Frayed Knot

Dekker makes this week 'Hot Sheet' in BA for his 10-25 w/2 HRs & 5 2Bs week: Den Dekker's hot week at the plate extended his hitting streak to 11 games and bumped his batting average up to .305 for the season. The Mets' 2010 fifth-round draft pick had a three-hit game yesterday and a ninth-inning leadoff double on Wednesday that set the stage for a Binghamton walkoff victory. He hit just .235 in 72 games with Binghamton last season, but this year he leads the B-Mets in almost every offensive category and sits atop the Eastern League in total bases. The center fielder out of Florida still has a high strikeout rate, but his improving average and power numbers show signs of promise. Then, during a Q&A about Dekker's future BA writes: Fourth OF is probably the safe bet, but with the numbers he's putting up in Double-A (.305/.363/.543 so far), we'll have to reconsider that projection if he sustains it. He has the range to be big league center fielder, how much he'll hit has been the question.

If he's a catcher with a good arm let's turn him into a reliever!

Dinner at Tipitina's? ... Check

Quaid plays the charming rogue well enough as does Barkum as the cold northerner (un-named IIRC, but you get the idea that she's a nordic from Minnesota) who's a crayfish out of water amongst the laid-back (and mostly related) Crescent City gang. Slow down Chere, this is N'Awlins, we all got a different way of doing things around here

I saw this like a billion years ago and my recollection is that its somewhat predictable plot, fake N.O. accents, broad native/outsider characterizations, worked better than it had any right to do.

Reminiscent of Elaine's reaction to 'The English Patient'

From a BA Q & A: Q -- Richard (Brooklyn): Do you think wilmer Flores's current hot streak is an abberation or a sign of progress? Thanks A -- Ben Badler (BA): Probably a little bit of both. When someone like Flores becomes a big deal at 16, people tend to lose patience and forget that this guy is still a 20-year-old in High-A. I'm not saying he's going to be an all-star, but he does have excellent hands at the plate and the power he's starting to show doesn't surprise me. There's very real progress here.

MFS62 wrote: Flores has been en fuego. He's now playing third base and is hitting .323/.355/.523 Gets an 'honorable mention' in BA's 'Hot Prospect' watch this week. -- For as long as he's been around, it's easy to forget that Wilmer Flores is still just a 20-year-old in the high Class A Florida State League. Now playing third base for the Mets, Flores is off to a .323/.355/.523 start through 19 games, including an 11-game hitting streak. With international prospects, it pays to be patient.

I saw this one a few months back - but at this point I can't remember the ending. I had heard good things about this flick but, I admit it, whatever they were trying to say was way over my head.

Wheeler is #6 this week on Baseball America's 'Prospect Hot Sheet' (remember, this is not an overall prospect judgement, merely a weekly round-up of who's hot) Why He's Here: 0-1, 3.00, 2 GS, 12 IP, 8 H, 2 R, 0 HR, 17 SO, 2 BB, 3 HBP The Scoop: Wheeler notched nine strikeouts against Portland on Friday and eight more against New Hampshire on Wednesday to take over the Eastern League lead with 21 punchouts. The EL is a long way from the big leagues, granted, but one couldn't ask for much more from Wheeler than he's shown thus far. He's throwing strikes with two plus pitches and showing flashes with his third and fourth offerings. Monitor Wheeler's lefty-righty splits this season to check on the progress of the changeup and cutter, two weapons he needs to combat lefthanded batters.

I expected to like this one more than I did. Not quite sure why it fell (somewhat) flat for me.

I saw this a week or two back - I'll give it a solid *** Not great, but a nice little story where even the turns that look stoopid going in - like the stoner boyfriend-ish dude becoming virtually a temporary family member - wind up being OK in the long run. Older girl was good, and a nice little part by Beau Bridges as cousin Hugh.

Count me among those who had never heard of these books prior to the avalanche of publicity for the movie over the past two weeks. Now that I've heard of it I don't think it's something I would have ran to even if the reviews had been good. Maybe when it comes to cable.

Get to the important part, how nekkid does Mila get?

Even without Woody being in it, virtually every moment in it is still pure Woody.

