Field Of Dreams
Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella; Amy Madigan as his wife, Annie; Gaby Hoffmann as his daughter, Karin; and Dwier Brown as Ray's father, John.
Most Inspiring Film, 1989 - 5-Star Masterpiece
Field Of Dreams is about Lost Dreams and the Place to Find Them
And it's about baseball; but baseball is just a metaphor for something bigger. It's about an Iowa farmer named Ray who hears a voice that tells him, "If you build it, he will come." He knows the Voice wants him to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield; which, oddly enough, he's willing to do because he thinks it will keep him from ending up like his dad - a man that "never did one spontaneous thing in his life." But he thinks the field is for "Shoeless" Joe Jackson - one of the infamous eight "Black Sox" that were barred from baseball for life in 1920 - so he will come and play baseball again... which he does, but that's not the reason for the field.
Later, Ray gets a second message that tells him, "Ease his pain," which sends him off on a road trip to pick up Terence Mann - really J. D. Salinger, author of Catcher In The Rye, according to Shoeless Joe, the book on which the film is based - and a small town doctor named Archibald "Moonlight" Graham. Kevin Costner plays Ray, Amy Madigan plays his wife Annie, Ray Liotta play Shoeless Joe, James Earl Jones plays Terence Mann, and Burt Lancaster plays Moonlight Graham. Together they find their dreams on a baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. But, as wonderful as all this is, that is still not why Ray was told to build the field.
At the climax of the film, Ray has to make a choice between selling his farm in order to keep from being foreclosed on, and risking everything in order to keep the baseball diamond. At that point, Terence Mann makes a little speech about what is best about America, and how baseball has marked the time throughout the years and helped keep us on track. Both he and Ray's daughter, Karin (played by Gaby Hoffmann), tell Ray that if he keeps the baseball diamond, people will come and pay to see it, and that will save the farm.
But what is the baseball diamond, really?
Technology Meltdown
I already nearly lost one close friend to texting and driving. I don't want to spend the next several years attending funerals of younger friends. Is the ability to text really worth your life?
No one knows the full extent of damage the gaming industry is causing to the psyches of younger Americans, but movies like this one, starring Gerard Butler, show how sick the industry is.
They say you become what you look at. Based on what we're looking at, what are we becoming?
The monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein may be strangely prophetic.
What are we becoming?
What are our children becoming? This is a sad, lonely picture.
Get ready for...
Is This Thing We're So Proud Of Destroying Us?
For the past couple of weeks, the eyes of most Americans, and the world, have been glued to their screens watching the world's greatest athletes perform wonders in the snowy Canadian countryside. And rightly so. But is this thing we're so proud of destroying us? I'm not talking about the Winter Olympics, which have been inspiring. I'm referring to the technology that is bringing those games into our homes, cars, offices, and basically every place we now occupy. We are a technology-saturated, technology-obsessed society, with new devices being introduced almost faster than consumers can absorb them.
Is all this technology destroying us?
Before you poo poo that idea, let me offer some examples.
Example #1: A good friend of mine was recently driving 70 mph, ran off the highway, hit a parked car, rolled twice and was almost killed because he was using his iPhone when he should have been concentrating on his driving. The Department of Transportation says that it is 10 times more dangerous to text and drive than it is to drink and drive.
Waitsel’s Best Movies of 2009
Grab your popcorn and drink and let's talk.
It's that time of year, when everybody and their brother publishes a "Best of 2009" movie list. It's really becoming annoying. What makes my list different, I hope, is that I try to have a certain amount of objectivity and discernment about it. Just because I personally like certain aspects of a film or certain actors that are in it isn't enough to include it on my list: the film has to have some major redeeming values; which, today, is becoming increasingly more difficult to find. But, there are still some good movies out there, and I hope at some point there will be more. Among the values I look for are artistic merit; spiritual, cultural and historical relevance; humanity; and just plain good story-telling.
I apologize for the length of this article, but it contains a lot of information I think you will find interesting. After my list of the nine movies I liked best from 2009, I offer my comments on six films I was supposed to like but didn't, ten films to look forward to in 2010, and some reflections on the film industry in general. So, here we go.
BEST DRAMA / MOST INSPIRING - The Blind Side - 5-Star Masterpiece
If you don't see any other film from 2009, you have to see this one. Not only is it good drama and even inspiring, Sandra Bullock (The Proposal, Crash, Miss Congeniality) is to die for. She plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, a real-life, very high-mainteance, incredibly focused, tenacious wife, mother and interior designer, living a very wealthy lifestyle with her family in Memphis, Tennessee. One fateful rainy night, the family meets and decides to help a young, homeless black student from their children's private Christian school. He is Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), future All-American and first round NFL draft pick; but at the time, an introverted, poor student with only two qualities that might possibly help him to become a football player: his size and his protective instincts. Leigh Anne, with the help of husband Sean (Tim McGraw), son S.J. (Jae Head) and daughter Collins (Lily Collins), along with coach Burt Cotton (Ray McKinnon), help Michael to see his potential and use it to become, not only a talented football player, but a good student and an honorable man. So that, by the end of the film, he has coaches from all over the South vying for his recruitment.
This is a true story, based on the book by Michael Lewis (The Blind Side: Evolution Of A Game), and directed by John Lee Hancock (The Alamo, Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, A Perfect World), who also co-wrote the screenplay with Lewis. Country music recording artist Tim McGraw is enjoyable as good-natured husband Sean, and also does the soundtrack. But Sandra Bullock steals the film. I know how good she is because I grew up in a Southern family with interior designers, and they're all high-maintenance, focused and tenacious like that. What makes Bullock's character extraordinary is the courage, heart and vision she adds to those qualities. But she never smiles... until the end of the film, and it's a classic moment. Another terrific scene is when the coaches from different universities are looking at a video of Oher blocking an opposing player that has been antagonizing him all game, and pushing him all the way down the field, into the end zone and over the fence. That's just one of the many times you'll laugh and cry simultaneously. This movie makes me glad there is still a movie industry.
PG-13