, Pollard took advantage, running 12 times for 69 yards and two scores against the 49ers. With Elliott coming off a down year, it's fair to wonder if Pollard will see more touches, and in Dallas's high-powered offense, even 10 touches per game would give him flex value. If Elliott gets hurt, Pollard's value would really take off. If you draft Elliott, be prepared to overpay for Pollard because he's the type of backup other owners will draft in the middle rounds, too. Trey Sermon, 49ers Sermon had a decent college career split between Oklahoma and Ohio State, but he saved his best performances for the Big 10 Championship and Sugar Bowl last year, rushing for a combined 524 yards and three TDs while adding another 65 receiving yards on seven catches. The 6-1, 215-pound Sermon ran a 4.57 40-yard dash and doesn't wow with any other measurables, but you know if he gets consistent touches in the 49ers system, he'll be productive. Raheem Mostertwon't stay healthy, and even if he does, we know San Francisco will use multiple ball carriers. Wayne Gallman will probably more involved than any of us want, but Sermon still has major breakout potential. Justin Jackson, Chargers Jackson is just as likely to get cut as he is have a good year, so proceed with caution here. That said, the Chargers need a true "lead back" to complement receiving ace Austin Ekeler, and last year's popular rookie sleeper, Joshua Kelley, repeatedly flopped in his attempts to take over the lead role when Ekeler was hurt (3.2 yards/carry). Perhaps Kelley will bounce back and get first crack at the 1B job, but Jackson outplayed him last year (when he wasn't missing seven games because of toe, quad, and knee injuries). Jackson averaged 4.6 yards/carry (4.9 for his career) and caught 19 passes for 173 yards in a similar campaign as his rookie season. It's tough get too excited about Jackson, but someone figures to emerge in this backfield. If it's not Jackson or Kelley, then you're looking at sixth-round rookie Larry Rountree III, who produced well in his career at Mizzou (5.0 yard/carry, 40 TDs). For now, we'll err on the side of the veteran. Rhamondre Stevenson, Patriots The 6-0, 231-pound Stevenson might very well be on the inactive list early in the season (he is a Patriots RB after all), but he has upside if he finds his way into the lineup. The Patriots are notorious for shenanigans with their RBs, and even though Damien Harris looks to be "the guy" in New England, no one would be shocked Stevenson started stealing carries or being used as a goal-line hammer. Sevenson averaged 7.2 yards/carry and scored 13 TDs in 19 career games at Oklahoma, and he even showed some receiving chops with 18 catches and 211 yards in just six games last year. He presents the kind of unique skillset Bill Belichick loves to use, so fantasy owners should have him high on their watchlists. Jake Funk/Xavier Williams, Rams Does anyone really trust Darrell Henderson to last the full season as the Rams' feature back? Maybe he will -- or maybe L.A. will sign a veteran like Le'Veon Bell or Todd Gurley -- but until they pick up someone else, undrafted Jones and seventh-round pick Funk are the most likely candidates to siphon carries. At 5-10, 204 pounds with 4.49 speed, Funk has similar size but more speed than Jones (5-11, 208 pounds, 4.54), but Jones was far more productive in career at SMU than Funk was at Maryland. Neither of these backs really stand out, but they figure to get shots at playing time early in the year. Caleb Huntley/Javian Hawkins, Falcons Mike Davis and Cordarrelle Patterson are currently atop Atlanta's RB depth chart. Anyone trust them to last in those spots all year? After them, you have Qadree Allison, who's had some sleeper buzz of his own at times but totaled just one carry in three games last year. With all that said, we're going off the board for some sleeper picks here and highlighting rookie free agents Huntley and Hawkins. The former is a 5-10, 229-pound bruiser who scored 18 TDs in 15 games his final two seasons at Ball State. Huntley is a 5-9, 196-pound speedster 2,347 rushing yards, 20 catches, 185 receiving yards, and 17 total TDs in two seasons at Louisville. They could form a solid thunder-and-lightning duo if given the chance, but as it stands, Hawkins is a little more interesting due to his versatility and speed. Read the full article

[actutrends]

Who deserves a playoff spot most: Kings, Suns or Timberwolves?

The Kings, Suns and Timberwolves are all theoretically in the playoff hunt in the Western Conference. Who needs that spot the most?

So it looks like the NBA draft lottery works! Three teams who miserably tripped over themselves en route to top-10 picks repeatedly over the course of a decade are right in the playoff hunt this season. They are the Kings, Timberwolves and Suns, and at most two of them will make it.

