Animal Instinct
The Los Angeles Lakers advanced to round two of the NBA playoffs following last night’s 107-101 victory over the Denver Nuggets, completing a clean sweep of their mile-high opponents and leaving LA as the only team still undefeated in the postseason. Kobe Bryant tallied 31 points, including 14 in the final six minutes of the contest, Pau Gasol scored 21, and Lamar Odom led the squad with 12 rebounds. Purple and Gold now enjoy a couple days’ rest before they face the winner of the Utah Jazz / Houston Rockets series, which Utah currently leads 3-1, with game five tonight at 6:30 pm. The Eastern conference’s number one seed isn’t having quite as easy of a time as the Lakers during their opening round. In an unbelievable turn of events, the Boston and Atlanta series is now tied at two apiece after the Hawks downed the Celtics 97-92 yesterday thanks to Joe Johnson’s 35 points and Josh Smith contributing 28 of his own, going 12 of 13 from the free throw line. If Atlanta can somehow manage to oust Boston from the playoffs, it would be a monumental upset and supreme disappointment for the city still bitter from this year’s Super Bowl failure against the New York Giants. I’ve also been keeping a close eye on the Phoenix Suns’ match up against the San Antonio Spurs, a series that returns to Texas tonight with the Spurs holding a 3-1 advantage. The Suns found a way to handily defeat San Antonio on Sunday 105-86 after losing the first three. It will be fun to see if the Spurs’ coach Gregg Popovich continues issuing orders for the hack-a-Shaq defense, a strategy that has frustrated the 7’ 1” center and Phoenix fans to no end. The 2008 NBA playoffs are only 10 days old but have already succeeded in completely drawing me in. With three of four games this evening on TNT and NBA TV being potential series clinchers, I don’t foresee my interest waning anytime soon.
I made it out to the AMC theatre at Westfield in Century City to see Horton Hears a Who! Saturday night and was in rapture at the Dr. Seuss story brought to life on the big screen. The rich, vivid colors within the animation and frenetic action in Whoville were but two of the highlights in the surprisingly funny tale that trumped the two recent live action versions of Theodor Geisel’s children’s stories, The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas . If you haven’t seen it yet, keep your eyes peeled for two scenes: one where the computer generated images give way to the original Seuss drawing style and another when Horton gets into a fight and the design all of a sudden shifts into anime mode. These two moments are a somewhat jarring departure for the story’s visual presentation but succeed in ramping up the energy level by keeping the audience on its toes. I also found the time to watch the brief but exciting Cloverfield , a thrill-ride motion picture that thrusts the unsuspecting viewer into a harrowing encounter with a 350-foot monster on a path of destruction through New York City. None of the human characters were particularly memorable but I don’t think that was the point. To watch a behemoth creature devastate Manhattan in realistic detail is, as producer and Lost creator J.J. Abrams says in the special features, a clear tribute to Godzilla and King Kong but also an earnest attempt to scare people already on edge from the carnage they witness daily. I was a little put off by initial descriptions of the shaky handheld look but kind of got into the unique point of view after awhile. In fact the whole thing grew on me as it unfolded, more than I thought it would, and ended so abruptly it left me wanting more. The movie works on a visceral level but also possesses a subtext, albeit buried under the rubble of so many demolished high-rise apartments, and for that I will recommend you give it a try.
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