Categorical - Printable Version

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Re: Categorical - terry - 07-13-2014

(07-13-2014, 07:11 PM)leftcoast link Wrote:Bull Durham (Best sports movie, right?)

Good question about the best sports movie . . . I wouldn't put Bull Durham at the top of my personal list. My favorite sports movies would be:

Chariots of Fire
Breaking Away
Rocky
Field of Dreams

Bull Durham would be a contender for the #5 spot, along with The Natural and Hoosiers.

Honorable mention to A League of Their Own for Tom Hanks' performance and one of the great quotable sports movie lines: "There's no crying in baseball."

Among sports movies in the last few years, I liked 42 and Invictus.

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Re: Categorical - Leftcoast - 07-14-2014

Good choices, Terry.  Let me give you a case for Bull Durham as my sports flick fave.

There's this thing about sports movies - They often take themselves too darn seriously. 

In 1981 I loved Chariots of Fire.  I bought the Vangelis soundtrack and I admired Eric Liddell living out his morals even when they weren't mine.  Sadly, when I watched it recently my 50 year old self wasn't as thrilled.  It all felt a little too ponderous and self-important.  The tight shots of the team running on the beach or prepping for their races with the background music surging were too beautiful, too nostalgic and a bit too whitewashed.  I still enjoyed the flick but the movie no longer is in my personal top-5.  (Of course, your mileage will probably vary!)

The great thing about Bull Durham is the way the director both respects baseball and knocks it off the pedestal that  movies like "The Natural" have placed it upon.  We know our sports heroes better these days and it is hard to believe they are worthy of worship when they step outside the lines.  I appreciate their struggles and endurance but movies treating my sports heroes as god-like exemplars of humanity cause me to roll my eyes.  In Bull Durham you learn that Susan Sontag and William Blake really can't help you throw a fastball, strikeouts are fascist and find out what the team is REALLY discussing in those long conferences at the pitcher's mound.  We also get the ultimate in anti Nerd Nation advice for young pitchers -  "Don't think - It can only hurt the ball club."

I no longer believe in Roy Hobbs but I see Nuke Laloosh and Crash Davis on the sports page every baseball season.

My Personal Top 5?

1  Bull Durham
2  League of their Own
3  Slapshot
4  Hoosiers
5  Friday Night Lights

That is unless we consider Caddyshack a sports movie ..... ;-)

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Re: My favorite 11 movies and a few ties for 12th - 2 for 2028 - 07-14-2014

(07-13-2014, 03:02 PM)Mick link Wrote:James Bond (all Sean Connery, all Daniel Craig, one of the Pierce Brosnan, none of the rest)

Are you forgetting On Her Majesty's Secret Service or have you not seen it?

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Dissin' my man George Lazenby - Redrum - 07-14-2014



Actually, one of the better Bond books storylines  (they're all kind of comic from 50 years of perspective).  And Diana Rigg.  And there was George.  Kind of wooden.  And the movie went, "thud".

Question I have about this pic-- besides "This is James Bond?"  is: Why he is posing with an empty gun?  Typically, when empty of ammunition, many or most semi-auto pistols will lock in the breech open position. You can tell because the slide is back, revealing the round barrel.  Not a big deal, but if the photo is supposed to convey " Bond...ready for action",  Mr. Lazenby is in for a brobdingnagian surprise when he aims and pulls the trigger.  Either that, or in real life they didn't trust actor Lazenby to handle even an empty gun, so locked it in a position where he couldn't do any damage.  Sort of emblematic of the whole Connery-less Bond excursion.

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Re: Categorical - terry - 07-14-2014

(07-14-2014, 01:13 AM)leftcoast link Wrote:I no longer believe in Roy Hobbs but I see Nuke Laloosh and Crash Davis on the sports page every baseball season.

Well, you're not supposed to believe in Roy Hobbs, not literally. He's supposed to be a mythical character, right?

