Brian’s Song

Brian’s Song
YouTube viewing

These are the facts in the brief career of pro football star Brian Piccolo: he was college football’s leading rusher in 1964 at Wake Forest, and was named the Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year, finishing tenth in the Heisman Trophy balloting.

He was signed by the Chicago Bears as a free agent, after both the NFL and the AFL passed on drafting him. In 1968, the year in which teammate and former Rookie of the Year Gale Sayers injured his knee, Piccolo ran for 450 yards, had 291 yards receiving, and two touchdowns.

In 1969 Piccolo was diagnosed with embryonal cell carcinoma, and underwent surgery twice. He died June 16, 1970 at the age of 26, leaving behind a wife and three daughters.

Those are the facts... but the facts only tell you so much.

Brittany Runs a Marathon

Brittany Runs a Marathon
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens NY

This was my first movie at the Kew Gardens since a driver backed into the front doors last Friday, knocking them down but causing no other damage, to people or property. When I heard the news, and after I was assured no one was hurt, I was scared, I admit it. I’m glad the damage was not extensive, because I do not wanna lose this place—and certainly not because of an incompetent driver, of all things. So now that that’s out of the way...

I’m a fan of the New York City Marathon. When I was younger, I’d go to other boroughs every year to watch the race but now I stick to Queens. The course goes over the Pulaski Bridge from Greenpoint, Brooklyn into Long Island City for a brief spell before the runners take the Queensborough Bridge into midtown Manhattan. Queens Plaza is closed off to vehicle traffic for a change and it’s great to walk the streets there.

I have fantasized about what it would be like to run in the Marathon. One year, my friend Bill (not the  guy from the video store; someone different) ran in it and I waited for him at the Manhattan end of the Queensborough Bridge, but I don’t recall seeing him. It’s been my observation in the past that you don’t have to be built like Usain Bolt to run a marathon; I have seen runners, male and female, with figures close to mine, running with everyone else, which always amazes me—but I never imagined it as anything other than a pipe dream.

Last Thanksgiving, I ran a 5K for the first time, and while it was exhilarating, I do not feel ready to upgrade to a full 26.2 miles yet—but that pipe dream of running a marathon—any marathon, not necessarily the big one here in New York—feels a bit more possible. A tiny bit.

So when I saw the trailer for the movie Brittany Runs a Marathon, I knew I had to check it out, because I saw a whole lot of myself in it. Based on a true story, it’s pretty much what it says on the tin—the story of a... let’s call her pleasingly plump young woman desperate to lose weight for health reasons (and improve her overall life in the process) by taking up running. There’s a romantic subplot, of course, and it all takes place in a New York I recognize as mine.

Mad props to star Jillian Bell for losing forty pounds and actually running the Marathon for this movie (though she didn’t actually run the entire course), but that aside, she’s very likable. Brittany is self-depreciating about her weight, yet she uses her humor to keep people at arms length—she doesn’t always do what you think she should, which factors into the plot late in the film. Writer-director Paul Downs Colaizzo is friends with the real Brittany, so he knows her well enough to translate her story to film.

Brittany runs a 5K first, and I was glad to see that, but the film doesn’t go enough into her eating habits, which she would have also had to change to help her lose weight. It certainly doesn’t address how difficult it is to resist temptation after a lifetime of eating whatever one wants without care of the consequences, or of how much nicer it can be to cook for oneself instead of eating takeout all the time—but maybe Brittany didn’t cook much. Dunno.

As for public perception and dating when you’re fat, well, yeah, I get that it’s different for girls, and the movie addresses that aspect, but us guys have to deal with that too. We see Brittany try to date as she loses weight, and we even see her diss a fat woman (with a boyfriend) during Brittany’s lowest point before she recovers.

I doubt I would’ve gotten as far as I have in my own personal battle of the bulge without Virginia. It was her who took me seriously when I expressed what I thought was an off-the-cuff comment about running the Marathon and it has been her who has encouraged me to run a 5K and motivated me into getting in better shape, in part by setting an example. She too has lost a bunch of weight (I met her after she did it), mostly through dieting and weightlifting. She doesn’t care for running. When I finished my 5K last year, I got a little medal, among other things. I gave it to her, because she made it possible.

Do I worry about my looks in relation to her? All the time. I’m no longer a spring chicken. The day my parts won’t work anymore is never far from my mind, and I worry whatever I do to make myself presentable for her is never enough... but after a year and a half, she’s stuck with me. You can’t imagine what that means to someone like me.

This Sunday, I’m gonna run my second 5K. I’m trying to be cool, since I’ve done one already, but a part of me is still on tenterhooks, thinking something might happen to me and I won’t be able to finish or whatever. I’m gonna do it, though. Will I ever run a marathon? Eh... ask me again in five years. These things take time.

Creed II

Creed II
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens, NY

What a year this has been for Michael B. Jordan: appearing in two of the biggest, most high-profile films in two physically demanding, yet very different roles.

In the first, he portrays one of the best cinematic villains in recent history, one which will make him a shoo-in for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination — and I'll go out on a limb right now and predict it's his name which Allison Janney will read off next February.

