Movies: The Men Who Stare at Goats

…directed by Grant Heslov, written by Peter Straughan (script) and Jon Runson (book), starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, & Kevin Spacey.  The Men Who Stare at Goats chronicles the efforts of a small-town reporter named Bob (McGregor) to uncover the story of the Army’s efforts at developing and using paranormal and psychic powers.  After an interview with a veteran of the Special Forces’ First Earth the Battalion and being cuckolded by his wife, Bob heads for Iraq to try his hand as a war correspondent.  There he runs into Lyn (Clooney), the Army’s former top psychic, who has his own mission in the desert.

We learn about the First Earth Battalion’s founder,   Lt. Colonel Bill Django (Bridges, reprising the Dude in some respects), who came back from Nam and conducted extensive research on all the New Age stuff you could hope for, and convinced his bosses at Fort Bragg to start the psychic/paranormal soldier program.  Django wants to train Jedi-knights – warrior monks of peace who can convince the enemy to move beyond conflict through reason and telepathic manipulation - and enlists Lyn and others in this pursuit.  They’re interested in remote viewing, precognition, phasing, and of course physical psychic manipulations (hence the goats).

No New Moons Here

Like the majority of red-blooded hetero American males, I stayed the hell away from New Moon this weekend.  Of course that didn’t stop the wife from going, nor did it stop the film from bringing in a near-Batman-like box office haul.  It’s not that I won’t go watch the occasional romantic comedy or chick-flick now and again, no, what it comes down to is a lack of respect for and dumbing down of the whole monster mythos genre.

The clincher for me was the scene in Twilight in which the girl and vampire-boy Edward ascend from the overcast forested shadows into the sunlight.  And what happens?  His skin sparkles like diamonds.  It’s so beautiful, says the girl.  No burning death, weakness, not even a little smoke.  Nothing but sparkly.  And this, my friends, is an insult to true horror fans everywhere.  It’s not that we’re against reimagining the folklore and mythology around traditional creatures like vampires and werewolves; shows like Buffy, the Blade movies, and even the Underworld movies have done this in some respect.  But do try to understand and  respect that  mythology and folklore, so any changes you make have some resonance, instead of seeming like a poorly conceived plot device designed to make teenaged girls sigh. 

Soccer Sunday and Such

MLS Cup kicks off in about two hours, featuring the back-from-the-dead L.A. Galaxy, last year’s dysfunctional laughing stock, vs. hot-at-the-right-time Real Salt Lake – they of the many merry midfielders.  The news from Seattle is the locals have embraced the championship with nearly as much vigor as they took to their Sounders this year, and 40,000 are expected despite the crap weather.  Good news for MLS.  Even better news if the Galaxy pulls it off – what a fitting final chapter to this whole Beckham Experiment thing.  But Salt Lake has only beat two of the supposedly best/most talented teams in Columbus and Chicago to get here, and anyone who’s watched them the past month knows they are fully capable of controlling play and scoring goals.

 Of course Beckham is carrying an injury (say this for the man – he knows drama) and could be fairly limited.  He’s likely one crunching Kyle Beckerman tackle from being out.  The real key to this match of course is league MVP Landon Donovan.  Salt Lake will be completely fixated on denying him the ball, but that might not be enough.  And maybe it opens the way for someone like Mike Magee or Alan Gordon to be the hero.  I’ve been predicting L.A. would win it all for months (just thought they’d be playing the Fire) so I won’t change my pick now.

In other  news, FIFA denied Ireland’s request for a reply against France after now-infamous Hand-of-Frog, featuring Thierry Henry (video after the bump).  Of course what else are FIFA going to do?  Admit that it’s time to employ instant-replay and other technology to prevent these kinds of mistakes?  Yeah, right.  It’s going to take something like this at the actual World Cup before they move forward.

The 23 – November Edition

The World Cup field is set (though Ireland may yet have something to say about that), and the U.S. acquired another pair of losses in Europe over this latest international break.  After dominating Slovakia everywhere except the final third, it was 1-0 Slovaks.  And then, with an 80% second-tier squad, Team America proceeded to get spanked by Denmark 3-1.

I’ve often called for Coach Bob Bradley to trust his depth and play other guys beyond his chosen core group of 7-8 surefire starters, but performances like these illustrate that without guys like Donovan, Gooch, Dempsey, and yes Jermaine Jones, Team America looks very average.  The midfield was completely overrun versus the Danes, with Michael Bradley (who starts every game he’s eligible) attempting to run the show.  Not a good sign.  A couple of upward trends from these games included Jeff Cunningham’s workrate and finishing ability, Jonathan Bornstein’s continued play and Jon Spector showcasing his versatility.

So without further adieu, here’s The 23 – the players Beemsville would bring to South Africa if we were in charge:

Scifi-ish Shows We’re Tracking

Well into the fall TV season, and we’re recording/watching three Science Fiction-ish shows on the big networks:  Fringe, Flash Froward, and V.  The latter two being new shows (sort of), while the first is back for a second season.  Of course part of this is to fill the void left by the end of Battlestar Galactica, and part of it is curiosity about big media’s ability or desire to deliver attempts at genuine science fiction to the masses.

Fringe seems to me like a true successor to The X-Files; something a lot of shows have attempted but none have really pulled off.  It has the paranormal investigator overlay, the quirky and interesting characters, and a good blend of humor, gross-outs, and conspiracies.  The two leads (Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson) have good chemistry and John Noble as Dr. Walter Bishop (Jackson’s dad) is great.  The writers outright steal a lot of the successful themes and tropes from Chris Carter and the X-Files, and have probably studied that show’s successful seasons of plot development like PhD students.  So far this has entertained rather than annoyed me.

