Today is our Toledo Mud Hens' opening day, and we're pretty excited. To celebrate the beginning of baseball season, and therefore summer (warm up soon! please!), film critic Kirk Baird has put together a great list of baseball-themed films for your to display at your library.
Bull Durham (1988): Writer-director Ron Shelton’s masterpiece, an ode to the great game, features terrific turns by Kevin Costner as career minor leaguer “Crash” Davis, a catcher with smarts, but not enough talent; Tim Robbins as Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh, a pitcher with fire in his arm and mush in his head; and Susan Sarandon as small-town baseball groupie Annie Savoy who can’t choose between the two.
Field of Dreams(1989): The second of Costner’s baseball classics, it’s the fantastical story of an Iowa corn farmer compelled to build a baseball field in the middle of nowhere, and the lives it touches. And just like that, the lasting meme “Build it and they will come” was born.
Eight Men Out (1988): Writer-director John Sayles fields an impressive cast (John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, D.B. Sweeney) for the true story of the Chicago Black Sox scandal, when underpaid players took bribes to deliberately throw the 1919 World Series. This fascinating drama offers a far more empathetic view of the players than history, which has vilified them and their deeds for decades.
A League of Their Own (1992): With men serving overseas during World War II, our national pastime grounded to halt until a group of athletic women took up bats, balls, and baseball mitts to keep the game alive. Gina Davis stars as ace catcher and power hitter Dottie Hinson; Tom Hanks is the drunken but lovable manager; and Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell are a pair of star players.
The Bad News Bears(1976): Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) is a former Major League Player-turned pool cleaner. He drinks too much. Smokes too much. And curses too much. He makes the perfect Little League baseball coach. Buttermaker teams up with his ex-girlfriend’s teenage daughter (Tatum O’Neal), who has a rocket for an arm, to change the baseball fortunes of the perennially bad Bad News Bears. A comedy that’s unabashedly non-politically correct, The Bad News Bears proved to be the blueprint for underdog films. (See Slap Shot, The Mighty Ducks, and Little Giants.)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942): Gary Cooper was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as legendary baseball player Lou Gehrig. A classic biopic of a beloved baseball player’s life cut tragically short by disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease), the drama features several real-life New York Yankees teammates as themselves, including Babe Ruth. And who can forget the famous farewell address to players and fans by “the luckiest man on the face of the planet”?
The Natural (1984): Robert Redford stars as a once-promising baseball pitcher whose career is derailed by tragedy. He claws his way back to the majors and with his special bat, makes a comeback for the ages. The cast is loaded—Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Barbara Hershey, Joe Don Baker, Richard Farnsworth, and Wilford Brimley—and director Barry Levinson delivers a roaring crowd-pleaser featuring an iconic score by Randy Newman.
Major League (1989): The Cleveland Indians are a down-on-their-luck franchise, and the new owner wants to make things even worse so she can relocate the team to another city. She assembles a group of past-their-prime veterans and quirky misfits to ensure a losing season. Then the team—led by the catcher Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger) and pitcher Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn (Charlie Sheen)—begins winning. This comedy classic spawned two sequels: Major League II (1994) and Major League: Back to the Minors (1998).
The Jackie Robinson Story (1950): The triumphs and pitfalls of the first black Major League Baseball player is chronicled in this biopic by the man who knew the story best, Jackie Robinson. Not only did Robinson play himself, he provides a better than you’d expect performance as well.
The Sandlot (1993): In this funny and touching film, friendship and adventure are key themes in a nostalgic look at a group of neighborhood boys in 1962 Los Angeles bonded by baseball and a baseball-eating dog known as “The Beast.”
Bang the Drum Slowly (1973): Robert DeNiro gained his first acting accolades—followed quickly by his role later that year in Mean Streets—as a terminally ill baseball catcher. Michael Moriarty plays the team’s star pitcher who befriends him and helps him through the season.
The Stratton Story (1949): A hunting accident costs star pitcher Monty Stratton (Jimmy Stewart) his leg. But Stratton refuses to give up the game he loves, and fights to play on with an artificial wooden leg. Based on a true story, the drama won an Oscar for its screenplay.
