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I'd give the nod to the original Bad News Bears, but Bull Durham was quite good.
A question for CBW or any other mechanics expert: suppose someone from Hollywood called you up saying they were making a baseball movie. The lead actor last played baseball at the age of 12 in Little League. What could you accomplish in a few weeks if the objective were to make said actor look good while pitching or hitting? (You don't have to worry about where the ball actually goes, the movie guys can take care of that later.)
I don't think Bull Durham was really mostly about the hardscrabble minor league thing -- it just used that as a backdrop. It used it brilliantly, and mined it for tremendous humor as well as some of the offsetting sad moments in the story. But Bull Durham was about the choice Annie had to make between the life she'd been living (represented by Nuke, just a continuation of the year-by-year relationships she'd had for who knows how long), and the life she'd always been afraid to live (with Crash, who represented something so much more dangerous and so much more real). Or maybe she wasn't afraid -- just never had the chance to, because how often do guys like that come along? But the movie is really about callow v. experience, and the relationship between them. And that could be in a steel mill, a war zone, or a minor league ball club in Durham.
Love it, love it, love it.
Air Bud totally went down hill after Air Bud: Golden Spike. The lack of diamond thieves, beach volleyball, and Gabrielle Reece really brings down the quality of his later work. Plus by then he was feeling the heat of the M.V.P.: Most Valuable Primate franchise. It's hard to compete with a chimpanzee on ice skates.
As far as Major League movies go it's my third favorite.
That is all.
Which was just a rip-off of "Ed."
Take that back.
I sortof agree, especially about the callow vs experience, but I think Crash is as much the central character, needing to make the same kind of choice, as Annie.
Would be funny if Robbins and Sarandon were to launch into a political tirade against McCain during the upcoming ceremony. With the election only 6 weeks away at that point, can they really be trusted? :-)
I'd hope we could trust them to do so.
My grandpa used to break this movie out every April. Several times I joined him. Haven't seen it since he passed. I really ought to.
I have mentioned Long Gone in these threads before. It is underrated, and Madsen acts well in it and is sexy (does a cool, brief nude scene). I like Sarandon OK as an actress but do not find her at all attractive, which takes the movie down a notch for me given her role. But I like Bull Durham--I think it well-written and well-cast.
Petersen is now on a certain level a bigger star than Costner due to CSI (Fishburne is apparently taking over for him--I have never seen CSI).
Yeah. It is set in the 1950s. At the end, IIRC, he has a chance to get a job in the Cardinal system--his dream--if he sits out a game to allow the Cards' affilliate to win the pennant. He is about to but then doesn't do it, and they win the pennant when he is hit by a pitch with the bases loaded. IIRC the Tampico Stogies, his team, is independent, so there is a little independent vs. controlled minors David/Goliath message there.
It is well-done, but I saw the ending plot device as a bit contrived. One thing I like about BD is that there is no "big game" moment.
He's now some suit in the Rangers front office, so he's definitely on the right path.
Plus, the James Earl Jones monologue about base...ball marking the time is an all-time classic.
"I'm gonna tell you one of the great truths you'll learn: All girls f#*&."
"Yeah, but this one's real religious."
"when I said all girls, I meant all girls. It's a fact."
Hmm. This is a tough call. Madsen's a little beefy, but it looks good on her, while Sarandon looks great, but she's not particularly sexy, oddly enough. Does anyone here find her genuinely attractive? You'd think she would be, with her raw attributes. Maybe she's a little too toolsy for me, and not enough production...
This is just peak vs. career.
Alibi Ike (on why he was late for spring training: "My calendar was wrong") and Bang the Drum Slowly deserve some recognition. The Stratton Story has James Stewart. He alone makes anything worth considering seriously.
Not tough for me. I've never found Sarandon attractive at all. I agree with robinred in that it actually takes the movie down a notch with her in it. I find it hard to believe that all of the young minor leaguers want to sleep with her.
It might not be the best baseball movie, but it's got the best baseball movie moment.
But those Willie McGee eyes of hers are the essence of baseball.
There's always William Bendix as Babe Ruth, hitting his 60th home run of the 1927 season -- repeat, 1927, during Prohibition -- at Yankee Stadium complete with a huge beer advertising sign in the outfield.
Wait a minute. In a movie where Babe Ruth is suspended by the commissioner for leaving in the middle of a game to rush an injured puppy to the puppy hospital, and in which Babe Ruth dies by sacrificing his own life for untested medical research that will help future generations, it's the anachronistic billboard that caught your attention?
