Song of the Day: Talkin’ Baseball by Terry Cashman

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

It’s opening day and I feel like celebrating with today’s song of the day!  Talkin’ Baseball was recorded in 1981 and it’s gone on to become one of the great baseball songs.

The Whiz Kids had won it,
Bobby Thomson had done it,
And Yogi read the comics all the while.
Rock ‘n roll was being born,
Marijuana, we would scorn,
So down on the corner,
The national past-time went on trial.

We’re talkin’ baseball!
Kluszewski, Campanella.
Talkin’ baseball!
The Man and Bobby Feller.
The Scooter, the Barber, and the Newc,
They knew ’em all from Boston to Dubuque.
Especially Willie, Mickey, and the Duke.

Well, Casey was winning,
Hank Aaron was beginning,
One Robbie going out, one coming in.
Kiner and Midget Gaedel,
The Thumper and Mel Parnell,
And Ike was the only one winning down in Washington.

We’re talkin’ baseball!
Kluszewski, Campanella.
Talkin’ baseball!
The Man and Bobby Feller.
The Scooter, the Barber, and the Newc,
They knew ’em all from Boston to Dubuque.
Especially Willie, Mickey, and the Duke.

Now my old friend, The Bachelor,
Well, he swore he was the Oklahoma Kid.
And Cookie played hooky,
To go and see the Duke.
And me, I always loved Willie Mays,
Those were the days!

Well, now it’s the 80s,
And Brett is the greatest,
And Bobby Bonds can play for everyone.
Rose is at the Vet,
And Rusty again is a Met,
And the great Alexander is pitchin’ again in Washington.

I’m talkin’ baseball!
Like Reggie, Quisenberry.
Talkin’ baseball!
Carew and Gaylord Perry,
Seaver, Garvey, Schmidt and Vida Blue,
If Cooperstown is calling, it’s no fluke.
They’ll be with Willie, Mickey, and the Duke.

Willie, Mickey, and the Duke. (Say hey, say hey, say hey)
It was Willie, Mickey and the Duke (Say hey, say hey, say hey)
I’m talkin’ Willie, Mickey and the Duke (Say hey, say hey, say hey)
Willie, Mickey, and the Duke. (Say hey, say hey, say hey)
Say Willie, Mickey, and the Duke. (Say hey, say hey, say hey)

4 Shots From 4 Films: Play Ball!

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Happy Opening Day!  Here are 4 shots from 4 films about my favorite sport!

4 Shots From 4 Baseball Films

The Natural (1984, Dir. by Barry Levinson)

Eight Men Out (1988, Dir. by John Sayles)

A League Of The Own (1992, Dir. by Penny Marshall)

42 (2013, Dir. by Brian Hegeland)

Music Video of the Day: Stayin’ Alive by Bee Gees (1989, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you’re ever giving someone CPR, they say that you should do it to the tune of Staying Alive so, if you memorize this song, you’ll be able to save a life.  That’s the type of helpful information that we happily provide to our readers free of charge here at the Shattered Lens.

According to the YouTube description, this from the “One for All Tour” Live concert at the National Tennis Centre in Melbourne 1989, Australia.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 3.7 “Mutiny on the Bull Team”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.

Things aren’t looking too good for the Bulls!

Episode 3.7 “A Mutiny on the Bull Team”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on October 7th, 1987)

After a terrible start to the season (back-to-back losses!), TD tells Coach Grier that he needs to do something to get the team back into championship shape.  Coach Grier launches an intensive training regimen and he posts a list of rules in the locker room — no beer in the locker room, players must shave for game day, and a bunch of other things.  The players rebel and, during the next game, they stop running the plays that Grier wants.  TD confronts Grier and demands to know what’s going on.  Grier says that he just did what TD told him to do.  TD says that he didn’t tell Grier to become a dictator even though that is kind of what TD told him to do.

Really, “reign of terror?”  Coach Grier is like in his 60s and he’s fat and out of shape.  The football players are …. well, football players.  What exactly is TD Parker saying?  It’s hard to say.  OJ Simpson delivers all of his lines in the same amiable and bland manner that he used when he said he would devote his life to searching for the real killers.  It’s hard to know what TD is thinking.

