Frayed Knot

I recently re-saw A SOLDIER'S STORY (1984) for the first time in a number of years. For those not familiar: a WWII era saga set on a black army base in the deep south. Part of the plot has to do with this particular base having one of the finest baseball teams in the stateside army. In one scene while playing against a white team one of the batters (a young Denzel Washington who got like eighth billing in this) bunted back to the pitcher which is where all hell breaks loose movie-wise. The pitcher, who had just thrown the ball righty, suddenly fields and fires the ball to 2nd base lefty and with the number on his uniform reversed. And the play at 2nd is made by a fielder with his number reversed and the runner sliding back into the bag from the opposite direction. Now obviously this was a case of bad editing as the image is simply reversed ... but how the hell does this make it to the final cut?!? The mistake is so blatant that it's not like they needed a baseball geek on site to suss it out. Good flick otherwise with some fine performances -- Adolph Caesar in particular -- although one with an oddity of having several of the lead actors die quite young within a few years of the film's release. Adolph Caesar - heart attack, 1986 at age 52 Harold Rollins - AIDS-related lymphoma at age 46 in 1996 Larry Riley - AIDS-related renal failure at age 29 in 1992 Trey Wilson - cerebral hemorrhage, 1989 at age 40 I'm usually not one for jinxes, but I hope Denzel has his life insurance paid up.

I re-watched THE DROP not long ago, a movie mentioned here recently in one of the threads discussing Tom Hardy. And while the movie set in a Brooklyn bar did have New Jersey’s own James Gandolfini as a major character, his cousin was played by the quite English Tom Hardy with the other two leads in this very New York movie going to Noomi Rapace of Sweden and the Belgian born Matthias Schoenaerts despite English being at least the third language for each of them. Man Trump’s right, all these fur’ners are pouring across the borders and stealing all our jobs.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I knew I recognized the guy who played the father but would never have guessed it was Tommy Carcetti from The Wire! Also is quite recognizable as Lord Peter 'Littlefinger' Baelish for those Throne of Games fans. And the part of the mother was played by Maria Doyle Kennedy, who was Natalie, one of the trio of female singers in THE COMMITMENTS, a movie which sadly seems to be out of circulation these days (never on cable, not available through Netflix, etc.). The women from that movie all seem to have gone into acting afterward but I don't think any of the guys did unless you want to count Glen Hansard and even he just went from a musician playing a musician in one movie to a musician playing a different musician in a different movie.

So part way into this I'm thinking that it's going to be a tale of a dorky kid bouncing from one uncomfortable/awkward situation to another (and I tend to really dislike those movies) but it quickly grew beyond that and turned into a nice little flick. I take it this director likes making music movies [ONCE, BEGIN AGAIN] which is OK because he's pretty good at them. And you don't even need to be an '80s music geek to enjoy this one.

Two other fairly recent movies I mentioned on this forum (and apparently no one else saw) which are both pretty much all-Hardy start to finish (literally so in one case): LOCKE (2014) and LEGEND (2015)

Where he can pal around with Tebow!!

An update on Cecchini on the occasion of his big league call-up http://www.minorleagueball.com/2016/9/8/12840448/mlb-rookie-report-gavin-cecchini-ss-new-york-mets At age 22, Cecchini is in a good spot on the age curve, having fully proven himself as a hitter in the high minors. Even with the questions about his defense, he should be a valuable player going forward. I would not under-estimate his chances to improve even further with the bat. He's done enough to merit a Grade B entering 2017.

IIRC, Pryor also needed to be replaced, by Gregory Hines in this case, in HISTORY OF THE WORLD due to his drug use problems. That may have actually been the time he famously set himself on fire.

I'm in pain, I'm wet, and I'm still hysterical

The wild, NEW west, where pickup trucks have replaced horses, rusting oil equipment occupies former buffalo land, and outlaws are as likely to be behind a bank desk as behind a bandana. But all that updating doesn’t mean insulting Indians has gone out of fashion or that things can’t still windup in a shootout across a dusty landscape. Brothers Toby & Tanner (Chris Pine, Ben Foster) concoct a plan to keep from losing title to the old family ranch. Jeff Bridges is the nearing retirement Texas lawman who finds renewed passion in chasing down what seems to be a series of minor bank ripoffs.

Gary was pronouncing this as Geh-Zell-Man whereas my mind, having only seen it spelled but not pronounced prior to yesterday, had pre-assigned it the softer S of Geh-Cell-Man A quick check through the interwebs revealed no clues as to the ethnic/lingual origins of such a name (or even any names with that unusual Gs beginning) other than a rather lame indication that virtually all Gsellmans reside in the USA.

