Ever since Thomas Edison captured the Jim Corbett-Bob Fitzsimmons heavyweight title fight on his new kinescopic movie camera way back in 1897, film and sport have marched lock step, linked together in a celluloid-based symbiotic relationship that not only has endured, but thrived.
Although the partnership started with boxing, no sport has enjoyed more favourable reviews than baseball. With that in mind, the Film Circuit, a division of the Toronto International Film Festival dedicated to the promotion of Canadian film, presents a cinematic shrine to the grand old game with the Major League Film Festival: Baseball Edition.
It started last night with an opening gala screening of Field of Dreams -- introduced by W. P. Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe, the book that film is based on -- and continues through Sunday evening with screenings of eight more classic baseball movies, celebrity guests and Toronto Blue Jay games.
The festival is the brainchild of Film Circuit director Cam Haynes, who rightly figured that such an event would be the logical way to combine his affection and affliction for baseball and film, and that the "marriage of his two loves was a natural."
The lineup of films is impressive, but it does tend to lean toward the more contemporary ball flicks such as Bull Durham and A League of Their Own at the expense of a classic like The Pride of the Yankees. Although the print condition of some of the older titles was an issue, Haynes felt that the more recent films deserved the spotlight because they had taken the game back to the field. "Over the last 30 years, the baseball films out there are easily the most popular in terms of audience reaction," Haynes said.
In addition to the action on the screen, the Toronto Blue Jays are also in town this weekend for three exhibition games against the Cleveland Indians. The timing is indeed by design, but it almost didn't happen that way. Former Jay Joe Carter advised Haynes to hold the event before, rather than during spring training, with the reasoning that it would be easier to get ballplayers to appear here before they headed south. But quicker than you could say, "Say it ain't so, Joe," Haynes decided, on the advice of Jay's general manager and president of baseball operations Gord Ash, to schedule the festival to coincide with the homestand. $5, all screenings at Famous Players Paramount Theatre, 259 Richmond St. W., 416-934-3279 or box office. Blue Jay tickets, $5-$24, 416-341-1234.
The lineup: March 3, 6:45 p.m., Bang the Drum Slowly; 9 p.m., Bull Durham; March 4, 10 a.m., Rookie of the Year, 1:05 p.m., Blue Jays vs. Indians double-header, 4 p.m., A League of Their Own, 6:45 p.m., Major League, 9 p.m., Eight Men Out; March 5, 1 p.m., Blue Jays vs. Indians, 4 p.m., The Bad News Bears, 6:45 p.m., The Natural.
Brad Wheeler