In the second, he's a hero, a champion, playing an original character in a series not only inspired by one of the great movie franchises of the last fifty years, but is a continuation of that same franchise in a different direction.

The common denominator in both is Ryan Coogler: director/co-writer of Black Panther and executive producer of Creed II.

Requiem for a Heavyweight

Requiem for a Heavyweight
TCM viewing

By the year 1954, television was taking off: Lucille Ball, Milton Berle and Ozzie & Harriet Nelson had top-rated shows; The Tonight Show debuted; Senator Joseph McCarthy became an unwitting TV star at the peak of the Red Scare - and a 30-year-old ex-radio writer had moved to New York with his family, stepping up from local TV in Cincinnati. His name was Rod Serling.

If you've ever stared out an airplane window, wondering if a monster is riding the wing; if you've ever looked at a child's doll and suspected it had a mind of its own; if you've ever noticed the lights in the night sky and feared aliens had infiltrated your cozy suburban neighborhood, you've been touched by his legacy.

Long before he led us into another dimension, not of sight and sound but of mind, Serling was another struggling freelance writer looking to break into the new medium that took America by storm in the 1950s, rewriting rejected radio scripts and pitching them to anthology series. In 1955, his teleplay for Kraft Television Theatre called "Patterns" was a hit, and it got him noticed. (I watched it for this post; it's very good.)

Playhouse 90 is now considered the gold standard of anthology series on television. After the success of "Patterns," Serling sold to the series' producers a teleplay that he would later call one of his greatest achievements as a writer: the boxing drama "Requiem for a Heavyweight," the tale of an over-the-hill pugilist searching for a life outside the squared circle even though fighting is all he knows. Jack Palance and Kim Hunter starred.

Serling and director Ralph Nelson both won Emmys for this episode. Adaptations were filmed in other countries, including England (where Sean Connery starred!). The New York Times called it "a play of overwhelming force and tenderness.... an artistic triumph."

In 1962, Serling and Nelson re-teamed for the film version, with a new cast: Anthony Quinn and Julie Harris, plus Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney. That's the version I saw on TCM.

It begins with Quinn's character getting his butt kicked in the ring, but it's shot entirely from his perspective, Lady in the Lake style. (This must have been where Ryan Coogler got the idea for use in Creed.) The camera blurs, going in and out of focus as if Quinn's eyesight was fading. When Quinn loses, Gleason and Rooney walk him back to the trainer's room (the walking is more convincing here than in Lady; a hand-held camera must have been used). We even see a rope lifted as he leaves the ring.

When we finally see Quinn's face, it's in a mirror, and he's a bloody pulp; that's when the opening credits roll. Oh, and did I mention his opponent is none other than Cassius Clay - before he became Muhammad Ali? He even got a line.

Quinn doesn't get a visit from the devil, offering him a deal; nor does he slip into an alternate reality or discover he's really a mannequin or anything like that; it's a straightforward drama with the same attention to human frailty and foible we've come to associate with Serling, held together by a dynamite cast.

I watched this with my mother, who once again, couldn't appreciate the artistry of the screenplay because it had a downer ending. Maybe I shouldn't complain - different people like different things in different ways - but my father would've loved this movie. He would've gotten why it ended the way it did and he would've appreciated it in a way my mother can't, for whatever reason. It's frustrating, but what can I do?

Sugar

Sugar
Cinemax viewing

Jerry was my best friend throughout junior high school. My memory of him is as a happy-go-lucky dude who liked to joke around a lot. I wish I could remember when and how we met; it was probably in either fifth or sixth grade. I just know we bonded pretty quickly on a lot of things - especially baseball.

In Flushing there's a Modell's Sporting Goods on Main Street. It's one of the last remnants of my childhood still standing in the neighborhood - and I've lost plenty. Downstairs, there used to be a giant bin filled with baseball gloves. Whenever Jerry and I went in there, we'd scour the bin, looking for gloves with the autographs of players we liked. As a left-hander, I always had a harder search than he did, because lefty gloves were few and far between - plus, it had to be a glove with a comfortable fit. I was very picky about that sort of thing. 

We'd go to Flushing Meadow to play catch, sometimes with his younger brothers. We had few opportunities to play an actual game outside of school - there were never enough of us to form a team - but we made do. Any dreams we had of playing for the Mets one day were only that. We weren't athletes; our interests ultimately lay elsewhere. It was okay.

Jerry was also Dominican, like the protagonist of Sugar. When Jerry was twelve or thirteen, I think, his family moved down there for a short time. I still have the letters he sent me. Sometimes Dominicans get hassled by other Latinos for whatever reason. That always annoys me because it's like they're insulting Jerry. I haven't known any other Dominicans since him - at least, none that made half the impression he did...

...and certainly no aspiring ballplayers. Sugar reminded me of the films of John Sayles: immersive in foreign cultures in a low-key, unobtrusive manner. Co-writers/co-directors Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck present Sugar's struggle to reach the big leagues simply, from a distinctly Latino perspective. This isn't The Natural or even Bull Durham; for all of Sugar's ability to throw a fastball, one always feels he's facing very long odds and a trip to The Show is anything but certain.

