{"id":1745,"date":"2011-10-21T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T15:21:51","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T06:00:00","slug":"the-big-year-brings-laughs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2011\/10\/21\/the-big-year-brings-laughs\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Big Year\u2019 brings laughs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The movie &#8220;The Big Year&#8221; opened on Friday, Oct. 14. In the movie, bird watchers compete in a Big Year event to see who can gather the most sightings of different rare species of birds in North America.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Big Year&#8221; follows Stu Preissler, Brad Harris, and Kenny Bostick played by Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson respectively, as they compete to be the No. 1 birder in the country. Wilson&#8217;s character Bostick is the obsessive title defender. He holds the record as the No. 1 birder in the nation and is determined to keep it that way. Martin&#8217;s Preissler is trying to retire from years as a successful businessman. He is using the Big Year to give him something to focus on instead of his job. Black&#8217;s character Harris is a lifelong dreamer and underdog in the competition.<\/p>\n<p>Along the way, movie watchers see the beautiful scenery and many interesting and rare birds. As the men compete, movie watchers are given the chance to see what these men&#8217;s priorities are as they face choices between birds and the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n<p>The central message of the movie is about getting priorities in order. The men in this movie have to figure out what is most important to them: winning the Big Year, being with the family they have, forming new relationships or focusing on their individual careers.<\/p>\n<p>The movie is a comedy and though it has funny moments it carries the strong signature characters of its major actors. Black&#8217;s and Martin&#8217;s characters in this movie parallel their characters in previous movies. This parallel causes the movie to lose appeal to those who do not enjoy the particular humor in Black&#8217;s and Martin&#8217;s other movies. Having common characters takes away the surprise aspect of humor because you already know the character from previous movies and therefore know how they will respond to a situation.<\/p>\n<p>It was rated PG for language and some sensuality and followed a fairly simple plot line. Despite the slightly disappointing acting it was an enjoyable movie that carried an overall positive message.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The movie &#8220;The Big Year&#8221; opened on Friday, Oct. 14. In the movie, bird watchers compete in a Big Year event to see who can gather the most sightings of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-1745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus","tag-hurricane-florence"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}