I’ve no doubts about the value of Noah Buschel as a film director and a writer. Despite somewhat underrated, he gave us interesting movies such as the indie romantic drama “Sparrows Dance” and the crime thriller “Glass Chin”. His latest, however, didn’t thrill me much. “The Phenom” is a sports psychodrama that showcases great performances from Ethan Hawke, Paul Giamatti, and Johnny Simmons, but leaves something to be desired in the end. The film is presented with constant ups and downs during the irregular narrative structure, regardless the solid psychological fundament and emotional weight that we can find in the cheerless story of Hopper Gibson (Simmons), a rookie Major League Baseball pitcher who, despite seen as a big promise, is sent
For the purpose of this paper, I will argue the film Field of Dreams does not contain a baseball theme, but one of inner conflict between father and son. Field of Dreams is a film of perseverance, fear, ingenuity, and good old fashioned stubbornness, from a man who fears becoming like his father. Resources will prove how this films use of acting style, cinematography, and direction are used to portray the father/son persona. Additionally, you will realize the reasoning behind this films theme, due to the unsecure masculinity during the 1980’s when this film was released. Although key elements pertaining to baseball were seen throughout this film; The sport of baseball is not the movies theme. Field of Dreams has several classifications for a sports themed film; However, due to acting style, direction, and cinematography, portrays a masculine balance between father and son.
A message that really explains the movie in a sentence is every human is not perfect and each human has their own personal struggles that they will try to overcome. Boobie Miles thought he was perfect and he actually put a curse on himself and got injured right at the beginning.The primary theme in the film is the Underdogs don’t always win. We thought because they were underdogs they were going to win but they ended up losing. They still did put up a great fight. Some other themes are the impact of adults’ hopes and goals lived vicariously through their children. The most important theme of the novel involves the impact of adults’ hopes and goals lived vicariously through their children. The people of Odessa place an unmistaken spell on the shoulders of their sons to be champions every year so that the adults can take the triumph as their own. The result is that their children can never leave their triumphs and defeats of that short time behind. It follows them no matter what they make of their lives, and it is unfair that they must do so. The last important theme is that of misplaced priorities. The people of Odessa wouldn’t accept the fact that their obsession with football was impacting on the educational success of their children. Their need to have a winning season affected class time, homework, tests, and even whether school
Timeless themes of equality, truth and perseverance are presented in this heartwarming tale of one courageous softball player and the wiffle bat that she adored. It all begins one summer day shortly after Tegan's sixth birthday. The scene opens with the young girl enviously watching a group of children play wiffle ball in the park across the street from her grandmother's house. She furtively glances behind her at the kitchen entrance and listens to the sounds of lunch preparations while contemplating the distance to the door. With a determined look in her eye, she takes a shaky deep breath and dashes out to the park to join the game, all the while looking back and wondering what her grandma would say. She approaches the field and stands by the rusty fence behind the plate. One of the older girls – she looks about ten or twelve – spots Tegan and invites her to join in. The kids show her how to swing the bat and the pitcher starts to toss the ball in her direction; they let her keep swinging until she hits one. When she does, the light wiffle ball catches the wind, floats high in the air, swirls around a bit, and lands two inches from Tegan's feet. After staring at the ball in wonder, she looks up and a slow smile spreads across her face. The other kids laugh and Tegan joins in with glee. The boy at first base looks at his watch and yells, "Hey, it's lunch time," causing all the wiffle ball players to scatter and race home in search of food. The girl that invited Tegan to play tells her to come back tomorrow in the morning to play a game with them and Tegan agrees with an enthusiastic nod of the head. She turns to run back for lunch, and sees her grandmother waiting by the fence.
As the novel opens, we are greeted by Ron Williamson who is a character from the small town of Ada, Oklahoma, which is one of those types of places no one even knew, existed. Williamson is very much thought of like the star quarterback on the college football team. He was “Mr. Popularity” throughout high school; always being the one to round up the gang for a party every weekend. He was a very talented athlete and never passed up a ball game. Williamson was on the honor roll throughout high school, a straight A-grade student, and was recognized many times for his performance as a student at school and his performance as an athlete on the field. His success did not end after high school, but rather he went on to play for the major league in baseball and was recognized for his performance over and over again leading the draft picks many seasons. Ron had dreamed of being a ‘big-star’ and a ‘hit’ in the major leagues just as he was on his hometown team, but unfortunately for him he never did reach such heights.
There were not many major characters in this movie, but all played an important roll to the subject matter. Jimmy Morris was the main character, a young man, about 30 years old with a wife, three children, and a career as a chemistry high school teacher and baseball coach. His high school baseball team was the inspiration to him helping to achieve his goal of wanting to be a major league baseball player. Lori Morris, Jimmy’s wife, Hunter was his only young son who adored his father, and two young daughters Jessica, and Jamie. Jimmy’s father who was a military man played a minor part in the movie but, was the reason for a major controversy in the main character’s life.
