Wimbledon 2014: Second Week

via Wikipedia

Barbora Zahlavova-Strycova was a dynamo on the junior circuit.  She won the Australian Open girls singles title twice, in 2002 and 2003.  In doubles, she was even better, picking up championship trophies at Aussie, Roland Garros and Wimbledon.  The senior tour has been more of a struggle.  In an era of tall women with ferocious power games, the 5' 5" Czech has had a respectable, though not exactly world-conquering career.  She had never made it past the third round of a Major until last week.

Every Slam tournament has its giant killers.  They're a big part of the fun.  Barbora Zahlavova-Strycova has taken out two seeded players en route to Wimbledon's second week: Na Li (2nd seed, China) and Elena Vesnina (32nd, Russia).  Her next opponent, today on Court 12, is Caroline Wozniacki (16th, Denmark), my pre-tournament favorite.  On the one hand, BZS did Wozniacki a huge favorite by taking out Li and Vesnina.  Wozniacki has never made it past the fourth round at Wimbledon so this is a great opportunity.  On the other hand, who's to say the giant killer won't strike again?

Family Movie Night: The Magnificent Seven

Title: The Magnificent Seven
Director: John Sturges
Original Release: 1960
Choice: Mine
My Overall Rating: 4 stars out of 5

via Geektyrant

The Magnificent Seven is but one strand in the far-reaching web of influence of one of cinema's most important figures: Akira Kurosawa.  The Japanese grand master directed the seminal films upon which many other seminal films have been based.  The Hidden Fortress begat Star Wars.  Yojimbo begat A Fistful of Dollars.  His masterpiece, Seven Samurai, inspired The Magnificent Seven, a 1960 Western.  While watching The Magnificent Seven, we also realized the influence on the Pixar movie, A Bug's Life - our very first Family Movie Night movie, incidentally.

A Mexican border town, harassed by Calvera and his band of raiders, hires seven gunslingers for protection.  But as with the original, this is no simple good guy vs. bad guy tale.  The more interesting moral tug-of-war is between The Seven and the villagers who have hired them.  Big names populate the cast: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Eli Wallach (who just passed away on Tuesday).

via BFI

For me, the movie is worthy of four stars for the Kurosawa legacy alone.  There's no way it's as good as the original, of course.  As far as I'm concered, Seven Samurai is one of the most perfectly rendered black-and-white films you'll ever see.  Indeed, The Magnificent Seven is strongest when it adheres to the model, weakest when it deviates (Are you reading, Peter Jackson?).  The musical score, composed by Elmer Bernstein (no relation to Leonard), is one of the most recognizable in the entire Western idiom.

The Cephalopod Coffeehouse: July 2014 Blog List

 

Greetings to all!  I hope you'll join us for the next installment of the Cephalopod Coffeehouse, an online gathering of bloggers who love books.  The next meeting is set for Friday, July 25th.  If you're interested, please sign on to the link list at the end of this post.

The idea is simple: on the last Friday of each month, post about the best book you've finished over the past month while visiting other bloggers doing the same.  In this way, we'll all have the opportunity to share our thoughts with other enthusiastic readers.  Please join us:

The Cephalopod Coffeehouse: June 2014

Welcome one and all to the Cephalopod Coffeehouse, a cozy gathering of book lovers, meeting to discuss their thoughts regarding the tomes they enjoyed most over the previous month.  Pull up a chair, order your cappuccino and join in the fun.  If you wish to add your own review to the conversation, please sign on to the link list at the end of my post.

Title: Wonder
Author: R.J. Palacio

via NPR

My Wife has devised a summer reading project for our family: a book swap.  Each of us gives the other two a book to read.  My daughter's choice for me was Wonder, a book that has been camped out at or near the top of the New York Times bestseller list for the past year and has also been the darling of the state-based book awards.  Kim Karras chose the book for her Coffeehouse post just last month.  Her post is here.

I have to admit that despite all of the laurels thrown at this book - or perhaps because of them - I approached Wonder with skepticism.  Is it a genuinely strong work or is it simply popular due to sympathy for the main character, a boy named Auggie born with a severe facial deformity?  Is it a flash in the pan until the next great tear-jerker comes along?  But I have also been curious.  And I'll admit to bias.  The fact that my daughter liked it speaks volumes.

