Football:
It's never too early for recruiting and I love the WWI reference by Scipio in his thoughts on the 2011 class. You can't throw more bodies at a problem, but you can always through throw (it was late) more UT taught history metaphors at it and feel smugly justified in your useless liberal arts degree, I know I do.
Personally, besides the breath of fresh air that is the entire OL class, I'm most interested in Sheroid Evans for the reasons Scipio mentions. Elite speed and unafraid to lay wood. You figure with any amount of Akina/Muschamp coaching he'll be a terror in the defensive backfield. Free Safety with range all over the field, strong safety-robber who reads and robs the quarterback in the middle, the possibilities are delightful.
Basketball:
To recap the major stories here: James was named team MVP, Bradley is leaving for the draft, and they gave Barnes a million bucks.
I'm not sure there are three stories that more poorly encapsulate the mud monkey of a season that was just dropped from the spread cheeks of the Texas basketball program on our collective face than these.
Phil Jackson, in typical fashion, lambasted the refs in an obvious psychological move before the Thunder series and claimed that Durant was getting treated like a "superstar". I'm in agreement, why should the league's scoring champion get the benefit of the doubt? It's not like he attacks the rim or has a long and difficult to contest shot. Jackson should be cautious from here, he doesn't want to find himself in the lair of an angry Durantula.
On the note of giant spiders, why is there a giant spider statue in the park off Manor? Who thought, "what a beautiful park that captures part of the natural beauty of Austin, let's erect a towering statue of a repulsive and terrifying creature here next to the sandbox"? Let's just pretend this was built in honor of 35.
Art/Culture:
I know everyone has been holding their breath since I posted on the original Clash of the Titans and the new remake before I saw the newer film. You've all been waiting for my assessment of the new version...
Of course it sucked. I cannot believe they attempted to remake a movie as beloved as the original and spent what can't have amounted to more than 2 hours on the script. From the overacting of the old man who finds Perseus to the mysterious Scorpion-riding Sand People it was one big hilarious mess with several changes that seemed to be present only to be different than the original.
Some of my favorite issues:
Casting: Sam Worthington lived up to my moniker of "Homeless Man's Jason Statham" with about as uninteresting a performance as you can imagine. He just quietly eats innings/scenes like a Wakefield knuckleball and in the end you realize there weren't any disasters but it wasn't an experience worth re-living either. He's a supporting actor trapped in lead roles.
The girl they got to play whatever the name of the new made-up character ageless chick talks exactly like Rachel Weisz. Poor Man's Rachel Weisz we'll call her.
Liam Neeson did a great job as Zeus and Ralph Fiennes is apparently paying his kid's tuition bills with creepy dark lord roles but their side plot, far more interesting than anything else in the movie, was grown in the dark like the shrooms in HenryJames basement.
The Scorpions: It's not at all clear to me what's going on with the Scorpions. They appear in numbers that are impossible to discern and are somehow immediately tamed by sand people whose numbers fluctuate without explanation throughout the film. Eventually, Perseus gets a shield made out of Scorpion hide that has several problems. For instance, it's supposed to be tremendously strong but we just watched bronze age weapons cut through it like hay and it's supposed to be light to carry but the inside seems to made of reflective metal.
The two characters who, apparently off-screen, took a piece of a dead scorpion's carapace and assembled it into a shield in a few days are a perfect example of what's wrong with the movie. They appear and disappear as some kind of attempt at comic relief with their obviously plastic axes without any rhyme or reason.
Overall the movie is filled with undeveloped characters, jokes and stories and a totally incoherent philosophy. I wrote of the apparent message from the trailer:
The new film seems to be the story of man overcoming the gods without help and realizing his potential as Leterrier skips the introduction of Christianity in the history of theological thought.
Now in the film Perseus is talking to Zeus about the victorious outcome (surprise! Perseus wins) and the help he offers and Zeus says, "well I wasn't willing to lose my son to save humanity." Perseus responds, "Maybe there's a little human in you."
I'm not sure if Perseus' response can be broken down into anything that has any meaning beyond what some crappy script writer thought might sound cool but 'm feeling fairly vindicated in my original assessment. I'm not sure if the director/writer were even aware of the basic premises of Christianity when they made this picture.
Anyways, it was entertaining and somewhere between a Uwe Boll movie and Hellboy II in quality. The original was actually more impressive in the special effects, even though it featured clay-mation. They had to build models and be creative in illustrating some of the major mythic scenes instead of having the Cloverfield monster come out of the water.
One of my favorite means of watching the movie was to point out which scenes were obviously designed for 3D (I didn't shell out the extra bucks for that feature) and laugh at their uselessness in the normal version. Got a cool Robin Hood Trailer though, which combined with the unintentional comedy of Clash just about made up for the big meaty chud projected in 3D.