Latest news with #Eephus'
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Afternoon Briefing: Severe weather strikes south suburbs
Good afternoon, Chicago. Despite the snow that fell on parts of the Chicago area, today marks the spring equinox. And you know what that means: Chicagohenge. Twice a year, during the spring and fall equinoxes, the rising and setting sun lines up with Chicago's east-west street grid, creating spectacular photo opportunities as the sun is framed within Chicago's skyline. Here's how it works — and where to see it during sunrise and sunset. And here's what else is happening today. And remember, for the latest breaking news in Chicago, visit and sign up to get our alerts on all your devices. Subscribe to more newsletters | Asking Eric | Horoscopes | Puzzles & Games | Today in History Winds from heavy storms that hit the south and southwest suburbs late Wednesday afternoon ripped the roof of a building in Steger, temporarily closing nearby railroad tracks. Read more here. More top news stories: Suspect killed in Pullman police shooting after domestic disturbance: CPD Naperville police make fourth gun-related arrest at Topgolf parking lot since early February Eight Chicago-based U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development staffers with more than 180 collective years of service have retired or are retiring later this year as the agency undergoes scrutiny and faces cuts from billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and President Donald Trump. Read more here. More top business stories: Bracing for budget crisis, Metra agreed to pay lobbyist as much as $4.65M for work on transit fiscal cliff Amid discontent at classical station, WFMT employees announce intent to unionize Here are five takeaways from No. 11 seed Xavier's win as No. 6 seed Illinois prepares for the matchup. More top sports stories: 'Proud and honored': Kosuke Fukudome, the Chicago Cubs' first Japanese player, reconnects with team in Tokyo Is 'winning the offseason' a real thing? And what must the Chicago Bears do for the NFL draft to be a success? Lollapalooza has announced the lineup by day for summer 2025, with Luke Combs and Tyler, the Creator as the headliners on the festival's opening day July 31. Read more here. More top Eat. Watch. Do. stories: 'Sunny Afternoon' opens soon at Chicago Shakes, telling the chaotic story of Ray Davies and The Kinks Review: 'Eephus' is a fond farewell to a small-town baseball field in its last inning Across wine country in France, Italy and Spain one number is top of mind: 200%. That's because last week U.S. President Donald Trump threatened a tariff of that amount on European wine, Champagne and other spirits if the European Union went ahead with retaliatory tariffs on some U.S. products. Read more here. More top stories from around the world: Social Security Administration to require in-person identity checks for new and existing recipients US falls to lowest-ever position in world happiness rankings; Finland on top again
Chicago Tribune
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Eephus' is a fond farewell to a small-town baseball field in its last inning
'Is this how it's gonna end?' By the time one of the small-town, middle-aged baseball players in director Carson Lund's disarming debut feature 'Eephus' says that line, it's very late, very dark and, for the old baseball field — Soldier's Field by name, a little smaller than Chicago's Soldier Field — it's the final inning before the ballfield is to be razed to make way for a new middle school. Places come; places go. Every human being deals with loss differently. 'Eephus' acknowledges that, but it's a sweet, sidewinding paradox of a sports movie: sentimental in a quietly unsentimental and offhandedly comic fashion. Lund's film confines the movie almost entirely to the nearly departed ballfield, before, during and after its final game. Yet it doesn't feel confining. Enough happens on or near any baseball diamond to get a movie out of it, if the right filmmakers are at the plate. Lund and cinematographer Greg Tango shoot and light 'Eephus' in grandly scaled digital widescreen imagery, in daylight, sunset hours and the cloak of night, and that too is a useful paradox. Not much happens, but every shot is composed like a widescreen mini-epic of downtime and hangtime, without much happening or any earnest revelations to solemnize things. We're hanging with the last remaining players on two amateur league rivals, the Riverdogs (wearing blue) and Adler's Paint (in red). The movie takes its title for the unfashionable floater of a nearly unhittable pitch, long, high and vexing. 