Cardinals & Two Movies

Well, I was right, they stunk it up pretty bad, the Cardinals, that is. Lost 19-12 to the worst team in the NFL Now, if they can manage to lose the next two to the Cowboys and 49ers, they’ll be able to pick up a pretty good quarterback in next year’s draft. They should be able to lose those two without even trying, and that’s what they’ve looked like in most of the games they’ve played. Maybe then poor Larry Fitzgerald can get back to catching passes.

I’ve seen two movies in the last week, both excellent. James Franco in 127 Hours as the crazy who liked to climb by himself and paid the price by having to hack off his own arm may get a nomination for best actor, but he won’t win. Christian Bale, in The Fighter, should be a shoe-in for best supporting actor, although I’ve never figured out how they determine who’s an actor and who’s a supporting actor. In fact, he and Collen Firth should be duking it out for that distinction. I haven’t yet seen The King’s Speech so I can’t really say, but everyone else seems to think that he also is a shoe-in for best actor.

But back to the two movies. In 127 Hours the wind- and water-carved gorges in Utah may have been the best thing about the movie. They were eerie and beautiful. We sort of hang on through most of the plot, knowing what happened and would happen, gritting our teeth when it comes time to hack off the arm using a knife he had dulled by chipping away at the imprisoning boulder. A good movie, but not as good as The Fighter. Just watching Bale do his manic thing made it all worthwhile. Mark Wahlberg, as Micky Ward, was excellent as the wannabe welterweight fighter trying to make it up and out of his Lowell, Mass., background. But it’s Bale, as the older boxing brother, who makes the film. Now I have to wait for The King’s Speech to escape the bondage of Harkin’s theatre, where it’s being shown exclusively way to hell and gone over in the East Valley. I just don’t know why so many of the good films are shown exclusively at the Harkin’s Camelview Theatre. Some of them later make it into the other venues, but some don’t.