As NBA languishing goes, these franchises are about as bad as it gets. They fumbled around for years to get to this point, and are only here because they got lucky a couple of times in one of the dozen drafts in which they should have found a star. None of them truly deserves it.

There’s also a chance they all fail again. FiveThirtyEight gives Oklahoma City and Portland the best odds to nab the seventh and eighth seeds in the West. Seven teams currently sit within five games of one another in the standings, meaning this thing is far from wrapped up.

When we talk about who is most deserving, though, it’s a whole other discussion from who will make the playoffs. The Trail Blazers and Thunder each were top-six seeds last year. They dueled in the first round. And while we’re discussing deservedness here, the Thunder are probably at the bottom of the rankings based on the fact that Damian Lillard turned the whole franchise into a corpse with one shot:

Newness is just more fun thing to root for when other options have run stale. Circling back to Sacramento, Minnesota and Phoenix (who combined for one playoff appearance this decade), let’s establish criteria to determine which depressing franchise ought to get to the playoffs in 2020:

1. How depressed is the fanbase?

2. How insufferable would the fanbase be if they made it back in?

3. How likable are the players? Are there any guys you especially want to see in the postseason?

4. Are they actually trying to win right now?

5. Is there hope for the future or is this their best chance to make the playoffs?

With those five categories in mind, let’s answer each question for each team and see who wins/loses the most categories. This exercise will totally have an impact on the actual outcome of the race.

1. How depressed is the fanbase?

Phoenix Suns: Relative to the other franchises listed here, the Suns still haven’t outlived the goodwill they collected last decade. The near-Finals berths and 60-win seasons and back-to-back MVP celebrations is too much to give them a full 10-of-10 here.

Still, the past decade has been atrocious. They’ve won 63 games combined the past three seasons. Minnesota and the Lakers are both on pace to make the playoffs this year alone. The Suns’ closest season to a playoff berth was 2013-14 when they accidentally won 48 games and became one of the worst teams in league history not to make the postseason.

The Suns have had a different head coach during each of Devin Booker’s five years in the league. They fired their general manager eight days before the 2018-19 season and James Jones is in his first full year running a franchise. It’s bleak.

Sacramento Kings: The Kings haven’t made the playoffs since 2006. They cannot possibly be less optimistic right now. A random click on a recent article at Kings’ blog Sactown Royalty quickly leads to the word “playoff drought.”

BUT Sacramento is the team many smart people picked heading into the season. They were the ninth-best team in the West last year. They have several promising young players, including Marvin Bagley III, Buddy Hield and De’Aaron Fox. It’s been ugly for a long time, but I can’t quite say it’s been miserable when last year was so promising and their encore has been promising thus far.

Minnesota Timberwolves: The team who made the playoffs most recently is somehow the most miserable. That’s because the savior who got them to the promised land, Jimmy Butler, was so frustrated with the infrastructure in place from top to bottom in the Twin Cities that he left six months after their playoff berth.

Before that, the last playoff appearance was in 2004, when the star of Uncut Gems was on the team.

A sampling from Wolves blogger Andy Grimsrud of A Wolf Among Wolves: “Wolves fans will tolerate losing — a lot of it, in fact. But there needs to be something to cling onto so that hope is not lost. For a stretch of games this season, we had reasons to believe: a suped-up Towns, rejuvenated Wiggins, and an improved team defense. Lately, however, those have gone out the window.”

Winner/loser: Minnesota

2. How obnoxious would the fanbase be if they made it back in?

Phoenix Suns: There aren’t a lot of obnoxious Suns fans. Internet fandom rose to prominence while the Suns were still good, and because their home city is full of old people and parents, theirs are a boring, silent plurality rather than any sort of insufferable monolith. It would be super weird for anyone to say something like, “I hate Suns fans.”

Sacramento Kings: Both Sacramento and Minnesota are going to be jubilant if and when their teams return to the promised land on the back of their young cores. And rightly so. It’s splitting hairs to see who would be worse in this regard.

Worse means the kinds of people who can’t be happy internally. In short, who between Kings and Wolves fans would act least like they’d been there before? With this new rubric in mind I can’t help but jump immediately to Sacramento.

They do this thing where the joke of how bad they are actually takes up way too much headspace among larger NBA fandom relative to how much they actually matter. Their place in the Sam Hinkie Trade Hall of Fame gave them an outsized place in the basketball conversation despite them being mind-bogglingly terrible for a while.

Somehow, I have a feeling we would talk about the Kings making the playoffs more than we did with the Wolves and more than we did with, like, the Indians making the World Series or whatever.

