Barking Carnival

That’s the title of Jon Krakauer’s new Pat Tillman biopic coming this September.
Tillman was a NFL starting safety who walked away from a 3.6 million dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army Rangers with his brother Kevin. He served with distinction in Iraq and Afghanistan and was killed in [...]

I hate him with the heat of a thousand fiery suns.

Mas cinema. This from SydneyCarton. - S.R.

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Hi!
Due to the continued dearth of off-season topical conversation, Sailor Ripley has entreated a few guest lecturers to contribute to The Barking Carnival. Fortunately for him, my unchecked hubris, proclivity towards wild exaggeration and generality, and immediate recognition that HenryJames is an unrepentant fairy should allow me [...]

As we continue our quest to turn this sports blog into Ain’t It Cool News, I give you another Guest Film Crit lecturer - our pal, Scagnetti.
- S.R.
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There seems to be no middle ground on here, albeit a ground that’s well-tread with expansive, intelligent discourse. Appears we either ham up the art or pick [...]

Frequent Carnival visitor EnglishAg mentioned to me that he was an English exchange student in College Station. This struck me as an interesting situation so I asked him to write it up (with no hope for any ball kicking). Here it is.
[...]

Chris Applewhite will likely be along shortly to add his excellent ‘Review for Nerds’ but I thought I’d post some quick thoughts in the interim. 
A buddy and I have a tradition of seeing most of these sci-fi/comic book/adventure films at their opening midnight showing as the people watching often surpasses the quality of the film [...]

As a big fan of non-fiction writing across all genres, from John McPhee’s takes on feats of civil engineering to Paul Theroux’s travelogues, a good biography on a notable historical figure is hard to beat. A recent article in the New Yorker reviewed new biographies of four titans of 20th century media, starting with treatments [...]

Remember literature classes where some crazy allegory was pointed out in an otherwise interesting book (i.e. “The Nautilus represents Verne’s expressions of inadequacy as a man.”), and you thought, “Man, they are really making too much out of this.”? I’m about to do that with “Solaris”, the 1972 Russian film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky [...]

The Deadliest Warrior is a new series on Spike and it’s excellent guilty pleasure guy fare. Morning stars crashing into human replica gel-filled dummy heads, katanas slicing pig carcasses in half, and interesting, often ludicrous - occasionally hilarious - match-ups soberly presided over by bio-engineers, ER doctors, paramedics, and IT geeks with computer simulation [...]

In part II of BC’s offseason film series, we continue to examine the inner workings of Barking Carnival’s hiring practices and fundraising strategies.
Sailor Ripley invited Lenny Dykstra over to discuss his new role as Barking Carnival’s desperately needed CFO. It went exactly according to plan.

After being fired by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stephen A. Smith’s tenure at ESPN has come to an unceremonious end. It has been reported that Smith and the World Wide Leader in Sports were unable to reach an agreement in contract negotiations. He will finish out his current contract on ESPN radio.
According [...]

I was surprised by the amount of feedback on my post about “The Bad Lieutenant”.  Anyone up for more movie talk?  I like to use Ebert’s “Great Movie” list as a DVR guide, and maybe I could post some thoughts on various films.  I feel these kind of posts are worthless without strong opinions, so [...]

I was watching HBO’s Real Sports last night and I came across a follow-up on a story run seven years ago on the battle over dodge ball at elementary schools. Can’t find the video, but the segment included such activities as tag where no child is ever “it”, no-touching policies (no hugs, high fives, [...]

I wasn’t always a space geek.  In fact absolutely no one I knew growing up was.  Not that it would’ve been unmentionable if I had been.  Of course there was a mutual expectation of knowledge of and interest in sports but one was also allowed an idiosyncratic fascination or two without significant derision.  For some it was comic books and others it was [...]

“Bad Lieutenant” was a low-budget 1992 movie, starring Harvey Keitel, that made several “Best Films of the ’90s” lists.  It turns out that Werner Herzog is directing a remake of it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1095217/
The original film, directed by Abel Ferrara, was about a corrupt (in every sense) NYC cop, who somehow finds grace in the end.  Here’s Ebert’s [...]

Zach Snyder is who we thought he was.

One of my longest running internal debates is whether or not I’m gay.
I actually didn’t write that, one of my colleagues did while I was on break. I decided to leave it in for the manifold enjoyments it might offer our readers; in that my bit of it remains a nicely turned phrase, it’s a [...]

This is how it would probably go.
Me: Man, that Blake Griffin is something else. We’ll have to double and hope for the best.
sooner: Blake Griffin’s fucking good man, you can’t single him, or he’ll destroy you.
Me: Yeah, that’s why I said we’re going to have to double him.
sooner: [...]

The comments from this group will be better than the story itself. I believe that with every fiber of my being.
Momma….