Post Patterns
Okay, here we go now. Some slightly more accessible, non-football thoughts of the week.
1) I told myself no sports news, but I had to throw this in. Martina Hingis is one heck of a tennis player. For those not in the know, she took two years off due to injuries and came out of retirement to return to tennis this year. She won the Australian Open three years in a row at the end of the 90's, and she's poised to make a run deep into that very same tournament right now, in her first matches back since returning. What a great shotmaker. I've watched her twice now, and she basically just doesn't make mistakes. The big hitters on the circuit now make too many unforced errors, and she'll just continue to rally and play smart while the less-experienced players dig themselves into holes. Great tennis.
2) It's official: After watching it twice for the first time in a long while, Hayao Miyazaki's Whispers of the Heart is officially my all-time favorite movie. I realize that admitting this is potentially grounds for being derided openly, but I don't care. It just connects with me emotionally somehow. I can't think of any live action films off the top of my head that get to me the way Whispers does. I'm not a huge movie fan, but here's some others on my immediate list of essentials:
Any Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, Animal Crackers)
Any Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest)
Airplane!
Oklahoma!
The Ladykillers (1955, with Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness)
Blackboard Jungle
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
3) Speaking of high art, I'll rant about people not releasing stuff on DVD. Normally, I wouldn't care about this, but there are two cartoons that I found really funny that seem like they're never going to see the light of day again at this rate: "Freakazoid!" and "Sheep in the Big City" - especially the former. The more I think about it, there were only a handful of Freakazoid! pieces that didn't work. The rest were hilarious, particularly the really offbeat stuff like "Lawn Gnomes" (a parody on "Gargoyles") and the episode with Norm Abrams. That was just crazy.
To be continued...?
1) I told myself no sports news, but I had to throw this in. Martina Hingis is one heck of a tennis player. For those not in the know, she took two years off due to injuries and came out of retirement to return to tennis this year. She won the Australian Open three years in a row at the end of the 90's, and she's poised to make a run deep into that very same tournament right now, in her first matches back since returning. What a great shotmaker. I've watched her twice now, and she basically just doesn't make mistakes. The big hitters on the circuit now make too many unforced errors, and she'll just continue to rally and play smart while the less-experienced players dig themselves into holes. Great tennis.
2) It's official: After watching it twice for the first time in a long while, Hayao Miyazaki's Whispers of the Heart is officially my all-time favorite movie. I realize that admitting this is potentially grounds for being derided openly, but I don't care. It just connects with me emotionally somehow. I can't think of any live action films off the top of my head that get to me the way Whispers does. I'm not a huge movie fan, but here's some others on my immediate list of essentials:
Any Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, Animal Crackers)
Any Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest)
Airplane!
Oklahoma!
The Ladykillers (1955, with Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness)
Blackboard Jungle
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
3) Speaking of high art, I'll rant about people not releasing stuff on DVD. Normally, I wouldn't care about this, but there are two cartoons that I found really funny that seem like they're never going to see the light of day again at this rate: "Freakazoid!" and "Sheep in the Big City" - especially the former. The more I think about it, there were only a handful of Freakazoid! pieces that didn't work. The rest were hilarious, particularly the really offbeat stuff like "Lawn Gnomes" (a parody on "Gargoyles") and the episode with Norm Abrams. That was just crazy.
To be continued...?