'Stays in the air forever,' one player complains, adding: 'You get bored watching it.' The plot of 'Eephus' can be taken care of quickly, because there isn't one. We get to know the players a little, simply by overhearing casual, back-and-forth observations and insults and banter. Some of them will truly, madly, deeply miss this place, and playing there. Others, less so; a couple of these men have been hanging on to this tradition, and their time away from other things, family or otherwise, with a certain amount of guilt attached. My favorite character in 'Eephus' is an observer, not a player: Franny, a twitchy charmer and die-hard Soldier's Field regular played by Cliff Blake in a superb casting stroke. Franny's devoted to careful, even obsessive statistical reporting on each new set of innings. He has been for most of his many decades. Setting up his folding table for this final match-up, we see a man in his element. It's merely a bonus when Blake re-creates the most famous line from the 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic 'Pride of the Yankees,' taken from Gehrig's moving 1939 pronouncement that he's 'the luckiest man on the face of the earth.' This makes 'Eephus' sound like pure corn, which it isn't. Its wit beams on and off a little, but it's nice and dry. The script, co-written by Michael Basta, Nate Fisher and director Lund, has the simplest of structures and while there are complications and demi-crises, on the field and off, it's all a part of the fabric. The innings come and go, as does the sound of a local radio personality (the movie's set in the 1990s, more or less) voiced by legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. 'Is this how it's gonna end?' The line comes near the end, though early in the movie, one character says the old ballfield will go 'the way of the Hindenburg,' which sounds pretty grandiose. When the end arrives — and I sorely wish the final shot was the terrific image of Franny, filmed from behind, watching the players drive off for the last time — the feelings and memories in progress weigh more than you'd expect. 'Eephus' — 3 stars (out of 4) No MPA rating (some coarse language) How to watch: Premieres March 21 at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.
Los Angeles Times
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
He remembers a different kind of baseball, relaxed and chatty. ‘Eephus' gets it on film
Controversially, the implementation of a pitch clock in 2023 effectively transformed the experience of both playing and watching major league baseball. By undermining the pitcher's authority on how the innings flow, the timekeeper shortens a game's duration. Now, as filmmaker and recreational ballplayer Carson Lund points out, America's pastime has become just another transactional activity — something you can schedule to get in and out of. A once leisurely sport has been forced to fit the demands of our hyperspeed culture. 'I find it cynical,' Lund, 33, tells me as we sit on a picnic table in Elysian Park across from a field with teenage boys at baseball practice. 'At its purest, and the way it was for 100 years, baseball is a game that could take five, six hours if it had to. It created its own sense of time and theoretically could go on forever.' The desire to portray baseball's enrapturing quality propelled Lund to co-write and direct his debut feature, 'Eephus' (now in theaters), an amusing and delightfully acted dramedy set in the 1990s about two adult recreational teams in suburban Massachusetts playing one last game before their local field is demolished and turned into a school. As day turns into night, the men play on, never quite managing to express their shared sorrow over the loss, which yields both humor and pathos. Their friendships are bound by baseball and might not extend beyond the field, yet Lund thinks of these team-driven relationships as authentic, even if tenuous. 'You work through your feelings through the language of the game and competitive banter,' Lund says. 'The banter in the film is very regional, feels like New England to me, a place where sports are so much a part of the culture that they've infused the vernacular.' Lund says he never much cared for baseball movies. All of them, he thinks, lack the rhythms of the game because, as with a pitch clock, they are 'ultimately subservient to the demands of Hollywood narratives.' 'They're so often fixated on individuals who are going through some sort of transformation and the game is simply a metaphor for that,' explains Lund. 'I wanted to immerse you in this single day on a single field and create a more collective experience with a large ensemble who are all dealing with the same thing, which is saying goodbye to a ritual, saying goodbye to a version of themselves that they create on that field together.' Lund's approach to a deeply American subject involved pacing and formal choices that one might more often associate with European art films or even Asian 'slow cinema.' Lund aimed to evoke the longing of Taiwan-based master Tsai Ming-liang's 2003 film 'Goodbye, Dragon Inn,' about the last showing at a movie theater about to close. 