The Curly W Productions documentary entitled IMPROBABLE, won an Emmy Award. That is always a great video to watch because it was about the World Series 2019 Washington Nationals team. There was another documentary that was the official MLB version by Splash Productions. Six years later, a third documentary was just published about the 2019 Washington Nationals, and this video was produced by an unapologetic Mets’ fan who runs Stark Raving Sports. You can view it on the YouTube link below without a subscription.
This past week, a baseball/softball themed short film was released by someone that many of you know, Kevin Nibley, who wrote and directed “Welcome to America, Brian Wong!” The film won BEST COMEDY this past weekend at the Alexandria Film Festival, and also won BEST COMEDY at the Giddy Island Film Festival in Paros, Greece as well as the Audience Award for BEST SHORT FILM at the FP Arts Film Festival in Scotland.
“This film has a long an interesting story. We actually shot it in 2005, but ran out of funds to finish. My career and my producer, Kate Barry’s career took off in various directions, and we never came back to this. … Hard cut to a year or so ago, my wife and I moved back to the DC area after 20 years or so in NYC. My mother in Silver Spring asked me to clean out a closet, and I found some digital transfers of our original film reels, and decided to reboot this project. I’m totally thrilled it’s getting seen now, and such a positive response!”
— Nibley told us
Knibley’s film is also going to be playing again in Alexandria on Dec 20th at the Galactic Panther Art Gallery. I saw it and loved it. The era of the film reminded me of my youth where families would takeover a park and have a picnic with a competition as the main part of the day. Sure, we would do a tug-of-war or the sack race. If your family was large enough, the Turkey Bowl football game or the mid-July softball game was a part of many families pre-1990’s family reunions. “Welcome to America, Brian Wong!” of the fictional Stein family felt real, and the ending was hilarious. The “Damn it grandma, get your head in the game” with the Bill Buckner moment was an incredible piece of baseball cinema set in 1987.
The film had you wanting more. The ending is a surprise. Your imagination wanders. You laugh, you smile, and you might even cry if you were the Henry in your family. “No one was born a winner” is another great line from the movie. You have Henry’s version of that Rocky montage with Henry inside the batting cages instead of Rocky chasing a chicken. I loved what Nibley did here. Baseball fans might think of Pete Rose barreling over Ray Fosse in an exhibition game, like Uncle John did to young Henry. Stein versus Stein. Anything goes.
From the fictional to a re-telling of more recent history in what also seemed fictional, the 2019 Washington Nationals took their .001 odds of winning a World Series from 19-31 to baseball’s highest achievement was fun to see from Start Raving Sports.
“It had actually been in the works since before the season started, but we timed it now because we wanted the postseason to be fresh in everyone’s mind when revisiting this story.”
— Stark Raving Sports told us
Curl up on a couch with some popcorn and enjoy the show.
