Friends had warned me about watching "Million Dollar Baby" because it was so sad.
They were right, but for the wrong reasons.
I watched it tonight and I am sad.
Sad, because I never saw a fight that didn't start in the middle of the ring with a speech from the ref and a touch of gloves, until this movie.
Sad, because I saw a woman who weighed about 130 pounds, who was hitting a heavy bag that looked like it weighed about three hundred pounds. (I still hit a heavy bag, and it weighs about sixty pounds, and I weigh about 210 pounds.)
Sad, because I saw people in a movie talk about how to hit a speed bag
- and it was entirely wrong. You don't shift your weight. You keep your weight centered.
Boxing is such a good sport. Why do these people seem to want to tart it up.
This current movie, like the Rocky trash before it, shows these huge roundhouse punches, that you would never see in a real match.
If you have ever boxed, you know that you are taught to never throw a punch outside the width of your shoulders. A short, compact jab to the inside, and a longer throw from the strong side.
I know, it ain't wooddorking, but it just made me mad.
I've never seen a good boxing movie. All of them, including the DeNiro movie about LaMotta, suck.
OBWW: The Actors Were Not Wooden.
(watson - who wishes that he could find a good boxing movie and wishes that everyone could see a fight at the Blue Horizon.)
Tom Watson - WoodDorker tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (email)
: Boxing is such a good sport. Why do these people seem to want to tart : it up.
A good sport? One where two men hit each other as hard as possible until one of them passes out, or dies? And where a longtime boxer stands a really good chance of brain damage?
I've watched many a boxing match, but I don't consider it a "good" sport. I just cannot imagine people allowing themselves to get bashed in the head being normal.
Keep in mind that movies are for entertainment purposes. If you are looking for factual representation of any subject, seek out a documentary. The 'activity' that a movie is centered around is often just a vehicle through which to tell a story in a different way. I never watch a movie involving a subject I'm well acquainted with and expect that I won't see a miserable representation of that subject. Examples:
Movies with professional astronomers, either sitting at the eyepiece of a giant scope, or doing their observing in the middle of the afternoon.
Movies with a scientific lab where every sample has perfect, unambiguous spectra, instantaneously, with 3-D chemical structures, with a list of every perp that purchased the evil chemical in the last 2 weeks. And of course, the lab is filled with banks of randomly blinking lights and vials of brightly colored liquids, many of which are bubbling.
Movies with cars that upshift 15 times in a row, and can squeal the tires on gravel.
Movies with computer programmers that can write bug free, virus code in a few minutes for a computer aboard an alien spacecraft.
Movies with farmers that are always dusty, broke, bitter and lonely with no hope of any type of happiness in their life. Oh, wait, maybe that one is true....but you get the idea.
... and yet we attempt to make fine furniture and call it fun. ;-)
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough
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For some reason Tom's post isn't on Supernews, which likely means he's crossed a spam measure of some sort.
In any event, the best I heard of "Million Dollar Baby" was that it was the only conceivable movie that could take both Clint Eastwood and boxing and come up with a "Chick Flick".
Unlike Tom, I have no interest in boxing AND hate boxing movies, so I haven't seen it and am unlikely to, so can't offer an opinion on the movie itself.
Movies in which a spacecraft in the vast vacuum of space can be
*heard* traveling on its intended course.
And all the scientists wear white lab coats even when, say, at the top of a Nepalese mountain collecting samples even though it's -25C and the wind is howling at 100kpm.
Movies in which scientists smart enough to earn Ph.Ds in all manner of esoteric fields are too dim witted to pick up the phone or just jump into their cars and leave when faced with danger.
... while (in at least one fairly recent film) receiving sexual favors from a gorgeous woman. We know this to be utter fantasy since Gorgeous Women (tm) typically wouldn't stoop to *speak* to a programmer let alone peform said acts - DAMHIKT.
More generally, movies wherein The Gorgeous Woman (tm) is so taken by her nerdy, spindly, Alfred E. Neuman-looking colleague, she just
*can't* keep her hands off him. She thus ends a relationship with Harry Handsome (tm) to pursue the office shlub. (Why did this
*never* happen to me, I wonder ...)
