Word: mantegna
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...here it is convention time again. Joey Mantegna, fellow Chicagoan, sent me a T shirt, which arrived last month. It bears the logo of the Chicago police department and the legend DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION CHICAGO--1996...WE KICKED YOUR FATHER'S ASS IN 1968...WAIT 'TIL YOU SEE WHAT...
...references to Dante, to Caravaggio (Pasolini once said that he wrote the script completely around the character of the real Ettore Garofolo, whom he saw one day carrying plates in a restaurant "just like a Caravaggio figure"), to Mantegna's "Cristo morto," to Vivaldi, whose religious music provides the backdrop for much of the film. This tension between Marxism and Catholicism, neorealism and symbolic references, is never overwhelming. It enhances each sequence, beautifying that which is most ugly, most tragic, or even most ordinary in a film determined to expose just these elements of Roman life...
...film may indeed rekindle that fervor. In its gaudy way, it could also remind audiences of important issues rarely addressed in movies: the estrangement of genius ("He is better at this," says Joe Mantegna as Fred, "than I've ever been at anything in my life"), the sick thrill of competition (a lesser player stares at Josh with craven awe) and the romance of failure. "Maybe it's better not to be the best," Josh says as the competition heats up; "then you can lose and it's O.K."The movie's subject is unusual, but its themes are universal...
Sparky Smith (Joe Mantegna) is a hotheaded baseball manager who loses his job with the Seattle Mariners and winds up coaching a squad of inept Russians. But THE COMRADES OF SUMMER is more than just a Slavic Bad News Bears. Shot in the former Soviet Union, the HBO film nicely mixes savvy baseball comedy with post-cold war satire: Sparky has to scrounge for equipment on the black market, holds practices in a cavernous warehouse and listens sadly to Voice of America broadcasts as his Mariners head for the World Series. (It's a fantasy.) Mantegna is delightfully dour...
...Mantegna's fragile works light up a major international show...