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It’s Wednesday evening here at BCB After Dark: the grooviest get-together of night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. It’s so good to see you. We’re busy tonight, but we’ll make room for you. There’s no cover charge. The dress code is casual. We’re getting a table ready for you now. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Last night I asked you if we should “Let Pete be Pete” or whether he should tone down his fiery nature. Fully 72 percent of you don’t want Pete Crow-Armstrong to change anything about his personality. The rest were fairly split down the middle between whether PCA should only tone it down on the field or everywhere.
Boy, are Dodgers fans angry about this one. At least the “online” ones. I always have to keep reminding myself that the majority of people aren’t scanning social media for stuff to get angry about.
Here’s the part where we listen to jazz and talk movies. You can skip this part if you want. I mean, you can skip reading the entire thing if you want, but you no doubt realize that it’s too late for that now.
I’ve been re-visiting Miles Davis’ early electric period lately, so I’m going to share some of that with you. Here’s the title track (and all of side two) of In a Silent Way, the album that revolutionized what jazz could be. (And that’s not the first time Miles did that.)
This is the period where Miles was transitioning away from the Second Great Miles Davis Quintet and towards the electric group that played on his next (and more famous) album, Bitches Brew. Wayne Shorter is still on saxophone and Herbie Hancock is still on piano, except that it’s an electric piano and he’s joined by another legendary player on electric piano, Chick Corea. Joe Zawinul, who wrote the first part of this suite, plays the organ. John McLaughlin joins Miles for the first time on electric guitar. Dave Holland has replaced Ron Carter on bass but Tony Williams is still the drummer.
We’re done with the BCB Winter Science Fiction Classic now and we’ll have seven more months before we have to decide what we’ll talk about next winter. That means I have to go back to writing about movies on my own, at least if I want to keep the format of this feature the same. I may temporarily stop writing about movies in a week or so because the World Baseball Classic may be taking up all of my time. But I have a little time to write about film in the meantime.
I’m going to depart from my traditional way of writing about an old movie a week. When writing about the winner of our recent tournament, 2001: A Space Odyssey, I mentioned that the most recent (2022) BFI Sight & Sound critics poll of the greatest films of all time listed 2001 as the sixth-greatest film of all-time. When I went back to the list to double check that, I realized that since I had recently watched director Wong Kar-wai’s 200o film In the Mood for Love, I had seen seven of the top ten films on that list. Since the other three movies were easy enough to track down and watch, I did that. The three films I hadn’t yet seen were director Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953), director Claire Denis’ Beau Travail (1999) and director Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929). Over the past week or so, I’ve watched all three of those films, so I can say I’ve seen the top ten movies of all time, at least according to one list.
So today I thought I’d start by giving you some quick thoughts on all ten of those films. I’m not going to go in depth on any of them and some of them I’ve written about before. I’ll write about the first two tonight and try to get to the rest when I have the chance.
- Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. (1975) Directed by Chantal Akerman. Starring Delphine Seyrig.
I wrote about Jeanne Dielman before and looking back at what I wrote about it, man, was I too harsh. I understand why I was too harsh—I’ll get to that in a minute—but the farther away I get from the ordeal of actually having to watch Jeanne Dielman, the more I’ve come to appreciate it.
The thing that impresses me about Jeanne Dielman is the impact the film has. I originally wrote that I was still thinking about the film three days after having seen it. It’s been three years now since I watched Jeanne Dielman and I’m still thinking about it. This is a movie with the kind of real power that ninety-nine percent of films do not have. It’s genius. I don’t think I got that in 2022. I do now.
Having said that, I wrote that watching it was an ordeal and I stick by that. Akerman seemingly borrowed a lot from experimental theater of the time. I don’t know if she was familiar with the works of Robert Wilson, but that’s what I was reminded of. The film is almost three-and-a-half hours long and nothing happens over the first three hours. That’s not quite true. For example, Dielman drops a brush while cleaning midway through the film and that’s significant, although it doesn’t seem so at the time. But it’s not what any of us in the audience would call action. It’s silently dropping a brush and picking it up. Watching Jeanne Dielman is a test of your endurance. You’ll be rewarded in the end, but it won’t seem worth it while you’re doing it.
Would I put it in my top ten? Maybe. It’s certainly a film that’s changed the way I interact with movies and the farther the actual experience of watching it is in my rearview mirror, the more I enjoy it. I don’t begrudge anyone who voted it number one anymore. But I would not make it my number one and please don’t make me watch it again or I might hate it again.
2. Vertigo. (1958) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring James Stewart and Kim Novak.
Jeanne Dielman knocked Vertigo off the top spot as Hitchcock’s masterpiece won the previous 2012 poll. I wrote about Vertigo last winter when we did our Alfred Hitchcock tournament. I seeded it as the number-one Hitchcock movie, although the more crowd-pleasing North by Northwest ended up winning the whole thing. (And man, I do love North by Northwest too, so that result didn’t disappoint me.)
