"Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994)

 

So we decided to watch a movie last night, and we wanted something light and funny, and we selected "Four Weddings and a Funeral", a 1994 British made RomCom that I had recorded off of TCM a few weeks ago.  Linda had never seen it.  I was certain that I had seen it, but as I watched, I realized that this was indeed a first time viewing for me.

We loved it.

The story revolves around a group of friends in Britain who seem to do nothing but attend weddings, while all the time wondering if true love will ever happen for them.  It stars Hugh Grant, a big star now, of course, but relatively unknown then, especially in America.  At the first of these weddings he meets an American woman, played by Andie MacDowell.  Complications, as they say, ensue.

After the third wedding takes place, we do get to that funeral of the title, which causes two of the main characters, Grant's being one of them, to question if love, true love, will ever find them.  During this funeral, one of the characters recites the W.H.Auden poem "Funeral Blues".  I was unfamiliar with this work, but found it quite moving. I have since looked it p and reread it a number of times already.  HERE is a link to it.

I confess to being a big fan of Hugh Grant.  I have always said that no actor, before or since, has ever been the equal of Cary Grant in terms of star power and pure movie star panache, but Hugh Grant comes the closest. "Four Weddings and a Funeral" made Grant a star, with his shaggy hair, goofy glasses, and trademark stumbling, bumbling style of speaking.  The movie is worth seeing for his performance alone.

MacDowell and Grant

Grant with co-star Kirstin Scott Thomas

Loved the ads she wore in this movie!

"Four Weddings and a Funeral was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award in 1994, along with "Quiz Show", "Pulp Fiction", and "The Shawshank Redemption".  All of them lost out to that year's winner, "Forrest Gump".  "Forrest Gump" was a good movie, but I could make a case that each of the other four would have been a more deserving winner.

Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

Ramblin' Thoughts On A Saturday Afternoon

 Some Idle thoughts from an idle mind.....

The Pirates have started the 2026 season on a fairly good note.  They are 8-5. The staring pitching of Skenes, Keller, Mlodzinski, Ashcroft, and Chandler had been quite good, if not very good.  New additions Brandon Lowe and Ryan O'Hearn have delivered as hoped; new addition Marcel Ozuna, not so much.  

And 19 year old rookie phee-nom, best prospect in baseball Konnor Griffin has arrived!

After getting an RBI double in his first AB, Griffin has collected only two hits since and is hitting .143, in 21 AB's in seven games.  Way too early to worry, and one thing that Griffin has shown is that he can flash the leather.  It appears that the Pirates have got their short stop for the next decade or so.

Did I say "decade"?  The other big news concerning Griffin is that he and the Pirates signed a nine year, $140 million contract  extension that will tie Griffin to the Bucs through the 2034 season.  This, of course, is completely out of character for Bob Nutting's Pirates, and it certainly is a positive development, but let's not give Nutting the Dapper Dan Award because of this.  As the owner of a professional sports team that purports to be all in on winning and winning championships, this is doing merely what you are supposed to do, something that Nutting has NOT done in his tenure as Pirates CEO.  As comedian Chris Rock says, you don't get special credit for doing WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO.  

As usual, The Grandstander will wait until the thirty game mark of the season before giving a more thorough evaluation of this season's Buccos.

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We are now halfway through (now speaking in hushed, reverential tones) The Masters, A Tradition Unlike Any Other. I confess to having been glued to the early round coverage of the event on Prime and ESPN for the last two days.  What can I say?

While I have no gripe against Rory McIlroy, he's a likable enough guy, I hate to see what he has done over these last two days.  Through two rounds, he is at twelve under par and has a six shot lead over his nearest competitor.  He has threatened to remove any semblance of drama from this year's tournament.  Like I said, I have no axe to grind with McIlroy, but I hope that he comes back to the field a bit, or that three or four guys surge forward to make it interesting come the fourth round on Sunday.

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In honor of The Masters I will close with this musical interlude from well known golfer and sometime crooner Bing Crosby.  May all your shots be "straight down the middle".

Catching Up on Oscars Movies

Linda and I are spending time this week catching on some of the Oscar winning and nominated movies that we have missed.

This, of course, was the big one.  The winner of Best Picture, Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Supporting Actor (Sean Penn), Adapted Screenplay (Anderson), and two others.  This movie opens in the early part of the 21st century, and we see that a group of radical and quite violent "revolutionaries", among them Leonardo DiCaprio, are using any means possible to protest.....capitalism? government immigration policy? does it really matter?  

