Sugar (Ryan Fleck/Anna Boden, 2008)

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Antoine Doinel
Joined: Sat Mar 04, 2006 1:22 pm
Location: Montreal, Quebec
Contact:

#1 Post by Antoine Doinel » Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:42 am

I was blown away by Half Nelson, and I'm looking forward to Fleck's next film which follows a Dominican baseball player who is recruited to play in the U.S. It will be debuting at Sundance. Here's a brief interview.

User avatar
Tom Hagen
Joined: Mon Apr 14, 2008 12:35 pm
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah

#2 Post by Tom Hagen » Thu Jul 03, 2008 3:06 am

The film was finally picked up by Sony Pictures Classics.

For me, it was easily the best film at Sundance; it was fantastic, building on the promise of Half Nelson in every way. As everyone admits, it will be difficult to market. But I genuinely hope that such a beautiful, humanistic film can find its audience.

User avatar
Antoine Doinel
Joined: Sat Mar 04, 2006 1:22 pm
Location: Montreal, Quebec
Contact:

#3 Post by Antoine Doinel » Mon Oct 27, 2008 2:55 pm

It looks like we'll have to wait until next year for this to hit theaters.

User avatar
Tom Hagen
Joined: Mon Apr 14, 2008 12:35 pm
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah

#4 Post by Tom Hagen » Mon Oct 27, 2008 5:51 pm

Interesting. Sony is going to have a difficult time marketing this film. Sugar is a genuinely great picture that will really struggle to find an audience. Mainstream audiences will be put off by the subtitles and the non-professional actors; by the same token, a baseball film is probably a tough sell for the arthouse crowd. It may not be a bad strategy to get this in theatres next year at the start of the baseball season -- a time of year that also happens to generally be pretty slow-moving on the indie/foreign circuit in the United States.

User avatar
Antoine Doinel
Joined: Sat Mar 04, 2006 1:22 pm
Location: Montreal, Quebec
Contact:

Sugar (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden, 2008)

#5 Post by Antoine Doinel » Wed Jan 28, 2009 6:32 pm

The trailer has arrived for Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's followup the excellent Half Nelson. Filmed with largely non-actors and uniquely focusing on a Dominican player who is recruited to play professional baseball, this promises to be a fresh take on the genre.

User avatar
PerfectDepth
Joined: Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:06 pm
Location: San Francisco

Re: Sugar (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden, 2008)

#6 Post by PerfectDepth » Thu Jan 29, 2009 3:20 pm

As a baseball fan, I've been looking forward to this since it's debut at Sundance last year. However, and it could just be the trailer, it seems odd that a young pitching prospect would be touted for a curveball, whereas 99.9% of scouting reports for pitchers in the Dominican (or anywhere for that matter) focuses on some sort of fastball. Secondary pitches (curve balls, change-ups) outside of being, well, secondary, aren't generally refined until late in a young pitcher's development and most players from the DR are signed when they are 16-18. Could anyone who has seen the film comment on this?

In any case, this is a fairly minor gripe and I'm eager to check this out.

User avatar
Tom Hagen
Joined: Mon Apr 14, 2008 12:35 pm
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah

Re: Sugar (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden, 2008)

#7 Post by Tom Hagen » Mon Feb 02, 2009 3:13 pm

The film starts with its protagonist as an "older" (like 18 or 19 years old) DR academy prospect being selected and signed for his first formal spring training in the States.

Fleck explained at the Sundance Q&A that I attended that he is a huge fan of the game (grew up cheering for the As in the Bay Area if I recall correctly) and that they attended camps in the DR and at spring training to do their homework. As a fan, you shouldn't be disappointed -- the baseball stuff in the movie is pretty authentic.

User avatar
Antoine Doinel
Joined: Sat Mar 04, 2006 1:22 pm
Location: Montreal, Quebec
Contact:

Re: Sugar (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden, 2008)

#8 Post by Antoine Doinel » Wed Apr 29, 2009 8:02 am

Saw this last night and was very impressed. Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden are doing something unique in American film (at least among current young filmmakers who all seem to be moving toward this mumblecore thing) by writing scripts that infuse their own politics of people in a way that isn't overt or preachy. Sugar uses the structure of a baseball film to expand bravely in its second act into a quiet meditation on community, spiritual fulfillment and identity. The film thankfully doesn't hinge on a triumph or tragedy but instead gets more complex and is much richer for it. I'm having trouble articulating much more because the film will play much better the less you know about the second half of it.

