We’re just a little over the midway point of Summer 2021, so there’s plenty of time to squeeze the pulp out of the sun and fun. Summer means movies, often big movies, and Turner Classic Movies’ latest in-depth research into the best of classic and genre films continues in the new book, TCM’s Summer Movies: 30 Sun-Drenched Classicsavailable now here at Amazon. Think about it–What would you recommend for the 30 best summer movies of all time? Writer John Malahy makes his selections, and pulls in an additional 30 movies as suggested “double features,” meaning you have 60 key suggestions that will either re-affirm your own picks, or more likely, provide at least a few new films you may want to try out. Over the past decade I have reviewed most of the books from publisher Running Press’s chronicle from the TCM library, and this latest is on the heels of TCM’s The Essentials: 52 Must-See Movies and Why They Matter and its sequel (reviewed here and here least year). Today I’m reviewing and previewing the new volume in what has become a major film library for the film historian. You may quibble with some of the picks, but I bet you’ll find at least 20 movies that make your own list of movies or at least help get you in the spirit of summer.
Like most things about baseball, The Battered Bastards of Baseballreflects as much about an era of American culture, economics, and politics as it tells a wonderfully engrossing story about a brief history of the sport. Independent baseball–privately-owned teams unaffiliated with the Major League Baseball conglomerate–was a thing of the past when Portland, Oregon’s minor league baseball team the Portland Beavers left town. It was the early 1970s and Portlanders weren’t spending their time or money on minor league games. Then enters the well-known TV actor Bing Russell, stepping off his last of 14 seasons on Bonanza where he played a deputy sheriff. Russell appeared in everything back then, from Westerns from Wagon Train to Rawhide, and modern fare like The Munsters, The Rockford Files, and The Twilight Zone. There begins an underdog story, a mix of The Bad News Bears, Necessary Roughness, and Moneyball.
If you’re lucky enough to trip into the Netflix documentary The Battered Bastards of Baseball, you’ll wonder where this story is headed. It’s a brief history of 1970s Portland and national baseball, and then actor/movie star Kurt Russell and his mother Louise Russell begin discussing his father in a typical documentary format. It turns out father Bing had a life-long affinity for the game, even being part of a significant piece of baseball history as mascot for the New York Yankees, befriending Joe DiMaggio, Lefty Gomez, and Lou Gehrig, who gave Bing the bat he used in his last game before retiring. That love for the game apparently never left Bing, who concocted an idea to bring baseball right back to Portland by taking the entrepreneurial route–forming a pure upstart baseball team to play minor league ball. Resurrecting the independent team model he would hold an open tryout for the new Portland Mavericks–if you build it they will come. And they did. Players rejected from the big leagues, some retired, many with paunches, and pre-movie star Kurt on the team, too, some players older than most teams would favor, and a bunch of hairy-faced guys decades before it became the “in” thing–all would come together to form a motley band of brothers that would earn a crack at the pennant. With a 30-man roster, and Bing’s personal brand of fun, fans packed the stadium again, the team setting a record for the highest attendance in minor league history, blazing the trail in other ways, naming the first woman general manager in baseball, Lanny Moss. But like all good things it seems, a villain would enter the picture to wreck it all.
The real deal: Kurt Russell playing in the Minor Leagues with the Portland Mavericks.
With that nostalgic, cheery vibe of Ivan Reitman’s 1970s movie Meatballs or a dialed-back Slap Shot, Bing’s grandsons Chapman Way and Maclain Way splice together both baseball, Hollywood, and Portland nostalgia to assemble a completely engaging, crowd-pleasing story of underdogs and misfits and the pied piper who led them. If you remember that every baseball stadium in 1970s America–and every grade school–had kids chomping on Big League Chew–you’ll learn that connection to the Mavericks, too.
The defining film of the 1980s attempt to reignite the 3D medium, the 1982 sequel Friday the 13th, Part 3, represents both the best and the worst in the 3D genre. It’s a film completely unapologetic about its three-ring circus of 3D gimmicks, yet in providing a hundred ways to throw something at the audience it stands by itself for trying things no other movie has tried. Want to see an eyeball pop out of someone’s head and come right at you? This is your movie. If that doesn’t sound all that appealing, never fear, this is 1980s horror, so there is more to laugh at than truly be grossed out.
But let’s talk about the current options first. You can watch Friday the 13th, Part 3 a few different ways. As part of its October Halloween schedule (previewed at borg.com here) AMC is featuring a few showings of the Friday the 13th movie series October 20-22, 2014, including showings of Part 3. You can also pick up a DVD Deluxe Edition version here or updated Blu-ray with features here from Amazon.com. It’s not available on streaming but is a rental option from Netflix. Certain versions, like the Deluxe Edition, come with a blue-red 3D glasses and the standard 2D version. For this review we chose the standard version with the 3D TV upconvert option with Extreme 3D.
For some perspective, the film came out in the year of classic hits like E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial, Tron, Poltergeist, The Dark Crystal, Blade Runner, The Thing, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.Friday the 13th, Part 3 begins with a complete recap of the climax of the prior sequel. The disfigured Jason Voorhees, who we actually get to see in this film, returns to Crystal Lake, to torment young camp counselor Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell), one of his targets who slipped away years ago.
Harold Ramis passed away Monday, and one of the best comedy geniuses left us. Caddyshack, Stripes, Animal House, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Orange County, Meatballs. You just can’t count the total number of laughs we would have missed without this guy. Millions? More like billions. The entire Earth would probably be swinging differently but for the impact of the writer, director, actor, comedian. He understood comedy like no other–nobody–and one of the best proofs of this can be found in this 2009 interview.
I don’t know why that line is so damned funny, but it is. All hail Harold Ramis.
or updated Blu-ray with features 
from Amazon.com. It’s not available on streaming but is a rental option from Netflix. Certain versions, like the Deluxe Edition, come with a blue-red 3D glasses and the standard 2D version. For this review we chose the standard version with the 3D TV upconvert option with Extreme 3D.