And let's not forget these great baseball documentaries:
Baseball (1994, 2010): Famed documentarian Ken Burns focuses on America’s National Pastime in this acclaimed PBS series. At nearly 19 hours long, this remarkable documentary is exhaustive in historic details and rich in insight. In 2010, Burns revisited his film with a two-part update entitled “The Tenth Inning,” which addressed baseball’s major stories since his first film: steroids, a strike, and a league championship for the ages.
The Lost Son of Havana (2009): Luis Tiant was 20 when he left Cuba in 1961 to play professional baseball in the United States. A pitcher with an arsenal of weapons to confound batters, Tiant played in the big leagues for 19 seasons. More than 45 years after he left Cuba, Tiant, accompanied by a documentary film crew, made an emotional return to his former home and family.
When It Was a Game(1991, 1992, 2000): HBO’s acclaimed trio of documentaries features mostly color home movie footage of classic-era baseball games and its iconic players from the 1920s through the 1960s.
The following flicks might not be the ones you immediately think of when it comes to baseball movies. But they're definitely worth checking out.
61* (2001): Roger Maris, Mickey Mantel, and the story of their electrifying home run race.
Damn Yankees!(1958): Based on the Broadway musical about a Washington Senators fan who makes a pact with the Devil to help his team win.
The Pride of St. Louis (1952): The story of famed pitcher “Dizzy” Dean.
Fear Strikes Out(1957): Anthony Perkins stars in this true story of a baseball player who battled mental illness.
Chasing 3000 (2008): Two brothers drive cross-country to see Roberto Clemente get his 3000th hit.
Cobb (1994): Tommy Lee Jones gives life to baseball legend and polarizing player Ty Cobb.
The Bronx is Burning (2007): This critically-praised ESPN mini-series examines the 1977 New York Yankees, its roller-coaster regular season, and winning the World Series.
For the Love of the Game(1999): Kevin Costner plays an aging pitcher who flashes back through his life while playing his final game.
The Rookie (2002): Dennis Quaid plays a Texas high school baseball coach given one final opportunity to make it in the big leagues.
The Slugger’s Wife(1985): Neil Simon’s story of a baseball phenomenon whose career year begins to fade with his relationship troubles.
Soul of the Game (1996): Three Negro League stars—Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Jackie Robinson—compete to be the first African American in Major League Baseball.
This Old Cub (2004): Filmmaker Jeff Santo explores the life and career of his father, Chicago Cubs great Ron Santo.
This past weekend was full of Award Shows, for kids, for country enthusiasts in the U.S., and for the music industry in Canada. It was fun to catch all the music artists receiving awards as well as performing at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, The ACM American Country Music Awards, and the annual Juno Awards in Canada.
The night was full of green slime at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. Hosted by Will Smith, the show featured a myriad of performances from Katy Perry to the new UK boy band New Direction. Big Time Rush, Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, and LMFAO walked off with Nickelodeon's blimp-shaped award in the music categories. First lady Michelle Obama presented singer Taylor Swift with the Big Help Award for all her charity work over the past year.
Taylor Swift continued her busy weekend by attending another award show, The ACM American Country Music Awards. For the second consecutive year, she won the Entertainer of the Year Award, which was the last award of the evening. Earlier, Miranda Lambert and Lady Antebellum also repeated wins for Female vocalist and Vocal Group of the Year categories. American idol winner, Scotty McCreery, took home the New Artist of the Year prize while Reba McEntire and Blake Shelton once again hosted the award show.
The Juno Awards, Canada’s biggest night in music, was hosted in Ottawa, Ontario. William Shatner served as the master of ceremonies, singing his opening monologue while playing a Les Paul guitar. Nickelback opened the show with fancy pyrotechnics, and a relatively unheard of group from last year, The Sheepdogs, won three awards. Feist was the big winner of the night, snagging three awards including the coveted Artist of the Year and Adult Alternative Album of the Year for her album Metals.
Definitely a big weekend! And we've got collections for all three shows. Click the links below to browse now.
Written by Kirk Baird, film critic and Detroit Film Critics Society member
Soviet probes sent to Mars fail to connect with home in the 1980s. A few years later several NASA spacecraft turn silent when they reach their distant destination or simply burn up in the planet’s thin atmosphere. Clearly, our Mars encounters have had their share of problems.
