Mets win again, Lucas Duda and Dillon Gee shines in series opener

So the Mets were able to win another series, yesterday with the win against the Brewers and now are off to a great start against the Pirates.  With the 8-1 win today against the Pirates, the Mets are now only one game under .500. More importantly, the Mets were finally able to get production out of left field with Lucas Duda. Duda was able to get 2 rbi’s today with Dillion Gee no skipping a beat going 8 innings with only one earned run being the beneficiary on the 8 runs scored by the Mets tonight.

Hopefully the Mets can keep on streaking as R.A. Dickey takes the mound against James McDonald, also it looks like Ronnie Paulino and Jason Bay will both be in the lineup. Maybe Bay can catch up with this streaking Mets club and be the hitter the Mets need him to be.

Reyes Does It Again, 2-1 Mets over Brewers

The Mets starting pitching has been impeccable as of late and tonight’s game was no exception to that trend. Chris Capuano, former Milwaukee Brewer, was locked in a pitchers duel with Shaun Marcum, former Toronto Blue Jay. It was a scoreless game until the bottom of the sixth inning when Chris Capuano made the first mistake of the game leaving a hanging change-up to the one and only Prince Fielder.  He was able to launch a lead-off, solo home-run to deep center to give his club the first lead of the night. Though the Mets, more specifically Jose Reyes responded.  With runners on the corners and one out in the top half of the seventh, Jose Reyes was able to hit his eleventh triple of the year giving the Mets the lead an ultimately the win after a great performances by Pedro Beato, Jason Isringhausen and Franky Rodriquez who walked in the wake of Chris Capuano’s great night consisting of six innings, one earned run and five strikeouts.

This game was much bigger than getting closer to .500, for the Mets, it was a game where they were able to win with minimal offense against the hottest team in the league with the Brewers having won six of their last nine series, only losing one of those series.  Now this is a Mets club who has won four out of their last five games. This is all being done with David Wright and Ike Davis, the power bats of this team who are on the disabled list. For a team who has had to bleed their minor leagues dry with call-ups this year, this club is able to be only two games under .500.

The Mets are better than the rest of the league gives them credit for, this year the Mets could be in the playoff hunt around the trade deadline with the return of their big bats and Johan Santana.  This would create some interesting scenarios with all the trade rumors surrounding players like Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, and Franky Rodriguez and the management wanting to dump big contracts.  Management would have to decide whether to surcomb to their fans, or to address their current financial issues. That is a problem I would love to see as well as every Mets fan come late this summer, but the players need to let all these talks and scenarios not affect them so that they can continue to play some good baseball.

Jose Reyes, An important part to the Mets and their fans.

I want to start this blog with a hot topic that has been the at the forefront of every conversation around baseball, where will Jose Reyes land by the end of the year.

Last Saturday on June 4th, I was able to head on down to Citi Field and watch my New York Mets take on the Atlanta Braves. The game was amazing, we had a great pitchers duel between Dillon Gee and Jair Jurrjens. Both these pitchers were able to hold each others lineups down as it was a scoreless game going into the bottom of the seventh. Here is where the Mets were able to show what they are capable of.

After Jason Bay was able to reach base on a fielding error by the Braves shortstop Alex Gonzalez, the stadium started to stir. Then as soon as you see Josh Thole, the Mets catcher hit a screaming line drive to right, you see the crowd beginning to wake up.

As the bases are then loaded after Ruben Tejada got hit by a pitch thrown by Jurrjens and pinch-hitter Jason Pridie gets an rbi single. Scott Proctor comes into a game where everyone in the stadium is thinking the same thing. As Jose Reyes comes up to bat, everyone is just praying to the baseball Gods that Reyes does what he does best.

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=15544411

Then on command Reyes hits a bases clearing triple down the left field line. The entire stadium just explodes as Reyes slides head first into third giving the Mets ad 4-0 lead which would hold, leading to a Mets 5-0 victory against the Braves who would then go on to win the rubber match the next day by a score of 6-4.

That one game Saturday, more importantly, that one at-bat by Reyes, proved to me how important the All Star shortstop is to the Mets. He is the heart and soul of the Mets. He leads by example and gets everyone in the dugout to play better when he is performing. More importantly the management for the New York Mets need to see this quality in Reyes and retain him, he should be considered an irreplaceable commodity to the organization as he will forever be loved by the fans of New York for his work ethic, performance, and those slides into third base.  He is too important to the fans to have traded for prospects or just let go into free agency.  I would love to see Reyes got offered a long-term contract before the All Star break as every other Mets fan believes should happen.  I hope that in the end, the Mets will not look back at their future decision on Reyes and regret it.

Info and video from MLB.com

Future States/Season 2/That Which Once Was

In this film, directed by Kimi Takesue, we follow the life of a little boy, a refugee who survived a massive tsunami in Bangladesh.  We find out that he continues to have nightmares about the tsunami, with black waves crashing upon the shore. He finds comfort working with an Asian man, who by trade makes ice sculptures.  He wound up in his care and discipline when he destroyed the mans ice sculpture. Due to this turn of events he is able to be happy once again while learning an important lesson.  He learns this lesson when he asks what is the point of making all of these ice sculptures if they will all melt anyway. The old man answers with one word, memory. He has memories that get him by, for he too lost everything in the tsunami, his wife and son. 

