15. Honeymoon

This film went into limited (allegedly it was wide but good luck finding it at the cineplex) release on September 12th. Written and directed Leigh Janiak (making his directorial debut), the film follows good looking, young newlyweds Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadway) on their honeymoon (hence the name of the film). Instead of going to Hawaii or some tropical locale, they decide to go to Bea's family's lake side house (they call it a cottage but it's a house) in the Canadian woods. A secluded lake house (in the offseason mind you) in the woods. Let that sink in. So you know nothing good is going to happen.

Things start as you'd expect, they're very happy and and they do lake stuff like go boating and fishing. One day they decide to go to a restaurant and they run into Bea's old childhood pal Will (Ben Huber), who's clearly not having a good day and initially asks Paul and Bea to leave in a fit of anger. When he calms down and recognizes Bea, he gets a little more hospitable. Then his weird wife Annie (Hannah Brown) enters and tells Paul and Bea that they should "leave." That incident right there should've been a hint for them to trek back to Brooklyn but like they shake it off as them being Canadian and go back home. That's when things take a turn for the deeply weird. After some strange lights come through the house, Paul finds Bea naked in the woods. She pulls a sleep walking excuse but Paul's a bit skeptical especially when Bea messes up breakfast and starts using strange phrases.. The next day on the boat while getting frisky, Paul notices profuse bleeding from Bea's vaginal area. Now he's worried as things are not adding up.

I don't want to give it all away but let's just say both Paul and Bea start their descent into madness for different reasons and it ends badly. This was a really good film. It shows that a scary film doesn't need a lot of effect to be scary. We watched this On Demand and it was worth it. The ending is very good and the moments leading up to it are very intense. Solid acting and direction. Not the scariest of films but for me, there was one scene that really creeped me out. This film is worth watching in any format. Find it. Watch it.

14. Oculus

I watched this On Demand over Labor Day weekend with my girlfriend. Weird as it may seem we both kind of have a soft spot for horror films. She digs scary possession type films while like the stalk and slash films. Though we do both enjoy the "descent in madness" films as well. The film received a 74% on rottentomatoes.com so, we decided to give it a test drive. The film is low budget horror that seems to saturate the market these days. There's very little gore and no overtly outlandish special effects. The estimated budget was $5 million. Oculus opened on April 11th on over 2,600 screens and took in over $12 million opening weekend. To date the film has grossed over $41 million worldwide. With those numbers, there will be a sequel.

The film takes place over two time time periods, there are the actions 11 years ago when the Russell family first encountered the mirror and the present. The film slips into in between the two era sometimes very well and sometimes not so much. The film opens with Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) being released from a mental institution and his sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan) is picking him up. Kaylie lets Tim know that she has the mirror and that they need to fulfill their promise to destroy it. Now let's go back...

Eleven years ago, Kaylie was 13 and Tim was 11. Their family just moved into a new home in a remote exclusive neighborhood. As the movers are bringing in furniture it's decided to put the antique mirror in the office. Once the mirror is hung in the office, weird things start to happen. The mirror starts by killing the plants and making the dog sick. Then it goes to work on the parents Marie and Alan (Katee Sackoff and Rory Cochrane). Present Day: After some convincing, Kaylie take Tim back to the house where things went bad. Kaylie has gone through a lot of trouble to bring the mirror back and has spent good portion of the last decade researching the mirror. Apparently the mirror is a dark entity that has caused the deaths of nearly 50 people over the last 400 years. She's also cooked up this elaborate scheme to record the events of the evening.

The film continues to switch back and forth. In the past, the children watch helplessly as their parents descend into madness. In the present, things get weirder and weirder. Tim and Kaylie see things as the reminisce about what happened, Tim is skeptical of everything that's happened. Its obvious that the decade in the mental hospital affected his memory. Let's cut to the chase, things go bad 11 years ago. Both parents lose their shit in different ways and as things breakdown in the past, things gradually get worse in the present. The mirror is really doing a number on Kaylie and Tim. Without spoiling too much and putting it bluntly, Tim finds himself in the same situation in the present as he did 11 years...being hauled off to the looney bin.

The summary was not that descriptive but this is the kind of film that I don't want to give too much away. Tis was a pretty solid film for what it was. Dark, creepy and a bit scary. The acting was solid all around. There were sometimes when the switching back & forth got annoying but that was needed. There were two stories, what went down when Tim and Kaylie were kids and their attempt at destroying the entity that damaged their once happy family. The stories are connected and lead to the same terrible end. I must admit I am still not sure how Kaylie was going to destroy the mirror. The was an elaborate system set-up to do so but I am not sure how she was expecting to get there.

Oculus is a solid rental for a Friday or Saturday night. 

The NHL's next wave of alleged expansion

The NHL, one season removed from it's 3rd work stoppage in under 20 years, has allegedly decided to add four teams. Howard Bloom of Sports Business News reported last week that the four alleged expansion cities are Quebec City, Toronto, Seattle and Las Vegas. Four expansion teams would have to pony up $1.4 billion in expansion fees. One. Point. Four. Billion. Dollars! Do you know how much of that ungodly sum would have to be split with the players union? ZERO. The owners carve it up amongst themselves like a Thanksgiving turkey. Would the NHL as a whole benefit? Doubtful. Will the owners pocket tens of millions of dollars? Absolutely! That's why it is going to happen. Make no mistake. Money is the only reason why there may be expansion.