And now the same mysterious menace that has plagued our Red Planet missions has reached across the inky void to bedevil Hollywood with back-to-back colossal box office failures of two Mars-centric films.
Mars Needs Moms was an ambitious motion-capture animated tale (the creepy computer animation that’s supposed to be lifelike) produced by filmmaker Robert Zemeckis. Based on a Berkeley Breathed children’s book, the 2011 film centered on a boy who comes to appreciate his mom after she's kidnapped by Martians and he must rescue her. The film cost $150 million to make, but made only $60 million back worldwide. That was a staggering loss for Walt Disney Studios.
And then Disney released John Carter(also based on a book) in theaters this past March. With a production budget estimated at $250 million, the film hasn't even yet made $65 million domestically as of the end of March. In foreign markets, the film looks to be in better shape, making nearly $173 million, for a worldwide haul of nearly $235 million so far. But even Walt Disney has conceded it will lose money on John Carter. Of course, the film could pick up steam in the home video market.
Mars has proven a popular destination for movies through the decades, beginning in 1910 with the five-minute silent film A Trip to Mars, which was produced for Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope.
George Pal’s 1953 sci-fi masterwork War of the Worlds, based on the H.G. Wells novel, riveted audiences with state-of-the-art effects of Martian war machines decimating Earth that still hold up even today.
The 1964 classic Robinson Crusoe on Mars took Daniel Defoe’s timeless tale of a stranded sailor, turned him into an astronaut, and rocketed him to our celestial neighbor.
In 1977’s Capricorn One, O.J. Simpson costarred as one of three NASA astronauts forced to fake a Mars landing, only to have the government hunt them down to keep the hoax a secret.
And in 2000 Hollywood gave us two science fiction films, Red Planet and Mission to Mars, both with similar themes of astronauts exploring and colonizing Mars and the troubles they find when they arrive.
And you can’t overlook the 1964 cult classic Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. The film proved to be the launching point for a young actress named Pia Zadora.
Last week on American Idol the remaining nine contestants sang songs from their own musical idols. Big shoes to fill! Among the judges and online recaps, the general consensus seems to be that the Top Nine did fine. Mentored by Stevie Nicks, the contestants seem to have lived up to expectations.
Not! How can so many folks think the night was an overall success, when in reality, everything was pretty much karaoke?
The Average
Elise Testone chose “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin. No one got the choice, but then she performed, and we all nodded our heads and said, “well, I guess she actually does an OK Zeppelin impression.” Elise had fun with the song and busted out just about every dance move in her arsenal for this performance. Unfortunately, it all came off a bit dated and spastic. Also, she wore Miranda Lambert's pants. Don't tell Skylar. Also, don't tell Miranda Lambert that her pants look like something Steven Tyler would wear.
Heejun Han rebounded from the awful awfulness that was Billy Joel night and showed off his wonderful tone with Donny Hathaway’s “A Song for You.” Heejun did a great job being professional and serious. Unfortunately, he was too serious. He lost all his charm, and while he sang well, his performance was nothing special.
On to Jessica Sanchez. The judges don’t want her to take risks. They only want her singing ballads, so she did a hypnotic and slow cover of Beyonce’s “Sweet Dreams.” She did a great job—as did the set designers, so much fog and doorways! But was the cover too slow? Can Jessica really only sing ballads? The girl has got to find one perky song to cover. Everyone has an up-tempo track on their album.
When Stevie Nicks first heard Phillip Phillips in rehearsal, she said: “I think he’s going to be very famous.” Way to give Phil an unneeded confidence boost. He already turned his nose up at Tommy Hilfiger and Puff Daddy for goodness sake! Phil sang “Still Rainin’” by Jonny Lang. Why on earth did he not pick a Dave Matthews Band song. That would’ve been the best. Dave Matthews sound-a-like sings Dave Matthews. Ha!
So Phil did the Johnny Lang song and it was safe. He rocked out on his electric guitar and everyone cheered. The end.
