I am still convinced that The Natural is about selling your soul to the devil, just the scenes explaining that somehow got edited out.
I think it's a biography of Satchel Paige, except they cast him as white. Plus hoodoo.
What sporty movies have I seen? Besides, like, the original MASH, which I am not sure it really counts.
The baseball games are kind of a dead giveaway.
As opposed to the tricksily disguised soccer games in Bend It Like Beckham, you mean?
Doesn't it start off with a bat hitting a ball? (The Natural, I mean.)
It was The Cup I was remembering, though.
Gotcha. Y'know, I've managed to avoid seeing The Natural all the way through somehow.
I think The Natural is more about the myth behind baseball. The best movies *about* baseball are probably Eight Men Out and Bull Durham.
As opposed to the tricksily disguised soccer games in Bend It Like Beckham, you mean?
I'm not the one arguing that sports movies aren't about sports.
Edit: Although I was awfully distracted by JRM's cheekbones.
IIRC, it starts with a tree gettign hit by lightning, and a kid lathing his own bat out of the lightning-struck wood. Then later, there is Robert Redford in a waistcoat striking out a major leaguer in a sun-kissed, J. Crew late-afternoon shot. Somewhere in there, Glenn Close looks on limpidly.
I'm not the one arguing that sports movies aren't about sports.
You misled me by answering my question posed in response to the contention that BiLB wasn't about soccer in the same way. Not that I was thinking Nutty was saying it wasn't about soccer. Just that
The Natural
handled its sport differently.
See, I didn't think Bend It Like Beckham was much of a sports movie, either. It was a coming of age movie with some badly played soccer in it.
BiLB didn't
have
to be about soccer. It didn't even have to be about sports. Whatever was chosen was integral to the plot, because it was the device for dissension and cultures clashing, but there were other ways.