Anyway, Leo is in love with one of his fellow revolutionaries and they have a baby.  The woman get captured and turns states' evidence and goes into witness protection, leaving Leo and the baby behind.  We then flash forward to the present day.  The baby is now 16 years old, and Leo is doing his best to raise her while he drowns himself in booze and drugs.  His days as a revolutionary are far behind him.

Then, his daughter gets kidnapped and Leo has to revert to his old ways and his old network of radical friends to help him rescue her.  There is  humor in this as DiCaprio tries to get back in the game but keeps forgetting passwords and other such things from his old gang, but this is no comedy. It is a straight up thriller of a movie as he tries to save his daughter. Thrown into this mix is Sean Penn as fascist-like Army Colonel Steven Lockjaw, who has a personal interest in finding the missing girl.

Oh, and the movie culminates in a car chase involving DiCaprio, Penn, and the daughter, Willa, played by Chase Infiniti, but let me tell you, this is unlike any car chase scene that you have ever seen in a movie.  Director Anderson has filmed what has become a movie cliche in a way that is new and different, and just as exciting as Steve McQueen in "Bullitt", Gene Hackman in "The French Connection", or any chase in any James Bond movie.  Trust me on that.

If I had to vote, I still think that I would cast my ballot for "Sinners" as Best Picture of the Year, but I won't argue that Academy's Choice of "One Battle After Another" for the big prize.

In addition to Penn, who certainly deserved that Oscar, this movie scored three other acting nominations:  Teyana Taylor for Best Supporting Actress as Perfidia, Leo's lover and the mother of Willa, but I think that Miss Infiniti, as Willa, probably deserved that nomination every bit as much if not more that Miss Taylor.  Benicio Del Toro was nominated as Best Supporting Actor and he was terrific as the guy who helped DiCaprio in his quest without ever losing his calm demeanor and all Hell was breaking loose around him.

Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for Best Actor.  Michael B. Jordan was most worthy of that Oscar this year, but DiCaprio was terrific in this one, and he, too, would have been a deserving winner.  In fact, after watching this I had the thought "Has DiCaprio ever been less that terrific in anything that he has ever done?"  I don't think so, and to that end, I commented that he has become this generation's version of William Holden, who was also terrific in everything that he ever did.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

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"Blue Moon" tells the story of famed lyricist Lorenz Hart, who teamed with songwriter Richard Rodgers to write and produce some of the greatest songs of the first half of the twentieth century, songs that populate the Great American Songbook.  The movie takes  place on one night in 1943, the night that "Oklahoma!" debuted on Broadway.  That show went on to redefine musical theater in America, and it was also the first show that Rodgers wrote with Oscar Hammerstein II, after his falling out with Hart years earlier.  As Hart bemoaned, "the biggest hit of Rodgers career will be the first show that he wrote without me."

The movie is essentially a filmed play.  It takes place in one setting, Sardi's Bar and Restaurant, and Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart carries the show.  He has probably 75% of all of the dialog in the movie.  Hawke was deservedly nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in this one.  Andrew Scott, who I liked so much in the 2024 Netflix series "Ripley", played Richard Rodgers, and Margaret Qualley played Elizabeth, a 20 year old girl with whom the 47 year old Hart was smitten.  A scene of conversation in the Saudi's coat check room between Hawke and Qualley towards the end of the movie was positively terrific.

Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley, Ethan Hawke

I knew who Lorenz Hart was, but I certainly did not know his story, so this movie was and education as well as an entertaining movie experience.  The movie is worth seeing on many levels, not the least of which the terrific music on Rodgers, Hart, Hammerstein, and others of that era that plays throughout the entire movie.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

That Duke-UConn Game

I hope that you all were watching that Regional Final game between Duke and Connecticut on Sunday afternoon.  I was watching and I was rooting for the Blue Devils for two reasons: (1) I had a small ($3.00) on Duke, and more importantly (2) I really, really dislike UConn Coach Danny Hurley, and take great joy when he gets beat.

Throughout the first half when Duke led by as many at 19 points and took a 15 point lead into the locker room, it looked like was going to get my wish.  Then, the Huskies began their version of Aesop's Tortoise and the Hare fable and kept chipping into Duke's lead and turning what looked to be a rout into a game.  Still Duke led by five with 1:51 to play, and had a 72-70 lead and the ball with :10 to play after the UConn kid goes 1 for 2 on the free throw line.  All they had to do was inbound the ball, hold onto it, get fouled, and game over.  Instead, Duke attempts a pass across mid-court, it gets deflected and stolen by UConn, and then...

Freshman Braylon Mulllins sinks a shot from the logo, and UConn wins 73-72.

Michael Wilbon calls things like this a "shout-out-loud" moment when you see it, and that was certainly true as both Linda and I, well, shouted out loud as we watched it unfold.  As I often say, a game like this is why you follow sports.

