It's Not Crazy, It's Sports

March 2, 2015 7:33 AM

It's Errol Morris Week at Grantland. Six short documentaries created by Academy Award winning filmmaker Errol Morris (previously) will be rolled out this week. The first, entitled The Subterranean Stadium, about a league of electric football players, was posted today.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates (4 comments total)

This first one is a pretty good example of the question I posted a few days ago on AskMefi about fanatics being consumed by objects/crafts. Some people did suggest some Errol Morris stuff, but not his entire back catalogue (minus thin blue line/mcnamara/rumsfeld basically), so I would just point anyone interested to that errolmorris tag. Not that I need to really, considering this has 23 favourites currently before even a comment is posted! Which makes me wonder what the record is. Anyway, thank you for this. I'm not sure what his policy on the interrotron is now? Is it only used for 'serious' stuff?
posted by dimejubes at 1:39 PM on March 2, 2015

So far, I really liked The Subterranean Stadium and didn't much care about The Heist. I think Morris in general is a lot better when he goes into a situation without an pre-planned story and can really get into it with the people, turning something as mundane as "A bunch of guys play a nostalgic football game for fun in one guy's basement" into a story about aging and family and coping with loss. The Heist, by contrast, is just telling the story of some college hijinx in almost the same way you'd get in a newspaper article about it, and never really got to much of anything interesting about who the guys were or why they did it.
posted by Copronymus at 4:07 PM on March 3, 2015

I agree. I think The Heist is lacking an antagonist. These guys are still anonymous -- why? Is someone still looking for them? Who? What's that person's story? The saddest detective in the world.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 4:43 PM on March 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Quote about Rumsfield: There’s something about his manner that reveals to me much about the man. A refusal to engage stuff with any meaning is really frightening, and I think that’s part of who he is.

Makes me think I shouldn't have listened to the critics- might have to watch that one.
posted by zenon at 9:59 PM on March 5, 2015