The Dark Knight Rises Teaser Trailer to Premiere in Front of Harry Potter?

Rumors are swirling around Hollywood that The Dark Knight Rises' first teaser trailer will premiere during the first showings of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Superherohype.com has the most concrete information, saying that the length of the trailer will be 1 minute and 33 seconds long and will run in both 2D theaters and IMAX 3D theaters (TDKR is not a 3D film, but there are reports that it will use even more IMAX than TDK).

Honestly, I would be fine if the first teaser trailer is similar to the first teaser trailer for The Dark Knight which was mostly snippets of the jewel thief story Alfred was telling Bruce in response to Bruce describing the Joker's actions, followed by the Joker giving a few lines and giving us a glimpse of what Heath Ledger's Joker laugh would sound like, all just audio with the Batman logo slowly being revealed and then a Joker card shown.

This time around, a lot more information is known to begin with, including that Liam Neeson as Ra's al Ghul will be back, more than likely serving as the main villain and either behind or working with Bane. If there's anything in the trailer that would cause instant fan service, it would be Bane screaming out his trademark line, "I WILL BREAK YOU!"

A New Women's World Cup Champion Will Be Crowned

For the first time since the German women defeated the Swedish women in the 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup, a new champion will be crowned at the end of the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup. Japan defeated Germany 1-0, in extra time from an incredible goal by Karina Maruyama. Germany was seemingly lifeless the entire match, filled with very questionable substitutes, especially the case of the legendary Birgit Prinz, who was never substituted into the match, despite being the all-time best goal scorer in German women's football.

After Maruyama's goal in the 108th minute, Germany (and the German crowd) came alive, desperately trying everything they could to score just 1 goal to force the game in penalty kicks. But despite the sudden burst of energy, the final 14 minutes could have gone by any faster for the Germans as they failed to score a goal, mostly due to the incredible goalkeeping by Ayumi Kaihori.

Japan moves on to the semifinal where they await the winner of Australia vs Sweden, which at this point, Japan is favored to win no matter who they face.

Germany has won the last 2 World Cups and has not lost a game since they were beaten by the U.S. in the 1999 World Cup. That incredible streak has now been broken, and questions will have to be asked on what Germany could have done to at least take the game to penalty kicks. I'm sure the coach's decision to not bring in Birgit Prinz will be heavily scrutinized, especially after she was benched in Germany's first game.

Japan has played spectacularly this World Cup and a win in the final match would do much to help life spirits in Japan where the northeast area of the island of Honshu is still suffering incredible damage from the massive earthquake and tsunami. It would also do much to improve the opinion of Japanese football around the world, as Japan was long thought to not be a sporting country, but now are highly competitive in both football and baseball.

Tomorrow Australia takes on Sweden at 6:30 AM Eastern (gross) and USA takes on Brazil in what looks to be the most anticipated match of the tournament.

Missing Messi

A player who looks a lot like Lionel Messi was wearing his jersey today, playing against Colombia in Copa America. "Messi" scored 0 goals, continuing "Messi's" streak of not scoring international goals. His teammate CAHLOS TAVAHZ also struggled to score, probably thinking more about his impending move away from Manchester City than scoring goals in a competition that would make Argentina no longer look like a laughing stock.

Lionel Messi might be the best football player in the world when he plays for Barcelona, but when it comes to playing in Argentina, he isn't even at Maradona's level. Stars are born in Champions League, but legends are made at the World Cup. Diego Forlan's star power skyrocketed at last year's world cup, whereas he was previously totally unknown. Messi's star power has only gone down, failing to make his mark at UEFA Champions League and continuing to perform poorly in Copa America.

Argentina's first two games were draws against Bolivia and Colombia, causing Argentina to now require a win against invitee Costa Rica, pending the results of Bolivia vs Costa Rica, which Bolivia is expected to win. There is in fact, a very real possibility that host nation Argentina will be eliminated in the group phase, which would cause Argentina to become a worldwide laughingstock.

At this point, I'm not surprised at all that Argentina is playing such uninspired football. Messi is mostly a humble guy, but with everyone calling him the greatest thing since sliced bread, it has to be going to his head a little bit. CAHLOS TAVAHZ is also busy attempting to form words with his gigantic teeth and desiring to leave Manchester City because he wants to spend more time with his children in Argentina. Tevez going to Argentina's league is a huge step down, but in reality, it could be him trying to inspire Messi to go back to Argentina as well to build better chemistry with Argentina national team teammates.

Whatever the case, Copa America could prove to be the beginning of a very long road for Argentina.

ESPN Scores Big Against NBC

Starting next year, ESPN has successfully outbid NBC for single-network coverage of the Wimbledon championships for the next twelve years, unseating NBC. The reason ESPN is being debated, but most agree that NBC choosing not to air any matches live until 2014, while ESPN would air all quarter and semifinal matches live (as well as early rounds) got ESPN the win.