Movies wherein sexual contact of any and all kinds is performed in the office without concern for sexual harassment laws or even discovery by the cleaning lady, administrative assistant, or parking attendant. Extra points are given for impossibly complex sexual liasons conducted in even more impossibly small European sportscars.
Movies in which incorruptible politicians operate from entirely noble principle and Badness is the sole province of Eeeeeevvviiill Corporations.
Movies in which Our Hero leaps though the air firing two semi-automatic handguns cocked 90 degrees from normal, hitting every intended target in sight and avoiding the merest hint of collateral damage, while: a) Remaining magically free of harm as the Bad Men shoot magazine after magazine of *fully* automatic fire at Our Hero AND b) Never himself ever having to reload or running out of ammo.
Movies in which Our Hero is wounded by large caliber fire, patches himself up, and leaps back into action (because "hydrostatic shock" is an illegal idea in LA).
(The most dangerous abuse of guns is in Whollyweird...)
Movies in which people scuba dive with a single tank (thereby presumably breathing compressed air or Nitrox) at depths where the partial pressure of O2 would cause convulsions and death (deeper than roughly 230 feet for compressed air, less for Nitrox). When one diver runs out of air, he is able to breathe happily from the octopus (spare regulator) on his buddy's rig even though they both started the dive at the same time and dove roughly the same profile.
Movies in which the construction worker, woodworker, steel worker, fisherman, or farmer drive around in spotless clean *new* pick-em-up trucks with nary a dent, ding, or even dust. Extra points given when said truck is black.
'Crockumentaries' in which multi-millionaire Whollyweirdos presume to speak for "the average person" because they have so much in common with the rest of us. Extra points if said Whollyweirdo flies private jets to speak at conservation conferences.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk snipped-for-privacy@tundraware.com PGP Key:
Heh. Like our Prez, who cautions all of us to think about how we use fuel as he steps onto AF 1 to make a seventh (or whatever) wholly unneeded trip to the hurricane zone, thus guaranteeing another 20,000 gallons of jet fuel wasted.
C'mon Tom, Thats not a boxing movie at all. It's a female empowerment movie. Look at your own example 130# woman punching a 300# heavybag? 200# man punching a 60# bag? Ever see the show Alias? 90# freak woman can beat the crap out of any man they throw at her but if she fights another woman it lasts for what seems hours.. Geena Davis as president? Puhleeze....
It's all a feminist/marxist conspiracy quelling the male masses into a false sense of inferiority. How can anyone waste time watching such drivel when there are so many good books out there.....
Damn, Tom ... I enjoyed visiting with you on the phone, you like my favorite music, now you confess to being a boxing fan ... a decidedly politically incorrect endeavor these days. Wanna dance? ;)
To SWMBO"S utter disgust, much of my TV watching is catching ESPN's classic boxing reruns of all those great fights in the last century. When I was a kid in the early fifties I had to be dragged away from Gillette's Friday Night Fights on that big 8" TV screen.
Notice, if you will, that most fight fans went to the fights in the 40's and
50's in a suit and tie, then switch channels and take a good look when corporate religion's TV cameras pan the audience ... now chew on that awhile :)
.... and watch Archie Moore fight Yvon Durelle for a few rounds and you can see where Mohammed Ali got much of his style and shtick.
Even his 'base' is eroding. It no longer matters what he does, he's been exposed. His new-found keen interest in the little people looks phoney because it is phoney. The worse thing that can happen to a public relations stunt is for it to look like a public relations stunt. Nobody likes to be played a fool.
Right, because his opponents are just fountains of empathy and support for the average guy. People like Kenney, Feinstein, Clinton, Reid, and all the rest of the drooling opposition are paragons of public virtue and brimming with resonance for how most of us live. Compared to almost anyone that opposes him politically, W looks like a mild, caring genius - and I'm no Republican, BTW - I've just learned to cultivate a nearly boundless contempt for the professional stupidity that is the Left.
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