Anthony J. Merced

Last night Matt Garza of the Tampa Bay Rays became the fifth pitcher this year to throw a no hitter. Now that’s not the highest amount ever. 1991 saw seven men throw up all zeros. However, it does indicate that the momentum is swaying away from big hitters in the box and toward strong arms on the mound. Home runs have been on the steady decline. Whether or not you equate this to the new rules and stringent testing for PED’s, it doesn’t change the fact that this new era of baseball is being defined by the ERA and not the RBI. Headlines have been following the professional exploits of young Stephen Strasberg more than A-Rod’s chase of 600 home runs. Last night cemented this changing of the guard.

There are now only two teams in major league baseball to not have a no hitter in their history books: The San Diego Padres and the New York Mets. Both have had their fair share of one hitters and both currently have very strong starting pitching. It wouldn’t be out of the question to see Johan Santana throw a no hitter. Especially when you consider the pitcher friendly ballpark he throws in. While a search for the elusive no hit bid isn’t on the top of every team’s list, it is already affecting their spending habits. Just two years earlier, Manny Ramirez was the talk of the baseball world. One of the best hitters, and game changing players, was traded from the Red Sox to the Dodgers. This year, the two major trades have centered around the movement of pitchers Dan Haren and Cliff Lee. Both men are seen as being the missing key to the playoff puzzle.

Winning playoff games has never been a mystery. It has always begun and ended with starting pitching. The only difference is that people have started to catch wind of this notion. Alex Rodriguez, the highest paid player in baseball, maybe soon be looking at someone with a bigger wallet than his own. That someone else will more than likely be Cliff Lee. And every pitcher after him will be waiting for their payday.

Two weeks in and it looks like Inception won’t be going anywhere. Christopher Nolan’s Sci-Fi epic managed to ward off Angelina Jolie’s latest action romp Salt. While this isn’t completely unexpected, it is rather impressive considering Inception has only dropped 32% from it’s opening weekend (credit: www.boxofficemojo.com). So far the movie has garnered over 142 million in domestic theaters alone. Considering it’s already blowing away other summer Sci-Fi blockbusters in years past, it’s worth inquiring whether or not Christopher Nolan is the selling point, or the very unique premise. Nolan’s success with The Batman franchise can’t be understated. However, he’s been able to hold audiences with his other works. Something that previous comic book adapters such as Bryan Singer Zack Snyder have been unable to do. While Nolan’s third Batman film will sell on expectations alone, it’ll be interesting to watch whether or not he continues with the franchise after solidifying his name as one of the world’s premiere filmmakers.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which opened two weeks ago, continues to have a dismal showing. It seems that children aren’t buying in to the “coolest job ever.” Lackluster reviews also didn’t help the film that was banking on mystifying children around the world. It’s 45% drop left it hanging with a mere 9.7 million dollar weekend. Unfortunately that doesn’t help put a dent into the 150 million dollar budget.

Ten years ago, if you would have said that Blockbuster Video would disappear or fade out of relevancy people would have doubted your sanity. As of today, Blockbuster is in critical condition and expected to die at some point in 2011. How did this happen? How did a company that seemed ahead of its time fall so fast? As is the case in the business world, the winds of change blow in quickly. The inability to adapt quickly makes your company go from relevant to archaic.

The interesting thing about the fall of Blockbuster is not how quickly but how slowly it happened. At first, Blockbuster was a monster that stood alone. From its beginnings in Dallas, Texas it seemed that the market was one that they could dominate for many decades to come. However, as most things go in entertainment, the medium changed. First, VHS tapes became DVD’s. This wasn’t a problem. Entire libraries nationwide were switching from the clunky tape format anyway. What they didn’t expect was that anyone would be interested in anything more than a pay-per-rental model. Netflix quickly proved this wrong. They provided subscribers with unlimited rentals, no due dates and no late fees. This was made possible by the relatively simple and cheap methods of manufacturing multiple copies of DVD films. Normally a VHS tape suffers generation loss from one copy to the next. No copy ever looks as clean as the original source. However with DVD’s each copy looks as crisp as the one that came before it. This meant that any damaged or lost copies were easily and cheaply replaceable.

Blockbuster attempted to employ many different strategies to counter the growing number of Netflix subscribers. They dipped their toes into the online rental business only to see it flounder. They also tried to eliminate late fees. This campaign lost them even more money. While late fees had been abolished, many customers were charged the full purchase price and restocking fee of the film. This lead to a lengthy and costly investigation in 48 states. As of July second one of the last major blows was announced to investors. Blockbuster will voluntarily delist from the New York Stock Exchange due to share prices falling below $1 a share.

