RED ARMY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - American Doc on Soviet Hockey Ignores Canada

RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA

AMERICAN PROPAGANDA

Red Army (2014)
Dir. Gabe Polsky

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Gabe Polsky’s feature length documentary Red Army is as much about the propaganda machine (of Cold War Russia/Soviet Union) as it is pure propaganda unto itself, by placing undue emphasis upon the rivalry between America and the Soviet Union on the blood-spattered battleground of ice hockey competition. Polsky has fashioned a downright spellbinding history of the Red Army hockey team, which eventually became a near-juggernaut of Soviet skill and superiority in the world.

In spite of this, many Canadians will call the film a total crock-and-bull story.

I wholeheartedly admit, however, the bias of growing up intimately within the universe of world competition hockey. My own father, Julian Klymkiw, played goal for Canada’s national team in the 1960s, a team that was managed by Chas Maddin (filmmaker Guy Maddin’s father). Guy and I eventually became the respective director-producer team behind Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel and Careful. Maddin went on to immortalise a ‘non-professional’ team from the wintry Canadian prairies in the Jody Shapiro-produced My Winnipeg. Maddin even featured a beefy lookalike of yours-truly wearing a uniform emblazoned with the name ‘Julian Klymberger’ (the surname being one of my own nicknames in years past and to represent my Dad).

To say Maddin and I were both well aware of the true rivalry in international hockey would be an understatement.

But one didn’t need to actually grow up in hockey families intimately involved with various Team Canada hockey leagues to realise that the United States was a blip on the Soviet rivalry-radar. The only famous match-up between the Soviets and America happened during the 1980 Olympics, when a team of veritable untested ‘kids’ hammered the Soviets (immortalised as the 2004 Walt Disney Studios feature film Miracle starring Kurt Russell).

Polsky’s film uses this match as the film’s primary structural tent pole, and completely ignores the historic 1972 Canada-USSR Summit Series, which has gone down in most histories (save, perhaps, for America’s) as the greatest display of hockey war of all time. His film also ignores, though pays passing lip service, to the fact that the real rivalry throughout the 1970s and 1980s had virtually nothing to do with America and everything to do with Canada and Russia.

I know this all too well.

My own father eventually became the Carling O’Keefe Breweries marketing guru who brokered huge swaths of promotional sponsorship to Team Canada over 15-or-so years and, in fact, worked closely with hockey agent/manager/promoter and Team Canada’s mastermind Alan Eagleson. Dad not only spoke a variety of Slavic languages fluently, but his decades as an amateur and pro hockey player all contributed to making him an invaluable ally to both administrators and players of Team Canada. To the latter, famed Canadian sports reporter Hal Sigurdson reported, ‘Big Julie [Klymkiw] often rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty behind the Canadian bench.’

I’m not, by the way, arguing the absence of my Dad in this film – he did his thing, promoting beer to promote hockey and hockey to promote beer, which allowed him to travel the world and be with all the hockey players he loved – but what I’m shocked about is how Red Army can ignore my Dad’s old pal and colleague. The film includes ONE – count ’em – ONE off-camera sound bite from Alan Eagleson.

Polsky appears to have made no effort to even interview the man himself or include the reams of historic interview footage of Eagleson that fills a multitude of archives to over-flowing. Eagleson, for all the scandals that eventually brought him down, including imprisonment for fraud and embezzlement convictions, was the game’s most important individual on the North American side to make Soviet match-ups in the Western world a reality, and to allow professional North American players to go head-to-head with the Soviets. (Though Eagleson went down in flames, my Dad always remarked straight-facedly, ‘The “Eagle” never screwed me.’)

How, then, can a documentary about Soviet hockey so wilfully mute this supremely important Canadian angle to the tale? Where are the interviews (new or archival) with such hockey superstars as Gordie Howe (including sons Mark and Marty), Bobby Hull, Bobby Orr, Marc Tardif and all the others who battled the Soviets on-ice? Why are there only mere blips of Wayne (‘The Great One’) Gretzky, most notably a clip in which he sadly refers to the Soviets’ unstoppable qualities? Why are there not more pointed interview bites with the former Soviet players discussing the strength of Canadian players? It’s not like archival footage of this doesn’t exist.

There’s only one reason for any of these errors of omission: all the aforementioned personages and angles are Canadian. Ignoring the World Hockey Association’s (WHA) bouts with the USSR is ludicrous enough, but by focusing on the 1980 Olympic tourney and placing emphasis on the National Hockey League (NHL), the latter of which is optically seen as a solely AMERICAN interest, Red Army is clearly not the definitive documentary about the Soviet players that its director and, most probably American fans and pundits, assume it is.

America? HAH! Canada! YEAH!

As a sidenote, there's an excellent series of DVDs produced by the visionary Canadian producer-distributor Jonathan Gross and available through his company Video Services Corp. (VSC). The titles include Canada Cup ‘76, Team Canada 1974: The Lost Series, The WHA Chronicles, Canada Cup '84 and Canada Cup ‘87 and they ALL address this important aspect of Soviet-Canadian Hockey. I wonder if Polsky bothered to watch any of them? Only his hairdresser, or rather, conscience would know for sure. Full ordering info on the titles below review.

Even if one were to argue that the story Polsky was interested in telling didn’t allow for angling Canadian involvement more vigorously, ‘one’ would be wrong. The story of Soviet hockey supremacy has everything to do with Canada – a country that provided their only consistent and serious adversary, a country that embraced hockey as intensely as the USSR and a country, by virtue of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s official policy of Canadian multiculturalism, that reflected the vast number of Canuck players who had Eastern European blood and culture coursing through them.

It’s also strange how Polsky, the son of Soviet Ukrainian immigrants, ignores the fact that a huge majority of great Soviet players were ethnically Ukrainian. I vividly remember meeting so many of those legends as a kid and listening to them talk with my Dad about a day when maybe, just maybe, Ukraine would have its independence and display Ukrainian hockey superiority over the Russians, never mind the rest of the world. (Given the current struggles between Russia and Ukraine, this might have made for a very interesting political cherry-on-the-sundae.)

Ultimately, Red Army is American propaganda, or at the very least, is deeply imbued with American propagandistic elements. Given that it’s about Soviet hockey players, I find this strangely and almost hilariously ironic, which in and of itself, gives the movie big points.

All this kvetching aside, Red Army is still a solid film. Focusing on the historic and political backdrop of Joseph Stalin and those leaders who followed him, all of who built up one of the greatest, if not the greatest series of hockey teams in the world, this is still a supremely entertaining movie. Polsky’s pacing, sense of character and storytelling is slick and electric. The subjects he does focus upon, the greatest line of Soviet players in hockey history, all deliver solid bedrock for a perspective many hockey fans (and even non-hockey fans) know nothing or little about.

