Ç June 2009 | Main | November 2009 È

July 19, 2009

THOUGHTS ABOUT BILLY HOYLE

It is too bad Ron Shelton doesn't make movies any more. As I speak, we are in the worst drought in the history of sports movies ever. The recent offerings - in the last five years ago - have run the gambit between unwatchable treacle to wacky, often unfunny satire. The latter gave, sadly, the best film of this unfortunate canon: TALLADEGA NIGHTS. But the "sports" in that movie is (intentionally) laughable, so its standing is a testament to the tendency to make god-awful movies about sports.

I blame REMEMBER THE TITANS: a movie I thought was perfectly okay at the time but have since grown to hate. It was enough of a success for about ten terrible movies to adopt its template. The only one that was reasonably good was MIRACLE, and even it is a good story that doesn't quite transcend its crappy trappings. I don't want to think about, for instance, GLORY ROAD or COACH CARTER.

A few thoughts on sports movies:

- Football mostly doesn't work on film. Its too hard to choreograph twenty-two people doing something that is supposed to appear chaotic, spontaneous, and exciting. At best, it appears choreographed, at worst muddled and confusing. The only good football movies, that has good football scenes (BRIAN'S SONG, the underrated PAPER LION, NORTH DALLAS FORTY, and RUDY don't count, as they are about football players who don't really play a lot of football) is the original THE LONGEST YARD - the less said about the remake, the better. Defenders of Oliver Stone's 1999 debacle can go play "Ten Yard Fight." I also refuse to listen to anyone defend the football parts of the O.C. FOOTBALL SHOW, er, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. Does every game have to end with some last second acrobatic drama?

- Boxing is the most cinematic sport. The three highest-honored sports movies ever are ROCKY (which won Best Picture), MILLION DOLLAR BABY (which shouldn't have won Best Picture), and RAGING BULL (which should have, and is generally in the "Best Movie ever" arguments). In the hands of capable directors, we get flicks like the aforementioned and the similarly excellent ALI and CINDERELLA MAN.

- HOOSIERS is the only basketball movie to film basketball games and make them work. Unless you count TEEN WOLF and the Jordan-esque efforts of Number 45.

- Every crappy movie ever made about golf attempts to play up a mythology that only golf fans seem to take seriously. As such, the only good movies about golf are TIN CUP and HAPPY GILMORE, which mostly point out the interesting absurdities of the sport.

- Baseball movies form a relatively mediocre genre. I think EIGHT MEN OUT is kind of a masterpiece, but not many others do. While THE NATURAL has its ardent apologists (with whom I respectfully disagree), can you think of a truly great baseball movie? I did, however, really like the baseball parts of THE BRONX IS BURNING.

Which brings us back to Ron Shelton. Shelton directed one of the best sports movies ever made (BULL DURHAM), one of the better of recent memory (TIN CUP), and one of the more dated and compulsively watchable (WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP). Shelton at least got that once you get past all that "Wide World of Sports" crap, you have athletes who never made it and are interesting nonetheless. He realized that every sports movie doesn't have to be about the glory of the game or its ability to reconcile communities and/or racial tension.

Since the TITANS model has been proven to make mild commercial successes, we will continue to see more of this "How sports saved the world" bullcrap that systematically reduces the complexities and revises history into a story that Disney can be happy with.

Good sports movies? Anyone?

Posted by Andytown at 10:42 AM | Comments (2)

July 6, 2009

WHY DO THE RIGHT THING IS GREAT

Really good article about DO THE RIGHT THING on the AV Club

And here's a few other links:

Cool video that my friend Will made (echoes of David Gordon Green, Terence Malick, the Van Halen RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW video)

Excellent review of PUBLIC ENEMIES by Mahnola Dargis that shares my sentiments.

My favorite Magnetic Fields song of the moment

Posted by Andytown at 2:50 PM | Comments (0)

July 1, 2009

KLOSTERMAN/SIMMONS re: TWITTER

On his latest podcast, The Sports Guy and Chuck Klosterman had a lively, if rambling debate over the ethics and relative merits of Twitter. I have a twitter page which I rarely update, but these two (particularly Klosterman) bring up some interesting questions about the relationship between a journalist and his/her audience.

The Sports Guy's podcast is probably number one on my podcast list; it's pretty much the only one I'm dedicated to listening to. I also really enjoy the AV Talk podcast, which is relatively new and only recently available on ITunes. Other than that, I occasionally listen to the NBA Today and PTI podcasts. That's about it. Any other suggestions? I used to do Filmspotting but stopped for various reasons . . .

That said, sometimes the SG is maddening - I understand that part of his appeal is that he blends pop culture and sports, but sometimes I think he's not the jack of all trades he's made out to be. His best interviews are with Klosterman, whom he's done three long podcasts with. His worst was with Mark Cuban, which was fawning and seemed to exist only so Cuban could pimp his products.

I don't know how I feel about PTI. Its "5 Good Minutes" is, ironically, the worst part of the show, particularly when they interview athletes. Typical interviews involve questions similar to Principal Skinner's question to Mr. Burns: "What's more important? Hard work or sticktuitiveness?" When are we going to realize that 99.5% of sports professionals are extremely uninteresting in interviews and cover their ass to an absurd degree. Like Blake Griffin is really going to tell ESPN that he doesn't want to play for the Clippers, or Houston's GM is really going to say that he wishes he could unload Tracy McGrady. It was the worst thing about Jim Rome and its the worst thing here.

Recently I've been reading (very slowly) an interesting book called NIXONLAND, which brings me back to the Frost/Nixon interviews, recently memorialized (poorly) in Ron Howard's movie. That interview was relevant because Frost was putting Nixon on trial, not asking him inane questions that could be answered in sound-bites. As even the movie points out, the key to Frost's strategy was not to allow Nixon to retreat to anecdotes, and to ask questions that could be answered. Those, I suppose, are the only interviews I'm interested in.

You can get part one of the Klosterman/Simmons Podcast here and part two here

If those don't work go to his twitter page or to his page on ESPN.

Posted by Andytown at 4:37 PM | Comments (1)