Football Recommendation: The League

                              

                            Sure, you can say Football recommendations, or any sports recommendation should be about movies in general. Though when it comes to a show about the love of Fantasy Football in general especially all the football fans who do it constantly in every football season well the TV show, the League is one of those underappreciated shows you just must recommend. 

                            Some friends who are all avid fantasy football fans try to balance their time between the league and their real lives. The sitcom features a plethora of cameos by real-life NFL players, who play themselves in the series. 

                            Now I'm a fan of Fantasy Football even though my Cowboys are awful when it comes to the playoffs. The fantasy aspect of it is a kind of sense of joy watching all different kinds of football on the weekends. And for sure a lot of people don't understand what the whole concept of Fantasy Football or trash talking your friends day in and day out, for which I truly understand and can't blame them, though to me it's about gaining pride for yourself that sense of pride that you can hold onto the rest of your day as well as carrying it with you through the course of your day as well as the rest of your week. A great example I started to play in a league with the people I work with and majority of them are in a sense pre-madonna's and once I logged into the draft I found out that I got the first pick in the draft and I didn't say it to all of them but I wanted to lead out every vulgar language I could at them, but I couldn't because it's that other self that telling you to keep your mouth shut so all I could really say was my miserable f**king a** life I finally got the first pick in the draft, sadly I picked Christian McCaffery and he's hurt right now but that sense of pride is something you have to hold onto especially whenever your day or week is bad. The show itself does a great job in incorporating that aspect of fantasy football although I doubt all the misadventures in the show happens in real life but it's still funny from start to finish, though despite that the show overstayed it's run but the first four seasons of the show are the best. So, if you’re a fan of NFL football or fantasy football or any other kind of football I would highly recommend watching the League on Hulu, though seasons five through seven are a bit fifty, fifty I would still check the show out and even if you watch five through seven, I'm sure you'll have a blast or feel free to shut the show off if you feel it’s losing its edge, I mean you know the famous saying right? Quit while you’re ahead.  

50 Year Anniversary of The Longest Yard

 

                                  Everybody! The time has come to celebrate the return of the Football season. Oh, wait it's already here, as well for me with Nebraska sticking it to Colorado, sorry not sorry to all Buff fans out there and Deion Sanders if you ever read my reviews moreover Dallas Cowboys beating the Browns on the first week. I'd say life couldn't be better, though I'd like every fan to think it doesn't last long. Though with every football season you need to find the right Football movie to celebrate the occasion and surprisingly enough the Longest Yard has officially turned 50 years old, and no I'm not talking about the 2005 version though will have a lot to talk about that I'm talking about the 1974 film that made Burt Reynolds a household name. Now having watched the film through I'm beginning to see that producers for Smoky and the Bandit were looking at this movie and saying to themselves holy crap we should make a movie where Burt is just driving cars.

                                  An Ex-Football star (Burt Reynolds) making time forced by the warden (Eddie Albert) to organize a team of inmates to play against his own line-up of guards. The warden tries to blackmail him into throwing the game, but the convicts have their own ideas and see the game as an opportunity to repay some of the brutality they have endured.

                                  Albert S. Ruddy who wrote and came up with the idea/concept to the Longest Yard after a conversation with his friend who at the time was the richest women in America who was married to an All-American football player who was a first-round draft choice by the NFL then later suffered a bad injury that sealed his fate. Getting back to Albert S. Rudy who was also the producer behind great films like the Godfather and Million Dollar Baby, him and the rich lady were having a normal conversation while her hubby was trying on three different jackets and asking which one to pick, and in her own words said "take all three because when I kick you out you'll need them", love right? So, after that conversation at the clothing store Ruddy was inspired to write the idea for which would later become the Longest Yard. Even Ruddy knew Burt Reynolds would be the perfect actor for the starring role, though Ruddy was asked by Reynolds to direct the movie, he knew he had to get Robert Aldrich famous for classics like The Flight of the Pheonix with Jimmy Stewart and the Dirty Dozen with Lee Marvin. Surprisingly Aldrich wanted Reynolds to tone down his stunt work mainly because I believe he wanted the film to be real as it gets, and Reynolds asked if there's going to be hitting involved the Aldrich reply's if he knows Packer’s legend Ray Nitschke? Reynolds said yes and Aldrich said, "well he'll be playing a game called kill the actor", for which when you make a football movie that should be a great one liner to say to your movie star. Burt Reynolds as in actor is amazing in the movie I mean this is really the one true movie that he's great in, moreover well all know Reynolds is great in the movie even without is infamous mustache, but Eddie Albert who a lot of people even the younger generation would know that he's infamous for Green Acres and with this movie he does a great job separating himself from is iconic role in Green Acres to a charming and horrible warden who is everything wrong about the prison system and Albert's does a great job at that. Getting back to Ray Nitschke as a football player he does a great job at that, and though he only has a few lines through the movie but even when he's up against Reynolds he's funny moreover does a good job as a first-time actor in a movie about football and four years later he was inducted into the pro football hall of fame. Not just Nitschke who helped with the football scenes, but Vikings legend Joe Kapp helped with a lot of the Football scenes especially to make them real as possible. Now I can probably tell you that the original is a billion times better, for which it is no doubt about that. And I have a full memory of each of the two movies growing up and I can honestly tell you that each of the movies are the same in terms of dialogue and scene structure and now having re-watched the original movie I kind of have to look at the Adam Sandler movie as a disgust but not so bad because, really because Reynolds himself plays the coach part though granted the football scenes are most certainly different but deep down the original movie is a hundred times better for many reasons its own movie but most importantly the 2005 version of the film just have that typical Sandler jokes that only Sandler would consider funny and to me that's just why I would pass the Sandler Longest Yard. What makes the Longest Yard a great Football movie is that the film is about dignity no matter how bad people treat you or how much self-respect you lose in life you must build yourself up and stand up for yourself. The other thing what makes the film great is that a bunch of murders, criminals and terrible men are giving this lost Quarterback the chance to gain the dignity and wanting to win the game against the Guards even if it means spending thirty years of his life in prison. So, if you’re looking great football movie, I would highly recommend watching The Longest Yard for anyone who hasn't seen it, and you can most certainly check the film out on Paramount + if you have the streaming service then your weekend will be great if you choose to sit down and watch the fifty year old film.

