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hammerva

By hammerva
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colonial

colonial

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With my daughter visiting family out of state this summer, this means I get the opportunity to go to the theater and see a "grownup movie," one where the audience is older and the film is targeted to adults.

I checked out the Yogi Berra documentary "It Ain't Over" over the weekend. Unlike most documentaries featured in this forum, this isn't controversial -- it's a tribute to the baseball great and a big-screen thesis as to why Berra was more than just a commercial pitchman and caricature.

Through archive material (including plenty of commercials and news interviews) and commentary from teammates, family, friends and others, we learn about Berra's life from childhood through old age -- the Purple Heart recipient who was on the beach at D-Day, the 10-time World Series champion player, talented coach, family man and baseball diplomat. And at only 96 minutes, the film breezes through and doesn't feel like a slog.

There was a great focus on why Yogi should be considered one of baseball's all-time greats on the field ...

Spoiler

The film begins with video of the 2015 All-Star Game and one of Berra's granddaughters complaining that Yogi was passed over in the polling for the "Four Greatest Living Ballplayers" -- the four "voted on by the fans" were Aaron, Mays, Koufax and Bench. The game was in Cincinnati -- you would presume one of the four would be a Red and MLB would much prefer it would be Bench instead of Rose.

Several minutes are devoted to the World Series "play at the plate" involving Yogi and Jackie Robinson (which a strong emphasis that the two were great friends off the field) and Yogi being fired as Yankee manager in 1985 and his self-imposed exile from the Yankees as long as George Steinbrenner ran the team.

Spoiler

The film seemed to fog the timeline at this point, suggesting Berra stayed away from MLB between the 1985 firing and "Yogi Berra Day" at Yankee Stadium more than a decade later. His tenure as Astros bench coach is skipped -- it tends to be forgotten, but Berra being on the bench for Houston was mentioned at least once or twice per game during the 1986 NLCS against the Mets.

I did forget that ...

Spoiler

David Cone pitched the perfect game for the Yankees on Yogi Berra Day against Montreal. I was genuinely surprised that Cone was not one of the talking heads for this documentary, particularly since he's stayed involved with the Yankees as a broadcaster the last few years. They did speak to Joe Girardi, who was the catcher and had his glove "blessed" by Berra before the game, as well as Derek Jeter.

It was cool to see Vin Scully and Roger Angell being able to be interviewed before their passing. 

Also an odd celebrity cameo or two ...

Spoiler

They showed Yogi delivering some of his "Yogi-isms" while delivering a graduation address at Montclair State University in New Jersey (the school hosts his namesake museum). Among those sitting behind Berra was Bruce Willis -- my sister, a Montclair State grad, reminded me that Willis also spoke at the graduation and even crooned some Motown (believe he was an MSU dropout).

 

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hammerva

hammerva

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So Max has a new documentary called American Pain and it is the most Florida thing you will ever see.  It is the story about the South Pain Clinic (and other names I believe) run by these meathead former steroid dealers named the George brothers.  This clinic in a strip mall area is buying millions of opioids and pain pills from all sorts of doctors and selling them to basically everyone that was there.     They are showing the lines to this place blocks long with some of the biggest freaks,  addicts, and dealers.  I mean people buying pills and then shooting and snorting these things IN THE PARKING LOT.   The one featured the most is a bunch of trashy dealers from Kentucky who drove down to Florida every week to buy them uber cheap and feed the addiction to their part of the area.   So trashy that they and their friends rent a school bus and pretend to be a church service.    And they are getting away with it by having shady doctors approving them with a rubber stamp while packing heat and using some kind of MRI place that had a strip club on the side.   I mean it has everything from stripper wife who ran a side clinic  to white supremacists to even shadier pain clinics pretending to be them.    Again it is Florida overload in terms of white trash

If it wasn't so sad and irritating on how it fed an addiction throughout the entire east coast including where I was born in West Virginia,  it is incredibly hilarious.  