Polsky even interviews a former KGB agent who accompanied the Soviet players to North America in order to guard against defection to the West. Here again, though, I’ll kvetch about a funny Canadian perspective. Dad not only played hockey, not only was he a marketing guy, but he even squeezed in a decade of being a damn good cop in Winnipeg, and when Team Canada went to Russia, Dad would go from hotel room to hotel room, find bugs (not the plentiful cockroaches, either) and rip the KGB surveillance devices out of their hiding places for himself, his colleagues, players and administrators from the West.

I’ll also admit to enjoying the interviews with the likes of NHL coach Scotty Bowman and Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak; however, the most compelling subject in Polsky’s film is the Soviet defenceman Slava Fetisov, who movingly recounts the early days of his hockey career, his friendship and brotherhood with the other players and his leading role in encouraging Soviet players to defect for the big money of pro hockey in North America. It’s also alternately joyous and heartbreaking to see the juxtaposition between the balletic Soviet styles of play with that of the violent, brutal North American approach.

Contrast is, of course, an important element of any storytelling, but in a visual medium like film, it’s especially vital. It’s what provides the necessary conflict. With Red Army, however, the conflict is extremely selective. It is, after all, an American movie, and as it proves, if Americans do anything really well, it’s propaganda. Us Canucks here in the colonies can only stew in our green-with-envy pot of inferiority. We know we’re the best, but we have no idea how to tell this to the rest of the world, and least of all, to ourselves.

Kudos to Polsky and America are unreservedly owed.

They show us all how it’s done.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Red Army is currently in theatrical release via Mongrel Media in Toronto and Vancouver, followed by a February 27 release in Montreal and a rollout in the rest of Canada later in the year. It previously screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014).

To read a full version of my essay Canada vs. America: The Politics and Propaganda of Sports in Gabe Polsky's RED ARMY and Bennett Miller's FOXCATCHER, feel free to visit my column: Greg Klymkiw's COLONIAL REPORT (on cinema) from the DOMINION OF CANADA at the ultra-cool UK-based magazine electric sheep - a deviant view of cinema by clicking HERE.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING
FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW.
IN SO DOING WILL ALLOW YOU TO  SUPPORT
THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER 

In Canada - BUY VSC's The WHA Chronicles HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup The Lost Series 1974 HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup 1976 HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup 1984 HERE, eh!
In Canada - BUY VSC's Canada Cup 1987 HERE, eh!

SNAKE & MONGOOSE - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Jesse Williams & Richard Blake as SNAKE & MONGOOSE
The real-life drag racers who partnered with Mattel's HOT WHEELS

Snake & Mongoose (2013) ****
Dir. Wayne Holloway, Writers: Alan Paradise & Wayne Holloway
Starring: Jesse Williams, Richard Blake, Noah Wyle, Tim Blake Nelson, Fred Dryer

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Snake & Mongoose is a tremendously entertaining picture about the grand, glory days of drag racing. Focusing on the friendly rivalry between two of the sport's biggest stars, it's a movie's movie that comes jam-packed with all the Kraft Dinner comfort-food-styled-clichés you'd want from a racing picture yet alternately dappled with raw, rip-snorting reality. I suspect it's a picture many people will enjoy - of both sexes - but for those of us who lived through that amazing time, the movie is only going to have oodles of added resonance, but will frankly provide plenty of pure, glistening pools of unadulterated joy.

During the 70s, I seriously doubt there were any little boys in North America who:

(A.) Didn't own a few truckloads of Hot Wheels racing cars;
(B.) Didn't own several sets of Hot Wheels racetracks:
(C.) Didn't fall in love with drag racing;
(D.) and most of all, didn't know who the Snake & Mongoose were.

I was one of those little boys and I sure don't remember any kids I grew up with who weren't obsessed with any and all of the above. I remember counting myself extra lucky since my Dad was a P.R. man for a brewery at a time when promotions were the only way to market beer since advertising booze was against the law (at least in many Canadian territories). Dad sponsored a lot of sporting events and the one I loved the most was drag racing. I practically got to live at our local drag racing track one summer - not in the stands with all the suckers, but in the backstretch and at ground level, with all the manly men in T-shirts, cigarette packs tucked into their sleeves, sporting amazing sideburns and always, ALWAYS, surrounded by a ton of booze and babes: HOT BABES like the HOT WHEELS cars! It was Heaven on Earth: a cacaphonic, kaleidoscopic sensory-overload-sensation brimming to the max with the smell of fuel, burnt rubber and greasy oil, the sound of engines revving, tires squealing, staccato track announcements, babes-a-twittering, flashbulbs popping and LOUD rock n' roll on the speakers. And yeah, there were babes, too.

Have I mentioned the babes, yet? I digress. My bad.

The dazzling and promising feature length directorial debut of Wayne Holloway tells a relatively simple tale that spends twenty years in the lives of the famed California drag racers, Don "The Snake" Prudhomme (Jesse Williams) and Tom "The Mongoose" McEwen (Richard Blake). Friends and rivals since childhood, the two young men follow their dreams early in adulthood. Don is sweet, stable and loyal to his best gal while Tom is a wild man who cheats on his lovely, loving wife, drinks hard, rides hard and plays hard. He's also a whiz at self-promotion and keeps trying to convince his buddy to follow in his footsteps.

Through the two characters we experience how the early days of professional drag racing were full of unscrupulous track owners who make all the money while welching on the full prize money to the drivers. Tom combats this with promotional and sponsorship tie-ins as Don struggles along. When Tom comes up with the brilliant idea to sell themselves to the Mattel company and tie-in with the company's hugely successful Hot Wheels brand of toy race cars, Don decides to jump on board. In no time, Mattel designs toy cars to match the men's own cars and in turn, the guys design cars based upon models whipped together by the toy design team at the kiddie toy empire.

On track, the men are genuine rivals, but off track, they are the best of friends. This is part of their appeal to all the young boys - two men who remain best pals, but who also want to win. They capture the hearts and minds of kids everywhere. As they rise to the top of their game, one rises even higher and the other begins a slow plunge. It's a standard show business trope in narratives of this kind, but it also happens to be rooted in fact and generates a great deal of dramatic conflict throughout the proceedings. The film also focuses on the domestic lives of the men, adding a human element to the picture that eventually trumps a great deal of the macho shenanigans (without leaving them too far behind). There's an especially harrowing subplot involving Tom's leukaemia-stricken son which, goddamn it, moistened my eyes on more than a few occasions and most notably during a "Win one for the Gipper" conversation twixt father and dying son.

What jettisons Snake & Mongoose into a special place amongst racing pictures is how the clearly talented director Holloway captures period detail by expertly mixing straight-up dramatic recreations (chock-full of superb period detail) with absolutely stunning genuine stock/newsreel footage of the back-stretch at the track as well as during the thrilling races themselves. This is expertly bounced about to deliver a seamless tone that keeps our attention glued to the screen.