Anyway, Grier realizes the errors of his ways and the Bulls win the game!  So, TD doesn’t have to cut anyone from the team.  He can put away his knife for now.  Everyone in the locker room should be breathing a sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, Yinessa and new owner Jill Schrader struggle with their feelings for each other.  In the end, Yinessa kisses Jill in the stadium parking lot so I guess they decided to forget about the whole “We have to maintain a professional separation” thing.

One final note: Last week’s episode featured Delta Burke swearing that she was going to reclaim ownership of the Bulls.  But, with this episode, Burke is no longer listed in the opening credits so I guess that storyline is over with.  Jill is now the owner.  Good!  Maybe the Bulls will finally win a championship.

Film Review: Survive The Game (dir by James Cullen Bressack)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Looking at the title of 2021’s Survive the Game, you may be tempted to wonder what game the characters are attempting to survive.

The answer is that there isn’t a game, unless you’re one of those people who still insists on using “The Game,” to refer to the drug trade because you once heard someone do the same thing on The Wire.

Though there are no games, the film is full of people who are trying to survive.  For instance, after a drug bust gone wrong, Detective David Watson (Bruce Willis) is trying to survive having been shot in the gut.  He manages to do so surprisingly well, even though he’s being held hostage by the bad guys.  The leader of the bad guys, Frank (Michael Sirow), is supposed to be a fearsome torture expert but David just smirks at him.

David’s partner, Cal (Swen Temmel), survives by running to a nearby farm.  The farm itself is owned by Eric (Chad Michael Murray), a veteran who is haunted by the death of his wife and who just wants to be left alone.  With the bad guys surrounding his farm and looking to eliminate all of the witnesses, Eric teams up with Cal.

There’s a lot of bad guys in this film and they’re all so eccentric that they really do become the main attraction.  The bad guys are occasionally entertaining.  They spend a lot of time bickering and each one has at least one particularly obnoxious personality trait that can be used to distinguish one from the other.  Most of them have a tattoos.  One has a mohawk.  Quite a few have brightly colored hair.  You can’t help but wonder how any of these people could possibly be successful criminals because they’ve all gone out of their way to make sure that it will be easy for law enforcement to spot and identify them.  To once again cite The Wire, Wee-Bey Brice yelled at at his son Namond for not shaving his head because the police would be able to easily spot Namond’s haircut.  Wee-Bey had a point.

Anyway, this is a siege film.  Cal and Eric spend almost the entire movie running around the farm and picking off bad guys.  For those of you who are into this sort of thing, some of the kills are imaginative and ruthless.  Interestingly, some of the bad guys are presented as being more sympathetic than the film’s heroes.  They have their own relationships and fears and they get upset when their friends are killed.  I actually felt a little bit bad for some of them. It makes Survive the Game slightly more interesting than the usual DTV B-action movie.

As you may have guessed, this is another Randall Emmett production.  Emmett is best-known for his ability to get former and current A-listers to take small roles in his B-movies.  As such, an actor like Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone would put in a day’s worth of work and the film could be advertised as starring Bruce Willis as opposed to Chad Michael Murray.  In Survive The Game, there’s a somewhat endearing moment that occurs when Willis appears to start laughing at the ludicrous dialogue to which he is being subjected.  That said, Willis was obviously not doing well when he appeared in this film and it does make some of his scenes somewhat difficult to watch.  The viewer really does end up missing the Bruce who could drive Alan Rickman to distraction.

Survive the Game is a film that I had long meant to watch, though I’m not sure why.  I think the title appealed to me.  Again, I’m not sure why.  It’s better than some of Emmett’s DTV action movies but it’s still pretty forgettable.  I would still watch a prequel about how the mohawk guy became a ruthless mercenary.  It seems like there’s probably a story there.

Film Review: Out of Death (dir by Mike Burns)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The first question that one might want to ask about 2021’s Out of Death is what is going on with that title.

