Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 [Blu-ray] | ![Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51oRdP1LM8L._SL500_.jpg) | Director: Kevin Rafferty
Actors: Tommy Lee Jones, Brian Dowling, Vic Gatto, Frank Champi, J.P. Goldsmith
Studio: KINO VIDEO
Category: DVD
List Price: $34.95
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Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 22985
Format: Color, Letterboxed, Widescreen
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: Blu-ray
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 104 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 5.3 x 0.5
MPN: 6622
UPC: 738329066222
EAN: 0738329066222
ASIN: B00260LFAQ
Theatrical Release Date: 2008
Release Date: August 4, 2009
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| • | HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29 [BLU-RAY] (BLU-RAY DISC) |
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Product Description
Studio: Kino International Release Date: 07/28/2009 Run time: 104 minutes
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
 I was there January 22, 2010
Elijah (Hawaii)
I loved this documentary as I was fortunate to be at the game thanks to an elderly alum who gave me his 50 yard line 4th row seats. I thought it was well done and captured the feeling of the time and context. I think it is a great sports documentary.
When a Tie Is a Win January 10, 2010
Douglas S. Wood (Monona, WI)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This documentary film about a 1968 football game between rivals Harvard and Yale is great fun and also opens a little window on "The Sixties" (which really went from around 1965 to 1974 as one of the players points out). Filmmaker Kevin Rafferty (The Atomic Cafe (Collector's Edition)) tracked down Harvard and Yale players some four decades after the game and skillfully mixes game footage with the player interviews. The result is 73 captivating minutes of sports, social commentary, and even celebrity watching.
How is a tie a win? Both teams were unbeaten going into the final game of the year, but Yale had future Dallas Cowboy star Calvin Hill and a number 16 ranking in the polls (Yale? 16th in the land?!). Yale goes out to a big lead and has the game well in hand until odd things begin to happen. Still down 29-13 with a minute to play, Harvard manages to score two touchdowns plus two two-point conversions in the final 42 seconds to "win" the game, 29-29. (Harvard was aided by Yale's astonishing lack of an onside kick return play that helped Harvard regain possession of the ball and begin its final drive.)
Football aside, the film features Tommie Lee Jones (No Country for Old Men), then an all-conference lineman for Harvard and Al Gore's roommate! Yale's QB, Brian Dowling was the inspiration for Doonesbury's B.D. And George W. Bush gets a mention for hanging from the goal posts in a state of inebriation after an earlier Yale win at Princeton. Another player (now bald on top and thick in the middle) was dating a shy and reserved Meryl Streep. The Vietnam War always in the background and sometimes took center stage - at least at Harvard. At least one player was a vet who had survived Khe Sanh while another was a member of the SDS. Casual sex had been discovered with the invention of the Pill - every date offered at least a possibility of 'going all the way'.
What really makes the film, however, is the fact that several of these former players are very good story tellers, whether it is the deft humor and witty insight of J.P. Goldsmith or the scary honesty of linebacker Mike Bouscaren, who candidly admits he attempted to injure the Harvard QB, but only got a well-deserved personal foul. (Oddly, he also asserted with absolute certitude that he had knocked a Harvard running back out of the game by using his helmet as a weapon and spearing the player's ankle. The game film clearly shows Bouscaren is nowhere near the action when that player is injured. Bouscaren had created his own false memory!) Compelling times, good stories well-told, and a wild game on the gridiron make for a highly entertaining an stimulating film.
 Go Crimson December 3, 2009
LSE (Atherton, CA)
The movie is great fun, especially if your connection is on the Harvard side. We did have problems with the first DVD shipped to us; it was unwatchable for technical reasons: the picture shattered or action froze.
A unique documentary about the social setting of a great college footbal game November 13, 2009
Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The 1968 Harvard-Yale football game is rightfully considered one of the greatest in the history of college football. The game that is virtually always rated the greatest game ever occurred the next with Arkansas and Texas, rated #2 and #1 playing the last regular season game of the first one hundred years of college football, with Billy Graham giving the opening prayer and Richard Nixon giving the trophy after the game. And while that game will long be considered the best, largely because of the unrepeatable circumstances surrounding the game. But to be perfectly honest, for sheer entertainment, the Yale-Harvard game was better. What makes this documentary so great is not that it does a fine job of recounting one of the classic games, complete with interviews with most of the key figures in the game (sadly Calvin Hill, the player from the game with the most successful pro career, did not participate in the film), but that it recreates the large social setting of the day. The ending is one of the most famous in the history of college football, but what gives it so much impact in this film is getting the reaction of the players to the game and learning what their situation away from the field was. The overall result is one of the most entertaining films that I've seen in quite a while.
One of the things that makes the film so much fun is that the players included some familiar people. Brian Dowling remains one of the most famous Ivy League players ever while Calvin Hill enjoyed a memorable career with the Dallas Cowboys. Actor Tommy Lee Jones, who played for Harvard, is one of the interviewees. And famous people were lingering on the edges. One player was dating Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones was rooming with Al Gore, and one player had roomed with George W. Bush, who had graduated from Yale the previous spring.
On a pure football note, it is interesting to see that had Yale taken care of the football, they would have won with ease. Key fumbles led to Harvard scores and prevented Yale ones. I was delighted watching the replays of famous Yale QB Brian Dowling. I knew that he was the basis for the character BD in the Doonesbury comic strip, but I had never actually seen any extended footage of him playing. He was an incredibly exciting player to watch, a Roger Staubauch/Fran Tarkenton type scrambler who was brilliant at finding receivers as he ran around in the backfield. Going into the game Dowling had the distinction of never having lost a football game. And despite the title of the film, he never did.
Harvard-Yale 29/29 November 11, 2009
Nawn (East Taunton, MA USA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Unable to personally review it because I bought it as a gift for my husband. He had specifically requested it as a Christmas gift after seeing a review for it in a magazine which gave two thumbs up!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
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