I think the Nuke Laloosh and Crash Davis characters are great. But I don't really see them as realistic portrayals of today's baseball players. I don't think they're supposed to be. I think they are exaggerated, idealized types. I'm pretty confident that no baseball player could ever come up with anything like Crash's "long slow deep soft wet kisses that last three days" speech . . . let alone a minor league groupie coming up with Annie Savoy's "Church of Baseball" speech. I think Annie is just as mythical in her own way as Roy Hobbs. Don't get me wrong, I really like Bull Durham. But I don't think realism is its great virtue.

By the way, I forgot to mention earlier that while I think Field of Dreams is a very good movie, I think the original book (Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella) is outstanding. Well worth reading.

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Along the same lines... - Redrum - 07-14-2014

The vintage baseball/ scifi novel If I Never Get Back  by Darryl Brock was one of most interesting books about baseball I've ever read.    I'm not a brobdingnagian baseball fan,  but this book actually made me like baseball more, once I understood its roots.  In some ways, it made me wish baseball were more like it was back in its infancy.

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Re: Categorical - jayasena - 07-14-2014

<sarcasm>
You guys are all wrong. United Passions is THE BEST sports movie evah!
</sarcasm>

(For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, here's John Oliver's take on FIFA. The explanation of the movie starts around the 9-minute mark, but the rest of the 13min segment is well worth watching as well).
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJEt2KU33I][/url].

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Re: Categorical - Mick - 07-14-2014

(07-14-2014, 09:19 AM)terry link Wrote:[quote author=leftcoast link=topic=10113.msg92330#msg92330 date=1405325621]
I no longer believe in Roy Hobbs but I see Nuke Laloosh and Crash Davis on the sports page every baseball season.

Well, you're not supposed to believe in Roy Hobbs, not literally. He's supposed to be a mythical character, right?
[/quote]


There was lots of literary license involved, but Hobbs was based, at least in part, on Philadelphia Phillies player Eddie Waitkus.  As a rookie in 1941, Waitkus was known as "the Natural."  He earned four Bronze Stars in WWII, then when he returned, he made the NL All Star team in 1948 and 1949.  Ruth Ann Steinhagen was a fan who stalked him and shot him on June 14, 1949.  She figured out the name of one of Waitkus' classmates, went to the Phillies' hotel, checked in, left a note under his former classmate's name stating that she had an urgent matter for him.  He arrives at her hotel room, she shot him with a .22.  She called the front desk, reported the shooting, cradled his head in her lap until help arrived.  She never stood trial, she was remanded to a mental institution almost immediately.

She said "As time went on, I just became nuttier and nuttier about the guy, and I knew I would never get to know him in a normal way, so I kept thinking I will never get him, so if I couldn't have him, then no one would have him."

Bernard Malamud's book was published in 1952, and Hobbs' tragic end foreshadowed Waitkus' tragic end the next year when he died of esophageal cancer at age 53 in 1972, just two weeks before the Munich terrorist murders.

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Re: Along the same lines... - oman - 07-14-2014

(07-14-2014, 10:27 AM)ferrari link Wrote:Anyone besides me read "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach?  Very different.

I did, via audiobook, but didn't finish.  That went from a really nice read to absolutely blowing up and pissing me off when it got to the college president's romantic notions and the other plot lines that developed at about the point where our hero starts developing some fielding issues.

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Re: Dissin' my man George Lazenby - Mick - 07-14-2014

(07-14-2014, 07:24 AM)Redrum link Wrote:

Actually, one of the better Bond books storylines  (they're all kind of comic from 50 years of perspective).  And Diana Rigg.  And there was George.  Kind of wooden.  And the movie went, "thud".

Question I have about this pic-- besides "This is James Bond?"  is: Why he is posing with an empty gun?  Typically, when empty of ammunition, many or most semi-auto pistols will lock in the breech open position. You can tell because the slide is back, revealing the round barrel.  Not a big deal, but if the photo is supposed to convey " Bond...ready for action",  Mr. Lazenby is in for a brobdingnagian surprise when he aims and pulls the trigger.  Either that, or in real life they didn't trust actor Lazenby to handle even an empty gun, so locked it in a position where he couldn't do any damage.  Sort of emblematic of the whole Connery-less Bond excursion.