Out of Death?  Did they run out?  Is there an issue with the warehouse?  Is it a nationwide outage or just a regional problem?  How exactly does someone find themselves out of death?  I mean, there are plenty of shortages in the world.  There are people who can’t get clean drinking water or tasty food.  I had to wait an extra day to get my new scanner because of a supply chain issue.  These things happen.  But people never seem to run out of death.  Death is the one thing that we will always in large quantities.

As for the film itself, it is rather death-obsessed.  Shannon (Jaime King) is a photojournalist who has recently lost her father.  All she wants to do is spread his ashes in the woods.  However, when she witnesses a murder in the woods, she finds herself being pursued by a compromised deputy (Lala Kent).  Meanwhile, Jack Harris (Bruce Willis) is a retired detective who has recently lost his wife.  He wants to spend some time alone in his niece’s cabin but instead, he finds himself mixed up in Shannon’s problems.  The corrupt sheriff (Michael Sirow) wants to be mayor and he’s not going to let Shannon and Jack stand in his way, even if it means killing every possible witness.

Even though Bruce Willis gets top-billing along with Jaime King, he’s not in much of Out of Death.  Out of Death was one of the many film productions to be delayed by the COVID lockdowns.  When production finally did begin, Bruce Willis shot all of his scenes in one day.  (The entire film took 9 days to shoot.  Roger Corman, if he was still with us, would want to know why the production took 9 days when it could just as easily been done in two.)  Sadly, this is one of the films that Bruce Willis made after it became apparent that he was having serious issues with his health.  Willis delivers his lines in a halting manner, which technically works for his emotionally shattered character but which is still hard to watch now that we know that Willis was suffering from frontotemporal dementia at the time.  Producer Randall Emmett made his career by convincing big stars to appear in B-movies and he shouldn’t be faulted for that.  However, the later films he made with Willis not always easy to watch.  Say what you will about the films that Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro have made with Emmett, they all knew what they were getting into.  It’s hard to say whether the same was true with Bruce Willis.

As for Out of Death, it’s a fairly dull cat-and-mouse game but I will give it some credit for capturing the atmosphere that goes along with being isolated in the Southern wilderness.  This is a film where you could feel the humidity rising from the screen.  And Jaime King, who deserves better, gave a strong performance as Shannon.  Otherwise, the most interesting thing about Out of Death is the mystery as to what exactly the title means.

Out of Death?  It’s a nice thought.

Film Review: Setup (dir by Mike Gunther)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On the mean streets of Detroit …. really, Detroit again?

Well, anyway, Sonny (5o Cent) is a career criminal who also happens to be a really nice guy.  When his partner-in-crime, Vincent (Ryan Phillippe), worries about the survival of his imprisoned father (James Remar), Sonny is sympathetic.  When his other partner-in-crime, Dave (Brent Granstaff), won’t shut up about how much he loves his wife and his life in the suburbs, Sonny is genuinely happy for him.  Sonny may be a criminal but he’s not violent.  He’s not a killer.

Understandably, Sonny is upset when Vincent kills a guard during their latest diamond heist.  However, that’s nothing compared to how angry Sonny becomes when Vincent betrays both him and Dave, shooting them and leaving them for dead.  Dave dies but Sonny survives.  Seeking revenge, Sonny teams up with a gangster named Biggs (Bruce Willis).  Biggs demands that Sonny retrieve some money for him.  It really shouldn’t be that difficult except for the fact that every criminal in Detroit is soon revealed to be an absolute idiot.

At this point, I’ll admit that 2011’s Setup has more than a little in common with Gun.  Like that film, it takes place in Detroit and it centers on the drama that takes place in the shadows of the underworld.  50 Cent plays a criminal in both films.  James Remar has a small role in both films.  Both films feature multiple betrayals and both of them contrast the criminals on the street with the bosses behind-the-scenes.  Both films were also produced by Randall Emmett.  Indeed, this was one of the first films that Bruce Willis did with Emmett.  Emmett would go on to produce several of Willis’s final films and there’s definitely some controversy as to whether or not those films exploited Willis at a time when he was particularly vulnerable.