Tom McCarthy (writer/director of this, 'Station Agent, 'The Visitor') does seem to have an affinity for plots involving seemingly incompatible strangers getting thrown together via somewhat odd circumstances. Saw it last week and give it a solid 3.5

Lifetime achievement award: Steve McQueen � the Tao of Steve required maintaining a detached cool even astride a Harley vaulting barbed wire fences to evade Nazis, flying a car over the hills of San Francisco, racing at Le Mans, on the run with Ali McGraw, bounty hunting atop a train, shot flying a jet as Thomas Crowne, financing a documentary on bikers, and generally living his life at maximum RPM. I just re-saw (for about the 50th time) The Great Escape the other night. I also read, more than once when I was younger, the true-account book from which it was derived. And while the movie states up front that many of the characters are composites and/or changed somewhat from the source material, McQueen's character and his role in the plot has no real basis in the book and was completely made-up for the film. Nothing really wrong with that of course, any studio at that time would obviously want McQueen in its blockbuster action flick and sticking in an American character into a camp which was, by that point, almost entirely British is also good for the old U.S. box office. So then the supposed story goes that one condition of getting McQ to agree to the picture was that they write in a scene where he gets to show off his motorcycle riding. Studio, of course, agrees; they get their man, he gets to add to his macho/cool image and everyone skips off happily to the bank.

It says something about the predictability of these things when Meryl Streep winning is considered the night's biggest upset.

The Second Spitter wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: All the momentum is clearly behind THE ARTIST which I believe will eventually find its place in history as the greatest silent movie released in 2011 Never underestimate the Francophobia that pervades American society. There's also a lot of Franco-envy -- not that I believe that's the reason it's going to clean up on the Film/Director/Actor awards, I'm just sayin'.

My day-of prediction that this was going to come down to a contest between MONEYBALL and THE DESCENDANTS is out the window. All the momentum is clearly behind THE ARTIST which I believe will eventually find its place in history as the greatest silent movie released in 2011

Vic Sage wrote: The Redford version is a complete snooze. Instead of being about the decadent corruption at the heart of the "American Dream", it's about costumes and art direction. Excerpts from Roger Ebert's review: The movie is "faithful" to the novel with a vengeance -- to what happens in the novel, that is, and not to the feel, mood, and spirit of it. It would take about the same time to read Fitzgerald's novel as to view this movie -- and that's what I'd recommend.

Scheduled for a Xmas 2012 release according to IMDB, I'm actually sort of looking forward to this one for several reasons. - I never saw any of the previous (at least four) versions - the most famous is probably the Redford/Farrow one which oddly isn't available via NetFlix or through my local library system. - the reviews on that one were only so-so to begin with anyway so I'm not all that jazzed to run out and purchase a mediocre and nearly 40 year-old flick just to see it - the only release since that one was a made-for-TV version with even more tepid reviews And, finally, I read the book for the very first time just a few weeks ago. No particular reason really, just though it was something I needed to get around to and somehow had never done all through school and whatnot. Turns out that this F. Scotty guy's a pretty good writer, I'll have to look around to see if he's written anything else recently.

Ryan Gosling stars and drives cars. He drives get-away cars, he drives race cars, he drives stunt cars ... and he does it all while managing to utter fewer lines of dialog and interact with fewer people than anyone who's in every single scene of a movie since Robert Redford in 'Jerimiah Johnson'. Then one day he drives his cute little neighbor home because her car is on the fritz and his strictly-ordered life becomes a lot more complicated.

Vic Sage wrote: 1. Best Picture: "The Artist" ''The Descendants" ''Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" ''The Help" ''Hugo" ''Midnight in Paris" ''Moneyball" ''The Tree of Life" ''War Horse." Interesting that they "only" went with eight when they had the option of going with as many as ten In the end it's going to come down to "The Descendants" and "Moneyball" - ELAIC isn't getting good enough reviews (which makes you wonder what it's doing here) - TREE OF LIFE was more a critical fave but didn't have enough popular appeal - THE HELP has that whole political correctness thing going on which will get it some smaller awards (like supporting actress) but not this one - HUGO; too much of a kiddie flick - THE ARTIST; I have nothing to say about this movie - MIDNIGHT IN PARIS; Woody had enough trouble getting wins when he was on top of his game - WAR HORSE; probably has a better shot at winning Tonys than Oscars Of the ones I saw (Moneyball) I select Moneyball

I noticed this flick on a surprising number of year-end TOP TEN lists. Not that I thought it was terrible, but the critical reviews seemed better in most cases than did ordinary person reviews (like what we've got here for instance) and while that's certainly not all that uncommon it does seem so for this type of movie.