Minnesota Timberwolves: See above.

Winner/loser: Sacramento

3. How likable are their players? Are there any guys you especially want to see in the postseason?

Phoenix Suns: Everyone seems to hate Booker. All of the veterans are guys we’ve already seen in the playoffs. Nothing to really see here.

Sacramento Kings: The main guy of note here is Hield. The continued rise and unexpected development of the Bahamian sweet-shooter is one of the coolest things about basketball this decade for people who watch college basketball. After a wild explosion as a senior at Oklahoma, Hield was drafted to a Pelicans team that had no interest in developing him.

Remember the DeMarcus Cousins trade? Apart from the one year Cousins played for New Orleans before rupturing his Achilles, Hield has been better than the big man since the deal. The Kings have undoubtedly gotten more value out of Hield than the Pels did out of Cousins.

Aside from Hield, the other stories are the Harrison Barnes playoff redemption and seeing Fox on a big stage for the first time. This would be pretty fun.

Minnesota Timberwolves: In Minnesota’s five-game loss to Houston in the first round of the 2018 playoffs, Karl-Anthony Towns averaged 15.2 points on a paltry 54.2 true shooting percentage. Minnesota allowed 120 in the closeout games of the series as the Rockets basically got a break before the semis.

Towns and Andrew Wiggins had a chance to prove we should be excited about seeing them in the playoffs and failed. All the other guys are really young. Pass.

Winner: Sacramento

4. Are they actually trying to win right now?

Phoenix Suns: Undoubtedly. They traded away all their second-round picks until 2022 and signed Ricky Rubio to a big new contract in order to compete this season. The bigger form of pressure is Booker’s continued contentedness, a storyline that will only glow brighter as his new maximum contract goes on.

Sacramento Kings: Not necessarily. They are still playing the long game — and should be. They passed on extending Bogdan Bogdanovic this fall and for once this summer did not sign any guys near retirement to big last-hurrah deals. They have lots of talent, but most of it is young and they can afford to be patient.

Minnesota Timberwolves: Again, not so fast. After trading Butler, they finally immersed themselves in a more traditional build around Towns, hiring Gersson Rosas and Sachin Gupta to lead the overhaul. Their entire core is under the age of 25. They have pressure — like Phoenix — to appease Towns before he starts to look around the league and imagine greener pastures.

Winner: Phoenix

5. Is there hope for the future or is this their best chance to make the playoffs?

Phoenix Suns: There’s plenty of time. Booker is in the first year of his second contract, Deandre Ayton is in his second NBA season, and just about everyone else is on their rookie deal. Though veterans like Aron Baynes and Dario Saric may leave after this season, they are replaceable talents. The young guys are on track to help Phoenix compete for the foreseeable future.

Sacramento Kings: Losing Bogdanovic would hamper the Kings next year. By failing to agree on an extension with Bogdanovic but doing so instead with Hield, Sacramento definitely appeared to pick one over the other. In fairness, they are redundant players. Keeping both doesn’t make much sense.

However, losing Bogdanovic in restricted free agency this summer would leave someone like Justin James to replace that bench scoring production for next year. That means this season may be their best chance to compete.

Minnesota Timberwolves: Rosas’ vision is clearly deep into the future. Placing Jarrett Culver and Josh Okogie in the starting lineup when they’re not all the way ready is one bit of evidence. The decision not to sign anyone except Jake Layman to multiyear deals is another. With Towns and Wiggins locked in long-term, Minnesota has no need to step on the gas right now.

Winner: Sacramento

The part where I decide who will make the playoffs in the West

It has to be the Kings. How crazy is that?

This is exactly why we do this stuff. Combing through all the various factors at once is overwhelming. Laying it all out shows you that yes, in fact, the Kings of Sacramento have the perfect mix of misery, urgency and talent to be the most deserving of a playoff spot in 2020.

The post Who deserves a playoff spot most: Kings, Suns or Timberwolves? appeared first on Actu Trends.

[flauntpage]

A Team of Destiny: Ten Takeaways from Eagles 41, Patriots 33

What a ride, man.

The disrespect, the doubt, the misfortune – wasn’t it there from the start? There was always something hanging over this team, some nagging apprehension in the back of the mind that made you wonder if they really could get it done.

It honestly started in Week 1, when Ronald Darby dislocated his ankle. There goes the #1 cornerback Howie Roseman had just traded for.

In Week 2, a tough loss at Kansas City. We spent the next seven days arguing about Doug Pederson’s run/pass play-calling split.

