Random Thoughts 11/29/12

• I was recently introduced to musician Sufjan Stevens and I'm not quite sure what to make of him.  Every time I start to think, "wow, this guy is a musical genius," then the very next song sounds like awful noise to me.  Hmmm.
• Politics drew my attention away from the World Series of Poker this year.  Phil Hellmuth got his 12th bracelet (and then his 13th when he won the main event in the European WSOP in September), Phil Ivey made five final tables, and several other previous winners and pros had great showings.  The main event had a final table with eight of the nine seats held by Americans and Greg Merson won his second bracelet and $8.5 million.
• Hellmuth's European victory not only extends his record number of WSOP wins but also makes him the first and only player to win both the American and European WSOP Main Event.  If you're not convinced he's a great poker player… just ask him.
• I watched LucasFilm's World War 2 movie about the Tuskegee airmen, Red Tails.  On the one hand, the special effects were brilliant.  I've never seen such a seamless presentation of WW2 air combat and it gives me high hopes for the future of war movie visuals.  On the other hand, it was perhaps the most poorly written dialogue of any WW2 film I have ever seen.  From start to finish, the spoken lines seemed to be generated by a random war movie cliche generator.  Just twenty minutes in I wished the audio would fail so I could watch it as a silent movie.  In fact, I'm certain a party game could be played by watching the movie muted and having the viewers improvise dialogue; randomly inserted war movie talk like "get him!!!" "no!!!" and "take that, Hitler!!!" would be little different then what was actually written.
• Part of the problem with Red Tails is that it was written and directed by men with precious little movie experience and very mixed results in television.  The writer has had his last four television series canceled out from under him in their first seasons.
• Here's a funny commercial starring Panthers quarterback Cam Newton: