Culturegeeks

I am so in love with the Reel Geezers right now that I can’t stand it!

Their review of Juno is pretty good, too. I scrounged up a bit of information and posted it to the WFMU blog here.

This morning, 37,000 competitors in the New York City Marathon will be running a block away from my apartment.

Last night, I watched the DVD of Pride, an “inspired by true events” sports flick that had an amazingly short theatrical run. Because it’s pretty crappy. In fact, there’s only two whole reasons to watch Pride:

• One is Terrence Howard’s great performance as Jim Ellis, the janitor-turned-swim-coach who saves a failing neighborhood rec center and a bunch of troubled teens by creating a swimming program. Howard is truly turning into one of the finest character actors around.
• I’d say another 1/2 of a reason is the half-of-a-performance Bernie Mac turns in.
• One more 1/2 of a reason is the swimming action, because underwater camera shots of competitive swimming are just really exciting.

(The two biggest reasons to stay away from Pride are bad, cliche-ridden writing and Tom Arnold (ugh). Nevertheless, I’m a sucker for these types of movies, so I cried anyway when the Philly kids overcame their obstacles and improved their self-esteem through sport.)

I love inspirational sports movies, completely irony-free. So I compiled a list of the Top 10 Inspirational Sports Movies. Behold:

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Believe all the hype: Anton Corbijn’s indie biopic about Ian Curtis is amazing. And then some. Here’s why I loved Control so much:

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Give the filmmaking team of 30 Days of Night a gold star for a genius move: casting Danny Huston as head vampire honcho Marlow. Huston tears up the screen - and a bunch of hairy, frigid Alaskans - in a performance that is textured, intimidating and “Whoah!” inspiring.

And here’s the rest of the good news. The film isn’t nearly as crappy as I thought it would be.

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