Cheap Friday Night Lights [HD DVD] (DVD) (Peter Berg) Price

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Customer Reviews of Friday Night Lights [HD DVD]

Friday Nights
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>Title: Friday Night Lights <
>Director: Peter Berg <
>Produced by: Brian Grazer <
>Release date: 10/08/04 <
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>Did you know that the Permian Panthers have won more state championships then any other high school team in the state of Texas? That is a very good record considering that there are more high school teams in Texas than Kentucky and Tennessee put together. <
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>In this great sports film it tells the true story of a high school football team in Odessa, Texas, where football is life. This movie was inspired by the true season of the 1988 Permian Panthers. Friday Night Lights was based on a book written by H.G. Bissinger, and was voted by ESPN the magazine the greatest football novel of all time. <
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> This movie keys on the life of five ordinary small town boys that all share one dream, a state championship, Mike Winchell (Lucas Black), Boobie Miles (Derek Luke) Brian Chavez (Jay Hernandez), Don Billingsley (Garrett Hedlund), and Ivory Christian (Lee Jackson). These teenage boys have the weight of the world on them as they head into the 1988 season. <
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> In this small town they have one huge quality that is football. Every Friday night all businesses close for the night and all the houses are empty. Since everybody is at Barrett Stadium one of the largest high school fields in the country. The Panthers are always one of the top teams in the state, and every year the community expects a state title. Considering all this anything less then a state championship is failure. <
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> Permian heads in as a good favorite to win state, but when Permian's star All American running back, Boobie Miles, hurts his leg in there first game the teams confidence and chances decline. The panthers were then forced to start a tiny one hundred pound running back that is nowhere near the skill level of Boobie Miles. After Bobbie finds out he is out for the season, the whole team and town about give up on their chances of winning state. It looked as if there was a horrible disaster that happened in the town, the way everybody acted. However quarterback Mike Winchell, fullback Don Billingsley, and defensive end Ivory Christian will not let this team go down that easy. <
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> The panthers manage to pull together a good season. They faced a season that Permian was not use to, finishing barely in front of five hundred. Losing games no one in town thought would be close. But they ended up in a three-way tie for first and second place in the region. As a result they do it the way everyone settles a tie, they flipped a coin. The coin flip went there way and they found them self in the state tournament. The team gets motivated after hearing about Boobie being hurt, and probably having his football career end. They then dedicate the state tournament to Boobie. Permian makes it all the way to the state championship game where they face a powerhouse from central Texas, the Dallas Carter Cowboys. Where Dallas Carter went undefeated and won every game without breaking a sweat. Since Permian barely got into state championship Dallas Carter was heavily favored. But the panthers wont go down without a fight. <
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> This movie has great camera views and makes you feel like your watching a real football game. After I watched the movie I really wanted to play football, it was that good. For example I would watch the part of the movie where they play Dallas Carter before every one of my football games, it made me so pumped and ready to play. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole movie just waiting to see what happens next. I would defiantly advise sports lovers or people who just like a good movie to check this one out. <
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>By.jd

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Definitely an above average sports film
I have read so many spectacular reviews of the TV series FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHT that I decided that I needed to watch the series myself. But I first wanted to see the film that the TV series was based upon. <
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>This is a carefully crafted film about the somewhat dubious role that football is allowed to play in the lives of small town Americans. What many people seem to miss in seeing the film is the deeply critical aspects of the film. While the struggles of Permian High School to overcome the loss of their star player Boobie Miles -- who is portrayed as a 1988 high school equivalent of today's Darren McFadden of Arkansas (like McFadden, Miles is portrayed as someone who is spectacularly fast, a great receiver, and even an accomplished passer) -- take center stage, there is also a quiet but pervasive criticism of the role that football is allowed to play in people's lives in this small town. There is the sadness of several former players who have never been able to find meaning in their lives after hanging up their cleats. There is also the poignancy of people utterly obsessed with the failure or success of the local high school team, as if there was some connection between the quality of their lives and the fate of the team. From the beginning to the end of the movie there is a sense that these are people without lives, so that while on one level we celebrate the victories of the team on another we experience a deep sadness. I kept thinking of something Kierkegaard wrote while watching the movie. He distinguished between the comic and the tragic, characterizing the latter as regarding with finite interest that which ought to be of eternal interest, while identifying the comic as regarding something finite as of eternal interest. In this sense, the movie is at its heart a tragicomedy. The movie doesn't explore precisely why these people have such sad lives, but it leaves no question at the end that they do. <
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>This is a very slick movie, which is impressive given that it was essentially a low budget film (it was made for around $30 million) with a very large cast. As a result the film has pretty much a no name cast, the only actor that most people would be familiar with being Billy Bob Thornton. But the film never reveals its low budget. From beginning to end every aspect is highly polished. <
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>I mentioned the way that the movie criticizes our obsession with football and how this obsession is contrasted with the fundamental emptiness in the lives of the characters in the film. The two characters who most display these aspects of the film are the aforementioned Boobie Miles and former star Charles Billingsley, played by country music star Tim McGraw. The only thing that Miles has going for him at the start of the film is his athletic ability and as we hear him struggling to read a recruiting letter we realize that he is borderline illiterate. When he learns that his knee injury is far worse than anyone imagined he realizes how little life has to offer him. He is a man with rapidly collapsing horizons. Billingsley, on the other hand, has only his memories of having starred for Permian. He relentlessly drives his son to achieve a similar kind of success so that he can relive some of it vicariously. <
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>This film in the end is not a celebration of football, but a paean on our excessive obsession with what is, in the end, only a game. It does not mean that football is devoid of all redeeming values, but it does mean to point out that there is more to life than football.

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Small Town Football
"Friday Night Lights", the inspiration for the 2006-2007 TV series of the same name, is an unflinchingly look at a small, economically-depressed Texas town where the only exciting event is the Friday night high school football game. That kind of spotlight creates intense expectations for the Permian High School Football Team to succeed, causing players to make tough choices and live with the consequences. <
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>Billy Bob Thornton does an inspiring turn as the football coach who rallies the team after a season-ending injury to a key player. His leadership and mentoring of the team causes the players to come together and make the best of their situation and of each other. The movie avoids a cliche ending but leaves the viewer with the sense that what the players accomplish together will be with them all their lives. <
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>This film is highly recommended as an excellent capture of high school sports as preparation for the challenges of adult life.