Do I wish I had tried to become an athlete? Eh, not really. I might wonder about it once in a blue moon, but I tend to think the chance of long-term injury doesn't make a few fleeting moments of glory worth the struggle - not that I thought that way as a kid, and neither did Jerry. Dreams don't work that way. Sugar is about one young man's pursuit of his dream. I can relate to it because while he doesn't end up a star pitcher, not everyone can be. He still finds a way to do what he loves, though, and that may be more important than glory in the end. I think Jerry would agree.

Queen of Katwe

Queen of Katwe
seen @ UA Kaufman Astoria 14, Astoria, Queens NY

I don't recall when I first learned chess. I suspect it was sometime in junior high. I have a mental image of an adult, probably a teacher, explaining the rules to me. I'm fairly sure I didn't learn it from my father. He was more of a checkers man - that and cards.

I never had any great desire to master the game. Video games were more my speed as a kid, and as an adult, I'd rather play gin rummy. Put a chess board and pieces in front of me, I'll play you, but only for fun.

It's a very competitive game, that's for sure. Whenever I go to Washington Square Park, I see dudes playing each other on tables at the southwest corner, arranged in semicircles near the entrance. They tend to be friendly games, but with a fair amount of trash talking. At a Panera Bread near me, I often see several dudes who regularly go at it, tooth and nail, when they play. They seem to be pals, too, but their competition is cutthroat. They slap the clock timers furiously and argue over moves.

Chess ain't for dummies. Remembering how each piece moves, being ever-conscious of protecting your king while searching for a hole in your opponent's line of defense to exploit - it's demanding. Even a casual game requires attempting to think one or two steps ahead at the least.

I tend to play defensively. I don't wanna come on so strong I wind up slaughtered because of defenses I should have taken when I had the chance. It doesn't matter. I still end up losing when I play the computer on my laptop.

Chess doesn't strike me as a sport the way baseball is a sport, yet Queen of Katwe is labeled a sports movie anyway, so whatever. ESPN Films co-produced it, so I guess it counts. Chess doesn't lend itself well to film - there are only so many furrowed brows
and close-ups of chess pieces you can make - yet there have been a small amount of chess films. Tobey Maguire played Bobby Fisher recently, for example.

Mira Nair is a good director. I enjoyed The Namesake and Mississippi Masala. I was conflicted when I first saw she was making this one for Disney, but this isn't as saccharine as you might expect. I did think her editor had a heavy hand. Editing should never call attention to itself, but from the first post-opening credits scene, it did. I also thought the film was a bit longer than perhaps it should have been; just when you think Phiona Mutesi is about to win that Big Tournament, something sets her back and she has to win another Big Tournament. Still, it was pleasant to watch. David Oyelowo continues to impress me in everything he does. I like him a lot. And Nair did a wonderful thing at the end by bringing out the main cast, one by one, for a "curtain call" with their real-life counterparts.

So the last time I spoke about Lupita Nyong'o, I challenged Hollywood to capitalize on all the goodwill built by her Oscar win and make her a star. It's been a mixed bag at best so far. Yes, she was in The Force Awakens, but as a CGI character. Ditto The Jungle Book. And did anyone even bother with that Liam Neeson plane movie? She's had better luck on Broadway. Jen told me she saw Nyong'o in Eclipsed and loved it.

Katwe is the first real film showcase role for Nyong'o since 12 Years a Slave. She's excellent, but I admit I had a hard time imagining her being old enough to have had four kids, two of them teens. Eh. I'll let it slide.

So I saw the movie with my friend Sandi, who I've been itching to finally tell you about. I met her a year and a half ago at the Newtown Literary reading. Her poetry was published in the same issue as my short story. In talking to her afterwards, she had said she was trying to start a sci-fi/fantasy writers group. I had some old sci-fi material that either never saw the light of day or was never properly critiqued or both, so I decided to join up. I spent the next eight or nine months meeting with Sandi and these two other girls at her place in Astoria. It was helpful, but being in two writers groups at once became a strain, so I had to leave.

Sandi and I, however, have stayed in touch. Katwe was only the second movie we've seen together, after Kubo and the Two Strings, which we also liked. She actually got a little teary-eyed over Katwe. She's the type that likes to stay for all the credits at a movie's end, unlike me, so I've learned to indulge her. I don't mind it  so much if I'm with someone. Besides, the day before was her birthday.

Creed

Creed
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens

When Creed first began doing gigs around their hometown of Tallahassee, Florida, grunge rock had started to become played out. They had to settle for playing in family restaurants. They played mostly cover songs, but all the while they were writing original material for what would eventually become their 1997 debut record My Own Prison, which they initially released on their own Blue Collar Records label. According to manager Jeff Hanson, fourteen labels had passed on the band, until representatives from Wind-Up Records came to Tallahassee to hear them perform - 

PSYYYYYYYYCHE!!

Just kidding. Wanted to see if you were paying attention.

Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro

Hollywood's Hispanic Heritage Blogathon es un evento dedicado a celebrar los logros de los latinos en la industria del cine a lo largo de la historia, organizado por Once Upon a Screen. Para obtener una lista de bloggers que participan, por favor visite los enlaces en cualquier sitio.

Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro (AKA Samson vs. the Vampire Women)
YouTube viewing

Long before the Rock, Hulk Hogan, Jesse Ventura or Rowdy Roddy Piper, there was El Santo - a professional wrestling legend from Mexico who parlayed his success in the ring into the movies and other media, as part of a career that spanned almost five decades. Was he any good as an actor? Nope - but this is one of those cases where acting ability was kinda beside the point.

Raging Bull

Raging Bull
seen @ Central Park Conservancy Film Festival, Central Park, New York NY

You certainly don't need me to tell you how great an actor Robert De Niro is, but I haven't talked about him in detail here, so indulge me for a little bit. I don't remember the first movie I saw him in. Might've been The Untouchables. Might've been Midnight Run. Not sure which. I watched both of those movies on cable quite a bit as a kid. The big ones - Taxi Driver, Godfather 2, Mean Streets, and today's subject, Raging Bull - didn't come until later.

Is it possible we take physical transformations in actors for granted these days? Whether it's Christian Bale getting super-skinny for one movie and fat for another, or Nicole Kidman wearing a fake nose or Charlize Theron getting ugly, we may appreciate and celebrate actors who go the extra mile for a role, but it's fair to say that it's not as unusual anymore. It's hardly a new practice - Lon Chaney Sr. was probably the originator for this sort of thing in Hollywood movies - but you look at a movie like Bull and you see De Niro go from being a physically fit boxer in his prime to being fat and bloated in middle age and it still has the ability to amaze after all these years.

One can't talk about De Niro without talking about Martin Scorsese, and indeed, it's remarkable how time and again, the director has been able to summon personifications of the reckless, out-of-control human id in the form of De Niro, his greatest collaborator. De Niro's Jake LaMotta is possessive, ill-tempered and full of himself sometimes, but he's different from the psychotic Travis Bickle in Taxi or the delusional Rupert Pupkin in King of Comedy. And yet the essential De Niro is recognizable from role to role. He's not like, say, Johnny Depp, who can disappear into a role, but that's okay. It's what makes him De Niro.

De Niro has gotten some flack in recent years for appearing in movies that would seem to be beneath him, but honestly, how many roles like Jake LaMotta are out there? More to the point, how many movies with characters like Jake LaMotta are being made by Hollywood these days? Not that the past fifteen years have been a total wasteland: of the ones I've seen, the original Meet the Parents was funny (can't speak for the sequels); and he was quite good in Silver Linings Playbook. Plus he had that cameo in American Hustle.

Bull looks like an Old Hollywood film, and not just because it's in black and white. Certain camera movements and compositions Scorsese makes throughout the film give it an old-school kind of feel to it. I've thought about whether or not Scorsese has an identifiable visual style. I think he does, but it's hard for me to pin down exactly. Bull looks different from GoodFellas, which looks different from The Wolf of Wall Street, but I think they all "feel" like his films to a certain extent. I dunno. I'd have to look at a bunch of his films all in a row to describe it better.

I saw Bull with John and Sue in Central Park. I had been there for movies before, but I had forgotten how much pre-show activity there was. There was a trivia contest, and some annoying local TV sports newscaster, all of which I could've done without. There was someone there from the Museum of the Moving Image, however. That wasn't so bad. Anything to promote Queens, after all.

The Endless Summer

The Beach Party Blogathon is devoted to the grooviest and swingingest beach-related movies around, hosted by Speakeasy and Silver Screenings. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the link at Speakeasy.

The Endless Summer
Netflix stream viewing

I've never had any great interest in surfing. When I think of the beach, I'm reminded of my days in summer camp as a child, and we did a whole lot more splashing around and dunking each other than we did surfing. I vaguely recall experimenting with a boogie board once or twice.

I learned the hard way that swimming in a beach is nothing like swimming in a pool, and the difference, obviously, is in the waves. Not that I'm that great a swimmer to begin with, but at least with a pool, the conditions are much more controlled and predictable, and swimming always felt more relaxed and natural there, not like on a beach, where the waves can do anything - and to be honest, I still find the waves to be a little scary sometimes.

I remember being envious of the counselors who would go further out into the waves than we campers. At this one day camp, whenever we'd go to the beach, the counselors would form a "horseshoe" perimeter in the water within which we would have to stay, and the counselor who was the best swimmer (I think it was always the same guy; not sure) would be in the center, the farthest out from the shore. It would be a challenge for us to swim out to him and try to mess with him in some way.

I live near Rockaway Beach, and in recent years I've gone out there in the summer to see the surfers. I wasn't even aware they had a surfing scene. Whenever I used to go out to the Rockaways, I always went to Riis Park, which was much further down the peninsula. (I remember the beach there as always having big waves, in my mind, anyway.) A few years ago, however, I went to Rockaway Beach and was pleasantly surprised to see surfers doing their thing. I don't recall seeing any spectacular moves, but I'm not exactly an expert on the subject. Everything they did looked amazing to me.

