First Review Of Tommy's Honour

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The Independent's Geoffrey McNab reviews Tommy's Honour following the film's debut at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Based on Kevin Cook's terrifc book, it is directed by Jason Connery.

He writes:

There are a lot of whiskers and sideburns and plenty of thick tweed on display in Jason Connery’s Tommy’s Honour, which opened the Edinburgh Film Festival on Wednesday night. This is a golfing movie but not one in the vein of Happy Gilmore or Tin Cup. It is a sturdy, handsomely made Scottish costume drama, set in St Andrews, Fife, in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The film tells the story of Tom Morris Sr and Tom (“Tommy”) Morris Jr, a father and son who transformed golf and won multiple British Opens.

“Are you daft? You need a mashie,” one character is told in the middle of a game. That’s a reference to a club called the niblick, not to a way of cooking potatoes.

Connery evokes an era in which players strutted the Old Course at St Andrews in heavy jackets and caps, hats and bonnets, using wooden shafted clubs to hit hand-made golf balls off very rough looking fairways onto bumpy greens.

A preview clip:

Terry Jastrow Screens His Golf Film, Festival Circuit Is Next

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The longtime producer/director perhaps best known for his work at ABC has directed a film called "The Squeeze."

Sounds interesting...but it has a ways to go before the public sees it.

For Immediate Release:

Terry Jastrow Announces Completion of His First Feature Film, The Squeeze, Targeted for Theaters Spring 2015

Los Angeles, CA - Multiple Emmy-winning TV sports producer/director Terry Jastrow announced his first film "The Squeeze" will hit theaters in the spring of 2015. Jastrow wrote and directed the caper-golf movie, which recently had its first industry private screening at United Talent Agency in Hollywood to an enthusiastic audience that included film distributors, cast and crew, Terry's wife and co-producer, actress Anne Archer, and golfer Phil Mickelson.
 
"The Squeeze" is a true story about a young man from a small southern town who gets caught in between two notorious gamblers, until the stakes become a matter of life or death. The film, which stars Jeremy Sumpter ("Friday Night Lights"), Christopher McDonald (Shooter McGavin in "Happy Gilmore"), Jillian Murray and Michael Nouri has been submitted to the Toronto Film Festival in September.
 
"Making this movie is a dream come true," says Jastrow, the longtime ABC Sports producer and director. "For many years as a sports director working for the legendary Roone Arledge, I was schooled in the art of storytelling...'the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition'...and am very pleased to apply those concepts now to movie making."
 
A seven-time Emmy Award winner, Jastrow has produced or directed more major championships than anyone in history, with 62 U.S. Opens, British Opens and PGA Championships. Now Jastrow has turned his attention to writing and directing feature films and stage plays.
 
Next up for Jastrow is a play he wrote and will direct this summer at the world's largest arts festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The play -- entitled "The Trial of Jane Fonda" -- stars Archer. Performances run July 31-August 24.

Andy Murray Invested In Seve Movie, Admits To Sandbagging

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Bob McKenzie reports for the Express that Scottish tennis great Andy Murray invested in Seve The Movie, released June 27th, in part because of his dad's admiration for Ballesteros.

McKenzie writes:

"We went to watch the tournament in Gleneagles quite a few times which was just down the road from our house. I haven't played golf since I started having problems with my back and since the surgery, I haven't bothered trying to be honest.

"I will wait till I have finished (my career)."

Not that you would want to play Murray for 50p by the sounds of it.

"When I used to play for money, I always used to play off 16 or 17," he says with a smile.

"I have never lost a game of golf for money in all the times I have played. I don't know what my handicap was exactly but that is what I used to play off. "Everyone got hacked off when I was playing against them."

Murray plays Kevin Anderson in a fourth round match Monday at Wimbledon, reports The Guardian's Kevin Mitchell.

Henry Fitzherbert of The Express raved about Seve The Movie, calling it...

absorbing, beautifully shot picture (brilliantly edited by Saska Simpson) cleverly combines archive footage of Ballesteros with a dramatic re-enactment of his youth featuring a charming performance from young unknown Jose Luis Gutierrez.