The film has a gorgeous sun-dappled look, but in the heat of race days, it's especially evocative in terms of the gorgeous grain dancing on-screen from the stock footage and the carefully filtered and beautifully lit dramatic footage that captures the blazing heat and dust of the track and its backstretch. In addition to eliciting terrific performances from the entire cast (especially its two leads and a wonderful supporting turn from the great Fred Dryer), director Holloway displays a vivid and clear voice as a filmmaker who has the kind of gifts that will, no doubt, deliver even more terrific pictures. The movie is jam-packed with a clever, varied palette of technique, but it's also got a ton or two of real heart.

Snake & Mongoose is up there with the best racing pictures. In fact, I'm willing to declare it might be the best of them all.

Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada (along with their U.S. counterpart) has released a stunningly transferred Blu-Ray release which is seldom less-than perfect. Its only flaw is a meagre, short and disappointing added behind-the-scenes feature which feels more like a promo reel. Most egregiously, it features interviews with everyone but the film's clearly gifted director. Whassup wit' 'dat? The movie, however, is more than worth owning in spite of this, especially for racing fans and 10-year-old boys of ALL ages. Feel free to order the film from the Amazon links below, and in so doing, supporting the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT
AND SCREAM FACTORY™,
IN AN UNPRECEDENTED PARTNERSHIP,
PROUDLY UNVEIL
HALLOWEEN THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
BLU-RAY™ BOX SETS

Limited Edition 15-Disc Deluxe and 10-Disc Edition Brings Together ALL The Halloween Feature Films In One Massive Set For the First Time EVER; All-New Bonus Features, Collectible Packaging, and 40-PageBook Make This
THE Blu-ray™ Box Set Event of 2014!

Michael is Coming Home September 23

ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT CANADA OFFERS THIS EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT. AMAZON PRE-ORDER INFORMATION COMING SOON TO THIS WEBSITE FOR THIS………

ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT

THE BLIND SIDE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - On the precipice of Sandra Bullock possibly winning another Oscar for an awful movie, perhaps the time is right to look at the awful movie that started it all.

"Look, a lot of rich White people, but mostly me, have been really, really
kind to you and I think you better start winning some games - not for
us, but for yourself. Well, and for me, too. Mostly for me, okay?
But mostly, TO BETTER YOURSELF!!!"

The Blind Side (2009) *½
dir. John Lee Hancock
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Jae Head, Kathy Bates

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Watching people be nice to other people is, for the most part, pretty boring. It's simply and unequivocally not very interesting and as such, makes for poor drama. In fact, it pretty much makes for NO drama at all. As Frank Capra proved on so many occasions, the only time in the movies that seeing people be nice to other people had anything in the way of dramatic impact was when the feel-good cinematic epiphanies were preceded by pain, suffering and/or conflict of the most unbearable kind.

The Blind Side is pretty unbearable, too, but not because the movie drags us through hot coals to get to the nirvana of feel-good, but because it's just so unbearably... feel-good.

Based on the true story of rich White people who helped a poor Black boy become a football player,The Blind Side could have been unbearable on the same kind of political grounds that so many movies have been where rich White people are seen as the real heroes in the salvation of Black people from their "lowly" station. This, however, is the least of the movie's problems.

The picture's biggest failing is that a lot happens, but for most of the film's running time it feels like not much of ANYTHING has happened.

Real-life football legend Michael Oher (surname pronounced like "oar") is fictionally presented to us in his adolescence as a big, quiet, seemingly oafish, physically powerful and possibly retarded Black boy - kind of like Lenny from Of Mice and Men. His Momma is a crack addict, but luckily, a kindly neighbour from the wrong side of the Memphis tracks has not only provided him with a home, but is especially kind to him by taking the lad to a high-toned private Christian school to get an education and possibly a sports scholarship. The Coach at the school also proves to be very kind to Michael and fights the good fight with the school administration to let him be admitted as a student. Some of the teachers are not pleased with his lack of academic prowess, but sooner than you can say, "White people are the saviours of Black people", the Science teacher realizes how smart he is and becomes very kind to him. Soon, all the teachers are kind to him (with the exception of the nasty English teacher who thinks he is an illiterate moron).

Alas, Michael becomes homeless when the kindly fellow from the beginning of the movie is unable to extend further kindness since his offscreen wife (like in Diner where we hear, but don't see Steve Guttenberg's wife-to-be) wants this large homeless boy off their couch. Michael sleeps where he can, hand washes his clothes in a laundromat and dries them in dryers left spinning and unattended. Still, this is a minor setback since by this point, so many people have been kind to him, that it's merely a matter of running time before someone will be kind to him again.

In the school yard, for example, when Michael sees some cute little girls on the swings and tries to give them a push, they run away - thinking, perhaps, that he's Chester the Child Molester. Well, sooner than you can say, "White people say wise things to Black people they could never have thought of by themselves," in walks a horrendously cute little White boy (Jae Head) who is quick with the wisecracks and overflowing with precocity. "Try smiling," Whitey says to the hulking, dour Black boy. And Goldurn' all ta' hail, if'n dis' don't work wonders. Michael smiles and soon, this 200 pounds of brawn is happily pushing pubescent girlies on the swings. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but this CAN work for child molesters, mais non?)

At this point in the proceedings, things could be going a lot worse for our hero, but so far, people have been kind to him. Then one night, the rain comes down like cats and dogs. The White boy and his family drive by our drenched hero and the Mom (Sandra Bullock) is shocked that this boy is homeless. Quicker than you can say, "Rich White people are the only ones who can put roofs over the heads of homeless Black people," she lets him sleep in their suburban mini-mansion. At first, he sleeps on the couch, but when his girth threatens to collapse it, Mom kindly buys a bed and gives him his own room.

Mom takes a real shine to this silent oaf and proceeds, for most of the film's interminable running time, to be... you guessed it!... kind to him. Her kindness is overflowing. One scene after another follows where Mom is not only kind to him, but gets others to be kind to him to.

One of Mom's friends remarks, "You're really changing that boy's life." Mom stares off wistfully and says, "No, he's changing mine." How he's changing HER life is a tad beyond me. She's gorgeous, has a gorgeous husband, two gorgeous kids, a gorgeous mansion and a gorgeous wardrobe. Since she's been very kind to him already, one can only suspect that her life changes since she becomes even MORE kind to him. Eventually, everything this Black boy deserves is handed to him on a silver platter - thanks to the kindness of Mom and so many other kind White people.

But wait! Conflict is on the horizon! To get into college to play football, our hero needs a higher Grade Point Average.Well, you might be surprised to hear this, but Mom hires him a private tutor (Kathy Bates). Damn, this tutor is good! And most of all, she is so kind to him. Even more surprising is that his teachers are kind to him and give him the support he needs to get the grades he needs.

But, hark! Do I hear the sound of even more conflict a-rumbling?

You bet! Remember that mean English teacher? Well, he's still pretty mean and it looks like he might not give our boy the grade he needs.

