Customer Reviews

The Ultimate Book of Sports Movies: Featuring the 100 Greatest Sports Films of All Time

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I AM TAKEN AWAY BY A GOOD SPORTS MOVIE. AFTER READING THIS BOOK, I WAS TAKEN AWAY WITH THE BOOK. THE AUTHORS, RAY DIDINGER AND GLEN MACNOW PUT THESE MOVIES IN THERE PROPER PRESPECTIVE WITH A GREAT ANALYSIS OF EACH MOVIE. THE SIDE COMMENT FROM WELL KNOWN ACTORS AND SPORTSTARS PROVE TO BE WELL WORTH YOUR TIME.

This book was a great compendium of the best sports movies. My husband and I agree with many of the choices and this book has also made us aware of several movies which we have not seen, but are now eager to watch based on the recomendations made.

The Ultimate Book of Sports Movies features 100 sports films deemed the greatest of all time and adds in fun features, facts, and original contributions from over 100 superstars. The result is a survey that offers not just the top 100 films with movies from every sport in the field to synopsis and sidebars of information. Very highly recommended for any sports or movie general-interest library.

Any fanatical sports loving enthusiast who has also done due diligence off the "field" in his life... and waded through the millions of everyday movies made in the history of Hollywood... to find the few sports oriented "gems" and outright "classics"... will be rewarded for their efforts by buying this book. This is the *SUPER-BOWL-RING*... *HEAVYWEIGHT-CHAMPIONSHIP-BELT*... *GOLD-MEDAL*... compilation of sports movies. The authors have done an absolutely unbelievable job of culling through cinematic history... all the way back to the silent movie days... to pick the *ONE-HUNDRED-GREATEST-SPORTS-MOVIES-OF-ALL-TIME*! That alone could represent an ambitious individual's life work... but these sports loving authors... representing the underappreciated legions of men (and women) who not only want to rave... and rage... about the top one-hundred... but we also want to throw in a few piercing comments about which movies stink! But hold on! If you're like me... if this truly is our *DREAM-BOOK*... then it should be a printed version of what I/you want to represent the way we actually act in front of our TV... or in a movie theatre... or in a bar... in a "friendly" discussion/argument... with friends and foes alike. So if that's the case... how about:

*A LIST OF TEN ACTORS WHO ARE A DISGRACE TO ATHLETES AND SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO PLAY ONE*

*A LIST OF TEN ACTORS WHO PASS THE GRADE AS ATHLETES*

*HOW ABOUT THE BEST LINE IN EACH OF THE ONE-HUNDRED MOVIES?* An example in my favorite baseball movie of all-time "FIELD-OF-DREAMS" (Note: the author's admit it would be too easy to list, "IF YOU BUILD IT, HE WILL COME." Or, "HEY, IS THIS HEAVEN?" "NO, THIS IS IOWA." So they go right to the awe-inspiring poetry: "THE ONE CONSTANT THROUGH ALL THE YEARS, RAY, HAS BEEN BASEBALL. AMERICA HAS ROLLED BY LIKE AN ARMY OF STEAMROLLERS. IT HAS BEEN ERASED LIKE A BLACKBOARD, REBUILT AND ERASED AGAIN. BUT BASEBALL HAS MARKED THE TIME. THIS FIELD, THIS GAME-IT'S A PART OF OUR PAST, RAY. IT REMINDS US OF ALL THAT ONCE WAS GOOD AND IT COULD BE AGAIN. OH, PEOPLE WILL COME RAY. PEOPLE WILL MOST DEFINITELY COME."

Wow! There are many, many, places that the author's readily admit a box of Kleenex is required to watch certain movies. But if this is truly my/our dream book there should be more. How about:

*Reality Check* - where the director blew it in many of these classic movies such as when Shoeless Joe Jackson bats right and throws left. In real life Jackson threw right and batted left. (Just the type of things I/you yell at the screen all the time.)

*Lists of Sports Flicks For Kids*
*Great Sports Scenes In Non-Sports Movies*
*All-Time Movie Baseball Team*
*All-Time Movie Football Team*

Perhaps one of the most thought provoking features in the book is the *PIVOTAL-SCENE* section in each movie such as the one in *HE-GOT-GAME*: "AS THE TRASH TALK GROWS NASTIER, JAKE LOSES HIS EDGE-AND HIS ENERGY. JESUS IS BIGGER, FASTER AND, ULTIMATELY, MENTALLY STRONGER. THE ICIER JESUS GETS, THE MORE HE DOMINATES. IN FACT, HE IS USING THE LESSONS WE SAW JAKE TEACH HIM YEARS AGO. EVEN AS HE SLAYS HIS FATHER, HE IS VALIDATING HIM.

There are many other lists and endless bits of delicious sports and movie minutiae that are akin to precious jewels. This is not only a great read... but it will become a valuable reference book for years to come. It even recommends how "re-watchable" the flick is and ends each movie section with a famous personality telling you why that particular movie is his all-time favorite.

I highly recommend you buy this book because it has so much value on so many different levels.

The book is fun and breezy.
Glad I bought a used copy, the service was great.

Although I don't always agree with Glen and Ray , I admire the amount of work put into this project. I also appreciate the little tidbits of info. I learned alot.

Love this Book and I don't normally read books... Not even half way through it and Love It...

The idea of putting together a book on the top 100 sports movies is a good one--but in this case it's written by a couple guys who spout opinions instead of offering much in the way of objective details. One is from NFL films and the other is a sports radio host. Though both claim to have sportswriting background, they didn't put in the work to write a detailed, fact-filled book in the subject.

Each film gets a couple pages which includes a plot summary and then some tidbits like "best line," "goof" and "reality check." It reads more like a Wikipedia entry than a book that has been well researched. They include a few opinions from athletes, but mostly it is their own spouting about what they think are good and bad films.

A number of facts are wrong. They admit in the opening that they don't include boxoffice results as a measure of a film's success. And they also "did not include the three highest-grossing sports movies of all time," which they list as The Waterboy, The Longest Yard remake and Talladega Nights, since they are "frat boy comedies." Huh? They don't put them in a book just because of the style of sports film? They also err because the animated film Cars (which they do include in a list of children's sports films) actually beat all the others at the boxoffice.

Some of their choices are so strange that in the end the reader concludes that there aren't 100 great sports films--there may be about 40 or 50 of them. They include a number of movies that most have never heard of and their rankings are so arbitrary that beyond the top 15 the order doesn't make much sense.

Bingo Long at number 39 yet they only rank Rudy #57? Silly fluff like The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh is included at #100? Then widely-loved films like White Men Can't Jump is only #66, beat by movies you have never heard of like Sugar (which is about Dominican Republic baseball players--and one of the authors admits that he used to live there covering baseball. Hmmm--wonder why it's on this list?). Who can take them seriously after seeing that?

They also appear very biased toward boxing movies (including a number of obscure ones) and have way too many recent movies on the list that are hardly instant classics. And they include movies that aren't really true "sports" films, such as The Hustler and Rounders. Meanwhile they slam a number of true sports films on their list as not being realistic enough--so why rank them on a top 100 list if the authors are going to demean them?

This would have worked better if written by a Sports Illustrated researcher who did the work involved to dig up great details and then present them in a more objective way. As it is, it's nice to skim through but doesn't provide much new insight into any of the films.