The Bad
Gospel aficionado Joshua Ledet sang Mariah Carey’s “Without You.” Jimmy Lovine called the song one of the top five most difficult pop songs to sing. Joshua Ledet didn’t let that scare him, though, and he went out and gave a somewhat pitchy rendition. Who's voting for Joshua really? Can he just keep doing the gospel thing with every song? Branch out, Joshua. Also, show us some personality beyond loving crawfish.
Don’t get mad at us, emo teen girl. We like Colton Dixon. We do. We just don’t like him singing “Everything” by Lifehouse. You could tell Colton loved singing this song, but it was just too safe. There were no surprises, no changes. Just Colton looking like he’s going to burst into tears as he wails into the mic. Hold it together, Colton. Sure, you’re a front runner, but Lifehouse doesn’t match your musical style or image. You seem more like a Dashboard Confessional kind of guy.
The Gotta-Go
So, Skylar Laine, we hear you absolutely LOVE Miranda Lambert. Can you show us how much by yelling “Gunpowder and Lead” while dancing like you’re at a honky tonk? Ok, now while dancing, get out of breath and start panting some of the lyrics. Now, act really excited like you’ve been performing this in your bedroom since you were toddler and it has always been your dream to do this song on Idol. Perfect. Thanks.
All right, DeAndre Brackensick! Bring that falsetto back! Wait, wait. Don’t do it through the whole song. And why choose such a sad number? “Sometimes I Cry” is a beautiful tune, sure, but it’s sad and just doesn’t suit you.
Someone also has to pick a former Idol winner as their idol. For this round, it's Hollie Cavanagh and she likes Carrie Underwood. Hollie should’ve taken a risk and done one of Carrie’s more up-tempo, edgy songs. Instead, she sang “Jesus take the Wheel,” which has been done numerous times. Hollie sounded like any girl who loves country. And that’s the problem. It was forgettable. No wow factor. Hollie needs a moment in the worst way or she’s outta here.
Lucky for Hollie, American didn’t like Heejun’s seriousness and sent him packing. Before Heejun got the boot Nicki Minaj performed this year’s “Super Bass,” a new club jam called “Starships.” In case you didn’t notice, Nicki Minaj is terrible at lip synching.
And then there were eight. Tomorrow they’re breaking out the leg warms, hairspray, and neon for 80s night. Fingers crossed for a karaoke-free evening — and for someone to sing “(Don’t You) Forget About Me” from The Breakfast Club.
Last year we took a look at the emergence of 3D and IMAX in cinemas and home theater. Now, heading into this year’s blockbuster summer season, let’s take a fresh look at where those technologies stand.
3D and IMAX First, the bad news for the film industry: moviegoers are staying away from the theater in droves, with the number of tickets sold in 2011 at their lowest level since 1995.1 Box office numbers have been in decline since 2002, and it seems the proliferation of 3D films has been a contributing factor in that decline. The feeling is that 3D is seen as gimmicky with audience members being put off by both the glasses and, more importantly, the higher ticket prices 3D demands.2
However, despite the frightening numbers, it’s not all doom and gloom in regards to the box office. There’s one area in which ticket sales are booming, and that’s IMAX. During the first six weeks of 2012, IMAX ticket sales totaled $55 million, a 45% increase from the same time period in 2011.3
One reason IMAX sales are growing is that the giant-screen experience is one that cinema lovers simply can’t replicate at home, unlike standard theater and even 3D. Also, IMAX generally dedicates itself to blockbuster “event” movies to make the experience really worthwhile. IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond himself describes their core audience as “fanboys and fangirls,” which explains why even a movie like John Carter, which has generally been seen as a flop, made 17% of its box office gross from IMAX screens.4
The Hunger Games And of course, those promising 2012 numbers for IMAX were measured before the really big 2012 films came out. Like Titanic, the second highest grossing film of all time, which returns to theaters (including 3D and IMAX) this week. Oh, and another one you may have heard of called The Hunger Games, the hottest ticket so far this year, which opened recently to the fifth highest opening day of all time.5 IMAX screenings of the film brought in $10.2 million during its opening weekend, an IMAX record.6 That being the case, it will be very interesting to see the IMAX numbers at the end of the year, when they will include such films as The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, and Marvel’s The Avengers.
What Do You Think? Are IMAX films worth the premium ticket price? How do you feel about 3D? Let us know in the comments section below.
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