Coney Island, by contrast, is a place where I almost never see much in the way of surfers. Every time I go out there, I see way more swimmers, especially kids. Maybe the waves aren't conducive for hanging ten. Maybe it's not allowed down there. Don't know. [UPDATE 6.11.15: A subsequent visit to Coney after writing this, plus confirmation from John, leads me to conclude it's the former.]

It may be that no other film captures the terrifying beauty and exhilaration of surfing better than The Endless Summer, a documentary from 1966 that follows two California surfers as they travel around the world in search of the so-called "perfect wave." Once again, I prevailed upon the Netflix account of my pals John and Sue to watch this one, which is available as a stream. Over burgers and chips, we watched it at their place and got a great kick out of it.

Director, writer, co-producer, cinematographer and editor Bruce Brown follows two surfers, Mike Hynson and Robert August, all over the world and films them taking on the waves in a wide variety of locations, from California to Africa to Australia to New Zealand and Hawaii. A surfer himself, Brown's entire film career has been devoted to the sport, ever since he took 8mm shorts of California surfers while in the Navy in the early 50s. He taught himself how to make movies from a book.

Summer was made on a budget of $50,000 and was turned down by Hollywood. A two-week screening in Wichita, Kansas was a huge success, however, and Brown followed it up with a year-long run in New York, and distributor Monterey Media/Cinema V picked it up. It would gross $5 million domestic and $20 million worldwide.

The cinematography is incredible. We see Mike and Robert hanging ten from multiple angles, and Brown even gets a few subjective shots from a camera strapped to a board while it's in motion in the water! They need to be seen to be believed. John had made the point that while the average person could conceivably take shots like these today thanks to the progression of modern technology, they must have looked strikingly innovative in 1966, a time when Frankie-and-Annette beach party movies were the apex of beach-related cinema, and Jaws was still nine years away. 

Even today, it's thrilling to watch. The skill Mike and Robert, as well as the surfer friends they make during their travels, have in taming the waves is amazing enough, but we also see the majesty and power of the waves themselves. We see lesser surfers getting wiped out, their boards flying in all directions as they escape with their lives. We watch breathlessly as the bigger waves carry the surfers higher and higher up the crest until they tumble over the top, or encircle the surfers within a tunnel of water that quickly closes behind them. It's man versus nature at its most primal.

Summer is not without its flaws. Seeing Mike and Robert, two white guys, coming to African countries like Ghana and Nigeria and teaching the natives how to surf can't help but smack of imperialism to a certain extent, and John, Sue and I were gob-smacked at seeing them in South Africa, apparently completely ignorant of what was going on down there at the time with apartheid and Nelson Mandela. Maybe Americans were too busy fretting about Vietnam to know much about South Africa in 1966 (and indeed, traveling around the world to surf on unfamiliar shores must have seemed like a great away to avoid the draft!), but in hindsight, it's extremely difficult to watch our protagonists interact with white South African surfers who probably benefited directly from the apartheid system, even if they didn't contribute to it, and not think about such things.

It would've been nice to have seen Mike and Robert talk about this, and many other things, but here we come up against my biggest problem with Summer: Brown's narrative, which dominates the entire film. He takes a light-handed, even silly at times, approach to his narration (though it comes across as a bit racially insensitive in some scenes in Africa), but he even puts words in the mouths of Mike and Robert - for humorous purposes, yeah, but it struck me as overkill. Even documentary filmmaker chatterboxes like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock let their subjects speak for themselves, but not Brown. Also, in some surfing sequences, he really should just shut up and let the power of the waves and the skill of the surfers do the talking.

The soundtrack is put together by a band called The Sandals, and as you would imagine, there's plenty of catchy surf-rock instrumental tunes. The theme song is very mellow, the kinda tune you could imagine listening to as the sun goes down on the horizon after a long day of surfing, and you're lying there on the sand, lounging under an umbrella, maybe with a lemonade in your hand. You can practically hear the waves breaking on the shore. The Endless Summer, dated as it may be, will make a surf fan out of you for sure if you're not one already.

New release roundup for March '15

- Deli Man. My first 2015 movie of the year is this delightful little documentary about the traditional Jewish deli, its glorious past and its diminished-but-still-thriving present, including testimonials from notable Jewish celebs such as Jerry Stiller and Larry King. We see the difficulty and the stress of working such a hectic place as a deli, as well as the camaraderie and the fun, and Jewish culture and history get their fair share of attention. Not as New York-centric as you might imagine, although the Big Apple is well-represented. We also see Jewish delis in places like Houston, Toronto and San Francisco, among other places. While I don't frequent them that much, here in New York I've been to Katz's on the Lower East Side and the Carnegie in midtown. They feel rather touristy, but as a unique New York experience, they're worth going to. If you can't make it, though, at least see this movie.

- Red Army. Fascinating doc about the Soviet hockey team of the 70s and 80s - the team that utterly dominated its opponents in the name of the greater glory of the USSR and the Communist way of life. I have vague memories of "Miracle on Ice," when the US Olympic team upset the Soviets in 1980. I certainly remember the pro-US fervor that gripped the country around that time, even if I was too young to understand the reasons why the Soviets were the so-called "Evil Empire." The movie focuses on superstar player Slava Fetisov: his career, his contentious relationship with his coach, his eventual move to America and the NHL, and his post-playing career. He's a prickly sort, to say the least, but hearing him talk about living behind the Iron Curtain and what the Red Army team represented to the Soviet people, particularly the government, is riveting. Much more than just a sports doc.