Field of Dreams... the James Earl Jones monologue about base...ball marking the time is an all-time classic.
I dunno, there's something icky about a guy with black skin rhapsodizing about how 1910s baseball "reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again."
To me this is her best film credit, period. And her sexiest moment on screen, ever.
I remember it as a scoring groundout, but it's been a while.
It's definitely a sacrifice fly. Seeing it for the 1st time as an English kid not knowing the rules of baseball well, I did not understand why everyone was so pleased with Graham when he was caught in the outfield...
It was a sac fly. Though after the Adam Greenberg incident, I thought it would've been something if Archie Graham came to the plate, winked at the pitcher and was promptly Ray Chapman'd, with nobody with medical experience around for miles. That would've taught everybody the same lesson in a different way.
The scene with the choking little-girl would have been kind of a bummer.
Your version of the film seems much darker. More of a Tim Burton-type baseball film.
Well, being as how Sarandon was 42 at the time, for the majority of them she was old enough to be their mother.
Not that those motherfukkkers would necessarily care. But thank God they didn't try to make Bull Durham II, III and IV.
I still say it's a sad truth that there's never been a truly great baseball movie, at least one on the level of Raging Bull and about half a dozen other boxing movies. Closest to it was Death on the Diamond, which is sort of like JFK, only with a happy ending.
And for a much better Tim Robbins movie---an infinitely better Tim Robbins movie---try Robert Altman's Short Cuts.
Unless, of course, you'd feel traumatized by seeing Huey Lewis's penis.
And as a left-wing, weed-smokin', gay-marriage-allowin', non-interventionist, Timbit-eatin' Canadian, Tim Robbins's politics are just fine by me.
"Well, that's a very rare 'get-off-my-lawn' moment from Andy! Baseball, I tell ya, who can figure out this game?"
Wasn't that a throw-in in the Prince Albert Pujols trade?
Bull Durham was the first move I saw saw Susan Sarandon in, as well. So if her attractiveness factor is based on what she looked like when she was younger then I missed out on that. I may never have seen her in anything earlier than that.
[Checks IMDB]... Yeah, I've never seen any of her movies from before Bull Durham. So if she pulled a Dale Murphy then I may be missing something.
Agree
"Well, that's a very rare 'get-off-my-lawn' moment from Andy! Baseball, I tell ya, who can figure out this game?"
Which is exactly the problem with baseball movies. 99% of them are pitched along the lines of "you don't have to be a baseball fan to like -----." And it shows.
Seriously, I've never been quite able to figure out why there are so many first rate, and realistic, boxing movies, and not one similar baseball movie, with the semi-exceptions of Eight Men Out and to a lesser extent, Cobb. Maybe it's just because the corruption in boxing is so generally known and accepted as a given, whereas baseball fans still would rather have their fantasies.
What would be a great baseball movie, if you could get it past the lawyers, would be one based on the whole steroid scandal. NOT, I hasten to add, from any superimposed and easy moral perspective, but from the point of view of the very real pressures felt by ballplayers to get a competitive edge. And how they deal with it in radically different ways, just as Major Leaguers do.
If you gave honest and non-judgmental portrayals of a mix of these varied paths that players choose, you probably wouldn't make for a blockbuster hit (duh), but OTOH you might finally produce a great baseball movie. Maybe even one as good as Raging Bull.
Like I said, you'd have to get it past the lawyers, and so you'd obviously have to change all the names, but if you had a small studio with some guts, you could make a hell of a good movie.
I'm not even sure that's the best Hobbs-hitting-the-ball moment in that movie. You pretty much know he's going to homer at that point. His first at-bat in a game, after Pop pulls Bump, you don't know quite what to expect -- or if you're guessing, you're guessing mammoth homer. So when he literally knocks the cover off the ball, I think that's better.
And I recall Susan Sarandon looking pretty good in The Witches of Eastwick, though I can't say I was paying much attention to her when Pfeiffer was onscreen.
Substitute "football" for "baseball" and I agree. I think that would actually be a huge public service in that case.
It might be, but it'd be a completely different movie, and since there's no particular historical event in football that people associate with steroids, it would also lack the dramatic context of a movie set around the two great recent home run chases.
Of course if all you wanted was a public health promo, then I guess you would be better off focusing on football. But that wasn't what I had in mind.
That's OK, Lassus, we're all allowed once in a while to respond to points that have never been made. ;-)
The lack of a specific dramatic context like that -- focusing on the everyday reality of steroids, not the anomaly -- would arguably make for a much more powerful movie, though probably not as box-office friendly.