    

80 Year Anniversary of To Have and Have Not

 

                                     

                              The last time I watched a Humphrey Bogart movie was seven months ago, and to be truthfully honest I never thought about in fact there been a lot of other movies I wanted to watch so really it's always been a habit of just when you can't find the right movie to recommend or celebrate a movies long anniversary of when it came out well, you always go to your default and recommend a classic movie from pre-World War. For which leads to a classic Bogart movie, that I suddenly realized is 80 years old, To Have and Have Not is not just a regular Bogart movie but also a movie which starts his love interest and later future wife Lauren Bacall and really if you had to pick one of the all-time greatest on screen couples in movie history, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall would most certainly be on that number one spot.

                              In Vichy France, fishing boat captain Harry (Humphrey Bogart) avoids getting involved in politics, refusing to smuggle French Resistance fighters into Martinique. But when a Resistance client is shot before, he can pay, Harry agrees to help hotel owner Gerald (Marcel Dailo) smuggle two fighters to the island. 

                              The film itself is loosely based on Ernest Hemingway's book title of the same name, and ironically enough Hemingway and legendary director Howard Hawks were close friends and on a fishing trip, Hawks told Hemingway, who was reluctant to go into screenwriting, that he could make a great movie from his worst book, which Hawks admitted was To Have and Have Not. Hemingway and Hawks worked on the screenplay during the remainder of their fishing trip because let’s face it you can't do two things at the same time one of them which leads to boredom, the two men decided the film would not resemble the novel, but rather would tell the story of how Harry Morgan met Marie, Lauren Bacall's character moreover was extensively altered for the film. Strangely when watching the film, you do get some resemblance with the film Casablanca and Hawks himself intended to have the screenplay be loosely modeled on Casablanca, which also stared Bogie hoping for the same success Casablanca had met at the box office. And in all honesty that doesn't bother me much mainly because Bogart does a perfect job playing an anti-hero always keeping a low profile never wanting to get involved with politics mainly a survivor like every regular man going through in life even during the war. Furthermore when authorities take Bogart's cash from him he knew that he has to take the job and through the course of the movie you see the character of Morgan changing and becomes a unlikely hero by the end of the movie and even Hawks created that difference from the book to the movie because he did not like stories about "losers" for which really I would most certainly agree with him on that. So, again Bogart is defiantly the perfect choice to play that part and lets it bloom through the course of the movie and really when it comes to those kinds of movies from a crime mystery or a war drama and even a survivalist story, I would watch Bogart in all those roles because he's just a perfect actor for that role. To Have and Have Not was even a first to where Bogart would me his future wife Lauren Bacall whom this would be her first movie as an actress in fact Hawks wife urged him to invite Bacall to take a screen test after seeing her model cover on the Bazaar fashion magazine, and Bacall was only 20 years old at the time for which her and Bogie would later marry in February of 1945 just a couple of months after the film’s release. Now both of these two makes this film worth seeing for many reasons there chemistry together is just pure joy like you've met you soulmate and that's what both Bogart and Bacall represent as these two survivalists who are not afraid of anything and begins to fall for one another, moreover you watch this film and you'd believe love is still real to which Bacall and Bogie were still married until Bogie's death in 1957. To Have and Have Not is most certainly on my list of a hundred greatest films of all time, it has everything from great character development great love story as well as a great story of one man being a hero in the end and for a movie that's 80 years old this film still to this day still ages like fine wine and even to this day I'll never get tired of watch the film from beginning to end. Though the funny and sad thing about this film is that it marks ten years now since Lauren Bacall died in 2014 which really, I believe that those two are now reunited and can live together in harmony in heaven. If this great gem ever lands on Turner Classic Movies or Hulu or even Max, I will highly recommend watching the film that brought the greatest on-screen couple in movie history.