Month: May 2015

Taking A Walk on HBO’s Boardwalk

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f847f7e88f0e5d464b4c79e0409fBeing Nucky Thompson, the king of Atlantic City, one can’t afford to stay out of danger for too long. It seems like every season the one time city treasurer and unofficial gangster is dealing with a big fish washing onto the Eastern shore to take a piece of his pie. Near the end of the season, he manages to escape. All this time, the authorities have never been able to touch him. Enemies come and go. Women are able to temporarily thaw his cold heart but eventually it hardens back up. In the fifth and final season of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, Steve Buscemi’s Nucky will face the realization that all good things eventually come to an end.

People cried outrage when HBO announced it is closing the doors on the expensive, elaborate and wonderfully shot drama this past winter. The show got better and better with every season, and the chances for more story growth and character development were there. However, when your seasons cost 100 million dollars to shoot and Creator Terence Winter is using real history with these famous figures, an end was always in sight in my eyes. Nucky doesn’t rule forever. Stephen Graham’s expertly crafted Al Capone doesn’t stay small time for long. Vincent Piazzo’s Lucky Luciano eventually becomes a boss. If you are familar with your ghosts of gangster’s past, HBO’s Emmy winning series was always booked with a ticking bomb attached to it. (more…)

5 Remedies For The St. Louis Blues

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Bylsma1Now that the latest playoff exit for the St. Louis Blues has sunk into the heartbroken minds of fans across the Lou, it’s time to look at some options this summer to improve the team. Some of them may be minor and some of them could be major. As I talked about last week, it’s time to depart the T.J. Oshie train, but it’s important to not stop there. There can be player moves and line transfers that could turn this team into a weapon not only this October but hopefully next spring as well. As the late comedian George Carlin once said, stop living in the past because it doesn’t care about your future. Let’s talk remedies.

1.) Hire Dan Bylsma

With no offense to Ken Hitchcock and his Stanley Cup success, he isn’t the man for this team’s future. The days of year to year contracts with a veteran coach who hasn’t tasted playoff success in quite some time must come to an end. Bring in a new coach and sign him for 3-4 seasons. Produce some stability instead of a substitute teacher behind the bench. While Mike Babcock can be enticing, I don’t see him leaving Detroit and the same goes for the old wolf, Darryl Sutter in Los Angeles. For my peace of mind, I’d like the gritty ex-player and ferocious Dan Bylsma. He coached the Pittsburgh Penguins to a Stanley Cup championship before they fired him last June and has spent the past year on the NHL Network and helping a friend on a WHL team. Bylsma wants to return to an NHL bench and could be the right guy for the Blues. He isn’t burned out after a year off, and has a chip on his shoulder after being canned in Pittsburgh so quickly. Bylsma is a player friendly coach who doesn’t just understand the game from a coaching level but can level with it from a young player due to his experience in the league. He has worked with superstars in Sidney Crosby and connected with younger grittier player in the minors. He is a fresh face in a Blues locker room needing a major face lift of any kind. If Doug Armstrong is not only practical but tactical, he calls Dan up and offers him the job. Start fresh and get serious. Bylsma has been to the promised land and knows what it takes, and will add a little intensity to the bench.

Or you could bring back Hitch and do the same old song and dance routine with your fanbase… (more…)

Avoid Pine Bluff For College Baseball Or Anything For That Matter

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ToriiTorii Hunter may have had a vision when he donated 500,000 dollars to his home town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, but I am not sure the result is what he dreamed about. Torii Hunter Complex, which holds home games for the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff Golden Lions baseball team, is located in a horribly underdeveloped neighborhood and holds zero atmosphere or payback for a visiting baseball fan. Located right next to a large college football stadium and parking lot, Delta Natural Kraft Field doesn’t have suitable parking, food, zero spirit and it also happens to smell like sewage and horse manure. Built and opened in 2011, the field seats 1,000 fans but comes nowhere near to filling the stands. It would be best to skip this complex and experience entirely. For a college field and location, it’s horribly rendered. Torii Hunter’s donation gave him the right to put his name on it but he definitely didn’t put any care into it and the name of the field comes from a local Kraft brown paper company. It’s a by the book result that’s got zero passion. Let’s dig into the details. (more…)

The D Train Stinks

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imageedit_1_6561406295The D Train has a compelling group of actors but a story that is as old and tired as spoiled milk in an empty apartment. Jack Black and James Marsden are talented actors but their work here never gets on the right freeway for viewers to enjoy the story. This is a movie without a real identity. Let me spin the setup quick.

Black is a school alumni nerd who never had his glory day in high school and spends his mid thirties trying to be so cool that he irons the juicy details right out of the word with every stupid nickname he gives himself. In order to win back some respect, he ventures out to Hollywood to lure back the high school superstar Oliver Lawless(Marsden, who has the most fun in the film) for the alumni reunion. A wildly unexpected event after a hard night of boozing and drugging forces the two men to reconsider everything.

This movie is like Black’s character. It wants to be super cool, very funny and also poignant in the end and it fails on all three fronts. It isn’t funny and the poster and trailer inform the viewer that “Get Him to the Greek” is in the cards. While that film had a brave and game duo in Jonah Hill and Russell Brand, Black and Marsden are pure blandness when together. Their wildness pales in comparison to the Greek’s wildness because the comedy was present and the drama was even surprisingly fresh. (more…)

Avengers: Age of Ultron Is A Kick In The Head

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who-do-you-think-will-die-in-avengers-age-of-ultron_0

When I think of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Dean Martin comes to mind.

“My head keeps spinning,
I go to sleep and keep grinning,
If this is just the beginning,
My life is gonna be beautiful”

What if you saw a doomsday ahead for your fellow soldiers and the citizens you wished to protect? Would you overreact and create a monster in the process of trying to save the world? That is the lining of the engine at the heart of the latest Marvel extravaganza, Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Writer/director Joss Whedon created the pinnacle of superhero team-up movies when he brought the Marvel family together in 2012’s Avengers and he throws everything but the kitchen sink at the viewer here in an attempt to match or top the spectacle that the first film created and the path it put our favorite heroes on. One of the greatest treats of this film is the fact that someone could walk into it blind and still enjoy it while the diehard fan will soak up everything and the comic book aficionado will be drawing his own map as the film pivots around historical comic book details. Avengers can be digested by any kind of film fan and that’s its main delight.

While it’s flawed and not as seamless as the first film, the film is highly enjoyable and sets up the next batch of Marvel entertainment such as Infinity Wars and the next Captain America adventure, Civil Wars. As epic and air gasping of an experience as Avengers: Age of Ultron is, it’s basically the seasoning before the juicier part of the steak is revealed. (more…)

John Wick Is Back For A Sequel!

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wick16x9Halfway through John Wick, our hero confirms a long standing rumor. As he sits in a chair, tied up and beaten, he tells the bad guys that he is indeed back. He’s also coming back to theaters in the future to kick ass, as Lionsgate announced today that John Wick 2 will happen and it will happen soon. (more…)