Day: December 31, 2021

I had never seen either version of Angels in the Outfield. Mainly because Field of Dreams aside, I’m not much for sports fantasies. I’d certainly never considered watching the 1994 version, which earned a 33% Rotten Tomatoes rating with a 49% audience rating.

The other night, bored and listless, I decided to watch the black-and-white 1951 version. To my surprise it won me over within 15 or 20 minutes.

It’s basically a redemption story — A Christmas Carol set in Pittsburgh. Paul Douglas is Guffy McGovern, a coarse, foul-mouthed brute of a Pittsburgh Pirates manager, loathed by just about everyone. One evening he’s visited by an invisible, craggy-voiced angel who tells him “become a better person and I’ll fix it so the Pirates start winning some games.” Douglas goes along, and before you know it everything has turned around — his life, the fortunes of the Pirates, even his non-existent love life (i.e., local reporter Janet Leigh takes an interest).

Complications ensue, of course, but that’s pretty much it — an abusive asshole becomes a better person with some heavenly assistance. It’s a minor effort but it works.

Based on a story by Richard Conlin, Angels in the Outfield was written by Dorothy Kingsley and George Wells, and directed by Clarence Brown, king of the “house” helmers.

…who are deeply alarmed about Licorice Pizza, and particularly the non-sexual, one-sided ’70s relationship between Gary (Cooper Hoffman), a 15 year-old actor and waterbed salesman, and Alana (Alana Haim), a 25 year-old whom Gary has a huge thing for but never scores with.

A similar kind of relationship was depicted a half-century ago in Robert Mulligan‘s Summer of ’42, except back then the younger lad (Gary Grimes as an anxious 14 year-old named “Hermie”) and the 20something woman (Jennifer O’Neill‘s “Dorothy”) did the actual deed…once.

Dorothy is heartsick over her young Air Force pilot husband having been shot down over France, and so, half-drunk, she invites Hermie to bed. Hermie is not only aroused but transformed by this episode, but the next morning Dorothy disappears, never to be seen or heard from again.

Herman Raucher‘s screenplay is based on his own actual experience. At age 14 he really did get lucky with a heartsick 20something he called “Dorothy.” If only some wokester scolds from the 21st Century could have somehow been time-tripped back to 1942 Nantucket and saved poor Herman from the terrible trauma of making love with a beautiful woman at age 14.

Related: Posted on 11.22.21.

Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman: “The biggest hurdle the Oscars face, especially in the time of a pandemic accompanied by a streaming revolution, is that the films that tend to be nominated are winning a smaller and smaller slice of the audience.

“[If] the nominees include Belfast, The Power of the Dog, Licorice Pizza, The Lost Daughter and The Tragedy of Macbeth, that will read as a roster straight out of the too-smart-for-school megaplex.

“I’m not saying don’t nominate those films. I’m saying that if those are the only films nominated, it’s going to be another year of the Oscars’ slow-motion implosion. Would it really be such an unspeakable vulgarity this year for the Oscar slate to include Spider-Man: No Way Home? Not as a token mainstream gesture but because it’s a film that honestly meant something to the larger public. Why has this become such an insane idea?

“What’s actually insane is leaving a movie like that one out of the mix. If the Oscars want a future, it would be a shrewd strategy for them to not inflict the death of a thousand cuts on themselves by using the dagger of elitism.”

HE to Gleiberman #1: Which Twitter elitists have insisted that handing a Best Picture nomination to Spider-Man: No Way Home would be “an insane idea”? I’m presuming we’re talking about the same dweebs who believe that Drive My Car is the film of the year, but…

HE to Gleiberman #2: If one of the nominees is King Richard, no one will think this is “straight out of the too-smart-for-school megaplex.” There are two family movies in Best Picture contention this year — one is excellent, the other less so. King Richard is the excellent one.