Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in "Pride of the Yankees"

Few movies have the suspense and thrills of Thursday night's NLCS game between the Phillies and the Dodgers. But for sports fans who crave celluloid pennant races and World Series to fill up the time between actual pennant races and World Series games, may we suggest:

* Alibi Ike (1935) Rubber-faced Joe E. Brown as a rookie hurler for the Chicago Cubs who always has an excuse when he messes up. From the Ring Lardner story.

* Damn Yankees (1958) Aging baseball fan sells his soul to get a decent slugger (Tab Hunter) for the Washington Senators. Gwen Verdon as the Devil's Candy.

* Eight Men Out (1988) John Sayles' absorbing period piece about the 1919 Chicago White Sox team whose members throw the Series stars John Cusack, Charlie Sheen and D.B. Sweeney.

* Fever Pitch (2005) Appealing rom-com starring Jimmy Fallon as a Boston Red Sox diehard and Drew Barrymore as his baseball-averse sweetheart, set during the Sox 2004 miracle season.

* It Happens Every Spring (1949) Charmer starring Ray Milland as a professor -turned-pitcher, creator of a chemical that makes baseballs repel bats.

* A League of Their Own (1992) Penny Marshall's vibrant account of the All-Girls Baseball Leagues stars Geena Davis and Lori Petty as catcher-and-pitcher sisters who face each other in the League World Series.

* The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (2000) Aviva Kempner's terrific documentary out the Hall of Famer who led the Detroit Tigers to multiple World Series while fighting anti-Semitism.

* The Natural (1984) Based on Bernard Malamud's allegorical novel, the film stars Robert Redford as a disappeared baseball legend who returns as the chivalrous slugger of the New York Knights who face the Phillies in the pennant race and the Pirates in the Series.

* Pride of the Yankees (1942) Terrific biopic starring Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, the Yankees Iron Man who, despite a bad medical prognosis, felt he was the luckiest man in the world. Dare you not to cry.

Your favorites? What am I missing?

The Dude Abides -- John Goodman and Jeff Bridges in "The Big Lebowski."

 A Serious Man, the new movie from the Coen Brothers, arrives -- as so many of their films -- to cheers and jeers. There is no critical consensus on this Story of Job set in 1967 Minneapolis, less funny ha-ha than seriously funny-strange. Believers call it a Biblical parable about a rational man whose life is altered by mystical, perhaps, satanic, phenomena. Here's Roger Ebert, who embraces it as "not a laugh-laugh" comedy, but a "wince-wince" one. Agnostics dismiss  it as "bleak," as does David Denby.  I call it both. (I'll link to my review when it goes on-line, later today.) No one creates atmosphere like the brothers Coen, whose films are a cold fusion of comedy and tragedy, sceptism and certainty, seriousness and frivolity. They are a genre unto themselves. But it's worth noting that whether they;'re mining the serious or frivolous in their narratives, there is likely to be an Avenging Devil (John Goodman in Barton Fink, Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men, Fyvush Finkel in Serious) who blows into town to show that Fate is stronger than Faith.

Salon asked some prominent cineastes to name their favorite Coen Brothers picture. My top-of -head response is Raising Arizona, which tonally is the most consistent. My more considered response is Fargo. For pure fun, I go for The Big Lebowski. You?

First, the stats: The 18 1/2th Philadelphia Film Festival (abbreviated, but no less tasty) comprises 37 films from 15 countries.  

It kicks off on October 15 with Law Abiding Citizen, F. Gary Gray's legal thriller (shot locally) starring Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx (the film will be accompanied by Gray and a "special guest") . The closing-night film (on October 18, the night before the festival actually ends) is Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, (acompanied by its locally-connected director Lee Daniels). In between will be a number of films hot from their premieres in Toronto and New York, movies such as Lars von Trier's controversial  marital saga Antichrist, the Chris Rock documentary Good Hair, and Cheryl Hines' marital slapstick Serious Moonlight. Among the other buzzworthy offerings are Grant Heslov's Men Who Stare at Goats starring George Clooney, Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, starring Robin Wright and Jean-Marc Valle's The Young Victoria with Emily Blunt.

For more information, check out http://www.pff09.org/.

Baby (Jennifer Grey) learns to soar with the help of Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze)

While it would be one of many of my nominees, this affectionate appreciation from Julie Klausner might persuade others to vote for Dirty Dancing as what the author calls "most Jewishest movie."

 In honor of the High Holidays, let Jewish and Gentile cinephiles offer their thoughts on the subject.

In the animation category): Prince of Egypt  (1998, with the voice of Ralph Fiennes as Moses) and The Rugrats Passover. In the classics category:  Counsellor at Law (1933, with John Barrymore as the attorney who suspects his wife of anti-Semitism). In the the comedy category: Annie Hall (1977, with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton) and In Her Shoes (2005, despite the fact that Shirley MacLaine is cast as a Jewish nana). In the drama category: Enemies: A Love Story (1989, with Ron Silver as the Holocaust survivor leading a triple life) or Munich (2005, with Eric Bana and Daniel Craig as an agent sof Israel's Mossad) or Defiance (2008, with Daniel Craif and Liev Schreiber as Jewish Nazi-fighters during World War II). In the musical category it's Dirty Dancing  (1987, with Jennifer Grey as the Jewess attracted to Gentile dancer Patrick Swayze) and Marjorie Morningstar (1958, Natalie Wood as the Jewess attracted to Gentile dancer Gene Kelly). Upcoming is the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man, a serious candidate for the honor.

Spike Lee once told me that he just "didn't get" Enemies and shrugged, "Maybe you just have to be Jewish." I don't know that that's true. But I was reminded of his perplexed reaction to the movie as I was walking out of (the very fine)  A Serious Man and buttonholed Gentile colleague Lou Gaul  and asked, "Is this understandable to a non-Jew?" Lou nodded, answering, "Oh, it's so Catholic." Yom tov to members of the tribe, a good weekend to everyone else ... and your nominee?

Should "Barbie: The Movie" base the screenplay on Presidential Barbie?

Now that movies based on kiddie toys are demomstrated box-office smashes (see Transformers), it was only a matter of time that a certain doll who has gone through more transformations than Optimus Prime would be the basis of a movie. Yes, Barbie: The Movie is in development . But on which of her many personas will the screenplay be based? Fun-loving beach girl in the striped strapless swimsuit? Presidential candidate with the Hillary Clinton bob (pictured)? Who should play her? And didn't Reese Witherspoon already play a reconstructed and adorably accessorized Barbie in the Legally Blonde movies?  Should Barbie be an entrepreneur, a homemaker, a politician? What conflicts should she encounter?

Jean Cocteau's "Blood of a Poet" (1930). That's legendary surrealist photographer Lee Miller as the statue.

There are poetic films (think Jean Cocteau's Blood of a Poet, pictured). And there are films about poets (think Il Postino, about exiled poet Pablo Neruda and his friendship with the milkman). Bright Star, Jane Campion's rhapsodic sonnet to John Keats and his muse, Fanny Brawne (which opens in Philadelphia on Friday) is both, a movie of evocative visual imagery exquisite as the poet's imagistic odes.

Campion's fresh-air naturalism is light years away from the suffocating-parlors of Sidney Franklin's The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), about the forbidden love of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Riffling through the mental rolodex,  it's hard to think of other poetic films about poets apart from Blue Car (2002), Karen Moncrieff's story of an adolescent writer. Shakespeare in Love (1998), including sonnets by the Bard, and Poetic Justice (1993), with Janet Jackson as the beautician/poet (her lyrics courtesy Maya Angelou), and Smoke Signals  (1998, with the words of Sherman Alexie), have their moments.

 I also relish My Left Foot (1989), with Daniel Day-Lewis as Irish poet and artist Christy Brown, The Basketball Diaries (1995), with Leonardo DiCaprio as the late Jim Carroll and Shadowlands (1993), the moving story of C.S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) and his unlikely affair with  American poet Joy Gresham (Debra Winger).

With the exception of the poetry-slamming hero of So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993) and the doggerel-writing title figure in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), poets in films tend to be stormy, rather than sunny, figures. Consider the Charles Bukowski (Mickey Rourke) chronically drunk in Barfly (1987), T.S. Eliot (Willem Dafoe), saddled with an unpredictable spouse in Tom and Viv (1994) and Sylvia Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow), battling depression and her husband's infidelity in Sylvia (2003).

