The Weigh In 66

And now for something a little different this week:

While most of the big summer blockbusters have come and gone and the last of the hype machines (Snakes on a Plane: 8/18/2006) is a few weeks away, you can kind of feel the lull in the movie news. Everyone is looking to next year or just simply latching onto any news to run down the pipe. A few studios have already released the fall movie line. While I’ll take a look at those films in the next few weeks, I wanted to take a step back and look at something a little different, the other side of football season.

Training camps have opened up all over the country over the last few weeks and fans are clamoring for news of two a days, rookie signings and preseason match-ups. The sports stations are all abuzz with Superbowl hopes and rebuilding predictions while the first televised game of the season, the Hall of Fame Game, was televised last weekend. Reggie White (posthumously), Warren Moon, John Madden, Harry Carson, Rayfield Wright, and Troy Aikman were all inducted into the Hall. It is time to break out those jerseys (#4 of the Green and Gold is ready for its first of the season dry cleaning) and check out those sites you favorited a year ago and haven’t been back to since January; the NFL player stat site. Because while we all keep an eye out to make sure our quarterback looks better than last year, most of the excitement of the football season will start while we are combing through last years stats and picking up the ten pound NFL preview books. Now is the time for fantasy football.

What is fantasy football?

Traditionally, in fantasy football, players form a league with friends, co-workers, or just other fans on the net. Each league has a draft and the players pick individual players that they think will give them an advantage every week. Teams are pitted against each other on a weekly basis and each player on the team is scored based on yards gained, touchdowns, kicked field goals, sacks, and yards lost caused by the defense. After a 14 week season there is a two week playoff to determine a final winner. The fantasy football phenomenon has become so popular that most sports radio and television stations have shows appealing directly to fantasy players and most if not all of the major football websites have engines designed to attract players to their fantasy system with mini games, money tournaments and the like. For some it is just another way to learn more about their favorite players, and for others it becomes a second job, complete with trash talk, weekly meetings, and high stakes.

I’m not a freak and don’t have 20 hours a week to spend on football but I do like the occasional football game…

For the casual fan, it is a great way to get more involved and learn more about your favorite players, all while getting more familiar with the rest of the NFL and give you a better appreciation for key match-ups while you are watching the game. Most sites give you basic information to look for each week and key players that could make a difference, all useful information for getting more out of each game you watch. Sites like NFL.com, ESPN.com and CBSSportsline.com are all user friendly and it is pretty easy to find a game where the players won’t take themselves too seriously. For just a few minutes during your next lunch break, you can add a little more excitement to your Sunday afternoons watching your favorite football team. You’ll even catch yourself glancing down at the ticker just to see if the starting running back for a team you never cared about before was able to break a hundred yards with a few touchdowns, even if the final score is meaningless. Who knows, you may even get hooked.


This weekend at your local multiplex (8/18/2006):

Snakes on a Plane: Action
Samuel L. Jackson, Julianne Margulies, David Koechner, Kenan Thompson, Rachel Blanchard
Plot: An FBI agent is escorting a witness from Hawaii to Los Angeles when an assassin releases hundred of poisonous snakes on the commercial airliner. The agent, witness and passengers have to band together to save themselves.
Buzz: Holy crap. After months of hype this film is finally going to be released. Will it be the B-movie schlock-fest we are all hoping for, or did the studio get the feedback they welcomed with open arms completely wrong?

Accepted: Comedy
Justin Long, Blake Lively, Lewis Black
Plot: Bartleby Gaines is determined and pressured by his parents to get into college, and when he is denied acceptance by everyone he applies to, he decides to create his own in order to convince his parents that he didn’t fail.
Buzz: See review

The Illusionist: Mystery
Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell, Eddie Marsan
Plot: An illusionist falls in love with a woman and is determined to get her back when she is stolen by a corrupt prince. When she is found murdered, he must use his skills to confront and expose the prince before he is framed for the girl’s murder.
Buzz: I honestly haven’t heard anything about this movie at all. With this cast you would think that someone would have promoted this a little more.

Material Girls: Comedy
Hilary Duff, Haylie Duff, Anjelica Huston, Brent Spiner, Lukas Haas
Plot: When social debutants and heiresses to a makeup fortune lose all their money, they are forced to get a job.
Buzz: A studio executive rolled over in his sleep onto a National Enquirer and wondered allowed, I wonder what would happen if those crazy Hilton broads lost all of their money. A year later, and viola, the Duff sisters have their latest movie coming out.



This week on DVD  (8/15/2006):

Scary Movie 4
RV
The Jeffersons (season 5)
Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier
L’Enfant
The Simpsons (season 8)
I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer
The I Know What You Did Last Summer Mixed Box Set
Hoot
Rome (season 1)
Safe Men
Hard Corps
The Clark Gable collection
The Ronald Reagan collection
Full House (season 4)
The Surface (series)
Remington Steele (season 4 and 5)
3rd Rock from the Sun (season 5)
The Weird Al Show (series)
Hogan’s Heroes (season 4)
The James Stewart Collection
The Flying Nun (season 2)
Masters of Horror-John McNaughton
Masters of Horror-Dario Argento
 

As always, please send you hate mail and love letters to DPlace76@yahoo.com. You can check out my random ramblings at http://bigdpimpin.livejournal.com/. Come be our friend and learn about all of the new and exciting news for Stumblebumland at www.myspace.com/stumblebumstudios.