Let us count the perfidies:

1)  Holding up a spent revolver.  Ugh.  Well, maybe he just shot someone.
2)  Telly Savalas was the villain.  Really?
3)  Bond gets married.  Wrong, wrong, WRONG.
4)  Moore was supposed to get the role, but there was unrest in Thailand and he signed up for another series of The Saint.
5)  There were five candidates for the film, including English actor John Richardson, American R. Wright Campbell (he wrote spy books and lived in Carmel, acted occasionally), Australian actor Lazenby, Dutchman Hans de Vries and Englishman Anthony Rogers.
6)  Lazenby got the part when (a) he wore Connery's Savile Row suit that Connery ordered9) but never received, (b) had a haircut from Connery's barber, © wore a Rolex Submariner and  (d) more to the point accidentally punched a stunt coordinator in his audition, and Cubby Broccoli thought it demonstrated aggression (Lazenby was passive).
7)  Synthesizer music.
8)  Wife dies.
9)  Made fun of James Bond gadgets
10) Lazenby's voice was dubbed in by other actors in certain spots in the film.
11)  Lazenby left the role in a huff because the producers wouldn't use his suggestions.  Diana Rigg called him an idiot.

Plus, Lazenby looks too much like this guy, American actor Jeffrey Donovan of Burn Notice:

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Re: Categorical - martyup - 07-14-2014

Would it be crass of me to endorse Blazing Saddles?

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Re: Categorical - oman - 07-14-2014

(07-13-2014, 07:11 PM)leftcoast link Wrote:Top 10
(In no particular order)

The Sting (Redford and Newman at their best. 'Nuf said )
Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back. (Best of the first trilogy - Lucas should have stopped at three)
The Fellowship of the Ring  (Walked in praying "Please don't screw this up." Jackson didn't)
The Shawshank Redemption (What IS it about this movie?  Every time I see it while channel surfing I stop clicking)
Casablanca (Saw it first as an outdoor summer movie - at Donner, I believe.)
Spirited Away (My fave from Studio Ghibli - The movie on this list that may cause some head scratching)
The Princess Bride (Beats AH for quotable lines - at least for me)
Bull Durham (Best sports movie, right?)
The Philadelphia Story (Cary Grant, Kate Hepburn AND Jimmy Stewart.  Nobody really talks like that but I wish they did)
Inception (Modern cool and the only real life CGI fest on my list.  Still debating what actually happened)

Spirited Away causes no head scratching.

Shawshank does.  It is silly, overwrought and criminally overrated by the rabble, and even some of the non-rabble.  I'm kind of obsessive about this.

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Re: Categorical - oman - 07-14-2014

Fast fave top 10:

1) Breaker Morant
2) Rushmore
3) The Searchers
4) Godfather (either)
5) Dr. Strangelove
6) Miller's Crossing
7) Jaws
8) Talk to Her
9) Manhattan
10) Room with a View

Sports flicks:

1) Eight Men Out
2) Breaking Away
3) Raging Bull
4) Personal Best
5) One on One



Life was easier when love was a ball.

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Re: Dissin' my man George Lazenby - oman - 07-14-2014

(07-14-2014, 12:07 PM)Mick link Wrote:8)  Wife dies.

dang...

