jgallanis

This could have been the best cooking show ever. The "home team" of Brooke Williamson, Michael Voltaggio and Tiffany Derry are as talented a collection of brilliant and innovative young chefs as you 'll ever see. My problem with the show is that it is often spoiled by egomaniac judges suffering from "I've gotta be the smartest person in the room" syndrome (Hi Frank!) There needs to a baseline of talent and taste in the selection of judges. Not just any bozo who happens to drink with Bobby Flay. If they took pains to seek out informed, Knowledgeable judges who actually judged the food in front of them rather than indulging in their pre-conceived notions and prejudices, this could be the best cooking competition show ever aired. As it stands, it's not.

Lord, Lord, young Ruby Dee was beautiful beyond belief! This is clearly a low budget production which canonizes Branch Rickey to an absurd extent, still worth your time if you're a fan of the most courageous player in baseball history. I have doubts about the film's contention that Rickey DIDN'T violate Negro League contracts when signing Robinson, Campanella, and Newcombe. In any event, in the universe of baseball movies, this is well above average, despite some stilted dialogue and obviously period-imposed distortions. Side note: odd that a feature film would be made a mere two years into Robinson's career.

As usual, Burns and his team do a terrific job of outlining the dead ball era of baseball. My major issue is that his portrait of the dominant player of that era, Ty Cobb, appears to have been taking verbatim from the unreliable and often misproven scribblings of Al Stump, the ghostwriter of the elderly Cobb's deathbed autobiography. I am a little surprised that Burns would fall prey to Stump's fairly obvious pulp fiction, but I guess it makes a more compelling story than an actual portrait of the complex, and certainly flawed individual that was Ty Cobb. When would I expect some sort of retraction or correction.