Tuesday, July 10, 2007

How do we sleep while the Bronx is burning?

I talked in broad strokes about "The Bronx Is Burning" in yesterday's column, but for those of you who stayed up past the Home Run Derby to watch it, after the jump are some talking points to get discussion started:
  • The role of Robert Ward, the Sport reporter who conducted the infamous "straw that stirs the drink" interview, was played by... Robert Ward, who's actually less well-known as a sportswriter than as a novelist and a writer for '80s cop shows like "Hill Street Blues."
  • More distracting: Turturro's ears or Sunjata's 'fro? (And can someone with a better knowledge of hairstyling and/or wigmaking explain to me why it's next to impossible to create a convincing afro wig?)
  • Sunjata's much taller and thiner than Reggie, but I thought he did a good job of recreating that ridiculously violent swing, which always made it look like Reggie was risking a major back injury in every at-bat.
  • "You guys have got guts. That's right. Guts by the bucketload!" Just felt it needed repeating.
  • Been a while since I read up on the '77 team, so I don't know if Reggie was already complaining about Billy's unfair expectations in spring training, but the scene where he said to Healy, "Doesn't matter what I do, 'cause it'll never be enough" seemed a bit early, no? On the plus side, Sunjata nailed the "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" monologue.
  • As I said in the review, the non-baseball stuff doesn't really work.
What did everybody else think?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a Mets fan, so I didn't bother staying awake to watch the show. But I did want to register my appreciation for the Midnight Oil shout-out in the title of this post.

Anonymous said...

I thought the editing seemed a bit jarring...It bounced between stock footage of the Yankees, to actors playing the Yankees to events happening in New York.

It just didn't seem to flow very well.

velvetcannibal said...

I didn't like the look of a lot of the shots, and I had problems with the editing. It's not seamless by any means. It's so distracting that I really didn't get into it enough to pay attention to the actors, which is a shame because I enjoy Daniel Sunjata. I don't know how long I'll stick around.

Rickey said...

haven't seen it yet due to the home run derby messing up my DVR, but it does sound very good.

Anonymous said...

Maybe I'm missing one, but I can't remember any ESPN "original" movie or miniseries that was any good. Bronx just seems to continue that trend.

bill said...

nice Midnight Oil reference!