FanHouse TomHanks

With attention spans dwindling, we forego full game-by-game previews to give you the essentials you need to know about every contest this glorious NFL weekend. Click here to go back in time.

The 1s

Cincinnati (0-5) at NY Jets (2-2): I'm just going to quickly put this on the table -- when the highlight of your season thus far is your "star" wide receiver kissing the head coach on the head, things are not going well. The Bengals look to me a lot like the cast of "Entourage" looked last week trying to "act" on mushrooms. There is no way bad actors should be forced to act like they're on drugs, unless the point is to make them look very, very stupid. This goes for the Bengals. They have acted like a football team for years, but haven't really produced much, and now we get to see them on mushrooms. It isn't a pretty picture. Also, did you notice I went this entire paragraph without mentioning B _ _ _ _, F _ _ _ _? This is me, taking a stand.

Pick: Jets

It's been quite a while since a great, or even memorable, baseball movie has arrived on the scene. I suppose mileage varies on these kinds of question but the last one that sticks out for me was 61* (I've tried to eliminate all memories of the excerable Fever Pitch), which wasn't great but was at least evocative of a particular time in baseball history. I briefly thought that There Will Be Blood would cover the 2004 ALCS but, alas, it turned out to be a milkshake of a different color.

It would seem that Tom Hanks has also noticed the lack of diamonds on celluloid. In an interview in Tokyo, Hanks said that he thought the life of Daisuke Matsuzaka would make a fine film.

"An interesting movie, I think -- one I'd want to see, if they made it -- would be the story of Dice-K. That movie would have conflict and cultural clashes and superb sports skills and sportsmanship. It would really be something in the right filmmaker's hands."

While I'd love to see a good baseball movie, I'm not sure Dice-K's story is the right one. Blessed from birth, seemingly, with a potent right arm, he dominates his way through the Japanese league before jumping to the United States for a ton of money and wins the World Series in his first season. Oh, and he does it after a multitude of other Japanese players who have made the cultural clashes something less than overwhelming.