Posted by Os Davis | 0 Comments
The simple rules of Butterfly Derby (plus review: Futurama, “The Butterjunk Effect”)
Though not currently based in North America, BuckBokai couldn’t wait to get his hands on this week’s episode of Futurama, the horrifically-titled “The Butterjunk Effect,” promising as it did another science-fiction sport to record in the annals.
Masters of the online science-fiction editorial universe io9, via reviewer Esther Inglis-Arkell, trashed the ep. Inglis-Arkell noted the out-of-character dialogue and action pressed upon Leela and Amy, and yes, BuckBokai must agree that a lot of the early stuff with catty remarks about shoes and weight seems like character-unspecific stuff written in somebody’s sleep. The io9 scribe did note some good bits to be hand in “the throwaway lines and sight gags that Futurama always excels at”; concurrence on this as well, then.
Read MorePosted by Os Davis | 0 Comments
Batman given Cardboard Gerald treatment in Dark Knight Rises review
Ben Swanson: Greatest Twitter-side movie reviewer ever? After busting up with 141-character bon mots from Cardboard Gerald, the “resident [Charlotte] Bobcats sadsack blogger” and “progeny of Shawn Kemp’s Lister Blister, on “The Dark Knight Rises” all morning, BuckBokai figured he’d repost ‘em all here for posterity. One caveat: Swanson has seen things we people wouldn’t dream – this one’s quite a departure from the franchise, it seems…
Spoilers follow … yeah, surrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre.
Read MorePosted by Os Davis | 2 Comments
The (E)X(ley)-Files: Reviewing “The Unnatural”
Obviously aliens: Josh Exley…
Those familiar with the exploits of super-secret government agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully can recall that scripts mostly consisted of a load of unlikely lines and in-references poorly delivered by the principals. “The Unnatural” is happily at least half an exception here, a standalone episode with the presence of Mulder and Scully kept to a minimum via means of a frame-story device; David Duchovny directed this one and actually incorporates some nice visual touches linking the two eras of the story.
Read MorePosted by Os Davis | 2 Comments
Joe Bauman and Josh Gibson: Real-life inspirations for Josh Exley
Upon viewing and reviewing the X-Files season six episode, “The Unnatural,” BuckBokai thought it only right to give a couple of baseball history’s more unfortunately obscure names their due: Namely, Joe Bauman and Josh Gibson.
The protagonist of the X-Files episode is one Josh Exley, a player for the Negro League’s “Roswell Grays” in 1947. The “Roswell” bit recalls Bauman, a longtime minor-league player in the lower minor-league levels for teams in Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. In a career interrupted by World War II, Bauman became a local attraction known for jacking long home runs wherever he played.
But 1954 was something special for baseball fans, if only the truly arcane-loving. Playing for the Roswell Rockets, Bauman torched extant home run records when he hit 72 dingers to go with a .400 batting average, 150 walks and an unbelievable 228 RBIs – in 138 games. Bauman’s homer mark stood for 47 years, until Barry Bonds topped it in 2001. Bauman, still living in Roswell, was quoted as saying that he never “thought it’d last this long, to be honest. I was watching on TV when [Bonds] hit that last one. It didn’t bother me or anything.”
Read MorePosted by Os Davis | 1 Comment
Edward Cullen vs. Pau Gasol: Who wins?
The brainwashed
Since this piece got little to no love over at big sister ‘site BallinEurope.com, BuckBokai reruns it here – search engine voodoo be damned – for an audience perhaps more in touch with the eternal war between the supernatural undead and NBA basketball…
BuckBokai recently read the latest anti-Laker screed basketball column by ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons, an alternately funny and blood-boiling confession-style bit about conditioning one’s children to cheer for the “right” sports team, i.e. Daddy’s sports team.
Posted by Os Davis | 1 Comment
R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen (1926-2010), world’s funniest umpire and Kirk precursor
One of BuckBokai’s faves – and surely one of anyone who digs on sports and science-fiction movies – has passed on, is no more, has ceased to be, has expired and gone to meet his maker, et cetera. Leslie Nielsen succumbed to complications caused by pneumonia in a Ft. Lauderdale hospital last night.
Nielsen is most remembered among sports fans (and the general movie-going populace) for his starring roles in “Airplane,” also featuring Kareem “Roger Murdock” Abdul-Jabbar, and the “Naked Gun” trilogy alongside He Who Shall Not Be Named plus a most memorable turn in episode one by Reggie Jackson. Goddamn it, too, if that umpire scene in Naked Gun I still isn’t one of moviedom’s funniest baseball scenes ever. We love it!
Read More