Archive for October, 2010

Analysis: Week 6, Jets @ Broncos

Oct 18

Boy, was that a sloppy game. I’m still sort of awed we came away with the win, as it felt like a loss for several hours after the game. But hey, great teams find ways to win games like this. Everything felt off: the short week, altitude, upcoming bye…the Jets were completely out of sync. Notes:

Mark Sanchez was erratic, but played great in the 4th quarter, leading the Jets to two scoring drives. The first half was probably his worst of the year (despite a few great throws), as he was picked twice and could have been picked two more. It’s easy to forget, what with all the strides he’s made this year, that he’s just 23 with very little playing experience. There will be days like this, and worse ones as well. But we can’t ask for much more than a 9-2 TD/INT ratio.
The bye is coming at the right time—there’s much to be cleaned up. I expect Santonio Holmes to emerge from the off week starting opposite Braylon Edwards. We need both in the game regularly, with Cotchery sliding inside to the slot. I thought Darrelle Revis looked much better yesterday: even on the plays he was beaten, he was in their hip pocket. He should be at full strength for Green Bay, which we badly need. With GB, Detroit and Cleveland next up, there’s a reasonable chance we could be 8-1, though I’ll say 7-2 is the most likely outcome.
One disturbing trend is the lack of QB pressure. Rex is sending the heat as always—and we did hold Orton to a woeful completion percentage—but we’re just not hitting the quarterback enough. This coming offseason, we absolutely must make it a priority to add some talented rushers at 3-4 DE.
Holmes’s fumble was nearly a killer, but he’s such a versatile, dynamic threat. The pass-interference call he drew was completely legitimate: I’m not a fan of flags having that sort of impact under normal circumstances, but that play was blatant. Not only did Renaldo Hill grab his facemask, which is what everyone’s talking about, but he also never turned to face the ball and had a handful of jersey. A non-call would have been the travesty there.
The running game was a step slow most of the day, but came to life in the 4th. Really, that could be said for much of the team. I’ll chalk it up to circumstances/an off day, and fully expect to see a much crisper team after the bye.

Analysis: Week 5, Vikings @ Jets

Oct 12

Posted by Gabe in Sports | No Comments

A very gutsy win, one I don’t think we pull out last year. Minnesota was a desperate team, obviously extremely talented—especially with Randy Moss now in the fold—and we weren’t sharp on offense. And yet we managed to pull it out. Some thoughts:

I thought Mark Sanchez played better than his numbers indicated in the first half. He was victimized by multiple drops, and just missed on a few long bombs. In the second half, he wasn’t on his game, though he did convert some key third downs. In many ways, this game was a great learning experience for Sanchez. Until now, teams like New England and Miami have tried to rattle him by firing blitzes and tons of pressure at him; he’s handled them beautifully, refusing to lock into a primary receiver and spreading the ball around. The result: plenty of open receivers, and Sanchez was finding them every time. Minnesota, though, presented a bend-but-don’t-break Cover 2, and generated most of their pressure for that fearsome front four. Because of that, the windows were very small, and it felt like Holmes, Edwards, Cotchery, et al were covered on most plays. Sanchez forced a few throws, and some others sailed on him. The wet ball didn’t help. Once again, though, there were no turnovers, though he got away with one that Lito Sheppard dropped (but really, if you counted every “could have been picked” throw, most quarterbacks’ numbers would look a lot worse). I’m not concerned about him going forward. He should step up with a stronger game against Denver next week.
The Jets were the first team in 51 games to rush for 150 yards against the Williams Wall and Co. LaDainian Tomlinson’s resurgence has been something to see, perhaps the craziest part of a crazy season and crazy team. He looks circa 2005. The burst, vision, hands, power…it’s all there. He’s been so good that Shonn Greeene’s solid play since his week 1 debacle has gone unnoticed, mostly because he just hasn’t had the opportunity for carries with LT dominating. But Greene’s 23-yard TD burst showed excellent recognition of the holes, and he looked powerful throughout. This is a much more explosive duo than the Jones/Greene tandem from last year. As long as everyone stays healthy, this should be a dominant run attack all year.
They say that the offensive line is only mentioned when they mess up, which means we’re not going to hear much about them. D’Brickashaw Ferguson won his matchup with Jared Allen handily, though Ray Edwards did beat Damien Woody a few times. The run blocking was absolutely mauling. That the Jets dominating the point of attack against perhaps the best front four in football bodes very well for our chances to continue our strong play. Matt Slauson has fit in well at LG. The move to let the aging Faneca go has seemed like the right move so far.
To me, the star of the game was Antonio Cromartie. Favre threw about 8 bombs to Moss, and Cromartie was step-for-step with him on every single one. The lone touchdown was one of the best throws I’ve seen, a rainbow with perfect arc that no defensive back in the NFL could have stopped. It’s a good thing Cromartie was so sharp, because Darrelle Revis didn’t seem himself as the night went on, unable to stay with Percy Harvin on a crossing route that led to a TD, and all-in-all tentative. It was unsurprising to hear after the game that his hamstring was sore. With Denver (who does boast a potent passing attack, but we need to think long-term) up followed by the bye, I’d sit him so he can have 21 days before he plays next. Barring some sort of aggravation, that should get him to 100%.
Santonio Holmes is going to add a ton to this offense. The timing wasn’t fully there yet, but his combination of speed and route running will make him the Jets 1b to Dustin Keller’s 1a.
I was one of the people who was very concerned about letting Jay Feely go and bringing in Nick Folk. Well, thusfar, Folk has shut me and a lot of other people up, playing practically perfect football. In fact, the entire Jets’ special teams unit has been lights out all year. Brad Smith remains the Jets’ most underappreciated weapon, and his 86-yard kickoff return after the Favre-to-Moss TD strike was a really big momentum play. Steve Weatherford has been outstanding punting all year. The coverage units have been mostly fantastic, though they did allow Percy Harvin to get near midfield late on a kick return.
Once again, Rex had his team ready to go. For all the talk about distractions, the Jets have come ready to play every quarter of every game this year.