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Tabe

Tabe

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18 hours ago, hammerva said:

So Max has a new documentary called American Pain and it is the most Florida thing you will ever see.  It is the story about the South Pain Clinic (and other names I believe) run by these meathead former steroid dealers named the George brothers.  This clinic in a strip mall area is buying millions of opioids and pain pills from all sorts of doctors and selling them to basically everyone that was there.     They are showing the lines to this place blocks long with some of the biggest freaks,  addicts, and dealers.  I mean people buying pills and then shooting and snorting these things IN THE PARKING LOT.   The one featured the most is a bunch of trashy dealers from Kentucky who drove down to Florida every week to buy them uber cheap and feed the addiction to their part of the area.   So trashy that they and their friends rent a school bus and pretend to be a church service.    And they are getting away with it by having shady doctors approving them with a rubber stamp while packing heat and using some kind of MRI place that had a strip club on the side.   I mean it has everything from stripper wife who ran a side clinic  to white supremacists to even shadier pain clinics pretending to be them.    Again it is Florida overload in terms of white trash

If it wasn't so sad and irritating on how it fed an addiction throughout the entire east coast including where I was born in West Virginia,  it is incredibly hilarious.  

My brother's best friend in high school ended up being a pain doctor in Florida. He ran a pill mil and got convicted of it circa 2012.

I should check out this show. 

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Dolfan in NYC

Dolfan in NYC

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On 10/24/2022 at 5:32 PM, RIPPA said:

This is the Jonah Hill documentary that got a lot of attention over the summer due to Jonah Hill "quitting" doing media

SOOOOOO.....  about this.  

His now ex-girlfriend is accusing him of manipulating her and being verbally abusive by gaslighting and (mis-)using therapy language.   And there are always two sides to every story, but jfc does he come across as a world class scumbag. 

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hammerva

hammerva

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There is going to be a new season of the Netflix sports series Untold and there are some pretty good ones featuring Jake Paul,  Johnny Manziel,  the Florida championship teams under Tim Tebow, and I am not sure if it is all about roids in general or just the BALCO part of it.  

 

 

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Curt McGirt

Curt McGirt

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Really enjoying Goliath. There is a lot of basketball detail, some of which I don't entirely understand -- I only played one year in middle school and only watch the occasional college game -- but the layman should be able to get it anyway. Wilt was a complicated man which makes for an interesting doc. I had no idea he was a Globetrotter! 

EDIT: Also, they used AI to cut up his voice samples and make them into a running commentary and somehow it... isn't creepy. They did a bang-up job on it. Surely they could have gotten someone who sounds just like him but this works. 

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Curt McGirt

Curt McGirt

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Did anyone watch The Golden Boy (parts one and two) on HBO, about Oscar de la Hoya? Very interesting. He made it himself and it's basically a four-hour therapy session where de la Hoya lets it all out and excoriates himself for his faults, which are many. The honesty is quite shocking. I mean, though he doesn't cop to it, this dude adds every accusation of him raping and assaulting women to the narrative which he could have easily left out. It ends with him in fresh hot water for several accusations. His wives and kids are dead honest about how much of a piece of shit he was to them. He talks about his mom beating the crap out of him as a kid. Yet the whole time in the past footage he's Mr. Smiley-Happy... there's no way anyone that smiles that much isn't hiding something. It really took me by surprise, this one. 

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Tabe

Tabe

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On 8/4/2023 at 6:01 AM, hammerva said:

Yeah this should be awesome.  If for nothing else but the "coach" Roy Johnson just coming off like a complete carny scumbag is.    

 

Oh yeah, I'm all-in for that one.  

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RIPPA

RIPPA

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This came out a few weeks ago but I don't think it was mentioned

After The Bite

The big picture topic is Cope Cod after the 2018 shark attack that killed a college student. (Which includes how some in the community still want to promote all the sharks in the area.) However, when you watch the trailer you can see that the seem to focus a lot on Global Warming, Human impact on the environment, etc... 

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hammerva

hammerva

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The Johnny Manziel Untold is just as good as you thought it was going to be.   He hasn't really shown anything that he realizes he messed up his life and it is clear from watching this that this isn't going to be the PR rehab story that he probably thinks it is.   The really funny part was how almost everyone in the family realized the slippery slope that Johnny was going except the ONE person you expected and that was his Dad.   Everything that you though about his dad about him enabling him and basically wanting to live in his life is generally true.  The only thing that we found out is that he wasn't rich from dad's oil like the narrative that basically helped him get away with the NCAA mess he was in.  All of that money was from his autograph sales that he and his best friend orchestrated.    While you can almost justify how he turned out like he did in Texas A&M given how EVERYONE made millions off of him, that sympathy does down the shitter after he was drafted.   The MVP was his former agent who I feel if you let him could tell you every horrible thing Johnny did after college.   He reveled in it and can't say I blame him.   

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