Week 3, then, they’re cruising against the Giants before Eli Manning wakes up. Jake Elliott hits a 61-yard field goal to salvage the game and keep the Eagles from falling to 1-2. How important was that?

Was Doug good enough or was he Andy Reid junior? Was the secondary capable? Would Jim Schwartz interview for head coaching jobs?

The questions just wouldn’t go away.

And the injuries… Jesus Christ, the injuries.

Darren Spoles, done for the year.

Jason Peters, done for the year.

Jordan Hicks, Joe Walker, Chris Maragos, Carson Wentz… done, done, done, and done. No way they recover from all of that, right?

The left guard rotation.. remember that one? Chance Warmack and Stefen Wisniewski. The Carolina game and the lopsided penalty flags. Big V needing help at left tackle. A second round draft pick who didn’t even play until Week 17.

Oh yeah, “They haven’t beaten anybody yet!”

That’s what the national media said before the Seattle game, and the Birds lost. But they stayed out west and bounced back with a clutch victory in Los Angeles, beating COACH OF THE YEAR Sean McVay on his home turf. No way they were better than the Vikings or Saints though, right?

They were a disrespected #1 seed, underdogs in three straight postseason games, two in their own house. They felt that all the way, from September through the first week of February, and it all ended with Nick Foles beating Tom Brady in the Super Bowl.

For real.

The Eagles won it all with Doug Pederson coaching a backup.

This truly was a team of destiny. Philadelphia has removed, from around its neck, the biggest albatross on the face of Mother Earth. No more Dallas Cowboy fans chiding your loser fandom. No more soul crushing losses. No more choking on the biggest stage. Memories of Rodney Harrison and Joe Jurevicius forever banished to the Pit of Misery. From here to eternity, you’ll be able to tell people where you were when the Eagles lifted the Lombardi Trophy.

They got into a shootout with Tom Brady and won. And they left themselves little room for error, overcoming a missed extra point, a missed two-point conversion, a red zone false start, and an incredibly unlucky interception. When the Pats took a fourth quarter lead, did you think that might be it? Honestly, did you? I wasn’t sure the defense would get it done, but they did.

It was an incredible game. Think about it as a neutral, if possible. Both teams came flying out of the gates and put on a show. No lulls, no boring blow out, none of that. We had guys throwing down power bombs and dropping big hits and executing on trick plays. It was a Super Bowl that shattered a ton of records.

This is what I want:

At the parade, I want the Eagles to introduce every single player and every single coach individually. Start with the rookies and second stringers. Talk about something that each one of them contributed this season, because it truly was a team effort, every single person involved from the trainers to the practice squad to the sports science guys to Joe Douglas and Howie fucking Roseman. Build it up. Hit the crescendo by rolling this guy up to the podium:

  1) Big dick Nick

28 for 43, 373 yards, 3 touchdowns, and an interception that really wasn’t his fault.

Oh and he caught a touchdown pass, too. Nick Foles caught a touchdown pass from Trey Burton in the Super Bowl. Doug Pederson asked a backup tight end to throw a pass to a backup quarterback on fourth and goal.

Nick was phenomenal, leading the Birds down the field on a 13-play drive to start the game. They settled for a field goal after Zach Ertz committed a red zone penalty, but my immediate takeaway was that Foles had come out and established a rhythm and looked incredibly comfortable in the pocket.

He made some tough throws into tough windows and generally put the ball where his receivers could make a play. He dropped deep dimes for Corey Clement and Alshon Jeffery and was excellent under pressure:

Blitzing Nick Foles? Not a smart move tonight! #SBLII pic.twitter.com/c3JremYqFG

— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) February 5, 2018

There was some motion as well, where Foles did well to hit targets when moved out of the pocket and forced to use his feet. The Eagles finished 10-16 on third down and 2-2 on fourth down with a 34:04 to 25:56 time of possession advantage, some of which, honestly, was because the Patriots were scoring at will in the second half.

Either way, the play of the Super Bowl MVP kept the Birds above water when it looked like they might sink in the fourth quarter under a constant barrage from Tom Brady and company.

This is a guy who was considering retirement less than a year ago. It’s one hell of a story.

  2) RPO, play-action, and balance

No, not every play-action pass is an RPO, and Cris Collinsworth and Al Michaels misidentified some plays as the latter last night, which isn’t surprising.

For example, this play isn’t RPO because the linemen are pass blocking all the way:

But the Birds did what they typically do, mixing and matching all the way down the field with a lot of balance.