ESPN has had a long tradition of airing all sports live, regardless of when they are played. This has caused a bit of a rift with fans, some believing it unfair that the East Coast generally gets to watch programming after work, while others believe that in the age of the Internet, live television is needed more than ever to prevent people from watching games on their computer. ESPN has embraced live games so much that ESPN3.com broadcasts several games that would never make it to air on one of ESPN's main networks.

As far as how this will affect the quality of coverage, that's unknown. ESPN may broadcast everything live, but the people behind these games are just awful. Nobody likes ESPN's Monday Night Football with Mike Tirico. Nobody likes Mike Breen and Jeff Van Gundy broadcasting NBA games (thankfully Mark Jackson will now be coaching and away from the microphone). Nobody likes ESPN's baseball coverage where last year, they infamously got every single pick wrong in the 2010 World Series (I'm dead serious, everyone they picked to win lost, including the World Series).

The only thing ESPN has going for it, ironically enough, is it's soccer/football coverage, which is by far the best and most extensive coverage in English in the U.S. They're starting to broadcast MLS games this summer, international club friendlies, as well as broadcasting Euro 2012 next year. The only "problem" with ESPN's soccer/football coverage is Alexi Lalas is publicly no fan of the Mexican national team and has turned away Mexican viewers in the past, something that could be dangerous as ESPN will be the sole provider of Euro 2012 in the U.S.; it will not get any Spanish-language coverage from Univision or Telemundo.

On the NBC side of things, this is a huge blow to its credibility when they already have less and less credibility as time goes on. NBC's refusal to air foreign (and even some domestic ones) sporting events live has greatly alienated their audience, who can very easily look on their phone to see the results that they want to see. As far as next year's London Olympic Games go, only time will tell to see if NBC changes their attitude and starts airing events live on its main network. For the Beijing Games, they did air events live on CNBC, MSNBC, and USA, but NBC still had their infamous "primetime" block to show the "best" of events from the day, usually biased to show what NBC thinks Americans will be most interested in, usually swimming, gymnastics, and track.

This is Mexico's Football Future?

The future of Mexican football, this is not. A lot of Mexican football fans are on cloud nine after defeating the U.S. 4-2 in the Gold Cup final, feeling unbeatable and that their #18 world ranking is far too low. The fact of the matter is that Mexico is very similar to England when it comes to football: they think they're much better than they really are. The U.S. has a much more realistic opinion on their soccer team, one of "We're a world-class team, but we're not going to win the World Cup with this squad or coach." The English and Mexicans think they're going to win the World Cup every time and every time they come up short. England hasn't won the World Cup since '66 when they hosted and Mexico has never even reached the Top Four, a distinction that the USA can claim, finishing 3rd place in 1930, the first World Cup.

At this year's Copa America, the CONMEBOL championship tournament, Mexico and Japan were invited to participate since CONMEBOL doesn't have enough teams to make a full tournament. Japan was forced to pull out due to the earthquake & tsunami, so Costa Rica was invited at the last minute. Mexico declined to send their A-squad, instead sending mostly their U-23 team and, to the best of my knowledge, 6 members of the A-squad, led by Giovanni Dos Santos. Unfortunately, 8 of those members fell victim to a prostitution scandal and were sent home, 6 of them being starters. This is not a good way to promote your national team's future.

To make things worse, this "B-" squad lost to Chile of all teams, 2-1 in their first game of Copa America, in the middle of an overwhelmingly pro-Chile crowd. They say karma is a bitch, but karma doesn't really have anything to do with this. Mexico simply has been brought back down to Earth with this loss. The current A-squad is a damn good team, but are they still going to be this good 3 years from now in the next World Cup? Sure, Chicharito and Dos Santos will still be the big stars, but what about Torrado, Salcido, Osorio, Marquez, and Sinha?

What about the increasingly controversial goalie position? In the last WC, Guillermo Ochoa was never used as the starting goalkeeper in a single game, despite consistently being voted the best Mexican goalkeeper in the world. As great as El Conejo once was, he is no Memo Ochoa. But despite that, Ochoa now finds himself in a difficult position, now heading to play in France as the first Mexican goalkeeper to ever play in Ligue 1. In the past, he was known for being so good not just because of his talents, but his communication with teammates, some of which were on his team in Club America. When national selection players go to foreign leagues, they don't always come back playing better; just look at the case of Jonathan Dos Santos, who hasn't lived up to expectations since playing in La Liga, or Jonathan Bornstein (what is it about football players named Johnathan?) who continues to be a starter on the U.S. team, but only has 2 goals in 38 caps?