Pentagram: Illini Basketball Preview

The Fighting Illini 09-10 Basketball season tips off tonight against SIU-Edwardsville.  Coach Weber has four freshman to incorporate, three of which have already proven they will play (and Joseph Bertrand might be in that mix too if not for a knee injury), and his top three returning scorers in McCamey, Davis, and Tisdale.  Illinois has three more talented players coming in next year, and Weber deserves a lot of credit for his recent recruiting success.

But if the football team has taught us anything, it’s to be wary of the local hype surrounding the Illini.  Don’t get carried away with lofty prognostications.  That said, we’re optimistic about this year’s hoops team.  They will be fun to watch with young athletic players and depth on the bench.  The days of low-scoring milk-the-shotclock-and-hope offense should be behind us, and we won’t see many more games in the 40s and 50s (let alone that nightmare Penn State game in the 30s).

Last year’s team overachieved its way to a 24-10 record behind the grit of Chester Frazier and the scoring of the now-junior class.  So what do we see for this year?  Five points in the pentagram…

Some Leaves and Stuff

A beautiful fall weekend, the likes of which we rarely see in November, meant a lot of time outside for the kids and a lot of leaves being bagged by the grown-ups.  There was also time for football, soccer, partying, and even some basketball.  But mostly it was the leaves.  With three big old trees in the yard, you just take it in stride…

53 Bags

Illinois’ offense looked competent and borderline good for the second straight week, scoring 35 points against the Gophers.  We’ve said all along the O&B would need 30+ points a game to win; too bad they waited until the season was halfway over to wake up.  Of course the competition has been less stringent after that brutal September, but how much do we attribute to more manageable foes, how much to the Offensive Coordinator finally getting it together, and how much to having a quarterback who can actually pick up blitzers and hit open receivers?  And we note that Minnesota made adjustments at halftime (and the Zooker did not) and nearly caught up after that terrible blocked punt, but Charest hit McGee on a crucial third down and Illinois got that final touchdown.  To their credit, the Illini never gave up on the season and still have the Illinois rivarly with Northwestern and a winnable home game against Fresno State.  Win those two and we’ll forgive some of the earlier crap…

The Kids’ thoughts on the Hobbit

We finished reading Tolkien’s The Hobbit this week – the first full-length book I’ve read to the kids.  It was a the obvious choice, as this was also the first book my Mom read to me.  It’s been a while since I’ve read that book and several things stand out after so many years.  Tolkien wrote in  long, descriptive, balanced sentences.  Very nice to read aloud.  The sense of place and history, the sheer amount of description is palpable in The Hobbit.  Of course this has become one of the prevailing themes of fantasy fiction, so no surprise there.  Finally, Bilbo is just a great character.  And now onto the girls’ thoughts as recorded be me with a few questions here and there…

One favorite part is when Bilbo went to talk to Smaug.  He saw the weak spot by getting Smaug to roll over by telling riddles.  Bilbo was pretty brave there.  I was afraid Bilbo might be found by Smaug, and he’d attack him and eat him.  I thought this was the scariest part.  Instead he just got a little burnt.

Power of the Stache

Somehow, Beemsville ally Grubb neglected to properly promote his participation in the annual Robert Goulet Moustached American of the Year Awards Ceremony that took place in St. Louis over the weekend.  Nominees included Attorney General Eric Holder, Sully Sullenberger (a decent pilot), some baseball pitchers, and University of Illinois alum and CBS Sunday Morning humorist Bill Geist.

Geist filed a report in his trademark hardhitting style here.  Watch the clip and marvel at Grubb sporting the Hacksaw Jim Dugan-style stache on CBS.

In Beemsville, the power of the moustache has always been tempered by the preference of the missuz.  She’s not a fan of bristly kisses.  It probably doesn’t help that any attempts at facial hair by me end up looking more like a high school kid than Thomas Magnum.

At any rate, we’re glad the moustache is making a comeback and that Grubb has his support group down there, even if he can’t find the time to blog about so momentus an ocassion as ‘Stache Bash 2009.

Big Fun Halloween

It was one of those days, as a co-worker of mine would say, with the fun-meter pegged.  Start with the last soccer game of the year for the Sidekicks, which comes as something of a relief with the weather turning worse and several of my players losing interest.  The two little Beems had fun though, and that’s what matters.

Then we were off to Champaign for our only family football game against Michigan.  And what do you know – the Zooker’s boys showed up to play.  A great hustle play by Terry Hawthorne led to an old-style four-down goal-line stand, after which the Illini went on to dominate the third quarter and pull away from the Wolverines.  We could scarcely believe it.  The Orange and Blue looked like the team we thought they could be, at least for one day.

Had to miss the 4th Quarter (which was painful) to get the kiddos back to their Uncle’s house in time for Trick-or-Treating.  We let the kids choose their outfits this year, and in a decision that warmed my heart they both decided to be super-heroes.  After that, the Missuz and me donned our costumes and hung with my sis and pals in downtown C-U.  Dubstep on the prairie - who knew?  This year our ensemble was Mermaid-and-Shark, the beats were massive, and the beer was plenty cold.  The best costume seen at Cowboy Monkey, and the winner of their impromptu contest:  some dude dressed as the Monarch of Venture Brothers fame.

Check out the brief photo-album (follow link and click on ’slideshow’), and drop us a line with your own Halloween news and stories.