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5 Least Convincing Scenes in Sports Movies

5 Least Convincing Scenes in Sports Movies

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 7 months ago
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For their new film, Sugar, writer-directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden cast an actual Dominican baseball player for the lead role of Miguel ‘Sugar’ Santos, a … Dominican baseball player. This employment of a non-actor with appropriate skill of course adds credibility to scenes depicting the sport while also qualifying Sugar as part of the current “neo-neorealism” trend. But Algenis Perez Soto is not the first real athlete to play a fictional athlete onscreen. Recall that before Shaquille O’Neal did his worst playing a genie and then a superhero, the NBA star played a college basketball player in Blue Chips.

Typically, though, casting a real player as a fictional player isn’t necessarily for authenticity; many pros end up starring in films as fantastical as Space Jam and Like Mike, and often they take a back seat to a Hollywood star in the lead sportsman role, whether that actor can truly play the game or not. If he or she can’t, it’s likely they’ll be made to look like they have the moves, and in many cases such an attempt at faking it fails. To illustrate why it might always be best for filmmakers to do as Fleck and Boden have done, we’ve selected five of the most unconvincing sports moments on film.
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Bears Playing Hockey. Clip of the Day

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 11 months ago
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I’m not down with hockey movies, and I’m definitely not down with movies in which animals play sports, yet somehow I’m a huge fan of this video. And all it is is bears playing hockey.

Maybe it’s because, unlike most hockey movies, I don’t need to actually worry about the game or the plot. I just need to become hypnotized by giant bears skating around on ice and hitting a puck with a hockey stick. Maybe the puck goes into a goal, maybe not, I don’t care. Maybe there’s a ragtag, underdog team on that ice, maybe not, I don’t care. There’s no dialogue, voiceover or narration of any kind, no attacking and killing the referee as if he were Grizzly Man’s Timothy Treadwell, just the calming visuals of a hockey game played by bears.

And apparently those are real bears really playing hockey, which is what makes it better than most animals-playing-sports movies. A lot of those feature real dogs or whatever, but special effects are typically employed when it comes to the animals’ seeming athletic ability. That dog in Air Bud is not really playing basketball. And that dog from Karate Dog is not really doing kung fu. And he’s definitely not doing karate, either, for that matter. Put 90 minutes of this on the big screen and I’ll go see it, because it’s genuine and it’s amazing.

Seriously, this is almost as enjoyable as that popular live puppy cam. If only this were perpetual, too.

[via Best Week Ever]