"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do, I stare out the window and wait for spring." - Rogers Hornsby

:: Friday, October 24, 2003 ::

Movie Review: "Runaway Jury"

OK, I'll admit it:

I nodded off a few times during the first hour of this film, which runs a bit over two hours. Not because the movie was bad, mind you, but because I have a tendency to not get enough sleep, and I guess I haven't caught up enough the last week, even being off work.

The good news is, I read John Grisham's novel on which this movie is based, and so I didn't really miss any of the story, so you can go ahead and read this review!

This one's very similar in tone to the way the other Grisham novels have been brought to the big screen, with an all-star cast (John Cusack, Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, Rachel Weisz, among others); in that sense it reminded me a bit of "The Pelican Brief", which starred an up-and-coming Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts, and was also set in New Orleans.

Grisham's from the South and so sets his novels primarily in Southern cities, and New Orleans, with its French Quarter characters and settings, serves as a great backdrop to the story. Its characters -- Hoffman's attorney for the plaintiff, who is suing a gun manufacturer for making the gun that a disgruntled employee used to shoot up a workplace and murder her husband; Cusack's seemingly feckless video-game player and his girlfriend, played by Weisz; and especially Gene Hackman's jury consultant character, who seems to ooze evil, seem ready-made for both the dark nights and colorful days of New Orleans. I love the characters that Hackman has played recently -- he's a great "heavy", and even at age 73 seems at the top of his game.

There are the usual plot twists, and we don't find out what this trial is truly all about till the very end, when it's revealed that the Cusack and Weisz characters are not what they seem to be. I won't ruin this film by telling you about it, but I suspect many people who are going to see this have already read the novel, and I'll tell you that even knowing that, if you have read it, won't ruin the film for you.

I didn't find this so much in the novel, but the screenplay also makes an elegant statement for gun control, in both the way Dustin Hoffman makes a closing argument, and in the way some of the jury members are portrayed. It does so without being heavy-handed (the way "The Life of David Gale", which came out earlier this year, did), and you can enjoy the film both for the plot twists and for this; it works on both levels. In addition, there are often films which portray TV news crews covering trials in unrealistic ways; this one shows them in very real settings without overdoing it.

It's a good whodunit with some good performances by very big stars, who don't hit you over the head with who they are; they are the characters, and that's not always easy.

AYRating: ***

:: posted by Al at 9:11 PM [+] ::
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Catching Up On Things

I finally finished "Squeeze Play", the novel written more than a decade ago by Jane Leavy, who wrote "A Lefty's Legacy", the terrific biography of Sandy Koufax, which you must read if you haven't. With the popularity of the Koufax bio, "Squeeze Play" got re-released, and it's a gem.

So now I've started "The Time-Traveler's Wife", which is a fascinating concept, and written by Audrey Niffenegger, who teaches at Columbia College in Chicago, and in addition to being a really good read, the book is set in Chicago and refers to various places, neighborhoods, etc. from the vantage point of someone who's actually lived in the city.

I'll link to a review on the sidebar.

:: posted by Al at 10:26 PM [+] ::
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Your Turn, Again

While those of us who were hurt so badly last week studiously ignore the World Series, I thought you would all be interested in an e-mail I received a few days ago from the charmingly-named Simon Shuttlewood, who is a Cubs fan living in the UK, and who wrote me something that truly touched me, and I know it will touch you too. It's long, but every single word is worth your time.

My name is Simon Shuttlewood and I am a 45-year-old English father of four and live in the city of Leicester in 'the Midlands', UK. Leicester is situated 100 miles north of London.

Where to start? Well I suppose the most prominent thing in my life at the moment is the fact that I have Motor Neurone Disease: in the US you know this illness as A.L.S. or Lou Gehrig's disease. I have a version of the illness that is called Familial MND and it is so called because our family has a history of this illness going back three generations. It started with my maternal grandmother who died in 1965 and then her two daughters, one being my mother, and so far, in the next generation, myself and my mother's sisters eldest Anthony. Mum died in 1990 and her sister one year later. Anthony died in 1997 aged 46. I was diagnosed one year later. The family trend appears to be approximately 10 years from onset of symptoms to death.

