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Boys in the Boat, dir by Clooney


Beau Vine

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1 hour ago, wild_turkey said:

I wanted to like the book but found it rather boring. Even the races became monotonous because he would describe how hard they were rowing, and then 5 pages later, they would row harder. There were some good parts but lots of it drug for me.

This is how I felt. 60% of the book is basically a biography of Joe Rantz, who is probably the 5th most interesting person on the team. The rest of the book is random history facts of the time awkwardly mixed in with the story, and a TON of monotonous rowing, and rowing, and technical shit about rowing, and rowing. 

The movie can be really good though as long as they put more focus on the team as a whole and don't have each race take up 30 minutes of screen time. 

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  • 1 month later...

Watching PBS American Experience about the 1936 Berlin Olympics and getting a glimpse of some of the members of the rowing team has me looking forward to seeing the movie.  I am going to read the book before going to the movie just as I did when I read Hillenbrand's Unbroken, the remarkable story of Louie Zamperini.  A friend of mine who spends his summers in Puget Sound every year was telling me how this story still resonates with locals in Washington.  Can't wait to experience this show and read this book.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 11/26/2023 at 8:30 AM, BeardIP said:

The trailer played before Napoleon movie and looked fantastic.

It took me a while to get through undergrad, but in my “second tour” down in Austin I spent two semesters rowing with TEXAS CREW, so I’m glad that your trip to the cinema tied my story all together for you.
 

5 hours ago, Don Johnson said:

Saw it today.  Didn’t read the book. Very much enjoyed the movie.  Had a Cinderella Man feel to it.  

It’s about fucking time that Hollywood found an American Cinderella story from the 1936 Olympics.

Glad to see these 8 white boys have finally given America something to cheer about 87 1/2 years later.

IMG_1359.gif.f9d03c376328084fa8c77b695279fa13.gif

 

Spoiler

PS- I have never seen “Cinderella Man” and am too lazy & sarcastic to look it up.

 

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49 minutes ago, Helobious said:

Holy shit at never watching Cinderella man. Outstanding movie 

And with Longhorn alum Rene Zellweger starring as the female lead, this is one I watch once a year.  Agree with the Cinderella Man comparison btw.

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9 hours ago, Napoleon said:

It took me a while to get through undergrad, but in my “second tour” down in Austin I spent two semesters rowing with TEXAS CREW, so I’m glad that your trip to the cinema tied my story all together for you.
 

It’s about fucking time that Hollywood found an American Cinderella story from the 1936 Olympics.

Glad to see these 8 white boys have finally given America something to cheer about 87 1/2 years later.

IMG_1359.gif.f9d03c376328084fa8c77b695279fa13.gif

 

  Reveal hidden contents

PS- I have never seen “Cinderella Man” and am too lazy & sarcastic to look it up.

 

wait.. a rowing crew from seattle washington in 1936 was white? 🙄

They did manage to shoehorn a little diversity to try to placate queefs like you.  Cheers!

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2 hours ago, Pokoloco said:

wait.. a rowing crew from seattle washington in 1936 was white? 🙄

They did manage to shoehorn a little diversity to try to placate queefs like you.  Cheers!

lol at “shoehorn”. UW had black students at that time and even before then. It’d simply be inaccurate for the movie to pretend they didn’t exist at all as you prefer. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I liked the book.  I was wondering when this was going to get made.

I rowed one and a half quarter at Stanford.  The crew was a shambles, just a club, and coming back from the dead.  They ultimately didn't have enough interest to field a lightweight crew, and I was too short to be on the main boat.  But it was beautiful to get out on the bay, even on the shitty part of the bay that we rowed on.  Even if this movie is just pretty, I'm going to love it. I thought the rowing scene in the Social Network was pretty cool

It's a very neat feeling when you get the boat going. 

I kind of regret not just going out to the boathouse and sculling on my own.

 

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Great flick.  So you can see the actual schooner used in the races at the boathouse on the WA campus.  If you give them a 6th year transfer QB and some decent receivers, I bet they let you take it out for a spin....

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  • 3 months later...

Hate to be a bookfag, but thought there was a huge discrepancy between the quality of the book and what was portrayed on screen. It was a solid average movie, decent casting.

The book was an epic story of Joe Rantz and his unlikely rise with others as an Olympic Gold medalist.

The biggest mistake was putting too much in and focusing (superficially) on the love story. The meat of the story was left the floor.

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The stepmom, in particular, was a fascinating story as was the Joe’s dad descent after losing Joe’s mom. Then the story of Joe taking care of himself on his own land, then working on the Gorge dam. Then the rigors and passion of the sport. Unbelievable and gritty stuff.

Also have the story and pedigree of George Pocock and his influence on the sport was fascinating. You had a perfect set up to tell his story as a break from Joe’s story.

Lot of meat and extraordinary scenes from history. At the end of the day, I suspect finances and wanting to appeal to the broadest audience made this just another sports movie.

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