All in all, 4-1 is a pretty sweet spot to be in, and the best part is that I think there’s tons of room for improvement. On to Denver!

THE SOCIAL NETWORK (David Fincher, 2010)

Oct 6

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I play poker pretty seriously. I don’t play as frequently as I’d like, and I’m not close to the caliber of the sharks who stalk their prey in the high-stakes online games, but I’ve supported myself exclusively from playing at times in my life, and feel confident that I could reach new heights if I devoted myself fully to the game. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find the time to dedicate to becoming great at it. Or, should I say, the concentration? More on this distinction in a bit and how it relates to David Fincher’s brilliant The Social Network, but for now: I may not be a fantastic player (yet!), or able to think on the level of the greats in real time. Hell, I can’t even fully comprehend 12th-level thinking when I see it written in online forum posts. But what I can tell is that when players like Patrik Antonius and Phil Ivey call an $80,000 bet with a pair of deuces because of extraordinary mathematical & psychological deduction, I’m witnessing someone with an exceptional mind and a laser focus (not to mention an iron stomach). These guys have natural gifts, but more than that, they’ve honed them to such a level that they’re essentially impregnable even to those who like poker, or play it fairly regularly. It’s the stratospheric level of the craft, and it’s awe-inspiring to witness and contemplate. And many of these masters are shockingly young: 18-to-25 is the sweet spot for the vast majority of them. Many have eschewed the traditional route of college for a four-monitor, number-crunching computer setup that rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on the virtual felt.

While watching The Social Network, I found myself frequently coming back to the idea of utilizing ones abilities to the fullest. I don’t necessarily mean something as earth-shattering as founding Facebook or Napster, though when Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) tells Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) that the money and court cases are meaningless to him compared to seeing how Napster has changed the world of music forever, I definitely got tingly. Because I’m sure he’s right: the same as a world-class athlete must experience an incomparable adrenaline rush when (s)he takes the court or field and hears the thunderous applause, it must be an indescribable feeling to know that you got so much out of your skillset that you’ve altered the world’s perception on something that was previously firmly established. But The Social Network left me wondering about those with slightly less lofty aspirations as well—after all, not everybody can be born like Mozart. What about those who are entrepreneurial in spirit and have tasted some success, but with a more streamlined vision could take their productivity to new heights? Or the teacher with the dazzlingly creative mind that spills over with brilliant ideas for short stories or children’s books, but somehow never gets around to putting the pen to paper? Watching Zuckerberg cavalierly solve a complete equation before quitting a class, or scribble complex computer coding on his dorm window while intoxicated moments before launching a site (FaceMash) so addictive that it crashed Harvard’s server within four hours, I was overcome with the sense that his biting line to the Winklevoss twins during a heated legal pow-wow in a conference room is spot-on: he says, “if they’d created Facebook, then they would have created Facebook.” The gist of his point—that if the Winklevoss boys had what it took to reach the apex of their talents, they wouldn’t have needed to ask him for help in the first place—deserves some serious reflection. The circumstances behind Facebook’s founding remain murky, and it seems clear that Fincher took some liberties with the facts/what’s been verified, but it hardly matters in the grand scheme of what Fincher accomplishes here. The Social Network is a sweeping look at the mind, our generation and era, and our future. It’s also interesting to note how little money matters to the truly brilliant: Zuckerberg still hasn’t taken Facebook public, and it took the infamous Tom of MySpace a long time to sell (continuing with the poker analogy from earlier, you’ll find that the experts will take a World Series bracelet over the winnings any day of the week, and many go broke time-and-again as they experiment with new strategies or take shots at higher levels. It’s all part of being at the intellectual top. Of course, these people tend to be wealthy anyway, but it’s hard for us grinders to fathom passing up selling a company for billions of dollars at age 24, and retiring to the Bahamas for the rest of their lives.