What has this got to do with the Chicago Cubs you might wonder? Well I have always been a sports fan having played Rugby Union in my youth and although I never played soccer I have always enjoyed watching the game. I also enjoy cricket but with my rugby background I became a fan in the early Eighties of American Football. That was the time when that particular sport started to be shown regularly in the UK. I quickly became a fan and started to support the Chicago Bears. I even went to Wembley Stadium in the mid-eighties to watch what was then called the British Bowl to see the losing team that year in the Super Bowl, Denver Broncos, take on the Buffalo Bills and a young Jim Kelly. But an avid Bears fan I have been for about 20 years.

So the illness forced me to retire from work in the spring of 1999 and as my body has slowly deteriorated over the years I have focused my mind towards other things and one principal thing was computing. From being a computer illiterate at 40 years old I have self-taught myself to be proficient in desktop publishing (PageMaker) in graphic manipulation (Photoshop) and latterly have started to play catch up with Web design (Dreamweaver). Starting with Microsoft's FrontPage I have developed for others three web sites and have enjoyed doing them.

This deterioration has also necessitated another learning curve with me needing to encompass and use voice recognition software (Dragon NaturallySpeaking) as I can no longer use my hands. So my computer is becoming more and more controlled with my voice. Purely from an interest point of view this e-mail is also being dictated using the voice recognition software.

Anyway, back to the Cubs; along with my deteriorating ability to do physical things I became more reliant on passing time by watching the TV and with a premium satellite service in the UK was able to watch many sports and sometimes late into the night. This is where baseball entered. A cinderella National Channel, called Channel 5, who coincidentally were the pioneers of televised gridiron in the UK before the satellite company of the Fox network, BSkyB (British Sky Broadcasting), bought up a lot of the sporting rights here in the UK, started in 1995 televising the Sunday Night Baseball programme from ESPN.

My introduction came after the 9/11 atrocity when late one evening (it was actually early hours of the morning) I switched over and it just happened to be game 1 of the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and the Diamondbacks.

Although I obviously knew that the game of baseball existed I had got no idea of the game apart from the obvious of hitting the ball, running round the bases, and hitting home runs. The nuances of the game (especially the language of the game from the commentators) were initially and totally lost on me but something must have made an impression on me in that first game because I taped all the games each night and watched them 'live' the following morning. It was a very exciting World Series culminating in a game seven down the stretch win. When the World Series was over I was gutted that I would have to wait another four months to watch baseball again!

Christmas of 2001, in conjunction with my January birthday of 2002, brought a fantastic gift from my father which was a visit to America, his treat, a country that I had always wanted to visit but up to this point had not been able to. The start of the 2002 baseball season I decided that I would not pin my allegiance to any team until the end of that season and watched from the beginning of the season the coverage available in the UK which was two games per week after the end of the NHL season.

I decided that Washington D. C., the political capital of America, was the area that I decided to visit and in truth my main objective was not necessarily to site-see but to try to meet ordinary Americans. Of that I managed to do lots!

On one of our travels into Pennsylvania we travelled to Philadelphia to see my very first live baseball game and the tickets, bought over the Internet prior to coming, were for Philadelphia versus the Arizona Diamondbacks at the Vet. I chose that game as Arizona were the reigning champions. As an aside it was interesting to see two new stadiums being built close by.

Following a sport from afar when there is little coverage locally is difficult but I was becoming more knowledgeable about the nuances and tactics of the sport and relished the 2002 World Series, with a nonbiased rooting for the Giants, and another exciting seven game thriller!

The fact that Dusty Baker had impressed me throughout that World Series seemed to be a sign not to be ignored when he left the Giants and joined the Cubs. At this point I had no knowledge of the Cubs past but felt that I needed to be loyal to the city of Chicago and decided, after research indicated they had been in Chicago all of their existence, to root for the Cubs.

A very nice family that my father and I had met on our trip to America sent me a surprise Christmas present last year and it was an authentic white striped Chicago Cubs shirt. So that was it. That confirmed my allegiance. I became a bonafide Chicago Cubs fan! (And so subsequently has my nearly 12-year-old son Jack)

Fast forward to the beginning of the 2003 season. A new satellite channel became available here in the UK, N. A. S. N. (North American Sports Network), and it was advertising the fact that it had MLB coverage. So recklessly I signed up for it and have been watching baseball all season. Conveniently and amazingly the fact that the Chicago Cubs play a lot of afternoon games I was able to watch quite a few live games from Wrigley Field this season. (I have been watching baseball nearly daily for the last six months!)

