Nissan Takes Out Kangaroo at Bathurst 1000

The poor kangaroo is about the only thing Nissan vehicles took out this weekend at the classic V8 Supercars event held in Australia.  The return of Nissan to the series has not been nearly as successful as original hopes had been with both two car teams struggling to break into the top ten, let alone podium or winning positions.

So as the season winds down and the V8 Supercars attacked their most famous track for 1000 kilometers and 161 laps, its only fitting that their season will be best known for an incident that occured early in the race and had no impact on the eventual outcome.

Twenty laps into the event the #7 Altima of David Russell hit a track hopping kangaroo.  The impact occured at 160 kph.  The driver had zero chance of avoiding the hit according to reports and no video has been released of the impact.  The kangaroo reportedly survived the impact and hopped away.  An image of the results can be seen here as well as video of a kangaroo on the track during the race...just no video of the accident itself.

This is not the first time this has happened at the Bathurst 1000 as back in 2004 a near identical incident took place in nearly the same spot.  Drivers were told before the event that fences surrounding the track had been raised and culling efforts in the local area had taken place to help prevent such impacts.  Guess that needs a bit more work...

Film Review: Silver Linings Playbook

Well I guess this makes three of the 2013 Best Picture nominees that I've see so far along with Zero Dark Thirty and Argo.

Silver Linings Playbook is certainly the most cliche of those I've seen so far.  It contains all the usual Oscar tropes that you would expect.  Everyone is damaged in some way--from Bradley Cooper's unemployed bipolar-ism, to Jennifer Lawrence's character who has lost a husband tragically to Robert DeNiro's anger problems and sports obsession.  The true message of the film seems to be that everyone is damaged in some way and we all have to deal with it the best we can.

The film is well put together and well acted, it just follows many of the same plot lines we've seen over and over and over and over...Boy loses girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl again, boy realizes he's been with the wrong girl, boy gets back with the right girl who has been there all along, they live happily ever after.  Seriously after watching the first ten minutes of the film (or even just the previews) who didn't know how the whole thing would unfold?

Direction wise, David O. Russell has likely inked a number of deals on the back of this film due to it being such a huge financial success but it really is unremarkable from that aspect and I haven't truly liked what he has put together in his career other than Three Kings.  Silver Linings Playbook is a decent throwaway film destined for endless reruns on TNT or other cable outlets as its so harmless and retread as to equate to baby formula.  Watch it with your wife/girlfriend...she'll likely enjoy it, and forget about it two days later.