A onetime topflight salsa protégé is drawn back to the rigors of dance in Cuban Fury. In his early teens, Bruce Garrett (Nick Frost) was a salsa savant, ready to make his mark on the world by claiming a local major dance title. With his revered salsa coach, Ron (Ian McShane), awaiting his arrival, Bruce […]
Two retired boxing adversaries get one last chance to settle a decades-old grievance in Grudge Match. Thirty years ago, two boxers — Henry “Razor” Sharp (Sylvester Stallone) and Billy “The Kid” McDonnen (Robert De Niro) — faced each other in two monumental matches with each winning one bout. On the eve of the culminating third event, Razor […]
A group of real-life climbers reach the top of K2 only to realize the most difficult part of their journey lies ahead in The Summit. In August of 2008, 18 climbers realized a dream by reaching the summit of one of the deadliest mountains in the world — K2. However, it’s the treacherous descent where most fatalities occur. This […]
A 26 year-old Negro League baseball player finds an unlikely benefactor and is given the chance to break Major League Baseball‘s color barrier while wearing number 42. Jack (Jackie) Robinson‘s journey from the simple buses of Negro League baseball to becoming the first black player in the all-white Major Leagues since a color ban was instituted is a […]
Back in 1985, long before fantasy baseball had become popular, I got involved in one of its ancestral forms and that experience exposed me to the importance of seeing baseball as a statistical entity requiring a different type of analysis. It also exposed me to the wonders of Bill James and his approach called Sabermetrics. […]
Here’s my take on The Fighter. This effort has been a major focus for its star and chief proponent Mark Wahlberg. He’d apparently been working to get this out for several years. The movie is a bit of a biopic on the life of two boxing brothers and their quirky family in Lowell, Massachusetts. The older step-brother, Dicky […]
This week found me stuffing in another 2009 film in Clint Eastwood‘s latest film Invictus. The movie focuses on a specific segment of Nelson Mandela‘s early Presidency in which he enlists the aid of the national rugby team to help cure the ills of his fragile country. Mandela, played exceptionally by Morgan Freeman (as if […]
It was a wonderfully eye-opening experience.
A teenage penguin looking to break into the pro surfing circuit is the focus of a documentary in the shallow pools of Surf’s Up. This is the story of Cody Maverick (voiced by Shia LaBeouf), a young rockhopper penguin trying to become the next big surfing star of Antarctica. The event of the season is […]