The future doesn’t look bright for the once dominate force in entertainment rentals. With Netflix, Hulu, and even Youtube entering into the market of streaming media, Blockbuster is once again left out in the cold. At this rate it only seems like a matter of time before the once dominate empire crumbles into obscurity.

Considering the poor health of George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, it comes as no shock that he died of a heart attack earlier this morning. Mr. Steinbrenner will be remembered as one of the most controversial and passionate owners in the history of sports. He took a crumbling empire that CBS cared little about and restored it to prominence. All of this is easy to learn about simply by looking up any biography. What is harder to find is the personal stories that seem to be spilling in from sportscasters and journalists across the country.

As a high school student growing up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium its impossible to not know someone that wasn’t touched by the team or its owner. A classic story that made the rounds during lunch period was that of a kid who defaced the wall at Yankee Stadium. Obviously he was caught. However, this is where the story took a different turn. George Steinbrenner contacted the police demanding to know who had done it. He met with the kid personally, wanting to know why he had defaced a symbol of his own community. The kid’s response was “Because I’ve got nothing else to do.” George’s response was swift. He threw him a shirt and said, “Well now you’ve got a job.” Needless to say that kid’s first job was to clean the graffiti off of the stadium walls.

Where most men of power wouldn’t have cared or prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, George Steinbrenner showed compassion to the fans and the community around his franchise. He understood the state of the South Bronx and gave back as often as he could. While we don’t know what the future of the Yankees will hold, all we can do is hope that the same passion and stubbornness held by its deceased owner carries on to the next generation.

R.I.P. George Steinbrenner (1930 – 2010)

According to boxofficemojo.com Despicable Me rules the movie mountain after its 60.1 million dollar opening weekend. This number is impressive considering the hype behind The Twilight Saga: Eclipse has yet to die down. Also this is the second highest grossing non Pixar original animated film (The first being Kung Fu Panda). This may not seem impressive considering the huge opening numbers that Toy Story 3 put up but it does show that other companies are starting to find the right strategy. Pixar has flexed its muscles over the years, popping out one incredible film after another. Not only have they garnered financial success, but they’ve also stolen the elusive critical success that never seems to follow movies with high box office grosses.

The other interesting fact about Despicable Me is that most of its first weekend gross did not come from 3D screenings. As of late, the popular belief is that 3D screenings have inflated the overall numbers due to high ticket prices. Only 45% came from the 3D premium ticket price. This issue is two fold. One way to look at it is to say that people are rejecting the higher ticket price. This may be true although the extremely high grosses of Alice in Wonderland and How to Train Your Dragon have shown otherwise. The second issue is that younger audience members simply do not enjoy the 3D experience. Lately I’ve spent a great deal of time with my younger cousins and have noticed that they do not have the patience for the glasses. Many times they prefer to watch the films in 2D.

Either way, Despicable Me’s great opening weekend has momentarily solidified the union between Universal and the upstart animation company Illumination Entertainment.

Major motion pictures are a strange machine with many complex parts. Most of those parts have a stake in the financial outcome of the picture. This means that any one of those complex parts also has a say in what is left on the cutting room floor and what is finally showcased to the world. No genre suffers from this system more than the biopic. On the surface it seems like a very simple formula for success. The only task is to tell the successful story of a beloved or hated popular figure. However, what we normally get is lifeless shell that attempts to deify more than exemplify.

Biopics are no different from any other film. Many of them based on published books or memoirs. This means that a great deal of rights need to be cleared ahead of time. In the case of a biopic, not only does the source material need to be cleared, but the final product usually must also be cleared by the person or their estate. Like most people, we all want to be remembered for our finer moments rather than our glaring mistakes. Unfortunately, the most interesting cinema (and art in general) centers around our faults or imperfections. Biopics seem to lightly wash over these character flaws as merely a footnote on the way to perfection. In rare cases, Raging Bull, we get an image of the imperfect man. It is a sobering look at how success does not equate to the cinematic happiness that Hollywood has portrayed since its inception.

