61* ***

 This Billy Crystal directed baseball movie isn't really a biopic although it is based on actual events. In 1961 team mates Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle set out to beat Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in a single season and it's one of the few 'made-for-tv' movies that could just as easily have been made for the cinema, helped in no small measure by Haskell Wexler's excellent cinematography. It's also extremely well cast. Barry Pepper is outstanding as Maris and there's fine work, too, from Thomas Jane as Mantle as well as from Richard Masur, Chris Bauer, Christopher McDonald, Donald Moffat and Seymour Cassell, (and it was nice seeing Renee Taylor again as Babe Ruth's widow).

In fact, the only problem with the picture, (and the problem with so many similiar 'inspirational' pictures), is Hank Steinberg's somewhat one-dimensional and sentimental script. Of course, if you're a baseball fan you're not going to be paying too much attention to what's being said off-field and the on-field action, and the underrated Pepper, more than compensate for the mostly banal dialogue. Indeed, here's a sports movie that could even convert non-believers like myself. It really deserves to be better known.

FANNY BY GASLIGHT **

 This Victorian melodrama has enough plot to fill several volumes and is, what you might call, 'a rum yarn'. Anthony Asquith's "Fanny By Gaslight" was based on a best-selling novel by Michael Sadleir and was a huge hit in its native Britain and it's an exemplary example of its kind. Phyllis Calvert is Fanny and let's just say what happens to her in the course of this tale would put any Dickens heroine to shame or to quote Thelma Ritter, 'all that's missing is the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end'. Stewart Granger is the young man who loves her and James Mason, the nasty brute who would like to ruin her and others in the fine cast include Wilfred Lawson, Jean Kent, Margaretta Sccott, Cathleen Nesbitt and Nora Swinburne. Given that it's basically a soap opera, Asquith handles it with considerable aplomb and the performances are first-rate. If it's a guilty pleasure, it's certainly a highly enjoyable one.