Yesterday’s Bloggery dealt with a topic that few film blogs were addressing — yet. So, in this post I’m going to focus on something everyone has seen and is talking about today (rather than tomorrow): the Billy Bob Thornton interview on Canadian radio (and Qtv). Hopefully he won’t be too pissed off at me for highlighting comments from FILM blogs responding to something involving his MUSIC career, though I have a feeling he’s not quite as serious as he lets on. Is it just me, or does he seem like he’s about to crack up at certain points when he’s attempting to look annoyed?
This is, of course, just the latest movie star embarrassment, of which we literally have seen a bazillion this year alone (hooray for another excuse for a slideshow). The one that it most resembles is the Joaquin Phoenix Late Show interview, and that only adds to why I thought Billy Bob was feigning his ire. Nobody can be as oblivious and serious as this. He had to know that such behavior hurts the band more than his fame helps them. While I somewhat agree with his initial requests, I believe that in his case he has to sometimes let this “shit” happen and deal with it in a more productive manner.
Here is what the other blogs had to say about the incident:
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Critics had every reason to object when Billy Bob Thornton remade The Bad News Bears a few years back. After all, Walter Matthau had already defined the role of foul-mouthed Coach Buttermaker, a cranky alcoholic who oversees a team of misfit little leaguers, in the perfectly serviceable 1976 original. Now we get yet another variation on the formula, this time starring Sam Rockwell as the last man you’d want coaching a varsity girls basketball team, in The Winning Season.
Strange that this second film from Grace Is Gone writer-director James C. Strouse could be so different from his debut (in which John Cusack played an emasculated widower who refuses to cope with the death of his wife in Iraq), and yet so similar to an entire subcategory of the underdog sports comedy. Some would argue that the girls basketball angle sets The Winning Season apart, but what little originality the film has going for it is the element it shares with the largely unseen (and widely unloved) Grace Is Gone –– namely, its observant yet underplayed attention to a fragile father figure.
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