Also, following his Cubs "career" (2 innings), Joe Nathan has re-re-signed with the Giants meaning we might see him this weekend.

You know the guy is young, but you figure that maybe a grandparent could have told him about some guy named Biggio.

d'Kong76 wrote: I also learned just now that we share a birth date which is cool coincidence. Wouldn't that make him a bit old to be a prospect?

Then there's the story of the lady who ordered the VCR tape (remember those kids?) of that movie for her and her grandson to watch but wound up with 'THE ARISTOC[u:2smt5pg0]R[/u:2smt5pg0]ATS' instead. [fimg=200:2smt5pg0]http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f26/SweetHenrietta/Blogger/The_Aristocrats_92250c.jpg[/fimg:2smt5pg0]

Eight errors over your last six games is no way to get called up to the majors, son. On the plus side: .320/.386/.432

Yeah, those footsteps Michael Conforto is hearing just may be from some Wyoming-made cowboy boots. Now at .330/.405/.530 for the season, which means that since my May 23rd post he's had 23 hits in his last 61 [u:15eqoi2w]PAs[/u:15eqoi2w] (not ABs, but PAs) including 4 HRs and 11 XBHs in those 23 hits. And, yeah it's Vegas, but 38% of his hits on the season (25 of 66) are for XBs Compare all that to Conforto being [u:15eqoi2w]4 for 36[/u:15eqoi2w] in June and [u:15eqoi2w]18 for 119[/u:15eqoi2w] since the end of April. Gary brought up the idea of farming out Conforto the other day (not specifically mentioning Nimmo but just in general). Keith brushed it aside but at the same time didn't rule it out completely and added that he didn't think such a move would be a soul-destroying maneuver from which a player never recovers. And sooner or later something's got to change somewhere, so when you figure in same position, LH batter, ... If nothing else, the season for Nimmo thus far continues his pattern of taking some time to adjust to a new level but then adjusting to it quite nicely. After almost double the number of PAs at Vegas 2016 compared to the partial season there after his 2015 promotion, his current 935 OPS is a sizable jump over last year's 810

At least he didn't get called in to pitch. The Padres used two position player pitchers (Chritian Betancourt, Alexi Amarista) in the same game whilst getting blown out by the Mariners Tuesday night. I guess that's one of the privileges of being a 1st round draft pick.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (I always have to look up his name to remember the proper order and placement of the names and hyphen) as Phillipe Petit during the French street performer's planning and eventual execution of his 1974 wire-walk across the two World Trade Center towers. Regardless of the quality of the movie as a whole -- kind of cartoonish characters at times including JG-L's French accent (though the actor can and does speak the language) and heavy use of quite obvious CGI -- the scenes of the stunt itself are sweat-inducing scary/cool. Maybe it's just because I'm not great with heights -- not a basket case but let's just say that I was never the first kid up the tree as a youth -- but I spent the walking scenes of the movie with a towel next to me in order to keep my dripping palms from starting a minor flood despite sitting on a very stable couch at the time.

Just 1 Homerun so far, but his overall numbers are climbing after a slow 2016 start: .289/.361/.416 in 167 PAs with 14 of his 43 hits for XB (10 doubles, 3 triples, 1 HR) (I just wanted to try out the kaboom feature)

All new for 2016! Majors: Nathan (free agent): Retired? Maybe. Met him last week at our annual gala, where we honored him for his donations. NOT retired as it turns out. Just signed a deal with the Cubs of all teams, who then immediately placed him on the 60-day DL. Hasn't pitched since his opening day of 2015, a 4-pitch save he recorded which preceded his TJ surgery later on that month. The hope is that the now 41 y/o will be game ready by July.

Heard good things, but haven't seen it. And you gotta like that sub-title on the poster: Boy Meets Girl, Girl Unimpressed, Boy Starts Band.

Watch MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, then you'll spend the rest of your life trying to Un-know what goes on in a Turkish prison.

DSI,AGSI (didn't see it, ain't gonna see it) I'm sure someone will telling that I'm missing something, but I've never seen a minute of anything PWH has ever done on film or on TV. Mainly it's just never occurred to me that it would be anything I'd find remotely appealing.

That's long been one of my favorite MP routines. My freshman roomie had a record* with that skit on it and we damn near wore that sucker out. * yes kiddies, a comedy record album ... they used to be big, ask your parents