Edgy MD

Spitter, would you like to poll-arize this thread?

That's for me me to report. Valdespin makes BA's 'Prospect Watch' (#7) for the week Why He's Here: .423/.464/.846 (11-for-26), 3 HR, 2 2B, 6 R, 6 RBIs, 2 BB, 3 SO, 4-for-4 SB The Scoop: Scouts never questioned Valdespin's raw tools, but they cautioned that the young middle infielder's game required a lot of refinement. Playing shortstop every day at Double-A may have afforded Valdespin that extra incentive he needed to mature. He's swiped 16 bases in 19 tries on the year, and in June he's turned on the power (five homers, .733 slugging) and tuned down the strikeouts (11 percent of at-bats). His performance may prove to be a statistical blip, but the Mets have to be happy with what they've seen lately.

The Second Spitter wrote: I was mostly indifferent to Portman's performance. Her character was probably the most underdeveloped of any on screen. If their intention was to create a "plain Jane" character then it worked. But other than that, she looked good and delivered her lines efficiently. (Just don't expect a performance on-par with Black Swan). Changing Jane Foster's back-story probably added to the character, provided you buy into the fact she is an astrophysicist. If she's a plain Jane, why does she wear all her makeup to bed? Why is she walking around with nasty hair extensions and seemingly eyelash extensions as well? She's as much a glamour puss as they come.

Prequels are the way the game is going. Studios get to extend the brand with no obligation to re-assemble the cast, or necessity to amplify the action to incoherence.

Finding the power stroke, JDV has two homers in the last four games. He's still at 12 errors, so maybe he's settled down. Righthanded hitters are getting just as much help on the other side of the diamond, where thirdbaseman Eric Campbell has 13.

I'm kind of surprised to see him in the Sally League. A guy --- especially one with a college pedigree --- knocks down buildings in Brooklyn, I expect him to open in St. Lucie the next year. Savannah seems like a lateral move.

That was clear to me from the beginning. I mean, I have a dim (useful anyhow) awareness of the Royal lineage, at least in teh American era. But the peripheral characters --- Lord this and Duke of that --- I'm not particularly curious about. But to associate Ms. Bonham Carter with the funny little sub-five-footer who lived to be 101 and seemed pretty thoroughly pickled to the end (no particular insult intended here, I could be wrong) was a startling realization. My thinking was probably along the line of "Wait a minute, she's not just a random person here... she's Elizabeth's mother... which makes her... HOLY CRAP!" Strangest picture to come up on a search for "young queen mum":

Oops. Fixed my linkie.

Kirk is day-to-day, recovering from the system shock of this heroic effort.

This guy reports that one of the prospects the Mets might be looking at come deadline time is Tigers reliever Chance Ruffin. Though a Chance Ruffin/Dock Doyle battery would be awesome. And after the game, they would investigate crimes in the 1920s.

I guess I'm Wet Blanket Willie, but Disney-era Muppetry* seems to taste kinda like they've substituted a key ingredient. *Shrunken in case some maniac reads my post before getting to the trailer's payoff.

One of those films that I was sure had a thread but I can't find it. Colin Firth is the Duke of York, bearing the weight of the world as his father is declining, his crown prince brother is derided by all parties as inadequate for the throne, a catastrophic war is looming for the British Empire, and he himself is sidled with a crippling stammer that makes the prospect of a public life --- let alone one leading his nation in war --- terrifying. Geoffrey Rush is his speech therapist. Helena Bonham-Carter is his kind wife, who I suddenly realized 3/4 of the way through the picture was the Queen Mum herself.

Wait... I know how this one ends!

Vic Sage wrote: He is a complex character that to simply dismiss out of hand as a hateful racist is to miss the point entirely. Please give me some credit. I didn't dismiss him out of hand.

Good for a .915 fielding percentage.

John Church is on shifting ground in St. Lucie, giving up 11 runs over four appearances totalling 5 2/3 innings. He looked to be straightening it all out with two scoreless appearances of two innings each, fanning five and walking one, and then kaboom, a six-run inning (three earned) on May 16. John Church was born in Florida. John Church went to high school in Florida. John Church went to College in Florida. John Church probably went to church in Florida. I'm diagnosing him with an overdose of home cooking and Prescribing for him a trip to Brooklyn asap.

Jordany bats lefty, doesn't see a whole lot of lefthanded pitching, and doesn't do much with it when he do. vs Left: .167 / .231 / .292 // .522. 26 PA. vs Right .293 / .344 / .440 // .783. 124 PA

Yeah, I'm certain I'd see more (and less) on a followup viewing. And I'd focus on other angles. But I certainly didn't mean to whack Ford (who I'm a fan of) with an anachroistic bat that he couldn't have anticipated. But I contrast it with Wayne's character of Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, who deals quite diplomatically with the Indians even as he accepts that, when dimplomacy runs its course, it's his duty to make war on them. Having seen those immediately prior, the relative defecit of that trait is what jumped out at me. So Ford of all people knew what he was doing, even as the effect is mixed (and maybe --- or probably --- supposed to be). And yeah, I guess it is both racist and anti-racist. ...he's also shot heroically (low angle, etc) throughout most of the film. It's amazing. Whenever they engage the Indians, Wayne's fellow Texans take cover behind rocks and trees, laying low with their rifles for self-preservation, while he stands like a statue, usually firing his pistol, as if no bullet could harm him. It's as if, as Richard Pryor theorized, Wayne could look death in the eye and say, "Get the fuck out of here."