Just looking back at my notes, they unloaded the playbook with basically everything they’ve used all season long:

It’s all in there.

RPO, play action, runs from under center and shotgun, pitches, a fake toss, a wheel route, some flat/bubble stuff on the flanks. I don’t remember exactly what “Clement fancy fuck” means but I’m sure there was a good reason for writing that down.

  3) A whole lot of bending

Bend but don’t break, right?

It was one big bend from the Birds defense, but they made some key plays to get the job done.

First was the Rodney McLeod third down tackle on Brandin Cooks– the power bomb:

The great tackle on 3rd down by Rodney McLeod on Brandin Cooks pic.twitter.com/XUrGh9zX5M

— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) February 5, 2018

That forced the Patriots into a field goal try, which they clanked off the post after a bad snap and/or hold.

Second was the 4th down stop, the pass for Gronk down the right sideline that went incomplete.

And finally, of course, the late-game strip sack from Brandon Graham.

In a high-level offensive game, the Eagles defense didn’t make a ton of plays, but made a few more than the Patriots defense, and that was the difference in this one. New England shot themselves in the foot with the missed field goal and failed 4th down conversion, which allowed the Birds to open up the double-digit lead in the first half. I feel like the Patriots win this game if they had gotten points out of those two aforementioned drives, instead of having to play from behind in the second half.

Sheil nails it here:

Eagles defense got gashed tonight, but Jim Schwartz's unit went the entire season — 19 games — without allowing a point in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter. Unbelievable.

— Sheil Kapadia (@SheilKapadia) February 5, 2018

  4) Defensive matchups

One of the things we mentioned last week in our preview series was New England’s ability to dictate matchups and identify mismatches all across the field. The Eagles had a lot of trouble with the no-huddle, up-tempo execution and looked gassed midway through the second half.

They actually had Malcolm Jenkins on James White, and he did a great job on the dangerous RB/WR hybrid, limiting him to 2 catches for 21 yards.

But with Jenkins on White, that left Corey Graham, Ronald Darby, and others to deal with Rob Gronkowski, Danny Amendola, and Chris Hogan. Think about how the Pats were slicing up the Birds even after Brandin Cooks had to leave the game with a head injury. That was a low-key HUGE development.

So New England adjusted in the second half, targeting Gronk five times on the opening touchdown drive. He finished with five first-half targets and 10 second-half targets, putting up 116 yards and two touchdowns.

The Eagles just had trouble getting to Tom Brady with a four-man rush. Fletcher Cox was double-teamed most of the night and Nate Solder did a really nice job of protecting the blindside at left tackle. When they did try to blitz, they just couldn’t get there, and Brady would easily identify where to go with the ball (think of the 3rd and 3 play in the 4th quarter after Darby made a nice open field tackle on second down).

New England put up 500 yards and didn’t punt. That’s incredible. We’ll dive into that when the all-22 film comes out.

  5) Illegal formation?

Doug Pederson’s ridiculous call right before halftime was the play of the game for me.

When I went back and looked at it again, I thought it actually might not be a legal lineup, so I combed through Twitter and found this:

My NESN colleague @chatham58 pointed out that the Eagles only had six players on the line on Foles' TD catch. He's right. pic.twitter.com/TRfB2teuMJ

— Zack Cox (@ZackCoxNESN) February 5, 2018

Yeah, I mean, he’s not wrong. That’s Alshon Jeffery up top, who needs to be on the line of scrimmage. Did the officials think he was? Or did they just blow the call? Maybe the pre-snap movement was a distraction.

Jeffery says he checked with the ref on the far side and got the okay.

An excerpt from an excellent article by Peter King over at Sports Illustrated:

Except Jeffery claimed he got the okay from the official on the right sideline. The way formation rules work, players can look over at a side judge or other official nearby to see if he’s in the permissible spot.

“I’m on the ball,” Jeffery said. “I pointed. What are you talking about? Man, you know I checked with the ref!”

For what it’s worth, Pro Football Talk cites an anonymous source saying the play was a “judgment call”:

The question is whether the wide receiver was on the line of scrimmage, in which case the formation was legal, or behind the line of scrimmage, in which case the Eagles only had six players on the line and were in an illegal formation.

The official thought the wide receiver was lined up close enough on the line to be covering the right tackle, and as a result the league doesn’t believe the Eagles got the benefit of a bad call.

The Eagles may or may not have got away with one there, but whatever. Hang on while I shed a tear for the New England Patriots, who have never had anything go their way in a Super Bowl.

