SUGAR (the movie) thread

i'm not totally sure this movie deserves its own thread, but it's better than a lot of other ones that have one so i guess.

http://images.teamsugar.com/files/upl2/1/13839/09_2009/d9b976302391af37_Sugar-Movie-still.jpg

i liked it. (i also liked morbz's review.)

i like how low-key it is overall, even while conforming to certain narrative expectations, and i liked how close-up and textured the sense was of all the different places -- city life in the dominican republic, the training camps, the minor league team in iowa. i like when a movie does its homework. and there's something sort of liberating about seeing america from that perspective, more honestly and complexly than immigrant stories usually do -- because immigrant stories made by americans usually want to flatter us in one way or another. and the movie still is uplifting after its own fashion, it's not like it tears the immigrant story apart (even though it could, if it stacked its deck differently). so maybe it only feels more true than the natural and it's got its fair share of hokum. but at least it's a more nuanced hokum.

if it's half as good as Hlaf Nelson is, im satisfied

i still haven't seen half nelson -- the premise put me off a little, sounds kind of contrived -- but i will eventually. one thing i like about sugar (which morbs says in his review) is the relative lack of contrivance. it sort of starts out following a sports-movie trajectory, but then it wanders off into something a lot less fairy-taleish.

it is way less phony than Half Nelson, tho it wobbles here and there.

nb: Jose Rijo, the ex-pitcher who portrays the head of a US-team-affiliated "academy" in the DR, lost his job with the Washington Nationals over the winter for financial shenanigans surrounding the signing of Dominican players.

really? i heard an interview with them where they said they tried to cast all real baseball people, so i guess that makes sense.

http://www.cantstopthebleeding.com/?p=15781

also it's been forever since there was a decent baseball-themed movie. (no, whatever one youre thinking of sucks.)

if by forever you mean "since bull durham," i'll buy that. (although in college one of my roommates got into watching major league over and over, so a lot of that movie is drilled into my brain.)

there's probably a good movie to be made about the steroid era, but it's hard to make baseball movies without some degree of cooperation from MLB -- and they're as likely to cooperate on a steroid movie as the army is on the abu ghraib story.

Eight Men Out came out after Bull Durham, right?

i think they were around the same time. but yeah, that's a good one too.

8MO is maybe my least favorite John Sayles movie.

And I like Bull Durham, but it's about sex.

well yeah bull durham uses a baseball setting to tell a story that's not really about baseball -- which is basically what sugar does, and maybe why both of them are better than most baseball movies.

(although i think being a baseball fan is a big plus for appreciating either movie -- not a requirement, but it probably helps.)

yeah, and unfortunately Barry Levinson made a baseball movie instead of The Natural.

this movie was great and, i would say, better than half nelson.

Oh yeah definitely better than Half Nelson. My only complaints were that it seemed slightly hard to believe that a MLB team wouldn't have a competent translator at every level and the soundtrack was slightly over-present for my tastes.

"8MO is maybe my least favorite John Sayles movie."

Really? Do you not like the book either? I think the movie does a pretty decent job of getting to the heart of it.

My only complaints were that it seemed slightly hard to believe that a MLB team wouldn't have a competent translator at every level and the soundtrack was slightly over-present for my tastes.

i agree about the soundtrack -- the "aleluia" sequence was a bit much for me too.

as for the translator, i'm not sure. i don't really think that having a translator would be sufficient preparation for navigating life in the US, though. the scenes in the restaurant with the french toast were right on, like the struggle between macho athletics and powerlessness.

I'm not saying it would necessarily help you navigate life in the US, but it would definitely help you understand what the hell your coaches/managers are trying to convey to you!

certainly
it did seem pretty unrealistic that everyone on the professional baseball side pretty much refused to help with the language barrier issue
like, no one in iowa even has a few words of high school spanish? that seemed suspect to me too. the higginses tried in their sad little way, but it was obviously supposed to be a feeble attempt.

but think of it this way -- even if they were given translators on the team, to figure out what the coaches were saying, does the team not owe them at least a little bit of real language training, not just job-specific stuff?

Oh that part of it I was fine with. Just there's the sequence where the coach is sitting him down in the office and there's clearly a huge barrier--I mean I gotta think that almost every team has a guy you bring in that situation.

the co-directors gave a bunch of interviews but i just skimmed em. I wouldn't be surprised if translator presence in minors was variable; ie, the somewhat veteran (catcher? I saw this last October) guy was unofficial translator, so why pay one? xp

plus that scene kinda has to be there to make a point, maybe they just didnt want to do it another way.

xp - yeah, you're right
but even here, the chicago fire hired a company (a company i used to work for!) to help their star players improve their speaking skills. major leagues don't bother with that? hm. i was sorry i missed that job.

"ie, the somewhat veteran (catcher? I saw this last October) guy was unofficial translator, so why pay one? xp"

Cuz not all the dudes you sign from the DR are got for just $15K and it's in the teams best interest to be able to communicate with them?

well one thing is he was always faking it about how much he really understood, doing lots of nodding and so forth. he rarely asked for language help -- which is probably not unusual in that kind of situation.

but really, i have no idea how much translation is available at the class-A level. i'm guessing not very much.

you know, we see dice-k or whoever come over here and they always have a translator, but he's got a $100 million contract. totally different deal.

Yeah but I'm not talking about a personal translator, just one coach or someone on the team who speaks better than passable Spanish and can explain why the hell the manager is getting pissed off at a player. Look we are talking about a team here that has pipeline from the DR (and Venezuela!). They are going to want to be able to effectively communicate with these guys (esp. the pitchers!) and it's not like finding former ballplayers who want to coach and speak Spanish and English is like finding ones who speak Yiddish and Thai. I'd be very shocked if any team with a large percentage of Spanish speaking players doesn't have at least one translator for them.

yeah it may have been exaggerated for effect, i don't know. i did really like the sense of isolation in the iowa section of the movie, just how foreign everything seemed. and then how warm and comfortable new york seemed in contrast. made me sorta proud of nyc. (of course they are new york filmmakers, i know.)

the "aleluia" sequence was a bit much for me too.

yes argh. i thought we declared a moratorium on that.

I don't know I thought the TV On Radio bit was maybe even a little sillier.

now that i bought, cuz that guy totally seemed like a tvotr-head.

Hah I was fine with him listening to it, but the whole we they introduced it "oh this is TV On Radio" song plays on head phones and then bam plays when he takes the field just seemed so "HI PRODUCT PLACEMENT!"

happily aside from an unimpressive freshman live opening set I saw, I am TVOTR-ignorant.

I think that dude was the movie's Doug Glanville.

(This was very good, btw, although the "Kansas City Knights" sort of pulled me out of it, even if I understand why they had to fictionalize it.)

saw this last night, loved it (excellent review up there, morbs!)

boden and fleck are pretty much the only people i'm aware of who are doing this kind of movie right. i'd love to know how they did their research and prep for this.

"this kind"?

I'm not sure Sony has done a good job marketing this, it's only done 900 G in America.

small american dramas, hell small american movies in general, that are thoughtful and have some mass appeal.

straight fire beautiful movie imo

i dont remember a recent movie that so trusted itself to bring tension that there were no big moments that you could see coming miles away - and all the baseball stuff seemed pretty much right on, except when he threw his curve to a lefty and had it bombed (slight nitpick obv!)

ya I liked this a lot

yep this was great & really well done