Tiger to miss cut

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Tiger Woods likely has missed the cut for just the eighth time as a professional on the PGA Tour.

It wasn't yet official Friday as he finished his second round of the Wells Fargo Championship just after 1 p.m. ET, but the projections suggest he will head to South Florida for the weekend to sort out his swing and his game before next week's Players Championship -- 

Woods could manage just a 1-over-par 73 at Quail Hollow and didn't make a birdie over his final nine holes to finish at 144, even par. The 36-hole cut was projected at 1 under and could go to 2 under before the end of the day.

"I figured I needed to get to 3 under to be safe, 2 under for sure," Woods said before departing. "It's frustration. I'm not playing a weekend where I have a chance to compete for a title. I've missed my share of cuts in the past, and none of them feel good."

Nick Watney shot 64 to take the early tournament lead at 12 under.

This marks just the eighth time since Woods turned pro in 1996 that he will miss a 36-hole cut, and the first time that he's done so twice at the same venue or tournament. Woods also missed the cut here in 2010 in just his second tournament after returning from a five-month break because of his personal issues.

Woods has 72 PGA Tour victories. Phil Mickelsonis next among active players with 40 -- and has missed 63 cuts in his career. Vijay Singh has 34 wins and 57 missed cuts.

Woods' last missed cut came at the 2011 PGA Championship in Atlanta, where he was playing for the second time following a four-month break because of knee and Achilles injuries.

After winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational on March 25, Woods was considered a huge favorite going into the Masters. But he never broke par and finished tied for 40th, his worst at Augusta National as a pro.

Woods felt good about his work the past two weeks with swing coach Sean Foley, who said his client struggled with posture issues.

But Woods again lamented the inability to play properly with a new swing and lapsing into old habits.

"It all has to do with my setup," he said. "When I get over the golf ball and feel uncomfortable, I hit it great. I want to get comfortable, and I follow my old stuff and hit it awful. I just tried to get uncomfortable and feel as bad as I could and then I striped it.

"I know what I need to do. I just need more reps doing it. ... We've changed a bunch of different things, and every now and then I fall into the old stuff. And that doesn't work, the combo platter of old and new."

All of this occurred despite a fortunate ruling for Woods at the par-5 fifth hole, where Woods hooked his second shot to the left of the green -- and nobody could find it. A lost ball would have meant a penalty stroke and going back to the original spot to hit again, but witnesses told a PGA Tour rules official that they saw the ball land and that a spectator must have picked it up. Woods got a free drop and made par.

"It was a very unusual situation, but based on all the evidence ... where else could the ball have been," PGA Tour rules official Mark Russell said. "It was like being lost on the floor right here."

None of that mattered, however, when Woods wasn't able to birdie any of the closing holes. He had a 5-footer at the par-4 eighth that might have put him on the cut line, but missed it. At the ninth, his last, he left himself a 50-footer and two-putted. Woods parred all nine holes on the front, and for the round made just two birdies.

Woods hit 14 greens in regulation but needed 33 putts and was ranked 122nd in the field in total putts.

From the 1998 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-am -- where he actually didn't return to play a rain-delayed round -- to the 2005 Byron Nelson Championship, Woods did not miss a cut on the PGA Tour, a record 142 straight tournaments.

Since that time, no player has gone as many as 50 straight tournaments without missing a cut -- although Steve Stricker heads into next week's Players Championship at 49 straight.

"It's a great week, this is one of my favorite tour stops," Woods said. "Unfortunately I'm just not going to be around for it."

Pirates Band of misfits

Though they don’t produce all that many, the British seem to excel at animated films, mostly because they don’t let the fact that the characters on screen are made of clay, paint, or pixels get in the way of treating the audience like more than brainless schoolchildren. The Pirates! Band of Misfits continues this tradition, the only awkward thing about it being the title.

These pirates are such misfits that they don’t even have names – they refer to themselves by unique characteristics. There’s the Pirate with a Scarf (Martin Freeman), the Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson), the Albino Pirate (Anton Yelchin), the Strangely Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen), and so on. And they love their captain (Hugh Grant), who is of course called The Pirate Captain, and who provides the best thing about pirate life – regular ham dinners.