The previous paragraph’s tangent is just one of The Social Network‘s many masterful strokes. It portrays Zuckerberg as a lonely, socially impotent computer nerd who’s more comfortable entering HTML than interacting with other human beings: Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) is his only actual friend, and they wind up embroiled in a bitter legal battle. Fincher’s vision is a legitimate concern in today’s internet-driven world. Conversation and attention spans are dwindling as blackberries and social networking take over, and many couples have dozens of back-and-forth email exchanges before even meeting each other in person—the film’s final scene of Zuckerberg hesitating, adding his ex-girlfriend as a friend on Facebook, and hitting refresh every 10 seconds like a zombie is haunting and, in many ways, horrifying, though I suspect many readers have done some variation of this on Facebook or some other site at some point. I’ve been guilty of much of this myself, and I often despise myself for it. The Social Network thrusts these concerns into the open, challenging the world to decide what we want to be. Do we want a world of intense transparency, where our accountant, high school sweetheart and family friends all know our every taste? Or will there ever be a limit to what’s too much? Sure, there will always be those who resist, but in the Zuckerberg generation—say those who are under 30—more and more people are growing accustomed to these things as the norm. Zuckeberg and company are betting that any complaints about limits will be more feeble protest than disgusted revolt, and indeed, the moments where he comes up with new Facebook features in The Social Network—relationship status, tagging photos—are among The Social Network‘s most sublime. They feel revelatory, as if Zuckerberg has discovered something that won’t fade away, that will change what’s considered the standard. In many ways, The Social Network is a scary movie; it’s certainly not light and fluffy fare. In the actions of not just Zuckerberg—who I didn’t find to be an asshole so much as a flawed genius—but those around him and what they all represent, many crossroads are held up for us all to see, judge, and ponder.

Technically, The Social Network couldn’t be much sharper. None of this would be nearly as effetive without Eisenberg’s brilliant performance: he slips into his role like a custom-tailored suit, delivering nervous banter repeatedly (the film is surprisingly funny at times, especially Eisenberg’s biting sarcasm). The supporting cast is up to the task of matching Eisenberg’s yeoman work, with Garfield and especially Timberlake shining particularly brightly. Trent Rezner’s dark music delivers a bite that’s befitting of the picture’s tone, and Fincher rebounds beautifully from the bloated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to craft a somber, superb gem. The lighting and location shooting really stands out here: Harvard’s liquor-soaked fraternities and shaggy living quarters contrast perfectly with the breezy house and cutting-edge Facebook offices in California. And Fincher does an outstanding job in refusing to cast anyone as a cut-and-dry villain. The beleaguered twins may or may not be victims, but they come across as smart, preppy Ivy Leaguers who grew up with a silver spoon, learned to think on their own, and may or may not have had the spark required to bring a concept as powerful as Facebook home. Eduardo may be seriously taken advantage of by those he trusts near the end, but his old-school business model, straight out of Mad Men on Madison Avenue, doesn’t jibe with Zuckerberg’s vision and priorities. When Sean tells him that: “a million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars,” we’re seeing the changing of the guard. Sites like FourSquare and iPhone apps are helping the Facebook generation dream big, and as we watch The Social Network, we’re left to evaluate what’s really cool on so many levels. The world is changing rapidly, and those who beat the rest of us to the punch about what we’ll ultimately want are the ones who will go down in history. Personally, I’ll be doing a lot of soul searching in the coming weeks, and who knows? Maybe someone special I know will churn out a best-selling kids book in the near future.

