Baseball movies, damn it, BASEBALL MOVIES!

42 was bleh, but the baseball scenes are sick. alan tudyk plays ben chapman and i had to struggle not to laugh during his exuberantly racist comedy routine from the dugout

http://meadowparty.com/blog/2013/04/10/42/

keith law's take

alan tudyk plays ben chapman and i had to struggle not to laugh during his exuberantly racist comedy routine from the dugout
it took me a bit to remember where i recognized the actor from. also, i started cracking up at the routine after a bit too.

I'm not surprised that Law didn't like it, he slammed Moneyball too. He basically hates anything that's the least bit Hollywood-ized.

Posnanski wrote about it on his blog:

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.ca/2013/04/42.html

I'm pretty wary of this film--and disappointed that Spike Lee didn't get to do it--but I'll see it.

I'm not surprised that Law didn't like it, he slammed Moneyball too. He basically hates anything that's the least bit Hollywood-ized.

― NoTimeBeforeTime, Monday, April 15, 2013 5:15 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

he's pretty much right about both of them though. 42 could've been so much better if it was even as good as Walk The Line (which is no masterpiece but at least its characters have arcs and get to display a range of emotions and experiences)

im not opposed to hollywoodized stuff, though this version was probably the least interesting take on JR you could've told. wesley morris' grantland review does a good job of explaining why helgeland's approach was antithetical to good drama

i did like things about the movie, dont get me wrong. its not terrible.

the pos's take is actually otm too, he just happened to like the movie

The NYT review was the one, I think, that suggested it's aimed at 4th-graders who know nothing about Robinson.

I haven't seen "42" yet, but I can appreciate that there's a need for the glossy, Hollywood version of the story. I wouldn't have wanted to see a completely realistic, 100% true to real events version of "Moneyball" either.

The NYT review was the one, I think, that suggested it's aimed at 4th-graders who know nothing about Robinson.

― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Monday, April 15, 2013 8:29 AM (1 hour ago)

this essentially was law's point too. haven't seen it but i'm in no rush to, given what i've read

hey, all the players at Fenway are wearing 42, what is this product placement?

I would prefer no basball movies at all btw

Neyer asks around for ideas for a great baseball movie:

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/4/22/4232580/baseball-movie-ideas-unmade

Best choices: Bill James/Cap Anson, Allen Barra/Bill Veeck, everyone who brought up Clemente
Worst choices: Bob Costas/Barry Bonds (ugh)

I think Finley and the early-/70s A's would be a great subject...except the movie would invariably pale next to the real thing.

Looked over the other choices. Durocher, fantastic--that might be my first choice, even before the A's. I actually think Morgan Freeman as Buck O'Neill is a bad idea. Freeman was a great actor early on, but he's gradually been made into this saintly figure; you'd have him playing another saint, and that's just too much goodness in one movie.

I don't think a Durocher movie would work -- it's not "Hollywood" enough. Same is probably true for Cap Anson, but as a period piece from a bygone era, it might fly. A 70's A's or Bill Veeck movie would be funny as hell and you wouldn't have to like baseball to laugh with it.

Durocher seems majorly Hollywood to me. You've got a readymade tagline in "Nice guys finish last," a great nickname, and Durocher himself had numerous Hollywood connections--movie-star friends, affair with Laraine Day, lots of gangster ambience. Where I think it'd really work is, as the guy points out in the article, how much baseball history Durocher's life encompassed (like Stengel's). You'd have three stories that are worth movies themselves: the Gashouse Gang, the '51 Giants, and the '69 Cubs. The one problem I could see is that there's too much ground to cover. You'd either need a three-hour film, or some way to organize the material sensibly.

I was thinking The Glenallen Hill Story too, but I think that one's been done.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/84/Arachnophobia.jpg/220px-Arachnophobia.jpg

Durocher would be great, assuming they followed the facts instead of Leo's highly fictionalized memoirs.

But that'll never happen. It'd have to be a hard R rating, and baseball movies now have to be kid-friendly, which is why you'll never see faithful adaptations of Ball Four or The Boys of Summer, and Durocher is too obscure to today's general public for a studio to greenlight a period picture that goes from the '20s to the '60s.

Studio meeting over proposed Ball Four script:

"This guy that says 'shitfuck' and 'fuckshit' all the time, can that be changed?"
"To what?"
"I don't know...How about we have him say 'LOL!' instead?"

Best choices: Bill James/Cap Anson, Allen Barra/Bill Veeck, everyone who brought up Clemente
Worst choices: Bob Costas/Barry Bonds (ugh)

― NoTimeBeforeTime, Tuesday, April 23, 2013 9:42 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark

a barry movie could be amazing if they did it right and avoided the obvious pitfalls. costas is right about the nuances there!

Bill Murray woulda been a great Bill Veeck, too old now. (Michael Shannon?)

