Baseball movies, damn it, BASEBALL MOVIES!

Salon review of Knuckleball:

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/14/pick_of_the_week_baseballs_secret_zen_fraternity/

Again: excellent.

my review:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/knuckleball/6522

I'd seen it in June, so I was remembering bits this time just before they played out, like the Texas contract withdrawal with Dickey. You can't write stuff like that.

That Eastwood/Timberlake movie looks dire.

belongs to Amy Adams, apparently

"looks dire" and "belongs to Amy Adams" are one and the same to me

Nice review, Morbius. I think we basically saw the same thing, I just loved the secret-society angle more than you, and wasn't especially bothered by the first half-hour. Agree that the music was awful. I can't think of another baseball film that's much like it.

"the secret-society angle" is about 15 mins of the film tho. And they keep going back to that one awful Boston sports guy.

I didn't time it or anything, but it sure felt like more than 15 minutes--in any event, it sent me home inexplicably happy, and pushed aside everything else about the movie. Niekro's story about has dad was priceless.

Huh, if Eastwood had directed Curve, it would've been worse, but it would've been better, y'know?

It's a "baseball movie," of course it's crap.

"looks dire" and "belongs to Amy Adams" are one and the same to me

― Ham Lushbaugh (Eric H.), Tuesday, September 18, 2012 2:02 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

what the christ

She's given a good movie performance precisely once: The Fighter. Presumably David O. castigated it out of her.

LOLed pretty hard when Amy Adams was on ESPN promoing. Had seen the trailer twice and a number of ads and had thought it was Pam from The Office finally getting her first star turn. Had no idea.

what I hate about this thread resurfacing

She's great in Catch Me If You Can!

xp unbookmarked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hww-Xxbud0

Ford looks too old to play Rickey

of the two baseball flicks out now i think i'll stick to the docu

The Worst Baseball on Film

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=18426

haha that is great

Haven't watched it yet, but you can see Donald Brittain's 1974 documentary on Fergie Jenkins at the NFB site:

http://www.nfb.ca/film/king_of_the_hill

Another one from the NFB site: Sleeping Tigers: The Asahi Baseball Story, about a Vancouver PCL team that won championships before being sent to internment camps after Pearl Harbor.

http://www.nfb.ca/film/sleeping_tigers_the_asahi_baseball_story

sounds cool

I had no intention of seeing Trouble with the Curve, but this makes it sound so monumentally bad, I just might catch it on second-run now:

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.ca/2013/01/trouble-curve.html#more

Batting average as an avatar of the new!

From Neyer:

"If you're reading this and you're a film buff, you probably know that Gary Cooper, who played Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees (entire movie here, free) had a real tough time learning to bat and throw left-handed. The filmmakers' solution? Outfit Cooper in a "backwards" Yankees jersey, have him run to third base after hitting the ball ... and then simply flip the images for the finished movie."

Someone (Tom Sheiber) went through the film shot by shot to figure out if this was really true. I'm with Neyer, this is an incredible piece of research:

http://baseballresearcher.blogspot.co.il/2013/02/the-pride-of-yankees-seeknay.html

The Pitch that Killed reportedly in pre-production.

http://www.stwnewspress.com/local/x986706511/Oklahoma-State-professors-Pitched-That-Killed-gets-the-Hollywood-treatment

hiphop on the TV ads will propel 42 to b.o. glory.

potentially amusing: John McGinley as Red Barber (deep South accent?), Chris Meloni as Leo Durocher (way too large).

im feelin 42. looks p good to me

From Neyer:

"If you're reading this and you're a film buff, you probably know that Gary Cooper, who played Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees (entire movie here, free) had a real tough time learning to bat and throw left-handed. The filmmakers' solution? Outfit Cooper in a "backwards" Yankees jersey, have him run to third base after hitting the ball ... and then simply flip the images for the finished movie."

Someone (Tom Sheiber) went through the film shot by shot to figure out if this was really true. I'm with Neyer, this is an incredible piece of research:

http://baseballresearcher.blogspot.co.il/2013/02/the-pride-of-yankees-seeknay.html

― NoTimeBeforeTime, Tuesday, February 5, 2013 4:08 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark

damn

i saw trouble with the curve btw. it was awful. amy adams was the only good thing about it, she was almost too good for this movie

Neyer on #42 and Hollywood, incl a YT link to The Jackie Robinson Story starring JR, which I remember seeing on TV the week he died.

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/4/8/4176250/jackie-robinson-movies-history-42

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