Probably going to spend the entire day, off and on, thinking about A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN being called "sentimentally spunky" in Penny Marshall's NYT obituary.
You know what's sentimentally spunky? FIELD OF DREAMS. That movie is drenched in sentimental spunk.
Can you imagine if there was one character in FIELD OF DREAMS as cynical as the Jon Lovitz scout?
Fathers and sons/playing catch = profound.
Sisters/playing baseball on opposing teams = sentimental spunk!
Sisters/playing baseball on opposing teams = sentimental spunk!
Years ago, I went to the baseball exhibit at the Natural History Museum and a world-class historian put baseball next to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, IIRC, as one of the US's three major contributions to the world.
Well, hold my fucking Barbie.
Which, OK, was based on a German prostitute doll, but I digress.
Pay attention what our culture enshrines and what it dismisses.
When I'm in NYC, I stay in a building very close to where Pauline Kael lived for a time. Next time I walk by, I'm going to scream "male weepie" at the top of my lungs. Because that's what Kael called FIELD OF DREAMS IIRC.
[Farther down this thread, an important correction has been made: Richard Corliss coined the term “male weepie” whereas Kael called it a “crock.”]