'I was interested in the bittersweet, funeral quality that suffuses Tsai's film,' Lund says. 'The films I love the most are the ones that privilege some degree of distraction or floating attention and allow you to luxuriate in the atmosphere.' An avid cinephile whose broad smile often illuminates his face, Lund started watching Stanley Kubrick and Ingmar Bergman movies at a young age through his father's recommendations. He's especially confident when talking baseball. Lund found the ideal field for 'Eephus' in the small city of Douglas, Mass., after visiting more than 100 diamonds across New England. 'I wanted a field that felt like it had been degraded by time with old wood, chipped paint and a sense of history,' he says. Since his cast of characters is, in his words, 'over the hill' — adult men ranging from rusty to out of shape, in a recreational league where the stakes are as low as they can be — Lund could focus on conveying the feeling of community by embracing a bit of chaos and capturing the action in wide shots. 'I wanted to see the interaction between all these different bodies moving around and the distance between everyone,' he explains. 'There are many qualities of baseball that aren't shared by any other major sport. It's very unique.' Born into a Boston Red Sox-loving household, Lund grew up in Nashua, N.H., and played shortstop in a traveling league. His father, who played throughout his life until recently due to an ailing knee, encouraged Lund and his brother to do it out of love for the game, never as an obligation. Lund played the coveted infield position in part because he looked up to Nomar Garciaparra, star player for the Red Sox in the late '90s and early aughts. Though he aspired to the majors, Lund eventually found the competitiveness among young men with similar ambitions too toxic. 'I just stopped, which broke my dad's heart,' he says. 'I was more interested in exploring creative outlets.' A high school job at his local library fed Lund's growing appetite for international cinema. Moving to sunny Los Angeles, where the fervor for the Dodgers is palpable wherever you go, rekindled Lund's fondness for the sport. For the last eight years he's played recreationally in the Soldiers, a team that's part of the Pacific Coast Baseball League. Some of his longtime Soldiers teammates were aware he was making a baseball movie, and they all attended the AFI Fest screening of 'Eephus' in Hollywood in October. 'There's no competition in this league,' Lund notes. 'I found it very relaxing and joyful. It's a sport, so you're exerting yourself, but the meditative qualities of baseball really started to stand out to me. The qualities you see in the film.' For Lund, filmmaking has always been a team sport. The screenplay for 'Eephus' emerged from the collaboration with childhood friend Michael Basta, part of the independent film collective Omnes Films with Lund, and Nate Fisher, with whom Lund first became acquainted while attending screenings at the Harvard Film Archive. The writing started over Zoom at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic with them asking each other what they would want to see in a baseball game. What archetypes would need to be included? That involved creating a box score, a visual map of the fictional game that would unfold throughout the film. 'Carson knew the game play, Nate knows fun, weird, trivial parts of baseball and I had the off-the-field stuff,' says Basta via Zoom. 'It was a funny mix of different baseball minds.' The trio first figured out what happened inning by inning. Once they had that structure, the process entailed discussing when and how to spend time with each of the characters without prioritizing one over another. 'It was about negotiating the push-pull between speed and stasis,' says Lund. 'That's what baseball's all about. These long periods of nothing happening and then bursts of action. I wanted to tease out those passages of nothingness and show that there's actually a lot happening.' In turn, Fisher agreed to participate as long as he could cast himself playing a character based on his all-time favorite player, Zack Greinke, a prodigious pitcher known for his deadpan sense of humor and idiosyncratic personality. More importantly, Greinke still occasionally throws the archaic 'eephus' pitch that lends the movie its title. 'We needed a guy to sit on the sideline and explain the whole theme of the movie in three minutes or less,' Fisher says during a video interview. 'I gave that to myself because it's really easy to act when you write your own lines. I hope [Greinke] gets to see this movie.' As Fisher's character, Merritt — who wears the number 21 like Greinke did when he played for Fisher's beloved team, the Arizona Diamondbacks — puts it, the eephus is 'a type of curve ball that is pitched so unnaturally slow that it confuses the batter … makes him lose track of time.' Notable among the many cast members is the voice of legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman ('Titicut Follies,' 'Central Park') as a radio announcer. Initially, Lund intended to have him play an on-camera role, but Wiseman's advanced age — he is 95 — complicated his involvement. Lund would love to see the veteran nonfiction storyteller make one of his acclaimed observational works about baseball. 