In the greater pirate world, however, the Pirate Captain is ridiculed as a weak and ineffective plunderer with an incredible knack for attacking ships with no treasure. A multiple-time loser at the Pirate of the Year Awards, he’s laughed at by better contenders Peg Leg Hastings (Lenny Henry), Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) and Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven). And since the award is all about the booty, it seems likely the poor Captain is going to lose again.

But fortune smiles on the misfits when they meet the not-yet-famous scientist Charles Darwin (David Tennant), who instantly notices that the Captain’s rather obese parrot is not a parrot at all, but a dodo bird, long thought extinct. Presenting Polly to the Royal Scientific Society would earn Darwin a huge prize, an opportunity the Captain jumps at as a shortcut to winning his own award. That is, if he doesn’t run afoul of the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), who has her own interest in the bird.

It’s mostly business-as-usual for director Peter Lord and Aardman Studios, creators of previous claymation-style films such as Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit series. Fans will immediately recognize the look, with its bug-eyed and chiclet-toothed characters, and sets filled jokes in the background, but the visuals here seem even more detailed than usual. The water scenes are particularly impressive, achieving near-realism through additional CGI effects.

And, also as usual, it’s the movie’s blend of dry wit and outright silliness that carries the day. These pirates are buffoons, yes, but they’re also quite good at what they do, which leads to all sorts of hilarious non-sequitur moments. The ease at which the “Scientist Captain” is able to infiltrate the Royal Society is as entertaining a sequence as any of the action scenes.

The cast is fantastic. Those used to seeing Hugh Grant as a stammering romantic lead will hardly recognize his voice here, delivering the Captain’s bombast and vulnerability in equal measure. Freeman and Tennant do equally well as advisors competing for the Captain’s attention. There’s even a monkey, trained by Darwin to speak using cue cards, that little ones will especially love.

It all adds up to a film that all audiences will enjoy on different levels. The Pirates! Band of Misfits is a voyage worth signing on for.

Think Like a man

 If anything can make you long for the hang-loose 1970s, it's the prospect of looking for love in an era when dating is governed by more regimented thinking than the old Soviet Union.

First came "The Rules," which said that the best way for women to nab a mate was by refusing to give it up (basically the code of the 1950s).

Then came "The Game," which said that if women are playing by "The Rules," then the only way for men to push past those defenses is to pretend to be even bigger cads than they are (which, according to the theory, secretly flatters women by tapping their desire to tame the male animal).

Then came Steve Harvey's "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man," which funneled "The Rules" and "The Game" into one book by explaining to women all the ways that men are trying to outthink them. Romantics of the world, do your heads hurt yet?

"Think Like a Man," an amorous ensemble comedy based on Harvey's 2009 best-seller, follows a dozen mostly African-American men and women as they attempt to navigate the brave new world of love by the book. The movie, which is very sitcom-setup-driven (it's "The Best Man" meets "Valentine's Day"), introduces its embattled pairings with titles like ''The Non-Committer vs. The Girl Who Wants the Ring'' and ''The Dreamer vs. The Woman Who Is Her Own Man.''

For a while, the cookie-cutter behavioral tics are funny in an overly broad way, even if the dialogue is basically stand-up patter turned into glib, fast conversation. And the actors make good company. I especially liked Romany Malco as the velvet-smooth player Zeke; Meagan Good as the spiky Mya, who finds it hard to stick to her dating-war codes; and Kevin Hart as the hilariously raging Cedric, who can't stop jabbering about the divorce he only thinks he wants.

Yet "Think Like a Man" is so busy tracking courtship as if it were a science project that the bite-size love stories lack spontaneity. When the women first get hold of Harvey's book, the manipulations that ensue are fun. When the men read the book and try to out-psych the women, the film should grow ever foxier in its complications -- but instead it comes down to a bunch of horndogs pretending to be chivalrous, which is repetitive and kind of soggy. That's the downside of staging a romantic comedy by the rules. B-

The Lucky One

I’m going to preface my review with this statement: I am an unashamed Nicholas Sparks fan. I own most of his books, all of his movies, and I still regularly stop and watch them when they’re airing on television.

