Anyone who follows me on Facebook or Twitter knows I enjoy labeling the NFL as "Goodell's League." The examples of why I feel that way are numerous; the increased penalties for incidental helmet-to-helmet contact, the exploding offensive numbers league-wide, the diminishing role of running and defense, all of these things are well documented and I need not embellish them further here. But after a superb football weekend (at least for me) where both Super Bowl finalists, the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers, are not defined by traditionally "elite" quarterbacks, I'm backtracking significantly.
The proof is in the second half of both the NFC and AFC Title games. The Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots each led at halftime, but neither team, in spite of playing at home, scored a single point in the second half. Unquestionably, the defense of Baltimore and San Francisco played key roles. Tom Brady was especially off in the AFC game, throwing two interceptions late and being thoroughly outplayed by Joe Flacco. And Atlanta provided a meltdown of the highest (or should that be lowest?) order in giving up a 17-point lead and rushing for a mere 3.5 yards per carry for 81 yards.
So what does this mean? Well, the NFL is still a quarterback-driven league, and it will be for the forseeable future. But defense and rushing remain key supporting pieces. If your passing game gives you a huge lead, a solid running game can help you dominate Time of Possession, which keeps your own defense fresh. Eleven-on-eleven is obviously a team game, and a vast majority of teams who reach this point are "complete" teams. Every element blends together like a symphony. They can pass, they can run, they can tackle, and they can defend. And that's why this particular matchup is so exciting to me. It feels fresh and new; not a re-tread of something we've already seen. Yes, we have seen the "Harbaugh Bowl" before, but that was a 2011 regular season game where both teams played on four days rest, and Baltimore won 16-6. Here, a two-week buildup means we'll see something far more aesthetically pleasing.
Given my ties to Baltimore, I'm unquestionably rooting for the Ravens. But a 49ers win would not have me sulking in anger. The two most dominant stories leading up to this year's Super Bowl are clearly (1) the "Harbaugh vs Harbaugh" matchup and (2) middle linebacker extraordinaire Ray Lewis' final game, and yes, they will be covered and covered and covered until you can't take it anymore. But I'd gladly take that over a matchup that is 99% about the quarterbacks' legacies and precious little else. That, more than anything else, is why I'm backing off of my "Goodell's League" diatribe. After all, if all you need to win is an elite, fantasy-stud QB with an encyclopedia of big-game experience and a truckload of commercials, the 49ers and Ravens would've been eliminated a long time ago.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Monday, January 14, 2013
Awards Reactions
How can you tell when a year in movies is especially strong? One sure-fire sign is when a film receives a high honor like a Golden Globe and controversy stirs. This year, we have Ben Affleck's Argo, one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year as well as a big hit among anyone who has seen it, myself included. Perhaps the win for both the film in the Best Drama category as well as a Best Director award for Affleck represents some sort of payback for being snubbed in the Oscar nominations for the latter category. If it is, it represents a glorified "participation trophy."
You don't have to think long and hard to understand why this is. By the time awards season has come and gone and we start looking toward blockbusters, does anyone remember the Golden Globe winners? I'd be hard pressed to recall any without consulting IMDB or Wikipedia. There's a reason the Academy Awards are presented last. They're essentially the Super Bowl of the movie industry. But unlike that spectacle, which contains images and sounds that linger for years, if not longer, this one fades quickly. And the same goes for the nominations.
Twitter, Facebook, and 24/7 media has drastically reduced the life cycle every story, especially something trivial like movie award nominations. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled this year's nominees, your usual outcry of robbery erupted ("WTF were they thinking snubbing Bigelow, Hooper, and Affleck in the Best Director category?") but it dominates headlines for no more than a day. Once upon a time, I decreed the Oscars as "just another committee's opinion" when my favorite movie of 2006, Dreamgirls, was left of the then-five choices for Best Picture (it can now go up to ten). My stance isn't quite that forceful today; it's obvious that winning an Oscar increases an actor/filmmaker/writer's marketability moreso than any other award he/she could receive.
Like the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, which has become a laughingstock after some writers protested the Steroid Era by turning in blank ballots, the AMPAS is on shaky ground. Zero Dark Thirty was the most critically acclaimed movie of 2012, but director Katheryn Bigelow already took home gold for 2009's The Hurt Locker. She already won, right? The same goes for Tom Hooper, bypassed for Les Miserables this year after winning for 2010's The King's Speech. Dynasties are boring, let someone else get a chance, right? Such is one school of thought, and if it's true in this case, then you're not truly nominating the best, now are you?