  6) Broken records

This was one for the ages.

The Birds and Pats combined for 1,151 yards of offense, which isn’t just a Super Bowl or postseason record. That’s the most yards put up in ANY NFL game EVER. We’re talking Baylor vs. Texas Tech here, and not Matt Rhule’s Baylor, the scandalous Baylor from a few years back.

Some people rolled their eyes at the defenses last night, but I honestly think it was more about tremendous offensive execution and less about poor defenses. The Birds are a phenomenal unit and just looked outclassed last night.

A chunk of the records that were broken last night were Tom Brady eclipsing or extending his own Super Bowl marks, but some of the non-Brady records include:

Most points scored by a losing team – 33 (New England)

Most passing first downs in a Super Bowl – 42

Most yards in the game – 613 (New England)

Most combined yards – 1,151

Most passing yards in the Super Bowl –  500, (New England)

Most passing yards, both teams combined – 874

Fewest single team punts in a Super Bowl – 0 (New England)

Fewest overall punts, both teams – 1

Most missed PAT conversions in a Super Bowl – 4 (both teams)

Just incredible stuff when you think about it.

  7) What is a catch?

Ugh, you knew this shit was gonna rear its ugly head.

Two instances in this game, first the Corey Clement touchdown:

Here's the Corey Clement touchdown reception pic.twitter.com/2dqhkfJAeb

— Ian Wharton (@NFLFilmStudy) February 5, 2018

He gets both feet down, but sort of readjusts his hands mid stride. When the “third foot” touches, he’s out of bounds. But I don’t even necessarily see this as a bobble or a lack of control. To me, he has control from the start, and re-positions his left hand to secure the ball. It feels like a fluid motion to me, and not necessarily one where he’s trying to gain control of the ball while bobbling it.

Make sense? I could see them easily overturning that, but I really do think it was the right call.

And the game-winning touchdown:

.@ZERTZ_86, and the #Eagles take the lead.#SBLII | #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/9sDAh6B4VQ

— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) February 5, 2018

Cris Collinsworth really did not want that to be a catch.

But it is, because the officials correctly ruled that Ertz had established possession and therefore became a runner, meaning that the touchdown is confirmed as soon as the ball crosses the plane.

That’s the difference to me vs. the Dez Bryant play from a while back and the Jesse James catch earlier this season. Dez didn’t cross the goal line with the ball and James didn’t confirm possession and take multiple steps like Ertz did.

Either way, thank the Lord we’ve reached a point where the NFL can now address this problem and redefine the rule in the offseason.

  8) Doug’s worst call?

I do this entry for every writeup.

His worst decision I think was going for the two-point conversion and then throwing a back shoulder fade to Alshon Jeffery. They didn’t need to go for two there, and then I didn’t like the call on top of it, even with a bit of misdirection in throwing four receivers out in a wide right look.

Also, the third down call to begin the fourth quarter, the little swing/reverse to Nelson Agholor for an eight yard loss, he would probably want that one back. Not a bad play design, but New England did a good job reading it.

On the final drive, he could have thrown it on third down and tried to kill the game right there, but opted for the field goal to take an eight-point lead instead. I could have gone either way on that decision, but it ended up working out just fine.

  9) Doug’s best call?

The Nick Foles touchdown reception will go down in NFL history as one of the most gutsy decisions of all-time, illegal formation or not. The irony, really, is that it’s not like the illegal formation provided any sort of advantage or whatever. The position of the top receiver made no difference in the play. It’s not like the Eagles got away with putting 12 men on the field or whatever, know what I’m sayin?

Obviously the second-best call was the decision to go on fourth down with 6:00 left in the fourth quarter. You just couldn’t give the ball back to the Pats at that point, and Doug made the correct choice to keep it rolling.

It’s incredible to see how far he’s come as a play-caller and decision maker in less than a year.

  10) Everything else

Admittedly, I wasn’t paying too much attention to the commercials, which I think got better as the broadcast went along. There was one really goofy one with Martin Luther King, Jr. that had to do with selling trucks, which I don’t think Dr. King would have approved of, but what do I know?

And what about the failed commercial break? 15 seconds of dead air on Super Bowl Sunday?

Woof man.

Someone’s ass is fired!

No, for real though, I thought the cable went out. What the hell was that?