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Re: Categorical - Rally - 07-14-2014

(07-14-2014, 06:05 PM)oman link Wrote:[quote author=leftcoast link=topic=10113.msg92325#msg92325 date=1405303896]
Top 10
(In no particular order)

The Sting (Redford and Newman at their best. 'Nuf said )
Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back. (Best of the first trilogy - Lucas should have stopped at three)
The Fellowship of the Ring  (Walked in praying "Please don't screw this up." Jackson didn't)
The Shawshank Redemption (What IS it about this movie?  Every time I see it while channel surfing I stop clicking)
Casablanca (Saw it first as an outdoor summer movie - at Donner, I believe.)
Spirited Away (My fave from Studio Ghibli - The movie on this list that may cause some head scratching)
The Princess Bride (Beats AH for quotable lines - at least for me)
Bull Durham (Best sports movie, right?)
The Philadelphia Story (Cary Grant, Kate Hepburn AND Jimmy Stewart.  Nobody really talks like that but I wish they did)
Inception (Modern cool and the only real life CGI fest on my list.  Still debating what actually happened)

Spirited Away causes no head scratching.

Shawshank does.  It is silly, overwrought and criminally overrated by the rabble, and even some of the non-rabble.  I'm kind of obsessive about this.
[/quote]

So wrong, so wrong.  Spirited Away . . . No, replace with Butch Cassidy

Princess Bride . . . Just kidding, right?  Take your pick, Godfather II, indiana Jones (the first one) Sands of Iwa Jima, or any episode of GOT

Bull Durham?  Jerry Maguire

Gunga Din.  Enough said.

You want cgi?  Avatar.

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Re: Categorical - Leftcoast - 07-14-2014

Bond's wife actually WAS killed by Blofeld hours after their wedding in the final scene of the original Ian Flemming novel,  "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". 

The original Bond movies followed the novel plots fairly closely.  The later movies - not so much.

(Corrected the misspelling.)

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Re: Categorical - Rally - 07-14-2014

(07-14-2014, 07:54 PM)leftcoast link Wrote:Bond's wife actually WAS killed by Blofeld hours after their wedding in the final scene of the original Ian Flemming novel,  "On Her Magesty's Secret Service". 

The original Bond movies followed the novel plots fairly closely.  The later movies - not so much.

For three years my buddies and I made an annual pilgrimage to Grumman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood to see the latest Bond film.  You youngsters here won't understand but they were quite titillating at the time.  We would buy our tickets then stand around telling somewhat dirty jokes until they let us in.  All the way from Glendora, this was an adventure! To me and my buddies, Sean is James, James Bond.  And no female film character will ever supplant Pussy Galore in my adolescent mind.

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Re: Categorical - Oasis - 07-14-2014

My favorite sports movie is Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 about the epic 1968 game between the two Stanford wannabes.  Usually the games are much more interesting than what the players think about them.  Not here.


Here are the the best war movies:


12 O'Clock High --Gregory Peck, Dean Jaeger -- best of the best
Das Boot  -- stupendous u-boat epic, a masterpiece.  Best viewed with subtitles.
Stalingrad -- phenomenal battle scenes; Ostfront epic
Downfall (Bruno Ganz is the best Hitler ever, way better than Guinness or Hopkins-- last days in the bunker)
Patton -- George C. Scott is top of the heap
Letters From Iwo Jima -- Eastwood-directed Iwo from Japanese viewpoint
Fog of War -- Robert McNamara admits his first choice was Stanford.  Very candid about Vietnam.


Then there is the best film of all time.  No kidding.  Actually a miniseries, Brideshead Revisited (1981)(ultimate all-star UK cast (Olivier, Gielgud, Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Claire Bloom) in Evelyn Waugh's classic story). Beautiful musical score by Geoffrey Burgon.  Splendid throughout.


An overlooked gem of a movie is Thirteen Days, about how that a-hole Krushchev threatened Ole Miss' undefeated 1962 season by putting missiles in Cuba.

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Re: Categorical - FarmDad.01 - 07-14-2014

Of the major American sports, H'wood has always had the hardest time with baseball in terms of versimilitude. I think that's because to begin to understand the game, you have to go out to the ballpark; TV does a great job of showing close-ups of lip-gnawing pitchers and neck-twitching batters, but is terrible at conveying the sport's intricate split-second geometry except in slo-mo replays.