All I can say is that this last two weeks have been an ecstatic, nailbiting, frustrating and ultimately desolate time and I feel after game six of the NLCS I suddenly had 50 years of history descend on me as well. I was totally gutted. You sort of knew that good things were not going to happen.

I am in absolute agreement with you on the basis of the team's achievement this season from where they were. I also agree that Dusty's management style is somewhat enigmatic but fundamentally Florida and Chicago were very evenly matched with in my opinion the edge in hitting laying with Florida and the perceived edge in pitching laying with Chicago. In truth what happened was that Chicago's bats stepped up initially but could not sustain it and Florida's pitching came through in the end along with their hitting.

All of Chicago (well the northside anyway) are ruing the missed opportunity of a long waited opportunity to play in the World Series but I have missed an opportunity had they got there to come back over to America, which is what I intended to do, and find a sporting bar in Chicago to watch the World Series games. (Even as ill as I am!)

But that isn't to be. But I will be hopefully around to cheer on the Cubbies next season and you never know...............

Kind of makes your everyday problems seem minor, doesn't it? Thanks, my friend from England, for this heartfelt note that puts everything in perspective, I think.

:: posted by Al at 9:16 PM [+] ::
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Movie Review: "Intolerable Cruelty"

If you are a fan of the Coen brothers ("Fargo", "Oh Brother Where Art Thou"), you are probably really looking forward to this film, which I would characterize as their first foray into true "commercial" filmdom, with two big stars (George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones).

The plot seems pretty basic, and almost seems like it's been done many times before. Clooney plays a divorce attorney with a reputation of winning impossible cases for his clients, and his "Pre-Nup" (named after his character, Miles Massey, who is a legend among divorce attorneys; he addresses conventions of such people, for example), is supposedly "impenetrable".

Then he meets Marilyn Rexroth (Zeta-Jones) -- she has a couple of other names, too, acquired by marriages to various men who she has left out to dry; she hangs out with other wealthy women who make sport of this. But Massey wins the case for Marilyn's husband and leaves her penniless.

That's where the fun starts, you see, because in the inevitable plot twist, Massey falls in love with Marilyn, who, in best starlet style, is dressed in various types of tight clothing.

You'll think at first this is a romance; but then it turns into a screwball comedy, and has a bit of thriller elements thrown it, and there are some hilarious characters (pay close attention especially to Jonathan Hadary, who plays a ridiculously gay concierge; Cedric the Entertainer, a private investigator, and Billy Bob Thornton, who is not what he seems at first).

About three-quarters of the way through, I thought the film totally lost its way, and you'll see why, but it redeems itself with the plot twists. I won't ruin the ending for you, but of course you'll leave smiling.

You'll also laugh at relative unknown Paul Adelstein, who plays "Wrigley" (and no, I don't think that has anything to do with the Cubs!), Massey's very sensitive assistant, and Geoffrey Rush is almost unrecognizable, but funny, as one of the first ex-husbands that Massey gets to, and you also find him at the center of one of the final plot twists.

This isn't one of the deepest films ever, nor is it even one of the best Coen brothers films. But it did make me laugh, and for an evening's entertainment, what more can you ask for?

AYRating: ***

:: posted by Al at 9:04 PM [+] ::
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Arizona Fall League

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona -- I just didn't want it to end that way.

Didn't want my last impression of the 2003 baseball season to be the crushing defeat at Wrigley Field last Wednesday.

So with that, I hied myself over to Scottsdale Stadium for an Arizona Fall League game; and actually, this was more of an exhibition game, because the USA Baseball squad that is practicing up for the Olympic qualifying tournament in Panama from October 30 through November 11, is playing a dozen games against AFL teams, and today they were playing the quaintly named Mesa Desert Dogs, who consist of prospects from the Red Sox, Pirates, Phillies, Indians and Athletics.