Foxcatcher

Foxcatcher
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY
12.19.14

Should athletes be heroes? I suppose it depends on how you define the word "hero." As a kid, the 1986 Mets were heroes to me, even though I hadn't even followed baseball all that long. I just happened to begin following them at a time when they were growing into a successful team, one that would go on to win the World Series in a dominating fashion. It was all certainly exciting, but would I have cared about them as much if they played .500 ball throughout the 80s instead?

Did I care about them as people? Well, I cared when Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry had their problems with drugs, but if I were to be totally honest, I suspect that I probably cared more about the fact that they wouldn't be able to contribute to the team as much. I was a kid, and even though I grew up in the "Just Say No" 80s, the full impact of what drugs could do to a person never truly hit me, especially not within the context of sports celebrities. From my perspective back then, it was as if Gooden and Strawberry were just really sick and needed time to get well again, and when they came back, I continued to root for them as if nothing had changed.

Did I think athletes could be a force for positive change in the world? That was the absolute last thing on my mind when it came to the '86 Mets. I don't recall Keith Hernandez or Gary Carter endorsing political candidates or advocating to save the whales or whatever, and even if they did, I certainly didn't expect them to. I imagine that any sports fan would agree that people watch sports to get away from the real world.

And yet this notion of athletes as heroes, or "role models," has persisted for a long time, despite the overwhelming evidence that they're as flawed, fallible, and human as the rest of us. Some say the very idea of athletes as role models is a fallacy. Others insist that this is an inherent, unavoidable by-product of fame as an athlete, and that may be true. If it is, then one has to wonder what we're teaching our children.

In Foxcatcher, a film based on a true story, Steve Carell, as millionaire John Du Pont, sells Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz, played by Channing Tatum, on the notion of athletes as heroes in order to get Schultz to agree to letting him be his coach. He comes across as a patriotic type, one who sees the youth of America in desperate need of public figures they can look up to, and a gold-medal-winning wrestler about to participate in the World Championships (and the next Olympic Games further down the road) fits the bill for him just fine - and though he talks a good game, Du Pont has issues of his own.

The movie doesn't delve very deeply into the athlete-as-hero concept. In fact, Du Pont remains largely an enigma from beginning to end, but Carell embodies the character masterfully, to the point where I barely recognized him in the role. I never knew he had these kind of acting chops in him, and I can see why he's getting serious Best Actor consideration.

This is my first time seeing Tatum, and he, along with Mark Ruffalo as his older brother, look very convincing as world-class wrestlers who, of course, employ different methods than professional wrestlers. The two of them have an excellent rapport with each other.

Foxcatcher is well made all around, but ultimately it left me feeling cold. It was difficult to care about what was going on, in part because the movie feels as deadpan as Carell's Du Pont, almost Kubrickian, in fact. At around the halfway point, I actually started nodding off (although in fairness, I was fighting a cold and didn't have much sleep). 

I was unfamiliar with the true events behind this story, so the ending caught me by surprise, but otherwise, I can't see much to recommend about this movie beyond Carell's great performance. I went into this with the impression that it would be different than the usual wave of biopics we get year after year, including this one, and in a way, it kind of is, but emotionally speaking, I found it hard to care much about this film.

Friday Night Lights (2004)

Friday Night Lights (2004)
seen on TV @ AMC
12.5.14

It's hard for me to think of Friday Night Lights as a successful TV show or movie much of the time because I always think of the book before anything else. I remember buying the book, written by H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger, after reading an excerpt in Sports Illustrated (you know this was a long time ago if I was still reading SI). 

I've never been a huge football fan. I rooted for the Giants and Jets growing up, naturally, and I was excited when the Giants had their Super Bowl season in 1986. If there was any reason why I stopped following football, I suppose it was a result of when I stopped following baseball. After they cancelled the World Series, I guess you could say it killed my interest in sports in general.

New York sports fans love their pro football, no doubt, but when it comes to college and high school football, the relationship between a town and their team is different. I experienced this first-hand, of course, when I lived in Columbus, home of the Ohio State football Buckeyes. Actually, the "football" part is superfluous; though OSU has lots of other athletic teams, in Columbus, there's no doubt who you're referring to when you say the name Buckeyes.

The Spoiler Experiment pt. 2: Million Dollar Arm

Spoiler Experiment pt. 1: Draft Day

Million Dollar Arm
seen @ Jamaica Multiplex Cinemas, Jamaica NY
5.20.14

I first watched the trailer for Million Dollar Arm sometime in late January/early February, and while I knew this movie would serve well as the "spoiler" movie in my Spoiler Experiment - i.e., the movie I'd learn everything about in advance - I have to admit it didn't exactly excite me. 

