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Word of the day : virga : wisps of precipitation evaporating before reaching the ground

No surprise that Boston emerged victorious in their series against a scrappy, pesky 76ers squad. But no way in the world do I see Boston getting by Miami.

Prediction: Miami over Boston in 5 games.

In the West, it'll finally be Oklahoma City's turn to represent the west, beating a great, deep San Antonio team (the best passing team in the league) but taking seven games to do so.

Prediction: Oklahoma City over San Antonio in 7 games.

(Julia's funny. She asked, "When did Oklahoma City get a basketball team? Do they have any fans?"

I can't blame her. It took the bottom-of-the-screen scrolling update bar on ESPN to inform me that the Nationals were in Washington, that it was the L.A. Angels now as opposed to Anaheim, that the Miami Marlins were now the Florida Marlins, and that there were NHL teams in Carolina, Phoenix, Colorado, and Nashville.)

Nevertheless, I was 4-for-4 predicting last round's winners, bringing my total to 9-for-12 in the playoff series' so far. Let's see if I can keep it up!

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Today's soul track:

"I Believe (When I Fall in Love it Will be Forever)", by Stevie Wonder from his 1973 album Talking Book, one of a string of successive 1970s masterpieces by Wonder - 1972 had Talking Book (featuring "Superstition") and Music of My Mind; 1973 had the great Innervisions (featuring "Living For the City" and "Higher Ground"); 1974 had Fulfillingness' First Finale (with "Boogie On Reggae Woman"); 1976 had the double-album classic Songs in the Key of Life (with "I Wish" and "Isn't She Lovely?").

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H--_-gPX3Nw

What more really needs to said about Stevie Wonder? As for the song, it's a smooth, moving conclusion to the Talking Book album. The album (also featuring "You are the Sunshine of My Life") won multiple Grammys and was ranked #90 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album went to #1 on the R&B album charts, #3 on the Pop album charts.

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Julia and I don't get to the movies like we used to - in fact, we don't go at all. We hate the lousy theater here in Statesboro and it'd be far too much of an expense and hassle to pay a babysitter in order to go all the way to the theater in Pooler. Why bother? Especially when the modern movie theater screen doesn't give one the quality of a high-def, suited-for-Blu-ray home TV? Still, as evidenced by my weekly column on new releases, I still follow what comes out fairly closely - and eventually, Julia and I see everything we want to anyway.

That said, I was browsing over the rest of the 2012 releases and found ten to fifteen that looked promising. These are movies Julia and I would go see in the theater if we could:

Gangster Squad

Maybe some of the L.A. Confidential magic here. The director of Zombieland and a killer cast: Sean Penn (above, as Mickey Cohen), Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone in a a crackling yarn about the L.A.P.D's attempts to keep the east coast Mafia out of L.A. during the 1940s. Possible Oscar nod for Penn in a scenery-chewing supporting role?

Taken 2

2009's Taken was an unexpected surprise, a terrific, out-of-nowhere action feast that was immensely pleasurable and exciting. I'm not surprised that there is a sequel, with Liam Neeson back, this time in Istanbul and taken hostage by the father of one of the baddies Liam killed first time around.

Trouble With the Curve

They were filming this baseball drama in Georgia this spring, specifically around Macon. It stars Clint Eastwood as an aging baseball scout who takes his daughter (Amy Adams) on a scouting trip. Co-stars John Goodman and Justin Timberlake. Oscar-friendly.

Killing Them Softly

From a George V. Higgins novel comes this Cannes hit by a professional enforcer (Brad Pitt) trying to decipher what went wrong in a poker game gone horribly awry. Pitt is on a role right now, and it looks like a violent, scuzzy, intense film with a terrific cast: Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini, Richard Jenkins, Sam Shepard.

Argo

A lot of Oscar hype for this upcoming drama directed by and starring Ben Affleck, who has emerged as an outstanding filmmaker. Six Americans are caught behind the lines in Iran during the Revolution of 1979, in which 52 Americans were held hostage. The CIA concocts a bizarre plan to rescue the six - entering the country posing as a Canadian film crew. Big expectations here and plenty of juicy parts for its cast: John Goodman (again), Alan Arkin, Kyle Chandler (coach!) Victor Garber, and Bryan Cranston.

