S.K.o.S.

I can't be the only person who thought that was Road Dogg.

I haven't actually seen Blackfish, but I'm thinking The Cove winning Best Documentary in 2010 could have something to do with it. It covers some of the same ground (dolphins rather than killer whales, though) and maybe the Academy was like "been there, done that".

Sarah Polley, director of Stories We Tell, took her non-nomination very graciously, tweeting: Way to make me feel like a jerk Sarah.

Oh shoot, Oprah's not in there either. The only Butler in there at all is William Butler for Best Score.

Crash Reel either. Or Blackfish, which I'm a little surprised about. That was probably the most mainstream buzz for a Best Documentary candidate since like Fahrenheit 9/11.

Washington has allegedly scored 43 points in the first quarter against Miami. Leading 69-48 at the half.

Here's another good resource if you're looking for 2013 movies to watch: a page that compiles and averages a whole bunch of best-of-2013 lists. http://moviecitynews.com/2014/01/the-top-tens-of-2013-155-lists-and-counting/

I just became aware that the Palestinian movie Omar is on the 9-movie shortlist for Best Foreign Film. It's the only one of the nine I've actually seen, and I liked it a lot but it's probably not Oscar-worthy. Guess that'll be the one I'm rooting for, though. Indiewire is predicting Act of Killing and Crash Reel both get nominated for Best Documentary, and then Stories We Tell beats them both out for the award. If that happens I will shake my fist at the TV so aggressively. Indiewire is also predicting one of the Somali pirates in Captain Phillips gets nominated for Best Supporting Actor, which would be interesting. (edit: Apparently this is not that uncommon of a prediction.) And if it's not him, then there's the question of who's going to be the fifth nominee after Leto, Cooper, Hill and Fassbender.

Yeah, in the vein of the Serkis talk, I've seen some discussion about whether Scarlett Johansson deserves a nomination.

Hey, remember Armond White? He's still trolling. arts.nationalpost.com/2014/01/13/armond-white-expelled-from-new-york-film-critics-circle-after-allegedly-heckling-steve-mcqueen-at-awards-gala/

If Kaepernick runs in for a touchdown and, let's say, cups his ear at the crowd, that would be glorious.

We haven't had our one-in-four upset yet this weekend, which is ominous given what Peyton does sometimes. ...it was Carolina that had the bye, right? Niners played last week?

Wtf.

Replay looked like he pushed him with his hands, then landed on him. Not really a hit.

For what it's worth, I (kind of) almost attended that Chikara show - I was in Tampa for business last March, but it was the weekend after the show. Too bad. I did get to the St. Patrick's day parade downtown though, that was a decent time.

There hasn't been any talk yet here of what this does to the indies. The EVOLVE iPPV that I watched last night cost $15, which is a perfectly reasonable price, and I personally would pay it again in the future, but it starts to seem like a lot less of a bargain now. And maybe it's not even a matter of value for money. Maybe some people will be much less interested in seeing what's out there on the indies when they're already full up on wrestling from the all-you-can-eat buffet that the network is gonna be. Whoever writes EVOLVE's e-mail updates (Gabe? I dunno) had a few paragraphs on this the other day, comparing WWE to Wal-Mart. And that's not to demonize them, but they're a huge company who has decided to throw their weight around and change the price points on things in a significant way. It's a very apt comparison. They recognize that the reason WWE is doing this is to make themselves money on the TV rights, not to put the indies out of business, but it's still going to have a big effect. In the end, they said "We've just got to be that much better now." Hopefully, competition will be a positive thing for as many people as possible. It did make me feel like I have more of a responsibility to keep supporting their product (and if I got worked, so be it).

Re the EVOLVE iPPV: Watched it as well. Felt much the same as you guys. Baretta-Nese was my MOTN, which surprised me because I wasn't expecting much from them. Hero-Ricochet had a kind of Malenko-Mysterio at Halloween Havoc feel to me, in the sense that Hero didn't really let Ricochet up to do much flying. Ricochet did seem very comfortable with mat wrestling, and he did get some flying in, but I wanted something more like Ricochet-Claudio at BOLA from a couple years back, where Ricochet is either flying or being obliterated. That was my first time seeing Uhaa Nation. A guy that size doing a standing SSP... damn. But yeah, it was a very good show, no bad matches. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, they have two more iPPVs tonight and tomorrow. For me personally, there's no way I'd pay for more than one show in a weekend, but it's good that we at least have the option to watch them live if we want. Editing to add: YES. That was one of the first things I noticed. I was feeling bad for them because there were so many empty seats. Then they go on commentary "We've got a jam-packed crowd here tonight" and it's like "Uh, really?"

I wanted to suggest this but I was hoping you'd all wait until Canada got on board. I'm wondering if there might be ways to get around the no-Canada thing. There are certainly ways to get at the Netflix USA video library from a Canadian computer.

It's at 3% now. Village Voice gave it a positive review for having lots of shirtless guys. I'm not kidding.

I was gonna ask which of their weekend Florida shows are on iPPV, and then I checked, and all three of them are. Oy! But yeah, I'm thinking the Tampa one looks like the best of the bunch.

I love the show, but that third episode where they're keeping the basketball player in the hotel room may be the single worst episode in the entire series.

Just heard an interview with Kevin Weekes where he must've said "except Rick Nash" three or four times. "Everyone on this team is a great player having a great year... with the exception of Rick Nash."

I didn't think I'd seen a whole lot this year, but I've watched 21 of those 100, so I should be able to put something together. The Crash Reel is not on that list and is well worth seeing. It's a different spin on the "head trauma in sports" debate - what if you were on the short list for the best in the world at your sport (snowboarding), and then nearly killed yourself doing it? Would you be able to go back? It'll be out on dvd in early February and still has a chance at a Best Documentary Oscar nomination.

To add to what's already been said, I thought the Bucks 4-way opener was perfectly good and the Makabe match was at least decent. Man that undercard was a slog to get through though.

Oh man. Just the way they planned it