Also, I found it hilarious how everyone kept retweeting this Justin Timberlake selfie picture and turned the kid on the left into a meme, but didn’t realize that Freddie Mitchell was standing over to JT’s other side:

"Let me get a selfie with #JustinTimberlake real quick." #SuperBowl pic.twitter.com/aPtMvhCb5R

— Sporting News (@sportingnews) February 5, 2018

As far as the broadcast, Al Michaels was okay. I think he’s tired. He’s been tired all season. Guy’s had a wonderful career and it might be time to call it quits and enjoy retirement. Cris Collinsworth, I don’t have anything against him, but his commentary on the catch/no catch stuff was unbearable.

Anyway, let’s check in with Ernest Owens to see how he’s celebrating:

White folks will celebrate with Black people "as one" when we fuel their capitalist sports system that values our Black bodies like million dollar slaves subjected to intense abuse (CTE) while keeping us silent.

Kaepernick wanted more and they sacrificed him for it. #SuperBowl

— Ernest Owens (@MrErnestOwens) February 5, 2018

Go Birds.

Super Bowl Champions.

A Team of Destiny: Ten Takeaways from Eagles 41, Patriots 33 published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[kyukurator-blog]

ARISTOTLE ON MARS

THAT FEELS BETTER

 When Aristotle talked about catharsis (the purging of fear and pity through drama) he MAY have been thinking more about killing your father and sleeping with your mother than invasive alien life forms.   

But in times like these we here at The Thread will take catharsis wherever we find it. So last week we finally watched Clint Eastwood’s Scully, and when the ferry crew started pulling the 155 passengers off the plane wing our eyes got all moist right on cue. 

 By the end of the movie an evil NTSB panel is forced to admit that sometimes heroes actually are heroes.  And we were forced to admit that every once in a while things actually do turn out well.  Aristotelian or not, it did perk us up.

But Scully isn’t exactly representative.  Far more common in films are films where small human errors add up to disaster.  Like  the Oscars — or the latest Alien knock-off that opens this week. 

  iTUNES USER ALERT! Just want to make sure you know you don’t have to pay $14.99 at iTunes for a movie you’re only going to watch once. Every other service will let you rent most titles for $10 less than iTunes. Amazing, right?  Even if you love Apple, don’t let them scam you.

     LIFE (2017)

 At the outer limits of human endeavor, the margin for error becomes increasingly slim.  So when an alien life form pops up in a movie — and it doesn’t have Star Wars in the title — we know there’s a good shot that before long something unanticipated is going to pop up.

Except that by now, the unanticipated is exactly what we anticipate, like:  Really?  You’re gonna stick your finger in there?

In Scully, the pilot’s experience and human ability to judge a complex situation more rapidly than any computer saves the day.  The lesson here is a flip of that — as the crew   members struggle to contain a ruthlessly aggressive Martian life form, their humanity keeps getting in the way.

The early reviews are decent, even though everybody agrees that it falls apart in the last act.  Reportedly whole multicultural crew are provided with  back stories  – not just Jake Gyllenhal and Ryan Reynolds.

Genre purists should be saving themselves for Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien franchise.  It opens in May, with a fun and even more multicultural cast.  But in all likelihood, they’ll come out anyway, just to jeer at not-so-cheap knockoff.

  DEEPWATER HORIZON (2016)

 Like Scully, we pretty much knew exactly what this movie was going to be before we watched it.  And we watched it anyway – though we did save it for a weekend when we were home alone, so we could pump up the 5.1 sound to an eyeball-jiggling volume.

You know from the start that Marky Mark is going to survive to get back to Kate Hudson.  And you figure he’s probably going to save the cute Hispanic woman (Gina Rodriguez — she could save him, but that would be a big genre stretch for this movie).  And it doesn’t take advanced calculus to figure out pretty quick that John Malkovich, sporting a honey-dripping drawl, is the villain.

It’s a real Dad flick – more technical jargon than cleavage.  And a nicely aging Kurt Russell in the solid-as-a-rock captain role.

Oh yeah, and (spoiler alert) there are explosions.  Biiig explosions.  Lots of explosions.  That damn oil rig blows up again and again and again; and again.  Here at The Thread, we don’t track every single superhero movie closely; but to our untrained eye there were more, bigger, better explosions than we’ve seen anywhere else recently.

There are human errors, falling in the subcategories of corporate greed and tempting fate.  But the movie accurately depicts the biggest error, which was made by the highly competent and super-experienced crew – not realizing what was happening and taking action quickly enough, as this geekoid article points out.

    LONE SURVIVOR (2013)

 Deepwater Horizon is the second of three collaborations (Patriot Day is #3) between star Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg.  They’ve honed in on a sort of disaster sub-genre: hyper-competent teams (overwhelmingly male) and how they deal with extreme situations when all the layers of failsafe fail.

