Hope Springs Eternal
The paradox of baseball philosophy in “Bull Durham”
Baseball is a young person’s game. From the first moment a kid can pick up a stick, they want to hit something with it. They want to run and chase and create places to call “safe!” And the games they play never adhere to time limits—they stretch as long as they need to so the play can last forever, as though it is youth itself that is at stake.…
My eyes snapped open at 2am on my bed in the Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco. Someone had stacked not just rocks, but boulders on top of me. My stomach churned. My breath labored. My head swirled with the strength of a typhoon. I needed to vomit, but I could barely move, and the harder it was to move, the more panicky I became. Nothing could have prepared me for this.
And it was all Brian De Palma’s [1] fault.
Nine hours…
After all these years, still a great twist! What a gut punch. This is the sort of Hollywood studio film that never gets made anymore—big cast, legal thriller, terrific script. Now this has all been moved to TV. No shade on the TV work, but I miss movies like Primal Fear.
It's hard for me to judge A SHOT IN THE DARK based on its own merits, as I usually do, because I watched it on the request of my son, Tommy. Tommy is almost 14, and has autism. For the last few years he has been obsessed with film composers. He can recite the IMDb filmographies of most with savant-like precision, and often corrects me. His current favorite is Henry Mancini, and he asked me to sit down and watch…
Disclaimer: I am a high school English teacher. I mainly teach Freshman English. Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET is a required text. In 15 years, I've taught it about 10-12 times. So, it should be duly noted that I am hypercritical of any adaptation of a play with which I am incredibly familiar.
ROMEO & JULIET sucked. It is the worst adaptation of this play I've ever seen, and that includes high school stage productions, which make up for their lack of…