Two other comments:

When you saw Braylon Mullins being interviewed post-game you realize what a kid he is.  I swear, he probably only has to shave once, maybe twice, a week.

Then there is the head coach.

In a profession - college head basketball coaches - that is filled with irritating and obnoxious people, Danny Hurley has to rank in the top five in those categories, but good God, it has to be conceded that he is one helluva coach.  He has already won two national championships at UConn, and on Sunday he was in a  situation after that first half where his team was getting its ass kicked all over the court, and had every reason to throw in the towel and go through the motions in the second half and say "wait 'til next year".  But they didn't, and Hurley had to be a combination of Knute Rockne, Vince Lombardi, John Wooden, and Bill Belichick to keep his team in that game and overcome what appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle. You gotta tip your hat to him, however begrudgingly.

In his Substack today, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar included this two minute clip, of the last two minutes of the game (minus commercials and time outs).  Kareem's comment was brief:

"It’s not over until it’s over. But when it’s over…wow, what’d I just see?"

It's Opening Day!

Yes, today is Opening Day, actually, Opening Night, of the 2026 Major League Baseball season, and joy reigns throughout the land.  It starts with a nationally televised game between the Yankees and the Giants.  The game will be played at the Polo Grounds!  Well, the Polo Grounds are long gone, and it's not actually televised, it is being streamed on Netflix, so you have to pay to see it.  MLB tapping another revenue source.  The rest of MLB opens tomorrow, and the Pirates opener against the Mets will be nationally televised on NBC.  

Why would NBC, back in the baseball business after many years, choose the Pirates to open the season?  Well, this guy no doubt played key role in that decision:

Yep, that is 2025 Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes, fresh off of a great showing in the World Baseball Classic who will be the starter for the Bucs tomorrow.

Why is it, Grandstander, you may ask, haven't you written about your favorite baseball team all winter and throughout Spring Training?

It's a good question, and the truth is, there is no good reason for it, other than, perhaps, laziness on my part?  Or, perhaps the performance of the Pirates and their chickenshit, cheapskate ownership has just turned me into a complete cynic when it comes to them.  In fact, the Pirates did make some moves this off season that might make you feel encouraged.  They actually traded for and signed some significant, we hope, players over the off season - Brandon Lowe, Ryan O'Hearn, and Marcel Ozuna to name three.  After years of doing NOTHING in the off-seasons, they actually did SOMETHING this past winter, but the question is, will that SOMETHING  be good enough to actually make a difference?  

One thing that the team does have is good starting pitching, led by Skenes, who, if he isn't the best pitcher in baseball, is certainly among the top three or four.  Other starters include Mitch Keller, Brandon Ashcroft, and Bubba Chandler, plus the hope that Jared Jones will be available to pitch by Memorial Day.  With exception of Keller, these are young guys with great potential, but they haven't shown that they can do it in the Bigs just yet.

The problem last year was that the Pirates couldn't hit or score runs.  Perhaps the additions of Lowe, O'Hearn, and Ozuna will rectify that, but there are still giant question marks at third base, short stop, catcher, and the outfield, which figures to be a sieve defensively.  Looming over all of the Bucs' offensive questions is 19 year old Konnor Griffin, the #1 prospect in all of MLB.  He will start the season in Triple-A Indianapolis, where the team hopes to get him some AB's against a higher level of pitching.  (He has never played above Double-A and only there for half a season.)  It is hoped that he lights it up at Indy, joins the team by Memorial Day, and begins a career at short stop where he will become a combination of Cal Ripken, Derek Jeter, and Honus Wagner.

Some people are saying that the team has a chance to make MLB's expanded playoffs this year.  They were a God-awful team last year, and it is hard to imagine that they could make the leap from Pathetic to Post-Season in a single year.  The betting lines have set the Over/Under on Pirates wins at 76.5.  Seventy-seven wins would represent a six game improvement over 2025.  That doesn't seem like much, but, the Pirates have made me very skeptical about their chances.  I saw my first Pirates game in 1959, and the fact that the ownership of this team has turned someone like me so cynical may be their greatest crime of all.

I bet the OVER.  Maybe they can improve by seven games, but I would still be shocked if that break .500 this year.

Hope I'm wrong, and, as always, LET'S GO BUCS.

March Madness 2026

 

If you are like me, you spent much of the this past weekend, Thursday through Sunday night, watching the opening rounds of the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament.  It was great.  Saw a lot of good games and some great players, and I look forward to the Regionals that will be contested this coming weekend. 

