Airsoft Movie Reviews

It's not your Vision Quest, pinning Shute, yay for the good guy style movie, all glitz and glamour with a happy, feel good, obvious ending. It's a movie that deals with wrestling and sports in general on a different level. It especially focuses on the trend that seems prevalent nowadays of parents pushing their kids into sports and pushing too hard. It's a road that a lot of us will have to face when we become parents and want to live vicariously through our own kids.

It is a good movie for someone who wants to learn more about what wrestling really is outside the practice room. It shows that often times the toughest opponent a wrestler will face isn't the guy he's actually wrestling but the scale. Anyone who has wrestled can immediately empathize with this and outsiders will see how much more there is to the sport than two guys rolling around on the mat. The battles with weight loss have put the sport into a critical spotlight and this film helps show you some of the mental reasoning that goes in on a wrestler's mind and why they are willing to go through the pain and sacrifice.

Like I mentioned, in the end you don't feel your typical happy closure, you feel introspection, you question, you scrutinize, you think. Kudos to a movie that can have this kind of profound effect!

As other reviews have mentioned, the wrestling action is very authentic. By using real collegiate wrestlers (instead of actors pretending to wrestle) the matches show off the speed, intricacy, and awesome physical demands required of the sport.

The wrestling mindset is also heavily explored here, with mantras like "hard work always pays off" and "the world is better for winners", writer/producer/cast member Jimi Petulla details the mental aspects of motivation, desire, and focus in a sport which is so unsympathetic about dividing the winners from the losers. Petulla plays the main character's father, who after feeling emotionally deserted by his own father, seeks to build his own son into an undisputed winner and champion who will not suffer the same pitfalls and frustrations he has had to endure in life.

The cinematography highlighting a small Pennsylvania coal-mining town is beautifully done, and the natural dialog between the characters enhances the realistic setting of Anytown, USA. One gets the feeling that this same story has been played out countless times in small towns across the country, and will continue to repeat itself as long as fathers & sons & sports exist.

One complaint I had was with the unclear motivation of the main character's rival (who I belive is played by a national chamption at 119lbs.). In some scenes he appears to be a compassionate team-player, and other times he appears as a cold, calculating aggressor willing to trample on his teammates to fullfill his own agenda. Perhaps that duality was meant to show the struggle that some wrestlers have in switching on and off the competitiveness instilled within them. Aggression on the mat is to be tempered by being a gentleman and good citizen off the mat - this is something I think most wrestling coaches preach, and Petulla displays that wonderfully through pep-talks to his peewee wrestlers and his own son early on in the film.

I would have liked to see more of the wrestling action, but utimately this film is not about wrestling alone. Also, I would have liked to see the alternate ending make the final cut, however the quality of the film and its unconventional ending left me satisfied in a bittersweet way.

The only annoyance was the appallingly bad subtitles, though they're sometimes bad enough to be fun in themselves. They're not up to the standard of the rest of the DVD, though, by a long shot. I have the HK version by Modern Audio Ltd., and I suppose that this issue may be specific to their release. That aside, I heartily recommend the movie.

The only annoyance was the appallingly bad subtitles, though they're sometimes bad enough to be fun in themselves. They're not up to the standard of the rest of the DVD, though, by a long shot. I have the HK version by Modern Audio Ltd., and I suppose that this issue may be specific to their release. That aside, I heartily recommend the movie.

For afficianados of the game there will be many glaring omissions but for the general reader this book is all you need to get a handle on the history of the game, casting aside the Doubleday myth (Spalding's invention) and treating yourself to the early New York Knickerbockers who wrote the rules of the game, which have essentially stayed the same ever since. Ward has an eye for detail, noting that Cartwright took the game to Hawaii, from where it eventually spread to Asia.

Ward spends a great deal of time on the divisions in baseball, not just that between the American and National leagues, but black ball and white ball. He gives an engaging discription of the Negro leagues and the eventual integration of the game with the immortal Jackie Robinson joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. He also notes many of the other negro greats who weren't so fortunate to be called up to the big leagues.

He also gives a good look at the free agency disputes of the 70's, which opened the doors to the astronomical salaries players get today. There is also a requiem on Mr. Baseball, Pete Rose, and the gambling that has plagued the game throughout its history. The most notorious example being the Chicago "Black Sox." Despite these lapses, the game has not only managed to survive but flourish into quite possibly the world's greatest game.

He hits all aspects of the game: The development of the game itself and the leagues, the labor history, the stars and great teams and personalities, the great moments in the history of the game, and so on. He also gives us a pretty good look at the old Negro leagues and we get to hear some of the great stories from those days before MLB was integrated.

The only bad thing I can say about this collection of dvds is that by the time it was over I was really sick of hearing different versions of "Take Me out to the Ballgame."

The great stories in this collection more than make up for that one drawback, however. He does more than just interview and quote the players, managers, umpires, owners and sports writers. He includes stories from fans. Doris Kearns Goodwin told about how she grew up rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers, then after they moved away, she found herself in Boston, becoming a Red Sox fan, just in time to have her heart broken again.

All fans of baseball should see this collection.

IT IS SO SAD THAT THE GAME HAS BECOME MORE FOR THE NAME ON THE BACK OF THE PLAYERS JERSEY INSTEAD OF THE FRONT.

Moreover, I found the extra features that do exist, like the on-screen bios, more of an annoyance than an asset. More skating, less talk & fluff, if you please!

That said, it might be worth buying for heartthrob Philippe Candeloro's swashbuckler routine.

Good show, but...

A very good video for figure skating