Gambit

Who doesn't love a romantic heist movie? A remake of a little-remembered 1966 pic starring Shirley Maclaine and Michael Caine, this Texas-set caper about an art curator trying to trap his horrible boss into buying a fake Monet - with the help of a rodeo queen. Co-starring Alan Rickman and Stanley Tucci.

The Big Wedding

A romantic comedy about a divorced, bickering couple pretending to be a happily married twosome during the weekend of a family wedding. What a cast. Along with the four above stars, there's also Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams, and Topher Grace. Should be a nice, appeals-to-all family comedy - maybe a little It's Complicated meets, er, Meet the Parents.

Seven Psycopaths

All you need to know, In Bruges fans, is that the writer-director Martin McDonagh and star, Colin Farrell, are back! This time around, an L.A. screenwriter gets involved with a bunch of lowlifes who kidnap and return people's dogs. Should be rude, funny, weird, very verbal, and loaded with violence. A cast born to do a McDonagh film too, some of our best actors to listen to: Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson. Abbie Cornish is here too, as are Tom Waits and the outstanding Zeljko Ivanec, so memorable in Damages.

The Silver Linings Playbook

David O'Russell (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees, The Fighter) is a critics darling and always worth a look. An adaptation of a Matthew Quick novel, the film is about an English teacher (Bradley Cooper) released from a mental institution trying to reunite with his wife, unable to understand that he has been away for four years, as opposed to a few weeks. He starts up a romance with a friend's widow (the sizzling Jennifer Lawrence). Sounds interesting, no? Co-starring Robert DeNiro as Cooper's pops, Jackie Weaver, and Julia Stiles.

On this blog before I've mentioned This is 40 (the follow-up to Knocked Up, focusing on the Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann characters), Lincoln (Steven Spielberg's non-war epic about our 16th president, starring Daniel Day-Lewis), Hyde Park on the Hudson (a biopic of FDR starring an Oscar-hungry Bill Murray and Laura Linney as Eleanor), but there are other promising movies too:

The Guilt Trip

Director Anne Fletcher is no auteur but she's given us some very pleasurable, fun, critic-proof movies - Step Up, 27 Dresses, and The Proposal. Now she's back with a road trip comedy starring the Jewish mother-and-son team we didn't know we were secretly waiting for: Barbara Streisand and Seth Rogen! Rogen plays an inventor who hits the road trying to sell his latest invention - Babs tags along.

Won't Back Down

An inspirational, feel-good drama about two Pittsburgh mothers, unhappy with the public school system, who decided to take charge of their children's education in an unconventional, actual-events-inspired way, starring three of our greatest actresses: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, and Holly Hunter. PG-rated, and looks like a good family drama.

Django Unchained

You didn't think I'd forget this one, did you? The new Quentin Tarantino movie that has set the film world ablaze ever since it was announced, this is the one that's supposed to finally get Leonardo DiCaprio his Oscar. A violent Western/drama about a slave-turned-bounty hunter (Jamie Foxx) who seeks vengeance on the ruthless plantation owner (Leo) who owns his wife. Don Johnson, Samuel L, Jackson, Kerry Washington, Christoph Waltz, Anthony LaPaglia co-star. Should be a great one.

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On this date in 1871 Paris, the French Fauvist painter Georges Henri Rouault was born. Rouault studied under Gustave Moreau at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts for eight years at the end of the century. Rouault, good friends with his teacher, was inspired by him early on in his own painting - as well as Moreau's fascination with medieval art. For the first ten years or so of the new century, Rouault was a practitioner of the "Beastly" art of Fauvism, his watercolors and gouaches marked with the passionate, expressive, powerfully-colored, landscape-heavy images representative of the movement.

Eventually, he moved away from Fauvism and began to focus on graphic art in the 1910s and 1920s. His most famous work from this period was an extensive cycle of works titled Miserere, a series of prints originally intended to be used in a book project. Today, Miserere, a series of mixed-media intaglio (a printmaking technique) prints, is seen as the artist's masterpiece - a profound, sorrowful account of a world at war and the general, eternal suffering of the human race.