'It wasn't just that I liked his voice,' Lund says about reaching out to Wiseman. 'I felt that by putting him in the film, I was telling the audience that this is more of an anthropological film than it is a traditional narrative. It's sort of a cue.' Red Sox fans also will delight in a late cameo by Bill Lee, nicknamed 'Spaceman,' an eccentric baseball luminary who, quite famously, also threw the eephus to catch people off guard. 'Having his name attached helped us secure financing,' Lund recalls. While none of the adult characters in 'Eephus' serve as direct proxies for Lund ('If I were in the film, it would be a better shortstop,' he boasts, endearingly), he did find a way to obliquely put himself in the film. Halfway through the game, a kid and his father show up to practice but discover the field is occupied. It's a brief but personally significant moment. 'It's actually my dad playing the dad and the kid is wearing my jersey of the New Hampshire Grizzlies from when I was in my traveling league,' Lund recalls, smiling. His proud father attended the film's premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Baseball, now filtered through filmmaking, seems to function for Lund as an unspoken gesture of genuine love. What could be more precious than time shared on a field? He bleeds Red Sox blood, so you won't catch him cheering for the Dodgers any time soon, but L.A. has grown on him nonetheless. 'At Dodger Stadium you can watch the sunset over the mountains,' he says, painting a scene. 'It's a beautiful experience.'
Boston Globe
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Eephus' is a good-natured hangout movie about one final ball game at a beloved field
When I saw 'Eephus' at the New York Film Festival last year, I was on the fence about it. Readers know I'm a huge baseball fan, but I was worn out by the end of the movie. I had a better time watching the same actors play a real live baseball game a few days later, Advertisement Players from Adler's Paint in "Eephus." From left: Jeff Saint Dic, David Torres Jr., Theodore Bouloukos, Ethan Ward, John R. Smith Jr., and Brendan "Crash" Burt. Music Box Films With their diet of multiple movies per day, film festivals can be exhausting. While I trust my reactions to films I either love or hate, it's the movies that lurk on the thin line between a positive and negative review that I always want to revisit when they finally get a general release date. Such is the case with 'Eephus,' because I honestly couldn't remember anything I actively disliked about the film other than the fact that it felt a bit too dragged out by the end. So, I went to see it again before filing this review. I didn't expect my opinion to change, to be honest; I thought this was going to remain a ★★½ review. But somehow, the movie didn't overstay its welcome this time, and I enjoyed it more. Lund has crafted a good-natured hangout movie that tells the story of one final game at Soldiers Field, a New Hampshire-set diamond slated for demolition the following day. (The film was shot in Douglas, Mass.) The game lasts into the night, on a field with no lights. We can hardly see what's going on by then, which is kind of funny. But it shows the commitment of the film's characters, a motley crew of men of varying ages playing on two sponsored teams, Adler's Paint and the Riverdogs. They've convened on Oct. 16 — a Sunday — to play the final game of the final season of an adult competitive league that's been around for quite some time. Advertisement Little mini-dramas lazily unfold. One team only has eight players, because one of the guys has something else to do. And it's clear that Father Time has been encroaching on the bodies of the older men. 'The worst part of this sport is the running,' we're told, and though everyone does their best to hustle, it's obvious that their best days are mere memories now. The film has a raggedy pace not unlike the runners who succeed or fail to score. Still, these guys are here to play, and they take it seriously. They have returned to Soldiers Field every year like the swallows return to Capistrano; it's more by instinct and routine than conscious thought. The film quietly contemplates the minor tragedy of losing such a familiar and comforting location. There are so many characters here it's hard to keep them straight. I don't think the film expects you too, either. You'll recognize everyone, and there are some standouts like grumpy Adler's Paint coach Ed (Keith William Richards), rival Riverdogs coach Graham (Stephen Radochia), a sincere player named Cooper (Conner Marx), and beer-loving Riverdog Troy (David Pridemore). Your beloved Red Sox even get a shoutout, represented by Bill 'Spaceman' Lee, a purveyor of the weird, slow pitch that gives the film its title. 