I say this so when I tell you I didn’t love the adaptation of The Lucky One, you won’t assume I’m a snobby hater dissing it out of spite.

I wanted to love it. Zac Efron is about the hottest thing on the market these days, at least in this girl’s mind, and the previews suggested that he and Taylor Schilling had a sizzling chemistry. I read the book (some time ago) and was excited to see Logan and Elizabeth fall in love on the big screen.

The Lucky One isn’t a bad film. It’s entertaining, it’s heartfelt, and Zac Efron is ridiculously good looking in his boxer briefs. Even though it’s tied for my least favorite Sparks film (with The Last Song), it’s still light years better than the dreadful The Vow, which tried to pass itself off as a romance but made me want to punch the girl in the face every five minutes.

But I digress.

Our premise is fairly simple. Logan (Zac Efron) is on his third tour in Iraq when he spots a photograph in the rubble. As he picks it up, a bomb explodes where he had been standing, killing several of his comrades. By the time he returns home, he’s survived more encounters with death than seems fair, and feels guilty being the one to live when so many good men died. He decides to try to find the girl in the picture, and thank her for saving his life.

When he arrives in Hamden, Louisana, though, he can’t find the words and Beth (Taylor Schilling) doesn’t give him much of a chance to explain. She assumes he’s there in response to an employment ad, so in the end he takes the job and doesn’t say anything about the picture.

It turns out her brother Drake was also a Marine, and was killed in action a year previously. She’s struggling with that, her grandmother’s recent stroke, and raising Ben (Riley Thomas Stewart), her eight-year-old son, with her abusive, controlling ex-husband Keith (Jay R Ferguson). Logan is quiet, and obviously dealing with his own issues, but he slowly begins to worm his way into their lives and hearts.

The grandmother (Blythe Danner) is the first one to warm to him, and watches with a smile as Beth begins to fall for Logan in spite of her preconceived notions. The situation turns ugly when Keith threatens to use his position as town police officer and his father’s power as mayor to take Ben away if Beth doesn’t stop seeing Logan.

Things get uglier still when Logan’s secret is outed, making Beth wonder how she can trust a man who lied to her, but how she can be with someone who might have lived in the place of her beloved brother. In the grand tradition of Nicholas Spark’s stories, there is a tragic death, a question as to whether or not the central couple will end up together, and scenes written with the express intent of wringing tears from the audience.

There are some positives. The scenery is gorgeous, the cinematography and lighting are spectacular, and Zac Efron is a swoon inducing hero. The relationship between him and Ben is my favorite thing about the film, and Blythe Danner adds much needed humor and a subtlety that’s missing from the rest of the cast. There were three scenes in which I felt fully invested, and that choked me up. One was in the garden, when Beth breaks down over the loss of her brother (their parents are dead, so they had only one another). The second was a scene between Ben and Logan, where the little boy says goodbye to the man who took the time to not only know him, but accept him for the person he might one day become. The third was a scene at the end where Logan tells Beth what happened to her brother.

You’ll notice that not one of those scenes were both between our central characters and about our central characters.

And that’s because although the chemistry between Logan and Beth flickers from time to time, it never ignites. I never got that ‘holy crow I’m going to absolutely die if the two of them don’t end up together’ feeling that completely essential to the ultimate success of these types of films.

That’s my biggest problem with the movie, and unfortunately that’s not something that can be foreseen or predicted ahead of time.

A couple of smaller issues:

The dialogue, particularly for Logan, is awkward and too obvious a lot of the time. I actually think Efron is a talented actor, but this script didn’t do him any favors.

Keith’s character is all over the damn place. The writer goes out of the way to try and humanize him one moment, then makes him a frightening stalker, then he quits his job over the guilt and goes crying to Beth, then he threatens her, etc. It’s hard to know how to feel about him, but the back and forth ultimately makes it impossible to care about him at all.

We don’t get to know Logan well enough. We’re expected to “get” him by assigning a generic “he’s sad because he’s a soldier and he’s seen lots of bad things” person, but without any insight into his particular psyche it comes off as cliched. Efron does what he can with silent looks and brooding, but all in all it’s hard to love a guy we don’t know.

