Baseball is cinema
April 4 — It’s official: the Braves are back in Atlanta! They may not be winning, but they are back!
Despite the frankly dire way we’ve started the season, there is nothing I love more than baseball. Except, maybe, baseball movies. I’m headed to see “Eephus,” the newest addition to the baseball canon, at the Tara next week, and in the run-up, I’ve been thinking about my favorite baseball movies. I’ve come down to three options, all with different aims:
💸 If I want to feel smart (and cry a little bit): “Moneyball”
🍻 If I want to have fun and laugh: “Everybody Wants Some!”
⚾ If I want to pour one out for the girls: “A League of Their Own” (yes, it counts!)
In honor of the true start of spring, I would love to hear about some of your favorite baseball movies. Shoot me an email here.
Without further ado … Action!
📽️ The Georgia premiere of the film “Saffron Kingdom,” made in Georgia by filmmaker Arfat Sheikh, will take place at Dahlberg Theatre Hall on April 22.
🎟️ Individual tickets for the Atlanta Film Festival are now on sale.
✍️ In honor of National Poetry Month, Soul Cinema Sundays is hosting a screening of Marc Levin’s film “Slam,” which put poet Saul Williams on the map. The screening will take place on April 13 at the Plaza Theatre.
💻 Nielsen data for February shows that viewers are more likely to choose YouTube over a streaming service like Disney or Netflix.
💔 The actor Val Kilmer, known for his roles in films like “Top Gun” and “Tombstone,” has passed away. He was 65 years old.
This week’s newsletter includes a conversation with the very young filmmaking team behind “Hell of a Summer” and two movie reviews: “The Friend” and “We Want the Funk.” Plus, a new episode of Crash Zoom and some reading and listening recommendations for your lunch break.
Thanks for reading!
Sammie
🏃 Join Move For Grady on April 26! With three cycling distances and two run/walk options, there’s something for everyone. Then celebrate your accomplishment – and support for Grady – with a fun finish line celebration at Georgia State’s Center Parc Stadium. SPONSOR MESSAGE
Talking ‘Hell of a Summer’ with Fred Hechinger, Finn Wolfhard, and Billy Bryk
🔪 Take “Superbad” and “Friday the 13th,” and you’ve got the basis for “Hell of a Summer.”
The new film, written and directed by Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, follows a bunch of camp counselors as a masked maniac picks them off one by one. That might sound like a carbon copy of “Friday the 13th,” but when it comes down to it, “Hell of a Summer” is more comedy than horror – a teenage romp masquerading as a slasher flick.
Wolfhard and Bryk also star in the film as Chris and Bobby, two of the witless teenage boys who will somehow be entrusted with the lives of children for the entire summer. Fred Hechinger stars as Jason, the teens’ only slightly older boss who – no matter how estranged he feels from his teenage coworkers – can’t seem to leave camp life behind.
🏕️ Read my interview with Hechinger, Wolfhard, and Bryk here.
Who’s ready for spring and summer gardening?
SPONSORED BY LOVE IS LOVE COOPERATIVE FARM
🪴 The worker-owner farmers of Love is Love Cooperative Farm have everything you need to grow an abundant kitchen garden for the spring and summer.
In addition to an enormous selection of certified organic vegetable, herb, and edible flower seedlings, Love is Love Cooperative Farm’s Annual Spring Plant Sale & Family Day on the Farm offers free gardening and foraging workshops, activities for young folks, pop-up chefs, farm tours, music, artisan vendors, and more! Stop by this Sat., April 5, from 10:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
💚 See the full schedule of events here.
A very good boy can’t save ‘The Friend’ from disaster
WEEKLY FILM REVIEW
🐕 During one scene in “The Friend,” an argument breaks out between two students in Iris’s (Naomi Watts) writing class during a peer review session. The argument arises between a girl and a particularly irritating boy, who is criticizing the girl’s main character. She’s too regular to be the main character of a story, he says. People like that are a dime a dozen. What’s the point?
The argument might as well refer to “The Friend” itself, which is (ostensibly) about regular people. Iris is a professor who lives alone in New York City, dealing with her grief over losing her colleague and friend, Walter (Bill Murray), to suicide. As if dealing with that loss wasn’t enough, Walter has left his Great Dane, Apollo, under Iris’s care.
From that description alone, you can glean that “The Friend” is a heartbreaker – a movie about everyday people and the everyday problems they face, and how the love of a dog can make everything just a little bit better. Sounds great, right? It could have been! But “The Friend,” unfortunately, isn’t able to capitalize on its premise.
📖 Read my full review here.
‘We Want the Funk’ is both groovy and informative
WEEKLY FILM REVIEW
🎺 “We Want the Funk” starts just as a documentary about funk music should – with musician Marcus Miller slapping that bass.
Miller’s bass solo sets the tone for the rest of “We Want the Funk,” which is just as full of musical moments as it is talking head interviews (in some cases, there are literal Talking Heads – David Byrne makes an appearance).
Directed by Stanley Nelson and Nicole London, the documentary traces the history of funk, both musically and culturally, through the eyes of some of its most influential players. It takes a closer look at funk’s connections to other genres like Motown and gospel, as well as its place within the Black liberation movement.
💃 Check out my full review here.
Crash Zoom: Global Cinema Foundation survey and ChatGPT v. Hayao Miyazaki
🎧 Welcome to Crash Zoom, a podcast where we take a deep dive into film and entertainment industry news!
Each week, join me and my cohost, indie filmmaker Aaron Strand, as we explore how things happening at the highest level trickle down and affect the independent artist. This week, we discuss ChatGPT’s viral Studio Ghibli images, the new James Bond producers, and more.
🗳️ Check out the new episode here!
🏃 Join Move For Grady on April 26! With three cycling distances and two run/walk options, there’s something for everyone. Then celebrate your accomplishment – and support for Grady – with a fun finish line celebration at Georgia State’s Center Parc Stadium.
SPONSOR MESSAGE
Lights, Camera, Action!
🛳️ If you know anything about me, you know that I love “Dawson’s Creek” more than anything in the world. More specifically, I love Joshua Jackson – AKA, Pacey Witter, who holds the belt for the Greatest High School Boyfriend in television history. He now stars in “Doctor Odyssey,” one of the wildest and fun television shows to hit network television in quite some time. In this Vulture interview from Rebecca Alter, Jackson talks about the television landscape over the course of his career, sex on screen, and bringing the Cary Grant to Dr. Max Bankman.
🎥 The Slate podcast “Culture Gabfest” is diving into some great shows, movies and books this week. From “The Studio,” Seth Rogan’s love/hate letter to Hollywood, to “Eephus,” Carson Lund’s love/hate letter to baseball, there’s plenty of great stuff out there to be excited about. Check out the full episode here.
🎸 Val Kilmer passed away on Tuesday this week. In a lovely tribute, Scout Tafoya talks about what made the actor so special. “Val Kilmer gained a reputation for being difficult, cagey, sarcastic, and possibly even insane, but he was never boring,” Tafoya writes. “Your attention is his. He got us.” Read the full piece here.