Oops, false alarm! He's kind too. Those pesky English teachers may seem like old sticks in the mud, but deep down, they're very kind - especially when they're White and want to teach some hard academic lessons to Black people that other White people are afraid to teach.

During the last few minutes of the movie, there is one final bit of conflict when a mean Black lady puts some bad ideas into our hero's head about the rich White lady who is so kind to him and he goes back to the Projects where he meets some not-very-nice Black boys and things get a tiny bit too unpleasant for all concerned.

Thankfully, this does not last long. Kindness rules and all is well again.

Written (I use the term loosely here) and directed (so to speak) by John Lee Hancock, The Blind Side is a movie that has very little going for it - no drama, virtually no conflict or tension, a running time that feels at least forty five minutes too long, a vaguely foul odour of racial condescension and globs of un-earned feel-good.

If, however, there is a plus-side to this odious trough of pap, it's oddly displayed in the presence and performance of Sandra Bullock. She is someone I always found incredibly hard to take. Her earnest perkiness, a perpetually stupid grin plastered on that long, horsey face and a yippy-yappy voice that made me long for the incessant barking of a rabid chihuahua always inspired in me a considerable expulsion of bile.

These feelings eventually shifted from nut-sack squeezing to admiration and, I must shyly admit to a regained firmness of a key appendage at the very sight of her. Somewhere around the time of her appearance in Paul Haggis's heavy-handed, overrated glorified TV-movie Crash, Bullock blossomed into something far more palatable and genuinely appealing. Some age, some maturity, some well-placed heft on her frame have all contributed to the enhancement of her ability to woo the lens of the camera. She also invested her peformance in Crash and the flawed, but underrated Alejandro Agresti film The Lake House with the kind of chops I never realized she had. In the latter title, she actually moved me. And no, it wasn't a bowel movement. The girl made me cry. And Christ Almighty! I even found her sexy and funny in "The Proposal".

In The Blind Side, she commands the screen like a pitbull - ravaging the lens with the kind of intensity I wish the movie itself had. Her performance has Oscar-bait written all over it, but within that context, I'd have to say it's entirely deserved.

If her second Oscar win is for Gravity, it will be for an equally intolerable movie, but at least The Blind Side is moronically entertaining instead of the dull, dour and idiotically overrated sudsy space opera. The Blind Side works very hard to be as awful and stupid as it is.

PARAMOUNT GAME NIGHT COLLECTION - Baseball Films Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw: FEAR STRIKES OUT & Original BAD NEWS BEARS Homeruns, BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY & MAJOR LEAGUE Ball Fours, HARD BALL, BAD NEWS BEARS sequels & remake all Strikeout.

It's the middle of a cold, dark winter.

Hockey is in full swing.

Baseball is a dim memory.

It seems as good an excuse as any to haul out the old Paramount Home Video nine-movie DVD box set entitled the Game Night Collection as a cinematic post-coital cigarette and pillow talk to the main event which occurred, it seems, so long ago.

Rating of Collection: **1/2
Ratings of Individual Films:
Fear Strikes Out (1957) dir. Robert Mulligan ****
Major League (1989) dir. David S. Ward **1/2
Hardball (2001) dir. Brian Robbins *
Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) dir. John D. Hancock **
Bad News Bears (1976) dir. Michael Ritchie ***1/2
Bad News Bears (2005) dir. Richard Linklater *1/2
Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977) dir. Michael Pressman *
Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978) dir. John Berry *1/2

Review by Greg Klymkiw

As someone who has virtually no interest in sports I'm still a sucker for great American sports pictures since the addition of story, character, mise en scene and on occasion, pure big-screen hokum become a perfect substitute for watching the thing itself. It's a genre that can delve into that one area of sports I actually find fascinating - the WORLD of sports – that is, everything about and around the sport rather than the sport itself.

American cinema is, of course, overflowing with sporting activities as a backdrop, but it's probably safe to say that baseball and football are – by far – the most popular activities to Uncle Sam's worshippers. In the movies, if football is analogous to war as it so often is (think Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday as a great example), baseball occupies a somewhat loftier, though gentler metaphorical position than football – that of LIFE itself. Winning is nice, but how you play the game is just as, if not MORE important.

When this box set presented itself to me a few years ago, I was pretty excited since I had seen many of these films when I was a child and had fond memories of them. I was also looking forward to catching up with a few of the newer titles I had heretofore missed and to take a new look at a couple of the more recent offerings. Ploughing through the whole box, my initial hopes weren’t necessarily dashed, but the collection turned out to be a pretty mixed bag.

Happily, in all such sets, there’s usually one Crown Jewel in the mix and this box is no exception.

While I’ve always had happy halcyonic thoughts about Fear Strikes Out, this most recent viewing yielded one of those rare experiences wherein the benefits of age (mine and the film’s) allowed for a whole new appreciation of this masterpiece of the 1950s. The inspiring true story of Jimmy Piersall (Anthony Perkins), a star hitter, shortstop and outfielder for the Boston Red Sox who made it to the top with his insanely demanding, driven father (Karl Malden) goading him on, resulted in a highly public nervous breakdown. It's the stuff movies are made of and Fear Strikes Out delivers big-time.

The relationship between father and son often provides highly-charged drama, but as portrayed in this extraordinary movie, it chills to the bone with its portrait of a father pushing his son out of both love and selfishness to dizzying heights of fame on the surface, while deep-down, shoving his son into a deep, dark closet mired in fear and intimidation.

Karl Malden as Dad and Anthony Perkins as Jimmy electrify the screen with their searing, staggering performances. As horrendous as Dad is, Malden still infuses the character with a warmth and humanity that makes the character all the more recognizable to anyone who has experienced that special love-hate tug with their own father. Perkins, in a role pre-dating his turn as the nut-job in Hitchcock’s Psycho is equally extraordinary – careening wildly from the shy romantic young man with a dream to the psychologically battered and drained vegetable in a straight-jacket.

Fear Strikes Out is also noteworthy as one of seven terrific pictures from one of the great producer-director relationships in American cinema. As a team, Producer Alan J. Pakula and director Robert Mulligan always dared to take us on journeys few mainstream pictures were willing to take in the late 1950s to early 1960s. They tackled a wide variety of important social issues with taste, intelligence and most importantly, a fabulous sense of showmanship. The pictures they made together were as supremely entertaining as they were thought-provoking. If the team had only made Fear Strikes Out and their timeless adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, that would surely have been enough to secure them a place in motion picture history, but they kept on delivering.