I didn’t even come close to shedding a tear. And that means this film failed.

The Lucky One

I’m going to preface my review with this statement: I am an unashamed Nicholas Sparks fan. I own most of his books, all of his movies, and I still regularly stop and watch them when they’re airing on television.

I say this so when I tell you I didn’t love the adaptation of The Lucky One, you won’t assume I’m a snobby hater dissing it out of spite.

I wanted to love it. Zac Efron is about the hottest thing on the market these days, at least in this girl’s mind, and the previews suggested that he and Taylor Schilling had a sizzling chemistry. I read the book (some time ago) and was excited to see Logan and Elizabeth fall in love on the big screen.

The Lucky One isn’t a bad film. It’s entertaining, it’s heartfelt, and Zac Efron is ridiculously good looking in his boxer briefs. Even though it’s tied for my least favorite Sparks film (with The Last Song), it’s still light years better than the dreadful The Vow, which tried to pass itself off as a romance but made me want to punch the girl in the face every five minutes.

But I digress.

Our premise is fairly simple. Logan (Zac Efron) is on his third tour in Iraq when he spots a photograph in the rubble. As he picks it up, a bomb explodes where he had been standing, killing several of his comrades. By the time he returns home, he’s survived more encounters with death than seems fair, and feels guilty being the one to live when so many good men died. He decides to try to find the girl in the picture, and thank her for saving his life.

When he arrives in Hamden, Louisana, though, he can’t find the words and Beth (Taylor Schilling) doesn’t give him much of a chance to explain. She assumes he’s there in response to an employment ad, so in the end he takes the job and doesn’t say anything about the picture.

It turns out her brother Drake was also a Marine, and was killed in action a year previously. She’s struggling with that, her grandmother’s recent stroke, and raising Ben (Riley Thomas Stewart), her eight-year-old son, with her abusive, controlling ex-husband Keith (Jay R Ferguson). Logan is quiet, and obviously dealing with his own issues, but he slowly begins to worm his way into their lives and hearts.

The grandmother (Blythe Danner) is the first one to warm to him, and watches with a smile as Beth begins to fall for Logan in spite of her preconceived notions. The situation turns ugly when Keith threatens to use his position as town police officer and his father’s power as mayor to take Ben away if Beth doesn’t stop seeing Logan.

Things get uglier still when Logan’s secret is outed, making Beth wonder how she can trust a man who lied to her, but how she can be with someone who might have lived in the place of her beloved brother. In the grand tradition of Nicholas Spark’s stories, there is a tragic death, a question as to whether or not the central couple will end up together, and scenes written with the express intent of wringing tears from the audience.

There are some positives. The scenery is gorgeous, the cinematography and lighting are spectacular, and Zac Efron is a swoon inducing hero. The relationship between him and Ben is my favorite thing about the film, and Blythe Danner adds much needed humor and a subtlety that’s missing from the rest of the cast. There were three scenes in which I felt fully invested, and that choked me up. One was in the garden, when Beth breaks down over the loss of her brother (their parents are dead, so they had only one another). The second was a scene between Ben and Logan, where the little boy says goodbye to the man who took the time to not only know him, but accept him for the person he might one day become. The third was a scene at the end where Logan tells Beth what happened to her brother.

You’ll notice that not one of those scenes were both between our central characters and about our central characters.

And that’s because although the chemistry between Logan and Beth flickers from time to time, it never ignites. I never got that ‘holy crow I’m going to absolutely die if the two of them don’t end up together’ feeling that completely essential to the ultimate success of these types of films.

That’s my biggest problem with the movie, and unfortunately that’s not something that can be foreseen or predicted ahead of time.

A couple of smaller issues:

The dialogue, particularly for Logan, is awkward and too obvious a lot of the time. I actually think Efron is a talented actor, but this script didn’t do him any favors.

Keith’s character is all over the damn place. The writer goes out of the way to try and humanize him one moment, then makes him a frightening stalker, then he quits his job over the guilt and goes crying to Beth, then he threatens her, etc. It’s hard to know how to feel about him, but the back and forth ultimately makes it impossible to care about him at all.