I'd rather sit through The Bad News B..rs again than The Natural, which Barry Levinson directed, per usual, with his toes. Malamud's downer ending, referencing the Black Sox scandal, becomes a walkoff home run by Roy Hobbs that actually shatters a bank of lights atop the right-field stands! Bull Durham's action scenes are only slightly more authentic than Bang the Drum Slowly's, the tech advisor of which didn't bother teaching Robert DeNiro that to properly round first base, use your left foot. Field of Dreams? Rather than thrill to ghosts of major leaguers past exfiltrating a corn field, I'm sure YouTube has archival footage of the minor-league outfielder who literally ran through a plywood fence; or Jose Canseco allowing a fly ball to bounce off his noggin for a home run; or a 1975 Military Night at N.Y.'s Shea Stadium, when a U.S. Army cannon turned the centerfield wall into smoking debris.

That said, one baseball flick made my 10 favorite sports movies (listed alphabetically), each of which I've enjoyed at least four times:

Bend It Like Beckham; 2002. In London, two teenaged girls (Parminda Nagra and Keira Knightley) bond through their exceptional soccer skills. But Ms. Nagra has to play for a prestigious travel club on the sly, as her Indian parents have declared sports unladylike.  For fans of The Good Wife, Archie Panjabi has a prominent supporting role.
Cool Runnings; 1993. A Winter Olympics bobsled team from Jamaica? Yeh, mon. Moments after an early practice run in Calgary: "Hey, you can pee now." Reply: "Uh... too late."
Downhill Racer; 1970. Robert Redford as a narcissistic skier trying the make the U.S. Winter Olympics team; playing the team's coach is Gene Hackman.
Longest Yard, The; 1974. Definitely the Burt Reynolds original, not Adam Sandler's 2005 remake.
Major League; 1989. A widowed chorine who inherits an MLB team wants it to tank so she can relocate the franchise (think the NFL's Georgia Rosenbloom Frontiere). Players include a Cuban slugger, played by Dennis Haysbert, who handles snakes while practicing locker-room voodoo and a nearly-blind fastballing relief pitcher (anyone old enough to remember Ryne Duren?) played by Charlie Sheen.
Mystery, Alaska; 1999. In a publicity stunt, the NHL Rangers travel to Alaska to play a local amateur squad led by Russell Crowe. The live-telecast game is held outdoors on a ginormous non-regulation rink that takes up much of a frozen lake. And who's brought in to sing "The National Anthem"? Little Richard.
Quiet Man, The; 1952. American pugilist John Wayne visits Ireland, where he has to put up his dukes to win the hand of Maureen O'Hara (as who wouldn't?).
Rocky; 1976. Yo, Adrienne...
Slapshot; 1977. I actually credit the Hanson Brothers with pioneering the au courant Nerd Glasses.
Wind; 1992. Stunning America's Cup sequences, plus credible performances by Matthew Modine and Jennifer Grey.

btw, here's a movie I'm betting few have ever seen, starting with myself: Columbia Pictures's 1942 The Spirit of Stanford, in which left-handed QB Frankie Albert plays himself transitioning from high school to Farm legend (among the extras portraying students, Lloyd Bridges and Forrest Tucker).

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Re: Categorical - Hulk01 - 07-15-2014

Favorite moment in any movie.

A vote for the nigh hen Sgt. Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) accompanies Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) to a Los Angeles club to confront Johnny Stempano and a blonde whom the sergeant assumes is another of Pierce Patchett's actress look-alike call girls:
   
Ed: Take a walk, honey, before I haul your ass downtown.
    Johnny: You are making a large mistake.
    Woman: Get away from our table.
    Ed: Shut up! [leans in] A hooker cut to look like Lana Turner is still a hooker.
    Johnny: Hey!
    Ed: She just looks like Lana Turner.
    Jack: [grinning] She is Lana Turner. (Spacey's grin is one key to the scene.)
    Ed: What?
    Jack: She is Lana Turner.
    [Lana throws a drink in Ed's face]

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