It’s also interesting to mention how this creative relationship really points to the importance of producers with vision. Once this team split up, Mulligan kept directing pictures, but they were all a pale imitation of his collaborations with Pakula. Pakula, on the other hand began directing his own pictures during Mulligan’s decline. Pakula kept delivering and continued the legacy of creating masterworks (Klute, The Parallax View and All The President’s Men to name just a few) while Mulligan barfed up such celluloid chunks as Summer of ‘42, The Other, Same Time Next Year and sadly, those pieces of crap were his “watchable” pictures – try sitting through Mulligan's coat-hanger abortion upon Jason Miller's The Nickel Ride sometime. Sadly, the Fear Strikes Out DVD has absolutely no extra features, but it’s a solid transfer of a gorgeous-looking black and white picture and happily enhanced anamorphically. It's a movie worth owning and within the context of this box set, it shares (thankfully on a separate disc) a slim-line case with Bang The Drum Slowly.

The latter title, directed by the painfully bland John Hancock, is rendered TV-movie-style (visually) and the muted drama pretty much makes mincemeat out of Mark Harris’s lovely novel and screenplay. A young Robert DeNiro as a doomed simpleton ball player works hard to charm and touch us whilst Michael Moriarty as the pal who takes pity on him is equally moving.

Both actors make the film worth seeing, but the picture moves lugubriously, looks ugly, has little feel for capturing the joy of the ball fields, dugouts and dressing rooms and is saddled with a grating musical score.

There are no extras with Bang The Drum Slowly, but none are really required. As a point of comparison though, this set might have benefitted from including the live television adaptation from the 50s wherein scriptwriter Arnold (Tucker: The Man and His Dream) Schulman and director Daniel (A Raisin in the Sun, Fort Apache – The Bronx) Petrie blended the techniques of radio drama with live theatre and cinema (along with those of live television itself), thus rendering a perfect example of cusp-period artistic expression during the dawn of television as a medium that was worth extending far longer than it lived. Their challenge was to translate a tale that spanned two baseball seasons, numerous locations (including dugout action) and a huge cast during one live hour of drama. Ultimately, it’s handled with the kind of originality and efficiency that Hancock's 70s film version can't even begin to hold a candle to.

The other piece of bad news in this box set is a double-trouble double-header. Two separate discs sharing another slim line case are a pair of what might be the worst baseball pictures ever made: Hardball, a bile-inducing story of loser Keanu Reeves finding his inner-self while coaching a ragtag group of deprived inner-city kids to little league victory and Talent for the Dame, a dull-as-dishwater picture directed by the once talented (Alambrista, Short Eyes) Robert M. Young, who turned-into-no-talent-sell-out-hack. Starring an earnest ('nuff said) Edward James Olmos (‘nuff said) as a baseball scout who turns a small town simpleton ('nuff said) into a major leaguer ('nuff said), it's virtually unwatchable. Lorraine Bracco ('nuff said) is in it too. Christ, she has an annoying voice. Watching her in this picture, I’m absolutely stumped how Scorsese turned her into the beyond-palatable Henry Hill moll in Goodfellas. Here, she sounds like a frog with a firecracker going off in its butt. Talent For The Game, as it should be, has no extra features, but Hardball is inexplicably jam-packed with extra features including a pretty useless commentary track with the purported writer-director and a mess of glorified EPK junk.

Getting its own slimline case, the single disc of writer-director David S. Ward’s Major League, dubbed the “Wild Thing Edition”, is loaded with a variety of extra features including an okay commentary with Ward. If you liked George Roy Hill’s Slap Shot (and I most certainly do), you’ll probably manage to enjoy this raucous baseball version sans Hill’s directorial panache and Nancy Dowd’s brilliant dialogue. That said, Major League made me laugh quite a bit when I first saw it and coming back to the picture was like putting on a comfy old pair of slippers, managing quite ably to deliver the well-worn goods.

Rounding out the set are four different titles with the Bad News Bears. Sharing one slim-line case are two separate discs of the original Michael Ritchie comedy classic and the recent Richard Linklater remake. Ritchie’s picture from Bill Lancaster’s terrific script holds up so marvelously that one wonders why the remake was necessary – especially since it really doesn’t try to move into new territory like some good remakes actually can. (I like citing the first three versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an example of how this can work beautifully.) Ritchie’s original, stars the inimitable hang-dog schlub Walter Matthau as the drunken foul-mouthed lout who manages to coach an equally foul-mouthed group of kids to ball-diamond glory with the help of a foul-mouthed tweener, pitcher Tatum O’Neal and foul-mouthed little criminal on a motorcycle, a very young Jackie Earle Haley. It’s a wonderful picture – both funny and moving. Linklater’s remake is not only necessary, but thanks to Lancaster’s script (which remains largely intact) and Billy Bob Thornton who is surprisingly good in Matthau’s role, it’s kind of watchable, but why bother when the original rocks big time and in its own way, hasn't really dated. Sadly, Ritchie’s classic has zero extras and Linklater’s ho-hum remake is jam-packed with extras.

The final offerings in this box are the 70s sequels to Ritchie’s original. On two separate discs in the same slim-line plastic case, you'll first find Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, a horrendously unfunny followup with few of the original cast on board and an utterly unappetizing William Devane making a poor replacement for Matthau. The other sequel, Bad News Bears Go To Japan, has a few laughs as the misfits find themselves in the land of the rising sun. Paramount wisely secured Bill Lancaster to write the script and they cast a very entertaining Tony Curtis in the coach role. Is it good? Not exactly, but it’s an okay time-waster and has a good number of ludicrous American-styled Japanophobic gags.

If you don’t own Fear Strikes Out, Major League and the original Bad News Bears and want to own all three of them, then it’s probably your best bet economically to pick up the box set. That said, I do hope Paramount Home Video gets its act together and issues some extras-loaded Blu-Rays of Fear Strikes Out and Ritchie’s Bad News Bears. That would be manna from Heaven.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS ABOVE OR BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

AMAZON.CA

AMAZON.COM

AMAZON.UK

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - This is a great film! But I HATE it!

This idiotically attired fop believes
he's a Man among Men because he teases,
tortures and slaughters a living creature
in front of screaming morons
who pay money to see this butchery.
Culture? If you want to call it that, be my guest.
Ignorance? Savagery? Stupidity? Yes!

Story of a Loser!!!

The Moment of Truth (1965) ***½
dir. Francesco Rosi
Starring: Miguel Mateo 'Miguelín', Linda Christian, Pedro Basauri

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It's probably a "cultural thang", but I just don't get bullfighting. It's a vicious, cruel and morally reprehensible "sport" (if you can even call it that) that involves teasing, torturing, then murdering a bull for the enjoyment of blood-lusting plebes (I include the "elite" here too) in mostly Spanish-speaking countries. Actually, I'll go further - call it ethnocentric or even racist if you will (and I will care less) - but anyone who would engage actively or enjoy watching this odious "art" (if you can even call it that) has got to have something seriously wrong with them. Yes, I'm aware of bullfighting's historical "importance" to Spanish "culture" (if you can even call it that), but why and how this crime against animals can continue in this day and age is beyond me.

And yes, I consider the teasing, torturing and wanton slaughter of animals a crime. Just because it's "cultural" doesn't mean reasonable, thinking people must accept its existence.