My vote for the most preposterous movie poet goes to Cornel Wilde as Omar Khayyam (1956) -- a poet/mathematician who inspired the Antonio Banderas character in the distinctly unpoetical The 13th Warrior. Yours?

Favorite movie poet/poetic movie? Any takers for Leo DiCaprio as Arthur Rimbaud in the 1995 Total Eclipse ?  

John Garfield (right) decks his opponent in "Body and Soul." More than 60 years after its 1947 release, it remains one of the most searing sports movies ever.

Sports mavens Ray Didinger and Glen Macnow have a  new tome, The Ultimate Book of Sports Movies, which lives up to its immodest title. Opinionated, informative and fun,  it's guaranteed to launch a million debates and twice as many movie memories in its ranking of the Top 100 sports flicks of all time. I won't tell you what their number one pick is, but it's a boxing film that is not Body and Soul (1947, pictured), the John Garfield-starring expose of corruption in the ring, which I would rank first and these sportsmen rank #18.

Among the book's many enjoyable huddles is their "All-Time Movie Football Team," which includes Burt Reynolds ( The Longest Yard )as quarterback, Cuba Gooding, Jr. (Jerry Maguire) as wide receiver and LL Cool J  (Any Given Sunday )as running back. Their All-Movie-Star Baseball Team includes Kevin Costner (Bull Durham) as catcher, Michael Moriarty (Bang the Drum Slowly) as pitcher and Wesley Snipes (Major League) as outfielder.

Quibbles? Well, Geena Davis (A League of Their Own) is a pretty awesome catcher, but TOPOSM lists only four femme-centric titles  -- including League -- in its Top 100. Guys will be guys. Smartly,  they include documentaries like Hoop Dreams (#14)  and When We Were Kings (#21).  For me, the only glaring omission from their Top 100 is Personal Best.   But it's their list, and it's pretty damned good. What's on yours?

Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon in Tony Scott's "The Hunger."

Doesn't matter that the moon isn't full,  there is no escaping vampires. At this very nanosecond on the small screen True Blood and The Vampire Diaries at your throat; on the large there are last year's Twilight and Let the Right One, a Danish film being remade by Hollywood. Coming soon to your local multiplex: the Twilight sequel, New Moon.

Why are stories of neckbiters so popular? Ask Alice Affleck Bullitt, whose Beyond Dracula, a course offered at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute in October, will explore modern vampire films such as Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark and  Neil Jordan's Interview With a Vampire.  For Bullitt, "The allure of vampires is that they are dangerous, but also seductive--isn't it hard to deny that as humans, we are often drawn to things or individuals despite (or to wit, because of) the fact that they are bad for us?"

The bloodsucker is an unusually adaptable metaphor. It can be used to represent sex (as in Tony Scott's The Hunger, featuring a stylish Sapphic  love affair between Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon), social transgression (Bigelow's Near Dark, with the fanged ones coming from the wrong side of the tracks), insatiability (Jordan's Interview With a Vampire) and initiation (Twilight).

What metaphor does your favorite vampire film/show trade in?

No one puts Patrick Swayze in the corner.

Tough guys do dance. And are remarkably tender. That's what Patrick Swayze, dancer/actor in the tradition of Jimmy Cagney, Gene Kelly and John Travolta and inspiration for Taye Diggs and Hugh Jackman, proved with incomparable grace both offscreen and on.

As I wrote in his obituary:

It's hard not to think that the one-time gymnast who vaulted to stardom in 1987's Dirty Dancing had rehearsed his premature exit in the 1990 blockbuster Ghost. As the banker who solves his own murder mystery, he speaks from the dead to his living sweetheart, Demi Moore. Mr. Swayze, impossibly sexy and throbbingly sensitive, tells her: "It's amazing, the love inside. You take it with you."

It's hard to think of another actor who could carry off roles like these. The surprise of Swayze is that he presented himself as a galoot before  revealing a character of rare gallantry.  "Patrick possessed a depth of nobility," said his Point Break director Kathryn Bigelow."

What qualities did you like about him? Favorite movie? Snatch of dialogue?

For those who would like to leave expressions for his family, here's the link.