'Uncut Gems''s Wayne Diamond also has a cameo. Cliff Blake in "Eephus." Music Box Films Additionally, the voice of documentarian Frederick Wiseman is heard every so often on the soundtrack, and the game itself is scored by actor Cliff Blake, who sits behind what looks like a TV tray of sorts, armed with his book of stats. When I attended the baseball game in Manhattan, I went to Blake to check the score. It was as if I'd walked into the movie. Advertisement That's probably the best way to describe 'Eephus' — watching it feels as if you are in the bleachers of Soldiers Field. ★★★ EEPHUS Written and directed by Carson Lund. Starring Cliff Blake, Conner Marx, Keith William Richards, David Pridemore, Stephen Radochia, Bill 'Spaceman' Lee, Wayne Diamond, Frederick Wiseman. At the Coolidge, Somerville Theatre, Dedham Community Theater. 98 min. Unrated (salty language, as per a baseball game) Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
Gulf Today
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
‘Eephus' is the best baseball movie since ‘Moneyball'
In Carson Lund's 'Eephus,' two teams — the Riverdogs and Adler's Paint — gather on a neighbourhood field for a baseball game. The leaves are already starting to turn — 'It's getting late early,' as Yogi Berra said — and this is to be the final game for their adult rec league. The field is to be demolished. No one would confuse them for all-stars. A suicide squeeze unfolds in creaky slow motion. The rotund left fielder mutters 'Mother McCree' under his breath when the ball is hit in the gap. But, regardless of skill level, they all care sincerely about the game. 'Eephus,' as leisurely as a late-August double header, simply unfolds along with their game. Except to chase a foul ball or two, the movie stays within the lines of Soldier Field, the nondescript Massachusetts baseball field they're playing on sometime in the 1990s. It spans nine innings, with dugout chatter and fading light. In this slow-pitch gem of a baseball movie — a middle-aged 'Sandlot' — time is slipping away, but they're going down swinging. Money, analytics and whatever's on ESPN can sometimes cloud what sports is to most people: A refuge. 'Eephus,' in that way, is a change-up of a baseball movie, an elegiac ode to the humbler weekend warriors who are driven by nothing but genuine affection for the game. Richly detailed and mordantly deadpan, 'Eephus' adopts their pace of play, soaking up all the sesame-seed flavour that goes along with it. The title comes from an unnaturally slow pitch not slung but lobbed toward home. When I was a kid pitching, I liked to uncork one from time to time, much to my coach's dismay. The metaphor isn't hard to grasp. One player describes it as a pitch you can get bored watching, even making you lose track of time. Much of the same applies to 'Eephus,' which drifts player to player, play to play, less as an ensemble piece than like a roving spectator. The guys, themselves, have no more than a handful of fans, including the diehard scorekeeper Fanny (Cliff Blake). Frederick Wiseman, the great documentarian whose films chronicle nothing so much as institutions kept alive over time, is the voice of the announcer. I earlier called Lund's film an ode, but it's not a sentimental movie. Time's passage, which no ballgame or perfectly thrown eephus can halt, grows increasingly disquieting as the afternoon light gives way to nightfall. That, to finish the game, they play into near-total darkness, with only headlights to see the ball, is a sign of desperation as much as it is commitment. After all, one guy in the dugout is listening to a radio broadcast of a ballgame, from 1972. What's being lost? It's not a strip mall the field is to be turned into but something harder to quibble with: a school. They could drive half an hour to another field, but that's said to be half Little League, half farmer's market. They aren't a collection of pals, either. They don't hang out away from the diamond. Things they don't talk about: work, families, politics. Things they do: eyecare for the ump. In the annals of baseball movies, 'Eephus' doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame with 'Bull Durham' or 'A League of Their Own.' The closest it gets to the big leagues is an appearance by Bill 'Spaceman' Lee, the 1970s southpaw and eephus adherent. But 'Eephus' is just as deserving of a place in that hardball pantheon, only in some minor ball realm, well below single A. Here, they don't throw 'high cheese' but such meatballs that, as one player riffs, you could call it pasta primavera. To call this a field of dreams would be pushing it. But it's a lovely way to pass some time.
