There will be Inglorious Baseballs

If you want to read about drugs and alcohol you'll have to wait a few days, I'm trying to be a bit more unpredictable and less cliche. This is a is a random rant on two movies and baseball. I don't really cover sports or movies too much on here even though I am a huge fan of both. As a sports fan I take pride that I am not what people refer to as a "pink-hatter" meaning I was a Red Sox fan pre-2004, a Patriots fan pre-2001, and a Celtics fan pre-2007 (I even went to a Celtics game when the lost like 22 games in a row)... and I still like the Bruins. As a movie fan, I love a good comedy or shoot 'em up film like most college students, but I also love the "classics." I also like a good satire. (But I despise those Wayens brother "________ Movie" movies.)


 While a lot of people claim baseball is boring, when you're on the field with the game on the line the intensity is insane. Since the game is slower, it allows time for the tension to build. A baseball game is like  Quentin Tarantino's  "Inglorious Basterds" or Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will be Blood" because they are long and drawn out, but they are also amazingly intense... and 3 hours long. Since baseball is slower paced then most sports it allows for intensity to build. A great game climaxes with a walk-off home run or a 95 mile per hour fastball up and in that a hitter chases for strike three. (Like  Basterds climax: SPOILER). There is so much strategy leading up to the final innings that a casual sports fan doesn't pick up on, like an a well timed hit-and-run or steal. Almost the same thing can be said about a movie like Inglorious Basterds, or There Will be Blood. A certain wording or delivery to a line, an angle of a shot, or lighting that a casual movie goer doesn't pick up on can add so much more to a scene. For a movie to have an awesome climax it has to have perfect timing and proper scenes prior to build the tension. (Plus any movie about killin' Nazis is awesome in my book.)

As one of my brothers put it, M. Night Shyamalan could not have pulled off an ending like Tarantino in Basterds. Much like a championship baseball team needs the right type of manager. Or any sports team in general, that's why Herm Edwards never won a Super Bowl and Shyamalan never won an Oscar, although he got two nominations for The Sixth Sense. When Edwards coached you always knew he would screw it up when his team was playing well... do I really need to make that connection with Shyamalan?

 Those two movies also have two of my all-time favorite bad-ass villains in Christoph Waltz's (if he doesn't win an Oscar for best supporting actor I will flip out the fuck out) Hans Landa, and in Daniel Day-Lewis' Daniel Plainview. No, those characters aren't serial killers setting up bloody traps, but they are greed-filled geniuses who do their job better than anyone else. They aren't out for blood lust, but they perfectly deliver some of the most badass lines ever written. When Day-Lewis gives his monologue you learn that he is one bad dude. Although, possibly his best line in the movie is "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people." It's simple, straight forward, but perfectly written and delivered.


Okay, I have no idea what I am talking about anymore. I think I might still be drunk from last night.  If I may borrow a line from Billy Madison "what you have just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."


Stay classy, not UMassy.