Vic Sage wrote: I think reading 21st century post-racial sentiments onto a 1940s Western is irrelevant and unfair... Don't makke me a presentist again. I contrasted it with other Ford films of the era, mostly films that pre-date it, in fact. Way to give up the spoiler!

I don't know. This is supposed to be a standout amoung the Ford films, but it's problematic. Wayne is an embittered itinerant Civl War vet who heads back to his old Texas town to set a spell with his brother's family. His brother has a teenage daughter, a pre-teen son, a tween daughter, and a young adult 1/8 Indian adoptee son-ish guy that Wayne himself had rescued as a baby from a Comanche raid. Wayne's characters usually run the gamut from code hero to paladin to misunderstood braveheart to last-of-his-breed legend. But here he's a real asshole anti-hero and gets to stretch a little beyond his limited acting pallette. He hates the Comanch so much that it keeps him up at night. Were you ever nice to one? Then he hates you too! Are you a comanche who's not a coldblooded killer? Bullshit. No such thing. He shoots Buffalo and leaves them to die just to warm himself with the thought of one more starving Indian. He comes across an Indian corpse and shoots his dead eyes out because, he explains, Indian spirits need their eyes to find the spirit kingdom in the afterlife. And that's the kind of dick we're dealing with. When a raiding party runs off with the herd of a neighboring Swedish Texan rancher, he's enlisted into a pursuing party of Rangers, but then his brother's home gets raided while he's out playing cop and the only survivors are the two girls, carried off into God knows what. You can imagine how pissed this guy is. But he doesn't go crazy. He lets it burn. Slowly. Holy fuck this guy. And that's where we get the title. He rides in search of the girls, along with the octaroon adoptee son (and boy, does that kid get some shit) and the Swede's son --- also the sweetheart of the teenager. And that's what we've got. For five years they ride in pursuit of a warchief named Scar (!!). Other Ford movies can be more charitable to the Indians, painting the calvary in a mixed light, protraying the exploitations of the US Indian agents as so hateful that the tribesmen had little choice but to go to war. But the bitter racism of Wayne's character in this movie is unambiguous, and it can't help but infect the tone of the movie at large. Wayne's that iconic a dude. There's probably a lot of messages in here deeper than I'm describing --- about the burdens men carry, about living beyond tragedy, about fathers and sons --- but they're sublimated in a movie about how them seriously, I just used a racist word when I really meant "Guardians" need to be scalped but good. Plus it's supposed to be in Texas, but Ford's clearly further west shooting under the same buttes he always likes to shoot under. Then there's the colorful townsfolk that the film occasionally switches back to --- the Swedes and a preacher/marshall guy with a funny hat, and the town halfwit. The comic relief in Ford films can often feel a little forced when contrasted with the bloody work of his heroes, but here, while this Wayne-monster --- with his spirit broken to bits multiple times over --- is on a gruesome five-year vendetta, it feels almost insulting. Anyhow, some of the most beautiful Western scenery on film is here, starting with shot one, and some typically great stunt-riding. And it's all wrapped up in a complicated and problematic picture. What did you think?

John Wayne is a lot dickier than he is in his other movies.

Guys, you're his familia. Act like it.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Internet buzz says it's the Cosmic Cube, though I noticed nothing cube-like in that box. I'll have to look for a screen shot online so I can take a fresh look. I thought it was funny to see Samuel L. Jackson walking around with a glowing mysterious thing in a briefcase again.

Didn't make much sense to me. I don't know what happens to me, but a lot of times in sci-fi/fantasy, we get to the climax, and I have no idea what's going on. I mean I know who the good guy and the bad guy are but I don't understand what they're doing and why. I'm gonig to make a great old man. -- Huh? Wha'? -- Quiet, grandpa!

So, if I remember the history of this character right, Thor origingally wasn't really THOR Thor, but a doctor who finds the hammer and becomes endowed with the power of the deity. As the character evolves, he starts talking fruity, making Norse references, and running afoul of Loki, while other characters from Norse pantheon start making appearances. The editors realized that they had gradually changed the character from a mortal who got lucky to the god himself, so they came up with this explanation that he was always Thor, but was walking the earth in some magic amnesiac exile, and when it was time for him to re-awaken, a spell he placed on the hammer would summon him to find it and reclaim his destiny. Something like that, right? Do I have it right at all? And is that sort of what's going on in the movie? That Blake isn't doesn't kow he's really the guy until a switch goes on and reminds him?