Thousands of stupid people who enjoy watching
animals tortured and slaughtered for sport.

There is a long tradition of bullfighting movies; the most well-known being the various versions of Blood and Sand (most notably the silent 1922 Rudolf Valentino version and Rouben Mamoulian's 1941 effort for Fox) and Budd Boetticher's studio butchered and recently restored The Bullfighter and the Lady. The above films are not without merit as films, but none of them can hold a candle to Francesco Rosi's The Moment of Truth.

I hate this movie, BUT The Moment of Truth is important on three fronts.

First of all, it's dazzling filmmaking. Secondly, it reflects the society and politics of Spain in the 1960s in ways that also shed light on the macho-blood-lust culture that would so proudly continue to extol the virtues of this heinous activity. Finally, it is an exquisite addition to the canon of the brilliant Italian director Francesco Rosi (Salvatore Giuliano, Hands Over the City, The Mattei Affair, Lucky Luciano) and, in fact, is a perfect melding of his Neo-realist and operatic tendencies (and influences).

The movie does not glorify bullfighting, but rather, it takes a no-holds-barred look at the entire world of the "sport/art" - behind the scenes and in the public spotlight. Rosi's film charts the rise of bullfighter Miguel Mateo 'Miguelín', an aimless young man who desperately seeks a better life and painstakingly learns the bullfighting ropes and rises to the top of the game. In spite of his stardom, he's still a simple country boy at heart and his handlers push him to ever-dangerous heights - exploiting him with absolutely no regard for his well-being. Miguel kills the bulls, but the men of influence kill his spirit and, in so doing, further feed the the centuries-old blood-lust of the "people".

Rosi's mise-en-scène is phenomenal. Attacking the tale with a mixture of classical, yet baroque shots reminiscent of his mentor Luchino Visconti, yet training his eye on the proceedings as a neo-realist storyteller and documentarian, this is a film that clearly springs from the loins of a born filmmaker. Sequences involving the running of bulls through the streets as their hides are pierced with ribbon-adorned harpoons, the dank basement of the bullring where Migeulin is trained by retired bullfighter Pedrucho (Pedro Basauri), the dusty rings themselves - surrounded by hordes of slavering, blood-crazed fans - these images are clearly unforgettable and, most importantly, are the real thing.

When we see fear in Migeulin's eyes as he faces an angry, snorting bull, this is not acting - it's the real thing. No rear-screen projection or opticals a la Blood and Sand are used here. It's real bullfighters, real swords, real gorings and real bulls.

While it is clear that Rosi's intent is to expose the macho myths of this world, I still find it sickening to watch. Even though it's SUPPOSED to be sickening, having to watch it is not unlike what it must be for non-pedophiles to watch real kiddie porn. Filmmakers who must take horrendous things to extremes in order to expose truth (like Kubrick, Pasolini, Scorsese, Friedkin etc.) do so within the realm of recreating violence. In The Moment of Truth, violence, pain and suffering happen for real and Rosi captures it on film with all the power and panache one would expect from a great filmmaker.

For Rosi to tell this story and explore the theme of the violent exploitation of man and beast - for him to break-down the perverse sense of masculinity that infuses the lives of those on both sides of the bullfighting world - he must, like all great artists avoid any sense of morality that will interfere with the horrors he seeks to display.

I understand this, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.

The most upsetting thing is seeing animals being teased painfully with the harpoons and to witness these beasts actually being stuck with swords, to watch - mouth agape - as real blood gushes out of these poor animals and worst of all, to bear witness to these animals having their spinal columns crushed with the cold steel of the torero's sword (and see even more blood gushing out of thee animals) is, frankly, more sickening than watching the re-created scourging and crucifixion of Our Lord in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

In spite of my revulsion, I cannot deny that Rosi is at the top of his game here. This is brave and brilliant filmmaking. However, in order to expose exploitation, Rosi must also exploit his human and animal subjects. It's even more detestable that he focuses his camera so astoundingly and unflinchingly upon the balletic grace with which the bullfighters taunt their quarry and then kill it.

There's no two ways about it.

I admire this film and I respect it.

I also hate it and wish it had never been made.

"The Moment of Truth" is available on an exquisitely mastered Bluray on the Criterion Collection - a widescreen Technicolor print that's a perfect example of a terrible beauty. The release includes a new English subtitle translation, a handsome booklet and an interview with Rosi himself.

MIKE TYSON: UNDISPUTED TRUTH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Spike Lee serves up a brilliant document of boxer Mike Tyson's astounding one-man-show.

HBO Films presents Spike Lee's latest Joint, a biographical portrait of boxer "Iron Mike" Tyson via his hit one-man stage production which wends its way through the triumph and turmoil of his storied life.



Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth (2013) ****
Dir. Spike Lee
Starring: Mike Tyson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Most boxers are genuinely great natural story-tellers. So many of them, it seems, spring from tough, colourful, Runyonesque mean streets of various squalid, crime-ridden urban jungles and no matter how punch-drunk they've become, no matter how many decades have passed, they all seem to remember every single detail worth recounting about their rich lives in and out of the ring.

In fact, I've personally never met a boxer who couldn't spin compelling autobiographical yarns. That said, one doesn't need to actually be sitting face-to-face with one of these grand old guys in a booth at some greasy diner to enjoy their tales of glory since there's a wealth of interview material out there with any number of pugilists.

These guys seem to have the hard-wired DNA to recount stirring narrative accounts that are as humorous as they are heartbreaking, as hiply cool as they are harrowing. Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth is a magical thing all unto itself - at least when it comes to documentary portraits of boxing and bluntly, it's impossible to imagine anyone other than the scrappy stylist Spike Lee to so perfectly capture the essence of one of the world's greatest boxing legends.

One of the aspects of Lee's film that was most apparent to me was the notion that its scope and style of presentation was not just the work of a genuine filmmaker (as opposed to the typical camera jockey that captures such events for television), but that it indeed, did not feel like a television special at all, but rather, a bonafide feature film. Like a previous HBO Film, Steven Soderbergh's astonishing Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, my immediate response to Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth was just how much I would have loved to see the movie theatrically - in a real movie theatre, with a real audience.

With this film in particular, I was reminded of the terrific tradition in theatrical exhibition of presenting work that can collectively be typified as "concert/live performance films." Unlike classic rock concert films, however, like Gimme Shelter from the Maysles Brothers and Charlotte Zwerin or Monterey Pop by D. A. Pennebaker, Spike Lee's film is more in the tradition of stand-up style concert films like the immortal Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, Eddie Murphy Delirious, but crossed with Jonathan Demme's groundbreaking Spalding Gray monologue masterwork Swimming To Cambodia.