Wonder inhabits a world I know very well: middle school.  Crazy man that I am, I teach middle school.  For me, the choice of setting alone was a stroke of genius for this story.  Sure, it's familiar for the target audience but it's also the ultimate test for an insecure child bearing obvious physical anomalies.  Schadenfreude - it bleeds from the walls in an American middle school.  At no time in our lives are the people around us so relentlessly unforgiving.  Auggie is not only new to the school but new to the very concept of school, having only been taught at home before.  Intellectually, he's more than ready.  Socially, he has a very high mountain to climb.

We see Auggie's story from multiple perspectives.  Three of the eight chapters are told from his own point-of-view.  The others are by Via (his sister), Summer (his lunch table companion), Jack (his friend), Justin (his sister's boyfriend) and, my personal favorite, Miranda (his sister's friend).  I expected a tale of cruelty and insecurity and, to be sure, there is plenty of both.  But as the book's structure reveals, there is a lot more to every story than is immediately apparent to the narrator.

I know plenty of kids like each of the principals.  I even know some with tougher rows to hoe than Auggie's.  I see them every day.  But that's not the point of the book.  We all know these kids, because they are us.  We are all a little bit Auggie, a little bit Jack, a little bit Miranda (I've known a lot of Mirandas!), maybe even a little bit more Julian (the bully) than we might care to admit.  I had a pretty rough time at Auggie's age (5th grade - 10-11 years old) but I know well enough that he and kids like him suffer experiences I can't possibly fathom.  Jack may be the closest to me - the well-intended kid who still occasionally says dumb things that hurt people unwittingly.  Though truthfully, I was probably the two Maxes - the D&D boys.

Ultimately, Wonder is about kindness.  Through selfless acts, we not only help others but save ourselves.  I love Miranda's story in particular because she does not completely understand her own extraordinary act of kindness even as she's in the midst of it.  Yet through the act, she redeems herself and fixes a small part of her own fractured world.

Perhaps predictably, the ending is very happy.  I'm not ashamed to admit that I teared up quite a lot by the end.  I still wonder if 20 years from now, people will still appreciate this story or if it will be remembered only as "that cute little book about the kid with the face."  For the record, I'm hoping for the former.

Part of the deal for the book swap was that everyone had to blog about the books.  That part was my idea.  Here is My Wife's post about the book I gave her.

Please join us and share your own review of your best read from the past month.  This month's link list is below.  I'll keep it open until the end of the day.  I'll post July's tomorrow.  Meetings are the last Friday of each month.  Next gathering is July 25th.

Star Trek: The Gamesters of Triskelion

Episode: "The Gamesters of Triskelion"
Series: Star Trek: The Original Series
Season 2, Episode 16
Original Air Date: January 5, 1968

via Memory Alpha

While trying to beam down to one planet, Kirk, Uhura and Chekov are whisked away across the galaxy to another one, light years away: Triskelion.  They have been abducted by beings called the Providers to become gladiators.  But rather than seeing the Providers directly, our heroes are controlled and trained by their fellow slaves, known as thralls. 

Apart from the Thunderdome element, this episode shares similar themes with "The Apple."  Shahna, Kirk's lovely lady jailer/trainer, was born on the planet, a product of selective breeding.  She is completely naive to the concept of other worlds or another way of life.  Kirk and friends set out not only to free themselves but the other thralls as well - from their slavers and, ultimately, their own innocence.

*****

via Wikipedia

Dick Crockett served as stunt coordinator for the episode and also played one of the thralls, the Andorian in the ring with Kirk at the end.  He was born February 27, 1915 in Maywood, Illinois.  As a stunt supervisor, his biggest television gig was Peter Gunn: 76 episodes.  Among many movie credits, he was associate producer for four films: The Pink Panther, The Great Race, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? and Gunn.  He died in 1979 of a myocardial infraction.