Ewan Murray previewed the film for The Guardian and noted this about the lead actor:

José Luis Gutiérrez, who plays the young Seve in the early part of the film, should be underplayed. This is a role bearing a heavy weight of pressure and responsibility. Even for Gutiérrez – a 16-year-old with a handicap of four – Ballesteros is iconic to the level that he admitted to being “frightened” about not being up to the task.

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called Seve The Movie “engaging enough” and writes:

a misty-eyed tribute that, in DVD form, is destined to rest on the memorabilia-packed shelves of legions of golf-crazy guys from Dallas to Dumfermline.

No release date outside of the UK and Ireland has been set.

The trailer:

The Light Still Very Much Out In Bill Murray's Closet

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Lindsey Boetsch Tweeted a few shots from the Murray brothers' annual charity event in St. Augustine, and it's clear that Bill Murray is determined to look as (beautifully) awful as possible. 

But the Lama shirt is pretty sweet. Wonder how long before his people ask for royalties?

 

"While we're young" Was All Rodney

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Gary Mihoces talks to Rodney Dangerfield's bride, Joan, who thinks Rodney would be doing cartwheels over the new USGA ad campaign using his ad-libbed "while we're young line," even if they aren't doing anything about slow play in their men's and women's Open championships. Okay I threw in that last part.

As she prepares to laungh a new website, www.rodney.com, she puts into context what Caddyshack meant to Rodney's career:

She says Dangerfield "forfeited a high-paying Vegas gig to do Caddyshack — and for peanuts," she said. "He actually lost money making the movie. But it did open doors for him and helped him kind of live the movie star life, which you know was fun for him."

Caddyshack was her husband's "biggest break in film." It helped launch him into starring roles in films such as Easy Money and Back to School.

She said she contacted Jon Peters, executive producer of Caddyshack, to confirm Rodney had come up with the "while we're young" line.

"He assured me that Rodney did," she said. "And it sounds like a line Rodney would come up with anyway because of his comments just in general life ... born out of impatience and frustration.''

There was also this about Tiger:

"Rodney was aware that Tiger Woods had mentioned that Caddyshack was his favorite movie," she said. "... He was especially proud of that because, again, he always wondered, 'Does the golf crowd really look down on the movie?' "

Alex Myers talked to Paula Creamer about how her "while we're young" spot came about and she acknowledged that while there's a long way to go, the timing of the launch might not have helped matters.

"I think it's coming around," said Creamer, who has a 10-year-old cousin that came to see her play, but isn't interested in picking up the game because 'it takes too long.' "That whole service announcement might not have had the best timing, but now that the two hardest venues are out of the way. Who knows?"

A.V. Club Returns To Bushwood: "It's like going to ruins…only for 80s snob versus slob comedy."

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Thanks to Shane Bacon for finding Kyle Ryan's A.V. Club story and short film from Grande Oaks Golf Club, home to much of Caddyshack's filming.

Included are some great shots of the foundation remnants of the caddyshack and other photos of the Caddyshack merchandise sold at Grande Oaks where the logo features a gopher.

The video:


The golf club that hosted Caddyshack’s raucous production

Film Review: A Journey To Golf's Past: Creating Old Macdonald

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In this week's Arts Issue of Golf World, I review Michael Robin's film on the making of Bandon Dunes' Old Macdonald.

The film sets a new bar for storytelling in the design world. It also proves that when professionals like Robin--a prominent television producer and director who is also a fine golfer--and his team conveyed the many dimensions of a golf course, it shows just how mediocre network television has been at bringing courses alive.

And don't be fooled by the title, this is more than just a "making of" film about Old Macdonald. Some of the best moments come when the team travels to the world's most famous holes and dissect their attributes, including the Redan, Road and Macdonald's template holes at The National Golf Links.

The extras-loaded DVD is a must for anyone who loves architecture or Bandon Dunes.

You can order the film for all of $10 (!) via the Bandon Dunes shop site.