We don’t get to know Logan well enough. We’re expected to “get” him by assigning a generic “he’s sad because he’s a soldier and he’s seen lots of bad things” person, but without any insight into his particular psyche it comes off as cliched. Efron does what he can with silent looks and brooding, but all in all it’s hard to love a guy we don’t know.

I didn’t even come close to shedding a tear. And that means this film failed.

Leg Extensions

Main Muscle: Quadriceps

1. For this exercise you will need to use a leg extension machine. First choose your weight and sit on the machine with your legs under the pad (feet pointed forward) and the hands holding the side bars. This will be your starting position. Tip: You will need to adjust the pad so that it falls on top of your lower leg (just above your feet). Also, make sure that your legs form a 90-degree angle between the lower and upper leg. If the angle is less than 90-degrees then that means the knee is over the toes which in turn creates undue stress at the knee joint. If the machine is designed that way, either look for another machine or just make sure that when you start executing the exercise you stop going down once you hit the 90-degree angle.
2. Using your quadriceps, extend your legs to the maximum as you exhale. Ensure that the rest of the body remains stationary on the seat. Pause a second on the contracted position.
3. Slowly lower the weight back to the original position as you inhale, ensuring that you do not go past the 90-degree angle limit.
4. Repeat for the recommended amount of times.

Variations: As mentioned at in the foot positioning section, you can use various foot positions in order to maximize stimulation of certain thigh areas. Also, you can perform the movement unilaterally (one leg at a time).

The 3 Stooges

Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk… Some joker in the deck, or two, thought it was time to try to bring back “The Three Stooges”. Sadly, the Farrelly Brothers timing in directing a new stooges story appears to as off as that of the actor/comedians they hired to portray the original dynamic trio. The original Moe, Larry and Curly were born out of an old vaudeville act that in 1934 led to the forming of The Three Stooges. This new group imitating Moe Howard (Chris Diamantopoulos), Larry Fine (Sean Hayes), and Jerry “Curly” Howard (Will Sasso) seem to have been forced together, failing to have the innocence and smoothness of flow that made the stooges famous.

At best, this film might be described as a tribute performance. At worst it tends to bore the true Stooge fan with several jokes that are clearly inflicted Farrelly style and not worthy of the three. Moe, Larry, and Curly’s humor was often simple minded and absurd. Their slapstick antics were based on their interactions with each other. They were not mean spirited, only picking on others when suitably provoked. They knew that even a fish out of water would die. By contrast the Farrelly Stooges go on to open a fish farm on a golf course that is pathetic as an attempt at humor.

The new crew is presented in three episodal acts beginning with a duffle bag full of babies (the wee three) tossed from a moving car onto the steps of an orphanage. Then, ten years later, when the now preteen gang of terror hopes to be adopted in what is clearly a ripoff of “Annie”, Moe goes but gets returned. Having laid the groundwork for what is to come, the next act (seemingly stolen from “The Blues Brothers”) has the stooges off to the big city to get the money needed to save the orphanage.

Final Act… Well, by now if you are still in the theater you are probably wondering “Why?”. Larry and Curly have parted ways from Moe. Moe has wound up on, of all things, the reality show “Jersey Shore”. Unfortunately, without Larry and Curly, Moe’s eye pokes and noggin knocks to the “Jersey Shore” kids come off as humorless cruel violence without justification or reason other than it looks good on reality TV. What a tragedy.

Speaking of tragedy, after the words “The End” hit the screen to relieve the audience, a last insult is inflicted by the Farrellys. The brothers come on screen to explain and demonstrate that the hammers and tools used in the movie were made of rubber and augmented by sound effects. They even properly demonstrate the eye poke, showing how the fast action move actually hits above the eyes. In this age of “JACKASS” when warnings are needed to “NOT try this at home” before a movie or show start, this last word seems to invalidate any purpose for this movie to have been made.

Alas… What is a Stooge? In the days of Vaudeville a Stooge was a plant in the audience who would be called up on stage and provide comic antics to augment the act on stage. In the case of this movie, a stooge might be the person who just handed over their cash to sit in the audience to witness a sub-par performance. Better to save your money and go off somewhere to do The Curly Shuffle…