This effort is based on the true story of Jim Morris, a high school science teacher/baseball coach, who is inspired by his players to try out for the pros and fulfill his life-long dream of playing in the majors. Dennis Quaid, no stranger to sports films, plays Morris with enough conviction to make the part work and the producers do a credible job of recreating the real-world events that led to Morris brief stint as a relief pitcher for the woefull Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The first half of the film, dealing with his rag tag bunch of High School Baseball players (all of whom look way too old to actualy be in High School) is less effective and probably a bit too long. Overall the film does suffer from some pacing issues and a few extra subplots that we probably could have done without. However, it is still a fairly involving movie with an inspirational theme that proves once again that baseball is the national pastime for a reason. GRADE: B-

Zombie Nation 2004 R
Hey, I was bored. I looked in my Comcastic little box to find a movie to watch. Zombie Nation? Hey, I love zombie movies. Says the filmmaker has some sort of cult following in the description. Funny how it doesn't warn me not to watch this film. I could've used that advice.
Zombie Nation is just like Troll 2 in that it's completely misnamed. It has little (if anything, depending on your point of view) to do with zombies, and takes place all within one city. This film revolves around a crooked cop, who acts as badly as possible (he has to be trying to suck this much), while he arrests women for trivial bullshit and then kills them. Yup, he's a serial killer cop. Not only is this film flawed in thinking that it's a zombie flick, it also gets its serial killer facts completely wrong. Serial killers enjoy killing, they live for it and they get down and personal with it. This guy knocks out the women, and injects them with some poison. He doesn't even have sex with the corpse or dismember it. Talk about boring! Eventually, one of the whopping five women he kills has Voodoo protection done to her and for no apparent reason, all five come back to life and head off to kill this guy. They were all buried or tossed into the ocean, but you wouldn't know it buy the sharp clean clothes they're all wearing. The women then act very poorly and take their revenge. Oh yay.
This film was crap in every category. Crap acting, crap writing, crappier sets, and crappier make-up effects. The women don't look zombie-like, unless you count really dark make-up around the eyes to be the de facto definition of what makes a zombie. They can all talk, behave, think, and act perfectly human. The gore is weak compared to even many PG-13 films and the nudity is beyond brief. You see glimpse of breasts in the opening sequence... Then the exact same breasts later! Go figure. Guess only one actress was willing to go topless for this trite. The police station is so badly constructed that you can see where they stopped painting the walls of the warehouse they're obviously filming in. You can see the pipes and the bad lighting and the overly sparse set-up and even, unless you are blind, you can see the director failing. Steer clear, it's a waste of time.
1/10