Scoring's up, but not me

When your fantasy world turns upside down: How to survive Tony Romo, Drew Brees& Matt Forte woes

Tony Romo is down and your fantasy football may be on the way out.
Drew Brees is throwing as many INTs as a vintage Ryan Leaf.
Can Chad Ochocinco keep using his hands for more catching and less Tweeting?

Last week, I was tempted to write in this column about how Week Six was one of those rare fantasy weeks for me when everything falls into place. All three of my teams scored triple digits in winning handily, and I figured that I would talk about how awesome it felt when things come together like that, especially since it’s such a rare occurrence.

I ultimately decided against it, fearing that it would be show of hubris, causing the fantasy gods to show offense and immediately plague my team with locusts or floods or ACL injuries.

Apparently, even considering such braggadocio was enough to turn my fortunes against me, because I suffered through a heinous Week Seven. On the NFL’s highest-scoring week in two years, even though two of my three leagues have scoring systems so liberal that your players practically get points for drinking Gatorade, I managed to crack 50 points in just one of the three leagues and was soundly beaten in all three.

What’s impressive is that I managed to underwhelm in a variety of ways. There were poor performances by reliable players, idiotic lineup decisions by yours truly and one injury that not only ruined my week in one league, but possibly destroyed my championship hopes. Let’s take a look back at this carnage. Maybe you can take some sort of lesson from this horror show

In my NFC-only league, which I run and contains close friends and family, I came into the week at 3-3, but riding high after back-to-back huge efforts gave me the overall point lead. But my team has been notoriously all-or-nothing, and this was a nothing week, with all my weaknesses glaring brightly. My top running back, Matt Forte, was supposed to be Marshall Faulk in the Mike Martz offense but instead gets about as much carries as Trung Canidate used to. And Michael Crabtree went back in the Witness Protection Program after emerging from hiding the past few weeks. My brother’s team beat me by a jillion.

Next up was my work league, where the situation was very similar: So-so record (3-3), but solid point totals. Plus, I thought that this was the week that my first-round pick, Drew Brees, would have a bust-out day against the lowly Browns. By his fourth interception, it became abundantly clear that wasn’t going to happen. This actually was the least of my disasters, as Brees got some garbage points and Ochocinco finally used his hands for catching and not tweeting.

Still, my two heretofore reliable runners, LeSean McCoy and Rashard Mendenhall, struggled, leaving me vulnerable to a Monday night comeback by my opponent.

Worst of all was the debacle that my online league suffered. This team was unbeaten after six weeks somehow, despite the fact I whiffed in the draft with early choices on Ray Rice on Larry Fitzgerald. I caught a break by playing a guy who scored just 63 measly points, and yet my team sputtered and stumbled their way to a pathetic 34 points heading into Monday night.

It would have helped if I had Kenny Britt on my roster. Oh, wait, I do have Kenny Britt on my roster; I just chose to sit him in favor of Jabar Gaffney. Oof!

Yet I still had my quarterback in play on Monday night, and a big game would allow me to come back for an ugly victory. If you haven’t guessed that my quarterback was Tony Romo, then you haven’t been paying much attention.

By the time I turned off the TV on Monday night, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus. The bottom line is that I’m probably not as smart as I thought two weeks ago, nor as dumb as I seemed last week. Who knows what this Sunday will hold?

If it’s another like last week, I’ll be switching to a Fantasy Celebrity Apprentice League real quick.

unspecified

Movie Review

Billie Eilish takes fans behind the scenes in immersive 3D tour film

Photo by Henry Hwu/courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Billie Eilish in Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft - The Tour Live in 3D.

In 2021, at the tender age of 19, singer Billie Eilish was already the subject of a documentary, The World’s a Little Blurry. At that point, she had only released one album, so the film threatened to feel too early for such treatment. The ensuing five years have only made her a bigger star, though, so in many ways that movie now feels prescient for the person on display in the new concert documentary with the unwieldy title of Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft - The Tour Live in 3D.

Directed by Eilish and blockbuster filmmaker James Cameron, the film takes viewers inside Eilish’s 2024-2025 tour in support of her latest album, 2023’s Hit Me Hard and Soft. Filmed mostly at her series of shows in Manchester, England, the movie is a showcase for Eilish’s music, but it also serves as a smaller exploration of the type of person she is, as well as the impact she has had on her legion of fans.

The draw of the film is the use of Cameron’s beloved 3D technology, which he has employed in each of the three Avatar films. Unlike in those films, where the 3D has the odd effect of making the visuals too realistic for their own good, the technique brings an intimacy to the large-scale show that underscores the unique bond the singer has with her supporters.

Eilish and Cameron go back and forth between performances at the concert to behind-the-scenes sequences, detailing the enormous effort it takes to put on a show like that and how Eilish spends her time getting ready for it. As in The World’s a Little Blurry, this film continues to portray the singer as down-to-Earth, someone who yearns to maintain the connection to her fans that she’s had since she released her first single, “Ocean Eyes,” 10 years ago.

And as the many emotional songs in Eilish’s concert playlist prove, the feeling from the crowd is mutual. While Eilish has multiple bangers like “Bad Guy,” “Therefore I Am,” and the Charli XCX collaboration “Guess,” it’s the sad songs like “Everything I Wanted,” “Happier Than Ever,” and the Oscar-winning Barbie anthem, “What Was I Made For?” that hit the hardest. The depth of feeling emanating from her many sobbing fans singing along to crushing songs cannot be understated.

For audiences of the film, though, it’s the breadth of camera angles and shot choices that make it truly dynamic. There are cameras everywhere, including in the crowd, inside a cube at the center of the stage that rises and descends, following Eilish as she traipses every inch of the long, rectangular stage, and even a small one Eilish uses to bring an extra personal touch to the in-arena screen. Combined, they capture the complete energy of the concert, something that is not always the case in a film of this type.

Eilish has almost as many movies — two — as she does albums — three — which borders on overkill for a singer of her age. But both her music and the movies show her to be a person who knows the responsibility of being a celebrity, someone who understands that her fans are the reason she’s famous at all. Her career may go up or down from here, but it’s clear she’s already made a huge impact on those who love her most.

---

Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft - The Tour Live in 3D opens in theaters on May 8.

movies film