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SUNDANCE 2007
Lucky Number Slevin
"Off The Black" by Zack Roddy
The Sundance film, Off the Black, was written and directed by James Ponsoldt, and stars Nick Nolte, Trevor Morgan, and Timothy Hutton.
The film centers on Ray Cook (Nolte), a fifty-seven year old umpire for the high school baseball team. The team's pitcher, David (Morgan)
and a few other players decide to vandalize Ray's house after Ray calls the pitch that loses them the championship game. But to David's dismay,
Ray catches him, and it's either clean up the damage, or call the authorities. David decides to clean, and over the oncoming weeks he and
Ray begin to bond: Ray, a father figure to David, whose own father (Timothy Hutton) has become a vegetable after David's mother left them
all two years earlier, and David, a surrogate son to Ray, whose own son has not spoken to him in years. When Ray asks David to come
to his high school reunion as his son, both men's lives escalate to a point where there is no going back.
Off the Black is a great film in that its two stars have excellent chemistry, and it has just the right amount of drama, and of comedy.
It almost seems as if the director put a camera on the actors living their daily lives, for the actors are so effortlessly attached to their parts,
that it seems real and natural.
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