A Stanley Cup Precursor

The Chicago Blackhawks’ 2013 hockey season has been my favorite season of sports ever. It’s not even a conversation for me. After witnessing everything that has happened this year, I wonder if I have ever even really been a sports fan before. Sure, I catch a lot of Bulls games, have even attended several, and I’ve watched about every Bears game for the past couple years, and have always watched sports since I was a child and my father would have the 90’s Bulls championship games on and would react fiercely to Bears games. I even consider myself a Cubs fan, although my enthusiasm for baseball has all but entirely faded as of late.

But this experience is new, and is inexplicable. I’ll go to the bar with friends and family to watch some of these games, just like I’ve done with every other sport every other year, but when the referee drops the puck in center ice, you won’t hear me again for another 20 minutes of game time [save the occasional couch noise]. I am transfixed and mesmerized by the sport, and the viewing experience has transcended anything I have experienced in the past. The crisp, sharp sounds of sticks, pucks, glass, and players is breathtaking and unparalleled in sports; the amount of sheer excitement and suspense never ends, for you don’t have multiple time-outs or time in between plays like basketball and football, and the energy levels multiply those of soccer because of the enclosed, smaller space, along with the fact that pucks can be shot multiple times faster and the players are on skates. There is just no comparison in this world to the experience of playoff and Stanley Cup hockey.

I won’t lie, I like being a little smug and pretentious with my Blackhawks fandom, having started watching them before they won it all in 2010 [I watched in 2009, get on my level]. That win was something entirely different from this year. That win changed everything, and gave life to a dead sport in Chicago, and I couldn’t be more glad that it happened. But the sad thing is, I wasn’t 100% interested in those games that season. As much as I hate to admit this,  I even fell asleep in game 6, the final game, before it was over. I can’t help but laugh when thinking about it now, because after 3 overtime games in a 8 days, I am actually getting physically tired watching the Blackhawks games, but I am never close to falling asleep. Pure adrenaline floods my body as the players gear up and the television networks start the hype.

I don’t want to get too far into specifics of this greatest sports season yet, because it’s not over and it could all be for naught, but I also couldn’t go another second without somehow expressing how glad I am that I have been able to experience what I consider to be the epitome of sports, and I hope everyone out there is just as glad.

Tonight, the Blackhawks have a chance to win the 2013 Stanley Cup, and although it will have almost no historical statistical significance, it would be the greatest single sports achievement for me as a sports fan.

Let’s go Hawks!

Man of Steel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAVuKPFKrNo

A young itinerant worker is forced to confront his secret extraterrestrial heritage when Earth is invaded by members of his race.

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Director: Zack Snyder

Writer[s]: David Goyer [screenplay/story], Christopher Nolan [story]

Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Russell Crowe

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Finally, after several years of waiting in a Hollywood that has probably made most of it’s money on comic book films as of late, we get to see the most infamous comic hero the world has ever known. Despite doing well in the box office and in reviews, 2006’s Superman Returns is not remembered as a great film, and was made just a few years before technology launched comic book heroes onto the big screen in an incredible way. But now, after the success of many comic book films and DC’s own completion of the Batman trilogy, Zack Snyder and company have attempted to tackle the genre’s biggest task: Superman.

Stoker

After India’s father dies, her Uncle Charlie, who she never knew existed, comes to live with her and her unstable mother. She comes to suspect this mysterious, charming man has ulterior motives and becomes increasingly infatuated with him.

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Director: Chan-wook Park

Writer[s]: Wentworth Miller, Erin Cressida Wilson (contributing writer)

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode

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Stoker caught my attention with two different facts: this is director Chan-wook Park’s first English film. If you don’t know him, he is a pretty prolific and successful writer/director in Korea, and created what I think is one of the top 10 most influential films of this decade, Oldboy. I’d have to warn that it is an intense film with some mind-altering events, but it is also cinematic gold. The other fact: this film was written by Prison Break actor Wentworth Miller, and it’s his first screenplay. To attract a director like Park, the screenplay has to be pretty awesome.

Quick Review – I Give It a Year

A look at the trials and tribulations of a newlywed couple during their first year of marriage.

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Director: Dan Mazer

Writer: Dan Mazer

Starring: Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall, Anna Faris, Simon Baker

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2/4 – A UK comedy from the writer of the Ali G show and Borat with loads of humorous dialogue in the vein of Judd Apatow. It has many laughs, but eventually the dialogue grows tiresome, for that is really the only comedic aspect. The story, performances, direction, and most everything else makes for a pretty average rom-com, but I feel some people may find the dialogue more endlessly entertaining than I did.

Star Trek Into Darkness

After the crew of the Enterprise find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction.

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Director: J.J. Abrams

Writer[s]: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin

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I’ve been hugely excited to see this movie based on how much I enjoyed the first film and the cool marketing done for the film. Although it took me a few weeks, I finally got to the theater to see it, and I have to say, I wasn’t terribly impressed.