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Golcar CC


Bezalgo

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I thought it might be time to launch a companion to the cricket music thread after a discussion last night in a restaurant (called Argentino) where cricket on TV was mentioned by a Slovene relative.

He said he'd seen some cricket on TV in a British detective drama. After going through the usual suspects, my first guess was Inspector Morse - it was rounded down when, quite impressively in terms of TV trivia at least, he said Bergerac was in it but looking older. 

So Midsomer Murders it was, a bit of research indicates it was probably the episode Dead Man's XI.

A far more heralded piece of work is Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, an Indian film described as follows:

 The rains have failed, and the people of a small Indian village in Victorian India hope that they will be excused from paying the crippling land tax that their British rulers have imposed. Instead, the capricious British officer in charge challenges them to a game of cricket, a game totally alien and unknown to them. If they win, they get their wish; if they lose, however, the increased tax burden will destroy their lives. The people are terrified, but one man thinks the challenge is worth staking their entire future on. Will he convince the villagers to give it their best shot?


I actually have this on DVD and haven't yet got round to watching it yet, but I do intend to have a screening in the near future. Watch this space for more news... 

Meanwhile chip in with your own celluloid and small screen cricket contributions. 



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El Presidente


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Hooray.

 Something I know a lot about.

Dr Who - both Tom Baker and Peter Davison especially used cricket balls to escape peril! The 1982 episode - Black Orchid featured the Doctor (mistaken to be the Doctor WG Grace) playing in a whole episode while a murder mystery took place.

There was even a spinoff book called "Goth Opera" about vampires, which featured the Doctor playing a game with Merv Hughes and David Boon who both had dialogue in the story.

 

 



-- Edited by El Presidente at 15:15, 2007-01-19

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El Presidente


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and let's not forget the famous use of a cricket bat by the manager of the one and only Spinal Tap, from the excellent "This is Spinal Tap" film.

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Muppet


Je suis l'état et l'état c'est moi

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Golcar CC wrote:

A far more heralded piece of work is Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India.


I actually have this on DVD and haven't yet got round to watching it yet, but I do intend to have a screening in the near future. Watch this space for more news... 

We have this on DVD too and I can thoroughly recommend it. Even if you're not a huge fan of Bollywood. Good story, a cricketing take on the David v Goliath parable, with a bit of romance and (of course) lots of singing and dancing thrown in. The English don't come across too well, though - stereotypically nasty colonialists!

You'll need the subtitles (the dialogue is 80% Hindi). Don't be tempted to watch it with Hungarian subtitles, though, that will do your head in...



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El Treasurorio


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Who could forget the "Bodyline" series sometime in the mid-eighties, although it's quite a cheat for this thread being totally dedicated to cricket. It was, though, a wonderful series which I have somewhere on VHS.

Best film reference to cricket must go to the excellent film "Hope and Glory". The scene involves the star (a young lad who leaves London during the blitz for safer pastures with his grandparents in the country) and his grandad. During a family gathering where all manage to meet despite various war commitments, a cricket game is held by the males of the family to distract them from the female's bickering. The scene is wonderful when Ian Bellen's excellent portrayal of the arrogant and pompous grandfather shows extreme annoyance when clean bowled by his grandson who's thought to be useless in most things, including sports. The delivery of "He bowled a bloody googly!!!" is simply cricketing cinematics at their best and definitely needs to be seen!   



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Golcar CC


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El Treasurorio wrote:

Who could forget the "Bodyline" series sometime in the mid-eighties, although it's quite a cheat for this thread being totally dedicated to cricket. It was, though, a wonderful series which I have somewhere on VHS.

Best film reference to cricket must go to the excellent film "Hope and Glory". The scene involves the star (a young lad who leaves London during the blitz for safer pastures with his grandparents in the country) and his grandad. During a family gathering where all manage to meet despite various war commitments, a cricket game is held by the males of the family to distract them from the female's bickering. The scene is wonderful when Ian Bellen's excellent portrayal of the arrogant and pompous grandfather shows extreme annoyance when clean bowled by his grandson who's thought to be useless in most things, including sports. The delivery of "He bowled a bloody googly!!!" is simply cricketing cinematics at their best and definitely needs to be seen!   
Anything totally dedicated to cricket definitely comes under this thread...
 The Bodyline series was great - I remember all of us in my class at grammar school endlessly repeating the "which bastard called this bastard a bastard" line ...
That was probably the peak of TV cricket drama in my book 


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Angus


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I was watching The West Wing the other night, and the American President, no less, said a line that ended '....I'd rather watch Scotland play at cricket.'