All of these films shared a number of elements with Lee's film. First of all, they were shot before live audiences. Secondly, the stage presentations were conceived with being captured on film. Thirdly, as theatrical feature films, they shared the unique viewing experience wherein the movie audience watched a cinematically rich approach to filming an event that included on-screen audiences responding to the material. Sitting in a huge movie theatre with hundreds of people laughing in unison with audiences reacting to the show on-screen was an experience unique to cinema and one that was so special, so indelible that watching Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth at home, on television with a very small (albeit delightful) audience that included my wife and twelve-year-old daughter made me immediately yearn to have seen this terrific movie (with said wife and child) in a real movie theatre, with real people and a larger-than-life screen.

Lee's mise-en-scene is certainly larger-than-life and this, given the subject, is as it should be and could only be. Mike Tyson was the undisputed heavyweight boxing champion of the world and the youngest man to ever win several coveted titles. Most of his fights were won by completely knocking out his opponents and usually in the first or second round. For many years, he seemed unstoppable, but a series of turbulent personal travails wreaked enough havoc upon him that he did, indeed, start to lose. During one losing bout, Tyson savagely bit off part of his opponent's ear - not once, but twice. Add to this the blight of various domestic disputes, bankruptcy and a rape conviction leading to three years in prison and Tyson has a story as huge as that of any immortal God of Ancient Greece.

Using a series of simple, but evocative lighting effects, still images, film footage and a great music track, Lee shoots Tyson as he sits and struts upon the huge stage like a lion in a cage - his very life forming the bars and the appreciative audience providing the eventual redemption within the tale he weaves. We learn about Tyson's rough childhood - a beloved mother who was a substance abuser and sometime street hooker, an abusive step-father, an irascibly flamboyant pimp as his birth father and a huge juvenile criminal record. Tyson seems thankful for these early years of crime and incarceration, as his time in juvenile detention led to a relationship with a trainer and mentor who promised Tyson that he would indeed groom the lad into becoming the youngest world boxing champ.

Tyson comes across as a plain-spoken orator - an entertainer from the streets of life and the school of hard knocks. He's pretty damn riveting and Lee clearly knows how and where to place the camera - the lens of which that truly, madly and deeply loves the ex-champ. Unfortunately, it's impossible to be completely sold on his redemption - the physically brutality he exacted upon his young wife Robin Givens is avoided in favour of exposing her "gold digging" ways and the manner in which Tyson represents his rape conviction is full of denial and mean-spiritedness towards his victim. Instead, we get a parade of all the celebrities who came to visit him in prison. (Shame on all of them!) These are big hurdles to get over and I'm not sure if most audiences will be able to do so. I suspect, however, that Lee's dazzling direction will indeed keep them watching at the very least.

Ultimately, what the film achieves is not so much myth-making since Lee knows that this ground's already been tread upon (via James Toback's excellent, though surprisingly straightforward feature doc Tyson). Instead, we get "Iron Mike" up close, personal and almost oxymoronically, bigger than life. As the camera scrutinizes the big man, there's no denying that there will be plenty of room for audiences to see what they need or want to see. Most will see a young man from a hellhole, his rise to the top and his rock-bottom crash. We'll see a man in denial and yet, this is what we'll clearly see and believe. Finally, we'll see a man, a human being - one who looks ahead to new beginnings and new challenges.

And for all the achievements and all his fame, he'll still be a thug - a thug who parlayed his gifts as a thug into becoming a much-beloved hero and celebrity - an American Icon.

Only in America. No wonder the country is collapsing.

"Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth" can be seen on HBO Canada. For info, visit the website HERE.
Playdates in Canada are as follows:
Saturday Nov.16 8:01PM ET / MT
Sunday Nov.17 2:16AM ET / MT
Saturday Nov.30 11:45PM ET / MT
Sunday Dec.8 9:40AM ET / MT
Sunday Dec.8 6:30PM ET / MT

For info on U.S. dates and times, visit HERE.

JEWS AND BASEBALL: AN AMERICAN LOVE STORY - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Jews and Baseball - An American Love Story
(2010) dir. Peter Miller ***
Narrated by Dustin Hoffman

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Based solely on the title I was so excited to see Jews and Baseball - An American Love Story even though I have never been - in any way, shape or form - an avid sports fan. In spite of this, there are certain sports I love. Sounds dichotomous? Well, if truth be told, it's the WORLD of certain sports that continue to have such a nostalgic hold on me and in the right context - usually a historical one - I get giddy over the very IDEA of sports pictures (fiction or documentary) that focus on certain aspects of atmosphere and theme. Baseball is one such sport, and the thesis implied in the title of this new documentary was immediately tantalizing.

I assumed the picture would touch upon Hank Greenberg who sat out the pennant race in 1934 to observe Yom Kippur, but since there already exists a truly great documentary, Aviva Kempner's The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg what I was really looking forward to was a fun grocery list of great Jews in baseball (from players to management to owners), references to all the great Jewish American writers who wrote so eloquently about baseball - my favourites baseball books penned by those of the Hebraic persuasion being Bernard Malamud's The Natural and Paul Auster's tremendous piece of detective pulp Squeeze Play (under the pseudonym Paul Benjamin) and most importantly, I predicted (wrongly and perhaps unfairly) that we'd be getting a cinematic baseball equivalent to Simcha Jacobovici's documentary rendering of Neal Gabler's Hollywoodism which explored how Jewish immigrants not only invented Hollywood, but through the medium of film, created the American Dream itself.

Here's the deal: We get the grocery list.

Can grocery lists be entertaining? Well, when it comes to the list director Peter Miller and his writer Ira Berkow provide, it's not without merit - the picture in this respect feels exhaustive and many of the subjects are definitely worth knowing about.

Is the movie boring? Never. It delivers up all the Jews in baseball we're ever likely to see assembled under one roof and the film is proficiently made in the eminently user-friendly and compelling way episodes of A&E Biography and other "informational" TV docs are.

Is it unique?

Special?

Ground-breaking?

Not especially.

It accomplishes four things very well.

First of all. Miller gives us a sense of what baseball WAS in terms of its romance as a sport, but most importantly, as a unique, magical, romantic world unto itself. This is, frankly, the one aspect of the film that feels personal and moves it a few notches above a typical TV-styled "informational" documentary. The film delivers an experience that explains WHY we all used to love baseball - it was never just the sport, it was the atmosphere: the whiff of hot dogs (mostly, if I'm correct - NOT Kosher nor, at the very least, all-beef), salted peanuts in the shell, the grass that inspired Joe to go shoeless and all those players of every shape and size dotting the fields like cows chewing their cuds but with dazzling bursts of action to rival those jack-hammered upon us by the Jerry Bruckheimers of the world.

Miller yields the magical bedrock upon which baseball rests itself upon and for that, I was truly delighted.

Secondly, while I'm not a sports nut, I understand - as a movie-nut - where this breed comes from. The thing itself is everything, but NOTHING without the minutiae and Miller delivers minutiae in spades. God bless him for this. So will sports fans.

Thirdly, all of the above is narrated by Dustin Hoffman - a great actor with a truly distinctive voice that is absolute perfection for the matter at hand.