Absolutely. Now tell us about how there are no good 9-ball movies either because there are no good pool halls anymore.
ahem
Either that or boxing is more lyrical, thoughtful and artistic than baseball (or any other sport.)
The lack of a specific dramatic context like that -- focusing on the everyday reality of steroids, not the anomaly -- would arguably make for a much more powerful movie, though probably not as box-office friendly.
The truth is that if a baseball movie about steroids took a non-judgmental view about the peer pressures involved---if, for example, it depicted "Barry Bonds" or "Mark McGwire" in a multi-dimensional manner rather than as cartoon figures, it probably wouldn't be much of a hit at the multiplexes, either.
As for a football movie, I'm sure that you're right, that you could also make a very good one based on the realities of big time football from the NFL down to the Texas high schools. I only offered the baseball version because we were talking about baseball movies on this thread. I'm not for a minute arguing against a similar film treatment of the steroid-related peer pressures of football.
Well, there's never been a really great pool movie, either, not even when there were pool rooms of every street corner of Manhattan. Not even The Hustler. So there. (ahem)
Grady Seasons will kick your ass for saying that.
I liked that one a lot better than The Hustler, but in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. And other than Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's looks, the only thing about The Color of Money worth remembering was that great "Grady Seasons" line about Tom Cruise's nightmare. And BTW the real "Grady Seasons" (Keith McCready, who played him in the movie) is one of the top 10 real life characters in sports history, not to mention being one of the all time great money players.
The real problem I have with both of those movies is admittedly an "elitist" one. I cringe every time I see either Cruise or Newman try to impersonate a pool player, since both of them can barely pick up a stick. It's like watching William Bendix play Babe Ruth. Jackie Gleason, OTOH, is a pleasure to watch in The Hustler, and he and George C. Scott are all that rescue that movie from the dumpster.
EDIT: Never saw (or even heard of) Kingpin, but I'll check it out. Hope springs eternal.
The speech doesn't say anything about 1910's baseball; in fact, its specifically about the timelessness of baseball.
But then again, I'm the greatest Field of Dreams homer of all time, so I may be biased.
I saw that movie in college with my girlfriend. The credits rolled and I just sat there transfixed going "Wow."
That said, to really dig FoD you have to be okay with at least temporarily taking a gauzy view of baseball-as-idyllic, as well as the magical realism stuff. (And dealing with the historical inaccuracies.) So I can see why it's not for everyone.
www.turntheriver.com
I see it opened in New York in May, but unfortunately I haven't heard a peep out of it since. The trailer makes it look like it could either be the best pool movie ever made, or the worst. Tough to tell in two minutes worth of clips.
There was a girl in the movie?
And Netflix doesn't have Long Gone. Dang.
Baseball movies: "Field of Dreams" is the best in my book. "A League Of Their Own" is very good, I think, and often underrated in discussions on baseball movies. "Long Gone" is also generally underrated, and I was glad to see it mentioned here.
Bull Durham: I think the point of the movie is the intersection of the life paths of Annie and Crash. Both characters are heading toward a crossroads in their lives and meet at exactly the right time, like pitched ball and swinging bat, colliding right on the sweet spot. It's not about one or the other, but the two together. Great movie.
Billiard movies: I liked "Poolhall Junkies." The acting is a little raw at times, but I think that works well in that particular film. Chazz Palminteri, Rick Schroder, Rod Steiger and Christopher Walken are all supremely fun to watch in it.
Grady Seasons: the best Grady in the history of sports. Definitely better than Grady Little. Ten times better than Grady Sizemore, who is wildly overrated and almost certainly no better than, say, a Jacoby Ellsbury, somebody like that. Grady Seasons rules.
(Sorry I was late. This is a great thread, though.)
Here's a more recent version of Grady. About 96,360 pints of beer more recent, to be exact. He would've been much better than Mizerak in that Miller Lite commercial, but I can't imagine the Kiefer ever endorsing one of those girly beers.
Boxing movies: boxing makes for a perfect forum for film because you can dictate the length of a fight and the sport has regularly scheduled natural dialogue between characters (in corners, between rounds). The only other sport I can think of that has routine scheduled verbal interaction as part of the normal course of action on the playing surface is football, between downs. Baseball has mound conferences, but you can't write a movie in which there is a mound visit after every batter.