In 2001 Michael Mann directed Will Smith in a biopic about the memorable and often times controversial Muhammad Ali. More than any other biopic in memory, this film suffers from an extreme version of revisionist history. They say that the winners always rewrite history. However, in today’s information age it is easy to see when those rewrites take place. Ali was more of a memorial to the beloved sports figure than a film about a human being. His insecurities were washed over by athletic and political achievements. What should have been a film showing one of the more complex figures in American history turned into a chronicle of professional achievement.

This past weekend I attended a screening of the French film Coco Before Chanel. As you would guess it chronicled the early life of famed fashion designer Coco Chanel. While the film was entertaining and mildly insightful, it still suffered from the usual biopic symptoms. Coco Chanel is portrayed as a women who seemingly always knew what to do. The movie placed her in a world where she was surrounded by the insanity of the upper class. When presented with a problem it is never of her own creation. A brief search into information about her life shows a much more interesting picture after the movie ended. While her love life makes for interesting drama, it seems to neglect who she was and what her place in fashion history is (although a few words in the epilogue of the film shed some light on this).

The biopic is an interesting conundrum in Hollywood. The non fictional life does not fit into the perfect mold of the Hollywood movie structure. Unfortunately, there have been few attempts to think outside of the box. Most times, real lives are shoved into a format that doesn’t suit it. This why the modern documentary has slowly crept into the place of the biopic.

With the popularity of TMZ, ET, and various other news or tabloid outlets, audiences spend more time talking about the controversial actor rather than talking about the controversial actor’s body of work. Information is at our finger tips each time we wish to hear about the latest rehab stint or run in with the law of our favorite celebrities. Sometimes we cheer them on during their long road to recover. Other times we vilify them and point to what could have been. Our minds consider what we could have done with their wasted opportunities. Lately, things have taken a different turn. The troubled actor meets with the troubled character to create a perfect storm. The actors are able to pull from their own experience to add depth to the sometimes shallow characters they portray. On top of all this, we add our own information about the actor onto the role, giving us multiple layers that may not have been there before.

If there is an actor that best suits this description it is Robert Downey Jr. Once considered a rising star in the late 80’s, his run-in’s with the law left most people itching for the next news reel instead of itching for the next movie reel. His early roles in Weird Science and The Pickup Artist showed that he was easy to watch and easily changed. His role as Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin marked the height of his early success. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1993. Things quickly headed south as drugs and legal battles kept him from being as useful to the business as he could be. After hitting rock bottom, he needed to build his career back up from the shambles that it had become.

It wasn’t until Jon Favreau took a chance on an unproven draw like Downey that things turned around completely. Robert had never been a blockbuster actor. While critical success had found him easily, money making features were not in his resume. Luckily, Favreau saw the link between his title comic book character and the troubled actor. Tony Stark is a drunk egomaniac who, while filled with good intentions, wants the world to revolve around him. It would be hard to argue that Robert Downey Jr. didn’t share that description in the real world. Thus his performance came naturally. Sometimes so naturally that the comic book itself was rewritten on camera. A Marvel character that had been an unproven commodity on the big screen quickly became the its hottest property. Tony Stark is Robert Downey Jr. However, there is an argument to be made that Downey’s controversial past is what made it possible for his portrayal of Tony Stark to be life-like.

Vincent Gallo, an artist also known for creating controversy, is most known for his over the top personality. While few have seen The Brown Bunny most know about it’s controversial material and the wars that ensued because of it. The best way to describe Vincent Gallo is to call him an enigma. He has dabbled in music, paint, film, acting, modeling and just about any other form of art you can think of. His most memorable work has to be his role as an actor/director in Buffalo 66. What you watched on the screen was never a character but Gallo himself. The same man that wished colon cancer on Roger Ebert and talked wildly against selling your soul to the business he sold his own to several times. While Gallo the person has never been the most likable character, it has enabled him to flesh out the visions of similarly unlikable characters on screen. In Francis Coppola’s latest film Tetro Gallo plays an anger filled writer who constantly looks for separation from the work he’s done. While many men could have provided a more than adequate performance, Gallo adds his own unique perspective on a character that he seemed destined to play. Tetro the character is loud, insulting, deranged, and sometimes manic. All traits that can easily be traced back to Gallo himself.

Does controversy make the controversial actor or does the controversial actor make the controversial role? We’ve seen how success has poisoned even the most talented actors and we’ve also seen what the few that survive have become. Life experience is at a premium in entertainment. It can be harnessed but never duplicated. All it takes a few glimpses at the wooden performances filling current theater screens to wonder if life experience truly does make the difference.