Finally, though, what the movie does especially well, is inspire us to think about the much better movie it could have been - a movie that still needs to be made. And yes, this is seemingly unfair, but even the film's title conjures up something so much more interesting and potentially provocative than it delivers upon. Yes, we get (to coin the old MGM adage) more Jews who love baseball than all the Jews in Baseball Heaven, but other than the decent Hank Greenberg profile (a nice encapsulation by Miller that was, alas, already done nicely in the aforementioned Kempner documentary), the big question we're left with by the end is: How is this film a UNIQUE "American Love Story"?

Okay, with Hollywoodism, Jacobovici and Gabler were blessed with the clear and irrefutable and (at the time) not-fully-explored notion that Hollywood was invented by Jews who used cinema as an instrument to perpetuate the dreams of all those who fled their shtetls at the end of Russian Cossacks' sabres to seek a new life. The American Dream as created by Hollywood was, without question, an invention of the Jews - one that touched all Americans, even, I might add, boneheaded racists.

Baseball, on the other hand and as played in America was purely Goyische in its invention. Beyond the Greenberg section and the grocery list, I wanted more. I wanted an exploration of Jewish culture strictly with the domain of baseball. What is it to be a Jew in a sport dominated by Anti-Semitic Goyim? What was it like then? What is it like now? What is the history of Anti-Semitism in American baseball? What is it about baseball that causes a Jew to stay within such an Anti-Semitic environment (and let's also not forget, an anti-Black environment also)? Answers to these questions are not answered in any conclusive or compelling way.

And anti-Semitism aside - what is it about Jewish culture that created such a plethora of great ball players? How does a Jew love baseball? Why does a Jew love baseball? What is inherent in the Jewish culture that inspires this love?

On one hand, an answer to such questions might best be found in Shylock's speech where he asks: "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge?" And furthermore, to paraphrase: "Hath not a Jew the same love of baseball as a Christian?" Well, uh... yes, but the movie itself is called Jews and Baseball - An American Love Story and as such, there's the implication that we're going to get a deeper cultural exploration than the film delivers.

And how about all the Jewish writers, filmmakers, actors and artists who extolled the virtues and values of baseball through their creative work? How about all the Jewish academics and critics who wrote about this creative work? Why don't we hear more from these quarters?

All good questions, I think, and definitely worth exploring in much greater detail than Miller's documentary allows.

Until then, however, Miller's picture will do.

It's unquestionably entertaining, but you, like I, might want something more.

Something that breaks ground - kinda like baseball cleats.

"Jews and Baseball - An American Love Story" is available on DVD via VSC - Video Service Corp. 

THE ROLLER DERBY CHRONICLES: ROLLING THUNDER, DERBY, ROLLER DERBY MATCHES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - KLYMKIW CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA FOR 2012 #5

For the MAN in your Life.
For Christmas.

Here's your Greg Klymkiw Christmas Gift Suggestion #5 for 2012. "The Roller Derby Chronicles" is a must for all the menfolk nearest and dearest to you. From VSC (Video Service Corp) this is a 3-disc derby delight that features two documentaries (one contemporary, one a near-classic from 1971) and a whole mess of vintage Roller Derby matches from the late 40s to mid 70s. The discs come in a cool package that includes a mini-replica of a roller derby rink on the cover.

The Immortal Francine Kochu

The Roller Derby Chronicles: Rolling Thunder (2009) *** dir. Larry Gitnick
Starring: Donald Drewry, Gwen "Skinny Mini" Miller, Charlie O'Connell, Francine Kochu, Jerry Seltzer, Leo Seltzer

This 48-minute (standard television one-hour) documentary is a fast-paced, but informative and entertaining introduction to the strange "sport" of roller derby that for a 30-year period took America by storm. We see the early beginnings of roller derby as launched, invented and promoted by Leo Seltzer, its life, trajectory and near-death due to television in the 50s (they made more money on live shows than on TV licence fees and royalties). The film show the rebirth of roller derby under the guidance of Seltzer's son Jerry up to the pinnacle of its popularity in the 70s until it's death in the same decade due to the fuel crisis in America.

The doc is replete with lots of great roller derby footage from a variety of periods and deftly presents the rules of the game in addition to the various modifications over the years. The "action" is supported with new and period interviews with Roller Derby stars like Skinny Mini Miller, Charlie O'Connell and the lovely Francine Kochu.

Introduced and occasionally narrated by the delightfully cheesy dulcet tones of sports announcer Donald Drewry, Rolling Thunder is a terrific primer for anyone not familiar with roller derby and a wonderful walk (or roll) down memory lane for those of us who religiously watched Roller Derby on television and saw it live whenever we could. (As a kid I used to see Roller Derby in the old, packed-to-the-rafters 10,000-seat Winnipeg Arena.)

All in all, Rolling Thunder (obviously not to be confused with the great 70s post-Vietnam vigilante thriller with William Devane) is a terrific appetizer to the buffet dinner to come.

Cinema Verite Meets Roller Derby

The Roller Derby Chronicles: Derby (1971) ***1/2 dir. Robert Kaylor
Starring: Mike Snell, Charlie O'Connell

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If one looks at Rolling Thunder as a starter course and the two discs of actual Roller Derby matches as dessert, then 1971's Derby is a full-on gourmet main course.

Initially financed by the Roller Derby moguls to promote the sport and to focus on its biggest star Charlie O'Connell, the dream team of Derby's key creatives came up with something far more fascinating. While following the affable O'Connell around, the filmmakers are presented with a very happy accident. A young Mike Snell showed up whilst the cameras were rolling on O'Connell in the dressing room. Snell wants to play roller derby and zeroes in immediately upon the reigning star to get advice.

Snell has quit his back-breaking proletarian unskilled labour job, saved up three years worth of wages to learn the art of roller derby and with his wife's support, he's going to seek stardom in Roller Derby. To the filmmakers, this was too good to be true and we bounce back and forth between the grounded O'Connell and the live-wired irresponsibility of Snell. This guy is also a major cocksman and the film focuses on his philandering and even follows Snell's wife as she confronts one of his many lovers.

Yes, the movie is about Roller Derby, but it's also about the American Dream gone completely awry and though the picture peters out in its final minutes, it is, for the most part one of the most fascinating cinema verite documentaries of the period.

To anyone following this sort of thing, this should come as no surprise. The director is Robert Kaylor who went on to direct the flawed, but strangely compelling feature length drama Carny with Gary Busey, Robbie Robertson and Jodie Foster. The producer is William Richert who went on to direct one of the best political thriller satires of the 70s, Winter Kills with Jeff Bridges and John Huston. And last, but not least, Derby's editor is Anthony Potenza who'd go on to direct the famed rock-doc No Nukes, some of Bruce Springsteen's best videos as well as the epic Springsteen video anthology.

Derby is a winner all the way and a documentary that demands re-discovery!!!