There is a fabulous film from Quebec, which I'm sure all in Slovenia would love, called La Grande Seduction, - or, Seducing Dr Lewis. It's about a Quebec island trying to attract a cricket-mad doctor to their community by pretending they play. It is a must-see, although they do show Makaya Ntini bowling at one point, and the doctor thinks he's playing for India.



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brazo de natillas


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The Shout with John Hurt, Alan Bates and Susannah York starts and ends at a cricket match. It's an odd film served with with plenty of expressionistic ham.



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Golcar CC


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Angus wrote:

I was watching The West Wing the other night, and the American President, no less, said a line that ended '....I'd rather watch Scotland play at cricket.'

There is a fabulous film from Quebec, which I'm sure all in Slovenia would love, called La Grande Seduction, - or, Seducing Dr Lewis. It's about a Quebec island trying to attract a cricket-mad doctor to their community by pretending they play. It is a must-see, although they do show Makaya Ntini bowling at one point, and the doctor thinks he's playing for India.

 Sounds excellent! Maybe we should recognise French Canada as a separate country after all. 

In fact I've just ordered it "off of" Amazon (to a UK address as they don't recognise Slovenia as being in Europe , let alone French Canadia).

Didn't West WIng get a bit too mawkish after Series 1, though? 



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El Presidente


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That show where Rolf Harris gets three painters to paint a famous person is on the telly at the moment and they are doing Michael Parkinson. Rolf is interviewing Parkinson at a cricket match and talking about how he nearly played for Yorkshire. Didn't realise that Parkie was a left-handed batsman. Apparently he was quite a good player in  his youth.

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Angus


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Bridge Over the River Kwai has a reference to cricket, and Syriana - starring George Clooney - shows quite a bit of Gulf cricket action in the oilfields.

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zimmerframe


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Tragically bereft of other ideas, I ended up watching 'the Bodyguard' with whipme et al. and early on someone asks '...how's the Hollywood Cricket team going?'. This tricked me into watching the rest of the movie.

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Angus


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Who could forget? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The man with the hockey mask, Casey Jones, carries around a cricket bat for beating members of The Foot Clan - in a similar vein to Belarusian cricketers. He hits Raphael into a bin and shouts, 'Six runs!' I leapt for joy when I heard that as a kid.

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Muppet


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I've just noticed that there's no reference to the film "Wondrous Oblivion" on this thread. This is a lovely little British comedy drama from 2003, which is genuinely about cricket; it's set in London in 1960.
The story centres around David, an 11-year-old Jewish boy, who is obsessed with cricket. His parents (refugees from Germany) are a bit mystified by his obsession, particularly as he is terrible at the game himself. Then a Jamaican family move next door, and he is delighted to see that they play cricket. He is quick to take advantage of their arrival to improve his game, but the rest of the neighbourhood are disgusted at the arrival of these "darkies", and demand the same antipathy from their Jewish neighbours.
So it's a story about racial prejudice, religious identity, sexual inhibitions, and overcoming the odds, with some very cool early ska music from the likes of the Skatalites thrown in. And we even get to meet a young Frank Worrell and Gary Sobers!
Highly recommended...

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El Presidente


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Nice find. I will definitely try and track a copy of that one down. If there isn't too much swearing perhaps I could use bits of it in an Advanced English Lesson. Cheers for the tip Muppet.

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Angus


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Lost, Series 4, episode 2 - a Scotsman gets splattered by a cricket bat in a US bar. He foresaw it in a psychic vision. Should be on the internet from today.

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Angus


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Cricket got a mention in American Idol - Paula Abdul says Simon Cowell talks about nothing else. What a legend. You should invite him to become your American Ambassador.

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Golcar CC


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Croatia 1 showed the very crickety episode of Inspector Morse entitled "Deceived by Flight" yesterday. Unlike plenty of such shows which have the main characters wandering across a pastoral scene with cricket in the background in this story the game was very much part of the story - which involved a team who had an annual European tour to Holland and Belgium that could be involved in drug smuggling, but also involves the Lewis character trying desperately to catch up with the Test match score and taking time off to watch it before being dragged back by Morse to go undercover (imaginatively as an college underlying called Lewis), and get on the cricket team...

Morse grumbles about cricket and receives a paean to the game from his love interest in return ...

the Croat subtitle translator perhaps wisely decided to skip as much of the cricketing jargon as they could.

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