Right now, Steven Speilberg's Lincoln is the prohibitive favorite. It's the safest, least controversial of the nominees, and for my money, the best (it finished No. 2 on my Top 10). Plus, it has the benefit of being hugely relevant in a time where partisan squabbling in Congress has everyone turning up their noses. A win here for a movie that celebrates one of our nation's greatest political victories and the compromise it took to reach it would be a very positive message indeed.
As anyone who has read my Top 10 list knows, I made the massively unconventional choice of naming the sci-fi thriller Looper as my No. 1 movie of 2012. In spite of being a critical success (93% on Rotten tomatoes, 84/100 on MetaCritic) and opening the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, not for a second did I believe it would score any major nominations, not even for Original Screenplay (which I argue is the movie's greatest strength). It's not an "actors" movie; it relies more on plot, ideas, and moral dilemmas for its success. Plus, it has too many of the trappings of an action thriller to be interesting to the serious, stodgy Academy. It's not the "best" or most "objectively well made" movie of 2012 (how the hell would I or anyone know what that is?), but unquestionably my favorite and I'll happily defend it against anyone who wants to challenge me.
2012 was the year I jumped face first back into movies after not writing much about them since 2009. The fact that critics went one way with their best film of the year (Zero Dark Thirty), the Golden Globes went another way (Argo), and the Academy will presumably go another (Lincoln) only illustrates the full platter we've had to savor.
You don't have to think long and hard to understand why this is. By the time awards season has come and gone and we start looking toward blockbusters, does anyone remember the Golden Globe winners? I'd be hard pressed to recall any without consulting IMDB or Wikipedia. There's a reason the Academy Awards are presented last. They're essentially the Super Bowl of the movie industry. But unlike that spectacle, which contains images and sounds that linger for years, if not longer, this one fades quickly. And the same goes for the nominations.
Twitter, Facebook, and 24/7 media has drastically reduced the life cycle every story, especially something trivial like movie award nominations. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled this year's nominees, your usual outcry of robbery erupted ("WTF were they thinking snubbing Bigelow, Hooper, and Affleck in the Best Director category?") but it dominates headlines for no more than a day. Once upon a time, I decreed the Oscars as "just another committee's opinion" when my favorite movie of 2006, Dreamgirls, was left of the then-five choices for Best Picture (it can now go up to ten). My stance isn't quite that forceful today; it's obvious that winning an Oscar increases an actor/filmmaker/writer's marketability moreso than any other award he/she could receive.
Like the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, which has become a laughingstock after some writers protested the Steroid Era by turning in blank ballots, the AMPAS is on shaky ground. Zero Dark Thirty was the most critically acclaimed movie of 2012, but director Katheryn Bigelow already took home gold for 2009's The Hurt Locker. She already won, right? The same goes for Tom Hooper, bypassed for Les Miserables this year after winning for 2010's The King's Speech. Dynasties are boring, let someone else get a chance, right? Such is one school of thought, and if it's true in this case, then you're not truly nominating the best, now are you?
Right now, Steven Speilberg's Lincoln is the prohibitive favorite. It's the safest, least controversial of the nominees, and for my money, the best (it finished No. 2 on my Top 10). Plus, it has the benefit of being hugely relevant in a time where partisan squabbling in Congress has everyone turning up their noses. A win here for a movie that celebrates one of our nation's greatest political victories and the compromise it took to reach it would be a very positive message indeed.
As anyone who has read my Top 10 list knows, I made the massively unconventional choice of naming the sci-fi thriller Looper as my No. 1 movie of 2012. In spite of being a critical success (93% on Rotten tomatoes, 84/100 on MetaCritic) and opening the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, not for a second did I believe it would score any major nominations, not even for Original Screenplay (which I argue is the movie's greatest strength). It's not an "actors" movie; it relies more on plot, ideas, and moral dilemmas for its success. Plus, it has too many of the trappings of an action thriller to be interesting to the serious, stodgy Academy. It's not the "best" or most "objectively well made" movie of 2012 (how the hell would I or anyone know what that is?), but unquestionably my favorite and I'll happily defend it against anyone who wants to challenge me.
2012 was the year I jumped face first back into movies after not writing much about them since 2009. The fact that critics went one way with their best film of the year (Zero Dark Thirty), the Golden Globes went another way (Argo), and the Academy will presumably go another (Lincoln) only illustrates the full platter we've had to savor.
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