I don’t sing, I can’t draw, and I definitely do not dance. Other than the ability to memorize useless things, I was blessed with the ability to play sports. Since I was six my life has revolved around sports. Throughout these eleven years of continuous ball, I have developed a highly competitive attitude, learned how to be a leader, and learned how to deal with adversity.
The mind-body connection is a very powerful one. For everything you think in your mind, your body has a reaction, regardless of whether it is real or imagined. For example, have you ever had a bad dream? Usually, you will wake up and your heart is racing, you are sweating and very agitated, even though all you were doing was sleeping. But, in your mind there was something bad going on and your body was reacting to it. Here?s another example: if you are home alone and you hear a noise and interpret it as the wind, you are fine; but if you interpret it as a prowler, your fight or flight response takes over and you become fearful. Your heart begins going a mile a minute, your eyes dilate, and you are scared. These are just a few examples of how strong the connection is between your mind and your body. With this premise, it becomes unmistakable how necessary it is to train both the mind and body for 'peak performance'.
Sport and identity together have a unique relationship in which any regional or national place can use sport as a means to create a sense of identity. The relationship is complex and varied. Identity can be explained as understanding what or who a person or a thing is. Sport is capable of creating a feeling of nationhood and this is an important factor. It is important too for a nation to create a sense of identity but it is especially important for a regional area. For a small country to host a major sporting event is a significant achievement especially with having rivalry with bigger neighbouring countries. Nationalism can be expressed in a less aggressive manner through sport because there is a clear winner and loser; it is a clear cut way of asserting superiority of your notion over others. In this essay, one regional and one national example will be looked upon to see how they use sport to assert their sense of identity. Cricket in Yorkshire County Cricket Club will be used as a source of a regional example and rugby in South Africa will be used as a national example. We will look at the factors they used to inflict sport as a means to promote their identity and also if these identities are sustainable.
However, one cannot lose sight of the humanity within the film. The spectacles of the balls themselves intimately show a mirage of human emotions including passion, desire, joy, humor, grace, and delight. The featured men willingly share the pleasure they feel through participation in the balls with us, the watching audience. They attempt to describe the exhilaration of being able to "become anything and do anything." (1.)
normal thing rather than something only pro athletes do. The study of the mind and how it
It is clear that meditation helps heal the mind and body from everyday stress and worries, but who knew it would be making such a huge impact on athletic performance! Meditation has without question EXPLODED into the world of sports. Professional athletes of all sports practice meditation to help them visualize themselves with perfect technique in order to replicate it over and over during games or matches. They also meditate to become more focused on the task at hand and athletes meditate to remove emotional influence from determining the players skill of play during that match.
The functionalist perspective is a sociological approach that emphasizes the way in which the parts of a society are structured to maintain its stability. Well, sports contributes to the overall social stability of our society by teaching kids at a young age how important something as simple as teamwork and trust is.
Even by just watching this movie, I felt the strong understand of challenging yourself for the better instead of going with the status quo of failure. Instead of accepting what seems to come for you, change your future, because every moment counts. And just because you may not win every time, doesn’t mean you didn’t learn anything. You could’ve learned education, self worth, and individuality within a team. Now you’ve won something that could change a person for a lifetime. And that’s why I really enjoyed this movie. I enjoyed the opportunities to interpret the obvious messages differently. That’s why someone else might get a different vibe out of the Coach Carter. And that’s more than I could hope for in a movie.
Three factors were identified that contribute to the affects anxiety and stress has on an athlete’s performance. These factors were sent to psychologists and sports analysts who ranked them according to their level of importance they believed each factor had. Seven experts’ rankings are included in the funny mathematical section. Each expert participated in a survey that ranked the factors on a scale from one to ten. The degree of strict agreement between all the experts was 0.2000. Although this may seem like a number of great significance, the experts did possess the same views, making it difficult for the level of agreement to be high.
A lot of times, sports seem like a contest of physical skill― a test to see who is the fastest or strongest, who has the best eye or the most endurance, who can jump the highest or can handle the ball the best. What a lot of people don’t know is that there is so much more to a sport than just the muscle and coordination. In order to excel in a sport, an athlete requires a lot of self-discipline, concentration, and self-confidence. It’s the mental factor that makes a difference. Former Olympic gold medal-winning decathlon runner Bruce Jenner once said, “You have to train your mind like you train your body” (Gregoire 1). Success or failure depends on the mental factors just as much as the physical ones. The training of the mind of an athlete is called sports psychology. The use of sports psychology has a huge impact upon an athlete’s performance. The mental skills of a sport are just as important as the physical skills. All professional athletes use sports psychology. “If they aren’t currently using it, it’s almost guaranteed they’ve used it in the past, even if they are unaware they have” (Davis, Stephens, The Exploratorium 129). It’s hard to find an experienced athlete who hasn’t used sports psychology, because without it, they probably wouldn’t be where they are. The use of sports psychology is a crucial step to becoming a successful athlete.