92/100

MLB Playoff Picks: Round 1

Oct 6

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This postseason has a predestined feel to it—Yankees/Phillies redux?—but one never knows. My picks for round 1:

Yankees over Twins in 4. The Yankees have the Twins’ number, and without Justin Morneau, I just don’t think Minnesota has the firepower to take out the Yankees. I will say, though, that Game 1 is very important for New York with C.C. Sabathia on the mound. Their Achilles heel is their starting pitching beyond Sabathia, especially with Andy Pettitte having barely pitched over the past month, and a Twins win tonight against Sabathia could put the Yankees on their heels a bit. Francisco Liriano is the only Twins starter who has dominant stuff, so he’s as good a bet as any to do it. Still, despite their impressive W/L record and the Yankees’ late struggles, I can’t pick Minnesota. As a proud Yankee-hater, however, I hope I’m proven wrong!

Rays over Rangers in 5. I don’t feel as confident about this pick, and I sort of want to change it. I think Texas is being slept on because they’ve been a pretty average team since July, which is somewhat understandable…but remember that they basically had the division locked up then. The AL West was brutal this year. Now that they’re healthy and in the playoffs for the first time in forever, they’re going to be focused, and the 2-in-5-games Cliff Lee factor can’t be overlooked. I’m going with the Rays because they have a deeper bullpen and more balanced lineup, but not by much when Texas is clicking. A coin flip, in my opinion.

Phillies over Reds in 3. This would be the largest upset of any series if it goes the other way. The Phillies have been absolutely scorching over the past few months, and their Halladay/Hamels/Oswalt trio is downright unfair. Meanwhile, they face a Reds team that’s talented and has a bright future, but they’re starting a pitcher in Game 1 who’s coming off Tommy John surgery and missed the first 50 games with a PED suspension. I’d love to see Cincinnati pulls of the monumental shocker, but unless Philadelphia implodes, it’s hard for me to see Cincinnati’s path to winning three of five.

Giants over Braves in 5. An interesting series. The Giants should win—they have much stronger starting pitching, and have played much better over the past month—but Atlanta has more experience and motivation to win for a longtime manager who’s retiring after the season. The Giant offense can be pitched to, but Atlanta’s starters have been very inconsistent, and their offense is banged up. I do think the Braves could win this, but I think Lincecum and Cain step up to the plate and carry San Francisco to a hard-fought win, and the privilege to get stomped by the Phillies in the divisional round.

THE LAST DETAIL (Hal Ashby, 1973)

Oct 1

Posted by Gabe in Capsule Reviews | No Comments

If Harold and Maude (1971) and The Last Detail (1973) are reliable barometers of Hal Ashby’s style and cinematic interests, he seems particularly intrigued by characters that see the best in those society has cast aside. Harold and Maude features an age-and-label-defying relationship between a young, perpetually down-in-the-dumps boy who’s obsessed with death, and a freewheeling old lady who brings him out of his bubble. In The Last Detail, we follow lifelong Navymen Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and Mullman (Otis Young) as they’re assigned to escort the naive and scared Meadows (Randy Quaid) to prison for stealing the grand sum of $40 from a charity box. Due to a personal vendetta of their commanding officer, Meadows is to serve eight (!!!) years for this offense. What begins as a fun-loving detail quickly dampens as the gravity of Meadows’ fear, confusion and depression sets in. Buddusky and Mullman shift gears and try to boost Meadows’ morale before he’s (unfairly) incarcerated for an extended time, hoping to leave their mark. There are several wonderful sequences here: the three of them drinking beers in a hotel room, drunkenly rambling about life, and a character-building trip to the whorehouse that features a touching moment between Meadows and the hooker Buddusky has set him up with. The interaction, dialogue, and parent/child-esque relationships are very well done, if somewhat repetitive—once the relationship begins its arc, it’s pretty one-note until the strong finale. And it’s not on the emotional level of Harold and Maude. But, Nicholson is great, and Young & Quaid aren’t far behind. The Last Detail is a strongly constructed, well-directed road movie that serves as a successful vessel for Ashby’s pet causes.

65/100