Opening Day Film Festival

"The Natural" sucks?

Are some of you people just cynical about everything?

The cover being knocked off the ball and all of that was supposed to look like "hooey." It looked that way to the people in the movie, too. That movie tapped into so much of our archetypal human folk lore - yes, the Arthurian stuff, but also any religious or folk mythology where somebody's coming to lift everyone. Somebody the likes of which has never been seen before. Anchoring that story template in baseball, which has developed an American mythology of its own, wasn't "hooey." It was inevitable.

 

Just keep For "Love of the Game" off of there. Talk about fucking up the book when you make the movie. Awful.

Points to Pressboxer for including "Long Gone." I haven't seen that one in a very long time. Not sure how it holds up today, but it was funny stuff at the time.

"She just loves your ass, kid."

 

How can the The Bad News Bears not have been mentioned yet?

If you want to ignore the two sequels, fine ("let them play"), but don't neglect the original.

But definitely keep Rookie of the Year off the Opening Day Film Festival list.

 

I'm with you, Joe. People believe the original "Bad News Bears" is the wacky misadventures of a bunch of ragtag misfits. It really is a darker film about Little League baseball. Not the dopey sequels, but the first one.

 

Bad News Bears (1976 version)
Major League
Pride of the Yankees
Alibi Ike
Little Big League
Bull Durham
The Natural
Bang the Drum Slowly
Eight Men Out

On the bench I have
Cobb
Elmer the Great
The Scout
Mr. Baseball
Mr. 3000 (also known as Bubbler Strikes Out)
61

In the pen
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings
The Rookie
Rhubarb
It happens every Spring
and of course, The Babe Ruth story

 

Gotta have 'The Naked Gun'

 

Field Of Dreams loses points for being overrated nauseating treacle that can't even have Shoeless Joe batting from the correct side of the plate.

 

Oh, for fuck's sake. Newsflash: SJJ didn't come back from the dead, either. Treacle? Okay, maybe. Maybe. But it's still a classic.

 

I can't believe no one has mentioned Fever Pitch.

 

Maybe part of being a ghost is that you do everything backward. But was it even Shoeless Joe? I mean, wasn't he wearing shoes?

 

Oh, and let's not forget having a black man recite a sickening paean to segregated baseball.
Not a lot of black folks on that field, either.
And the movie remains, along with Shawshank, Steel Magnolias for men.

 

G'head, Fen, tell us how you really feel.

Don't hold it in like that. It's not good for you.