Way Too Early 2015 Starting Pitcher Rankings

1) Clayton Kershaw (LAD)
2) Felix Hernandez (SEA)
3) David Price (DET)
4) Chris Sale (CWS)
5) Max Scherzer (???)
6) Corey Kluber (CLE)
7) Madison Bumgarner (SF)
8) Jose Fernandez (MIA)
9) Adam Wainwright (STL)
10) Yu Darvish (TEX)

An Everyman's Movie Review: Foxcatcher

When I first saw the trailer of Foxcatcher I was instantly hooked. After Moneyball, I was in on director Bennett Miller, I was in on Steve Carell doing his best to win an Oscar, I was in on Channing Tatum trying to expand his range, and I was in on a stylish, creepy movie about a creepy fucking dude. I was so excited about this film, that I ranked it as my #2 most anticipated film of this fall season. In that column I wrote, "I actually can't imagine a scenario where Foxcatcher is bad 'per se' but I can envision a scenario where the film is just not as good as I am hyping it up to be."

As it turns out, Foxcatcher is bad. I mean really bad. It's not Troll 2 or Saving Christmas bad, but it is not a good movie. I could take a movie with great performances that's not very engaging or a movie in which I am self-aware enough to know that I don't like it because my expectations were set way too high (because at least then I can re-watch the film), but neither is the case with Foxcatcher. The film's main problem (among many) is that there is no conflict. For the vast majority of this movie, these characters just exist. They're there, and that's it. I could actually take that if Bennett Miller was properly setting mood and tone to help the audience feel uncomfortable surrounding a creepy situation, but that doesn't happen either. What's most infuriating about the story that's been chosen to be told is that natural conflict should arise. The whole reason this story deserves to be made into a movie is rife with conflict, yet that barely shines through.

The 10 Best Singles of 2014

I think this year in mainstream pop culture will be remembered for two things: that it was absolutely dominated by females artists (at least seemingly more than normal), and that it was a really bad year for music. Now don't get me wrong, the two are not mutually exclusive. It is absolutely NOT the case that because there was more mainstream female artists with popular songs that that was the reason music this past year has been bad. I think that's just coincidental (especially considering Adele and Lorde is going to dominate my half-end year in review). But the fact remains, the past 12 months have not been very good, especially at the top. There was no clear but #1 song of the year, and even creating a top 5 was difficult. But with all of that being said, there still was some quality nuggets among the garbage that are worth talking about and worth listening to over and over again. Here are those nuggets and my list of The 10 Best Singles of 2014:

The 14 Best TV Shows of 2014

Television programs and programming is in a weird place right now. The Golden Age of Television is long gone (although its official death came when Breaking Bad ended last year) and in its wake we're seeing a huge crop of quality TV shows from a variety of different sources. Yet despite the gross number of quality programming, there isn't a show like The Sopranos or Breaking Bad anymore. Hell, there isn't even a Lost anymore. You'd think with more traditional and non-traditional service providers cropping up that at least one of them would give us The Next Big Thing, but it hasn't happened yet. Instead, what we're left with is a shit ton of really-good-but-not-Holy-Shit-amazing shows. While the "Top 14 of 14" sounds like a gimmick, it's sort of not. There's just that much good television shows to talk about that I need to expand my list beyond a Top 10, but I had a difficult time going past 14. So without further ado, here is my list of The 14 Best TV Shows of 2014:

My Interstellar Review and The New Norm For Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan is my favorite director of all time. I will blindly go see any movie the man makes. Hell, I went to see Man of Steel in part because his name was attached to it. It was my blind faith that I even went to see Interstellar in the theaters at all. Nolan was coming off of his worst movie since his debut of Following, The Dark Knight Rises, and the trailers made Interstellar seem horrible and boring as shit. I was neither looking forward to nor excited to see Interstellar. But this was still a Christopher Nolan film, and as such, I needed to go see it.

And bow howdy am I glad I did.

The reason I will go see any movie that Christopher Nolan makes is because between 2000 and 2010, the director had one of the greatest runs in the history of American cinema. You would have never guessed that a man responsible for the 1998 indie film Following would go off on the hot streak that Nolan did. (At one point, and it still might be, Following was streaming on Netflix. I watched the first half hour of it and I had to turn it off because it was so bad and it was not compelling).

Why The Hunger Games Represents The Best of the Young Adult Adaptations

I'm going to go on the record and say that I enjoy The Hunger Games franchise. They're not great movies by any stretch of the imagination, but they're mind-numbingly enjoyable as shit. Now I most certainly am not a fan of all movies that are adaptions of YA novels, but I do enjoy The Hunger Games. I think I like the franchise so much because it fills the void that Harry Potter left behind. As a man in his late 20's, I grew up on Harry Potter. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was released when I was 10, the movie adaptation was released when I was 14, and the 8th and final film came out when I was 24. The Harry Potter books and films have literally been a part of half of my entire life.

The Harry Potter franchise works because it fulfills that innate desire that we all have to want to be destined for something better, especially among little kids. As a young boy, the character Harry Potter was not only told that he's a wizard, but he's the child of two extremely popular and skilled wizards and that he defeated THE most powerful wizard known to wizard-kind. Harry Potter was not only famous in the wizard world, but he was wealthy beyond his wildest imagination. Harry Potter was an incredible athlete, would constantly get away with rule-breaking (and often get rewarded for it), and ended up saving an entire civilization. What little kid reading a book series like this wouldn't be enchanted and compelled by this world? The Harry Potter franchise gave you hope that you could be whisked away into another world where your best wishes are granted.

Why Nightcrawler Is The Better, Improved Version Of Gone Girl

There are a lot of similarities between David Fincher's Gone Girl and Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler: both star a career-best performance by their A-list leading man, both are a dark, twisted tale brought on by a sociopath, and both are a scathing satire on the relationship Americans have with the media. The only difference is that Gone Girl is directed by an experienced director with a rookie screenwriter, whereas Nightcrawler is directed by a first-time director with a veteran screenwriter. While we like to think as movies as the director's forum (whereas TV is the writer's playground), the reality is that if you do not have a great, or even good script, there's nothing even the best directors can do to tell a masterful story.

That's the main problem with Gone Girl. While David Fincher is at his best in his latest film, and he probably does some of the best directing work of his career, Gone Girl is just an average movie. There's nothing that Fincher could have done to save Gillian Flynn's script, and in fact, Flynn's script in the hands of almost every other director is a flat out bad movie. It is not that Flynn is a bad screenwriter, it's that her original story (Flynn also wrote the book Gone Girl) is so bonkers, bat-shit crazy that I'm surprised it ever became popular enough as a book to get Hollywood's attention. You can read my full review of Gone Girl here.