Lone Survivor is based on non-fiction book by former Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell.  A four-man Navy Seal reconnaissance team is inserted into the Hindu Kush, with the mission of scouting the location of a Taliban leader.  In the hilly terrain, they lose radio contact with their base.  They then stumble onto an elderly shepherd accompanied by two teens.

Luttrell (Wahlberg) convinces his comrades not to kill the three, but one of the teens gallops off, and before they can re-establish communications Taliban fighters come streaming in.

From the start of the film we’ve seen the cardinal rule that these guys live by – never yield; never give up.  In the ensuing firefights and chases, the four Seals take monstrous amounts of bullets and physical abuse but keep on going.  Eventually they make contact and two Huey helicopters swoop in – only to have one of them shot down in flames and the other retreat.

Only Luttrell survives – and only because he is saved by a Pashtun villager who risks himself and his whole family because of his Islamic moral code which obliges him to shelter the stranger.

    APOLLO 13 (1995)

Lately we’ve been searching for classics to watch with our tweens (nota bene — City Slickers is much more of a raunchfest than you may remember).  Classics, in this context, being anything pre-2010.  Which is why we’ve ended up re-watching a lot of Tom Hanks movies lately.

Apollo 13 is probably the highest profile they-all-came-back-alive situation in modern history.  You do very much know how it turns out, so this kind of thing is a real test of a filmmaker’s craft, which is why Clint Eastwood or, in this case, Ron Howard gets the job.

You’ll be waiting for the biggest meme from this movie: “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”  We’ve got to admit that Hanks is really good at humanizing these super buttoned-up, understated types.  In the photo above, he’s next to another all-purpose nice guy.  No, not Kevin Bacon — the recently departed Bill Paxton.

    THE MARTIAN (2015)

When it comes to writerly eloquence, the self-published Kindle novel The Martian was horribly written – kind of high school junior level.  And just like Fifty Shades of Gray, there are lots of pages you can just scroll right through.  But if you’ve got a certain sensibility (the kind that would lead you to read a novel about an astronaut stuck on Mars), don’t start it late at night, or you’ll still be up when the birds start chirping.

Author Andy Weir is one of those overnight success stories – although he was still a computer programmer when he published The Martian as a serial on his website, he’d been writing for years.  Some followers asked him to self-publish it on Kindle.  Four years later the feature film was released, starring Matt Damon and directed by Ridley Scott.

When an epic sand storm forces a Mars mission to abort and take off early, a crew member is hit by debris and blown away.  Telemetry shows he is dead, the craft is teetering in the wind;  so to save the rest of the crew, the commander (Jessica Chastain) blasts off.

Of course, Watley isn’t dead, just skewered like a bug by a spear-like antenna.  He manages to make it inside and remove the antenna.  With all communication cut off, he faces a long slow death from starvation.

Except, of course he doesn’t.  Through tenacious will and a lot of mental meat, he figures out how to restore the radio, and then how to grow enough potatoes to survive until his crewmates can improvise an emergency return mission to pick him up.  More shit happens, but he perseveres.

For a lot of the novel, Watley is sitting alone and thinking about potatoes, so it wasn’t an easy story to dramatize.  The adroit touch with which Scott accomplished reminds us that we should go out to a theater to watch his Alien reboot.

    Titanic (1997)

And the music swells.  Dare we use the words “Celine Dion” and “catharsis” in a single sentence?

Wanted our 5th pick to be Shackleton, the miniseries in which a stalwart Kevin Branagh (even more thin-lipped than usual) endures more wind-whipped ice and penguin meat than any man should have to; and miraculously brings them all back alive, minus a few random fingers and toes.  But we realized that it’s not available for streaming.  If you have Netflix DVD or a good library nearby, check it out.

So.  We recently re-watched Titanic at home, and the boys were transfixed, despite the love story pasted onto the epic deflation of human hubris.  Even viewed from the couch, it’s a grand, imagination-stirring film, with mind-boggling effects and a life-was-simple-then moral compass.

This movie cemented our love affair with Kate Winslet, which had begun with Heavenly Creatures.  And, we’ve gotta say, we like Leonardo better now than we did at the time.

Those last scenes must have been good training for The Revenant.  Although we must add this unfortunate Weir-esque fact – there was actually room for both of them on that door.  Don’t believe it?  Well, Mythbusters re-enacted it and proved that he didn’t have to die.

  ARISTOTLE ON MARS was originally published on FollowTheThread