Below is a link to my Bucknuts article previewing the upcoming Big 12 Championship game. As most of you know, this game has National Championship implications as a Missouri victory will vault them into the National Championship while a Oklahoma win would most likely but my Buckeyes in the Championship game.
Lots of controversy and disgruntled fans about how the championship game is shaping up (similar to EVERY year). ESPN is not making it any better either. All of the finger pointing, complaining, and whining seems misplaced as the real issue is a lack of a playoff system. Until that happens people would be better served writing their athletic directors and conference commissioners demanding change rather than trying to discredit any team in front of you in line for a title shot.
This week’s commercial of the week goes out to ESPN’s Do You Know Gameday Handshake commercial. Every week ESPN has unveiled a new commercial imploring viewers to guess on the habits, traditions, and personalities surrounding their hit college pre game show , College Gameday. Gameday has a cult fan base and is taken in by millions of viewers on television and thousands in person as the show rotates from stadium to stadium.
The commercials are usually funny and probe your guessing ability to imagine the culture, routines, and personalities of this great show. And for the commercial below, the answer is actually true if you are dying to know.
This is my first movie review for benkoo.com and before I jump into it, I thought I would give some background on my overall tastes. I am very selective and am skeptical of most movie going opportunities that come my way (my 2 roommates want me to see Beowolf at an Imax theater in the East bay). In college I soaked up a lot of good new movies and caught up on a lot of the classics but haven’t had the time to see a lot of good flicks this year.
With all that being said the Coen Brothers are two of my favorite movie makers and I was enthralled with the preview and subsequent reviews for No Country for Old Men. In particular I was excited to see Tommy Lee Jones in this movie as this seemed to be an extension of his performance in The Three Burial of Melquiades Estrada, a movie that I really enjoyed.
So I ventured to my local theater on opening night, opting to forgo the unpleasantness of bars the night before Thanksgiving. For 90 minutes the movie was everything I expected and much much more. Great acting, great direction, gripping suspense, and memorable action sequences that will be forever etched into my memory. Up until I read more about the movie I thought it was Kurt Russel playing the protagonist, Llewelyn Moss, but as it turns out it was Josh Brolin who put in stellar performance. Picture and spoilers below
No Country for Old Men doesn’t dilly dally as the movie opens with Anton Chigurgh, one of the most scary and evil bad guys I have ever seen killing a deputy and subsequently using his car to pull over a driver in order to steal his car (yeah he kills him too). Llewelyn Moss then stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad. Dead bodies everywhere, with a truck- full of drugs still waiting to be claimed. Several miles away Moss finds one final dead body and more importantly a case of $2 million. Moss takes the money back to his trailer where he and his wife engage in some classic banter.
In the middle of the night Moss decides to go back to the scene as there was one man who had survived the massive shootout and was in need of water. Moss finds the man dead, shot by a second barrage of attackers. In the distance Moss sees a group find his truck and begins to chase after him. In an exciting but somewhat unbelievable scene, Moss is able to escape without catching sight of his attackers. Moss knows that with his truck at the scene, its only a matter of time until he is hunted down.
Later we come to find that Moss’s would be assassins was not Chigurgh but rather “The Mexicans”. Through out the movie Chigurgh and “The Mexicans” in addition to Carson Wells, played by Woody Harrelson, track a shrewd and determined Moss who is smart enough to send his wife away from what would ensue. Unfortunately for Moss the money has a tracking system in the case, one that can pick up a signal from short distances. Moss, Chigurgh, Wells, and the Mexicans do battle in a variety of border towns. The middle portion of this movie is absolutely fantastic as the resourceful Moss is barely able to survive wave after wave of attacks.
This great movie will draw mixed reactions as the ending seemingly falls short of all the build up in the first 3/4 a movie. No Country for Old Men racks up gun fights, dead bodies, comical dialogue, and epic chase scene during the first 90 minutes but slows to a crawl as Moss’s final demise is not shown but is only inferred. We do not know how or who finally ended Moss’s heroic attempt to defy the odds.
Moss’s death slows down the movie although it seems one last confrontation between Tommy Lee Jones’ character (sheriff) and Chigurgh will unfold. Surprisingly it does not happen and there is much debate on why and how the two sidestep what seemingly would be an epic showdown. Keep in mind this movie follows the book, so all criticism on that front should not be targeted at the Coen brothers.
The final 10 minute stretch of No Country also raises some eye brows as Chigurgh confronts Moss’s wife and presumable kills her although that is up for debate as well. In the aftermath of this confrontation Chigurh is injured in a random car accident one that seems to veer away from the direction of the entire film. Tommy Lee Jones closes the movie with a somewhat lackluster monologue citing his rationale for retiring as sheriff. The screen suddenly goes black thus ending one of the better films of 2007, but one that could culminated with an A+finish to go along with the rest of the movie.
