A League of Their Own, Pt. 2: Mae Swings, Evelyn Cries, Jimmy Rants

25th Anniversary Four-Part Mini Series Event

Previously in Part 1: "Dollies" who could also play ball were recruited to save America's Favorite Pastime while the men were at war. But these athletic women didn't realize that they'd still be met with such sexism despite the chance to show their gifts. The final piece of this movie's puzzle was the manager and the job was offered to Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) and that's where we pick back up. How will the Rockford Peaches handle their new arrogant alcoholic boss? 

Batter up...

Part 2 by Nathaniel R

33:40 "Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to the first game of the All American Girls Baseball League"... In this case via the establishing shot (Penny Marshall makes good use of those throughout) 'ladies & gentlemen' is a small plural; the stands are mostly empty. 

Click to read more ...

A League of Their Own, Pt. 1: Cow Girls & Charm School

25th Anniversary Four-Part Mini Series Event

Welcome sports movie fans. Or, in a pinch, actressexuals who will watch largely female casts do practically anything.

Twenty-five years ago on July 1st, 1992, Penny Marshall's period comedy A League of Their Own (1992) opened in theaters. It wasn't quite an immediate blockbuster but word of mouth was spectacular -- in its second weekend it grossed practically as much as its first, which as you know is exceedingly rare. The female led comedy proved another home run for the director of Big, eventually grossing over $100 million domestically. It ended 1992 as that year's tenth biggest hit, just behind Basic Instinct and shutting Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven out of the moneyed top ten.

For the next few days we'll be revisiting this beloved classic tag-team style like we did with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), Thelma & Louise (1991), Rebecca (1940), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Please join in the conversation if you love this movie (and who doesn't?). - Editor

Batter up...

Part 1 by Lynn Lee

01:22 Inside an old-fashioned cape-cod house, a tall, slender, elegant older lady with reddish blonde hair (Lynn Cartwright, but with Geena Davis’ unmistakable throaty voice dubbed) is packing a suitcase.  As we’ll learn, she’s Dottie Hinson, one of the (fictional) first women to play in the (real) All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League, and is getting ready to attend a special event honoring the AAGPBL at the baseball Hall of Fame.  She seems oddly less than excited about it, even when her daughter turns up with her old baseball mitt...

Click to read more ...

HBO’s LGBT History: All Aboard! (2006)

Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions.

Last week we looked at a couple of mid-2000s HBO comedies to discuss various gay stereotypes in Da Ali G Show, The Comeback and Entourage, a mere week after discussing complex characters in HBO dramas. Today we look at quite possibly the most surprising entry in this history: All Aboard! Rosie’s Family Cruise. Yes, this is a documentary about the maiden voyage of Rosie O’Donnell’s all-inclusive (pun-alert!) LGBT family cruise. I dreaded watching this. I mean, that promotional image alone was enough to make me queasy and that was before I even pressed play.

Well, color me surprised. Not only is All Aboard! a pretty decent documentary but it is a fascinating document of LGBT life and politics in the early twenty-first century.

Click to read more ...

Black History Month: "Schwarzfahrer," an Oscar Night Memoir

For this Oscar day special episode of Black History Month, we asked devoted reader Paul Outlaw, who you'll know from the comments, to share his Oscar memoir from the 1993/1994 ceremony. We're happy to call Paul a friend after our last few trips to Los Angeles. He starred in a German short film that won the Oscar years ago.

An elderly German woman (Senta Moira) and a black youth (yours truly) sit side-by-side on a Berlin streetcar in Schwarzfahrer, a twelve-minute 35mm film that premiered at the Berlinale 22 years ago this week. The film’s title is a play on words: a “Schwarzfahrer” is slang for “fare dodger” as the film was called in the UK , but if you break the German compound word into its components, it translates as “Black Rider” (the US title).

“Schwarzfahrer is a trenchant and stylistically assured work which makes the best use of all possibilities open to the short film. The film deals with a topical subject in a very humorous and extremely entertaining manner. The jury only wishes that German feature films would portray burning social issues and events with a similar lightness of touch and craftsmanship.

- Jury statement at the awarding of the first Panorama Prize of the New York Film Academy, 43rd International Film Festival, Berlin, Germany, 1993

When the short premiered I was an expatriate living in Berlin. After the film’s extremely positive reception – we were promptly invited to Cannes – I got the idea in my head that Schwarzfahrer could one day win an Academy Award.

Our journey to Oscar after the jump...

Click to read more ...