And even with the whole "overseas experience" thing, Memo Ochoa may lose his starting job if the clenbuterol scandal becomes the real deal and not just "bad meat." If Ochoa can't be goalie, Mexico doesn't exactly have a huge selection to pick from. If the U-23 squad playing in Copa America is anything to indicate, Mexico's future is not that bright. If they don't succeed at the 2013 World Cup, it could be a very long road for Mexico, because Chicharito isn't going to be able to save the team single-handedly. Their U-17 team is doing very well (in a tournament held in Mexico), but there aren't any real stars for the team who could look to unseat Chicharito anytime soon or take over as goalkeeper.

Mexico's biggest problem seems to be a common trend in CONCACAF, and that's poor defense. Right now it's ok, but Rafa Marquez is not going to get younger and he's going to need someone to replace him.

Too Much Football!

No, not the NFL lockout, there are too many FIFA-sanctioned football events this summer. It began with the CONCACAF Gold Cup, which saw Mexico defeating the U.S. Then, right in the middle of the tournament, the U-17 World Cup began. In the middle of that tournament, the Women's World Cup began. In the middle of that tournament, Copa America (the CONMEBOL equivalent of the Gold Cup) has begun. This much football is just plain exhausting. In fact it's so exhausting that Mexico didn't even bother sending their A-Squad to Copa America, instead (initially anyway) sending their U-23 team with 4 members of the national team.

Four major tournaments being held in quick succession (currently 3 simultaneously) is also exhausting on the Spanish-language broadcasters, Univision choosing to only broadcast the Gold Cup and Copa America, letting Galavision broadcast the Women's World Cup, and not even bothering with the U-17 World Cup. In English, Fox Soccer Channel broadcasted all of the U.S.'s games during the Gold Cup, ESPN will be broadcasting every game of the Women's World Cup, ESPN U will broadcast the majority of the U-17 World Cup games. Copa America will not be getting any coverage in English, which isn't surprising given that even the Gold Cup got only minor coverage in English.

So yes, even the mighty Univision is incapable of broadcasting this much football. None of the matches have occurred simultaneously and there's too much licensing fees involved in broadcasting all 4 tournaments, but Univision won't broadcast the Women's World Cup for two reasons: Mexico and Colombia were the only Spanish-speaking countries to qualify and neither were expected to do well, and Latinos just do not care about women's sports, no matter how good they are. A clear-cut example of this is evident with Brazil's top player, Marta, the FIFA Women's Player of the Year 5 years in a row. Despite that incredible honor and distinction, Brazil doesn't have a women's football league. Marta instead plays in Women's Professional Soccer, the 2nd attempt to create a women's league in the U.S., the capital of women's football.


Now I was basketball crazy during the NBA playoffs, but those 2 months are just awesome and full of underdogs and spectacular failure, coupled with the joy of seeing LeBron James fail yet again when he was so close to winning it all. This feeling only compares to last year's World Cup when media darlings Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi utterly failed to aid their teams, Ronaldo only scoring 1 goal in the entire tournament (during the 7 goal massacre of North Korea), and Messi failed to score a single goal.

That being said, can we spread out these FIFA events? It's hard enough to watch up to 6 FIFA games per day, an MLS game, a baseball game, and live my normal life all in the same day, which I ended up doing today.

Skyward Sword Has Gone Gold

Nintendo has confirmed that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has gone gold. To those that have no idea what that means, I will explain: There are generally 3 phases in a video game development cycle: Beta, Alpha, and Final, sometimes referred to as Bronze, Silver, and Gold. In the beta version, the game will play very similarly to the final product, but may not look exactly the same, sometimes looking incredibly differently.

Screenshot from the beta version of the game once tentatively titled Zelda 64

The reason a beta version doesn't always look like the final product is when a new game engine is involved and the developers are figuring out how to backwards engineer the engine for a new type of game, which was the case with Ocarina of Time, which used the exact same engine as Super Mario 64. In these cases, it is more important for the game to play like the final product rather than look like it.

After the beta version comes the alpha version, or the silver version. In the silver stage, the game looks and play exactly like the final product, but may differ in menu icons, button configuration, and of course, glitches.

Alpha version of Ocarina of Time, showing the reversal of button configuration between B and A, a different map in the bottom right, and a "Whip" action command instead of "Faster"

Once all the bugs have been worked out and other tidbits have been worked out, the game goes gold and is officially ready for release, which is the stage Skyward Sword is in. So why does Skyward Sword still not have release date? Because Nintendo is busy translating the game to English! Nintendo is being awesome and they will have a simultaneous worldwide release for Skyward Sword, reportedly to avoid spoilers from breaking. Nintendo has been very careful in what they reveal about the game's story, giving only small details, the biggest of which are considered that Zelda is not a princess this time, Link travels to the Siren Realm where he cannot use a sword, and the name of the spirit of the Skyward Sword is Phi.

Best Buy listed the release date to be in September, and at this point, that is looking incredibly likely.