2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 11

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Baseball Movies

I started out with sports movies but that’s a lot of territory.  Football, basketball, boxing, horse racing and all kinds of other stuff.  Baseball by itself is plenty for a list.

Every kid of my generation loved baseball as much for playing as for watching the pros.  We played some version of baseball on parish fields, sandlots, school yard asphalt or around the cars on our city streets.  Baseball, stickball, punchball, slapball or softball.  Wherever we could find the space and whoever was around we could always get together some kind of game.

And of course we were rabid fans.  Being from New York City we had to choose between the Yankees and the Mets.  But even though I was a die-hard Yankees fan I went to the 7th game of the 1969 World Series and dutifully ripped up a square of turf when the Mets won it all for the first time and planted it in my backyard.  A year later that chunk of grass died.  It figured.

“The Sandlot” is a cheat because it’s more of a comedy about kids but it has a few things that broaden the appeal.

“Field of Dreams” and “A League of Their Own” both have cultural aspects that annoy me but both contain enough entertainment to allow me to include them on the list with only a grimace or two.  “The Natural” is overly sentimental but I consider it the best attempt to capture the mythological aspect of baseball in the American psyche; at least as it was before America was lobotomized in our era.  “61*” is a more realistic look at the business of baseball legends.  “Eight Men Out” is another movie to look at the reality behind the legends.  It’s the story of the Black Sox Scandal.  Excellently made.

I’m sure opinions will differ.  Have at it.

  1. The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
  2. It Happens Every Spring (1949) 1
  3. Angels in the Outfield (1951) 1
  4. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1976)
  5. The Natural (1984)
  6. Bull Durham (1988)
  7. Eight Men Out (1988)
  8. Field of Dreams (1989)
  9. A League of Their Own (1992)
  10. The Babe (1992) 2
  11. The Sandlot (1993)
  12. Cobb (1994)
  13. For Love of the Game (1999)
  14. 61* (2001)

1 Master Diver

2 War Pig

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 10

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Military Movies

I’m sure everyone will say I left out one of their favorites.  War movies and movies about the military seem to be very personal in their impact.  And that’s easily remedied when you list your forgotten favorite in the comments!

I left out ancient wars so Spartacus and Henry V were too far back I thought.  “Master and Commander” is close to the line but is such a good movie I couldn’t leave it out.  Although it would still show up in an action category and a list of movies about the sea.  Of course, I was restricted to movies I’ve seen and I can’t claim to have seen most war movies.

  1. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) 3
  2. The Story of GI Joe (1945) 3
  3. They Were Expendable (1945) 3
  4. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
  5. Fixed Bayonets! (1951) 3
  6. Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) 3
  7. From Here to Eternity (1953)
  8. Pork Chop Hill (1956) 1
  9. The Gallant Hours (1960) 3
  10. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 3
  11. The Longest Day (1962) 3
  12. The Great Escape (1963)
  13. Zulu (1964)
  14. Battle of the Bulge (1965) 3
  15. In Harm’s Way (1965) 3
  16. The Dirty Dozen (1967)
  17. Battle of Britain (1969) 3
  18. Patton (1970)
  19. A Bridge Too Far (1977) 3
  20. Big Red One (1980) 3
  21. Das Boot (1981)
  22. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
  23. Gettysburg (1993) 3
  24. Saving Private Ryan (1998) 2
  25. Band of Brothers (2001) 2 *
  26. Black Hawk Down (2001)
  27. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
  28. Downfall (2004)
  29. Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) 3
  30. American Sniper (2014)
  31. Dunkirk (2017)

*(TV Series)

1 Master Diver

2 Tom D

3 War Pig

Now is the Summer and Autumn of Our Discontent

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August, September and October will be consumed with talking about Kamala Harris?  It doesn’t seem possible.  There’s just nothing there.  They’ve got to throw us something else or we’ll all go insane.  I guess the next thing will be her vice-presidential pick.  Can you imagine that?  Being second banana to Kamala Harris?  In a sense Kamala Harris was the perfect person to be the back up to Joe Biden.  An emotionally unstable nitwit would complement a dementia patient well enough.  But what would be one rung below her?  I don’t know, a roll of bubble wrap?  One of those door-stops that’s made out of a spring?

I suppose, to distract us Joe Biden can start a war with someone.  It’ll have to be with one of our allies.  We can’t afford to lose to one of our enemies.  Currently our navy is taking incoming from something called the Houthis which sounds like a Star Wars race that should look like lobster-men.  Apparently, we’re now being attacked by smaller and smaller organizations.  Eventually we’ll work our way down to where TikTok influencers will be calling us out.

But yes, Joe Biden is going to need something to do for the next six months while he waits for his brain to reach zero-charge and he expires behind the Resolute desk.  So, a war makes sense.  It doesn’t have to be a real war.  In fact, a fake war will be much better.  Now that Betty Boop doesn’t have to run press conferences for President Meathead she can be repurposed as Joe’s babysitter.  She can bring him ice cream and give him war updates.  And to simplify things for the personnel who run the White House tours they can move Joe down into the bunker.

Breathless news of great victories and tragic defeats could be delivered every few hours and lulls in the battle could coincide with his 1:30 pm nap.  I think it would suffice if they could get him the deluxe edition of Risk and let him set up the board on a card table next to his Lazy Boy.  If he’s smart, he’ll build up his defenses on Alaska and Greenland and get those five armies for North America every turn.  The smart money is to expand into South America and Africa after that.  Europe will be tough although he’s already got a lot of armies in Ukraine so there’s that.  Well, I won’t second guess Biden.  He is a strategic giant so I’ll just wait for his memoirs to come out in “Highlights” magazine to learn how he conquered the world again.

We’ll have to get through the next three and a half months somehow.  I think I might skip the Kamala speeches altogether.  Listening to her talk about her racial and sexual grievances would be way too annoying.  Perhaps I can come up with a completely non-election-based series of topics to get me to December.  And at that point many things will have been decided by the outcome of our political drama.  I think this election will be an endpoint for a lot of things.  A Kamala Harris presidency would be a benchmark.  People in the future could point to it as the official beginning of post-America.  Perhaps I should start drafting an obituary.  It would be the decent thing to do.