Twib Notes

I fear I have a weak constitution. I always seem to get sick around the holidays. This year, I made it through Christmas alright, but then after I returned from Virginia—I started to run a fever. So I stayed home for a few days. Just watching tv. Some thoughts:

–The NFL bought some time on Saturday on NBC and showed their NFL Network game on NBC. Bryant Gumbel does the play-by-play for them apparently. Dude just irritates me. I don’t know why. I think he just seems a little too uptight or something. But then it also hit me that he doesn’t completely know what he’s talking about. He would say constantly, “The Giants are going to give the ball up on downs”. He would say this when they wouldn’t convert the third down. And then they punted it away. Do you see what’s wrong with that? Giving it up on downs means that you go for it on 4th down, and you don’t make it. I’m so glad I just googled this. It was not unnoticed. Check out this story in the New York Times.

–I flipped on the tv on Sunday and started watching the Eagles play the Falcons, hoping desperately that they might lose so the Cowboys could win the division. But right away, I saw A.J. Feeley was in for Jeff Garcia so I knew something was wrong. All the starters had been pulled. And then I saw the score, 39-31, Lions over the Cowboys. The Lions! Yeesh. I was hoping that the Cowboys had done the same and that’s why they lost, because it was the 2nd stringers. But nope. Not good. Hopefully, the Tuna lights a fire under these guys. Or else it’s going to be one and done.

–I watched a number of movies too. Including a bunch of ro-cos. There’s quite a dispartiy between outright awful, “The Object of My Affection”, the passably lame, “The Wedding Date”, and the sublime, “Groundhog Day”. I think part of it has to do with how much you root for the characters. How much do you really root for Paul Rudd and Jennfier Aniston to get with each other? Not much. He’s gay. She’s straight.

Also, here’s something I noticed the first time I saw “The Wedding Date”. You don’t notice it on the small screen on Will & Grace, but when you’re watching Debra Messing at 50 feet tall on the silver screen, you’re going to notice–she has an unfortunate aspect to her nose. It’s oddly shaped. It’s off-putting. You keep waiting for them to change the camera angle. No 3/4 shots! Absolutely no profiles! And I like her. A lot.

Anyway.. All this is prologue. I’m actually infinitely glad that I watched “The Object of My Affection” because I could not stop laughing during the big dance number with Rudd & Aniston and she’s like 8 months pregnant. This then folds into the coup de gras where Rudd’s kids sing and dance to Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be”. My oh my indeed. I dvr-ed it, so I’m going to hopefully post a clip of it tomorrow just so you can see what I’m talking about.

–Finally, I watched “Hide and Seek” last night with Robert DeNiro and Dakota Fanning. Dakota’s creepy for sure. This movie actually seemed pretty good. Till you go to the big twist at the end. I’m going to tell what that is, because this turns out to be a crappy movie and I want to warn you. So Dakota is DeNiro’s daughter and his wife/her mom recently killed herself by slitting her wrists in a bathtub. DeNiro takes them to an out of the way house in the woods so they can put some time and distance between that startling event. Dakota starts to withdraw from DeNiro and soon creates this imaginary friend “Charlie” who does horrible things recalling the mom’s death. It gets creepy. You start to wonder, what is wrong with this little girl? And then you start to think maybe it’s the creepy next door neighbor(the couple lost their daughter and the dad seems more than put out about it), maybe it’s the sketchy realtor guy, maybe Dakota is just bonkers.

So it climaxes with Elisabeth Shue coming up to Dakota’s room and “Charlie” pushes Elisabeth out the window(Miss Shue being a love interest that “Charlie” is upset about.) We don’t see who “Charlie” is from this point. It’s seen through Monster Cam pov.

Okay, so did you figure it out yet? No? No idea? It’s DeNiro. He’s “Charlie”. It’s not Dakota who’s crazy! It’s him. He found out his wife was cheating on him and he killed her and then created this multiple personality to deal with it. Laaaaaaaaame. The worst part is listening to DeNiro’s childish “Charlie” voice. Up until this moment, it was an engrossing movie. Then it became crappy. I was sad, because I had stayed up till 1 am to finish it.