The ending is what you make of it. Although most of us would have liked to seen the continuance of action, violence, and suspense spill over into the final 4th of the movie, this movie stayed true to the novel and focused on the subplot of a sheriff wanting to keep peace while avoiding danger. I think this movie will grow on me and others as its really a unique story, executed terrificly by the Coen Brothers. However still many of us wonder what could have been, if the ending closed out the film with the level of intensity, excitement, and suspense that captivated the audience through out.
Tomorrow is turkey day and I can’t wait. 4 day weekend! Here are some random thoughts I have on tomorrow’s games and some other items.
-The gods have smiled upon ESPN. They are broadcasting the only college game tomorrow with 6th ranked Arizona State taking on 11th ranked USC. The NFL game going concurrently is what should be a snoozer between the Colts and Falcons. Keep in mind this game is on the NFL Network only meaning most of American won’t even have a chance to watch Peyton Manning light up the Falcons defense. A couple blogs ago I wrote about how the cable companies are really hurting themselves by not having channels like the NFL network compared to DirectTV. This is the perfect example. To help build buzz for what should be one of the more watched games of the year on ESPN, ESPN.COM has ran with this story all day as it’s main feature.
- On Sunday I commented that although the NFL slate of games for Thanksgiving was pretty lackluster, I was at least thankful that I no longer had to watch Joey Harrington on Thanksgiving. At the time I didn’t know there was a third game with Harrinton’s Falcons taking on the Colts. Still I was safe as Harrington had been so bad, he had been benched for maybe the 15th time in his career or so. I spoke to early as it was announced yesterday that Harrington will start vs. the Colts tomorrow. Maybe next year?
- There is a lot of talk about who will win the NFL MVP. The three front runners are Tom Brady, Terrel Owens, and Randy Moss. Don’t involve yourself in arguing with anyone over this. Brady has it and barring injury will run away with this one. A receiver would only get this award over his QB, if he had a massive share of the TD’s and catches and the quarterback threw a lot of picks to dampen his case. This is not the case with Brady and while Owens is having a great season, one that will likely be rewarded with a lot of NFC awards, he has no shot in overtaking Brady.
- I recently engaged some friends about what’s more entertaining between NFL and College. I used to be an NFL guy, but my love for my alma mater and how intense this 2007 college season has been has put me fully behind college. For many it boils down to the fact that NFL is the pro league with names they recognize. Very understandable. However if you look at the quality of games, intriguing story lines, and the pure passion behind the team’s you have to give the nod to college. Just take a look at the NFL’s slate of games this weekend and tell me what sticks out as being a can’t miss. On the college side there is a nice assortment of intriguing games with 4 games having top 25 team’s facing off in addition to some great rivalry games. With more college games being broadcasted than NFL, and a MUCH wider distribution of the ESPN Gameplan package compared to NFL Sunday Ticket, I think college football is in great position to grow their fan base at a faster rate than the NFL
Before talking about my commercial of the week, I wanted to bring up that I recently noticed that advertisers are now segmenting their commercials based on if consumers have HD. Let me explain. We all get ESPN and those of us who have HD receivers and tv’s get ESPNHD which is the same content but on a seperate channel.
Currently I would say about 60% of new commercials are in HD, up considerably from 6 months ago (maybe 40%? back then). However it was during tonight’s Monday night game when I had a second television on the non HD ESPN channel running simaltaneously that I noticed that ESPN HD was playing a completely different commercial. Although most of the commercials lined up several times, the HD channel would have a different advertisement about every other commercial break.
Nothing ground breaking here as I am sure plenty of people know this, but just an interesting fact that may have flew under the radar. Adverterisers are wise to segment the HD early adopters who are likely to have higher incomes, more education, knowledge of high end electronics and technology, and a willingness to spend on luxury items.
With that being said the commercial of the week goes to this new Iphone advertisement targeted spefically at the Blackberry business professional community. Although the release of the Iphone was met with a lot skepticism from the Blackberry owners, slowly and surely Blackberry owners are making the conversion. Its something I am seeing first hand as business professionals are coming to grips that the Iphone has the main functionality needed for work purposes and prefer the Iphone user interface. The below commercial is a great example showing off the stocks and email widgets in addition to looking up articles in Business Week and WSJ. Apple is really getting aggressive in their advertising and are doing a great conceptualizing their great products to the general public.
Below is a link to my latest bucknuts.com articles which discusses how this is likely to be the last chapter in the Ohio State Jim Tressel vs Michigan Lloyd Carr era. Tressel has dominated the series 5-1 and and has won 3 straight against their bitter rivals thus putting Michigan’s current senior class in jeopardy of going winless agaisnt Ohio State, a feat that has not been accomplished in more than 40 years. Also on the line is a Rose Bowl berth and Big Ten Championship. Should be a great game.
Below is also a commercial for the HBO documentary “The Rivalry” that has been airing all week. This gets a ringing endorsement from as well as people with no affiliation from either school. Definitely good stuff.
It was about 4 years ago when I predicted the demise of DirectTV, the largest satellite tv company and biggest rival to cable providers. I made the proclamation after seeing the new On Demand DVR’s that have since been rolled out to the masses (I lived in one of the initial test markets and was enthralled by the new technology). I hypothesized that in the end consumers would opt for digital cable because of the new On Demand technology in addition to the inclusive telecom bundles being offered by Time Warner, Comcast, and others that included phone, internet, and cable (or 2 out of 3).