Like my "blind" movie, Draft Day - the one I went into knowing almost nothing about - it's about a middle-aged sports businessman searching for new talent through unconventional means, which is why I chose to pair them for this experiment, but it's also a Disney movie, based on a true story, so I knew it would also be a safe, middle-of-the-road, unchallenging piece of cinema. (Not that I thought Draft Day would be the Last Year at Marienbad of sports movies.) Basically I was going for as similar an experience as possible.

The Spoiler Experiment pt. 1: Draft Day

Draft Day
seen @ Jamaica Multiplex Cinemas, Jamaica NY
4.11.14

In a sense, what I'm doing with this Spoiler Experiment isn't terribly new for me. There have been movies in the past that I've seen knowing either (almost) everything or (almost) nothing. This, however, will be the first time I've made a conscious effort to pay attention to whether or not it makes a difference either way.

I'm writing this section on April 10, the night before I go to see Draft Day, the first of my two case studies. To reiterate, I chose my two test films, Draft Day and Million Dollar Arm, because they're just similar enough: sports comedies featuring middle-aged star actors, about businessmen looking for young talent to replenish their teams. It's my belief that this will make for a fairer comparison than if I chose films from different genres, or if I picked a studio film and an independent one.

Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams
seen on TV @ TCM
2.15.14

All this snow is slowly driving me insane. And I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way. I mean, living in the northeast, we expect heavy winters, but when you see people tweeting about snow in places like Alabama, something is seriously wrong with the universe. I wanted to go out last Saturday, but it was snowing, and I was in a glum mood to begin with. I needed some kind of reminder of spring - y'know, that it still exists, and that it will actually come sometime this year, once all this snow stops piling up all over the streets and all the slush stops gathering in my boots and all the cold makes walking around dreary and uncomfortable. (Actually, February has been marginally warmer compared to the single-digit days of January.) And what better way to be reminded of spring than baseball?

I never had anything against Kevin Costner. He always struck me as being a decent actor, Gary Cooper-like looks and all. I don't think I've ever sat all the way through Dances With Wolves - I probably wrote it off as boring back when it came out - but you better believe I've seen his sports movies. I never saw For Love of the Game, though; that one was actually recommended to me by a guy I met during NaNoWriMo last November, since I was writing a baseball story. And now Costner's making another sports movie, Draft Day, but I can't talk about that yet.

I remember all the hubbub about Waterworld and how much it cost and all the behind-the-scenes drama, and honestly, I didn't think the end product was all that terrible. Hell, compared to most of the superhero movies today, I imagine it might even look better. (It definitely deserves a reappraisal of some sort.) The Postman, on the other hand... well, I can't defend that one. Maybe Costner did get a little big-headed after the success of Wolves, and maybe he did need to come back down to Earth for awhile, but it would've been wrong if he had stayed in Hollywood jail forever.

Field of Dreams was made during his glory years, and it was a bit of a shock to see him look young again, but that's time for you. It's a purely American movie, the kind that wears its heart on its sleeve, and while baseball is the vehicle for this story, at its heart, it's about fathers and sons. 

I had forgotten that; I had come into this thinking about just the baseball aspects, and as a result, I found myself thinking a whole lot about my father. This was the first time I had seen it since his death, and while he's never very far from my thoughts, watching this sorta made him come alive for me again, for a moment. 

I've written here before about how I learned about the game from him, how he took me to ballgames and all that stuff, and without going too deep into it again, the point is that I see this movie in a different context now. For all of the good things I remember about my father, there were things on which we strongly disagreed as well, and I understand, to a certain extent, why Costner's character would be afraid of becoming his father, and why he would want to do something as crazy as build a ballpark in the middle of his cornfield.

Maybe it's a baby boomer anxiety, but I don't think it is. At some point, every generation measures itself against the one that came before it. They may find it lacking at first, but things that seemed incomprehensible once can seem more understandable over time. I know that much, at least. And while I'm grateful for the positive things he contributed to my life, I'd still like to see my father as a younger man and try to figure out why he believed the things he did, made the choices he made. Who wouldn't, given the opportunity?

So yeah, I cried at the end of the movie... which I never did before, and I've seen this a bunch of times. It was cathartic, I suppose. I've learned to live without my father, but every now and then, something comes along that reminds me of him - the bad stuff as well as the good. It'll be a long time before I can watch this movie again, that's for sure.

On a different note: I watched Field with my mother, and wouldn't you know it, after it ended, she said she didn't get it! Apparently she was confused by who was alive and who was dead and why. I tried explaining it to her, but it didn't help. Sometimes, I fear for my mother's sense of imagination. 

We had had a conversation earlier that day about movies and television and she said she prefers watching History Channel/Learning Channel-type programs these days because most movies and shows clash with her sense of morality and taste. The word "wholesome" was used. And while I don't expect shows like Mad Men or Breaking Bad would ever appeal to her, a movie like Field is much more accessible than, say, your average Christopher Nolan movie. I'd think she'd be able to make the creative leap necessary to understand the Twilight Zone-type premise. 