As to the film's authenticity on the field, as a onetime baseball nut, they mostly get it right. One detail they really nail that I don't think I've ever seen any other baseball film do, is show a pitcher running to his defensive positions if a batter hits off him (ie. going behind the catcher if a runner is coming home; going to the cutoff position if the ball is hit deep in the outfield etc).

User avatar
Jeff
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:49 pm
Location: Denver, CO

Re: Sugar (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden, 2008)

#9 Post by Jeff » Sun May 03, 2009 5:49 pm

Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck follow up their amazing Half Nelson with a baseball movie that's not really about baseball at all. Sugar, instead, tells the story of the many Latin Americans mined from their home country by Major League Baseball, and the future that awaits most of them.

There is no Big Game climax, no crafty antagonist, no score to settle. Our hero is Miguel "Sugar" Santos, a 20-year-old kid who doesn't really know what he wants, but has always been told (by his mother, his friends, the agent who recruited him as a teen) that he wants to be a professional baseball player. The coda, however, makes clear that the story isn't really just about Sugar, but the hundreds of immigrants like him who are recruited by Americans to entertain them by playing their national pastime, and then are quickly abandoned when they are no longer perceived to be of value.

Fleck and Boden attempt to repeat the success of their debut by avoiding all tropes of the genre. While Half Nelson was laudable for it's sublime subversion of the young-white-teacher-saves-poor-inner-city-minorities-from-certain-doom themes that dominate movies about educators, it was the electric performances by Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps that made it truly transcendent. They are smart to avoid most baseball movie cliches in Sugar, but the move seems more calculated here and the film suffers somewhat from it's non-actor cast who give largely vacant performances. Still, it's fun to watch Sugar try to quickly adapt to life in the states. The Iowa family that takes him in are naive and patronizing, but are also shown as truly gentle and loving. It was refreshing to see the denizens of middle-America not being condescended to or portrayed as ignorant rubes.

While Sugar doesn't click on all cylinders, it does so much right that fuels the excitement for the future of the writer-director couple. I can't wait to see what they do next.

User avatar
bkimball
Joined: Sat Apr 15, 2006 12:10 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: Sugar (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden, 2008)

#10 Post by bkimball » Sun May 03, 2009 11:48 pm

Tom Hagen wrote:The film starts with its protagonist as an "older" (like 18 or 19 years old) DR academy prospect being selected and signed for his first formal spring training in the States.

Fleck explained at the Sundance Q&A that I attended that he is a huge fan of the game (grew up cheering for the As in the Bay Area if I recall correctly) and that they attended camps in the DR and at spring training to do their homework. As a fan, you shouldn't be disappointed -- the baseball stuff in the movie is pretty authentic.
I believe we were at the same screening. :D

As a baseball fan, I was thoroughly impressed at how they addressed the issue of immigration and dealing with a foreign land in the US. Ever since I saw this film, I imagine a back story for players when I'm watching baseball.

There aren't many films that I have seen from contemporary American filmmakers that empathize with minorities as well as this.

flyonthewall2983
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:31 pm
Location: Indiana
Contact:

Re: Sugar (Ryan Fleck/Anna Boden, 2008)

#11 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Tue Mar 09, 2010 1:32 am

This made it's TV debut on HBO tonight. Probably On Demand already by now.

Numero Trois
Joined: Sun Sep 20, 2009 5:23 am
Location: Florida

Re: Sugar (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden, 2008)

#12 Post by Numero Trois » Wed Mar 17, 2010 6:06 am

After getting over my horror seeing the "edited for content" screen show up on the regular DVD, I gave in and watched it. Hate to say it, but having not seen the theatrical version in the end this version didn't seem to suffer for the loss. I'll save my outrage for the next time this happens to a DVD release.

I thought the directors were flirting with disaster by including a version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" right towards the end of the film. When the opening cords struck, my eyes kind of rolled until hearing the Spanish language vocals. Like the rest of the film, it's the approachment from an unexpected angle that keeps the cliches from setting in. Anyway, it's a lovely version.

Post Reply