Sweet cold cash.

Now, there are a couple of articles on this subject that are written by professionals and use actual statistics to make their point. I encourage people to read them. Now the NHL denies this but think about it for second, the NHL has labor peace until 2017-18 and the league is flourishing right now. Two main reasons why they are allegedly thinking about it.

Here's why I think NHL expansion is a dumb idea. There are currently 30 teams with 16 teams in the Eastern Conference and 14 teams in the Western Conference. Of the four teams mentioned, Seattle and Vegas would go into the West and Toronto and Quebec going to the Eastern Conference. That comes the conferences would have an 18/16 split. It's possible the NHL could move Detroit back to the West but two seventeen team conferences sound stupid.  Again, this is all speculation.

One of the articles I referenced above is form fivethirtyeight.com and they're stats say that a team in Las Vegas is a bad idea man. Vegas was the fastest growing city in the U.S. until the economic bubble burst in 2008. I like Vegas. Lots of people love Vegas. In short bursts. Vegas is a tourist town and the regular people who live there usually work more than one job and the hours are not conducive to a 7pm start. Plus there's so much competition for your entertainment dollar in Vegas that I just don't believe that the NHL can wriggle into a top slot. Regardless of any state of the art arena they build there, I have my doubts as to how many season ticket packages they can sell. Vegas is a great venue for an all-star weekend but I just don't believe that the city can support a team. 

I have my doubts about Seattle as well. Sure the city is still bitter about how things went down with the Super Sonics leaving town and they were robbed. But Seattle already has the Mariners and the Seahawks. Allegedly there's a core of NHL fans that occasionally venture into Vancouver to catch Canucks games but in the few times I've been to Seattle, I've never seen anyone who wore any type of NHL paraphernalia. Seattle never seemed to care about the NHL for decades, now all of sudden it's a viable market? I don't buy it. Seattle has had a history of pro hockey from 1944-1975 and there an attempt bring the franchise into the NHL but it never came to fruition and the NHL told Seattle to go f*ck themselves (allegedly) when the Seattle contingency couldn't get financing. Does Seattle even have a venue? One of the reasons the Sonics bolted for OKC was the Key Arena was a bad arena. The city put a lot of financing into the Seahawks and Mariners so how much is left? Sorry Seattle.

As for the Canadian cities, if Toronto can support a 2nd team then why not. Now Quebec had the Nordiques from 1980-1995  before moving to Denver to become the Avalanche and winning the Stanley Cup in 1996 and 2001 (that had to hurt).

The Nordiques were one of the four teams that came over from the WHA in the merger in 1979 along with the Oilers, Jets (now the Coyotes) and the Whalers (now the Hurrincaes). After the Oilers, the Nordiques were probably the 2nd best team from the merger winning the division in 1986 and 1995 (both seasons yielded 1st round playoff exits) and going all the way to the Wales Conference Finals in 1982 and 1985. What sunk the Nordiques (as well as the Jets) was the weak Canadian dollar. All the Canadian teams make Canadian money but they pay the players in American money and that led to the sale of the team and the move to Denver. The Nordiques had a real good rivalry with the Canadiens, they played each other 4 times in the playoffs and played to a draw. They had some interesting moments like this...

It was a different time. 

If Quebec City can support a team, which it looks like they can, then let them have a team. Let's be honest, I always thought their uniforms were pretty cool too...

What can I say, I dig the fleur de lis.

The other major concern is the dilution of the talent pool. To me, there's already too much mediocrity. Adding more teams will mean that mediocrity can become too high a bar. Do you think that the hockey fans in Toronto want 2 lousy to mediocre teams? I doubt that (although the Leafs looked like they were turning things around in 2013 before losing a game 7 to the Bruins then missing the playoffs this last season). If Vegas and Seattle stink, how long will those franchises last? Sure the potential for $1.4 billion is probably too much to pass up but it will hurt the league in the long run (being the expert financial sports franchise analyst that I am). There are teams that aren;t in very good financial waters now. The Coyotes were propped up by the league since 2009 (the team went bankrupt) before recently finding a new ownership group. Though the consensus is that the group is looking to bolt from Phoenix as soon as possible.

A lot of other teams have had problems, the Islanders were poorly mismanaged for nearly two decades. Charles Wang finally sold the team and they're moving out of the wretched Nassau Coliseum into the Barclay's Center in Brooklyn for net season. They were so poorly run at some point, flim-flam man John Spano was briefly the owner of the team before he got indicted for fraud. The Ottawa Senators have problems in the past as they couldn't meet payroll. Though the franchise has turned itself around over the last few years. 

It's a bad idea. If the NHL expands they owners and players will run into the same problems they had in 2004 and in 2012. I guess being a billionaire means never being wrong. Of course, the NHL denies such a thing is taking place but you know the owners are thinking about it. Thank you for your time.