Blue About Blue Jasmine

I have to open by saying that I was disappointed with Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine.

Maybe I'm feeling the same thing critics did who saw The Lone Ranger this summer, expecting something at least somewhat different, then getting...a different vision from the director.

I was disappointed first because, unlike his last two movies (Midnight in Paris and To Rome with Love), which were devastatingly funny, Blue Jasmine almost never is.

Okay, deal with that.

Second, I always want someone to attach to, to empathize with, to care about and root for.

In Blue Jasmine, you feel like it's supposed to be the main character, Jasmine (not her real name), played well by Cate Blanchett, but I dislike her from the opening scene -- where's she's annoying an older woman she doesn't know with her life story while on a plane.  I never got over it.  Call it personal.

But it seems Woody never tries very hard to make her likable.

Her life is as blue as the title, and the song that is the signature (and in the background, I think) through out -- Blue Moon.   She has "no prospects" and is forced to live with her sister, Ginger (goes with Jasmine, right?), played with some vulnerability and zest by Sallie Hawkins, in San Francisco.

After Barcelona, Paris, and Rome, San Francisco doesn't quite lead in this movie the same way (the setup is there with the opening plane trip), with cuts back to Jasmine's former life on the East Coast with the sleazy, oily dead husband Hal (played with sufficient oil by Alec Baldwin).

The pieces are all there.

But, despite the director's best twisting to gain tension, we aren't really hoping Jasmine lands the next husband -- saving her from the "menial" (her word) work she needs to do to get some kind of life.  

In the end, we don't care.  And Woody leaves us not caring.

Maybe next time.

The Myth of the Great Nats

Today, for a moment, we're talkin' baseball.

Today Dave Cameron on ESPN Insider wrote "Can Nationals make Miracle Playoff Run?"

Well, of course.

But...

See, based on last year's success, everyone things this is a great team.  Always on the verge of breaking out.

This blog is to tell you that they've got it wrong: they are a plus .500 team that got lucky last year.

First: their everyday lineup isn't that good.  Jayson Werth is having a year werth his money -- .330 and leading the team in homers.  But he's not the scary clean-up hitter a team as scary as the Nats are supposed to be is supposed to have: he's no Puig, no Kemp, no Votto, no Cabrera.  You get the picture.

Harper hits .270.  He hits a lot of homers, but he misses a lot of games.

Desmond is a good shortstop, but he's a .270 hitter, too.

Who in this lineup is Votto? Puig? McCutcheon (Werth is trying)?

Second: their pitching after the top 3 or 4 is lame.  Zimmerman, Gonzalez, Strasburg are top rate.  Haren has been up and down. The bullpen has been bad.

The Braves beat them like they are the red-headed stepchild.

I could go on and on.  But you see my point: people talk up the Nats, but where's the substance?  Who is it that's driving this bus?  Harper?  He's no Miggy.  Nobody is.

So, maybe the Nats make a run. I root for them.  But it'll be because they grind their way out of it, not because they are this great team that is just a bit off.

Who Wants Tiger Back?

Three weeks ago, in the aftermath of Phil's historic (epic) win in The Open, I wrote here of the wonder of Phil's win and the message it sent to Tiger and Lee Westwood, who both failed to grab the claret jug.

Now, having seen Jason Dufner play a classically PGA tour round of golf -- fairways and greens -- knocking it close often enough to shoot 10 under for the four days and 2 under on Sunday.  That beat Jim Furyk by 2 and the rest of field really wasn't in it after Henrik Stenson inexplicably made 5 on the short par-4 14 that he can reach with a driver.

To repeat what you've probably heard too many times already: Dufner is the 18th non-repeat major champion since Tiger won the US Open on one leg at Torrey Pines in 2008.  Only Phil, Rory and Padraig Harrington (remember him? did he make the cut at Oak Hill?) have won two majors in that time.

The PGA Tour has become Phil and the pigmies. Or Tiger and Cubs, given Woods has won five times this season.

But is this what we want to see?  Henrik Stenson winning the Masters?  Jonas Blixt taking the US Open?

History tells us that golf goes through periods like this, not dominated by a single golfer.  But we have to go back to the period between Arnie's ascension and Hogan's retirement to a time when there was no dominant force in the majors.  Since Arnie, we have seen Jack take the mantel from him, then Tom Watson, then Nick Faldo & Seve Ballesteros, then Tiger Woods.

Now, Tiger is still playing.  But since the knee injury he is, for lack of a better, more complex analysis, "past his prime," and golf awaits his successor.  Is it Rory?  Or some unknown at this point?

Sundays in majors are more interesting if there's a Tiger in the hunt. Or Phil.  Or even Rory.  Dufner v. Furyk v. Stenson v. Bradley isn't the same.  Until one of them wins a couple majors and grabs the mantel.

We need "juice" in the majors, like Muirfield, where Tiger hung there to finish 6th and Phil played one of the great rounds of all time to come from five groups back to win.

We've seen too much in the last 5 years of the ho-hum.

Bring back Tiger, so we can have someone to root against on Sunday in the Masters...the US Open...the  Open...

If he won't win number 15, we at least want him to be there on Sunday.  And it'd be great if there was the next great golfer standing in his way -- someone who wins two majors in a year and starts us talking about "the next Tiger" with some accuracy.