Spider-Man: Homecoming Trailer

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Justice League

 I post this not because I'm excited but rather because I think it's interesting. Batman v Superman was awful. This... doesn't look a whole lot better. Those costumes? Ugh.  It'll make a lot of money though.

No Good Deed

Inappropriate, some bad language, but still pretty funny:

Two-Time Galaxy Savers

Boom!

I love this poster.

Avengers + Spider-Man + GotG = Infinity War

Iron Fist

Political Football

I'm not a Patriots fan but this one time it doesn't bother me much that they won. Why? Well, this article pretty well sums it up. Even though I avoided most media in the week leading up to the Super Bowl I was still aware that various sports personalities criticizing Brady and the rest for having ties to Trump. I find this despicable. I still don't like Brady or the Patriots but he made all the right people angry, and that's something.

Nate's On To Something

FiveThirtyEights Nate Silver is on to something. He has an interesting article about "Power-Pairing" and used the Big Ten as the example of how that would have looked for 2016.

The Tri-Valley Conference already does something like this for basketball. The TVC consists of the East, West, and Central. So, at two different times in every team's schedule, they do a sort of "power-pairing" with another side of the conference. For example, on Friday, Jan. 6, the #1 team in the TVC-East will play the #1 team in the TVC-Central. Then, on Friday Feb. 3, the #1 team in the TVC-West will play the #1 team in the TVC-Central. And, on Friday, Feb. 24, the #1 team in the TVC-East will play the #1 team in the TVC-West. (Obviously the same is done for every team seeded #2-#7.)

He's right, it would definitely be a logistics/transportation nightmare. Plus, you may not know very long in advance who that team would be.

But, I like the direction Silver is going and I've been screaming it for the past 2 years...get rid of the divisions. It's too risky or ends up not mattering anyway. If Florida beats Alabama in the SEC Title game, that should not give a 4 loss Florida team the right to get in the Final 4 of the playoffs. Or, PSU wins and doesn't get in anyway.

Do I necessarily want to use that extra weekend for the opportunity to expand to an 8 team playoff? No. Look at this year. Clemson and Alabama are the two best teams. End of discussion. Six more teams would have said the same thing. Could FSU or USC or Oklahoma have made it interesting? Yup.

?

I had a thought today: Maybe part of the NFL ratings drop is that people are sick of seeing the same teams over and over? I can watch four games today and I'm sure you can guess the main teams that are being featured. Of course it's Green Bay, New England, and Dallas. The Green Bay and New England games have been practically unwatchable because the commentators spend all their time sucking up to Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady. Yes, they're very good quarterbacks, but these guys sound like teenage girls fawning over their favorite pop star. Maybe if we had a little more variety and the commentators could act like adults it would help.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Marvel Movie Rankings, Post-Strange

1a.Captain America: Civil War
1b. Guardians of the Galaxy
1c. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
4. Avengers
5. Iron Man
6. Doctor Strange
7. Iron Man 3
8. Avengers: Age of Ultron
9. Thor
10. Captain America: The First Avenger
11. Ant-Man
12. Iron Man 2
13. Thor: The Dark World
14. The Incredible Hulk

Thoughts on Doctor Strange

A few thoughts on Doctor Strange:

-Benedict Cumberbatch is terrific, as you might expect. Marvel wanted a big name for this project and you can see why. Strange suffers more than most Marvel heroes as he becomes a hero and Cumberbatch makes the most of it.

-In the trailers I thought Cumberbatch's American accent might have sounded a bit off. I didn't feel that way watching the movie so it may have just been my brain reacting to the fact that he didn't sound like Sherlock.

-The visuals are the most obviously outstanding part of the movie. Kaleidoscopic would be the best way to describe most of them. Some of the scenes shown in trailers have drawn comparisons to Inception but the whole movie goes far beyond that. There are also a lot of trippy visuals drawn straight out of the original comics drawn by Steve Ditko:

-Because of that it's probably worth seeing this in 3D. I didn't last night but I might later.

-The story bears some obvious similarities to Thor and Iron Man but it is notably different than either. I think there's a lot more depth to the story and themes than you might pick up at first so a second viewing is probably in order.

-Kaecilius, the villain of the movie, has a well-developed point of view and reasonable motivations though I think a lot of people will dismiss him as not being memorable enough.

-There's a vague suggestion that the magic in this movie has some connection to science but it still works as magic, though it's Jedi-like hand-waving and not spoken spells.

-Overall I would put this in my second tier of Marvel movies, somewhere below GotG, Winter Solider, and Civil War.

-Both the mid-credit and post-credit scenes are worth watching. The mid-credit scene ties into the next Thor movie and the post-credit scene is for a Strange sequel.

621,000

That's how many subscribers ESPN lost in October. Outkick The Coverage has a fantastic article about this and it's well worth reading the whole thing. The short version is ESPN is bleeding subscribers at an alarming rate and within five years they could be facing some serious financial issues. That's really interesting as ESPN is the heart of the current cable system and distribution of most sports. If ESPN fails or has to make major changes we're going to be living in a dramatically different world when it comes to sports.

The other interesting question is: Why? A few thoughts:

1. The most obvious answer is people are cutting the cord in record numbers. Some don't care about sports anyway, others (like me) do care but just can't justify the extra cost. This isn't changing anytime soon.

2. Another issue is ESPN has become more openly political and specifically left-wing in their coverage, though most ESPN personalities would deny that. I think this matters but I'm not sure how much.

3. Protests by players in various sports doesn't help. Any one thing may not matter a lot but I think all of it taken together and added to these other factors can definitely push people over the edge.

4. I haven't watched the network very often lately but my impression is just about everything that's not an actual sports broadcast is worse than it used to be, though possibly I'm just old or thinking the past was better than it was. I've been particularly unimpressed with SportsCenter, aside from the SVP version. Most of these shows must be cheap to produce but if they're not keeping people interested, or even driving them away, it's an issue.

5. In trying to wring every drop of revenue from sporting events the commercials have gotten ridiculous. An NFL game can barely keep my interest anymore because of all the commercial interruptions.

The Escape

 Back in 2001 BMW made The Hire, a series of short films (~10 min each) shown on their website starring Clive Owen as The Driver, various new BMWs, and many notable actors. This was quite something at the time (YouTube was still four years away) and the films were very popular. BMW is celebrating the 15th anniversary of the films with a new one, which is definitely worth a watch:

GotG Vol. 2 Sneak Peek

Iron Fist

Uniform Spotlight

I didn't notice any particularly notable uniforms or helmets yesterday (Louisville's mettalic helmets were nice enough but pretty normal at this point) but I did notice something odd about Notre Dame's uniforms: Their pants.

Seeing a football player with sweaty pants isn't unusual but it's particularly noticeable on ND's pants. and kind of gross. A lot of the players looked like this at kickoff. You'd think Under Armour would be able to come up with gold pants that didn't make it look like the players peed themselves before going on the field.