Posted on 07/26/2003 12:07:53 AM PDT by ex-Texan
View From the Rail: Beware! 'Seabiscuit' may inspire some hope
I love the new "Seabiscuit" movie so much it hurts. What do you expect from a railbird?
But for those of you who don't like heaping dollops of poetry and lush cinematography to go along with a great story, it's going to be tough love.
I want to encourage those with type-A personalities to hang in there.
So please read this review with your tongue firmly in your cheek.
Once in a great while a movie comes along that everyone should see. Don't miss this film.
It's a story about our American heritage that illuminates many of the heartaches our society has been subjected to, and offers up hope from days past toward a better future -- not just for the Sport of Kings, but for the world in which our children will inherit.
Curmudgeons and smash-mouth realists of the world unite -- it's going to take grim determination to keep "Seabiscuit" away from our X-treme TV-oriented offspring.
Take a stand.
Don't let them be pulled in by the dazzling derring-do of the Dreamworks film crew that drops them dead-center into a herd of stampeding horse flesh. What's the thrill of watching skateboarders wipe out when you can watch jockeys get trampled in Technicolor by wild-eyed thoroughbreds hell bent for leather?
"Seabiscuit" even sports a passel of our Emerald Downs homeboys beating each other bloody with whips on horseback, bouncing off rails of bush-track bullrings, and disappearing under the terrible cacophony of razor-edged hooves.
Is this suitable summer blockbuster fare for saddle-sore, couch-potato cowboys?
You bet it is.
This movie sports no mind-numbing "woo-woo" new-age Kung-fu warriors beating each other senseless in midair; no machine-made gods of some new millennium that liquify before our eyes only to reappear as black patent-leather sex-goddesses on steroids.
No, these movie moguls are too smart for that.
They resort to the clever ruse of a true story that clamps down on young, impressionable minds.
After the teaser of racetrack violence they get Tobey Maguire to play Red Pollard, a young jockey who reads poetry to his horse and races over the rickety wooden bridge of childhood, only to crash headlong into the brutal world of men.
This feel-good saga has broken, Depression-era men who heal themselves or are healed by women who love them.
What's the alternative -- reality TV, where fantasy dates talk trash to fantasy mates?
It gets worse.
Jeff Bridges plays Charles Howard, a self-made man who transcends the death of his only child with elusive curatives like kindness and generosity.
Chris Cooper fills the role of Tom Smith, a soft-spoken trainer who mourns the demise of the American West and fights back by conquering the inner demons of a horse who won't be tamed by a whip.
Did you know Smith won the training title at Longacres in 1935? The year before that, he slept in a stall while mustangs in his dreams circled Mount Rainier.
This story is too close to home.
"Seabiscuit" the movie segues between the sad world of men without hope and the mindless joy of a boy on a horse galloping through oak groves. It's a moody, reflective, ultimately joyful-tone poem that brazenly broaches the subject of bitterness vs. transcendence, pride vs. wisdom.
This flick is My Friend Flicka meets The Horse Whisperer meets Dr. Phil.
It's Beauty and the Beast stapled over the story of The Black Stallion.
Protect your children from this senseless celluloid carnage.
The movie dares to suggest that hope can conquer hype, pedigree, insurmountable odds, and whatever else you got, mister.
Don't fall for it.
In the Great Depression, who needed hope? Americans needed jobs, not rose-colored glasses. Why the newspapers of the era devoted more space to a bandy-legged undersized horse than to Hitler and Theodore Roosevelt combined still boggles the imagination.
Imagine our news media today devoting less coverage to war, pestilence and genocide to focus on the heroics of a horse or some impossible childhood dream.
Hope is the most virulent strain of American viruses, but oh-so-easily cured by the latest sound bite on suicide bombers, the war on AIDS or the latest statistics regarding world hunger.
That the movie's release fuels the hopes and dreams of tens of thousands of racetrackers across these United States (whose livelihoods may ultimately depend upon its impact on the American sports psyche) is another disheartening trend.
With the recurring nightmare that saddles the racing industry to unjust gaming statutes both local and national, don't these people know when they're licked?
All this hoopla generated by a dead horse and old memories of a match race with Triple Crown-winner War Admiral is a conundrum of epic proportion.
The scariest part of this movie is that it will appeal to grade-school kids, teenagers (who wanna see what Spiderman looks like in the flesh) and even young tykes still riding wooden ponies.
In fact, except for the virtual wild ride that Dreamworks engineered with helmet cameras that boots audiences toward some mythic finish line aboard a streaking thoroughbred for the first time in motion-picture history, the P in this PG rated movie escapes me.
Even my great (though hard of hearing) granny wants two bucks across on the 'Biscuit.
I told her the horse was deceased.
"The horse ain't dead, you idiot," she screamed. "Look, he's right there on the TV screen!"
I give up. I'm going down to Emerald and laying six bucks across on the 'Biscuit. Then I'm going back to the movie theatre to watch the part where the young jockey, Pollard, walks through a sun-dappled field reading poetry to his horse.
That's a beautiful scene.
Once hope interfaces with media spin, you can't beat it to death with a pony on a stick.
See you at the movies -- reality TV just isn't my bag.
Larry Lee Palmer is a Seattle resident and the P-I's handicapper. He can be reached at sports@seattlepi.com
Oh -- the crowd applauded at the end of the movie. It has been a while since I was in a theater where people were that moved emotionally.
The horse won. I won around 300 dollars.
It was very exciting. Cha Ching!
Now, I'm down about a grand.
Funny thing was she was yelling and screaming and everybody around us was quiet. They looked rally upset that she won.
Not even a cent.
HOw do they know... ;-)
Seabiscuit Reviews (please post your comments about the movie)
I got that impression initially, but there was a disclaimer later. Something like it wasn't the jobs that gave people hope and a future, it was belief in themselves and courage to pursue their dreams. It also mentioned the myth that scores of people committed suicide on Black Friday in 1929. That did not happen.
There was a brief scene where the narrator said that the depression era public works programs meant that someone, finally cared. Then they showed a pic of FDR.
I'm surprised they didnt give it a PG-13...taking Jesus's name in vain twice, the scene with the prostitute.
(sarcasm) Kind of like Free Republic...
Buying on margin was 10% then, now it's 50%. That's your answer.
There was much more speculating done on 10% margin requirements which meant there were many more “players” involved in the market. Margin calls on 90% of the stock’s value hit a much larger percentage of investors than in 87 and at significantly higher rate. 90% margin calls bankrupted nearly everyone, companies went out of business due to lack of capital and that put a lot of people on the street at the same time. That’s what happened.
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