I don’t think I truly appreciated Vertigo until I got a 4K UHD Blu-Ray copy of it and could really take in the visual feast that Hitchcock and cinematographer Robert Burks put together. I’m sure the first time I saw Vertigo was on a rented VHS tape on a standard 1980s television with tinny mono sound. I remember for years thinking that Vertigo was just good, but that there were at least a five or six Hitchcock films that were better. The technology of the times couldn’t capture the artistry of Vertigo. I’m not even sure if most theaters in 1958 could capture it, although I’m sure they did a whole lot better than my TV. Psycho, which was made with a TV crew and a TV budget, played a lot better on a VCR than Vertigo ever did.
I had to watch Vertigo three or four times before I realized it’s a masterpiece. It looks gorgeous and every shot is perfectly composed. Speaking of composed, I might prefer the Bernard Herrmann score in other Hitchcock films, but his work on Vertigo is fantastic as well. Both Stewart and Novak give powerful performances. And I guess as I get older, the film’s themes of madness and obsession resonate more with me.
Would I put it in my top ten? Definitely. I’d probably vote for it as number one. Vertigo is everything cinema should be. I could watch it ten more times and never get bored.
Next time, I’ll try to write about Citizen Kane and Tokyo Story.
Welcome back to everyone who skips all that other stuff.
The Cubs got some bad news today as first baseman Tyler Austin underwent knee surgery and would be out for “months,” according to manager Craig Counsell. Now I don’t know if “months” means two months or eight months, but I’m going to assume that with the surgery, recovery and time to ramp back up, Austin is probably out until at least July. Early June would probably be a best-case scenario, but August or September isn’t out of the question. Heck, the entire season is possible.
Austin, 34, who was returning to MLB after a successful six-year career in NPB, isn’t one of the key players on the Cubs roster. But he was expected to fill the role that Justin Turner played last year: a right-handed bat off the bench and depth at first base.
Without Austin, the Cubs are thin at first. Yes, Michael Busch returns and he is one of the top first basemen in the game these days. The Cubs have also said that they expect Busch to play a lot more against left-handed starters this year. But on the days Busch doesn’t play, there aren’t a lot of good options. Rookie Moisés Ballesteros has a fair amount of experience at first in the minor leagues, but he also bats left-handed and thus isn’t a good choice to give Busch a day off against a tough lefty. He’s also not a terrific defensive first baseman, although he may be at least OK there, which is more than you can say about his catching.
Ian Happ has played 11 games in the majors at first and I suppose that whoever ends up winning the fourth outfielder role could man left field while Happ is at first. But that doesn’t solve the right-handed bat on the bench problem, nor is it really a long-term solution if Busch got hurt. None of the three non-roster invitee outfielders, Dylan Carlson, Chas McCormick and Michael Conforto, have any real experience at first base. Conforto is a left-handed bat to boot. (Carlson is a switch-hitter who hits lefties better.) Matt Shaw is a right-handed bat off the bench, but he has zero experience at first base. Plus, the Cubs want him playing all over the diamond and not just at first.
The Cubs do have one option in the minor leagues in first baseman prospect Jonathon Long. Long is right-handed and has played the majority of his career at first base. He could be an easy in-house solution for the hole that Austin’s injury has left.
There are a couple of caveats to Long, however. While Long had a good year in Triple-A Iowa last year, we know that with the contraction of the minor leagues, the jump from Triple-A to the majors is greater than it’s ever been. Even top prospects have struggled with it to start their careers. By the time Long got the hang of hitting major league pitching, it might be July and Austin might be ready to return.
Long’s ZiPS projections for 2026 in the majors aren’t great either at .246/.334/.372. To be fair, those batting average and OBP projections are pretty close to what they projected for Austin, although Austin was projected for more power with a .459 slugging percentage.
Finally, if you really think Jonathon Long is a good major league prospect, do you really want him sitting on a major league bench getting six or seven at-bats a week? Don’t you want him working on his skills down in Iowa? Long could especially work on increasing his power totals if he wants to be a starting first baseman in the majors (and he does).
There is one other option. While almost every first base free agent has signed with a team already, there is still one on the market: Wilmer Flores. The 34-year-old 12-year right-handed hitting veteran is still unsigned, even though he didn’t have a bad year last year. With the Giants, Flores hit .241/.307/.379 with 16 home runs in 125 games. Signing Flores would give the Cubs an almost like-for-like replacement for Austin, although Flores won’t have to re-adjust himself to major league pitching.
I’m sure the reason that Flores hasn’t signed yet is that he wants a major league deal. Were he willing to accept a minor league deal with an invitation to Spring Training, someone would have given that to him by now. To sign him, the Cubs would have to give him guaranteed money, which would certainly put the Cubs into the luxury tax penalty, if they aren’t already in that territory now.
The good news, however, is that Flores probably won’t need a lot of money. He inked a two-year extension with the Giants in 2022 that had a player option for 2025 at $3.5 million. Flores exercised that player option. So he agreed to play for the Giants on a one-year, $3.5 million deal last year and is probably looking for something similar this year. Going $3 million or so over the first luxury tax threshold is a minor penalty for a team like the Cubs.
So should the Cubs try to bring in Wilmer Flores to replace Tyler Austin before some other team snaps him up? Or should they just try to make due with the players currently in the organization?
Thanks to everyone who stopped by this week and especially a big thank you to everyone who joined the conversation. We are always glad to hear from our patrons. Please get home safely. If it’s snowy by your house, take extra care. We want you back next week. Tell your friends about us. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again next week for more BCB After Dark.