It was hot today -- 100 degrees. In fact, if it hits 100 tomorrow, and it's supposed to, that will be the latest-ever 100-degree reading here in the Valley of the Sun. Nevertheless, it really is a dry heat, as it didn't really feel that hot.

Neither were the Devil Dogs. Josh Hancock, a Phillies prospect, threw well for three innings and then blew up in the fourth, and then Greg Kubes (pronounced Kub-ish, and he threw just about as awkwardly) came in and gave up a three-run homer to Justin Leone, who had also homered off Hancock the inning before. Leone is a Mariners third-base prospect when he is not on Team USA, and he looked great today, hitting a double as well as the two homers, and the Mariners can use a third baseman.

It's kind of refreshing to sit in a stadium where you park for free, pay $5 at the door and sit anywhere. There were about 150 people in the stands, many of whom appeared to be relatives and friends of the players (I wound up sitting right in front of a few people cheering loudly for USA pitcher and Twins prospect J.J. Durbin, who gave up three hits the first inning he worked, but eventually settled down). In addition to hearing every one of the umpiring calls, and coaches exhorting hitters to "work the zone", you can hear cellphones ringing from all the way across the ballpark.

Team USA finally defeated the Desert Dogs 10-3 -- and you can click on that link a bit later if it doesn't work right away; I suspect the recaps won't be in till late tonight or tomorrow, and after seeing this team play only one game, I think it's pretty well set for the international tournament. The club is pretty serious about winning, as there are several people with major league experience, including today's starter, Jason Stanford of the Cleveland Indians, and Ernie Young, last of the Tigers, though I'd swear he's been around since the '70s.

And one last thing about that. Roger Clemens, who is retiring from the Yankees at the end of the World Series, has made several public statements about his desire to pitch for the 2004 Olympic team. His remarks were met with some dismissal by USOC officials.

Frankly, if a man with the stature and talent of Roger Clemens wants to represent his country in the Olympics, I'd say let him. Not only would it be good for the Olympic team, to have someone like this performing, but it would lend some star quality to the team, and maybe even give the USA a better shot at winning gold.

:: posted by Al at 6:33 PM [+] ::
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The Who Cares Series

Got e-mail from my friend Jessica, who suffered through the NLCS with us, and who lives in New York:

Just my luck. A friend of mine who works for Letterman offered me tickets for game 6 or 7. Hey not the Cubs but I have never been to a World Series game so if he can get tickets and if there are those games I will go. Rooting for Fish of course. Actually I would love to have the Yankees beaten in LESS than 6 games and I think you were too quick to dismiss those "inexperienced" Marlins. I assume you hate Yankees as well but it is MUCH worse when you LIVE here.

I have been AMAZED at the number of people who were "worried" about me. I guess being a nutty die-hard in New York and taking off work to go to all the games does kind of stand out around here but literally EVERYONE from the place I get my coffee to guys in the wine store next to my apt wanted to see if I was OK and I got a TON of e mail from friends across the country ( which I know you did as well)

I did indeed get a ton of e-mail from friends and also from many of you and in the next few days and weeks I will try to answer all of it.

I'm glad for Jessica that she can get to a WS game, actually -- I have seen three of them, game 4 of the 1980 WS in Kansas City, and games 3 and 4 of the 1982 WS in Milwaukee. Seeing a World Series in person is something anyone who's a baseball fan should try and do at least once.

But I find myself strangely disinterested, much as I was in 1984, when I didn't watch or listen to even one pitch of the Tigers-Padres series. There's still that dull ache there from knowing that I should have been in New York today watching the Cubs play the Yankees, and I have a hard time rooting for the Marlins, and of course want the Yankees to lose. I'll listen or watch, I suppose, but won't go out of my way to do so. I gather the Yankees won tonight and evened the series.

My wife, brother in law and his wife drove up to Sedona (which I learned today was named after the wife of the founder; her name was Sedona Schnebly. He apparently wanted to name the town "Schnebly Station", and thankfully the postal officials said it was too long), and on the drive back listened to the game off and on, as the Phoenix radio signal drifted through the mountains. We also sat through a nearly forty-mile backup on the highway -- it was almost like driving through an L.A. rush hour, which added almost an hour to our trip back. Yeah, I know, tough life again.

:: posted by Al at 10:22 PM [+] ::
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