This film was very touching in the way that both of these people, the young boy and the old man, both lost everything but now have each other as well as their memories of their loved ones.  The boy is allowed to remember now and not have nightmares of the black wav es. I believe that this is the only way to get passed a tragedy like this, through memories and something to fill the hole that is now vacant in one’s heart. 

 

Doodle Bug (1997)

This film features a man in his apartment trying to squash what seems like a bug. As he chases it around the appartment we eventually see that it is a smaller version of him. Then we see that it is just a mini version of himself.  He then does not hesitate to squish it and does the deed. Then we see an even larger version of himself crush the man who was living in the apartment.

I believe this film, directed by Christopher Nolan to be representing a very old saying, “treat others as you would like to be treated”. So Nolan here is trying to get the message across to people this old saying. This film is trying to get the world to be a better place.  This was a creative and intersting way to express his feelings and to get his message across.

10 Minutes

This film is touted as the best short film ever made. This film is pretty good as well as emotional, but I still wouldn’t give it that title. This film displayed what times were like during the tradgedy at Sarajevo in 1994. The family being shown was right in the middle of a warzone, the child goes out to just get some bread and water for dinner from the food trolley and some shelling starts to commence. Everyone starts running in panic to their homes while the boy goes back to find that his family is dead. This is all surrounded by another scene in which some man in Rome looks to get his pictures developed in just 10 minutes. He is amazed at how fast they were developed and we are also amazed to see how a child could lose everything in just 10 minutes.

This film was one that was designed to get a reaction out of people. One that was supposed to spur action in ending this terrible war. This film did its job in getting recognition and did strike the audience, getting a rise and attention towards this war. The director Ahmed Imamovic did a reat job with this film but i don’t believe it should be crowned the best short film ever.

French New Wave

The French New Wave was a movement after World War II that brought a new way to tell stories to the world of cinema. It was a way for artists to express themselves in the way of film.  These filmmakers were able to prove that they could make successful artistic films without the mainstream studios in the form of short films. In Europe, short films are valued more that they are in the United States.  It is also considered that the directors in France were responsible for this new wave of filmmaking like, Francois Truffant, Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer just to name a few were the true founders of modern independent filmmaking.

This new way of filming was introduced as a way for people to show their own style of filmmaking creating this Auteur cinematic style that we see today.  For France was in complete ruin after the war and they needed some form of entertainment to lift peoples spirits. This style of cinema allowed these directors to show original films and more about human life, life as it was after World War II.

Free Cinema was one of the forms that erupted out of this film era in France.  It is what allowed all these expressionists film makers to make films demonstrating the French way of life for free.  If you want to see more on Free Cinema, look at some of my previous blogs and if you want to see more on Auteur cinema look at Alisa’s blog  at http://alisashortfilm.wordpress.com/.

Before Dawn (2005)

This was another short film about immigrants trying to get across the border without papers. This film though had great camera angles and visuals. I loved seeing all the fields as dawn approached and seeing the truck coming in the distance. Then all the people pop up like daisies. They rush the truck and there off. The unfortunate thing is that they were caught and were escorted off to be dealt with by patrol cars and a helicopter.

Then you see the one man who did not get in the truck, over slept perhaps, but he seems to get up after all the commotion, and crawl back to his home in hopes to get to America another day. This film was powerful in the way it was presented. It really showed the difficulties people are dealt with when trying to get to this country, showing the United States citizens that it is not that easy to cross the border.

Future States/Season 2/Worker Drone

This video was another video that looked at video games and what they may become in the future. Here we see the next type of warfare, war waged by gamers. These people at home can now help with military operations from their home.  Rahuul in this film is given an explanation by his best friend on to why this game is not a simulation, but real war. He goes into further detail as to why the United States would be outsourcing and resort to this type of war. The need for more victories and less casualties is a must.

These people are worker drones due to the fact that they are nothing but puppets to the United States military. Rahuul realizes this all to be true when he notices that the landscape is exactly the same as the landscape where his girlfriend/wife is. He quickly destroys his own teammate and leaves Global Corp.  Now he finds that a real battle has happened where his girlfriend/wife was and they embrace each other with tears of joy and fear, tears that can’t wipe away what just happened, a battle with no military casualties, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any civilian casualties.

Future States/Season 2/White

This film was shocking and will make anyone seriously think of taking global warming seriously. In this film you see a black man struggling to get money for his wife’s delivery. He is forced to use the world’s “new currency” , skin pigment. Apparently people can have the pigment of their skin extracted for money, this is then sold to white people who want further protection form the sun.  Now at the end of this film you see his pale white arms holding his Black number 35 baby (color pigment code), showing the new terrors of a chaotic world.

This film really makes the audience see the extremes of a world we may live in if we do not start preventing this from happening now. It also depicts the end of the white race. The need for darker skin is now almost essential for survival.  The  director A. Sayeeda Clarke really wants to bring the fears of Global warming to life.