Sunday, February 28, 2016

Best Picture - Spotlight

source: oscar2016awards
L to R pictured
Stanley Tucci, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber
Update from January 17, 2016 entry:
Congratulations to Thomas McCarthy for his Oscar, Best Original Screenplay for "Spotlight", which also won Best Picture.

Michael Keaton has now been in 2 Best Picture films (2014 for "Birdman") in the past 3 years.

Sunday, February 21, 2016

World Bowling Tour Championship - Double D Winners


If you follow my blog posts regularly, I write about these bowlers often. They've been my favorite bowlers in the PBA and PWBA for some time now.

Young, poised, modest, and for the past year, bowling extremely well. So well they finished in the top 3 in the World Bowling Tour point standings.

Dom Barrett, 1st seed, men's division.

Danielle McEwen, 2nd seed, women's division.

The games were bowled in a new World Bowling Tour format. Very easy to follow. Each strike is 30 pins. Spares are 10 pins + number of pins thrown on first ball. Splits and opens are the total pin count after 2 balls thrown. A conventional 300 game is 12 consecutive strikes. In the modified format, 10 consecutive strikes is a 300 game.

Today, the dynamic D's won their respective matches. Dom earned an additional $10,000 dollars for his perfect game. Thanks to YouTube's bowlingvideos4all quick work, they're already available to view.

Congratulations Danielle and Dom.

Sunday, February 14, 2016

About Time - Valentine's Day 2016

source: YouTube
Rachel McAdams, Domhnall Gleeson
The remote on most weekends goes into super surfing mode. As it was President's Day/Lunar New Year/Valentine's Day weekend, the thumb press went into overtime.

Last night, the thumb got a 90-minute rest when I found the 2013 movie "About Time" starring Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams. My tear stained face after the film's end managed to see Richard Curtis wrote and directed the movie.

The same Richard Curtis who wrote "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Notting Hill" and "Love Actually". All films that left me with piles of soggy tissues no matter how many times I watched.

What I found most poignant about the film was the lesson Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) learned:
  "I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life."
Here's the trailer:

Sunday, February 07, 2016

PBA on TV

source: Bowlingdigital.com
Jesper Svensson
Congratulations to Jesper Svensson of Sweden in becoming the youngest bowler (age 20) to win the PBA Tournament of Champions.

As I was at bowling practice this morning, I didn't get a chance to watch today's PBA TOC.  It's programmed in my DVR and will likely watch after the Super Bowl.

With the return of the PWBA and PBA's Summer Swing, it's wonderful for pro bowling followers like me to be able to see bowling nearly year round.

From October to April, ESPN or ESPN2 airs PBA matches on Sundays, From May to August/September, CBS Sports Network airs the PBA Summer Swing and will air PWBA matches.

There will always be complainers that want matches to air live on a broadcast network like ABC (as it did 50+ years ago) or CBS (instead of CBS Sports Network).

I'll put it gently. The 20th century ended 15 years ago. There are too many other sports venues with larger markets where bowling cannot compete. Not going to happen.

I realize CBS Sports Network for many of you is considered a premium channel and isn't part of the standard cable package.

Suggestion: Wait a week or so and watch it on PBA's YouTube channel. Nearly all the televised matches can be found there. Best part, most of the commercials have been taken out. NO TV ads. FREE.

Here's last week's DHC PBA Invitational Finals (bummed Dom Barrett lost, but very happy Amleto Monacelli won) :