Bonds is too contemporary a subject for a biopic -- there isn't enough perspective on his career yet, especially since nobody really knows what he's like in private. It would also be a hatchet job (there's no movie-worthy story in "guy becomes greatest player of his era, never talks to anyone) so I don't really see the point.

too contemporary doesnt scan for me... was moneyball too contemporary? pride of the yankees came out a year after gehrig died. jackie robinson starred in a biopic about himself while he was an active player! and the timeframe makes it more interesting, we've seen a billion those were the days baseball movies already

it'd have to be done there will be blood style obv, with bonds as daniel plainview

The Robinson and Gehrig movies were from a totally different era, when baseball was by far the #1 sport among other things. I don't see the demand right now for a biopic on a contemporary player (in any sport). Moneyball wasn't that old but there were already a million things written about it before the movie came out so I think there was enough perspective there, plus the whole underdog saga is ready made for a movie adaptation.

Not totally related, but even though Moneyball doesn't seem like it happened all that long ago, in terms of baseball economics, the big market vs small market and contraction debates are practically ancient history, so in some sense it does feel like a completely different era.

Bonds as Daniel Plainview sounds promising though, although I think I'd do it more along the lines of Rosencrantz and Gildenstern. I'm thinking the backdrop to a Rich Aurilia/Jeff Kent buddy flick or a view from the perspective of Darren Baker.

was moneyball too contemporary?

For the studio and filmmakers it was, cuz what was on the screen had pretty much nothing to do with reality.

Pride of the Yankees is also nearly total fiction. The movie Robinson starred in is interesting, but look at even 5 minutes of it (I posted it upthread) -- it was SUPER low-budget.

I can't see a studio doing a nonfic baseball movie without MLB's cooperation either.

Contemporary films are tricky, but I can think of at least two that work: All the President's Men was fantastic, The Social Network very good.

Bonds would be tricky too, but I think a great film could be made. I wouldn't want a hatchet job, no, nor an apologia--I guess I'd want a director/screewriter who's conflicted on the subject. I actually see some parallels between Bonds and Nixon. (Be forewarned: I see Nixon parallels everywhere.) No, I'm not saying Bonds bombed countries into oblivion or trashed the constitution. More that both of them seemed impossible to know, both had very public downfalls after having everything in their grasp (again, a major difference: when Nixon's big moment comes, reelection + China, he's already had a lifetime of unseemly stuff behind him), and both had bete noires that seemed to contribute to their destruction--JFK for Nixon, McGwire/Sosa for Bonds.

For what it's worth, I think Oliver Stone's Nixon film is excellent. Most people do not agree.

Bonds was hated before PEDs were even an issue. Remember him being left off the "All-Time Team"?

the movie should just be a ~90 min static shot of a bonds mid-afternoon nap in his special clubhouse recliner

otm

the big market vs small market and contraction debates are practically ancient history

are they? didnt the new cba stack the deck against small market teams even more?

http://blogs.thescore.com/mlb/2013/07/10/an-oral-history-of-the-1989-cleveland-indians

Posnanski wrote about The Bad News Bears yesterday:

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.ca/2013/07/walking-bears.html

I think the comments get at what the movie's really about (I've only seen it once a few years ago and really liked it): the awful behavior of some adults at kids' sporting events.

which is brought to a head by the revenge of Vic Morrow's kid.

http://assets.adamriff.com/images/frank_underwood-baseball.gif

no

tsk, always the gay actors who can't throw (Perkins as Piersall)

from House of Cards?

Saw 42 last night and thought it was surprisingly solid. Yes, full of those hollywood biopic moments but good in spite of them. Thought Chadwick Boseman really nailed it. And yeah, the baseball scenes were good as fuck, made me fall in love with baseball again. The base-stealing made my hair stand up.

Harrison Ford was decent overall but had a little to much of that "I'm An Old-Timey Businessman With A Heart Underneath" english on his performance.

tbf some of that was the writing.

Haven't seen it yet, but the "I want someone with guts NOT to fight back" scene is p much verbatim from The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)

the lies at the heart of Field of Dreams

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/4/23/5640792/field-of-dreams-worst-baseball-film-of-all-time-25th-anniversary

Three-hour Taiwanese historical epic:

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/kano

Heard at our staff meeting tonight that the grade 8s are showing Moneyball as part of their probability unit in math. That one stumps me a bit.

(Notwithstanding that I didn't mind Moneyball, I guess the obvious connection is the high probability that any narrative baseball movie's going to be mediocre or worse.)

Didn't realize there's a Dock Ellis documentary out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHIISyodBYQ

Anyone seen Kobayashi's I Will Buy You?

Yeah, a few months ago. It's ok, not great.

http://m.mlb.com/cutfour/2015/03/25/114786332/principal-richard-vernon-from-the-breakfast-club-was-once-a-minor-league-baseball-player

free video: Baseball's Been Very, Very Good to Me: Minnie Minoso Story

http://video.wttw.com/video/2365436462/