That said, I actually kind of liked Setup.  It’s definitely a low-budget B-flick but it still has its ambitions and it actually achieves some of them.  50 Cent is far more convincing as the well-intentioned but somewhat dumb Sonny in Setup than he was in Gun and he actually does pretty well as the film progresses and Sonny becomes more conflicted about whether or not he actually wants his legacy to be one of vengeance.  Ryan Phillippe is well-cast as Vincent and I liked the performances of Jay Karnes and Jenna Dewan, both playing low-level criminals who find themselves in over their heads.  The film did a good job of examining all of the different levels of crime in Detroit, from the wealthy Biggs all the way down to the idiots who continually screw up the simplest of plans.  Randy Courtere does an especially good job as Petey, the moron who thinks playing with a loaded gun is a good idea.

As for Bruce Willis, his role here is small and it’s a role that probably could have been played by any tough guy actor of a certain age.  But, Willis still brings his cocky charm to the role.  (Seeing Willis here really drives home just how different he was in the final films that he did for Emmett.)  Willis plays Biggs with a sense of humor and it’s just what the movie needed.

To say a movie is better than expected can sound like a backhanded compliment but it’s a compliment nonetheless.  Setup was definitely better than I expected.

Film Review: Gun (dir by Jessy Terrero)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Angel (Val Kilmer) has just been released from prison and he’s returned to the hard streets of Detroit.  Hooking up with his old friend Rich (50 Cent), Angel gets involved in a gun-running operation.

Unfortunately, it’s no longer easy or safe to sell guns in Detroit.  The police are cracking down.  Rival gun dealers are trying to take out a competition.  A raid at a club leaves a dealer dead and a huge power void in Detroit’s criminal underworld.  When it becomes obvious that the police have a snitch in Rich’s crew, Rich’s girlfriend (AnnaLynne McCord) suspects that it’s Angel.  Can Rich find the snitch without having to betray his best friend?  And does Angel have secrets of his own?

First released in 201o, Gun was the third film that Val Kilmer made with 50 Cent and it’s apparently their only collaboration that Kilmer didn’t mention in his autobiography.  It probably should be noted that Val Kilmer doesn’t look particularly happy in the movie but that actually works for his character.  Angel has just gotten out of prison, he’s mourning his wife, and he’s found himself right in the middle of the type of violent situation that could lead to him going back to prison.  In many ways, Angel feels like he could be a version of Heat’s Chris Shiherlis.  It’d easy to imagine that maybe Chris changed his name after escaping Los Angeles.  He became Angel and he found a new partner in the form of Rich.  Unfortunately, Detroit is a lot uglier than Los Angeles, Rich is no Neil McCauley, and Michael Mann’s not directing.  Kilmer’s performance is not bad.  Even in a low-budget movie like this, he still did his best.

That said, the film is centered around 50 Cent.  50 Cent plays Rich.  50 Cent provides the music.  50 Cent produced the film, along with Randall Emmett, a producer who largely made a career out of getting faded stars to appear in B-movies.  (He’s best-known for producing the many of Bruce Willis’s final films.)  As Rich, 50 Cent gives a rather stiff performance.  It’s not so much that he’s not convincing as a street smart gun dealer as he’s just not very interesting to watch.  There’s a predictability to his performance, one that is reflected in the songs that appear on the film’s soundtrack.  How many rap songs about making money and shooting people can one listen to before admitting that it all gets boring after a while?

In the end, the most interesting thing about Gun is the number of familiar faces who appear in small roles.  James Remar plays a cop.  Paul Calderon, the bartender from Pulp Fiction and the traitor from King of New York, plays a detective.  John Larroquette and, somewhat inevitably, Danny Trejo both make appearances.  Perhaps most oddly, Mike “Boogie” Malin, the winner of Big Brother All-Stars, plays an ATF agent.  I should mention that, in real life, Boogie Mike and Dr. Will Kirby (winner of Big Brother 2) had a friendship that widely mirrored the friendship between Rich and Angel.  I doubt that factored into his casting.  That would be giving Gun to much credit.

Gun was not a particularly compelling film, though it did win some authenticity points by actually being shot on location in Michigan.  That said, Val Kilmer gave a better performance than perhaps the material deserved.  Val is definitely missed.