Wimbledon 2014: My Picks

Tennis is long overdue for a genuine youth movement, especially on the men's side.  The youngest of the top seven players in the world is Scotland's Andy Murray at 27 years of age.  To those of us north of 40, 27 still seems awfully young but in the tennis world, 25 has long been a line of demarcation.  If you haven't made it to the top by age 25, you probably won't.  Consider the current kings of the sport.  Rafael Nadal won his first Major at 19.  Roger Federer won his first at 21.  Novak Djokovic was 20.  But those three players have had such a stranglehold on the top honors for so long that even the most talented players in the next wave have struggled even to attain relevance.  Add in improved sports medicine and fitness and top pros are playing better for longer than ever before.  Even the one breakthrough this year was by Stan Wawrinka, already 28 by the time he won the Australian Open in January.

via Wikipedia

Enter Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria, 23 years old.  Never heard of him, right?  Well, he is no stranger to those who follow tennis with any regularity.  As a junior player, Dimitrov was burdened with the nickname Baby Fed, essentially anointed Federer's successor.  Like Fed, he has a strong all-court game and a big serve.  In a normal era, Dimitrov would probably have won a Major by this point.  But the Age of Fed-Rafa-Novak has been anything but normal.  Wawrinka did prove, however, that the top dogs are not invincible.  Play brilliantly for two weeks and anything is possible.

Dimitrov has a good game for grass courts, a junior champion at Wimbledon.  He just won his first ATP grass title a week ago at the 2014 Aegon Championships.  He is, without a doubt, a long shot but I think it would be great for the sport if he could pull it off.  Then maybe he can be known as something other than Maria Sharapova's boyfriend.

Speaking of 23-year-olds with well-publicized love lives, Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki could probably do with making headlines for her tennis rather than her recent split with golfer Rory McIlroy.  She was World #1 for 67 weeks but has never won a Slam title, leaving her open to great criticism while she owned the top ranking.  I've always liked her.  She smiles a lot.  But she really won me over when, in accepting the runner-up trophy at the 2009 US Open, she gave her speech in English, Polish and Danish.  That's not something you see every day. 

via Wikipedia

Wozniacki does have a grass court title, having won the Eastbourne tournament in 2009.  She is probably an even longer shot than Dimitrov but it would be nice to see her win.  It's difficult to feel too badly for anyone with $16 million in career winnings but it's gotta be rough being saddled with a label like Best Player Not to Win a Major as Wozniacki was for a long time.

Family Movie Night: Frozen

Title: Frozen
Director: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
Original Release: 2013
Choice: Our Girl's
My Overall Rating: 4 stars out of 5

via The DisneyWiki

I'm pretty sure My Wife and I were the last two people on Earth to see Frozen.  Our Girl watched it with Grandma during a visit but this was her big chance to share it with us.  To say Frozen is a successful film is to say the sky is blue.  It is the fifth-highest grossing film of all-time and also picked up two Oscars: Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song ("Let It Go" - apparently my niece sings it at the top of her lungs in the bathtub).  The movie was inspired by The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen.  Just in case you've managed to stay away longer than we did, a quick synopsis, via Wikipedia: "the film tells the story of a fearless princess who sets off on an epic journey alongside a rugged mountain man, his loyal pet reindeer, and a hapless snowman to find her estranged sister, whose icy powers have inadvertently trapped the kingdom in eternal winter."



The film is visually awesome.  There is no denying that.  I am not exactly enamored of a winter wonderland since I live in one for a decent portion of the year.  Even so, the world of Frozen is breathtaking.  The story is cute, but not exactly revolutionary - fairly predictable and everyone gets what they deserve.  One expects the franchise will be with us for a while.  There's already a stage musical in the works.  And ABC's Once Upon a Time series is set to make use of the characters in its upcoming season.  ABC, of course, is owned by Disney.

I will confess that I am not a big fan of the songs - nearly all in the current wailing Broadway delivery for which I do not care.  There are a couple of choral arrangements, however, that are more my speed.  I enjoyed the orchestral score, too, composed by Christophe Beck.

Overall, good movie.  We'll definitely be watching it again sometime.  I'm not prepared to call it great but I do understand the fuss.

If you'd like to learn more about our weekend, My Wife posted about today's arduous hike up Mt. Mansfield.