4 years later I now think the opposite as Digital cable providers have stagnated in terms of product and service while DirectTV has revamped their offering. Below are three key differentiation points where DirectTV has seized a clear competitive advantage.
1) HD-
6 months ago regardless of who your cable or satellite provider was, HD content was not widely available. While cable companies have added to their HD lineups, the recent Direct launch of a new satellite which has added a wide assortment of HD channels has anointed DirectTV the HD king.
HD has their own group of enthusiasts who fiend for anything and everything in HD. Many of these enthusiasts have migrated to DirectTV or have recently relocated and have found this once difficult decision to be made a whole lot easier. In fact Direct TV grew its customer base by a net quarter million subscibers in 2006, with much of that growth attributed to their market leader status in HD content.
2) Sports Progamming
DirectTV has made it a priority to out pace the cable companies in available sports programming. Below are 3 examples
a) The widely popular NFL Sunday Ticket is only available on DirectTV. The Sunday Ticket and therefore DirectTV serves as the only option for displaced fans outside of their team’s television market as well as the only viable option for eateries, pubs, and other commercial locations that hope to attract patrons by having the total assortment of NFL football games. Direct TV not only makes extra revenue from this popular package ($$$$$$ for businesses who subscribe) but is now offering their Super Fan package for an extra $100 bucks to fans looking to view every single touchdown on a Sunday afternoon.
b) The NFL network. DirectTV was one of the first providers to pick up the NFL Network and was wise to do so as the once upstart NFL network now broadcasts some of their games on their increasingly popular cable channel. Last year cable providers who had yet to strike a deal with the NFL Network (some vow to never carry it) felt the wrath of multiple fan bases who were not able to watch late season showdowns that were showcased on the network. With no deal still in place with some of the largest cable providers, DirectTV stands to absorb a second wave of pissed off NFL fans.
c) With the help of DirectTV, the upstart Big Ten Network became the first cable network in history to be in 30 million households in their first 30 days. The big 3 cable companies have yet to join the party though and are losing subscribers at a fast rate to Dish Network, smaller cable companies, and Direct TV who do carry the network. Cities inside the Big Ten region include Chicago, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, and Minneapolis. The Big Ten also has the largest alumni base of any athletic conference thus extending the number of people who are steamed they cannot view their alma amateur’s athletic events on television. In fact the game of the year, Appalacian State vs Michigan was the Big Ten Network’s inaugural broadcast and was predicted by cable executives to be an example of the “second class” programming.
3) Customer Service
The cable company is notoriously known for having the worst customer service and product quality of any industry in the United States. In fact consumer reports place Comcast with the lowest customer service quality in the United States with Time Warner and others close behind. With high customer service internal turnover combined with hardware and network issues constantly irritating consumers, the cable companies are entrenched as US consumers number one foe.
While DirectTV gets mixed reviews for their customer service, the majority of subscribers swear by the companies ulta responsive customer service efforts. DirectTV is known to go to extreme in keeping disgruntled customers often throwing in premium channels, sports packages, lowered rates, or new hardware in exchange for a chance to “earn back your business”. This customer centric approach combined with a more robust and streamlined website has allowed DirectTV to retain customers at a higher rate while also appealing to customers like this lady who have found themselves at war with their local cable company.
Conclusion: Similar to US auto manufacturers, the big 3 cable conglomerates have some catching up to do. Instead of focusing on emerging market trends and consumer needs, these companies were too busy focusing on mergers and acquisitions rather than focusing on product and now find themselves with a more and more hostile customer base who are seeing added value in making the switch.
Despite the fact that Peyton Manning appears in about 1/2 of the commercial you view during a fooball game, I got to give cred to one of his newest ads. I really haven’t enjoyed Manning’s work off the football field what so ever but found this Mastercard commercial to be entertaining. Although usually one to give an enthused pep talk, Manning keeps it real with the the millions of men who believe a toned 6 pack is within their reach. Definitely a break from his normal shtick of being monotone, uncharismatic, and not funny. This time Manning is monotone, uncharismatic, but funny.
Got to call out this hilarious ESPN the magazine ad featuring recent cover boy Greg Oden. For those of you who don’t know Oden is a 19 year old 7 foot tall freak of nature basketball player that looks as is he is 40 years old. The former Buckeye and number 1 pick is unfortunately out for the season due to a knee surgery.
The commercial is affective and comedic as Oden pokes fun of himself. Oden is truly an interesting character and a refreshing change of pace for the NBA, a league that tends to market either the super gritty/aggressive/alphha male persona or the cool/confident/stylish persona . Oden does not fall into any of these buckets by a long shot as he was a 4.0 honors student in high school, dressed up as Erkel from Family Matters for Halloween, constantly pokes fun of himself, and is probably as level headed yet corky as pro athletes come.
