Hustle

Hustle does a great job of pointing out how much solid work goes into crafting a professional sports team, just by focusing primarily on one gifted scout (Adam Sandler as Stanley Sugarman) who runs into problems when the owner's son takes over (Ben Foster as Vince Merrick). 

It's like a 24/7 job it's rare he ever stops concentrating on basketball, he consistently sacrifices so much for the team without much complaint or sharp contradiction.

He has an amazing job and gets to spend his time doing something he loves, and can concretely see his emphatic results each time a player he's chosen makes a cool play.

I saw him like a representative for what generally goes on behind the scenes in professional sports, for the tens of thousands of people diligently working to put a dynamic team together.

Even when that team isn't playing well the wheels are still in perpetual motion, making deals and calls and observations hopefully leading to that next championship.

When you think about how many thousands of people are habitually competing to build the next champion, it does seem like the odds against anyone ever winning are so astronomically high that victory's miraculous.

And then if you see your outstanding favourites lose the Super Bowl three times in your curious youth, and then come back to pick up back to back wins less than ten years later, with the same quarterback, you can't help but be thankful to the organization.

If you do actually win the championship it objectively validates every decision made that season, you can take a break and sit back and bask in heralded pseudo-divine contemplation.

Each step of the way not just the winner it's still better to get there than not make it at all, it's like every organization is fighting for each inch of ground at all times and never even considering coming up short.

At least that's what characters like Stanley make me think with their healthy attitudes that keep things focused, with some jobs you have to continuously adapt at any given time with inquisitive reflexes.

That was amazing when the Raptors won I never thought I'd see that happen.

I was pissed Dad didn't get to see the Leafs win again before he passed.

But honestly, he loved basketball so much more.

I'm so happy he got to see that.

Hustle's worth checking out.

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

If vampire narratives were constructed long ago to suggest that the European aristocracy was carelessly gorging itself on the life blood of the European worker, and zombie narratives countered this characterization by connoting that the European worker was simply jealous of the aristocratic mind, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse asks the questions, "where do American scouts scouting in small town America fit into this dilemma?, and how can scouting build bridges between classes who solely work, and those who only play"?, scouting thereby redefined as a constructive democratic bourgeois intensity.

There are no vampires in Scouts Guide but there is an exclusive gathering, the sons and daughters of the capitalistic elite, the cool kids, in attendance, our scouting heroes given the wrong address in direct humiliation.

The zombies spread after a lackadaisical janitor interrupts a scientific experiment, accidentally awaking a zombie, who then rapidly devours his misplaced curiosity.

Soon the majority of the town is infected as the scouts unknowingly camp out in the woods, and the cool kids cavalierly consort, blissfully unaware.

But soon these 3 scouts must emerge from the forest to apply their skills in battle, aided by a savvy cocktail waitress thereafter, in their unheralded altruistic calling.

Friendship is on the line as two of them are thinking of quitting scouts and one remains true to their cause.

The zombies's hunger leaves them little time to air grievances however, as they fight together as one to save those who ignorantly disdained them.

Thus, since the zombies have been coerced into blindly embracing ideological dogma, and the capitalistic progeny is too young to understand why, the scouts must jurisprudently save them from an unprovoked attack, having tried to save at least one zombie beforehand, while hoping the virus can one day be cured.

Attendee Kendall Grant (Halston Sage) is impressed and expresses her gratitude physically.

Is it juvenile, insufficiently serious, undeniably heroic and fun?, who am I to say?

I thought perhaps the scouts weren't scouting prominently enough for a lot of the film, but the grand finale ingeniously made amends.

It is fun.

I think I saw a bear zombie, a human who had been bit by a zombie bear.

No werebears though, no werebears.

Trouble with the Curve

Trouble with the Curve.

Trouble with the Curve is a nice story. It situates a complicated familial dynamic within a competitive professional atmosphere which is adorned with collegial and asinine interactions that polarize the continuum established between youth and age.

Relationships and ethnocentric tendencies are examined as well, and after an explanation is provided, the resultant synergies mobilize the disenfranchised.

And the multidimensional nature of experiential competencies collaboratively contends with electronically generated statistics to offer an holistic approach to the practice of forecasting.

It's presented in an easy-to-follow and understand format, potentially photosynthesizing a modest kernel of truth.

All of these things, are good.

Clint Eastwood's character could have been more diversely differentiated from that whom he played in Gran Torino however.

Not that I don't love the old curmudgeon, but not enough time has elapsed between the two films.

And it's tough to find shelter from the narrative's after-school-special-like style, which, while cultivating a strong inclusive yet combative framework, lacks the creative virtuosities needed to motivate a wide-ranging reception.

Not that it's trying to do that.