I have three favorite baseball movies, all for different reasosn:
Field of Dreams. I saw that movie when I was 10, when I was not cynical about the game or its players. I still had that sense of wonder and fantasy about the game, so I could definitely buy everything presented in it. Still enjoy watching it to this day.
Major League. In my opinion, the best baseball comedy made. It really nailed the team dynamic and interaction. Funny as heck too.
The Sandlot. I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet. Simply what baseball is in its purest form.
Oh, and I have to mention the best baseball scene in a movie not about baseball, the last act in Naked Gun. Thank god for Enrico Pallazo.
That scene is absolutely essential. Thank God for the automaton Reggie Jackson as well.
No kidding. He looks like the guy who ate Grady Seasons.
There aren't really any "good" baseball movies, but I've always been partial to Major League.
I found Field of Dreams kind of forgettable, honestly.
I really liked Bull Durham, too, but the part everyone quotes and loves, that stupid-ass monologue by Costner to Annie was painful to listen to.
You should see The Hunger.
They actually showed this movie late last night on TMC. Only caught the first 20 minutes or so before turning in but I liked what I saw. And, any movie with Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson and Ann-Margret in it can't possibly be bad.
can't say i've ever been satisfied by any baseball movie, really. they all get too sentimental. its a brutal game when you get down to it.
I was actually disappointed by Short Cuts. That's probably because I'm a huge Raymond Carver fan, but nonetheless ... I though the adaptation of "So Much Water Close to Home" lost the darkness and foreboding that was such a big part of the short story. Also, Lyle Lovett and Andie MacDowell completely ruined "A Small, Good Thing." I'll never understand why directors employ actors who can't manage anything better than a rote line-reading. Mostly, the whole thing lost the minimalism that was so central to Carver's stories.
On another level, movies with intertwined vignettes always strike me as contrived, but YMMV.
Anyhow, if you're not a Carver loyalist, then the movie probably is pretty enjoyable. And the chainsaw thing was great.
Agreed on The Player--tremendous film.
I can take or leave Sarandon's acting. I'll go with mostly hot. I think she had the right level of hotness for a baseball Annie. Pam Anderson would not have worked in that role. :)
I strongly dislike Costner, except I liked him in Bull Durham, thought he was okay enough in Field of Dreams. I also liked him a lot in the western he did in the last few years with Robert Duvall and Annette Bening. It might be that Duvall carried him -- I just love Duvall in these crusty, don't-f-with-him, old guy roles he's been doing.
He was no match for The Toronto Kid.
but edward g. robinson was great, as always.
"Aren't you a long way from your sexist football coaches, your polluted Ohio River and your third-rate mass transit system?"
I think one big thing is the use of the play-by-play announcing during baseball movies is cheesy at best, juvenile at worst. Bull Durham used it to effect, so it didn't really undermine the action. But most baseball movies are too lazy & will just pile the PbP on, to the movie's detriment. (Of course, Major League nailed it with Uecker, which was an inspired use of the genre's biggest cliche.)
Seems to me most baseball movies are a lot like baseball games, in that there are long stetches of nominal if not boring activity, punctuated by glittering moments of sublime beauty. Field of Dreams and The Natural were like that for me, overall rather substandard yet with some of the best, most memorable scenes in all baseball movies.
I took the recommendation of a few posters awhile back and watched Slapshot. It is by far the best sports movie I have ever seen.
His just desserts for being a reflexive faux-patriotic d-bag.
One of my favorite movies of all time (infinitely better than "Bull Durham," as you said), but it's no more a "Tim Robbins movie" than it is an "[insert name of any of about 86 good actors that appear in the film] movie." It's more a Robert Altman movie than anything else. (Or a Raymond Carver movie, but it was Altman that so seamlessly wove all those Carver stories together.)
Robbins' character in the movie is definitely one of the movie's better ones, though. Perhaps the most detestable prick in a film full of them.
Paul Newman's leisure suits are worth the price of admission.
and the movie makers don't understand that the back story in a baseball movie has to be good. it can't just be filler. that's why eight men out works. its one of the most important events in baseball history, compelling even to non-baseball types.
i think a good movie could be made about jackie robinson if a smart director used oral history sequences using some of the material from 'bums' (peter golenbock), and shot it the way warren beatty did 'reds' ... but i cringe at what hollywood would do with it.
Written and directed by THE Chris Eigeman?!?
Slapshot was critically underappreciated when it came out in the mid-1970s; either Siskel or Ebert originally gave it a huge thumbs down -- and years later, admitted they were utterly wrong. Today it stands out as one of Newman's best performances.
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