Friday, September 3, 2010

Ready for some football?

Please forgive the momentary departure from blogging about Obama being a boogerhead.  Lord willin' and the seas don't rise, there'll be plenty of time for that...

But I'm gettin' itchy for a kickoff.  There's just something special about football.  Whatever that special "something" is, it is even evident in pop culture.  Now I'm not much of a moviegoer (twice in the last 15 years or so) and not much of a TV watcher, but I've managed to see a lot of good football movies.  What about other sports?  I like baseball (especially when my Giants are still relevant in September) but I can't think of one good dramatic baseball movie.  Baseball seems to better lend itself to Major League and Bull Durham fun movies rather than drama.  Basketball?  There's Hoosiers.  Can't think of any others.  Well, there was that awful Robby Benson thing back in the '70s, too.  Hockey?  Please don't even start with the Mighty Ducks.  Soccer?  The Stallone/Pele flick Victory was pretty decent.  When the crowd starts chanting Dies Irae it gives me a little chill.  But really, would it have been half as cool if they were playing the Paraguayan National Team?  Nah, it's cool 'cuz they're beating Nazis. 

That brings us to football...

I can't think of one single serious football movie that sucked.  Some of the comedies (Adam Sandler, I'm looking at you) haven't done anything for me.  But the serious football flicks all seem to be really good.  I don't want to spread it on too thick, but there's a certain nobility about football.  That nobility lends itself to good cinema.  Think about it for a sec...
  • Invincible
  • Remember the Titans
  • Gridiron Gang
  • Blindside
  • Facing the Giants
  • We Are Marshall
Note that most of these are true stories.  Football doesn't need a lot of embellishment to be compelling.  I could add quite a few more to the list.  Heck, even Rudy was alright, and that was about Notre Dame. (spit) There were even some really sad ones from the '70s, whose titles escape me right now.  One of them was something like "The Brian [somebody] Song".  I think you get what I'm saying.   Football lends itself to drama in ways other sports don't. 

Consider this a general-purpose football/football movie thread.  Have at it.  And, oh yeah, one more thing:

GO BEAVS!!

5 comments:

  1. College gameday!

    Yeah, the 1971 movie was "Brian's Song" -- a friendship story about Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers. Serious tearjerker. There was a remake a year or two ago, but I never saw it, and likely never will so that I can preserve the memories of my high school-girl crush on James Caan.

    My favorite baseball movie is "It Happens Every Spring," a 1949 black and white in which a scientist develops a formula that makes baseballs repel wood. Pretty funny -- my daddy and I watched it every time it was in tv.

    That having been said, WOOO PIG SOOOOIEEE!!! Oh, and GEAUX SAINTS!!!

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  2. Go.....er. Hmm. There are no real college football powerhouses in the North east. I guess Penn St technically counts but JoPa is a zombie and I can't root for zombies.

    Syracuse? ugg.

    I guess there's notre dame.

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  3. Moogie - must be nice having a defending Super Bowl champ to root for. My Steelers are looking kinda lost with this Big Ben controversy.

    Infidel - "Think Globally, Act Locally" You can be a Beaver fan from a distance, and turn your your place in NY into an orange-n-black shrine to Beaver awesomeness!

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  4. I like football more each year, even though I don't know what they are doing 1/2 the time. I hope your fav team wins... Inno.

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  5. I'm not much of a movie person, but I have to believe some of the more recent football movies must have sucked. Hollywood has screwed up every other genre. And even though everyone picks the ASU SunDevils to suck this year, I have a glimmer of hope they'll do well. Plus I had a coupon this week where if the Sun Devils scored 31 or more points you got a free Double Butterburger Deluxe at Culvers. They scored 53. That's got to be a good omen. Life doesn't get any better than the intersection between food and football.

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