Maybe I give her too much credit. I'm not sure. I'd like to be able to talk movies with her the way I used to talk about them with my father, but the level of interest isn't the same, to say the least. Even when I try and sit down with her for an older movie, a movie closer to her generation than mine, she'll still say things like, oh, the ending was too depressing. She said that once after we watched A Streetcar Named Desire, which kinda misses the point of that movie completely. But maybe I shouldn't judge.

42

42
seen @ AMC Fresh Meadows, Fresh Meadows, Queens, NY
4.18.13

And now, five things I thought of as I watched 42:

1. I wished my father had lived to see this, because this would've soooooo been up his alley. I got my appreciation for baseball from him at an early age. (It used to be love at one point. It must have been love, but like the song says, it's over now. Invite me to a ball game and I'll go, especially if it's a minor league game; I just don't feel the passion for it that I once did.)

For all of our conversations about baseball and race over the years, I regret never asking him what his memories were of Jackie Robinson entering Major League Baseball, an event he would've been around for as a kid. I'd ask my mother, but she's never had any interest in sports. Of course, Jackie Robinson transcended sports, but still, I doubt she'd provide me with much in the way of insight. Maybe I'll ask her anyway.

2. This seems kind of silly, but it occurred to me that Robinson's style of play is anathema to the Moneyball philosophy of today. I bring it up because the Brooklyn Dodgers were considered the number three team in New York back in the day (behind the Y-nk--s and Giants), but history shows that they won the 1947 pennant with scrappy little guys that didn't exactly overpower the competition, but found a way to win somehow, much like the Oakland Athletics of Moneyball.

Modern-day sabermetricians - the fans who examine the game through mountains of statistics - have determined that the stolen base, Robinson's forte, is actually counter-productive to a good offense. (I'd explain how, but it'd probably bore you. Just go watch Moneyball again.) Basically, it's considered too high-risk a ploy. Back in 1947, however, it was different. No one ran the basepaths with as much tenacity and alacrity as Robinson, and as we see in the film, it rattled pitchers fiercely. Plus, it was entertaining to watch.

I suspect that's something the sabermetricians might forget for all their number-crunching. Yes, baseball is a game that's played to be won, but there's also something to be said for spectacle. Unlike football and basketball, the action in baseball is slower and more methodical - but to my way of thinking, that means the big moments feel even bigger when they happen. And that's probably what it felt like to watch Robinson in action.

3. Gee, it would be nice if Harrison Ford got a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for this. I almost didn't recognize him at first, what with the bushy eyebrows and the voice. Nothing against star Chadwick Boseman, who was decent if not outstanding (and kudos to Warner Brothers' marketing department for actually putting this relative unknown actor's name ABOVE THE TITLE on the poster), but I think of Ford, and how his star has faded in the past decade or so, and how much of a shame it is that throughout his great career he's only been Oscar-nominated once (for Witness).

Ford, like Bruce Willis, has been a classic, old-school, marquee action star who can also do serious drama and even comedy on occasion. Looking back over his career, one could argue that his last great leading-man role was The Fugitive, and that was twenty years ago. I don't need to see him as Indiana Jones again, and I definitely don't need to see him as Han Solo again (if either one happens), but I would love to see him in another Oscar-caliber performance. Maybe this is it. I think a Lifetime Achievement Oscar is more likely, however, and if that's the case, that would be unfortunate... but what can you do.

4. Writer-director Brian Helgeland's screenplay is more faithful to history than I thought it would be. Take Dodger manager Leo Durocher, for instance (husband of actress Laraine Day at the time). He was one of baseball's more colorful characters, but the fact that he didn't manage the Dodgers in 1947 could be considered problematic from a storytelling angle. 

I thought the movie would either revise history by having him as the manager for the entire season, or simply not mention him at all, but they stuck to the facts; mentioning his extramarital affairs and how the Catholic groups wanted him disciplined for it and his eventual suspension, leading to the search for a new manager. This seems like the kind of detail that films "inspired by actual events" or "based on a true story" tend to ignore for simplicity's sake, but Helgeland didn't. Also, big-ups to Helgeland for not being afraid to use the word nigger in its proper historical context. (I notice no one's complaining about it THIS time.)

I recommend reading the book Opening Day by Jonathan Eig for a more detailed account of Robinson's rookie season. Among other things, you'll find that there's no historical evidence to support whether or not shortstop Pee Wee Reese put his arm around Robinson in a game at Cincinnati. Still, it's the sort of thing that should have happened, because enough people seemed to believe that it did, so it became part of the legend.

5. No World Series? 42 ends with Robinson hitting a home run and the Dodgers winning the pennant, but we never see them go on to the World Series, likely because they lost to the Y-nk--s - and that feels like a cheat. Moneyball showed the A's losing the World Series, which I definitely didn't think it would do, but that's a different kind of movie, with very different themes. 

If I had written the screenplay, I would've begun and ended with an older Robinson at Game 7 of the 1955 Series, which Brooklyn won for the first and last time, and having him reflect on his path to the big leagues. Then we'd see all the stuff that was in the film, and it would end with him celebrating his World Series win with the rest of the Dodgers. 42 is worth seeing for all sorts of reasons, but - forgive the inevitable baseball metaphor - it's a hard-hit double to the left-center field gap instead of a home run.