Since the weekend, I have heard a number of people bemoaning the fact that college basketball as it exists today has "killed Cinderella" due in large part to NIL money and the transfer portal.  They point to the fact that all of the sixteen teams remaining in the tournament are "big programs" from power conferences, and that the fact that mid-majors just "can't compete anymore".  To that I say....it has always been thus.  Oh, sure, first round upsets are always fun, but when the smoke clears after the second round, there are usually nothing but blue-bloods left standing.  Once in a while a George Mason or VCU manages to advance, but those occasions are few and far between.  Rather than me go on and on about it, let me cut-n-paste from the today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column from sports writer Paul Zeise:

• People complaining about the lack of a “Cinderella” advancing in the NCAA tournament are people who have a romanticized view of the event that isn’t based in reality. The truth is one or two of those mid-major teams pulling an upset is fine. A run like George Mason had to the Final Four once in a while is fine. But the tournament is best when the best teams and best players continue to be showcased as the tournament goes on.

The power conferences should field the best teams, as this is the tournament to decide the national champion. I enjoyed watching the High Point win against Wisconsin as much as the next guy, but I don’t want to see five or six High Points winning, and I certainly don’t want to see more than one of them in the Sweet 16.

I know that there are many theories as to why the mid-majors have been shut out of the Sweet 16 the past two seasons. The transfer portal and NIL are a big part of it — the mid-major schools have essentially become feeder programs for the power teams. But there are other factors as well. And it is OK that the power conference teams are taking control of the tournament. As I have written many times, the landscape of college athletics is changing and will continue to change, so you might as well embrace it.

Nailed it!

As for what lies ahead, I will give you a prediction:  Houston over Arizona in the Championship game.  Had not seen Houston play all year, but when I finally saw them this weekend...Wow.  They was one strong team.

And speaking of strong teams, I watched the women's tournament game between Connecticut and Syracuse on Monday night, which UConn won by a score of 98-45.  It was 65-12 at halftime, and Syracuse scored only 4 points in the second quarter.  Watching the Lady Huskies on Monday night was positively jaw-dropping.  Maybe Syracuse just had an off night, a very, very bad off night, at the worst time possible.  

Or maybe Connecticut is just THAT good.  I don't see how any team can beat them.  

By the way, that win over the Orange was their 52nd win in a row.

Finally, one of the highlights of the weekend for me was watching Iowa's Alvaro Folgueiras make the shot at the end of the game that gave the Hawkeyes a 73-72 win over defending champion Florida.  Folgueiras was the Player of the Year last year in the Horizon League when he played for Robert Morris and led the Colonials into the NCAA Tournament.  He transferred to Iowa after the season (see Paul Zeise's comment above about mid-majors becoming "feeder programs"), and now he has contributed to a Big Ten team making it to the Sweet 16.  

Always nice to see a Colonial, even a former one, make good!

Folgueiras hits the winner!

To Absent Friends - Neil Sedaka

 

Neil Sedaka

1939-2026

I did not want to let too much more time pass before registering this tribute to singer/songwriter Neil Sedaka, who died last month at the age of 86.

A musical prodigy on the piano, Sedaka teamed with his Brooklyn high school classmate and friend, Howard Greenfield, and together they produced hit records out of New York's Brill Building like "Oh Carol", "Happy Birthday, Sweet 16", "Calendar Girl", and perhaps his biggest hit, "Breaking Up Is Hard to do", which was Number 1 on Billboard Top 100 in 1967.  Like many of his contemporaries, Sedaka was swept away by the British tidal wave of bands and singers that was led by the Beatles in 1963.  Sedaka continued to write music and perform, but his days as a star appeared be over.

In the mid-seventies, however, it was one of those British stars, Elton John, who encouraged Sedaka to come back, and John helped produce the album "Sedaka's Back", the album that brought Sedaka back into mainstream popular music, and after that, he never really went away.  His comeback  was also helped immensely when the duo of The Captain and Tennille recorded his song, "Love Will Keep Us Together", a song that became one of the biggest hits of the decade of the 1970's.  (If you listen closely to the closing chorus, you will hear them sing the words "Sedaka is back".)  In one of his obituaries he was quoted as saying that after "Love Will Keep Us Together", he went from an annual income of about $50,000 to one of over $4 million.  He even re-recorded his biggest hit, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do", this time as a slower, more romantic ballad, and it once again hit the Billboard Top Ten in 1975.

Neil Sedaka had a long and prolific career, he was said to had written close to a thousand songs, but I will close by saying that my own personal favorite of his was "Laughter In The Rain".  You can see him singing it live in a performance recorded in 1975 HERE.  The fashions and the hairstyles are way out of date, but that song never will be.

RIP Neil Sedaka.